Fuller House: The Complete Third Season (2018/Warner DVD Set)/The Hate U Give 4K (2018/Fox 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/I Am Not A Witch (2018/Film Movement DVD)/Sleepover (2004/MVD Visual Blu-ray)

4K Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B-/B/C+/B Sound: B-/B/C+/B Extras: D/B+/C/B Main Programs: C/B/C+/C+

The teen years (or close enough to them) mean different things for different people, especially where genre, race, socio-economic class and other factors enter, so we brought together this unusual set of releases on the subject...

The squeaky clean family friendly series, Fuller House, returns for a Complete Third Season (2018) and features many familiar faces from the original show. Geared towards a young audience and complete with coming of age themes and life lessons, the show delivers more of the same humor that fans have come to know and love in its third season.

Fuller House stars Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, Andrea Barber, Michael Campion, Elias Hager, Soni Bringas, Dashiell Messitt, Fox Messitt, Bob Saget, Lori Loughlin, John Stamos, and Dave Coulier to name a few.

DJ (Bure) is now a widowed mother of three. In order to help her with the kids, her best friend Kimmy (Barber), and sister Stephanie Tanner (Sweetin) end up helping her. The show explores each character's growing pains and trails and tribulations through daily life.

Episodes include...

Disc One - Best Summer Ever, Break a Leg, Declarations of Independence, My Little Hickey, Uncle Jesse's Adventures in Babysitting, M-M-M-My Ramona, Say Yes To The Dress, Maybe Baby, and Wedding or Not Here We Come.

Disc Two - My Best Friend's Japanese Wedding, Troller Coasters, Fast Times at Bayview High, A Tommy Tale, Surrogate City, Soul Sisters, Happily Ever After, Fullers in a Fog, and Here Comes The Sun.

No extras.

Fuller House is very much in the same tradition as Full House and is a fine sitcom for what it is. While pretty cheesy and mainly predictable, the show hasn't quite run out of popularity or gas yet.

On the more realistic side of life, there are always books that get released that you hear about somehow, despite the world of multi-media we live in and the buzz is as highly critically good as any sales might be. Some of those books might make solid feature films or even TV mini-series, but too many likely don't get ought or bought and shelved. One such book is by Angie Thomas, which may be a landmark from the point-of-view and discourse of a young African American female finding herself somewhat torn in several directions because of her unusual life situation.

Now we have George Tillman, Jr.'s film of that book. The Hate U Give 4K (2018) is easily one of the years' best films and it just may have made a breakout star of Amandla Stenberg, who is remarkable as Starr Carter, who offers honest voice over pf her life and more, transforming into the character as she grows quickly in the face of almost unreal situations that are not as impossible or unlikely as they used to be. She lives in a tough urban neighborhood predominantly African American, but her father runs the local grocery store and a bad incident at a local school has the parents sending her to a fancier school with interesting results.

There is some humor here, but things get quickly ore serious as several subplots start to criss-cross at the same time and it all becomes very involving very quickly. It's remarkable such a key, important book that has been selling so well and has such critical acclaim has a feature film more than worthy of it, especially at this time in our country's history when female discourses are so vital, while issues of racism and sexism are as relevant as ever.

However, this is not some propaganda film or overt political film, but a very well-acted, well-cast slice of life we are not hearing enough about from anywhere! Not film, music, TV, the news or the Net. The supporting cast is outstanding (Anthony Mackie, now a big star, so great as The Falcon in the Marvel Comics films, had the guts to play a horrible, awful gang leader here proving how serious he is about his acting still) and to get this much chemistry going in any film is so easy. I'm glad they pulled it off.

Its also great that Fox respected the film enough that it is giving the film a deluxe 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray with Blu-ray set release. It deserves it. You know the film is good when you get involved, love the characters and hate to see it end. Let's hope this is the beginning of something new and important, because it is smart, healthy and long overdue.

Extras are fine, many and include...

Extended Scenes:

Maverick and Seven Protecting Their Home

Uprising

Seven's Graduation

Featurettes:

Starting a Conversation

The Talk

Code Switching

The Heart of Georgia

Thank U Georgia

Starr: Shine Your Light (4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray only)

AND a terrific Feature Length Audio Commentary track by George Tillman, Jr., Amandla Stenberg, Russell Hornsby, Angie Thomas and Craig Hayes.

