So much to like, it’ll make you ‘Sing’
New on Blu-ray
Sing Street Starz/Anchor Bay DVD $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.99
It’s a shame that audiences didn’t flock to John Carney’s retro-pop musical when it was in theaters this year, but the movie’s so likable that it’s sure to stick around and become a perennial favorite.
Ferdia Walsh-Peelo stars as Conor, a shy Dublin teenager who in the mid-’80s forms a band with his working-class classmates to impress a girl. With the tutelage of his hip older brother (played by a scene-stealing Jack Reynor), Conor advances quickly from simple tunes to more sophisticated music, aping the likes of the Cure, Duran Duran and Hall & Oates. The songs are upbeat and catchy, helping both these kids and their fans escape from their lives in a part of the city ravaged by a collapsing economy. This is a feel-good film about optimists using their creativity to endure hard times. Those kinds of stories are always welcome. Special features: Featurettes and audition footage
VOD
Lace Crater available Friday
Writer-director Harrison Atkins’ brain-bending horror-comedy may test viewers’ patience early on with its semi-improvised dialogue and amateurish acting, which makes its cast of hip urban New Yorkers a little hard to take. But once the plot kicks in, and the heartbroken heroine Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) finds herself getting seduced by a burlapcovered ghost at a drug-fueled Hamptons house party, the movie becomes much more beguiling.
Atkins turns Ruth’s posthaunting ordeal into a constantly shifting metaphor for a modern young person’s social life, letting the nightmarish decay of her body stand for everything from a bad romantic breakup to sexual shaming.
“Lace Crater” connects only intermittently, but when it does, it’s refreshingly unique.
TV set of the week
JackThe MoviesIrish Acorn DVD, $39.99; Blu-ray, $39.99 Jack Irish Season 1 Acorn DVD, $39.99; Blu-ray, $39.99 Although Guy Pearce hasn’t been appearing on the big screen in leading roles much lately, fans of the Australian actor can get a hefty helping of his work in two new collections of the TV series “Jack Irish.”
Created by crime novelist Peter Temple, the character Jack Irish is an ex-lawyer who does various odd jobs that often lead to him playing amateur sleuth and action hero.
Pearce brought scruffy charm and wit to the part, first in three TV movies and then in a six-episode series — both now available from Acorn. The sets are recommended for Pearce devotees and for anyone who loves offbeat detective stories. Special features: Behindthe-scenes featurettes
From the archives
Pioneers of African American Cinema Kino Lobber DVD, $79.95; Blu-ray, $99.95
One of the year’s most exciting and historically significant archival projects, this collects nearly 20 hours of feature films and short subjects created by and starring entrepreneurial black entertainers between the ’20s and ’40s.
These “race films” run the gamut from musicals to melodramas to westerns and showcase the talents of American masters such as Oscar Micheaux, Spencer Williams, Paul Robeson and Zora Neale Hurston.
Given that most of these pictures played well outside any kind of traditional distribution system, they’ve always been in danger of getting lost, which makes the preservation efforts behind this set all the more heroic.
These are important documents of a truly independent cinema, produced outside of a Hollywood that had little interest in what these artists had to offer. Special features: Brief introductions to some of the films and filmmakers
Three more to see
The Boss Universal DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; also available on VOD; Hardcore Henry Universal DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; also available on VOD; The New World Criterion DVD, $39.95; Blu-ray, $49.95