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New on DVD

New on DVD

Waltz with Bashir
Rated R for some disturbing images of atrocities, strong violence, brief nudity, and a scene of graphic sexual content
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Filmmaker and Israeli war veteran Ari Folman encounters a friend that is having nightmares brought on by the events of the First Lebanon War where they fought together.  When he realizes that he has many gaps in his own memory, he attempts to reconnect with many of the soldiers he fought with in an attempt to face the horrors of war he has shut away out of his mind.  Innovative in every way, this animated film that plays like a documentary was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  That being said, this is not a film for everyone.  It is a tough, challenging film filled with disturbing content that you will wish to forget just as Folman is trying to remember.  It does give an account of this war that most, including myself, are largely unfamiliar with.  The disc contains both the English and Hebrew language versions of the films, as well as tons of special features to give deeper insight.  B+

Confessions of a Shopahollic
Rated PG for some mild language and thematic elements
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Based on the popular book series, Confessions follows a college grad that lands a job at a major financial magazine.  The only problem is that she is horrible with money, in deep debt and addicted to shopping.  Not knowing what to write about, she uses clothes as a metaphor for business and somehow becomes popular throughout the world.  Poorly written, lazily directed, and badly acted, this Bridget Jones wannabe is just miserable to watch.  Some might say that it’s good for teens and young girls due to it’s lack of mature content and wholesome feel, but I feel that the movie is so demeaning and insulting to women that I would have to disagree.  While there are women out there like this, I am thankful that it is the exception and not the norm this film portrays.  D

The Diary of Anne Frank: 50th Anniversary Edition
Unrated
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
This beautiful but sad tale of a young Jewish girl and her family hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam during WWII is hitting 50 this year.  While there is no sign of restoration of the original print, the film still holds up in looks and with Blu-ray manages to pop pretty well.  What this film doesn’t lack in is special features.  Both the DVD and blu-ray contain many new featurettes.  The blu-ray also contains loads of extras not found on the DVD edition such as a making-of commentary, archival footage and previously produced specials.  A

Blu-ray TV
This week also sees the introduction of some great shows finally released on blu-ray.  Lost Seasons 1 and 2 not only give you more than 20 episodes each to take in again, but contain some really interesting commentaries with interludes showing examples of production discussions.  And Hawaii in HD?  All I can say is wow.  Also on blu-ray this week is HBO’s John Adams.  What makes this set so interesting is the blu-ray only special feature of historical facts that pop up on the screen during the course of the series.  Not only are you entertained, but thoroughly educated as well.  Lost: Season 1 A; Lost: Season 2 B+; John Adams A-

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Year One

Year One

Starring Jack Black, Michael Cera, and Oliver Platt
Directed by Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day)
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, brief strong language and comic violence
Appropriate for teenage boys and stoners

    Jack Black and Michael Cera are two cavemen that are booted from their tribe and set off to wander the world.  Once out in the real world, they find themselves involved with many biblical characters such as Cain, Abel, Abraham, and Isaak.  I think that there might be some more story to it, but I was totally lost.

    I can usually find merit in any film, but I can’t think of one positive thing to say about it except for maybe that it’s only about 90 minutes long not including the credits. 

    The story itself is incoherent and so hard to follow that you just don’t care.  The plot is not even remotely clever and the dialogue, much of which appears to be badly improvised, is insulting to the audience.  I hate that this came from Harold Ramis, for whom I have the utmost of respect for as a writer and director.  For this to be created by the same person that brought us Caddyshack, Animal House, Groundhog Day and many other brilliant comedies, shows us that either the well is dry or he is just phoning it in. 

    To make matters worse, Jack Black is the same Jack Black that we see in every other movie he’s in.  I remember when his shtick was fresh and funny, but this film is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and he has officially reached annoying in my book ( I’m sure he got there much earlier for others).  It’s too bad because I think he could really make something great if he’d stop acting like a jester and grow up a little. 

    The rest of the cast are just clueless with this loser script and fail to make anything comical come alive on screen.

    What really gets me is how much toilet humor there is in this film.  Whether it is watching Jack Black eat from a pile of fresh feces or Michael Cera hanging upside down urinating on his face and into his mouth and nostrils, the jokes are just gross, childish, and not in the least bit funny. 

