I Am Legend – DVD Improves Upon Theatrical Release

I Am Legend

Starring Will Smith
Directed by Francis Lawrence (Constantine)
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence
Appropriate for ages 13+
Available March 18, 2008 on DVD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray Disc

If you recall from my first review, I was a little disappointed with this new Will Smith film.  I thought that the movie was overall effectively frightening, but had a bummer ending that made the audience depressed.  Apparently the producers agreed, and so they gave us the Alternate Theatrical Version with a brand new ending.  Remember that scene on the trailer that I was complaining about being absent in the theater?  You know – the one where the infected are breathing down Smith’s neck?  Good news – it’s in the new version and the ending is a vast improvement over the original.  And if you have an extra day with nothing to do – this disc comes loaded with hours of extras.  The best are the animated comics and a special doc discussing the science behind the movie, where real CDC officials discuss the history of pandemics and why we are overdue for one.  This is a great disc, and an example for all others to follow. 

Enchanted – A Delightful Parody

Enchanted

Starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, and Susan Sarandon
Directed by Kevin Lima (Tarzan)
Rated PG for some scary images and mild innuendo
Appropriate for all ages
Available March 18, 2008 on DVD and Blu-ray Disc

On the day a beautiful young cartoon character named Giselle (Adams) is about to marry the handsome Prince Edward (Marsden), his evil mother (Sarandon) banishes her to real-world Manhattan where she is left to fend for herself until her prince comes to rescue her.  Luckily, she finds a nice man (Dempsey) who is willing to put out a helping hand to the poor, crazy, whacked-out, yet wonderful New York newcomer.  The premise is nothing short of brilliant, although the ending seems like the ideas ran dry on the best way to close the show.  Also, it’s great to have Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz doing a movie musical again.  The music here pulled in an unbelievable three Oscar noms.  The disc contains tons of extras including a great making-of doc.  You’ll be able to keep your kids and Disney fans busy for hours with the Blu-ray only feature of The D Files.  Here you can watch the movie with an ongoing trivia game and Disney vignettes placed throughout.

No Country For Old Men – Caught in the Middle

No Country For Old Men

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Rated R for strong graphic violence and some language
Blu-ray and standard DVD available on March 11, 2008

When No Country won the Oscar for best picture, a lot of folks, including me, were forced to do a lot of head scratching.  But upon much reflection, I have started to see what is so amazing about this film.  My biggest problem with it was what they did with the hero.  Of course I thought the hero was Brolin’s character.  If you watch the film from the point of view that Jones’s sheriff is the hero, Bardem is the villain, and Brolin is just caught in the middle, the film takes on a new dimension.  It is a deeply complex story with interesting characters and thought-provoking dialogue.  The DVD contains a nice documentary on the making of the film and working with the Coens, but like all of the other Coen Brothers films, there is no commentary from them describing their strange, quirky process. 


Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who! – It’s The End Of The Speck As We Know It

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!     B

Starring the voice talent of Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, and Will Arnett
Rated G
Appropriate for all ages


The Story: An elephant named Horton discovers that a whole world named Whoville exists on a speck atop a flower.  While he is able to communicate with the mayor of this world, no one believes his tale, and conversely, no one in Whoville believes the mayor.  When the animals in Horton’s world try to kill off this speck, it is up to Horton to outwit them and do what he can to save Whoville from being wiped out of existence.

The Good: You can already guess that kids are gonna love this flick.  It is fast paced with loads of colors and a story that they will eat up.  While the film is not as adult friendly as your average Pixar pic, this one should keep the interest of the parents as well as other non-parental units that might wander into the theater.  The creativity is abundant here and should make most audiences fond of this lesser-known Dr. Seuss tale. 
I do find it very intriguing that the commercials and trailers for the film are trying to sell the voice talent over the film itself.  For those thinking that they are getting a Judd Apatow animated film here, please know that Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill are very minor toons in the story and are only being touted in the ads to get you thinking that you might be seeing a G-rated Superbad.  That being said, Carrey, Carell, and Arnett are all brilliant in their respective roles.

The Bad: Every so often the animation breaks from computer to hand-drawn in a very awkward way.  They even try to throw in a Pokeman sequence which feels very out of place.  Also, the end of the movie ends with a song that kind of ruins the enjoyment being had.  From what I understand, Jim Carey insisted on the song against the studio’s direction, and I really wish the studio had stuck to their guns and nixed it. 

The Summary: Beautiful animation combined with innovative story-telling make this a great family film that won’t dull the wits of the children watching it.

10,000 B.C. A Prehistoric Disapointment

10,000 B.C.     C-

Starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, and Cliff Curtis
Directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day)
Rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence
Appropriate for ages 13+


The Story: 12,000 years ago, a tribe is invaded and the men kidnapped for the purpose of building the first pyramids of Egypt.  One of the men that survived the attack goes after his tribesman and his woman, who was also stolen as a gift for the king.  Along the way he encounters many strange beasts and becomes a leader of men.

The Good: There is no doubt that the film feels like a big epic.  It’s immense in subject matter and full of great concepts.  The cinematography is pretty spectacular as are the aesthetically beautiful sets.  A lot of skill went into the building of this film.

The Bad: No matter how big your film is, without a decent script, there is no movie.  This script needed some help.  Writer Harold Kloser is a decent music composer, but his first script lacks the complexity and creativity of his music.  The story is not compelling and the characters don’t earn our empathy or interest.  The story has some potential, but doesn’t know what to do with it.  Maybe it’s the distraction that the film steals too many elements from other more successful epics such as Apocalypto and Dances With Wolves, or maybe its that the acting is so poor by most of the cast, but whatever it is, it’s more than apparent that this pic just doesn’t work. 

