Author: crunchonthis

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New on DVD

New on DVD

Lost: The Complete Sixth and Final Season
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
While there were a few folks out there that didn’t like the direction taken for the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815,  most, like myself, found the journey to be breathtaking and the end to be everything hoped for.  The parallel story lines were a bit confusing at first, but watching them a second time on this set along with some great special features including “The New Men In Charge,” a documentary that answers even more questions about the island including my biggest one about the polar bears, you can see the real genius in the writing and the beautiful ending of a truly special television event.  Very few shows have been able to leave like this and none so eloquently.  Noticeably missing is a commentary on the last episode, which I was really looking forward to listening to.  A

Pawn Stars: Season Two
Available on DVD
Back for another season are the family of pawnbrokers from Las Vegas trying to figure out the good deals from the bad as folks dream of big cash that they’ll later be losing in the casinos down the street.  Regardless of the clientele though, it’s always interesting to see what’s valuable and what’s not and how these guys try to pay bottom dollar for what they want.  In thirty-minute increments, the show is just fast-paced enough to make for a nice little guilty pleasure TV snack.  B-

The Backup Plan
Rated PG-13 for sexual content including references, some crude material and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
J-Lo wants a baby so bad and doesn’t want to have to wait for the man to give it to her so she decides to have an artificial insemination.  Unfortunately she meets the man of her dreams on the same day.  He doesn’t mind that she’s having a baby, or in this case two, so they start off on a relationship doing things slightly out of order.  While the premise here is not bad, everything else is.  The jokes bomb due to being horribly written and terribly acted.  J-lo is pretty and all, but just not a movie star and while her love interest carries his weight pretty well, he just can’t make it work.  Then there is the Jerry McGuire wannabe women’s support group that just plain stinks up the place.  Maybe if they hadn’t tried to make this a comedy and left it at a romance with complications it might have had a chance, but J-lo and most of the rest of the cast lack the timing to pull it off.  D

City Island
Rated PG-13 for sexual content, smoking and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies head up an extremely dysfunctional family in the New York City area that could very easily be functional if they’d only communicate a little better with one another.  In this comedy of errors, the mistakes the characters make build upon one another, some organically and some not, until the hilarious finale when things come to a head and have no choice but to pop.  The film has a small, indie feel to it, but it does deliver big laughs and has a nice quirkiness that many will appreciate.  B

The Simpsons: The Thirteenth Season
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
While not the best of the Simpson’s Seasons, this 2001-2002 airing still had the show pulling off some pretty funny material that gave South Park and Family Guy tons of ideas to steal from.  Still considered on the cutting edge at this time, the Simpsons covered a number of hot topics including medicinal marijuana, spirituality, reality television executions and obesity.  Among the best this season were “The Blunder Years” where Homer takes a flashback to his younger days with young Moe, Lenny, and Carl, as well as the episode “Sweets and Sour Marge” where Springfield is named World’s fattest town and Homer becomes a sugar smuggler when sweets are banned.  B+

The Instant Expert Series from The History Channel
Available on DVD
The History Channel has taken some of its most popular titles on some of its most interesting subjects and added a school-like approach with a small booklet in the case and quiz on the disc.  If you’ve ever wanted to know more about subjects such as Benjamin Franklin, Oil, Egypt, The Mayflower, The French Revolution or Beowulf, these discs are a great resource and very affordable.  

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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ellen Wong
Directed by Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz)
Rated PG-13 for stylized violence, sexual content, language and drug references
Appropriate for ages 13+

    Scott Pilgrim (Cera) is a 22-year-old cruising through life in Canada with a cute high school girl friend and a loud rock band to distract him – until he discovers Ramona Flowers (Winstead), an eclectic American that fascinates him to the point of obsession.  When she agrees to go out on a date with him, he gets more than he bargained for as he discovers that he must destroy each of her seven exes to get a chance with her.  Each one tougher than the next, he really likes her but wonders how much he can handle before he is destroyed himself. 

    Edgar Wright’s previous outings have taken genres and bended them with an imaginative spin, but this time he creates something truly original.  I can honestly tell you that you have never seen, and will never see anything like this movie.  It’s part musical, video game, romance, sci-fi, and teen comedy all rolled into one. 

    While I’m not sure if the music will stand up on its own – it sounds really good in the theater.  It’s loud, in your face, and fun to watch as Michael Cera’s awkward bass guitar playing rocks pretty hard.  And the added special effects that zip in and out only make the tunes more fun as you are experiencing them.

