“Draft Day,” Kevin Costner’s latest sports picture, leads this week’s new movies on Blu-ray and DVD.
“Draft Day” (Summit/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital, 2014, PG-13, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurettes, trailer). Costner has played a bicycle racer, a professional golfer and, in four films, a Major League Baseball player. Here, he is general manager of the Cleveland Browns and has all kinds of personal issues whirling around him on NFL Draft Day while he’s going out on a limb to rebuild his team.
Some of the soap opera challenges thrown at him mount up with implausibility, but director Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters,” “Dave”) handles them deftly as he juggles comedy and drama, while allowing the tension to build in a way that even non-football fans will enjoy. A great supporting cast helps: Jennifer Garner, Denis Leary, Frank Langella, Tom Welling, Ellen Burstyn, Sam Elliott, Chadwick Boseman and Rosanna Arquette, among others.
“Night Moves” (Cinedigm/DVD, 2014, R for language and nudity, trailer). Low-budget, low-key eco-terrorism melodrama set in Oregon is slow going but rewarding as it plays out in three acts: the lengthy, meticulously detailed preparation of misguided violence as a form of protest; the tension-filled destruction of a hydroelectric dam; and the psychological meltdown of two of the three perpetrators, told from the viewpoint of Jesse Eisenberg. He and co-stars Dakota Fanning and Peter Sarsgaard are excellent. But patience is required to stick with this intimate character study by minimalist filmmaker Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff”). (The rating is for some sporadic coarse language and a brief scene of nude middle-aged women in a hot spring.)
“Moms’ Night Out” (Blu-ray/DVD/Digital/On Demand, 2014, PG, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurettes, bloopers). A frazzled mother of three (Sarah Drew) takes a girls’ night out with friends (including Patricia Heaton), leaving the kids with their sitcom-style husbands (including Sean Astin), which, of course, leads to a string of disasters. Comic faith film is well-intentioned but is way overcooked with too few laughs between very broad gags that fall flat.
“They Came Together” (Lionsgate/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital, 2014, R for language and sex, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurettes). Raunchy, off-the-wall spoof of modern romantic-comedy clichés has Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler going through the motions in a plot lifted from “You’ve Got Mail”: His big corporation threatens her independent candy shop. Surprisingly laugh-free, despite a cast that includes Cobie Smulders, Christopher Meloni, Bill Hader, Melanie Lynskey and Ed Helms.
“Leave the World Behind” (Shout!/Blu-ray/DVD, 2014, not rated). Documentary follows the electronic dance-music band Swedish House Mafia on its final world tour. The three members of the group are profiled and their friendship explored, as is their break-up, along with the requisite music-on-stage sequences. Well-made effort should please fans.
“For No Good Reason” (Sony Classics/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital, 2014, R for language and sexual images, deleted scenes, audio commentary, featurettes). British documentary features Johnny Depp, Terry Gilliam, Richard E. Grant and Jann Wenner offering up thoughts on artist Ralph Steadman, most famous for caricatures that accompanied Hunter S. Thompson’s work. But it is Steadman himself who commands attention, regaling the audience with stories of the “Gonzo” movement.
“Out of the Clear Blue Sky” (Virgil/DVD/Digital, 2014, not rated). Documentary exploration of the firm of Cantor Fitzgerald, which was lodged on floors 101 to 105 of the World Trade Center in Manhattan when the events of Sept. 11, 2001, took the lives of 658 of the company’s 960 employees. Company CEO Howard Lutnick went from distraught, traumatized symbol of a nation’s grief to a vilified pariah because of his prior reputation, but the film also focuses on the families of those who were killed.
“Baby Blues” (Well Go/Blu-ray/DVD/Digital, 2014, not rated, in Cantonese with English subtitles). Chinese Chuckie? This horror yarn has a young couple moving into a new home and finding a doll there, which is, of course, possessed. After the wife gives birth to twins and only one survives, she becomes obsessively attached to the doll. Very bad things ensue.
“Heavenly Sword” (Flatiron/Blu-ray/DVD, 2014, featurette, trailers). Computer-animated fantasy based on the PlayStation video game about a red-haired warrior (voiced by Anna Torv) who holds the powerful title blade, which is pursued by an evil king (Alfred Molina) and his army.
“President Wolfman” (WildEye/DVD, 2014, audio commentary, featurettes, short films, music video, trailers). Raunchy political farce comprised of public-domain film footage, spliced together to create a story of the U.S. president turning into a werewolf. Taken mostly from the 1973 PG-rated Dean Stockwell B-movie “The Werewolf of Washington” (which is pretty funny all by itself, albeit unintentionally) with excerpts from other films bringing it down to a gore- and nudity-filled R-rated level. “Mystery Science Theater 3000” it ain’t.
Chris Hicks is the author of "Has Hollywood Lost Its Mind? A Parent’s Guide to Movie Ratings." He also writes at www.hicksflicks.com and can be contacted at hicks@deseretnews.com.