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Winner of three Academy Awards, Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash is essentially a two-character study about a gifted young drummer and his sadistic music conservatory teacher. Both Miles Teller and Oscar winner J.K. Simmons are excellent in those roles. The film’s persistent and insistent jazz score is so omnipresent it’s almost a third character. Paul Reiser as Teller’s father, Melissa Benoist as his first girlfriend, and Austen Stowell and Nate Long as competitive fellow drummers have the most prominent supporting roles, but it’s the interaction between Teller and Simmons that grabs and then holds your interest throughout.

Simmons’ character is not unlike the sadistic college professor played by John Houseman in The Paper Chase and the equally sadistic drill instructor played by Louis Gossett, Jr. in An Officer and a Gentleman, roles which won them Oscars as well.

Whiplash is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

An old-fashioned suspense film in the best sense, Hossein Amini’s The Two Faces of January, is a fairly faithful version of the 1964 novel by Patricia Highsmith, author of Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Viggo Mortensen stars as a middle-aged American con artist on his honeymoon in Athens who accidentally kills a private investigator and has to flee the country without a passport. He’s aided by much younger bride Kirsten Dunst and American-born Greek tour guide Oscar Isaac. The Hitchcockian drama is a fine showcase for both Mortensen and Isaac, less so for Dunst who makes a fine showing, but whose screen time is limited. Unlike most modern crime dramas with their ambivalent endings, this one ties up the loose ends nicely with good guy Isaac coming out on top.

The Two Faces of January is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD

With its no-name voice cast and trailers emphasizing a big doughy robot, I was under the impression that the title Big Hero 6 was the name of the robot. It turns out that there are actually six “big heroes,” the robot and five college-level nerds out to save the world from a tyrant who has seized the invention of one of the heroes whose name just happens to be “Hiro”. The robot, Baymax, belonged to his brother Tadashi who was killed in his attempt to rescue his professor from a fire caused by the bad guy in the city of San Fransokyo.

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature has all the bells and whistles of a modern day fantasy film but returns the genre to the comic book world from which it came. Kids will love it.

Big Hero 6 is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Blue Underground has released an upgrade of Larry Cohen’s 1976 cult classic God Told Me To.

The film, which appeals equally to comedy, mystery, horror and sci-fi film buffs, begins with random sniper killings of people on the streets of New York and is soon followed by more random killings by a cop during the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade. In both instances, the dying killers (Sammy Williams, Andy Kaufman), when asked why they did what they did, reply “God told me to”. A devoutly Catholic detective (Tony LoBianco) is determined to get to the bottom of the murders which expand to include even more brutal slayings. LoBianco (The Honeymoon Killers, The French Connection) is superb as the cop whose faith is shaken to the core by what he discovers. He’s ably supported by Deborah Raffin, Sandy Dennis, Sylvia Sidney, Richard Lynch, Robert Drivas, Mike Kellin, Sam Levene and Harry Ballaver.

The new release which is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD features all-new extras including lengthy interviews with LoBianco and Cohenm, and feature-length commentary by Cohen.

Kino Lorber has released a restored version of Billy Wilder’s 1964 comedy Kiss Me, Stupid on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The much maligned comedy may not be one of Wilder’s greats, but it is not as bad as its reputation would have you think. Filmgoers of the day anticipating another Some Like It Hot or The Apartment were not amused by Dean Martin pretty much playing himself as a stranded lounge singer who falls prey to the antics of amateur songwriter Ray Walston, gas station owner Cliff Osmond, and cocktail waitress Kim Novak. Felicia Farr as Walston’s wife and the Gershwin score gift it its class.

Kino Lorber has also released Richard Quine’s 1965 film, How to Murder Your Wife on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Quine directed Jack Lemmon as many times as Billy Wilder did. The actor made six for both of them. His previous films for Quine included My Sister Eileen and Bell, Book and Candle. This time around he plays a popular newspaper cartoonist who is famous for staging his cartoon dramas in real life before drawing them for the newspapers. Things get ugly when he draws a storyline about a man’s murder of his wife and his own wife disappears. Of course, this being a romantic comedy, he did not kill his wife and she is not dead.

The film, a big hit at the time, was a showcase for both Lemmon and Italian beauty Virna Lisi making her Hollywood film debut as his wife. She would appear in several more high profile Hollywood films throughout the 1960s but would achieve lasting renown as the evil Catherine de Medici in 1994’s Queen Margot for which she would win numerous international awards.

The long-running British mystery series Midsomer Murders began running in 1997 in the U.K., and 1998 in the U.S. It has thus far survived the retirement of its original Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby (John Nettles) and all the people who supported him including Detective Sergeants Gavin Troy (Daniel Casey), Dan Scott (John Hopkins) and Ben Jones (Jason Hughes). Tom Barnaby was replaced by his cousin John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon), allowing the series to continue with a lead character with the same name. The new-to-the-U.S. Midsomer Murders – Set 25 introduces us to Detective Sergeant Charlie Nelson (Gwilym Lee).

The characters may change, but the formula is the same. A heinous murder occurs in a quiet village in the fictional Midsomer County and Barnaby and his Detective Sergeant investigate. Before they can solve the first murder, another one or more will occur, the grizzlier the better for the series’ huge audience. The new set, which is comprised of five 90-minute features, includes the series’ 100th. More are on the way.

Midsomer Murders – Set 25 is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This week’s new releases include Foxcatcher and The Last of Robin Hood.

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