Blu-rays of the Week 

(Film Movement)

Hirokazu Kore-eda makes intimate, insightful films about families, some dysfunctional, others not, but always shown with sympathy and subtlety. His latest is a left turn, a courtroom drama that dramatizes a showdown between a defense attorney and a client who may not be guilty of a murder he’s already confessed to.

Although the film goes too far into the weeds to keep up appearances as a standard procedural, the tense moments between the two men—including a truly stunning ending—make it all worthwhile. The film’s muted colors look really sharp on Blu; extras include a 30-minute on-set featurette.

Hell Fest 

(Lionsgate)

After a group of dumb teenagers traipses down to the local amusement park for a Halloween-themed party, the horror soon becomes reality as bodies start piling up in ever more grotesque—and, occasionally, admittedly inventive—ways.

If you crave yet another “let’s kill teenagers” flick, you could do worse than director Gregory Plotkin’s entry: there’s enough blood and cleverness to make its 90 minutes go by relatively quickly. One big red flag: it took six writers come up with this. The Blu-ray transfer looks splendid; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

DVDs of the Week 

(Magnolia)

This candid documentary portrait of Joan Jett—former Runaway, huge MTV star (briefly) in the early 80s and Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame inductee—allows the trailblazing lady herself to speak uncensoredly and even angrily about her career in the male-dominated rock’n’roll world.

Director Kevin Kerslake has unearthed a plethora of vintage stage/backstage footage, photos and mementos, and Jett is our guide every step of the way, with her longtime manager-guru-partner Kenny Laguna. Extras include music videos and live footage.

The Oath 

(Lionsgate)

This heavyhanded and redundant would-be comedy is set in an America where the current president wants everyone to sign a loyalty oath to him—a couple declines to do so, which leads to the ruination of the family’s Thanksgiving dinner thanks to the arrival of two Homeland Security goons.

Ike Barinholtz, who wrote, directed and stars, wears three hats too many; he even manages to make the heretofore indestructible Tiffany Haddish unfunnily wearying. This witless movie wants to be a sharp, witty satire-cum-cautionary tale, but even the converted it preaches to probably won’t find it watchable. Extras are featurettes and deleted scenes.

Blu-rays of the Week 

(Lionsgate)

After a cataclysmic event that killed many, survivors still see “remnants,” the apparitions of those who died, in Scott Speer’s workmanlike adaptation of Daniel Waters’ novel.

Bella Thorne gives a forceful performance as a high school student trying to solve a murder mystery that may or may not involve her teacher (well-played by Dermot Mulroney). There’s an excellent Blu-ray transfer; extras are director Scott Speer and Thorne’s commentary, featurettes and deleted scenes (with Speer’s commentary).

Outrage Coda 

(Film Movement)

In Takeshi Kitano’s latest gangster flick, a retired yakuza returns to Japan from Korean exile to slaughter seemingly everyone in his path, piling up one of the highest body counts in any “Beat” Takeshi movie.

Although his films are pretty much interchangeable at this point—and this is the last of a trilogy, following Outrage and Beyond Outrage—Kitano’s energy as director provides a car-crash quality that keeps one watching for the next ridiculously overdone bloodletting. The film has a great hi-def transfer; lone extra is a full-length making-of documentary.

Snowflake 

In a scuzzy-looking Berlin, two criminals intent on avenging the indiscriminate murder of their family members find to their own peril that their antagonists come in the form of weapon-wielding fairy-tale villains.

Adolfo Kolmerer and William James have made a demented, sometimes enervating horror comedy that has enough outlandishly entertaining moments to be more than just the latest violent Coen-Tarantino knockoff. There’s a solid hi-def transfer.

DVDs of the Week

Elizabeth I and Her Enemies 

(Athena)

This informative British docuseries features a pair of historians, Dan Jones and Suzannah Lipscomb, who analyze Queen Elizabeth I’s life from birth—when she was apparently sexually abused by her uncle—until she assumed the throne and became the most powerful (if loneliest) queen that the world has ever seen.

The usual mélange of reenactments (Lily Cole plays Elizabeth in a surprisingly strong performance), camera-ready discussion and narration makes this three-episode series a fascinating historical story well-told.

Love, Gilda 

Although this 90-minute portrait of comedienne Gilda Radner is a touch hagiographic—glossing over less appetizing aspects of her life story—its affection toward its subject (a beloved show biz veteran taken too soon) is contagious.

Director Lisa DaPolito interviews friends, family, colleagues (conspicuous by their absence are Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray), contemporaries and those she influenced, and uses Gilda’s own footage, both home movies and audio recordings, to emotional effect. Extras include additional interviews and Gilda’s home movies.

Our Cartoon President—Complete 1st Season 

(CBS/Paramount)

The problem with tRumpworld is that nothing any satirists do—whether The Onion, Bill Maher, SNL, even the great impersonator Anthony Atamanuik—is as absurdly funny as the real thing. But this Showtime animated series (which started as skits on Colbert’s Late Show) does its level best to show how the illegitimate president and his swinish family are ruining not only the White House but the nation and the world.

But after several episodes, the humor wears thin; Colbert’s brief skits are better. The set includes all 17 episodes, along with the election special; extras include Colbert’s intro, audio commentaries, and more.

Scarred Hearts 

In Radu Jude’s slow-burning 1930s drama, a sickly young man enters a sanitarium and cultivates fruitful relationships inside its walls despite what’s happening in an increasingly right-wing Romania. Based on works by author M. Blecher, Jude’s film is yet another fascinating formal experiment to come out of a rejuvenated Romanian cinema, which features directors Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu and Corneliu Porumboiu.

But Jude—who shot this in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio so it looks like a TV movie or something from the period in which it’s set—has a rigorous technique that keeps this minimalist drama quietly enthralling for 141 minutes.

Amy Heckerling wrote and directed the movie Clueless in 1995, a hip update of Jane Austen’s Emma—about a young woman who fixes up everyone around her but only belatedly discovers the perfect man for herself—which made a star out of Alicia Silverstone as high school senior Cher, she of the valley-girlisms (“as if”).

Now, in 2018, Heckerling has transformed Clueless into an amusing musical that—at least in this spry incarnation savvily directed by Kristin Hanggi and wittily choreographed by Kelly Devine—follows the movie closely enough for those who are content to see the movie played out onstage. Heckerling’s biggest musical conceit is to take a bunch of songs from that era (by the likes of the Spin Doctors, TLC, Des’ree and Crash Test Dummies) and give her characters new lyrics to sing. 

So when Cher finds out that Christian, the boy whom she has a crush on, only wants to be friends, NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” is sung as her friends taunt her with “Is he bi, bi, bi?” Obviously your mileage may vary on how annoying all this is—I hit the wall after about the third repurposed tune—but even those who get into it will admit that the repetitiveness is apparent long before Kim Wilde’s euphoric “Kids in America” wraps things up.

Befitting Devine’s exuberant choreographic moves, the ebullient cast is energetic throughout on Beowulf Boritt’s stylishly tongue-in-cheek sets. And superbly filling Silverstone’s shoes is Dove Cameron, a Disney Channel veteran who sings, dances and acts with a flair that makes the part of Cher all her own and makes Clueless anything but.