The Best New Blu-Ray Releases: The Flash, Asteroid City, And More

As the streaming landscape grows stranger and more unpredictable, it's always good to remember that physical media is superior. I beat this drum every time I have one of these here Blu-ray round-ups, but it's something that bears repeating: streaming comes and goes, physical media is forever. And it looks better, too. Sure, you can stream stuff in 4K these days, but the quality will always be greater with a physical disc. 

Our latest Blu-ray round-up gathers together four new releases, all of which are quite different from one another. It's an eclectic bunch to say the least, gang! You have a superhero box office flop, the latest from Wes Anderson, a charming adult-driven comedy from director Nicole Holofcener, and a horror-comedy with a clever premise. 

I know that there are folks out there who simply cannot abide the style of Mr. Wes Anderson. And that's okay. But for me, Anderson continues to craft gorgeous, melancholy films that have the power to awe. "Asteroid City," his latest, might be one of his best — a funny, strange story about grief and art and where the two intersect. Like most Anderson movies, it uses a series of framing devices — the film is actually meant to be a filmed TV production of a play, so it's a story within a story. We see both the behind-the-scenes players rehearsing and struggling to understand the play, and the play itself, which takes up the bulk of the narrative.

Several characters converge in a desert town where a youth astronomy convention is underway. With this scenario, Anderon introduces us to a cast of players, with the main focus on recent widower Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman). A famous actress (Scarlett Johansson) is also in town, and she catches Augie's grieving eye. And oh yeah, an alien is also going to show up at some point, first in the form of stop-motion animation, and then in the form of Jeff Goldblum. 

What does it all mean? Even the characters don't know. When the actor playing Augie turns to the director (Adrien Brody) to confess he doesn't understand the play, the director tells him that it doesn't matter — he just has to keep going. Keep acting. Keep living. Later, the cast chants "You can't wake up if you don't go to sleep!" And the inevitable specter of death, and grief, hangs over it all. Anderson is one of the best filmmakers to capture the surreal nature of grief, an autumnal theme he returns to again and again, blanketing what could be a quirky tweeness with an inescapable melancholy, all of it rendered with the filmmaker's unique stylistic eye. 

Special features:

1. The Making of Asteroid City – With Wes Anderson as your guide, take a personal tour behind the scenes of "Asteroid City" and get insider's access into set creation, performer preparation, music rehearsals and more.
   1. Desert Town – Wes Anderson pulls back the curtain on the creation of Asteroid City with an intimate look at what goes into building a town in the middle of a desert and bringing its quirks to life.
   2. Doomsday Carnival (Digital, Blu-ray^™, DVD Exclusive) – Go even further inside Asteroid City as period costumes, classic cars, and camera tricks combine to create a bustling midway of carnival rides and lookie-loos anticipating an alien arrival.
   3. Montana and Ranch Hands – Witness a quiet prayer evolve into a hand-clapping country hoedown as the film's fictional band inspires a sudden dance number through their banjo, bass, and washboard.
   4. The Players (Digital, Blu-ray^™, DVD Exclusive) – Go behind-the-scenes with the stars of Asteroid City.
2. The Alien (Digital Exclusive) – Designers come up with the concept and Jeff Goldblum suits up in the costume to create the captivating look and mesmerizing movements of the movie's extraterrestrial creature.
3. The Roadrunner (Digital Exclusive) – Get a peek at the planning, puppeteering, and careful camera positioning that animates an artificial animal with scene-stealing personality.

Black characters are often very unlucky when it comes to horror movies. More often than not, a Black character in a group will die first — an undeniable fact that's become its own trope due to its prominence. From this basic concept comes "The Blackening," a horror-comedy in which every character is Black. As the tagline states, they can't all die first. Tim Story's film is never quite as funny or scary as it should be, but it gets by with a kind of easy-going charm heightened by a game cast. 

The premise involves a group of friends who gather in a cabin in the woods to celebrate Juneteenth. There, they encounter an offensive board game called The Blackening, full of Black-centric trivia questions. The friends are quickly trapped by a masked killer who forces them the play the game, which leads to a lengthy sequence in which we watch the characters ... play a board game. And folks, that's not very cinematic! Once the film moves beyond its board game angle into more of a stalk-and-slash story, "The Blackening" picks up. While it grows a bit monotonous, the cast — Grace Byers, Jermaine Fowler, Melvin Gregg, X Mayo, Dewayne Perkins (who also co-wrote), Antoinette Robertson, Sinqua Walls, Jay Pharoah, Yvonne Orji — keeps things alive with their banter; these characters seem like real friends, and that goes a long way toward making us root for them. I wish the horror was sharper and I wish the comedy was funnier, but this is still a solid entry in the genre. 

Special features:

• Audio Commentary with Director Tim Story and Writers Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins
• Do the Write Thing
• They Can't All Talk First
• Shall We Play a Game?
• Cabin in the Woods
• "Who's the Blackest?" Game Show
• Theatrical Trailer
• And more!