Blu Tuesday is a weekly column where we review the newest Blu-ray and 4K releases, along with a brief rundown of the included bonus material, to determine whether they’re worth buying, renting or skipping.
Pick of the Week: “The Last of Us: The Complete First Season”
Hollywood has an awful track record when it comes to video game adaptations, but if there was going to be any project to break that trend, it was HBO’s “The Last of Us.” Not only is the show based on the critically acclaimed survival horror game of the same name, but it was shepherded to the small screen by the game’s creator Neil Druckmann and Emmy-winning writer Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”), who perfectly capture the mood and emotion of the game’s bleak, post-apocalyptic world while diving deeper into what makes its characters tick. Led wonderfully by Pablo Pascal and Bella Ramsey, the cast is chockful of fantastic performances, including memorable supporting turns from Gabriel Luna, Nick Offerman, Murray Bartlett, Melanie Lynskey and more. Everyone involved is operating at the top of their game, but the show simply doesn’t work without the amazing chemistry between its two stars. Pascal is already a household name thanks to his work on “The Mandalorian,” but he really gets to show off his dramatic chops here, while Ramsey more than holds her own as his brash and fiery travel companion. Though the series doesn’t contain as much action as fans of the game might expect, “The Last of Us” smartly focuses on what’s most important — the characters — and is all the better for it.
Extras include a behind-the-scenes look at making the series and more. FINAL VERDICT: BUY
Also Out This Week:
“Fool’s Paradise” — It’s not every day that you see a film so shockingly bad that the studio would have been better off just shelving it and claiming the tax write-off, but that’s “Fool’s Paradise” in a nutshell. Charlie Day (pulling triple duty as writer, director and star) must be an incredibly nice guy in real life because it’s the only explanation for how he convinced so many big stars to appear in this absolute shitshow of a movie. Day’s directorial debut is so deeply unfunny and uninspired that I completely tuned out by the 30-minute mark. Though “Fool’s Paradise” certainly had the potential to be something much better, this bland and toothless Hollywood satire is an absolute misfire that only gets worse by the minute. FINAL VERDICT: SKIP
“Love Again” — This English-language remake of the 2016 German film “SMS für Dich,” which itself is based on the 2009 Sofie Cramer novel of the same name, isn’t much better than your typical Hallmark Channel movie. It’s an incredibly predictable rom-com that’s lacking in both romance and comedy; Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, although fairly likable leads, have no real chemistry, while many of the quippy one-liners fall flat. There’s also a completely random subplot involving Celine Dion (playing herself) that seems to have been added for the sole purpose of getting her to write some new songs for the soundtrack, and yet, her appearance might be the best thing about the whole movie. Unfortunately, the bar hasn’t been set very high by writer/director Jim Strouse, resulting in a rather dull romantic comedy that genre fans may seek out but certainly won’t remember. Extras include a behind-the-scenes featurette and some deleted scenes. FINAL VERDICT: SKIP
Disclosure: Bullz-Eye was provided a copy of the above titles for review purposes.
