Not an overly exciting week on the whole, but then again, maybe I just see it that way because I’m not one of the apparent millions who was enchanted by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remake. I did not see it because I thought it looked like the pointless piece of shit everybody claims Gus Van Sant’s Psycho is. More regretfully, I also did not see Gore Verbinski’s A Cure for Wellness, which is a top priority for me this week because it looks goddamn gorgeous and cuckoo-pants in equal measures (and the same goes for Paolo Sorrentino’s dip into the prestige TV pool, The Young Pope). However, I have unfortunately seen Where the Buffalo Roam, the first film made from the work of Hunter S. Thompson, which is out this week from Shout! Factory (in a release that finally restores its original soundtrack of 60s and 70s songs). It is a garbage-heap of a movie, limply-directed (at very best) by producer Art Linson, deathly unfunny, and more a bit insulting to Thompson’s work and legacy, distinguished only by a genuinely terrific Bill Murray performance as Thompson.

Aside from those, there’s some good stuff in the catalog titles department, particularly Criterion’s upgrade of Kenji Mizoguchi’s masterpiece Ugetsu and Paramount’s surprisingly loaded Blu-Ray of Ernest Dickerson’s Juice (featuring Tupac Shakur in his first starring role). And while 1492: Conquest of Paradise is likely no one’s favorite Ridley Scott movie, the fact that it’s been unreleased on American home video until now makes Kino’s Blu-Ray of it something of note (it’s the lesser of Kino’s two titles this week, however, with the other being Arthur Hiller’s The Man in the Glass Booth). Otherwise, you’ve got Universal recycling dated, ugly DVD masters of Major Payne and much more unfortunately the Truffaut version of Fahrenheit 451, and that’s about it. There’s also the Walter Hill movie where Michelle Rodriguez plays a male assassin given a sex change operation and killing those responsible, which unfortunately is apparently neither as deeply objectionable nor as pulpily entertaining as that description could be.

1492: Conquest of Paradise (Kino)
The Assignment (Lionsgate)
Beauty and the Beast (Disney)
A Cure for Wellness (Fox)
Fahrenheit 451 (Universal)
Juice (Paramount)
The Last Word (Universal)
Major Payne (Universal)
The Man in the Glass Booth (Kino)
Ugetsu (Criterion)
A United Kingdom (Fox)
Where the Buffalo Roam (Shout Factory)
The Young Pope (HBO)