HOME THEATER Comic bite to the bark of an underdog
New on Blu-ray
Wilson 20th Century Fox DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99; also available on VOD
Director Craig Johnson’s movie version of Dan Clowes’ outstanding graphic novel loses a lot of what was unique about the book, converting a complex study of an extroverted misanthrope into a quirky underdog comedy. But Woody Harrelson is terrific as the title character: a heavily opinionated, mildly delusional man who reconnects with his ex-wife (Laura Dern) and goes looking for the teenage daughter (Isabella Amara) she gave up for adoption. It’s nowhere near as thorny as the comic, which was more willing to make readers feel uncomfortable with its antihero. But the film is generally funny and energetic, and stands up just fine on its own. Special features: Deleted scenes and featurettes.
VOD
The Bad Batch Available Friday
Promising cult filmmaker Ana Lily Amirpour follows up her acclaimed “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” with this more challenging — but no less artful — postapocalyptic odyssey that’s low on thrills and heavy on atmosphere. Suki Waterhouse plays a young woman branded by the government as socially undesirable and sent to live in a lawless desert, where she’s beset by cannibals and hedonists. As with Amirpour’s debut, plot is kept to a minimum here, replaced by striking images and set-pieces that are mesmerizing, even when they don’t go anywhere.
TV set of the week
Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In: The Complete Series Time-Life DVD, $249.95
When “Laugh-In” debuted as a regular weekly comedy/variety series on NBC in January 1968, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon by finding the sweet spot between the hip, mod style that young people loved and the hoary old vaudeville gags that could appeal to Nixon’s “silent majority.” The box set is a fascinating trip through a tumultuous time in American show business, when the industry’s old guard fought to stay relevant without surrendering to the rising generation. Special features: Bloopers, interviews and a cast reunion special.
From the archives
The Paul Naschy Collection Scream! Factory Blu-ray, $79.97
Scream! Factory caters to connoisseurs with its latest Blu-ray box set, collecting five gory, sexy fright-flicks starring “the Spanish Lon Chaney,” Paul Naschy. The film’s titles alone — “Horror Rises from the Tomb,” “Human Beasts,” etc. — indicate what to expect here. But Naschy was a genre buff, and even as he was pumping out multiple splatter pictures a year, he fought to make sure that each one was creepy, stylish, sensational and weird enough to appeal to hardcore horror-hounds. Special features: Scholarly commentary tracks, deleted scenes and alternate takes.