Forget the tie: Buy dad some films for Father’s Day
From classics westerns starring Henry Fonda and Glenn Ford to foreign-language stunners to massive TV boxed sets, there’s a wide variety of DVDs and Blu-rays coming out just in time for Father’s Day.
So, this year, forgot about buying your pops another sweater or tie: dazzle him with the best Hollywood has to offer. KINGDOM - SEASONS ONE AND TWO (2017, Shout Factory, unrated, $30): Former boy bander Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers is a revelation in this hard-punching DirecTV drama about a family MMA fighters living in Venice, California. A very buff Jonas stars as a determined boxer who’s being trained by his ex-champion father (Frank Grillo) to become a profighter. Thanks to emotionpacked story lines involving Grillo’s addict ex-wife (Joanna Going) and free-spirited son (Jonathan Tucker), a gritty use of the Venice locations and an appealing unpredictability, “Kingdom” might be the best TV series you – and your Dad - have never heard of. THE ROUNDERS (1964, Warner Archive, unrated, $20): If you need a lesson in what star power can accomplish, check out this modest western which gets a big boost from the relaxed, lived-in performances of Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda. The actors play cowboys who try to break a roan, much to their eternal regret. Writer/director Burt Kennedy plays the new-to-Bluray “Rounders,” for laughs, particularly the cowboys’ run-in with two East Coast exotic dancers (Hope Holliday and Sue Ann Langdon) but Ford and Fonda imply a moving subtext of yearning and regret. EXTORTION (2017, Lionsgate, R, $20): If your Dad is turned off by the CGI-overkill of most action movies, gift him with this gritty little thriller which manages to keeps things refreshingly human-scaled and suspenseful for most of its running time. The action begins when a physician (Eion Bailey) and his family are stranded on a small Caribbean island. A local fisherman (Barkhad Abdi) offers to help for a million dollars but winds up vanishing, leaving Bailey in a beatthe-clock effort to locate his wife and son before they perish. Every time you think you have “Extortion” figured out, it offers up a fresh surprise, twisting and turning from a survivalist drama to a kidnap thriller to a revenge nail-biter. PELLE THE CONQUEROR - 30th ANNIVERSARY RESTORATION (1987, Film Movement, PG-13, $30): An Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film, this astonishingly evocative coming-of-age saga tags along with impoverished immigrants Pelle (Pelle Hvengaard) and his young son Lasse (Max Von Sydow) as they flee Sweden for the Danish island of Bornholm in hopes of a better life. Three decades since its release, “Pelle” has lost none of its power as director Bille August captures both the harshness of life in turnof-century Denmark and the unbreakable bond between father and son. It’s a bond which sustains them when everything and everyone else lets them down. BONES - THE FINAL CHAPTER (2017, Fox, unrated, $30): Hart Hanson’s eccentric police procedural wasn’t a groundbreaking show but it did manage to pull off plenty of witty banter over dead bodies. It also did a good job of balancing the romance between Bones (Emily Deschanel) and Booth (Philadelphia’s David Boreanaz) with mysteries that need solving. The final 12 episodes find Booth dealing with a vengeful villain whose father Booth killed years earlier and Bones suffering from a near-fatal brain injury. The series finale pulls together loose ends without trying too hard for significance. THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948, Criterion, unrated, $30): A precursor to every fugitives-on-the-run movie from “Bonnie and Clyde” to “Thelma and Louise,” this surprisingly tender romance finds the bank-robbing convict Bowie (Farley Granger) falling for the innocent Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) as he tries to outrun the cops and his accomplices. Director Nicholas Ray (“Rebel Without a Cause”) finds poetry in a love story set against the backdrop of dingy bus stations and run-down motels. And even though a sense of doom and dread hangs over the picture, Granger and O’Donnell make such a touching, soulful couple that it’s impossible not to be moved by their unlikely connection. THE YOUNG POPE (2016, HART TO HART - THE COMPLETE SERIES (1979-1984, Shout Factory, unrated, $160): Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers pass the chemistry test with flying colors in this engaging series about a wealthy and glamorous couple who often find themselves caught up in international intrigue. Along with their loyal assistant (Lionel Stander), the Harts bounce around the globe, sleuthing their way through some of the world’s poshest places. All 110 episodes, including the original pilot, are included in this 29 disc set. SNITCH (2013, Lionsgate, film on Dwayne Johnson’s resume but it is one of the first features which proved he had some acting chops. It helps that he plays a lot of scenes with Susan Sarandon. She’s so good as a politically ambitious U.S. attorney that she ups his game enormously, helping him to deliver a raw, touching performance. Johnson stars as a trucking exec who’ll do anything, including infiltrating a deadly drug cartel, to get his nerdy son’s prison sentence reduced. The actioner, which looks better than ever in this new 4K Blu-ray package, begins to fall apart in the third act but it still boasts some well-staged shootouts and freeway chases, and forces you to re-think the efficacy of mandatory sentencing. 36 HOURS (1964, Warner Archive, unrated, $20): Rarely revived these days, this superb World War II spy yarn, now on Blu-ray, is a first-rate action vehicle that boasts a unique premise, killer performances and a genuine sense of urgency. James Garner stars as an intelligence officer who, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, is captured in Lisbon by the Nazis. Rather than being tortured for information