New releases: A classy adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Far From the Madding Crowd’
Far From the Madding Crowd
20th Century Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
With very little hoopla, director Thomas Vinterberg’s adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic has become one of the most successful art house releases of 2015 — and for good reason. With films like “The Celebration” and “The Hunt,” Vinterberg has shown an ability to capture human relationships at both their most casual and most intense; Hardy’s novel covers both sides of that spectrum well in its story of a strong-willed farm girl who perplexes the men who mean to woo her. The movie version sports an outstanding cast, with Carey Mulligan as heroine Bathsheba Everdene and Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge as the men in her life. This is a classy production, and well-presented. The DVD and Blu-ray add deleted scenes and a healthy assortment of featurettes.
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A Little Chaos
Focus/Universal, $19.98; Blu-ray, $26.98
Available now on VOD
Actor Alan Rickman steps behind the camera for the first time in decades to direct this light period romance that tracks the complex web of relationships among the various artisans and aristocrats brought together by French King Louis XIV to construct the gardens at Versailles. Rickman gathers a great cast (including Kate Winslet, Schoenaerts and Stanley Tucci) and gives his actors the space to be colorful. The story as a whole is awfully slight, but it’s somewhat refreshing to see a film like this spring from an original screenplay, rather than adapting a pre-existing book or play. It just feels a little fresher — like the actors are making the characters their own rather than trying on someone else’s clothes for a while.
The Dead Lands
Magnolia, $26.98; Blu-ray, $29.98
The fantastical New Zealand landscape, so familiar from the “Lord of the Rings” series, gets to play itself in Toa Fraser’s film — or at least a version of itself from a distant past. James Rolleston stars as a teenage weakling who seeks vengeance for his slaughtered clan with the help of a mystical cannibal (Lawrence Makoare) who lives in a haunted forest. This resembles lots of other exotic action pictures about young warriors training for a battle royale, but the fight scenes here are genuinely thrilling — mixing brutal hand-to-hand combat and tribal dance — and the specificity of the setting adds flavor, making the movie more than just another generic sword-and-sorcery epic.
The Affair: Season One
Showtime, $39.98
Cable television’s advantages over the networks don’t begin and end with the freedom to be more explicit. This Showtime original doesn’t have the kind of clean, clear hook that most broadcast TV series demand. It’s sort of a melodrama (about a family man whose life is upended when he cheats on his wife), sort of a mystery (following a detective conducting an investigation) and sort of a formal experiment (telling the same story from multiple perspectives). It has a hard time keeping its various balls in the air for all of the 10 first-season episodes, but when everything’s clicking, it’s unlike anything else on television, and it’s very smart about how long-term relationships require a certain level of hypocrisy. The DVD set includes two brief featurettes.
And …
Adult Beginners
Anchor Bay, $22.98; Blu-ray, $26.99
Available now on VOD
The Casual Vacancy
Warner Bros., $24.98; Blu-ray, $29.97
Child 44
Lionsgate, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99
The Divergent Series: Insurgent
Lionsgate, $29.95; Blu-ray, $35.99/$39.99
Available on VOD on Aug. 4
Orphan Black: Season Three
BBC, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98
The Salvation
MPI, $24.98; Blu-ray, $29.98
True Story
20th Century Fox, $22.98; Blu-ray, $27.99
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