Blu-ray Disc Archives - Page 25 of 47

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 11, 20122012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Bob Goodman, based upon the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson
directed by Jay Oliva

by Jefferson Robbins There's
nothing left. Batman: Year One is so last year, The Killing
Joke basically got turned into The Dark Knight, and "Watchmen" has become both a big-movie flopola and a prequel
comics series. With Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 on shelves
now and its concluding Part 2 due on direct-to-video disc this winter,
the DC Universe has basically wrung itself dry of compelling product from the
'80s comics revolution that it can repurpose into features and animated
editions. The bones remain for new stories, but the cost-benefit on original
work vs. revivified fan favourites ever tilts towards the latter. Those of us
who discovered or returned to superhero comics as a result of Frank Miller's and
Alan Moore's mature deconstructions are seeing their final fruits. The only
burning question is how many shmoes bought this package from Amazon thinking
they were getting The Dark Knight Rises in half of a special two-disc edition.

The War Room (1993) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

November 6, 20121990s, 2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Blu-ray Disc, Documentary, The Criterion Collection

***/**** Image B Sound B Extras B+
directed by Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker

by Angelo Muredda "When I think of an old calendar, I see George Bush's face on it." How things have changed since lead Democratic strategist James Carville made that case against then-incumbent President George H.W. Bush in the winter of 1992, long before the rise of Dubya necessitated the use of such cumbersome initials. The War Room, a fly-on-the-wall account of the wildly successful but not always charmed Bill Clinton campaign from the POV of his key operatives, now feels like a time-capsule itself, an old calendar from an era before the internet and Super PACs radically changed the way presidential campaigns were run from moment to moment. Far from feeling hopelessly outdated, though, Chris Hegedus and DA Pennebaker's unofficial sequel to Pennebaker's work on Primary, which followed JFK's vanquishing of opponent Hubert Humphrey, is an illuminating look at how one of the most successful national campaigns in modern electoral history was waged from an unassuming office in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Your Sister’s Sister (2012) – Blu-ray Disc

November 5, 20122012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

**½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
starring Emily Blunt, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mark Duplass, Mike Birbiglia
written and directed by Lynn Shelton

by Angelo Muredda Lynn Shelton tends to swim in the deep end of the mumblecore pool. More improvisatory than the scripted films of the Duplass brothers (despite their overlap in casting), her work, in an odd sort of way, is probably closer in spirit to Joe Swanberg's. Swanberg's shabbier DIY aesthetic masks the heady nature of his projects, which explore the same three or four ideas about modern relationships in forms as disparate as the anthology film (Autoerotic) and the meta-slasher (Silver Bullets). In Humpday, Shelton nicely marries her own high concept–to make a movie about hetero male insecurity writ large–with a pair of naturalistic performances that elude Swanberg's scratchier efforts. Her M.O. appears to be to let her actors fumble through a convoluted situation that, on the strength of their characterizations, never feels as unnatural as it probably should.

La promesse (1996) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

November 4, 2012****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Belgium, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, FFC Must-Own, The Criterion Collection

****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Jérémie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo
written and directed by Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne

click any image to enlarge

by Bryant Frazer Since the mid-1990s,
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have been the standard-bearers for French-language
Belgian cinema. Born in Engis and raised in nearby Seraing (both located in the
industrial Belgian province of Liège), the Dardennes started making
documentaries in the 1970s, followed by a pair of narrative films they
immediately disavowed. 1996's La promesse was a completely fresh start.
The Dardennes' non-fiction work demonstrated a social consciousness that
remained in effect once they found their narrative voice, and it's amazing how
fully realized this effort is, exhibiting many of the formal strategies and
much of the narrative sensibility that would serve them well over the next
decade and a half.

Strangers on a Train (1951) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

October 31, 2012****/****, 1950s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

Strangers5

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll
screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Alfred Hitchcock’s queerest film (Rope notwithstanding) and proof positive of the director’s knack for casting men of ambiguous sexual mooring in roles that cannily exploit it, Strangers on a Train, shot in vibrant contrasts by the great Robert Burks, is best read as a dark comedy–a noir in the most perverse sense of the term. Find in it the finest performance by troubled Robert Walker, tormented to his grave by David O. Selznick’s infatuation with and eventual theft of wife Jennifer Jones and committed, not long after Strangers on a Train finished shooting, to a mental institution, where he was the victim of an accidentally-lethal dose of sedative. Playing a character named after the kidnapper and murderer of the Lindbergh baby, Walker is Bruno, a spatted dandy who bumps shoes with hero Guy (Farley Granger–the “girl” in the Rope dyad) on a train and ostensibly hatches a plan with the pliant tennis star to “criss-cross” murders (trade assassinations, as it were), freeing each of them from the burden of blood motive. Bruno wants his father dead; Guy, involved in a very public affair with the senator’s daughter Anne (Ruth Roman) but shackled to loathsome Miriam (Kasey Rogers), would benefit from Miriam’s timely demise. So when Miriam turns up dead by Bruno’s hand, Guy is trapped by circumstance into either murdering Bruno’s dad or going to the police and implicating himself and his lover in a conspiracy.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