    While most of the big names in the film are in smaller roles, everyone is so perfectly cast and does such a great job.  While the film is certainly about Pilgrim and Flowers, its the ensemble that brings it all together so well and this movie is full of future stars.   

    The music, the strange fighting sequences, and practically everything else though exists almost in a sort of dream state.  Scott actually dreams of Ramona before he sees her which only makes him want her more.  But nothing in the film seems real.  Yet you have to assume that it all is and this altered reality makes anything possible including wacky real-life fight scenes where the loser dies and turns to coins, music that turns to monsters and comic-like images, and most importantly – the Vegan Police.  Saying it’s creative is an understatement.  Being able to put this kind of vision on film is nothing short of genius and also very brave on the part of Universal for funding it. 

    Watching it for the first time I couldn’t help but think that this is just so neat – kind of like the first time I played with an iPhone.  I just hope it has better reception.  A   

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New on DVD

New on DVD

The Good, The Bad, The Weird
Rated R for nonstop violence and some drug use
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Korean, Mandarin, and Japanese with English subtitles
Writer/director Ji-woon Kim (The Uninvited) tells the story of three Korean outlaws in 1940s Manchuria that are all out to possess a secret map that will lead them to a treasure beyond their imaginations in this creative and highly stylized recrafting of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.  While the original can never be surpassed, this new take is so full of life and color and jam-packed with action that its hard to imagine not having fun watching it.  The Ugly is replaced here by The Weird, played by Kang-ho Song, and actor that is really turning in some great work lately with The Host and last year’s Thirst.  He adds a sense of comedy relief that provides an interesting element to the drama.  The rest of the cast and the production are also excellent and very big might I add.  This film has an epic feel to it with its huge set pieces and over-the-top action sequences.  I had a smile on my face for two straight hours.  A-

Cemetery Junction
Rated R for language and some sexual material
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
When I saw that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, the team behind series “The Office,” wrote and directed a film I immediately assumed funny and uncomfortable with bits of slapstick.  I assumed wrong.  Cemetery Junction is a town in England where three young friends burn time drinking, fighting and chasing girls while trying to figure out how to get out of their 1970s blue-collar town.  It’s a very thoughtful coming-of-age dramady with an excellent cast including Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, and Matthew Goode as the adults and Christian Cooke, Felicity Jones, Tom Hughes, and Jack Doolan as four very promising newcomers Gervais and Merchant brought in for the leads.  While certainly not a blockbuster, it’s a deeper piece of work than most will have thought possible from its creators and definitely worth the rental.  B

The Joneses
Rated R for language, some sexual content, teen drinking and drug use
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
When David Duchovny, Demi Moore and their two kids move into their new neighborhood, they seem like the perfect family with the latest and greatest fashions and toys, but behind their flashy exteriors lies a hidden agenda that has the potential to destroy the very neighbors’ lives they are befriending.  The first act of this film is very eye-opening.  In fact it had me pressing pause and researching the very subject matter the film was actually covering.  So at the very least, I think you will find this movie about the evils of consumerism and sheepish buying behavior enlightening.  It is also quite simplistic after the midpoint which is a little annoying.  Where the filmmakers had a chance to really make a strong statement, they went in the obvious directions and chose to sensationalize the characters’ actions for drama sake.  So while I liked the film, a different pathway would have been much more preferable.  B-

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The Other Guys

The Other Guys

Starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, and Michael Keaton
Directed by Adam McKay (Talladega Nights)
Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, language, violence and some drug material
Appropriate for ages 13+

    When the two most famous cops in New York City accidentally die in one of the most hysterical death sequences I can remember, a mismatched pair of detectives attempt step up and take their place.  Both cops seem to be bad at their jobs but together they try to take down one of the largest financial schemes the city has ever seen. 

    Recently Kevin Smith attempted the buddy cop comedy with Cop Out and it misfired completely.  One of the reasons that was such a dud was that not only were the cops completely aloof, so was the case.  What helps this buddy film to top the other is that while the cops are both idiots, the case is at least real, although complicated enough that you know that they are getting lucky more than they are intelligently solving it. 

    Unlike many of Adam McKay’s previous films, where I felt that much of the comedy came from improvisation on set, this one actually felt like it came from the page, largely because Ferrell is the only actor capable of bringing the big time improv.  Wahlberg’s character is a little dry and they could have had so much more fun with his troubling backstory, but Ferrell once again creates another memorable, quotable character whose jokes hit most of the time.   The rest of the cast is hit and miss although the opening bit with Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson is a laugh riot.  Still without Farrell – this film would have been nothing.  He is irreplaceable and owns every bit of screen time he has. 

