Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it, is to go out and grab a boatload of Tom Cruise action titles in UHD! With Cruise’s latest spy adventure as Ethan Hunt set to hit the big screen in just a few weeks, Paramount is releasing 4K versions of Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible 2, Mission: Impossible 3, Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation. And just for good measure, Paramount will also release the Cruise action/drama Jack Reacher in 4K. Elsewhere, Lionsgate pals around with the Frat Pack, settles scores with Acrimony, and gets its (extramarital) affairs in order with The Spinning Man. Finally, RLJE Films goes for the kill with Terminal, while Warner Bros. gets heroic with Black Lightning: Season 1.

Before signing off for the week (and for June), here’s the usual reminder: if you’re shopping for anything on Amazon and you do it through one of our links, it’ll help keep the lights on here at UpcomingDiscs. See ya next week!

“If you believe in a goal or dream before it happens, is that real?”

There aren’t a lot of inspirational tales out there for young women who aspire to be athletes. At least not that I have seen. That is why I am sure that Alex and Me is bound to make an impact. This is tale for every girl who aspires for greatness. As a father to an amazing little girl, this really hit home for me. Unfortunately, not so much with my daughter, who is a bit too young to grasp the importance of the message this film is conveying, but I fully intend to keep this movie on hand for when she is old enough to understand.

"Do you remember the first time you saw a dinosaur?"

By the time you get to the fourth sequel of a film the results are usually not very good. Even a groundbreaking film like Jurassic Park has been followed by at least one terrible sequel. The problem with these kinds of things is pretty easy to figure out. You can't please all of any film's diehard fans, and it's hard to continue to deliver on the formula's expectations, all the while breaking new ground without the result feeling more contrived than original. That's certainly all been true of this franchise. When Jurassic World set all kinds of box office records three years ago, it appeared that those entrusted with this franchise had found a way to turn it around.

“I just need you to not freak anybody out tonight.”

Flower ends up being a pretty strong reflection of its promiscuous protagonist: both the movie and the anti-heroine at its center are sharp, profane, a little all-over-the place, and contain a surprising undercurrent of emotion. The movie is a polarizing experience, to be sure, but I enjoyed going on this particular wild, unpredictable ride.

Cinematically speaking, the name Eli Roth has been synonymous with murder and mayhem. The director is best known for his work in the horror genre, bursting on the scene with 2002’s Cabin Fever and upping the ante with Hostel and Hostel: Part II a few years later. So it was a bit surprising to hear he’d be taking on a remake of Death Wish — the iconic 1974 Charles Bronson revenge flick — until I started thinking about the bloody possibilities. If the Hostel films gained notoriety as prime examples of “torture porn,” then it seems like Roth has graduated to “revenge porn” with this slick and (intentionally) silly re-imagining.

When Pacific Rim first came out, I had a blast with the film.  It was the ultimate giant-monster-versus-giant-robot film that my inner ten-year-old has wanted to see for so long.  Sure, the film had some dialog issues, but the world that Guillermo del Toro created with the film was so over-the-top and beautiful that the bad dialog was easy to forget.  It knew what it was, brainless eye candy, and it delivered in a big way. Now we have the sequel coming out; del Toro is no longer at the helm, and in his place we have Steven S. DeKnight whose previous directorial efforts have been episodes from Daredevil and Dollhouse.  Does the sequel hold up?  Well, to put it bluntly, not even close.

It’s been eleven years since that cast and crew took their final bow on the show Will and Grace.  In those eleven years so much has occurred such as gay marriage and the rise of the social justice warrior.  Just one glance at our political climate these days you can imagine there is plenty of material for comedy gold, heck there was even the revival of Roseanne that attempted to seize the moment.  But of all the shows that are on the reboot and revival trend train Will and Grace is the one sit-com I feel is the most suited to take the airwaves. A lot of time has passed, a decade in Hollywood is a few eternities and would seem to be an overwhelming task to reunite the cast and crew but it would seem the stars have aligned for this show but will it actually work?

Welcome to this week’s monster-iffic Tuesday Round Up! We kick things off with Universal going back for a second round of robots vs. kaiju butt-kicking with Pacific Rim: Uprising (4K) and trying not to go too crazy with Unsane (4K). And while calling Scrooge McDuck a monster is probably a bit strong, the penny-pinching quackster and his nephews get into some hot water in Duck Tales: Destination Adventure. In less monstrous news, Lionsgate puts the petal to the medal with Flower and Warner Bros. kicks things into high gear with soccer-centric family film Alex & Me.

The end of the week brings the biggest (and certainly oldest) monsters of them all. We’ll have a dino-tastic review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. And now it's time for your customary reminder: if you’re shopping for anything on Amazon and you do it through one of our links, it’ll help keep the lights on here at UpcomingDiscs. See ya next week!

Despite falling into the “coming of age genre”, Love, Simon is actually so much more than your typical mainstream teenage film.  In the 80’s John Hughes ruled the box office  with his films, everything from Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink and of course The Breakfast Club were the films that spoke to the kids of the era.  It’s been a while since a film has come along that has fit into the genre that has managed to handle the awkwardness of being a teenager while also toeing the line of being heartfelt and humorous. Over the years there have been attempts to capture the essence of the 80’s John Hughes films, but these seem to always fail by either going to raunchy or attempting to make the lead characters cool and popular.

When it comes to the Italian western aka the spaghetti western, the first director who comes to mind is Sergio Leone (The Good The Bad And The Ugly); and then there is Sergio Corbucci.  While Leone was blazing a successful career, Corbucci first came onto the scene with his film Django. The film was dirty, violent, and mean.  For those who are only familiar with the Quentin Tarantino version of Django, well, you’ll definitely see the films are drastically different aside from them both being revenge films. Much later on Corbucci got the chance to follow up his first big hit with another western, The Great Silence. I had gotten to see this dark western before, though it was in the form of a bootleg copy.