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: “Alfred Hitchcock: The Iconic Film Collection”
Movie collectors will never truly find a definitive Alfred Hitchcock collection because he worked at so many different studios over the years, creating a headache over the ownership rights of his catalog. However, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better representation of Hitchcock’s work than this limited-edition set from Universal (in partnership with Warner Bros. and Paramount), which contains some of the director’s most iconic films together on 4K for the first time, including “Psycho,” “Birds,” “North by Northwest,” “Rear Window,” “Vertigo” and “To Catch a Thief.” Though the packaging is a bit awkward, as it’s designed to look like a premium coffee table book, it’s loaded with rare photos, bios and trivia, which slightly makes up for the fact that it probably won’t fit on most bookshelves. If nothing else, it’s certainly befitting of a man whose impact on cinema looms large to this day.
Extras include audio commentaries on every film except “The Birds,” audio interviews with Hitchcock, behind-the-scenes featurettes and much more. FINAL VERDICT: BUY
Also Out This Week:
“Hush” — Director Mike Flanagan’s early work may have helped put him on the map, but 2016’s “Hush” — which has been remastered in 4K under Flanagan’s supervision for this new release — is without a doubt one of his weaker projects. A run-of-the-mill home invasion thriller with a slight twist (the protagonist is deaf), “Hush” lacks any real suspense over its 82-minute runtime. Neither of the main characters is particularly engaging, but by making one of them deaf, it forces the audience to suspend disbelief even more than your typical horror flick, since she’s basically a sitting duck for most of the film. It gets to the point where the intruder is no longer dragging things out for the thrill of the hunt — he’s just being plain stupid. Though “Hush” shows moments of promise, it fails to capitalize on them in any meaningful way, resulting in a subpar thriller that feels like it’s just going through the motions. Extras include an audio commentary by Flanagan, actor/co-writer Kate Siegel and actors John Gallagher Jr., Samantha Sloyan and Michael Trucco, as well as additional interviews with the cast and crew. The four-disc set also includes the newly created “Shush Cut,” a black-and-white version of the film that removes the musical score for a very different experience. FINAL VERDICT: RENT
Disclosure: Bullz-Eye was provided a copy of the above titles for review purposes.
