New DVD, Blu-ray and digital release highlights for the week of July 5 -11, 2021

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — It's a quiet post-4th of July release week dominated by catalog titles. Some are classics, some are otherwise.

• Defending Jacob - Based onWilliam Landay's novel and starringChris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell, "Defending Jacob" sees Andy Barber, a district attorney, investigating the murder of a 14-year-old boy until his son, Jacob, becomes one of the prime suspects. Wanting to believe that Jacob is innocent, Andy and his wife wrestle with the possibility that their son is guilty.
  
  
• Bringing Up Baby -Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant star in this screwball comedy from directorHoward Hawks. David Huxley (Grant) is a paleontologist soon to marry. Susan Vance (Hepburn) believes Huxley is a zoologist, asks him to help with her tamed leopard and promptly falls in love with him. Chaos ensues. Dismissed when it was released in 1938, the film has since been reappraised as a wonderful, albeit absurd, romantic comedy.
  
  
• Mirror - Russian directorAndrei Tarkovsky's 1975 film "Mirror" is a nonlinear narrative about a man looking back on his life from his deathbed. Considering incompressible by some and a masterpiece by others, the film loosely pulls from Tarkovsky's own experiences.
  
  
• The House on Sorority Row - Written and directed byMark Rosman ("A Cinderella Story"), "The House on Sorority Row" is an infamous slasher film from 1982 that sees a group of sorority sisters pulling a prank on their house mother who refuses to let the girls throw a graduation party. Aspects of the script were inspired byHenri-Georges Clouzot's classic thriller "Les Diaboliques."
  
  
• Mortuary - Believingher father's accidental death was actually murder, Christine (Mary Beth McDonough) and her boyfriend Greg (David Wallace) follow clues to a local mortuary where occult rituals are performed.
  
  
• Threshold - When Leo discovers his sister in the aftermath of what appears to be a drug overdose, she insists that she's been clean for months and is now suffering from a curse stemming from her participation in a cult ritual. Determined to prove her wrong, Leo sets out on a trip that leads him to believe that she might be telling the truth.

• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 4K UHD -Stanley Kubrick's classic Cold War comedy starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott was exclusive to the "Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 1" box set. With that set now out of print (and fetching outrageous prices on the secondary market), Sony is finally releasing a stand-alone release. It's simply gorgeous and belongs in any and every 4K collection.
  
  
• Space Jam 4K UHD - Ahead of the release of "Space Jam: A New Legacy," Warner Bros. is bringing the 1996 film to 4K. The film sees Michael Jordan team with the likes of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and the Tasmanian Devil to take on an alien basketball team known as the Monstars.
  
  
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 4K UHD -Edgar Wright's adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel series is something of a modern masterpiece that was vastly ignored during its theatrical release. The film sees Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) forced to fight the six evil exes before he can date his dream girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). I've yet to see the 4K release (the film was finished in 2K) but I'd expect the image to be improved by HDR.
  
  
• Howard the Duck 4K UHD - Based on the Marvel Comics character, "Howard the Duck" is more infamous for being one of the worst-reviewed films of all time. I was one of five people to see the film in the theater in August of 1986 (likely because George Lucas was involved to some degree). The film has its fans. I don't know that I'd count myself as one of them. So bad it's good? Maybe.
  
  
• 48 Hrs. -Eddie Murphy made his film debut opposite Nick Nolte in this buddy cop comedy. The film is both a police procedural and a play on "The Odd Couple" narrative as cop Jack Cates (Nolte) reluctantly teams with convict Reggie Hammond (Murphy) to try and track down a pair of cop killers. The film was incredibly popular with both critics and audiences and is credited for opening the door for numerous other franchises including "Lethal Weapon" and "Rush Hour."
  
  
• Another 48 Hrs. - Released 8 years after the original film, "Another 48 Hrs." brought Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte back together for another adventure. The story is about as inspired as the film's title as Cates looks to prove that he is innocent of manslaughter with the help of Hammond, who has just been released from prison.