New Year’s Eve (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Robert De Niro, Romance

Newyearseve1

*/**** Image A Sound C+ Extras C-
starring Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin
screenplay by Katherine Fugate
directed by Garry Marshall

by Jefferson Robbins Refining the Hollywood gravity well–the kind of cinematic drain-spiral that A-listers and aspirants can’t not be in–he first manufactured with Valentine’s Day, Garry Marshall’s New Year’s Eve hinges for me on the thought that Robert De Niro got paid at least seven figures to literally lie in bed. The movie feints at the larger symbolism of the holiday: A progression forward in light of what’s come before, the passages between immaturity and adulthood and life and death. But this is a romcom from the godfather of the modern romcom, albeit a too-long one that’s neither very funny nor very romantic, and it ultimately takes its importance from the infantile imperative to kiss somebody, almost anybody, at midnight when the year turns. If you don’t, you’re worth nothing.

The Big Heat (1953) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1950s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Gangster, Mystery, Thriller

Bigheat9

****/**** Image A Sound C+ Extras B
starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby
screenplay by Sydney Boehm, based on William P. McGivern’s SATURDAY EVENING POST serial
directed by Fritz Lang

by Walter Chaw The pinnacle of Fritz Lang’s American noir output, The Big Heat vacillates between hard-bitten and surprisingly tender. A movie of dualities, it positions Glenn Ford’s Det. Sgt. Bannion on the liminal borders between dialectic states: he presents a familiar hardboiled veneer on the one side, a broken, exhausted, eventually devastated family man on the other. The picture partitions noir bodily, forcefully into the margins of the gender divide, and it confronts, full-on, the popular conception of the ’50s nuclear family. It appears fully formed, an irritant to the hegemony of the American myth of nuclear/consumer nirvana, and it suggests that the cultural upheaval that would result in the helter-skelter ’60s started showing its fatigue early. The Big Heat is Rebel Without a Cause, except the mother is killed and the gay kid lives.

Shallow Grave (1995) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, The Criterion Collection, Thriller, UK

Shallowgrave12

**½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, Ken Stott
screenplay by John Hodge
directed by Danny Boyle

by Jefferson Robbins The title, in retrospect, is an indictment. Danny Boyle’s debut feature Shallow Grave made a splash both in the UK and abroad, but his flatmate protagonists are so thin and hastily sketched, their interfaces with the world beyond their stylish fourth-floor walk-up so glancing and limited, that even the inevitable comeuppances for their bad behaviour don’t interest us much. When three striving young Edinburgh roommates happen into a questionable cash windfall and run afoul of brutal gangsters and nosy coppers, the real marvel is that we’re buffaloed into caring by some forthright performances and by Boyle’s visually striking helmsmanship. The characters’ motivations beyond the suitcase MacGuffin are pretty much absent: They’re fatally shallow, with grave consequences. Boyle misdirects us away from these concerns, already hinting towards the vertiginous risks he’d take two years later with Trainspotting (there’s even a creepy animated baby, of a sort), and his cast is frighteningly talented and appealing. Yet it’s hard to shake the notion that we’ve unwrapped a prettily-wrapped gift package containing nothing but socks.

ParaNorman (2012) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Horror, Zombie

Paranorman3

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Chris Butler & Sam Fell
directed by Chris Butler

by Walter Chaw Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see and speak with ghosts, which, if you squint a little, is only a metaphor for the kind of sensitivity that, in a boy, will invariably lead to about a decade of being brutalized by his disconnected male peer group. (Everything will change once he invents Microsoft or Pixar.) Norman’s chief tormentor is barely-verbal Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, already past his sell-by date); his shallow and image-obsessed teenaged sister with a heart of gold™ is Courtney (the awesome Anna Kendrick), who has the hots for the captain of the football team, pre-verbal Mitch (Casey Affleck); and Norman’s best friend, whether he likes it or not, is Mitch’s weird, fat little brother, Neil (Tucker Albrizzi). The first problem of ParaNorman is that, in its rush to be sensitive to intelligent outcasts like Norman and Neil, it dehumanizes and mocks its tormentors, robbing them of the depth and complexity that would have resulted in a better film than this beautifully-wrought, entirely predictable package. (It’s like a jack-in-the-box made by Faberge.) The only moment in which one of these “inside” characters is given any kind of depth (it’s Mitch) is used as a sort of sitcom punchline that doesn’t lend the moment gravity so much as it continues the road of taking sloppy aim at an easy target.

Rosetta (1999) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Belgium, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Palme d'Or Winner, The Criterion Collection

Rosetta1

****/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione, Olivier Gourmet, Anne Yernaux
written and directed by Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne

by Bryant Frazer If there were any doubt that the Dardennes discovered what would be their lasting aesthetic with La promesse, it was dispelled in the opening moments of Rosetta. The earlier film spent a lot of time following characters around, hovering behind them as they made their way through their world. As Rosetta begins, we’re again in close to a character, but this time we have a velocity: The girl, Rosetta (Emilie Dequenne), is storming from room to room in some kind of industrial facility, and the Dardennes’ camera is following her at speed. This isn’t a virtuoso tracking shot out of Scorsese or P.T. Anderson, though; Rosetta isn’t accommodating the camera. When she exits a room, she slams the door behind her and the camera is caught up short, forcing an edit. When she erupts onto a factory floor, she ducks underneath the machinery, making her own passageways where the camera cannot go, and again forcing a cut. We are not welcome to follow.

