The Best New Blu-Ray Releases: Thanksgiving, Face/Off, The Raid, Lone Star

It's a new year, so it's time for a new Blu-ray round-up! Our first of 2024! Things are a little sparse here in at the start of the year, but there's still some great stuff to check out. We have Eli Roth's holiday slasher "Thanksgiving" to carve things up. Also, the fine folks at Kino Lorber have released John Woo's bonkers action extravaganza "Face/Off" on 4K! "Face/Off" is technically a December release, but we're including it now. Speaking of action, we also have a 4K release of Gareth Evans' "The Raid," aka "The Raid: Redemption." Finally, on the non-action movie front, we have the Criterion release of John Sayles' Western neo-noir character drama "Lone Star." 

So let's get to it. And remember to keep spinning those discs.

"Thanksgiving" started as a joke. When the experiment known as "Grindhouse" hit theaters in 2007, it came packaged with trailers for fake movies, and one of those fictional flicks was a slasher movie set around the most gluttonous of holidays. Some sixteen years later, director Eli Roth turned the fake trailer into a real film with his slasher pic "Thanksgiving," which hits Blu-ray this week. Turning a joke trailer into a full-fledged feature could've backfired, but Roth actually pulls it off here. I'll confess I'm not really a fan of Roth's work, but I enjoyed "Thanksgiving" immensely, primarily because it's a slasher pic that remembers to have fun with its premise. Don't get me wrong — I love our current trend of bleak, existential horror. But sometimes I just want an old-fashioned fright-fest, and on that front, "Thanksgiving." One year after a tragic Black Friday event, a killer dressed as a pilgrim is stalking Plymouth, Massachusetts, and, yep, you guessed it — there will be no leftovers. 

Special features:

• Exclusives
  • Deleted & Extended Scenes
  • Outtakes
  • Massachusetts Movies: Eli & Jeff's Early Films

• Also Includes
  • Behind the Screams
  • Gore Galore
  • Commentary with Eli Roth and Jeff Rendell

John Woo's American films are hit or miss, but I think we can all agree that his best Hollywood endeavor was 1997's gloriously bonkers "Face/Off." At the time of the film's release, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage were at the top of their games. Travolta was still in the midst of his glorious comeback kicked off by Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction," while Cage, who had won the Oscar in 1995 for "Leaving Las Vegas," was becoming a newly minted action star thanks to "The Rock" and "Con Air." So what better way to cash in on these big stars than by putting them in the same movie and having them swap faces? 

In "Face/Off," Travolta is Sean Archer, an FBI agent obsessed with stopping Castor Troy (Cage), a terrorist who likes to wear cool suits and say stuff like "I can eat a peach for hours!" After a confrontation (or a face-off, if you will) at the start of the film, Troy ends up in a coma. But there's a wrinkle: he's planted a bomb somewhere, and the only other person who knows the location of the device is Troy's imprisoned brother Pollux (Alessandro Nivola). The plan: using state-of-the-art and highly questionable medical science, Archer will don Troy's face and infiltrate the prison, getting the bomb info from Pollux. This plan works, at first, but unfortunately for Archer, Troy wakes up, forces the doctors to turn him into Archer, and then begins living Archer's life while the real Archer, wearing Troy's face, is stuck in prison. Yes, it's very silly, but that's part of what makes "Face/Off" so wonderful. Woo isn't afraid to go big, and there's an unparalleled joy in watching Travolta and Cage impersonate each other (Travolta is particularly skilled at playing Cage's eccentricities). 

Special features:

DISC 1 (4KUHD):

• Brand New HDR/Dolby Vision Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
• Audio Commentary by Director John Woo and Writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary
• NEW Audio Commentary by Action Film Historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
• Audio Commentary by Writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary
• 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0 Stereo
• Triple-Layered UHD100 Disc
• Optional English Subtitles

DISC 2 (BLU-RAY):

• Brand New HD Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative
• Audio Commentary by Director John Woo and Writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary
• NEW Audio Commentary by Action Film Historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema
• Audio Commentary by Writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary
• 7 Deleted Scenes (8:26) – with Optional Audio Commentary by Director John Woo and Writers Mike Werb and Michael Colleary
• The Light and the Dark: The Making of Face/Off Documentary (64:20)
• John Woo: A Life in Pictures – Featurette (26:03)
• Theatrical Trailer (2:08)
• 5.1 Surround and Lossless 2.0 Stereo
• Dual-Layered BD50 Disc
• Optional English Subtitles

"The Raid," aka "The Raid: Redemption," was like a kick to the face when it arrived seemingly out of nowhere in 2011. Shot hand-held, almost like an on-the-ground documentary, the film is just one killer action set piece after another. Yes, there's a story — an Indonesian SWAT team raids a building in Jakarta occupied by a drug lord and a bunch of his goons. But that scenario merely exists to give us a non-stop action-fest, as our lead character Rama (ass-kicker Iko Uwais) battles his way through one bad guy after another, all of it unfolding at a relentless pace that doesn't even think about giving us a second to catch our breath. The film now has a 4K release from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, complete with a new color grading overseen by director Gareth Evans. The biggest difference you'll notice is that the blue/purple-ish tint that overlayed the entire film is gone, replaced by more natural/warmer tones. I'm sure someone, somewhere, will have a problem with this, but it looks great and it's clear that this is how Evans now wants the film to look. 

Special features:

4K ULTRA HD DISC

• Unrated version of the feature presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision, approved by director Gareth Evans
• Indonesia/Bahasa Atmos + Indonesia/Bahasa & English 5.1 audio

BLU-RAY DISC

• Unrated version of the feature presented in high definition
• 5.1 Indonesian and English audio
• Special Features:
• Commentary with Gareth Evans
• Behind-the-Scenes Video Blogs
• Inside the Score
• In Conversation with Gareth Evans and Mike Shinoda
• An Evening with Gareth Evans, Mike Shinoda and Joe Trapanese
• Behind the Music with Mike Shinoda and Joe Trapanese
• Anatomy of a Scene with Gareth Evans
• Claycat's The Raid
• The Raid TV Show Ad (circa 1994)
• Theatrical Trailer

Is John Sayles our most underrated living director? I'm starting to think so. Sayles makes quiet movies, movies I suppose you'd call "small," but they can be epic affairs. Take "Lone Star," for example, which is now available through the Criterion Collection. The set-up is simple: a skeleton is found out in the desert near a small Texas border town. Local Sheriff Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper) sets out to look into the mysterious bones, unlocking a sprawling narrative involving a wide cast of characters. While they're not similar in tone or material, this feels akin to Michael Mann's "Heat" in the way it follows a set of characters all occupying the same area. Sayles directs the film with a steady hand, keeping things quiet while seamlessly cutting back and forth in time, including past sequences that feature a young Matthew McConaughey as Cooper's legendary lawman father, and Kris Kristofferson as a violent, racist Sheriff. Sayles has a unique ear for dialogue, and "Lone Star" is peppered with lines that linger; there's a poetry to it that has a way of infecting your brain. Sayles has a wealth of features to his name, but he feels incredibly underrated as a filmmaker — someone we take for granted or even ignore. He deserves more attention, and "Lone Star" is one of his best works. (Another of his best films, "Matewan," is also available from Criterion.) 

Special features:

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director John Sayles and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New conversation between Sayles and filmmaker Gregory Nava
• New interview with Dryburgh
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Domino Renee Perez