Home Video Releases for August 4
Home video shelves are bulging this week with new releases.
The second installment in the Divergent trilogy is now available for home video. In this futuristic film, heroine Tris Prior struggles with the death of her parents and a friend. In fact, there aren’t a lot of light moments in this middle movie. However The Divergent Series: Insurgent will likely please fans of the book that can now watch and re-watch this film until the next episode arrives in theaters.
Religious experiences are examined in two films releasing this week. In Do You Believe? several people question their relationship with God, including a pastor who finds his faith waning. In Freetown, a group of Mormon missionaries are caught up in the civil war that is sweeping their home land of Liberia. Facing rebels while on an arduous trip to safety, these young men put their faith to the test.
Far From the Madding Crowd stars Carey Mulligan as a young, headstrong Victorian woman with three different suitors. But she won’t be easily wooed by any of them. The film also stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge and Michael Sheen as the men who are pursuing her.
The 1993 fish tale Free Willy re-releases this week. In this story a young street boy finds friendship with a captured whale. The film focuses on the importance of family and the power to change one’s life.
Several R-rated films also release this week. Mia Wasikowska plays as a young 19th century French woman caught in an unhappy marriage in Madame Bovary. James Franco and Jonah Hill star as two men trying to recover their lost reputations in True Story. Hill plays a journalist who has been fired from his job. Franco plays an identity thief using the journalist’s name to evade the authorities. Alan Rickman takes on the royal role of King Louis XIV in A Little Chaos. Kate Winslet plays a woman who is given a chance to design one of the King’s gardens at his new palace in Versailles. Child murders and corrupt government officials are at the heart of Child 44. The Stalin-era movie stars Tom Harding as an investigator trying to uncover the truth.
