Watch at Home: Into the Poppins-Verse and Triple Shoplifting Frontiers
Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at 10:30AM 
Here's what's new for home viewing this past week or so.
New Blu-Rays/DVDS
• Mary Poppins Returns We here at TFE, despite being a musicals-inclined site, gave this one really short shrift this past season. It was not intentional but it was just that dang Christmas release date when everything is happening all at once. If you'd still like to discuss it let us know in the comments and perhaps we'll do a belated write-up
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so fun... though we worry it'll spur a million sequels which will, by the very nature of the novelty of this one, be inferior.
More DVDs and new to streaming titles after the jump...
• Green Book the Oscar winner is in theaters still inching towards $90 million domestic, but it's also out on Blu-Ray should you want to own it or even if you dont but suffer from Oscar completism (no judgments)
• Mortal Engines Another movie that got absolutely burid in the Christmas glut. Did any of you see it? We didn't hear a peep about it from any corners.
iTunes 99¢ Deals
• Blindspotting is their movie of the week, so if you're curious you can't beat the price. (Except, well, free)
• Stage Door (1937) is an absolute must-see for actressexuals and still weirdly lesser-known despite its famous cast. It's nearly as star-studded as the much more famous The Women (1939). This picture is about a group of struggling young actresses living in a boarding house together. The film stars two nobodies named Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn and also features Ann Miller, Eve Arden, Adolph Menjou and Lucille Ball. It's delicious and the film which gave Katharine Hepburn her signature line "the calla lillies are in bloom again"... though it was lifted from a play.
That's not the only classic title that's currently 99¢ though films tend to cycle out of that deep discount pretty quick. You can also rent the following on the cheap right now: the obsessive Wuthering Heights (1939), Strange Cargo (1940) with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, the legendary Citizen Kane (1941), the noir Dark Passage (1947) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the frighteningly prescient drama A Face in the Crowd (1957), the infamous Lolita (1962), Best Picture winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), BAFTA Best film winner The Commitments (1991), and the awesome rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) among others.
New to Streaming
So we're forced to do a mini round of streaming roulette. Wherever we land on the scroll bar, we share the image...
With a mother who wishes she hadn't given birth to you... usually you'd turn out more like us.
• Shoplifters (Hulu) This movie, among our top five this past year, is so wonderful and heartbreaking. See it.
Everyone to the office right now
• Triple Frontier (Netflix) Argh. When will filmmakers ever give up this nondescript too-dark-to-see slate grey thing they've been doing for what seems like two decades now. It's so dull. Does it even read macho or "gritty" anymore? It reads like nothing due to its ubiquity. The cast includes Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Pedro Pascal and Garett Hedlund and that's a lot of eye candy but if they're shot this way it's not so appetizing. To be fair we glimpsed at another few images and it's not always this dark but it's still fairly desaturated.
Right now your body is unable to cope with an operation like that.
• Girl (Netflix) They finally decided to stream this one way after the awards-run fact and with little fanfare. Netflix wanted the nudity edited out but apparently they lost that battle because the Camera d'or winning trans drama is streaming with a warning at the beginning about its content. The movie has significant flaws (not the least of which is its sensationalizing finale) but the father-daughter performances (Ariel Worthalter & Victor Polser) and the cinematography (ASC "spotlight" nominee Frank van den Eeden) are top-notch for those who are curious.
More new to streaming...
• Love, Death, and Robots (Netflix)
• Amy Schumer: Growing (Netflix)
• Collette (Prime)
• Cold War (Prime on March 22nd)
• Shrill (Hulu) - just reviewed
• Free Solo (Hulu) - just won the Documentary Feature Oscar!
• Catastrophe S4 (Prime)
Reader Comments (13)
Personally I would love a write up on Mary Poppins Returns. I loved it so much and want to read more about it.
I'm on the 'Let's Pretend Mary Poppins Returns Never Happened' side.
My 6-year-old LOVED seeing Mary Poppins Returns in the theater. The absolute joy on her face made my heart melt. That makes me forgive some of its flaws, such as the valid argument that it's too similar to the original.
Stage Door rocks! Ginger Rogers is hilarious in it, and Katherine Hepburn's purposeful bad acting takes the cake. It's right up there with her drunk Shakespeare in Morning Glory.
"Shoplifters" is also/has been for a while on Hoopla.
Mary Poppins Returns felt like a waste of money...their money, my money...
I'm in the Pro-Mary Poppins Returns camp myself. I left that movie so happy.
Two Words Julie Andrews!
Forget this Mary Poppins thing and have yourself a Hirokazu Kore-eda marathon, so we can can have a Hirokazu Kore-eda week. Humanism must be celebrated!
I want to see Mary Poppins Returns at some point … I somehow had never seen the original and only recently watched it (without any nostalgic childhood associations, I found it enjoyable, but that's about it). If the new one has the same storyline, I might want to wait a little bit longer before viewing it.
I'm with cal roth. Let's celebrate Kore-eda in a lead-up to the Cannes premiere of The Truth.
I loved MARY POPPINS RETURNS but probably only want to hear your thoughts if you loved it too!
I read recently that Peter Jackson's WWI doco THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD has grossed more from its limited release in the US than MORTAL ENGINES did! And the former is still in theatres.
Count me in the “loved it” camp for MPR and wanting to see more about it. It definitely has some flaws, but damn if it doesn’t have incredibly joyous highs to make up for them in overabundance.
That Mary Poppins sequel was so boring. I was shocked Blunt was seriously considered for Leading Actress category. She had nothing to do acting-wise and was basically supporting.