Rungano Nyoni's I Am Not A Witch (2018) is a film that is dubbed a 'fairy tale' on the packaging, but I had some issues with it being potentially exploitive. A very young preteen is accused of being a witch in present day Zambia, tied to a white ribbon and told if she flees, she'll be turned into a goat. Stupid but potentially scary to a young child, at the hands of a man with political power, she becomes a local star when this starts to backfire, but the odds of that happening in real life are extremely slim.

I get the point (though it struck me with what is going on in the U.S. these days, this kind of thing happens here more often than we know) and this seems a stretched out idea at 93 minutes, yet the sexism and hatred of women of any age worldwide is as real as it has ever been and the film will at least spark discussion that can be valuable. This would likely never fly or happen as any kind of Hollywood product.

The only extra is Rungano Nyoni's short film Mwansa The Great, running 23 minutes and playing as a sort of spiritual companion to the main film.

Finally, the PG family friendly film Sleepover (2004), gets an HD upgrade and plenty of extras for those who still remember it. I had never heard of it before, but it's funny to look back on now, as there are several familiar faces (then struggling actors) that have since become mega-stars including Steve Carrell, Evan Peters, and Brie Larson (now Marvel Comics new Captain Marvel). However, the Spice Girls references, any scene that involves the internet, and cell phones make it hilariously out dated. At the end of the day, though, the film is fine for what it is, even if it doesn't pack the staying power of similar genre entries Clueless or Mean Girls.

Starring Alexa Vega (Spy Kids), the film is about four best girl friends who are struggling to get through high school. When the 'popular' and 'unpopular' girls participate in an all night scavenger hunt, they discover true friendship, love, and more.

As mentioned, much of the cast you'll recognize now including Mika Boorem (Hearts in Atlantis), Jane Lynch (Glee), Sara Paxton (The Last House on the Left), Jeff Garlin (The Goldbergs, Curb Your Enthusiasm), Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie's Halloween), Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Scoot McNairy (Argo), Sean Faris (Never Back Down), Hunter Parrish (Weeds) and Sam Huntington (Fanboys).

Special Features include...

Audio commentary by Director Joe Nussbaum and actors Alexa Vega, Scout Taylor-Compton, Mika Boorem and Kallie Flynn Childress

''A Guide to the Perfect Sleepover'' making-of featurette

"Meet the Girls'' actress profiles

"Ready, Set, Action!'' featurette

Sleepover Confessions

Gag Reel

Wrap Party Reel

Behind The Scenes Photo Gallery

and Sleepover Original Theatrical Trailer

The 2160p HEVC/H.265, HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced 2.35 X 1 Ultra High Definition image on Hate U Give may have some slight limits and is not necessarily a 4K shoot, but it looks good and is the best performer on the list. The HD-shoot never looks generic, has some character and is a pleasure to watch. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on the blu-ray is not as rich or detailed, but is not bad, though not as alive somehow. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 7.1 mix on both format versions is well recorded, features its music without cutting into the narrative and is as well mixed as it is edited. I could always hear what was going on.

Presented in standard definition on DVD with an anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and a lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, Fuller House looks and sounds fine for the format. Compression issues evident (especially when comparing directly to HD), and is comparable to the original streaming broadcast on Netflix.

Sleepover is presented in 1080p on Blu-ray disc with a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and a nice sounding tracks in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix (48kHz, 16-bit) and English LPCM 2.0 mix, depending on your home theater setup. The presentation is fine considering the nature of the film and doesn't have any overly visible flaws. The look and feel of the production design is similar to something you'd see on The Disney Channel nowadays.

That leaves Witch with an anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image that is soft, but some of that is intended and it is only going to look so good in the older format, Sound is here in both lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, with the 5.1 just slightly edging out the other soundtrack. There are location audio issues a little bit, but this is good otherwise.

- Nicholas Sheffo (Give 4K, Witch) and James Lockhart

https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/