Coens’ fans will hail this one
New on Blu-ray
Hail, Caesar! Universal, DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; also available on VOD
Joel and Ethan Coen bring their skewed sensibility back to the world of Old Hollywood for the first time since their cult classic “Barton Fink,” and while the brothers come away with a shaggy comedy that their fans should dig, ordinary moviegoers may find the picture baffling. Josh Brolin stars as a studio “fixer” who spends his days straightening out troubled biblical epics and costume dramas while also squelching scandals involving communists, libertines and his biggest star (played by George Clooney). The plot meanders more than usual for the Coens, though “Hail, Caesar!” does nail a few big, boisterous set pieces (including a musical number featuring Channing Tatum), and the film as a whole expresses a heartening faith in human usefulness that makes its overall laxness more forgivable. Just don’t expect the story to come to a satisfying point. Special features: Four breezy featurettes. Race Universal DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; also available on VOD
Journeyman director Stephen Hopkins doesn’t try to pep up the bland biopic formula with his Jesse Owens drama, but he does deliver a reasonably stirring version of a story that bears retelling. Stephan James gives an engaging performance as Owens, who overcomes prejudice and intense national pressure to compete and win at the 1936 Olympic Games. The movie leans heavily on a simplistic heroes-and-villains narrative, but that’s hard to fault too much when the main bad guy is, y’know, Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, “Race” is broad but effective, reminding viewers of an important moment in the history of American sports and patriotism — which was also one more step down the long, seemingly unending road toward eliminating bigotry. Special features: A trio of featurettes. VOD Lenny Cooke Available Tuesday
Joshua and Ben Safdie are best known for writing and directing edgy, arty indie dramas like “Daddy Longlegs” and “Heaven Knows What,” but they’re also responsible for this heartrending documentary, about a former Brooklyn high school basketball phenom who came out for the NBA draft too early and never made it to the big time. Balancing footage of Cooke today with old clips of him at his peak, the Safdie brothers set out to capture the specific American dream of becoming a rich professional athlete, with a fancy crib and an entourage — and what happens to the dreamer when things don’t work out as he’d planned. Hitler’s Folly Available now
Cult animator Bill Plympton has made one of his oddest and most entertaining feature films with this mockumentary, which uses some of the Nazi leader’s real artwork and early biographical details to imagine an alternate history where Hitler aimed to be a rival
to Walt Disney as well as a genocidal dictator. While Hitler steers the Reich’s resources into making one unwieldy epic, Disney responds by putting all of his studio’s visionary technicians to work on the American war effort, employing animatronic robots to fool the enemy. Mixing archival footage, fake interviews, and his own animation, Plympton spoofs the pretensions of tyrants and artists alike, and suggests — rather subversively — that a Hitler who worked within the American mass media might’ve had better luck at taking over the world. “Hitler’s Folly” is available to stream for free at www.plymptoons.com.
TV sets of the week
Vinyl The Complete First Season HBO, DVD, $49.99; Blu-ray, $59.98
HBO and 1970s rock ’n’ roll fans alike expected much more than they got from the first season of this drama about the New York record industry in the era of disco, punk and prog. Star Bobby Cannavale gives his all, but “Boardwalk Empire” creator Terence Winter — in conjunction with producers Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger — often takes the wrong way into this material, reducing a fascinating period in pop history into just another overwrought premium cable show about a powerful man going through a midlife crisis. “Vinyl” is worth watching, though, both for how vividly it re-creates the excitement of its times and for some electrifying music. Special features: Commentary tracks; featurettes. The Last Panthers Acorn DVD, $39.99; Blu-ray, $39.99
The real-life misadventures of the European criminal organization dubbed “The Pink Panthers” by Interpol has inspired this sophisticated crime drama, which follows the intertwined lives of a Serbian master thief (played by Goran Bogdan), a French police detective (Tahar Rahim) and two pragmatic British insurance agents (Samantha Morton and John Hurt). This series is in part a docu-realistic look at the complexities of the modern criminal world, where new technologies make big jobs easier to pull off but harder to get away with. But it’s also about a changing Europe, where people of different cultures mingle and compete in countries far from their homelands. Special features: A half-hour of behind-the-scenes featurette.
From the archives
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan — Director’s Cut Paramount, Blu-ray, $22.99
After 1979’s “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” proved to be an expensive disappointment, Paramount green-lighted a sequel at a fraction of its predecessor’s budget, and the result was a film with more of the scrappiness and personality of the original TV series. Director Nicholas Meyer and a team of screenwriters relied less on fancy special effects and instead delivered a rollicking science-fiction adventure story that leans heavily on the history and the relationships of the “Star Trek” characters — with a classic villain in the form of Ricardo Montalbán’s ruthless, megalomaniacal Khan. By catering more to fans, “The Wrath of Khan” made “Star Trek” viable for the big screen and for a new generation. It’s the best film of the series in terms of its memorable scenes, lines and ideas, and it’s now available on Blu-ray in a special-edition director’s cut that adds a few extra minutes of scenes and moments. Special features: Two Meyer commentary tracks; vintage interviews; new half-hour making-of documentary. Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy Criterion DVD, $99.95; Blu-ray, $99.95
Germany’s cinematic New Wave came a little later than other countries’, but once the likes of Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder picked up cameras in the late 1960s, they and their contemporaries were as creative and prolific as any. Criterion’s new box set collects three pivotal movies from that movement: 1974’s “Alice in the Cities” (about a writer stuck on a trip with someone else’s kid), 1975’s “Wrong Move” (about young artists who meet each other by chance and become first friends and then rivals) and 1976’s “Kings of the Road” (about two sad sacks on an existential journey). Wenders tries out styles and tones, including bleak, deadpan and melodramatic. In addition to helping establish his reputation on the world stage, these masterpieces were an inspiration to ’80s American independent filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Allison Anders. Special features: Commentary tracks; interviews; early Wenders short films
Six more to see
Anomalisa Paramount, DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99; also available on VOD City of Women Cohen DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98 Horse Money The Cinema Guild DVD, $29.95; Bluray, $39.95 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Sony DVD, $26.99; Blu-ray, $34.99; 4K, $45.99; also available on VOD A War Magnolia, DVD, $26.97; Blu-ray, $29.97 Zootopia Disney/Buena Vista, DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99; 3-D, $39.99; also available on VOD