October 30, 20121980s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image C+ Sound B- Extras A
starring Grant Cramer, Suzanne Snyder, John Allen Nelson, John Vernon
screenplay by Charles Chiodo & Stephen Chiodo
directed by Stephen Chiodo

by Walter Chaw Boy, you know, I
really like the Chiodo Brothers' Killer Klowns from Outer Space. I can't
help it. I like it more than Night of the Creeps, more than Matinee, more
than any other film that would see 1950s creature-features
resurrected, be it through homage or farce or satire. I like it because it's
unapologetic, and because its high concept is broad enough that there are sufficient gags to peanut-butter across the entire runtime. I like, too, that they don't end
a scene without a groaner, meaning they're unerringly true to their stated
mission of erecting a shrine to Irvin S. Yeaworth's The Blob (truer, even, than the contemporaneous remake of The Blob) and doing it
with a relentlessly light touch. It's never scary (unless you're a true
coulrophobe), but it is often uproarious–like when one of the titular alien Bozos squirts angry Officer Mooney (John Vernon, just fantastic) with gag
flowers, to which Mooney, out of proportion to the affront, responds, "I oughta
shoot you right now." I also appreciated the moment when head girl Debbie
(Suzanne Snyder) asks why they're being shot with popcorn and her
boyfriend Mike (Grant Cramer) replies, "Popcorn? Because they're clowns!"
Well, no shit, Debbie, try to pay attention.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 29, 20121980s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, DVD, Horror

Death Dorm
Pranks
***/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Daphne Zuniga
screenplay by Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, Stacey Giachino
directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter

by Jefferson Robbins There may be nothing groundbreaking or new about a bunch of film nerds in their early twenties running around making a horror movie on the cheap, but that’s because Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter probably did it first. Created with the kind of zeal, energy, inventiveness-on-a-budget, and adherence to forms that are symptomatic of most youthful endeavours, The Dorm That Dripped Blood–written, shot, and released under a multiplicity of titles–is very much a product of its time and zeitgeist. That doesn’t mean it lacks worth–in fact, it manages to be both fun (in an ironic, cheesemongering way) and, in its final minutes, quite compelling and suspenseful.

Night of the Living Dead (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

October 28, 20121990s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Zombie

**½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras B
starring Tony Todd, Patricia Tallman, Tom Towles, McKee Anderson
screenplay by George A. Romero, based on the screenplay by John A. Russo and Romero
directed by Tom Savini

click any image to enlarge

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. George Romero's Night
of the Living Dead is a watershed: a quintessential drive-in/B-movie that
demonstrated without equivocation how horror/exploitation pictures are often "indicator species" in the cultural swamp–the ones that most
quickly, most effectively locate the toxins in the ecosystem. Appearing in
1968, Night of the Living Dead addressed the rise of televangelism in
its legion of communion-taking, slow-walking white people; predicted the generation gap (alongside Rosemary's
Baby) and a spate of evil-children flicks that appeared in the early-'70s; and spoke to the
Civil Rights war in its blithe casting of black actor Duane Jones and not-so-blithe murder
of his character by a posse of hillbilly vigilantes in the final frames. There's
something super-charged in the image of Jones holing up in a farmhouse with
whiter-than-white, meeker-than-meek Barbra (Judith O'Dea), something explosive
in the social microcosm represented by survivors trying,
unsuccessfully, to work together to affect their escape from what's really just a metaphorical threat. The movie resonated then; it resonates still.

