Jesse Owens and Hitler are featured in week’s new home videos

New on Blu-ray

“Race” (Universal DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98; also available on VOD)

Journeyman director Stephen Hopkins doesn’t try to pep up the bland biopic formula with his Jesse Owens drama “Race,” but he does deliver a reasonably stirring version of a story that bears retelling. Stephan James gives an engaging performance as Owens, who overcomes prejudice and intense national pressure to compete and win at the 1936 Olympic Games. The movie leans heavily on a simplistic heroes-and-villains narrative, but that’s hard to fault too much when the main bad guy is, y’know, Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, “Race” is broad but effective, reminding viewers of an important moment in the history of American sports and patriotism — which was also one more step down the long, seemingly unending road toward eliminating bigotry.

[Special features: A trio of featurettes]

VOD

“Hitler’s Folly” (available June 3)

Cult animator Bill Plympton has made one of his oddest and most entertaining feature films with the mockumentary “Hitler’s Folly,” which uses some of the Nazi leader’s real artwork and early biographical details to imagine an alternate history where Hitler aimed to be a rival to Walt Disney as well as a genocidal dictator. While Hitler steers the Reich’s resources into making one unwieldy epic, Disney responds by putting all of his studio’s visionary technicians to work on the American war effort, employing animatronic robots to fool the enemy. Mixing archival footage, fake interviews, and his own animation, Plympton spoofs the pretensions of tyrants and artists alike, and suggests — rather subversively — that a Hitler who worked within the American mass media might’ve had better luck at taking over the world.

[Beginning June 3, “Hitler’s Folly” will be available to stream for free at www.plymptoons.com.]

TV set of the week

“The Last Panthers” (Acorn DVD, $39.99; Blu-ray, $39.99)

The real-life misadventures of the European criminal organization dubbed “The Pink Panthers” by Interpol has inspired the sophisticated crime drama “The Last Panthers,” which follows the intertwined lives of a Serbian master thief (played by Goran Bogdan), a French police detective (Tahar Rahim) and two pragmatic British insurance agents (Samantha Morton and John Hurt). This series is in part a docu-realistic look at the complexities of the modern criminal world, where new technologies make big jobs easier to pull off but harder to get away with. But it’s also about a changing Europe, where people of different cultures mingle and compete in countries far from their homelands.

[Special features: A half-hour of behind-the-scenes featurette.]

From the archives

“Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy” (Criterion DVD, $99.95; Blu-ray, $99.95)

Germany’s cinematic “New Wave” came a little later than other countries’, but once the likes of Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder picked up cameras in the late 1960s, they and their contemporaries were as creative and prolific as any. Criterion’s new box set “Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy” collects three pivotal movies from that movement: 1974’s “Alice in the Cities” (about a writer stuck on a trip with someone else’s kid), 1975’s “Wrong Move” (about a group of young artists who meet each other by chance and become first friends and then rivals) and 1976’s “Kings of the Road” (about two sad sacks on an existential journey). Wenders tries out different styles and tones, inclduing bleak, deadpan and melodramatic. In addition to helping establish his reputation on the world stage, these masterpieces were an inspiration to ‘80s American independent filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch and Allison Anders.

[Special features: Commentary tracks; interviews; early Wenders short films]

Three more to see

“City of Women” (Cohen DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98); “Horse Money” (the Cinema Guild DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.95); “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (Sony DVD, $26.99; Blu-ray, $34.99; 4K, $45.99; also available on VOD)