To make matters worse, the CG isn’t up to snuff.  The mammoths look decent, but the saber-tooth tiger looks completely inorganic.  And lets not discuss the giant birds that look more like dodos than raptors.

I have here exactly the opposite complaint that I had with Semi-Pro last week: this should have been an R-rated film.  You throw in more violence, more bad behavior, and maybe even some decent romance and/or sex, and you might have the ingredients for a pretty strong film on your hands.

The Summary: Bad acting, writing, and C.G. effects plague this promising prehistoric picture.

Into The Wild – The Ultimate Adventure



Into the Wild

Starring Emile Hirsch, Hal Holbrook, and Vince Vaughn
Directed by Sean Penn
Rated R for language and some nudity
Available March 4, 2008 on Standard DVD and HD-DVD

Based on the real life and death of Christopher McCandless, Into the Wild follows a young man that leaves behind the comforts of home and travels around the country on foot in the search to find true happiness and satisfaction.  When he ends up stranded in an abandoned bus in Alaska, he faces the most difficult of challenges: staying alive.  For some strange reason, this film found itself missing from Beaumont theaters this last fall, in spite of achieving some relatively decent box office numbers (22 million), so hopefully it will find a good audience on DVD.  Sean Penn and crew put a lot of love into this mesmerizing story and the performances by Hirsch, Holbrook, and others are very strong.  In theaters the film seemed a little long (148 minutes), but on the small screen it feels just right.  I wish there was a commentary or two, but all we get on the two-disc set are the film and a couple of production documentaries. 

Semi-Pro – Welcome to the Amateurs

Semi-Pro     D+

Starring Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, and Andre Benjamin
Rated R for language and sexual content
Appropriate for ages 17+

The Story: The NBA has decided to accept four minor-league franchises and to dissolve those not chosen.  In order to become one of the chosen few, Flint Tropics owner and player Jackie Moon (Ferrell) devises stunts to fill the stands with fans and win enough games to go fully-pro. 

The Good: The premise here isn’t bad.  The cast is immensely talented.  There is room enough for some big comedy.  There are some good laughs to be had, but unfornately, you probably saw them in the trailer. 

The Bad: While the potential is here, what they did with it is give us a lousy, unfunny pseudo-comedy.  Most of the jokes seem more like random, improvised humor than what usually comes from a well-crafted script.  Ferrell is his typical over-the-top self, but his humor backfires here and leaves the audience wondering about the inside jokes that lead up to this movie. 
It baffles me why they made this an R-rated film.  It seems that the humor here is aimed more at undescerning teenagers that just won’t know better.  It’s like they threw in a few more bad words than you can get away with in a PG-13 just to get an R.  I don’t mind a good R-Rated comedy, but most of them go all the way with it and this one doesn’t have a clue where it’s going. 

The Summary: Step on up and see Ferrell shoot an air ball!

American Gangster – Bringing It To The Streets

American Gangster

Starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe
Directed by Ridley Scott (Gladiator)
Rated R for violence, pervasive drug content and language, nudity and sexuality
Appropriate for ages 17+
Release Date: February 19, 2008 on DVD and HD-DVD

I firmly believe that had this great American crime drama been released in theaters in December, we would have seen this film nominated for tons of Oscars this year.  Just because the buzz burned out too early, though, don’t skip this powerful drama based on the true story of Frank Lucas, the infamous gangster that was responsible for destroying Harlem with his steady supply of pure heroine.   Imagine  Scarface meets The French Connection and you have American Gangster, a nail-biting thriller that belongs more in the 70’s than in today.  The DVD contains an Unrated Extended Cut while the HD-DVD version contains both the original in HD and the new cut on the flip-side in standard format.  The alternate beginning is a little over-hyped due to the fact that they just moved the post-credits sequence to the front, and the deleted scenes aren’t all that memorable, but there is a very informative commentary by director Ridley Scott and writer Steven Zaillian. 

Darkon – Nerds in Paradise



Darkon

Unrated but contains strong language
Directed by Luke Meyer
Release Date: February 26, 2008


This winner of the 2006 Audience Favorite Documentary at Austin’s South by Southwest Film Festival follows the lives of a strange group of folks that like to take their role-playing to an extreme.  Every weekend this group of wannabe warrior poets set out to conquer and destroy their enemies in a live-action dungeons and dragons-ish universe.  At first the pic is just funny and peculiar, but rapidly turns into an immensely interesting and entertaining adventure reminiscent of this year’s King of Kong.  So, in honor of this year’s South by Southwest Festival, which is about to start up (www.sxsw.com), I’d like to highly recommend this terrific little doc.

Vantage Point – Yours, Mine, and the Truth


Vantage Point    B-

Starring Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, William Hurt, and Forest Whitaker
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense violence and action, some disturbing images and brief strong language
Appropriate for ages 13+

The Story: Set in modern-day Spain, the President of the United States (Hurt) is attending a summit and arranges to make a public good-will speech.  Before he utters a word, he is shot by an assassin.  This scenario is told over and over again from different vantage points and character views until the story resolves itself.  During the course of the film the audience sees the view from the Secret Serviceman (Quaid), the American tourist (Whitaker), the President himself, and the assassins and how they all intertwine.

The Good: For an action film, you could do much worse.  There is plenty of adrenaline for everyone and you barely get a chance to breathe before the story starts over again.  Yes it’s a little gimmicky, but the gimmick pays off and leaves us with an overall entertaining experience.  I think that you have to appreciate the originality here and the 24 style film making works well with the premise.

The Bad: Quaid is very good here, but some of the performances, especially Whitaker’s, are pretty cheesy.  I also thought that the big twist was more than a little predictable, but it doesn’t hurt the effectiveness too much. 

The Summary: Creativity combined with fast action makes this a nice little popcorn flick.