    So maybe if you are a teenage boy or taking some kind of mind-altering drugs, you might find this an entertaining film.  As for everyone else, stay far away from this stinker.  F

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The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Starring Denzel Washington, John Travolta, and James Gandolfini
Directed by Tony Scott (Man on Fire)
Rated R for violence and pervasive language
Appropriate for ages 17+

    When armed men following a ruthless leader (Travolta) hijack a subway car and hold it for ransom, dispatcher Walter Garber (Washington) must becomes both the negotiator and the only hope that the hostages have of surviving.

    This remake of the 1974 film starring Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw is a nice update and a solid action thriller.  Travolta makes for a pretty decent villain here, although at times he seems a little too out of control for someone of his background and former status.  Washington once again turns in a great performance, raising the acting from those around him to a higher level.  Gandolfini is very believable as the mayor of the city trying desperately hard to both do the right thing and yet still get reelected.  The only miscast is John Turturo, who acted like he was still in Transformers-mode and was very difficult to take seriously. 

    Tony Scott (Deja Vu, Spy Game) is very good at directing and pacing with this genre and this film is no different.  The film moves very fast and doesn’t give you much time to think about its various problems, such as a secondary very weak plot involving the gold market. 

    One thing I don’t like about Scott’s latest films is that he puts his thumb print all over the films in post-production and this one is his worst offender yet.  The opening credit sequence is the most annoying and difficult to watch that I can remember ever seeing.  There are far too many speed-up, slow-down, look at what I can do in the editing room moments throughout the film and this inability to just tell a good story is so distracting that I actually left the theater deflated.  I really like his stories (even when they are remakes), but sometimes I just don’t like the way he tells them.  I hope that when he takes on his next project, rumored to be a remake of The Warriors, that he doesn’t insist on telling us throughout the film that it’s him that is making it.  C

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New on DVD

New on DVD

Friday the 13th: Killer Cut
Rated R for strong bloody violence, some graphic sexual content, nudity, language, and drug material
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
What they are calling a reinventing of the Friday the 13th franchise is merely just a slicker Michael Bay version of the violent film series from the 80s and 90s.  In this new edition, a group of teenagers is staying at a cabin across the water from Camp Crystal Lake when goalie-masked baddie Jason Voorhees shows up, knocking them off one by one.  I knew that this wasn’t going to be a brilliant film by any means, but I did expect more.  Michael Bay’s reimagining of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was at least a little more inventive than the original, although a little too gruesome for my taste.  This new Jason flick, however, is still just the same old silly formula with beautiful naked college students getting mutilated by a supernatural madman in laughable ways.  D+

Home
Unrated and appropriate for all ages
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
This French import has turned out to be a huge hit in Europe, although with very little fanfare it will have a tougher time finding a US audience.  Home is a two-hour documentary with aerial footage from 54 countries showing how all of the problems of our planet are interlinked.  The dialogue, narrated by Glenn Close, might be a little too preachy for some, but overall a convincing argument is made that the abundance our planet has to offer is running out.  With its beautiful and surreal photography, it plays like a cross between Planet Earth and An Inconvenient Truth, putting its audience in both a state of awe and utter discomfort.  Noticeably missing are any special features showing how the film was made.  With images this breathtaking, I figured that the filmmakers would have been proud enough of their work to show it off in a behind-the-scenes setting.  A-

Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: 45th Anniversary Special Edition
Rated PG for thematic elements, some violent content, sexual humor, and mild language
Available on blu-ray
Stanley Kubrick’s classic cold war comedy starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott gets the blu-ray brush up in this loaded special edition.  Strangelove was responsible for so many of the world’s thoughts on the cold war that even though most of the film is entirely fictional, they are widely considered to be fact.  The film has an advanced picture-in-picture and pop-up trivia track that gives these facts of the cold war and dispels many of the misconceptions that this brilliant film created.  The track does block much of the screen though, so if you haven’t seen the movie before, or at least haven’t seen it in a while, I highly recommend that you watch it without first.  The disc is also loaded with a ton of special featurettes and even an interview with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson.  I think it’s safe to say that this is the most powerful and influential comedies in the history of Hollywood.  A+

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The Hangover



The Hangover

Starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis
Directed by Todd Phillips (Old School)
Rated R for pervasive language, sexual content including nudity and some drug material
Appropriate for ages 18+
    
    What was supposed to be just a fun-filled normal bachelor party in Vegas turns to disaster when the three friends of the groom wake up in their destroyed hotel room to find a tiger in the bathroom, a baby in the closet, a missing groom, and no clue what happened the night before.  Trying to piece together clues and evidence, the three must try to put together what happened and somehow get the groom back to L.A. in time for his wedding.  