Peanuts: Deluxe Holiday Collection [Ultimate Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Family, Television

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) Image A Sound B+ Extras C

"It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown" (1992)

"It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (1966) Image A Sound A Extras C

"It's Magic, Charlie Brown" (1981)

"A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" (1973) Image A Sound B Extras C

"The Mayflower Voyagers" (1988)

by Jefferson Robbins I defy you to ingest the first minute of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (***½/****) and not yearn for the idealized childhood nobody ever had. It's not merely nostalgic, it's made of nostalgia. Traversing the quiet streets of your tiny snow-painted town, cracking the whip on a frozen pond, singing a Christmas carol that seems to have lived in your heart long before it was ever written–it's enough to turn a guy Republican. Then, the poison pill, in the very first line of dialogue: "I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus."

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) [20th Anniversary – It’s Not Easy Being Scrooge Special Edition] – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

Posted in1990s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Drama, Family, Fantasy, Muppets, Musical, UK

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**/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, The Great Gonzo, Michael Caine
screenplay by Jerry Juhl, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
directed by Brian Henson

by Bill Chambers It’s all but inevitable that the Muppets would take on Charles Dickens’s venerable plug-and-play app A Christmas Carol at some point. More surprisingly, Michael Caine had not only not played Ebenezer Scrooge prior to The Muppet Christmas Carol (the role is like Hamlet for English actors who’ve plateaued), he had never before shared a stage with the Muppets, either. This despite his being, in the ’70s and ’80s, the exact calibre of star the Muppets pursued for cameos, and ubiquitous besides. He is, to my taste, not a harsh-enough Scrooge–there’s an irrepressible compassion there when Bob Cratchit (Kermit the Frog) asks him for Christmas Day off. And The Muppet Christmas Carol frankly surrenders too much of the spotlight to this human character: If this were my first Muppet movie, I’d’ve felt especially double-crossed during his song number with the also-flesh-and-blood Meredith Braun, which was restored for the VHS and TV versions of the film kids have grown up with but is absent again on the new Blu-ray. (Former FFC contributor Ian Pugh tells me he “always, always, ALWAYS” used to fast-forward this part as a child.) It’s almost cheating, to finally do the Muppet version of this tale and put an interloper in the lead, when the whole point of adapting it to a pre-existing framework is to match up the archetypes and balance that against audience expectations. It is, effectively, like getting to use characters as actors by casting them as different characters. This is also why Bill Murray works so well in Scrooged, because Scrooge pings off Murray’s crabby, misanthropic ’80s persona.

In the Mood for Love (2000) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, FFC Must-Own, France, Hong Kong, Romance, The Criterion Collection

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****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A
starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung Man-yuk
written and directed by Wong Kar-wai

by Walter Chaw The middle film in a loose trilogy by Chinese filmmaker Wong Kar-wai (the others are Days of Being Wild and 2046), In the Mood for Love is a love-drunk ode to the confusion, the intoxication, the magic, and the tragedy of being in love. It speaks in terms proximate and eternal, presenting lovers cast in various roles across years and alien geographies, placing some objects in the position of totem and memento and others in historical dustbins to be abandoned, forgotten. It links the act of watching a film to the act of seduction (Days of Being Wild might be even better at this), and there’s a strong sense in In the Mood for Love that Wong is playing the artifactor of both sign and signifier: He’s doing the T.S. Eliot two-step of authoring Prufrock while simultaneously providing the distance to criticize it.

Take This Waltz (2012) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, Romance

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***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby, Sarah Silverman
written and directed by Sarah Polley

by Angelo Muredda As both literary adaptations and first features go, Sarah Polley’s Away from Her was an astonishing exercise in restraint. Working from Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” about a seventysomething married couple whose longstanding private games turn into something else when Fiona (Julie Christie) is diagnosed with dementia, Polley forewent the ostentatious route of many first-time directors by telling the story straight. It’s become customary, in speaking of that film, to chalk up this directness to the source material–Munro is, after all, known for her frankness, and apart from the expansion of Olympia Dukakis’s character and a Hockey Night in Canada gag, Polley ported her narrative beats over more or less wholesale. But Munro has a certain nastiness, not least in her omniscient narrators’ cutting observations, that’s largely absent from Polley’s adaptation, which has particular sympathy for Gordon Pinsent’s reformed husband, who’s more of a forgetful cad in the short story. It’s a standard line to say that Munro reserves judgment, particularly towards her adulterers, but what of the ghoulishness of her characterization, in Lives of Girls and Women, of small-town scolds who say things like, “The law-yer, didn’t he think he was somebody?” Polley doesn’t get sufficient credit for translating what she can of that prickliness–which also runs through “Bear”–and molding the rest into something unabashedly romantic.

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

Posted in2012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

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**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

Posted in1990s, 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

Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

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**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 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

Posted in****/****, 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

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

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

Posted in****/****, 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

Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi

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***/**** 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

Posted in1980s, 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

Posted in1990s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Zombie

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**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

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

Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama

Steelmagnolias3

*/**** 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

Posted in2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Horror, Hungary, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, ZERO STARS

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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

Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Theatrical

Magicmike1

**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.