ENTERTAINMENT

Home Video | Box office champ 'Mockingjay' arrives

Todd Hill
Reporter

The box-office champ of 2014 arrives with a splash on DVD and Blu-ray this week, along with one of the strangest prestige titles from this past awards season. Beyond that, the week is defined by odds and ends with checkered release histories that have nonetheless found their way to the small screen, proof that everything, eventually, winds up on home video.

New movies

"The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1." This third installment in the latest young-adult book franchise to hit the big screen, like the first two, is just for the fans, and it definitely shouldn't be seen without watching what came before. So I can only hope that rapt followers of Katniss Everdeen's romps through this parallel dystopia appreciate how capably the film treats propaganda as a thematic device. More than that, I hope they realize just how fine an actress Jennifer Lawrence is, and how vital is the message of female empowerment championed here. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material. 123 min.

"Foxcatcher." You may need to watch this deeply bewildering film over again simply to better understand its hypnotic power, but you probably won't want to because watching it is such an unpleasant experience. Director Bennett Miller ("Moneyball") tells the true story of John du Pont, an extremely wealthy man who decided to be a wrestling coach. Bad things happened. Steve Carell, playing du Pont with a huge, false nose, and Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo as grapplers, all outdo themselves. The movie is a cautionary tale about distinctions of wealth, but I'm not entirely sure what the movie is trying to say. I just know I was creeped out. Rated R for some drug use and a scene of violence. 129 min.

"Captive." The French actress Isabelle Huppert has a talent for choosing interesting projects. This film, produced overseas three years ago and just now finding its way to home video in this country, tells the true story of a group of western tourists kidnapped by Islamic separatists in the Philippines. Want to know why that country isn't a huge tourist destination? Here's one reason. The movie has a documentary feel to it when it could've used some dramatic invention, and eventually explores the Stockholm syndrome as captors and captives begin to identify a bond with each other. Not rated but plenty of hostage-related violence. In English and Tagalog with English subtitles. 122 min.

"To Write Love On Her Arms." Why this movie never made it past the festival circuit before arriving on video may or may not have had to do with its awkward title (it was originally called "Renee"). It stars Kat Dennings, once the next big thing in movies before ending up on a run-of-the-mill TV sitcom ("2 Broke Girls") for the past five years. It's an inspirational film about recovery (from drugs, depression, etc.) and likely to appeal to those who respond to such stories, if no one else. It would have benefited from spending more time on Renee's backstory. Rated PG-13 for mature thematic content involving addiction and disturbing behavior throughout, and for brief language. 118 min.

Old movies

A familiarization with the blaxploitation film genre of the early 1970s is essential before viewing "Blacula" and "Scream Blacula Scream," making their Blu-ray debuts this week. Capitalizing on the black power movement, these are campy treatments of the popular Dracula character, cast to appeal to black audiences. (Pam Grier, who built her career on blaxploitation movies, appears in the sequel.) Seen from the perspective of today, the "Blacula" titles are fascinating studies, which isn't to suggest that these are high-quality motion pictures in any sense of the term. As the title character, William Marshall may have portrayed the sweatiest vampire ever seen on film, yet his makeup never runs.

Top 10

Here are this week's most popular DVD rentals as compiled by Rotten Tomatoes: "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1," "Lucy," "Fury," "Big Hero 6," "Gone Girl," "The Equalizer," "Boyhood," Birdman," "The Theory of Everything" and "Nightcrawler."

thill3@nncogannett.com

419-563-9225

Twitter: @ToddHillMNJ