    If you laughed hard at the trailers and thought to yourself “I’ve just seen all of the funny scenes,” you’ve thought wrong.  This is one hilarious movie that will keep you laughing and coughing knee-slapping throughout.  The humor is a little raunchy at times, but it is almost always clever, interesting, and unconventional.  I had a smile glued to my face for hours after I left the theater.  I am chuckling as I am sitting here writing this.  So if you can’t tell through my subtlety, I think that this is a pretty darn humorous movie.

    While the comedy is strong, its the smart script by Jon Lucas that brings it to the next level.  I can’t believe that this was written by the same guy who wrote Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.  Doesn’t seem probable.  To watch the film unfold like a mystery is just plain brilliant and completely engaging for the audience.

    Director Todd Phillips easily has enough pull to have gotten some big names for this cast, but instead he chose folks that you might have seen before, but aren’t exactly household names.  When quizzed, most folks will say it starred the dude from that chick flick, the nerd from The Office, and that guy from Comedy Central, but Phillips and co were able to see enough potential from this very cohesive group of guys to take a risk, and I hope that it pays off for them at the box office.  

    The only thing I didn’t like is that the film got a little dry towards the end during the Rain Man sequence.  It’s cute, but not nearly as clever as the rest of the film.  Also, this film is very much for adults.  I know the R should be a strong enough warning, but I’ll put a little extra emphasis on this.  The movie celebrates Roman-like debauchery and I was a little uncomfortable with all of the kids and teenagers in the audience. 

    This little film has cult classic written all over it and will probably go down as the greatest bachelor party film of all time.  Well done.  A

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New on DVD





New on DVD

Gran Torino
Rated R for language throughout, and some violence
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Director/star Clint Eastwood is a disgruntled Korean War vet named Walt Kowalski whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino in mint condition.  When the Asian boy from the house next door tries to steal it after being pressured by his cousin’s gang, the kids family makes him work off his debt to Walt to make it up to him.  As the racist Walt grows attached to the family he once hated, he becomes mixed up in a battle to keep the young boy out of his cousin’s gang and keep his family safe.  While I didn’t really like the film much as a whole – I understand why it was a runaway hit at the box office: people connected with Clint Eastwood again.  Clint is fun to watch, engaging, and you can’t wait to hear what his character will say next.  The rest of the film, however, is bad.  The acting by the boy and girl next door, as well as the pushy priest, is pretty darn horrible.  One of the things that might have contributed to the bad acting is that the directing job is one of Clint’s worst.  It felt like Clint didn’t rehearse the scenes at all and only shot one take.  Still, if you are just looking for a racist old comical coot and a story with a decent message, you’ll probably find it entertaining.  C+

The International
Rated R for some sequences of violence and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Clive Owen is in Interpol agent trying to expose a high-profile financial institution’s role in an arms smuggling deal.  As far as action thrillers go, there’s a decent tale here, but it’s been played before.  Owen’s character seems like a mix of all of his other thriller roles and Naomi Watts stars in a complete throw-away part.  I have liked some of director Tom Tykwer’s work, such as Run Lola Run and Perfume, but The International serves as a completely average and forgettable movie. C

Fired Up
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content throughout, partial nudity, language and some teen partying
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
The two most popular guys in high school decide to ditch football camp in favor of cheerleader camp in the hopes of scoring with as many of the 300 cheerleaders in attendance.  Instead of making a complete parody of Bring it On and calling it Cheerleader Movie (I really hope this never happens), Fired Up goes for a much subtler parody, yet wittier concept.  Sure it’s stupid, silly, childish, and immature.  But it also provides some very big belly laughs and I found the leads, Nicholas D’Agosto and Eric Christian Olsen to be very charismatic and fun to watch.  While the unrated version would have obviously gotten an R rating, I am very surprised that the PG-13 version made it through the MPAA.  It’s a pretty vulgar film for teenagers to be watching.  B-

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Up

Up

Starring the voice talent of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, and John Ratzenberger
Directed by Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.)
Rated PG for some peril and action
Appropriate for all ages

    78-year-old widower and retired balloon man Carl Fredricksen has dreamed of one thing all of his life – flying to Paradise Falls in Venezuela.  When urban developers threaten to take his house away from him and put him in a retirement home, he uses his remaining balloons and helium tanks to launch his house into the sky and set out on his dream-journey to South America.  Unbeknownst to Carl, though, is that a young scout named Russell has stowed away on his front porch and is now forced to travel with him on his journey.

