Hi and welcome to the third installment of DVDevelopments, where we tell you what’s good on disc and on streaming for the coming month. So let’s get started…
HALLOWEEN IN FEBRUARY
Why, you might ask, do we seem to get a glut of horror movies in the month of the valentine? Could be that everything spooky that played in theaters in October is slithering onto DVD now. The big boogeyman this month will likely be the well-regarded Doctor Sleep (Feb. 4), the sequel to The Shining. There’s also Rabid, the Soska Sisters’ effective remake of the David Cronenberg classic (Feb. 4), Lars von Trier’s controversial serial-killer satire The House That Jack Built (Feb. 4), the short-lived Swamp Thing series (Feb. 11) that played on the DC Universe streaming app, the first season of the new Jordan Peele-produced Twilight Zone (Feb. 18), and the much-hyped Lovecraft adaptation The Color Out of Space with Nicolas Cage (Feb. 25).
All this, plus the usual direct-to-video horror junk that will clog Amazon Prime.
AND THE OSCAR GOES TO…
Sometimes Oscar-nominated films are released on DVD in time for you to catch up with them by Oscar night (which this year is Sunday, Feb. 9). Sometimes, though, it depends when they were released in theaters; 1917, for instance, isn’t expected to hit home media anytime before April, since it just came out at the end of December. Same goes for Little Women. But if you want some rooting interest in this year’s offerings, we got you covered. Parasite already came out last month. Of the other Best Picture nominees, Joker and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are also already available; I wouldn’t hold my breath for The Irishman or Marriage Story, since those are on Netflix and they’ll want to hold onto exclusive rights for those films for a while; and then we have Ford v Ferrari (Feb. 11), Jojo Rabbit (Feb. 18), A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Feb. 18), Knives Out (Feb. 25), and Frozen II (Feb. 25). For good measure, there’s the 1966 so-bad-it’s-good cult classic The Oscar (Feb. 4). And last year’s Foreign Language winner Roma finally lands on Feb. 11.
PRESTIGE AND OTHERWISE
Okay, so they can’t all be gems. But February doesn’t stint on the classy stuff. There’s a new Masterpiece Theatre version of Howards End (Feb. 4) starring Hayley Atwell. There’s Emilia Clarke in the romance Last Christmas (Feb. 4), Phoebe Waller-Bridges’ acclaimed Fleabag (Feb. 11), Chadwick Boseman in the thriller 21 Bridges (Feb. 18), the excellent documentary about the National Enquirer Scandalous (Feb. 18), and The Maya Deren Collection (Feb. 25), a new compilation of the work of the avant-garde filmmaker. There’s also plenty of stuff like Boogers of the Antichrist (Feb. 11), which I am not making up, and I wish I were.
STREAM AND STREAM AGAIN
What can you expect to see from the cable-killers this month?
Amazon Prime comes out strong with Honey Boy (Feb. 7), an autobiographical drama written by actor Shia LaBeouf; there’s also the solid-sounding Nazi-hunter series Hunters starring Al Pacino (Feb. 21). Disney Plus offers the seventh and final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, starting Feb. 21. Netflix subscribers will be treated to Locke and Key (Feb. 7), a series based on comic books written by Joe Hill, as well as the new series I Am Not Okay with This (Feb. 26) and season 2 of Altered Carbon (Feb. 27). Finally, Hulu has a show based on the book/movie High Fidelity (Feb. 14).
THE IDES OF MARCH
It’ll start getting warmer out, but maybe not warm enough yet for outdoor stuff, so you can stay inside and curl up with the likes of Bombshell, Queen & Slim, Uncut Gems, Charlie’s Angels, and more. Tune in next month…
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