    The biggest problems I had with the picture were all of the inconsistencies and lame jokes taken too far throughout.  For instance, I liked that hot women everywhere are attracted to Ferrell, but in one scene he has to visit an ex-girlfriend, yet in a back story he explains he met his wife while in a situation that would kill any chance of having that ex-girlfriend.  There are many more of those little annoyances that I guess I shouldn’t let bother me, but I like my pieces of the puzzle to fit.  Also, there are many jokes such as the captain quoting TLC songs without knowing it, Ferrell carrying a wooden gun and Wahlberg lusting after Ferrell’s wife that are funny one, maybe two times, and misses the next ten.  These jokes might have made them laugh on set quite a bit, but as a member of the audience I felt they were a huge stretch. 

    But the litmus test of “did I laugh a lot” passed with flying colors, mostly due to the genius that is Will Ferrell.  When he picks the right project, and for him this was the right project, he proves why he is considered to be one of the funniest men alive.  B+

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New on DVD

New on DVD   

Date Night
Rated PG-13 for sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Steve Carell and Tina Fey are just your average boring married couple with average married problems when they spontaneously go out on a date in New York City.  When two killers mistake them for another couple, they find themselves on the run, in severe danger, and on the most exciting night of their lives.  This romantic comedy take on North by Northwest is actually a fairly clever little picture that waivers here and there, but serves up a pretty entertaining experience.  The guest appearances are some of the best things about this film including a great scene where they interact with James Franco and Mila Kunis playing the couple they are being mistaken for.  This scene alone is worth watching the film.  While many women will like the Mark Wahlberg moments where he is shirtless in almost every scene he is in, the joke does get a little old, or maybe its me getting a little jealous.  I’m not above admitting that.  B

A Prophet
Rated R for strong violence, sexual content, nudity, language and drug material
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
French with English Subtitles
A Prophet tells the story of Malik, a 19-year-old Arab that is sentenced to a French prison and is forced to carry out missions for a Corsican gang leader in exchange for protection until his release.  Having missed the film while it only spent a couple of weeks in theaters, I am now surprised that it only took home a nomination for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars this past year.  This is one of the most original, gritty, well-acted, and well-written crime dramas I’ve scene in years.  Evolving way past the prison drama genre, this feels like an epic, as powerful as The Godfather, where you grow with Malik as the scared kid in prison who must not only survive, but out-smart his fellow prisoners and eventually end up a potentially monstrous crime lord.  If this script were around 30 years ago, and in English, Robert De Niro would have been the only actor capable of performing this role.  That being said, Tahar Rahim has turned in what I can only sum up as a brilliant performance that you must see to believe.  A

Multiple Sarcasms
Rated R for sexual references and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Timothy Hutton is a whiny man having a midlife crisis that decides that the best way to cope with said crisis is to write an autobiographical play about his life.  The cast, which also includes Mira Sorvino, Dana Delany, Mario Van Peebles, and Stockard Channing sounds impressive at first for an indie until you see it and then you can’t figure out why they would have possibly signed on for such a script that wastes all of their talents.  It’s pretentious, overbearing, and the exact opposite of entertaining – almost like a version of Californication that has been edited for the airlines.  There is a moment where Hutton is talking about the play and exclaims “I don’t even care if anybody sees it.”  You could tell that this was the screenwriter’s philosophy and a self-fulfilling prophecy.  D  

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Dinner for Schmucks

Dinner for Schmucks

Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, and Zach Galifianakis
Directed by Jay Roach (Austin Powers)
Rated PG-13 for sequences of crude and sexual content, some partial nudity and language
Appropriate for ages 15+

    Tim (Rudd) is trying to get ahead at work and his lucky break comes when he is invited to a secret annual dinner with the executive team where each member must bring the biggest idiot thy can find.  There they each compete to see who can discover the most impressive buffoon.  Tim, being a nice person, is not interested but knows he must compete in order to move ahead and thus finds Barry (Carell), an IRS agent that creates art out of dead mice.  When Barry is so excited about the dinner that he shows up to Tim’s apartment on the wrong night, he finds a way to ruin Tim’s life in one mishap after another. 

