What’s New in Home Video & Pop Culture – October 22nd, 2024 – Curb Your Enthusiasm, Gummo and more

The Beast Within

There’s no doubt we’re in full fourth quarter swing, when the studios usually start to put out home video releases they hope will make great holiday gifts. This week we have no less than three TV shows collected in Complete Series box sets, plus a few other goodies. Read on to see the full details!

Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Series

The Show: The Walking Dead franchise as a whole may not be the pop culture juggernaut it once was, but it still gets eyeballs on televisions in many households with shows like Daryl Dixon and Dead City. But those shows feature stars from the original series carrying on their roles. Fear the Walking Dead, which ran for eight seasons, always held sort of a strange role in the Walking Dead universe. While Fear did eventually see Lennie James’s Morgan join the cast, it spent the first few seasons with an all-new cast of characters, one that was ever-changing due to the show’s seeming rule at the time that they HAD to kill off main characters at regular intervals so fans would be surprised.

Over the course of eight seasons, we started off following one family at the start of the zombie apocalypse, and eventually grew to a much bigger cast with heroes, morally ambiguous characters, and regular bad guys. I’ll admit that my relationship with Fear the Walking Dead changed over time; in the beginning, I watched it begrudgingly, with the “It’s not as good as the original show,” mentality. (But to be fair, I still maintain that the first season isn’t particularly great.) But as the show sort of settled into its ratings niche – not a bona fide smash hit, but not a flop, either – the creators started to move away from the mothership show and simply start telling the stories they wanted to tell, making it a much more interesting and nuanced series. By the end, I definitely considered myself a fan.

This week, the series has been released in a Complete Series box set, collecting all eight seasons (113 episodes) on 30 Blu-ray discs (it’s also available on DVD.) It’s collected in a nice chunky case that still is compact enough to fit on a shelf without taking up too much room.

The Bonus Features: There are bonus features for all eight seasons. You get about 30 commentary tracks that are spread out through seasons two through eight. You also get 3-5 minute mini-featurettes on every single episode of the first four seasons, giving you about two and a half hours of material total. In addition Season Three gives you deleted and extended scenes, while Season Two features deleted scenes, the complete set of Flight 462 Webisodes, and a 55 minute live Q&A with the cast from PaleyFest 2016.

Also, one nice thing is that the set does include digital copies. While I don’t generally list these as bonus features, so many TV shows don’t do this that I felt the fact that this set includes the entire series on digital was worth mentioning.

Digital Copy Included: Yes

The Wrap-Up: Fear the Walking Dead started off as a solid show that made for a nice placeholder between seasons of The Walking Dead. Over the years, it became something more and found its own fan base. As a person who watched a little sporadically over the years, I’m super glad to see the show collected in a Complete Series box set, which makes for the best viewing experience for the show yet.

Gummo (Criterion Collection)

The Movie: Harmony Korine is not a household name director, but in film circles he’s pretty well known. His most notorious film is Kids, which was pretty controversial in its day for its portrayal of teenagers engaging in behavior you may not approve of, presented in a way that made some people question if it might be real more than fiction. His most mainstream film was 2012’s Spring Breakers, which took a bunch of good girl TV actresses like Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Benson and turned them into de facto criminals. Neither film is particularly good, in my opinion. But his debut films, Gummo, was at one point quite highly acclaimed by critics. This week, The Criterion Collection releases a 4K Ultra HD version of Gummo for the first time (it is also available as a Blu-ray.)

You can probably guess what I think of the film based on my opinion of Korine’s two most well-known films. And I would LOVE to say, “Ah ha! You’re wrong! I actually ADORED it!” But… I didn’t. I will say that I can see why the film got attention when it first came out. The movie follows two bored teenagers roaming around their tornado-ravaged midwestern town generally being bored, causing trouble, and smoking and swearing a lot. And I can definitely appreciate the movie: for a first-time director, it’s incredibly visceral and authentic and even occasionally uncomfortable. It is definitely the film Korine wanted to make. I suspect that’s actually been the case with all of his films. He makes the movies he wants to make; I just am clearly not the audience he’s making them for.