Steel Magnolias (1989) – Blu-ray Disc

October 25, 20121980s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D+
starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah
screenplay by Robert Harling, based on his play
directed by Herbert Ross

by Walter Chaw Submitted for your
approval, shrill, neo-Tennessee Williams actress-posturing from the pantheon of
late-'80s harpies, featuring a special martyr performance from a Julia Roberts just months away from achieving sociopathic superstardom as a high-priced whore in Pretty
Woman. Not being able to relate to Herbert Ross's demographically-precise Steel Magnolias in any way, I nevertheless see in its popularity an opportunity for introspection about how little I actually understand other peoples' tastes. From my vantage, Steel Magnolias is two hours of
nattering and bon mots set in a home-salon run by Truvy (Dolly Parton, the
very definition of down-home warmth and genuineness), assisted by dizzy Arnelle
(Daryl Hannah), and frequented by diabetic Shelby (Roberts), her mother M'Lynn
(Sally Field), happy widow Clairee (Olympia Dukakis), and cranky widow Ouiser
(Shirley MacLaine). Ouiser basically stalks around swearing like a sailor and
getting shat on by birds, Clairee floats on momentum won (and fast flagging)
from Moonstruck, and M'Lynn turns into MacLaine
from Terms of Endearment. My favourite is when she force-feeds Shelby a
glass of orange juice in a vision of Hell I'd like to one day mash-up with the
brainwashing sequence from A Clockwork Orange. Along the way, the young
ones become pregnant, a stray man wanders through now and again, and each of the
grey old iron ladies gets a moment to demonstrate her humanity and humour in
the face of life's little, and big, tragedies.

The Raven (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 24, 20122012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Mystery, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Ben Livingston & Hannah Shakespeare
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw I'm
no nineteenth-century cop, but I personally would begin by interrogating the guillotine-pendulum maker. James McTeigue's abominable The Raven posits
legendary Marylander Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as a crazed, alcoholic, frustrated-artist type who has a bar tab the length of his arm to go with a fiery temper
and a quite-requited, it turns out, affair with toothy Emily (from Aardman Studios: Alice Eve), daughter of Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson).
Alack-alay, what should happen but a wax museum breaks out as a critics-hating
serial killer (just like Theatre of Blood, which I should've revisited instead) enacts scenes from Poe's stories whilst
dressed in the hat and cape of McTeigue's V for Vendetta protag. Good copper
Det. Fields (Luke Evans) is hot on the miscreant's trail, enlisting Poe as a
Poe expert to try to get one step ahead of the well-read marauder. There is,
alas, no ratiocination the equal of the mystery of Ben Livingston and Hannah
Shakespeare's (no relation, I hope) bewilderingly bad screenplay. No one, no
one, could deliver these lines–a mush of anachronistic phrases and
"period" posh–with conviction, much less the miscast Cusack and a motley
band of supporting players. The good news is that The Raven is funny. The bad news
is that it's so awful, it makes you the kind of person who watches a
movie just to be superior to it.

Magic Mike (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 22, 20122012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Theatrical

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey
screenplay by Reid Carolin
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Angelo Muredda Magic Mike opens with Saul Bass’s red-and-black Warner Bros. logo, retired in 1984. That gesture is meant, I think, to pitch what follows as a throwback to smarter studio fare along the lines of Hal Ashby’s Being There, but it also courts less flattering comparisons to the likes of the Police Academy movies. Steven Soderbergh’s latest pop exercise falls somewhere between those two poles–a little too close for comfort to the Guttenberg side. Conceived as a loose riff on star Channing Tatum’s time as a male stripper, it has a solid run as a cheerful smut delivery mechanism before hanging up its thong to become a rote ‘80s melodrama about good kids corrupted by bad drugs. If the howl of “Yes!” that greeted the first bared ass at my screening is any indication, that transformation won’t hurt the bottom line (a figure these strippers always seem to have on their minds), though it does make Magic Mike another promising yet half-baked Soderbergh project instead of a good movie, sans asterisks.

Torso (1973) + Maniac Cop (1988) – Blu-ray Discs

October 21, 20121970s, 1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Satire, Thriller

I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale
***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Suzy Kendall, Tina Aumont, Luc Merenda, John Richardson
screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sergio Martino
directed by Sergio Martino

MANIAC COP
**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Larson, Sheree North
screenplay by Larry Cohen
directed by William Lustig

by Jefferson Robbins Slasher movies are concerned with not just murder, but with its root cause–not motive, really, but motivation. There has to be a detonator, or else stalker-horror is what its most strident critics accuse it of being: all body-count, no brains. The films have leeway to be less concerned with motive than, say, those Ustinov-as-Poirot adaptations, where the whole cast learns whodunit while seated for tea and cakes in the third act. (I sort of miss those; I wish "mystery" hadn't been usurped by "thriller" in the moviemaking lexicon, and in part I blame Jonathan Lynn's 1985 Clue.) But they have to successfully allude to a trigger point, some match to the killer's keg of gasoline.

Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures – Blu-ray Disc

October 15, 2012****/****, 1980s, 2000s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Spielberg

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
****/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C+
starring Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri
screenplay by Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliot, Alison Doody
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008)
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C-
starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw Let’s talk about hats–fedoras, in particular, and how they evolved from the image of the hard-boiled detective in the American noir cycle into the chapeau-of-choice for Coppola’s gangsters in the anti-hero ’70s. How Harrison Ford’s Deckard from Blade Runner was originally conceived with one of the hats to go with his trench coat before Raiders of the Lost Ark made an American icon out of Ford’s swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones, and how that didn’t stop child-killing child-molester Freddy Krueger from getting a fedora (singed and blood-stained, but so was Indy’s) in 1984–the same year, as it happens, that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas turned their American icon into the star of his own horror movie with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The relationship between Americans and the hats their heroes wear is a complicated one. A Freudian would offer that hats are tumescent–the loci of masculine power, a metaphor for the penis/head–and that losing a hat is the equivalent of castration. My favourite example of that theory in practice is Joel McCrea losing his in a field of windmills to the trilling, mocking laughter of ladylove Laraine Day in Foreign Correspondent. The Coen Brothers make it a throughline in Miller’s Crossing, too, as Tom loses and reclaims his hat in cycles of power and powerlessness. I think it means something in the fourth Indiana Jones flick that evil Russkie Spalko tips the brim of Indy’s hat in an attempt to read his mind instead of knocking it off entirely.

The Horse Whisperer (1998) – Blu-ray Disc

October 14, 2012****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Romance, Scarlett Johansson

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D+
starring Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Scarlett Johansson
screenplay by Eric Roth and Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Nicholas Evans
directed by Robert Redford

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Revisiting Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer fourteen years after I last saw it, I am relieved to encounter a film that isn’t simply marking time until a climactic moment that was for me a cherished eureka at the movies. The picture begins with Grace (13-year-old Scarlett Johansson) rising at the crack of dawn to go horseback riding with her friend Judith (Kate Bosworth, billed as “Catherine”). Redford focuses on Johansson’s socked feet slinking past her parents’ bedroom door, and subsequently draws a lot of attention to legs and feet here–not in a fetish-y way, but as if they’re a person’s “tell.” I misremembered this scene, for what it’s worth, as Grace doing something wrong by sneaking out, but in fact her parents are not at all surprised to find her gone by the time they’re up and around. Mom (Kristin Scott Thomas) is basically Anna Wintour–her name’s even Annie–and Dad, Robert (Sam Neill), is, we infer, the kind of lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work.

Singin’ in the Rain (1952) – Blu-ray Disc

October 9, 2012****/****, 1950s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, FFC Must-Own, Musical, Romance

Singinintheraincap

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse
screenplay by Betty Comden and Adolph Green
directed by Stanley Donen

by Bryant Frazer Not just the best Gene Kelly film, and not just the best movie musical ever made, Singin’ in the Rain is a genuine national treasure–a single text proving for posterity what a wondrous thing the Hollywood studio system could be when it was firing on all cylinders. It’s the quintessential studio picture and smart as hell about its own nature. Unpretentious and unabashedly entertaining, it’s a self-reflexive product of the same filmmaking process it simultaneously documents and lampoons.

All the President’s Men (1976) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

October 7, 2012****/****, 1970s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, FFC Must-Own, Mystery, Thriller

****/**** Image A Sound B Extras A
starring Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Warden, Jason Robards
screenplay by William Goldman, based on the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
directed by Alan J. Pakula

by Walter Chaw The final film in director Alan J. Pakula's loose
"paranoia trilogy," All the President's Men does the
impossible by making heroes of newspaper reporters and a thriller out of telephone
calls and follow-up interviews. Based on Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's exposé of
the Watergate Scandal and President Richard Nixon's involvement in felonious
dirty tricks, it's more than just a cunningly-crafted docudrama–it's a key film
in the best era of the medium's history. It's a picture that highlights the
period's mistrust in our leadership while establishing highly unconventional
heroes for whom the stakes couldn't possibly be higher. And though we know
how it all works out, it seems more poignant for our knowing how everything works out.

La Grande Illusion (1937) [StudioCanal Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

October 2, 2012****/****, 1930s, 2012, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Jean Renoir, Drama, FFC Must-Own, War

Grand Illusion
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring Jean Gabin, Dita Parlo, Pierre Fresnay, Marcel Dalio
screenplay by Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak
directed by Jean Renoir

by Bryant Frazer If you watch it cold, the opening scenes of La Grande Illusion (hereafter Grand Illusion) make for a confounding experience. The film opens in a French canteen, equipped with bar and phonograph player, where an aristocratic captain calls a working-class lieutenant to accompany him on a routine reconnaissance mission. One short dissolve later, without even the narrative pleasantry of a stock-footage flight over enemy territory, we’re in a German canteen, equipped with bar and phonograph player, where an aristocratic captain announces that he’s shot down an enemy plane. Another fade-out, and the Frenchmen are quickly welcomed at the German dinner table. The German captain even apologizes for the French lieutenant’s broken arm.