    Based on the French film “Le Diner de Cons,” Schmucks takes some similar approaches to its source, but finds ways to not only bring more humanity to the part of the hero, Tim, but also to make the part of Barry ten times more uncomfortable to watch.  Of course this is done through the brilliance of the two leading men, Rudd and Carell.  In the French film, the hero is a complete jerk, but here it is so hard to hate Rudd, that even though you know he is doing something completely awful and creepy, you can’t help but think that he will somehow redeem himself.  He’s just too nice.  That plays in his favor when you can see his inner demons fighting as he struggles with the concept of the dinner.  And then there is Carell who turns in one of my favorite performances of the year so far in 2010.  Sure he is over-the-top, but there are moments of gravity that remind you that he really is a smart, albeit aloof, character with a weird but great artistic ability.  The parts were perfectly cast and perfectly performed.  For a film like this it is was also important to have a great supporting cast, and they really went all out, gathering some of the best names in comedy to be both the idiots and the idiots bringing the idiots.

    While there have been many films that have tried (Get Him to the Greek came close), very few have comedies have actually worked this year, and none have tickled the funny bone like Schmucks.  While its no Hangover, there is a good combination of discomfort and silliness here that got me laughing hard throughout.  I love the feeling I get after laughing like that for so long and I’m sure my body liked it too.  Some might not appreciate the slapstick, but to me this felt like a modern-day Monty Pythonesque picture with all of the absurdity and adult humor you could hope to discover from these great minds.  It’s an immensely entertaining low-brow film whose immaturity is completely excusable and even enjoyable.  A-

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Salt

Salt

Starring Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Directed by Philip Noyce (Clear and Present Danger)
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action
Appropriate for ages 13+

    Angelina Jolie is just your average CIA officer working overtime when a Russian defector explains to her and her superiors that she is really a spy that has lain dormant for years waiting to be awoken to perform a dastardly duty.  In this case it is to kill the Russian President at the U.S. Vice President’s state funeral.  Feeling trapped, she somehow uses skills they didn’t know she had to elude capture and proves that she really is a Russian spy, but her motives are not clear to anyone.

    There is no doubt that Jolie is a very capable action hero and this girl power spy thriller is a good vehicle for her.  But it also smells like a studio trying to remake Jason Bourne into a female-driven franchise.  While I like the filming style a heck of a lot more with Noyce than I liked Bourne’s Greengrass, the story isn’t nearly as believable.  With Bourne, it’s easy to understand that he has the skills he has, but with Salt, it appears she has the same kind of training, yet her skills ended when she was dropped off at the adoption agency as a child.  I’m sure she could have had natural athletic ability, but to do the kinds of things she does here she would have had to have had very recent vigorous combat training.  I don’t think her CIA job, as demanding as it was, would have counted.  It’s too much of a stretch to think otherwise.  So while she totally kicks butt, her butt-kicking is far-fetched. 

    As for the story itself, just like in Knight and Day, you know that things can’t be as bad as they appear half-way through the film.  After all, no studio would green light a film with this kind of budget where the audience would have to root for the villain as she destroys the U.S.  So to say it’s predictable is an understatement, but then again, there are many surprises that I did enjoy.  And these surprises worked so well because of great acting by a good supporting cast led by Schreiber and Ejiofor.  These two are able to make the story flaws seem almost unnoticeable. 

    Overall, Salt is an exciting thriller and Jolie is very good in it.  And while the writers should have come up with a better back story to convince the audience that she was capable of performing like an olympian and fighting like MacGyver, it still makes for a pretty decent piece of action adventure.  B-

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New on DVD

New on DVD

Clash of the Titans
Rated PG-13 for fantasy action violence, some frightening images and brief sensuality
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Sam Worthington stars in this remake of the original 1981 cult classic done-up with big special effects and less cheese.  While the filmmakers were considering throwing in gods from several ancient religions (bad idea), they stuck with the story of Perseus, the half-human son of Zeus, who goes on a journey to figure out a way to stop the kraken from destroying the capital city.  Here, Perseus ultimately wishes to seek revenge against Hades for killing his father.  While the special effects are fairly decent (and they look much better now that the ridiculous 3D has been taken out), the film still has no sense of adventure.  It’s just one action scene after another with no soul.  Without the adventure and fun, it lacks entertainment value and a film like this needs entertainment value.  It was a good idea to dust this one off and bring it back, but the absence of imagination shown by these filmmakers proves that they shouldn’t have been the ones that were allowed to do it.  Maybe 30 years from now, someone will get it right.  C-