The 4K Video/Audio: Gummo was a low-budget film, independently made almost 30 years ago. As such, the 4K transfer – which has been restored and remastered by Criterion – looks very good, but it can’t overcome the limitations of the source materials. It sure does a good job of convincing you that it can, however. Imagery is sharp and clear and the lighting looks very natural and lifelike. Colors are vibrant but not oversaturated, and the print is largely clear of debris or blemishes. There are some segments edited in that were shot on videotape and they look like they were shot on videotape, but that’s part of the aesthetic and it works. The soundtrack is a 2.0 stereo soundtrack so there’s not full surround sound, but the dialogue is clean and sounds full and not tinny, and the music hovers exactly where it should. All in all, it’s an excellent presentation of a film that shouldn’t look this good.

The Bonus Features:

• New interview with Korine
• Conversation from 1997 between Korine and filmmaker Werner Herzog
• Split Screen: Projections episode from 2000 featuring Korine in conversation with host John Pierson
• Trailer
• An essay by film critic Carlos Aguilar and an appreciation by filmmaker Hype Williams

Digital Copy Included: No

The Wrap-Up: Harmony Korine has had an interesting career, and he certainly has his fans. I can appreciate Gummo for being a stand-out movie in the time it was released, and Korine has a very clear vision as a director. His films aren’t for me, but if you’re a fan, this is a great release.

The Gilded Age: The Complete Second Season

The Show: Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey, followed up that cultural juggernaut with HBO’s hit series The Gilded Age, which has become a hit on its own. While not the sensation that Downton Abbey was, The Gilded Age has been a hit for its home network of HBO and this week sees the release of the second season on DVD.

Clearly, Fellowes is a creature of habit, because this is his third or fourth TV show in a row that focuses on rich and poor people in a bygone age. In The Gilded Age, the setting changes from England to America in the 1880s, where floods of newly rich people are starting to enter the society of old money aristocrats. It’s this conflict which fuels the show’s drama, mixed together with a healthy dose of scheming, romance, and melodrama. The show focuses largely on the matriarchs and female characters of society, giving juicy roles to excellent actresses like Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, Taissa Farmiga, and Cynthia Nixon. This second season DVD (sadly, it isn’t available on Blu-ray) collects all eight episodes of season two. It’s not a long season, but like its brethren Downton, the small number of episodes results in a higher quality show, with no filler episodes. It’s another terrific season and I can’t wait to watch more.

The Bonus Features:

• Behind the Gilded Curtain Featurette
• Character Featurettes – Agnes, Ada, Bertha, George, Marian, and Peggy
• The Black Elite: Then and Now Featurette
• The Real Gilded Age – Carrie, Cynthia, and Morgan
• Choose Your Side – Carrie, Christine, Cynthia, Denée, Morgan and Julian
• Who Do You Ship – Ada, Agnes, Bertha, Marion and Peggy
• High Class Drama – Carrie, Cynthia, Danee, and Morgan

Digital Copy Included: No

The Wrap-Up: As always with Julian Fellowes shows, The Gilded Age isn’t the kind of show that you watch the trailer for and go, “YESSS! I can’t WAIT to watch that!” At first glance, you might assume the show is a stuffy melodrama. But Fellowes knows how to create endearing characters filled with life and lots of humor and relationships that you care about. If you’re missing Downton Abbey or Bridgerton, why not try The Gilded Age to fill in the gap?

Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Series 

The Show: I know, I know… I’m supposed to love Curb Your Enthusiasm. It seems like everyone else on the planet does, especially critics. But I have just never enjoyed this show. Ostensibly, it’s the story of, well, Larry David. He plays an over-the-top version of himself, although I suspect he’s not actually that different from the character on screen. (And for those of you who don’t know, Larry David is the co-creator of Seinfeld.) We basically follow him on his day to day, and we get to see how the world makes him miserable. Which, I guess, can be funny, but the world is miserable enough these days, do I really need to watch somebody else be miserable?

