THE SAD YET FUNNY WORLD OF ‘THE BIG SICK’
New on Blu-ray The Big Sick Lionsgate DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99 also available on VOD
Comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon have turned their own one-of-a-kind love story into one of the year’s biggest indie hits: a funny, touching tale of family ties, healthcare woes, and cultural divisions. Zoe Kazan plays Emily, whose budding romance with an aspiring Chicago stand-up (Nanjiani) gets waylaid first by his disapproving Muslim parents, and then by a sudden illness that forces her into a medically induced coma. The leads are outstanding, but the movie’s unexpected MVPs are Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, playing Emily’s bickering parents, who bond with Kumail while she’s unconscious. Filled with quotable lines and contemporary concerns, “The Big Sick” has the virtue of specificity. It’s a real story about real people, given an entertainer’s polish. Special features: Deleted scenes, a commentary track, a SXSW panel discussion, and multiple featurettes that compare fact and fiction
It Comes at Night Lionsgate DVD, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99
distinctive and divisive horror films, writer-director Trey Edward Shults’ work takes place in a big, dark house, deep in the woods, in a future America that’s been ravaged by some kind of apocalyptic contagion. Joel Edgerton plays one of the survivors, who tries to keep his family safe and faces a moral crisis when a desperate couple (played by Christopher Abbott and Riley Keough) arrives on his doorstep, looking for shelter. The first-rate cast and Shults’ spooky mood-setting turn “It Comes at Night” into more of a meditation on trust, paranoia and social dynamics than a thriller. Genre fans looking for shocks have already expressed disappointment with the movie, but it’s a must for connoisseurs seeking a deeper, more soulshaking fear. Special features: A commentary track and a brief featurette
VOD 19-2 Season Four Available on Acorn TV
One of the best police procedurals of the 2010s is set and shot in Montreal and is an English-language adaptation of a French-Canadian series. The fourth and final season of “19-2” wraps up the story of patrolmen partners Nick Barron (Adrian Holmes) and Ben Chartier (Jared Keeso), who for the past four years on Canadian television have dealt with the dangers and politics of their job, while also managing complicated home-lives. Fans of “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” “The Shield” and “Southland” should jump right on “19-2,” if they haven’t already.
Clowntergeist Available now
Writer-director Aaron Mirtes’ film delivers exactly what its name promises. Mirtes shamelessly stokes the audience’s coulrophobia, from his genuinely startling opening sequence (adapted from an earlier short film) to multiple later scenes of a killer clown appearing suddenly from the shadows to wreak havoc. The plot’s mostly nonsensical, having to do with a hellish harlequin tormenting a small town with balloons that have the time of his next attack scrawled on them. But the young cast of unknowns is likable, and the scares are plentiful enough to satisfy everyone who checks out “Clowntergeist” because of the cheesy title — and then spends the rest of the night hiding under a blanket, fearing Bozo.
TV sets of the week The Vietnam War PBS DVD, $99.99; Blu-ray, $129.99
Ken Burns and Lynn Novick follow up their previous successful collaborations on the hit PBS docuseries “The War” and “Prohibition” with an 18-hour look at the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, taking into account the conflict’s Cold War origins, the campus protest movement, and the ongoing efforts to make sense of what happened and why. The documentary is at once comprehensive and digressive, with storylines and anecdotes that break the big picture down into small moments of crisis, outrage and regret. It stands as one of Burns’ finest achievements, in the class of “The Civil War” and “Baseball.” Special features: Over 100 minutes of bonus footage
Orphan Black Season Five BBC DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98
Back in 2013, this BBC America series began as a simple tale about a shady grifter (played by the Emmy-winning Tatiana Maslany), who discovered she had a wide array of lookalike clones. Five years later, the story expanded to include multiple shadowy organizations and secret labs, which the original “clone club” investigated and worked against — and sometimes for. The final 10episode season brings the saga to a satisfying conclusion, answering most every remaining question while focusing on the emotional resonances of this unusual family’s adventure. It’s a fitting capper to one of TV’s most original shows. Special features: Extensive featurettes and interviews
From the archives Hana-bi (Fireworks) Film Movement Classics Bluray, $39.95
When Japanese comedian Takeshi Kitano transitioned into filmmaking, he surprised his fans by favoring austere, arty crime dramas, in which he often starred as stoic tough guys — totally unlike his broader comic persona. As a writerdirector, he broke through in American arthouses with his masterpiece, the brutal and tender crime melodrama “Fireworks” (sometimes called by its original Japanese title “Hana-bi”), in which he plays a retired cop who’s having a hard time retreating to a quiet life with his ailing wife. As writer, director, and star, Kitano creates a beautifully abstract, intricately structured meditation on personal obligation, considering the strong grip that a life of violence has on those who’ve lived it. Special features: A featurette, and a commentary track from critic David Fear
Phenomena Synapse Blu-ray, $39.95
Italian suspense maestro Dario Argento was in his commercial and creative heyday when he made 1985’s bizarre and imaginative hybrid of supernatural thriller, slasher picture and heavy metal music video. A teenage Jennifer Connelly stars as budding psychic who has the power to control insects. When she’s sent away to school — in a picturesque Swiss village — the heroine and her bug friends get on the trail of a serial killer who’s been plaguing the community. With its inexplicable Iron Maiden cameos and its nightmarish images of impalements and creepy-crawly creatures, “Phenomena” is Argento at his most unfettered, practically free-associating from scene to scene. Special features: A scholarly commentary track, a feature-length documentary about Argento and multiple cuts of the film