Awards season is upon us. Two major award nominees top the DVD picks for the week of Feb. 23.
• “Collective”: Government corruption and incompetence. A health care cover-up. Unnecessary mass death and suffering. Sound familiar?
On this year’s Academy Awards documentary feature shortlist and nominated for both the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Nonfiction Film, director Alexander Nanau’s “Collective” follows a team of Romanian journalists who are investigating the 2015 fire at the Colectiv nightclub that killed 64 and injured 146 people due to lax safety standards and preventable hospital tragedies. And it’s an eerily relevant story for the COVID-19 era.
“Suspenseful and gripping, despairing and deeply human, the movie first screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals (in 2019) … A year ago, ‘Collective’ played like a nonfiction genre piece, a journalistic thriller by way of a political procedural,” wrote Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang in his review. “Seen now, during the gravest world health crisis in more than a century, Nanau’s expose of medical malpractice and pharmaceutical corruption feels like a grim warning, a prequel to a real-life horror movie still very much in the making.”
• “The Croods: A New Age”: Seven years after the franchise’s first installment, the Croods are back. Nominated for the Golden Globes Best Animated Feature, the film follows the family’s continued quest to find a landing spot. Along the way they encounter the Bettermans, who are more evolved, and interested in compelling Guy (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) to stay with them forever, much to the chagrin of Crood patriarch Grug (voiced by Nicolas Cage) and daughter Eep (voiced by Emma Stone), also Guy’s girlfriend.
Overall, it’s a “chaotic good” vibe, wrote Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh in her review.
“The journey is still fun, though harried. The animation design is bright and colorful, moving as swiftly as the snappy dialogue (the screenplay is by Kevin Hageman, Dan Hageman, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan, Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders),” Walsh wrote.
“But because the movie starts at an 11 and doesn’t let up, the runtime feels overly long. However, the voice performances are excellent, especially Cage, who brings his signature sense of yearning pathos to Grug the Neanderthal. Watching Grug get with the Pliocene Era and learn to embrace the new and different does seemingly make all that chaos worthwhile.”
Also new on DVD
• “The Last Vermeer”: A Dutch artist (Guy Pearce) is accused of selling valuable artwork to the Nazis.
• “Last Call”: A depressed man (Daved Wilkins) misdials a janitor (Sarah Booth), thinking he’s reaching out to a suicide prevention hotline.
• “Redemption Day”: A Marine captain (Gary Dourdan) attempts to save his kidnapped wife (Serinda Swan) in Morocco.
• “Silk Road”: Ross Ulbricht (Nick Robinson), creator of the infamous unregulated online marketplace that inspired a drug pipeline, is sought by the DEA. Also stars Jennifer Yun and Jimmi Simpson.
• “Wrong Turn: The Foundation”: A group hiking the Appalachian Trail gets lost and faces a deadly confrontation with a secret community. Stars Charlotte Vega, Emma Dumont and Matthew Modine.