Repo Men
Rated R for strong bloody violence, grisly images, language and some sexuality/nudity
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Jude Law and Forest Whitaker star in this futuristic thriller about a pair of friends that work as repo men for an artificial organs company.  Whenever folks get too far behind on their bills – they come in and take back their hearts, livers, spines, or whatever else the person might have implanted within them.  When Jude Law’s character has an on-the-job mishap, he is put into a coma and wakes up with an artificial heart that he can’t and doesn’t even want to pay for.  So he must decide to go on the run, or fight back against the company that put it in him in the first place.  While the concept of this film was recently seen in Repo: The Genetic Opera (interesting slasher musical if you ever feel like a fun rental), this film explores a different side of the business and for the first hour I actually thought it was going to be a pretty good film.  And it’s not like they didn’t have a clear roadmap of where to go – the formula is easy and it would have worked in this case.  But no, instead they went in this trippy, strange, sexual direction and even brought in a fight scene that looked like it belonged in a blooper reel.  The movie didn’t start off as a comedy, but after the half-way point, it sure enough became one, much to its detriment.  C-

Vincere
Not Rated but contains strong sexual content, nudity, violence, and language
Available on DVD
Italian with English Subtitles
According to the events of this film, fascist dictator Benito Mussolini led a double life in his early years by marrying a woman and then covering that marriage up while living his public life.  While at one time he was madly in love with his first wife, Ida Dalser (brilliantly played here by Giovanna Mezzogiorno) he soon refused to admit their relationship or that she gave birth to his first-born son.  Hell-bent on forcing him to make public their relationship and accept his son, she works her way into an insane asylum in this gut-wrenching historical drama.  While I’m not an expert on Mussolini and not sure how much of the story is accurate, since I’ve never actually seen a movie about the dictator, I found the film to be completely engrossing and spellbinding.  Using actual footage of the mature Mussolini throughout the film, there is a sense of eerie foreshadowing that exists throughout.  No matter what happens, you know it has to end badly for all parties involved.  But story aside, the film is gorgeously filmed, terrifically acted, and marvelously directed.  My only gripes are the strange transitions which I’m sure were meant to be artistic but I felt merely served as distractions.  Due to the graphic nature of the movie, this probably isn’t the film to rent for your teenager studying WWII, but if you are looking for a heavy, adult-oriented historical drama, it’s hard to find better.  A-

The Art of the Steal
Not Rated
Available on DVD
I love art and I love art museums, and I’ve been to some of the finest in the world, but I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject.  There is just something about a beautiful painting that speaks to you and when you find one, you just want to stop and stare and get lost in it.  This documentary explores one of the greatest art exhibits that most people don’t even know exists.  The Albert C. Barnes Foundation holds some of the finest Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh and other masters that he never wanted the world at large to get a look at.  It wasn’t completely private, but private enough.  Located just outside Philadelphia, Barnes collected his pieces and then put into his will that when he died they were not to be loaned out, put on tour, or seen by great numbers of people.  He wanted students to have viewing privileges, but never intended for you and I to.  After his death, the foundation saw things differently and eventually politicians and other people of power in Philadelphia convinced a judge to move the entire exhibit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  This prompted the makers of this film to call it the largest theft of art since the Nazis in WWII.  So unbiased filmmaking this ain’t.  They have a message to convey and frankly they sound like a bunch of elitist art snobs.  They do not make a strong case against and while the methods of moving the art might have been a bit shady, I for one can’t wait to see these fantastic pieces when the Barnes exhibit opens in 2012.  One of the subjects being interviewed made a statement that they overheard someone walk out of the exhibit while it was on tour saying “I’ve seen too many naked fat women for one day,” like that represented all of the museum-going public without art degrees.  That sums up the attitude of the film, but I’m still glad I saw it, because had I not I would have never known what to look forward to in Philly in just a couple of years time.  B

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Rated PG-13 for martial arts violence and some sexuality
Available on Blu-ray
Chinese with English subtitles (English dub also available)
Available for the first time on blu-ray is Ang Lee’s masterpiece about forbidden love, betrayal and redemption set in 19th-century China.  While the flying put some folks off,  the fact that it made $128 million at the box office and took home several Oscars proves that most Americans really got into the fantasy.  This transfer is stunning with a color palette captured for the screen by Oscar-winning cinematographer Peter Pau who provides a brand-new commentary for the disc.  The disc also contains all of the old special features from the DVD such as the making-of and a commentary by Ang Lee.  A

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Inception


Inception

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, and Marion Cotillard
Directed by Christopher Nolan (Dark Knight)
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action throughout
Appropriate for ages 15+

    Leonardo DiCaprio is Cobb, a techno-pirate who leads a team of thieves whose job it is to steal ideas from people’s heads.  When a job goes horribly wrong for him, the target hires him to plant an idea, called an inception, in a futuristic game of corporate espionage.  In order to make this work, the team must go dream inside a dream inside a dream, making it an extremely dangerous task to undertake.  To make matters worse, Cobb’s past has the ability to destroy the mission like a dream immune system. 