Cinderella (1950) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

October 2, 20121950s, 2012, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Family, Romance

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
directed by Clyde Geronomi & Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske

by Bill Chambers Despite its streamlining of the particulars, Walt Disney’s feature-length Cinderella ultimately takes fewer liberties with the source material (chiefly, Charles Perrault’s “Cinderella, or The Glass Slipper”) than almost any of his other animated fairytales. Consequently, there remains the problem of a heroine who’d still be sweeping the floors were it not for her Fairy Godmother, the deus ex machina to end deus ex machinas. The Cinderella myth, as Perrault interpreted it, is at best anachronistic–we learn that beauty is a virtue but that grace is a gift…whatever that means. Disney’s contemporization turns it into a karma fable of sorts, with martyrdom paying off like a jackpot and the comeuppance of Cinderella’s tormentors the real happily-ever-after of the piece. Cinderella’s a less-than-ideal role model for the millions exposed to the movie in childhood, really, because she accepts victimhood until external forces intervene on her behalf.

Child’s Play (1988) [Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc + Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

October 1, 20121980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Romania, Satire, Thriller, UK

CHILD'S PLAY
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland
directed by Tom Holland

CHILD'S PLAY 2 (1990)
**/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by John Lafia

CHILD'S PLAY 3 (1991)
*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Jack Bender

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Ronny Yu

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C-
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd, Redman
written and directed by Don Mancini

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Twenty years and four sequels later, it's obviously pointless to try to conceal that Child's Play is about a serial killer (Brad Dourif) who transfers his soul into an innocuous doll, but watching it today–more than a decade after it thoroughly traumatized me as an impressionable preteen–I was surprised to learn that the film itself didn't do much to hide that fact from the start. Oh, sure, when you first approach Child's Play, you're ostensibly supposed to wonder whether little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is responsible for the murders peppered throughout, despite his loud protestations that Chucky did it. But no, it never really tries to pretend that these horrible acts are being committed by anyone other than that godawful doll. In taking that perspective, Child's Play preys upon the irrational fears we all harbour–that sting of dread we get at the sight of an unintentionally unsettling toy, immediately wished away by safe, immutable reason: that's impossible–a doll can't hurt you.

Walking Tall: The Trilogy [2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

September 26, 20121970s, 2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Scream/Shout! Factory

WALKING TALL (1973)
***/**** Image B- Sound C
starring Joe Don Baker, Noah Beery, Jr., Elizabeth Hartman, Rosemary Murphy
screenplay by Mort Briskin
directed by Phil Karlson

WALKING TALL PART 2 (1975)
*/**** Image B Sound C- Extras B
starring Bo Svenson, Richard Jaeckel, Bruce Glover, Robert Doqui
screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek
directed by Earl Bellamy

FINAL CHAPTER WALKING TALL (1977) ***½/****
Image B- Sound C- Extras D
starring Bo Svenson, Margaret Blye, Forrest Tucker, Morgan Woodward
screenplay by Howard B. Kreitsek
directed by Jack Starrett

by Walter Chaw A hicksploitation flick that can hold its head up high among its blaxploitation contemporaries, Phil Karlson’s combustible, if risible, Walking Tall features a moment where a small-town judge (Douglas Fowley) warns vigilante Buford Pusser (Joe Don Baker) to cut out his foolishness, and another where the hero’s folksy grandpa Carl (Noah Beery, Jr.) declares that there’s a “ragin’ social disease” out there called “black equality.” Yet the Pussers are the good guys, or should I say good ol’ boys, and when I stumbled upon Walking Tall on late-night television as a kid, it instantly lodged itself against my red-white-and-blue heart. Watching the Coens’ Raising Arizona and True Grit years later, I hear and see echoes of Walking Tall‘s high-dudgeon. Of course it’s right there on the surface of Quentin Tarantino’s films, too, and right there in any serious conversation about the transfiguration (metastasis?) of noir—Walking Tall is a remake, as Glenn Erickson aptly notes, of director Karlson’s own tough-minded The Phenix City Story. More proximately, Walking Tall is the common-man’s Straw Dogs. Both begin with the appearance of our hero in the middle of a rural environment, and both involve the eruption of the Natural through the thin scrim of civilization. All three films–Phenix, Walking Tall, and Straw Dogs–identify with a noir idea that the hero’s morality, regardless of the laws of country and state, is the only, possibly last, light in the world.