Advertisement

New on video: ‘The Big Sick’ is a funny, touching tale and one of the year’s biggest indie hits

Share

New on Blu-ray:

“The Big Sick” (Lionsgate DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99 also available on VOD)

Comedian Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon have turned their own one-of-a-kind love story into one of the year’s biggest indie hits: a funny, touching tale of family ties, health care woes, and cultural divisions. Zoe Kazan plays Emily, whose budding romance with an aspiring Chicago stand-up (Nanjiani) gets waylaid first by his disapproving Muslim parents, and then by a sudden illness that forces her into a medically induced coma. The leads are outstanding, but the movie’s unexpected MVPs are Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, playing Emily’s bickering parents, who bond with Kumail while she’s unconscious. Filled with quotable lines and contemporary concerns, “The Big Sick” has the virtue of specificity. It’s a real story about real people, given an entertainer’s polish.

[Special features: Deleted scenes, a commentary track, a SXSW panel discussion, and multiple featurettes that compare fact and fiction]

VOD

Advertisement

“19-2: Season Four” (available 9/22 on Acorn TV)

One of the best police procedurals of the 2010s is set and shot in Montreal, and is an English-language adaptation of a French-Canadian series. The fourth and final season of “19-2” wraps up the story of patrolmen partners Nick Barron (Adrian Holmes) and Ben Chartier (Jared Keeso), who for the past four years on Canadian television have dealt with the dangers and politics of their job, while also managing complicated home-lives. Fans of “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” “The Shield,” and “Southland” should jump right on “19-2,” if they haven’t already.

TV set of the week

“The Vietnam War” (PBS DVD, $99.99; Blu-ray, $129.99)

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick follow up their previous successful collaborations on the hit PBS docu-series “The War” and “Prohibition” with an 18-hour look at the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, taking into account the conflict’s Cold War origins, the campus protest movement, and the ongoing efforts to make sense of what happened and why. The documentary is at once comprehensive and digressive, with storylines and anecdotes that break the big picture down into small moments of crisis, outrage, and regret. It stands as one of Burns’ finest achievements, in the class of “The Civil War” and “Baseball.”

[Special features: Over 100 minutes of bonus footage]

From the archives

“Hana-bi (Fireworks)” (Film Movement Classics Blu-ray, $39.95)

When Japanese comedian Takeshi Kitano transitioned into filmmaking, he surprised his fans by favoring austere, arty crime dramas, in which he often starred as stoic tough guys — totally unlike his broader comic persona. As a writer-director, he broke through in American arthouses with his masterpiece, the brutal and tender crime melodrama “Fireworks” (sometimes called by its original Japanese title “Hana-bi”), in which he plays a retired cop who’s having a hard time retreating to a quiet life with his ailing wife. As writer, director, and star, Kitano creates a beautifully abstract, intricately structured meditation on personal obligation, considering the strong grip that a life of violence has on those who’ve lived it.

[Special features: A featurette, and a commentary track from critic David Fear]

Three more to see

Advertisement

“Certain Women” (Criterion DVD, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.95; also available on VOD); “The Hero” (Lionsgate DVD, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99; also available on VOD); “Wonder Woman” (Warner Bros. DVD/Blu-ray combo, $35.99; 3D, $34.99; 4K, $44.95; also available on VOD)

calendar@latimes.com

Advertisement