    It’s hard to know where to start the praise of this film.  I think what stands out most is the originality of the story and the courage for a studio to go with it.  This is the least conventional film that Pixar has ever created, and therefore the riskiest.  An animated film about an old curmudgeonly man and his flying house does not sound like a hit at first thought and I seriously doubt that any other studio would have ever taken a second look at the script.  Yet Pixar takes the story, nurtures it, and turns it into yet another in a string of masterpieces. 

    It hardly needs mentioning if you’ve seen the trailer, but the animation is absolutely breathtaking.  The colors are rich and vibrant and the world around Carl is a fantasy, and yet familiar to the audience.  The little touches to the story, such as the adventurer he and his wife watched as children, the dogs with collars that talk their thoughts, the elusive giant bird that befriends Carl and Russell: all of these elements and more make this film both highly enjoyable and memorable. 

    Pixar opens the film with a very cute short titled Partly Cloudy, about a stork that is forced to deliver dangerous baby animals, but the silent film style montage in the first act showing Carl’s life from a young man to old is one of the most beautiful and touching stories I’ve ever seen in a film.  It could be an Oscar winning short all on its own.  You will feel more familiar with this man in five minutes than you will with most characters in an entire film.  This is what ultimately propels you into empathy with Carl’s quest.

    Before you think that I watched this movie wearing rose-colored glasses (actually, the 3D glasses had more of a dark tint), I do have one negative thing to say about the it.  I am very afraid of heights (being 6’7″ probably doesn’t help that) and being up in the air for so long during the film and looking down made me very queasy at times.  I’m certain that the 3D effects exacerbated it, but if you have severe acrophobia, you might want to be aware of this.  I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the movie, but my stomach might have.  A+

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New on DVD

New on DVD

He’s Just Not That Into You
Rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
This set of interconnecting stories tells stories of love, loss, cheating, loneliness, desperation and revelation.  The main thrust of the story revolves around a young girl named Gigi (Gennifer Goodwin) who is bluntly told by a bartender (Justin Long) about the signs that guys give when they are and aren’t into women.  Upon this realization, she attempts to play dating by a different set of rules that may or may not work out for her.  I’ll freely admit that I liked this romantic comedy and consider it one of the better ones of the last couple years.  It tries to be Love Actually, and never comes close, but is still witty, funny, and engaging.  The women are written a little more dense and shallow than the men, but then again, the basic idea of the movie is taken from the point of view of a man, not a women, so that makes sense in this situation.  The huge cast including Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson and many others worked well as an ensemble and each has their own memorable moments.  B

Revolutionary Road
Rated R for language and some sexual content /nudity
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet are just your normal 1950’s suburban couple in love.  They have a young family and seem to be living the American dream.  But when life starts to get in the way of their plans and both of them start to become regretful, the whole thing begins to fall apart.  This is really a great movie, but like Winslet’s other recent film The Reader, this one is very hard to watch.  It’s a punch in the gut that becomes very unsettling.  To make the audience more uncomfortable is the Oscar-nominated performance of Michael Shannon as a mentally disturbed man that comes into their lives and sees through their masquerade of happiness.  A-

Defiance
Rated R for violence and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
During World War II, the Bielski brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell) create a village consisting of hundreds of Jews in the Belarussian Forest in order to protect them from the encroaching Nazi forces.  While the history of this movie is fascinating, the script has some real problems.  It attempts too hard to be Braveheart meets Schindler’s List instead of merely telling this amazing true story.  The special features on the disc are better than the movie this time around, with featurettes on the survivors and descendants of this event.  Also of note is the beautiful score by James Newton Howard and violinist Joshua Bell.  It is truly one of the most beautiful pieces of music to come from Hollywood last year.  C+

Valkyrie
Rated PG-13 for violence and brief strong language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Tom Cruise is Colonol Claus von Stauffenberg, the German military leader that almost assassinated Hitler during World War II (sorry for the spoiler about Hitler not getting killed).  Based on yet another amazing true story, this film plays more like an adventure thriller and focuses very little on the actual war.  While the lack of violence and cruelty surrounding the Nazi party represented by the film bugged me at first watch, I found it less annoying the second time around.  I would have still preferred the film to be a Rated R, more dramatic and realistic approach to the war.  Historically, it’s not too far off and the performances by the very talented cast are terrific.  The disc contains two commentaries as well as several featurettes and a documentary.  B