    If there’s one thing this film has going for it is certainly novelty.  It’s original in every sense of the word.  Then again, Nolan excels at that which is one of the reasons he has such a rabid fan base.  That being said, it’s so original it’s confusing – in a good way.  And I’m not saying I left the theater confused.  He wouldn’t allow that.  Instead, he had to throw in so much exposition to keep this from happening that it got in the film’s way.  This is a film that should take two or three viewings to fully comprehend, rather than walking away happy in one.  That would have been okay with his fans as well too since they would have felt that much more intelligent once they got it.  His film Memento, which I still consider to be his best, was like that.  But instead there was just too much unnecessary rambling and even an extra character that could have been avoided, in order to keep the audience feeling comfortably smart.

    So is this film the brilliant masterpiece that all of the fan boys are proclaiming?  Not really.  It’s good, but in my opinion it’s not even the best in the ground-breaking special effects sci-fi dream genre (I might have just made that genre up, but there are a few films that meet the requirements).  I had much more fun watching The Matrix (not the sequels) or Total Recall and think that the stories in these films are just as complex yet more rewarding than Inception.  I realize that neither of those films can boast this amazing cast.  It’s hard to compare Arnold and Keanu to Leonardo in the acting arena.  But for some reason those films were simply more entertaining.  And maybe that’s the key word: entertaining.  I didn’t have that much fun watching this film.  I definitely have admiration for it, but take my breath away it did not.  I didn’t really like the characters that much and while I was cheering for Leo to succeed, I was still not certain that what I was seeing was real or if it really mattered.  The movie was clever as all get out, and intellectually stimulating, but aside from a moment at the end, it failed to capture my heart.  Maybe that is something that happens the second time you see it.  B+

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New on DVD

New on DVD

The Losers
Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action and violence, a scene of sensuality and language
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
What I originally thought was an A-Team copycat, I soon found out to be a film based on a popular graphic novel (that was probably an A-Team copycat).  In the film, an elite group of soldiers are mistakenly left alive by the very funny super-villain played by Jason Patric and now they are upset and after revenge.  While the script suffers from a budget not able to support a big action film, the cast is a pretty solid one with Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Watchmen), Zoe Saldana (Avatar), and Chris Evans (Fantastic Four).  The movie offers nothing in the way of originality, but there is tons of action to be found although I found myself not really caring about any of the characters by the end.  it might be a mediocre flick, but it fits in well into our mediocre movie year we are having.  C

Cop Out
Rated R for pervasive language including sexual references, violence and brief sexuality
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan are a team of fumbling cops in this film directed by Kevin Smith that can’t decide if it wants to be a parody or a cop comedy.  There’s no doubt you will laugh a lot as Morgan is hilarious and Willis plays a great straight man to his clueless partner.  And Seann William Scott steals every scene he is in as a thief that they apprehend and befriend.  But the tone of the film never takes a clear direction and it almost feels like Smith wanted to give the movie an indie vibe, and in the process made it come off as unprofessional.  One thing I did like about the Blu-ray was the creativity of the special features including “Maximum Comedy Mode” which makes the film immensely more enjoyable.  Smith is such a likable fellow and this special feature is almost like watching the movie with him and letting him laugh about it and make fun of it with you.  I’ve always said that Warner Brothers releases the best Blu-rays and even their bad and mediocre films are elevated by their special features.  C+

Mary and Max
Not Rated
Available on DVD and Blu-ray
I’m a little behind on this one as it was released last month, but as it is a little indie that almost escaped me, I thought it might have escaped most of you, and I just had to do everything I could to prevent that.  This stop-motion clayography film follows a little Australian child named Mary who finds an older Autistic pen pal in New York named Max.  Both are lonely and in need of a friend, and over a span of many years, the two develop a beautiful friendship of the most bizarre kind.  While certainly not for kids, the film is a wonderfully creative movie with an absolutely unforgettable storyline that many adults will be enthralled with.  It might be a bit sad for some, but the tears didn’t take away from the enjoyment at all.  Voiced by Toni Colette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Eric Bana, as well as many other gifted actors, this film is a showcase for talent in every aspect.  A