And that’s the main problem I have with the show: I find Larry David’s “character” completely unlikable, to the point where I can’t even enjoy watching him in a love-to-hate-him kind of way. That said, the show does have some good moments, usually centered around the guest stars. The show always had top-notch A-list guest stars, including names like Woody Harrelson, Ted Danson, Julie Bowen, John Hamm, Vince Vaughn, Mel Brooks, Michael J. Fox, Seth Rogen, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Lucy Liu, Martin Scorsese, Josh Gad, Hugh Hefner, Albert Brooks, Conan O’Brien, and others (oftentimes appearing as themselves.) If you like the show, you can now own the entire series on DVD in the 120-episode collection Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Complete Series, which gives you 24 discs in one relatively compact box set.

The Bonus Features: The set includes all of the bonus features from the previous seasons. That includes:

A Seinfeld Moment on Curb: Interview with Lary David and the Seinfeld Cast

Leon’s Guide to NYC

Larry’s Favorite Episodes

BTS of the final scene

Gag Reel

And More!

Digital Copy Included: No

The Wrap-Up: Now that the show has completed its run, you have the chance to either relive the series or dive in and binge it for the first time. Either way, you’ve got 24 discs worth of Larry’s miserableness to… I dunno… enjoy? Is that what you do with this show? Whatever it is, you can do it in one place now.

Veep: The Complete Series

The Show: I don’t know why I like so many of HBO’s drama and genre shows and dislike so many of their comedies, but boy is Veep a perfect example of what I don’t like. (And maybe the fact that I have back-to-back reviews of HBO shows I don’t like that both feature Seinfeld alums at the center of them says a little something about me, or at least about Seinfeld.)

I’m a pretty big Julia Louis-Dreyfus fan, and I generally find her both very funny and a great actress. Unfortunately, I really don’t like this show at all. And the fault isn’t really Dreyfus’s. She’s absolutely fine in the lead role, but there seriously isn’t one other character in this show who isn’t an obnoxious jerk. The dialogue is generally mean-spirited and insulting, and there isn’t a warm or mirthful bone in the show’s body. Maybe I’m being too hard on it; I’m sure it has its moments and some of the characters do go through arcs throughout the series, but even though I came to a begrudging acceptance of it, it never fully won me over.

If you’re a fan, however, you can complete your collection with the new box set Veep: The Complete Series, out on both Blu-ray and DVD. It collects all seven seasons, 65 episodes, and includes a ton of bonus features as well.

The Bonus Features:

• 36 Audio Commentaries
• Over Two Hours of Deleted Scenes
• A Making Of Featurette
• Outtakes
• Various Short Features

Digital Copy Included: No

The Wrap-Up: I know I’m soured towards Veep, but there’s no denying this is a terrific box set. It gives you the entre show’s run on your choice of Blu-ray or DVD and unlike so many other TV show sets these days, it also comes loaded with bonus features. For Veep fans, this is the ultimate home video release.

The Beast Within 

The Movie: Game of Thrones’s Kit Harington stars in this genre-based drama that works hard to create a mystery and develop interesting characters and somewhat succeeds in those aspects, while never quite coming together as a movie on the whole.

The film focuses largely on 10-year-old Willow, a young girl whose rural family is very secretive. One night she follows them out of the house only to discover there’s something… weird going on. Her dad is maybe not quite 100% human. Or maybe he is and she just didn’t comprehend what she was seeing. The film tries to keep you guessing for a while. And while the performances, especially those of Harington and young Caoilinn Springall, are exemplary, the film moves a little too slow and has to work within a little too much of a budget to really go the places we want it to go, at least until the climax. There are only a few different settings in the movie, so it all feels a little bit claustrophobic and a little bit restricted by a lower budget. It’s certainly not a bad movie, but it doesn’t move at quite a fast enough pace for those of us with shorter attention spans.

The Bonus Features: There are no bonus features.

Digital Copy Included: No

The Wrap-Up: The Beast Within is a well-made movie in terms of strong performances and good cinematography (within a limited range of visual differences). However, the editing/writing/directing – none of which are bad – could have all been tightened up a little bit to give us a movie that gets to the point just a little bit quicker.