Fury
One of the underrated films of 2014 was David Ayer’s Fury, a stark, unrelentingly grim take on war from the perspective of a Sherman tank. Sgt. Don “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt) and his crew are dismally outmanned and outgunned as the German army makes their last, desperate stand at the end of the Second World War. Adding insult to injury is the arrival of a green recruit (Logan Lerman) who might put them all at risk. (Shia LaBeouf, Michael Pena, Jon Bernthal co-star.) Ayer studies friendships forged in fire and coming-of-age in the toughest of circumstances, all set in the grit and gore of a war that claimed 60 million lives. Standard-disc extras: Blood Brothers, with Ayers, Pitt, Lerman, LaBeouf, Pena, and Bernthal, and how their in-depth conversations with Second World War veterans affected their performances; previews.
Dracula Untold
Game of Thrones fans will appreciate the distinctly Westeros vibe (not to mention a GOT actor of two) at play in Dracula Untold, which focuses on the softer side of legendary terror Vlad the Impaler. He’s a victim, a family man, defender of Christendom against those nasty Turks. He’s also a newly minted vampire, in this iteration of the legend. Luke Evans is a commanding presence in a film dominated by slow-motion carnage and bat morphing. There are loads of special features on the Blu-ray: Evans dissects scenes in “Creating A Legend”; we get to follow Evans around for a day starting at 5:30 a.m. at his home in Belfast; “Dracula Retold” mulls over various historical accounts of Vlad the Impaler; “Slaying 1000” highlights the choreography involved in the epic battle scene; director Gary Shore and production designer provide commentary; there’s an interactive map of Dracula’s ‘hood, an alternate opening, and deleted scenes.
The Overnighters
Christian charity is stretched to the limit in this true story of a small North Dakota town where busloads of job-seekers arrive daily, lured by rumoured six-figure paycheques and $30-an-hour McDonald’s earnings. But the fracking boom has flattened, there’s no work and nowhere to live, and no going back. Pastor Jay Reinke oversees the Overnighters program in his Lutheran church, which houses scores of men inside and in the parking lot. The film begins with the social issue at hand but whittles down to one man’s personal demons. Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Intuitive Filmmaking at Sundance, The Overnighters shines a light on the flip side of capitalism and prosperity in America.
Lucy
According to Lucy’s special features, it took director Luc Besson 10 years to wrap his head around the fact that humans may only use 10 per cent of our brain power, and it took almost as long to figure out how to make a film that would examine what happened if we were amped up to 100 per cent, without it sounding like a college anatomy lesson. No danger of falling asleep, though: playing Lucy is Scarlett Johannson in her second kick-butt, body-morphing role of 2014 (after Under the Skin). Lucy is an American student living in Taiwan who gets duped into delivering a package to a Korean businessman, who ends up using her as a drug mule. A brutal beating results in the experimental drugs cascading through her system; Lucy is accessing more of her brain by the minute, unlocking powers humans have only dreamed of, but her time may be running out. Extras on the Blu-ray include The Evolution of Lucy, featuring interviews with Besson and Johansson, who discuss the challenge of maintaining Lucy’s humanity. Still confused? Cerebral Capacity: The True Science of Lucy should help explain some of the trickier science in the film.
The Guest
Downton Abbey fans won’t believe the transformation of Matthew Crawley from buttoned-up lord to buff American psycho: Dan Stevens plays David Collins, a man who shows up on the doorstep of the Peterson family claiming to be the best friend of their dead G.I. son. Mom (Sheila Kelley) thinks it’ll be therapeutic for them to have him around; but daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) knows something is up, especially once the blood starts flowing. Darkly funny, playfully violent, and set during preparations for Halloween, of course. The blu-ray features deleted scenes, a Q&A session with Stevens, and commentary with director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett.