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Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation

Starring Christin Bale, Sam Worthington, and Anton Yelchin
Directed by McG (Charlie’s Angels)
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence, and language
Appropriate for ages 13+

    This fourth installment of the Terminator franchise (unless you count the TV show) follows the infamous John Connor (Bale) in the year 2018, commanding the human resistance during what could be their possible extinction.  As he is looking for Kyle Reese (Yelchin), the man he sends back in time to become his father, he finds another man named Marcus Wright (Worthington) that informs him that Reese has been captured by the machines.  The only problem is that Wright himself is a terminator that thinks he is a human, and Connor and gang do not know if they can trust him.  The one thing that John does know is that Kyle must live if there is to be any hope for the human race. 

    Before I rip into this one, I will sing a few of its praises.  First off, the special effects are off the charts.  While they aren’t as groundbreaking as what we saw in T2, they are still hugely impressive.  The new machines are equally terrific, although I would have rather waited to see the gigantic killer robots during the movie rather than having the trailer spoiling them, but oh well.

    My first gripe is that this is a lousy script full of fuzzy logic and plot holes galore.  I’ll try not to give too much away here, but it seemed way too easy for Wright to find Reese (guess it was destiny) and if Reese truly was enemy number one to the machines – either Wright would have been programed to kill Reese when discovered, or at least the machines would have killed Reese when captured rather than trying to use him as bait for Connor.  After all, if Connor’s thought process was correct (if Reese was killed, Connor would cease to exist and the resistance would die) then killing him as soon as he is captured would have made the most sense, and subsequently got us out of the theater an hour faster.  But let’s put logic problems aside, the dialogue is what really stinks here.  All the silly banter and clichéd rebels were just annoying.  I wish Bale had lashed out against the writers rather than the cinematographer.

    I also have a huge problem with the direction here.  McG has lots of style, but his scene work is not strong, and he is not good at compelling storytelling.  What looks like an acting problem is really just bad directing.  While the film will make a lot of money, giving McG $200 million when he is largely untested was kind of a dumb idea of Warner Brothers.  After its advertising campaign, I predict that this pic will be a big money loser for the studio. 

    Finally, Terminator is an R-rated franchise, and this teeny bopper, toned-down version doesn’t help the film at all.  I think a real director, with the same budget and a better-written R-rated script, could have really done something with this story, and possibly turned it into another classic.  C-

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New on DVD

New on DVD

Powder Blue
Rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and some drug use
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Four lonely souls living in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve (Jessica Biel, Ray Liotta, Forrest Whitaker, and Eddie Redmayne) try to find what might make them complete in this straight-to-dvd title with marquee names.  This is being sold as Jessica Biel’s first nude scene, but in reality, it is a waste of time.  The story is simply a mess.  Everyone is acting depressed and needy and not only are the scenes poorly directed, but the film doesn’t seem to have a foothold in reality.  I’ll admit, some of the characters are interesting, such as Patrick Swayze’s slimy strip club owner and Lisa Kudrow’s lonely diner waitress, but they are not in the film long enough to really get a feel for them.  So how did this film get all the big names?  My guess is that the cast thought it was going to be the next Crash, and by the time they figured out it wasn’t – it was too late.  D

History Channel Megasets
If you have a lot of time on your hands, the History Channel is releasing some massively impressive 14-DVD boxed sets this week.  First there is Military Combat which follows over 39 battles brought to life with computer animation and archival footage.  The set includes Battle 360: The Complete Season One, Dogfights: The Complete Seasons 1 & 2, as well as my personal favorite – Dogfights of the Future.  Next there is America at War, which contains over thirty hours of documentaries ranging from the Revolutionary War to the war in Iraq.  Finally, there is American Originals containing the entire first seasons from the very popular shows Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, and Tougher in Alaska.  All three sets are reasonably priced on amazon.com and would make pretty phenomenal Father’s Day gifts.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Rated R for violence
Available on Blu-ray
Widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly makes its debut on Blu-ray in bold fashion.  This gritty spaghetti western teams Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef as an uneasy trio attempting to find a large stash of gold buried in a remote cemetery.  This new fully-restored extended version looks and sounds great and has loads of extra documentaries and even a commentary by noted cultural historian Christopher Frayling.  I especially loved the featurette on legendary composer Ennio Morricone.  A+