Blu-ray Disc Archives - Page 29 of 47

Tom & Jerry: Golden Collection – Volume One (1940-1948) – Blu-ray Disc

March 12, 20121940s, 2012, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Short Films

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
"Puss Gets the Boot," "The Midnight Snack," "The Night Before Christmas," "Fraidy Cat," "Dog Trouble," "Puss N' Toots," "The Bowling Alley-Cat," Fine Feathered Friend," "Sufferin' Cats," "The Lonesome Mouse," "The Yankee Doodle Mouse," "Baby Puss," "The Zoot Cat," "The Million Dollar Cat," "The Bodyguard," "Puttin' On The Dog," "Mouse Trouble," "The Mouse Comes To Dinner," "Flirty Birdy," "Quiet Please!," "Springtime For Thomas," "The Milky Waif," "Trap Happy," "Solid Serenade," "Cat Fishin'," "Part Time Pal," "The Cat Concerto," "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse," "Salt Water Tabby," "A Mouse in the House," "The Invisible Mouse," "Kitty Foiled," "The Truce Hurts," "Old Rockin' Chair Tom," "Professor Tom"

by Jefferson Robbins They're phenomenally enjoyable, but the conflict in Warner's Roadrunner cartoons comes down to a lively protagonist pitting himself against something that's not a character, nor even a "force of nature." Nature, in fact, is suspended; Wile E. Coyote is struggling with a quantum impossibility. When he sets out after his prey, he finds laws of matter, energy, and motion suspended and reversed. (At times, the Roadrunner appears to move at lightspeed or beyond.) The Coyote applies Acme™ science to the chase, but discovers science doesn't apply. The Roadrunner has no obvious inner life or larger goals, and seems to exist just to frustrate his pursuer. The Universe simply does not want the Coyote to catch this blankly-smiling creature with a void howling behind its eyes, and so he never will.

Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 12, 20121970s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

Nude per l'assassino
***/****
DVD – Image A Sound C+ Extras C-
BD – Image C+ Sound B Extras C
starring Edwige Fenech, Nino Castlenuovo, Femi Benussi, Solvi Stubing
screenplay by Massimo Felisatti
directed by Andrea Bianchi

by Walter Chaw It's easy to tag the prurient appeal of Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for your Killer (if I'd discovered this film in my early teens, I never would've left the house), but without a lot of effort, its usefulness as a tool for dissecting its audience of voyeurs becomes clear as well. Indeed, it's possible to see the picture as a hybrid of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (in the equation of scopophilia with rape and murder) and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (in its protagonist's profession (fashion photographer), its boundaries-testing raciness, and a central mystery that hinges on a photograph), with every scene of obvious leering exploitation balanced by a long look in a mirror, a humiliating photo shoot (something we see in both Peeping Tom and Blow-Up) reflected upside-down in a metal surface, and what seems like knowing interpositions of an idea of retributive guilt at the film's bloodiest moments. Before every giallo set-piece murder, in fact, Bianchi inserts a flash of the woman killed during a pre-credit sequence back-alley abortion. It might not be simple morality, but it does speak to a variety of morality: a championing of demi-innocents undertaken by a heavy-breathing avatar in a motorcycle helmet and leather. Could there be a whiff of the pro-woman picture in the unlikeliest of places?

Lady and the Tramp (1955) – Diamond Edition Blu-ray + DVD

March 5, 20121950s, 2012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A
animated; screenplay by Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don Dagradi
directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson

by Bill Chambers Given that it may have the most famous scene in the Disney oeuvre, it’s odd that Lady and the Tramp doesn’t enjoy a better, or at least bigger, reputation. The first animated feature in CinemaScope, as well as the studio’s first original story¹ and its first dog movie (various Pluto-starring shorts notwithstanding), the film, despite earning the highest grosses of any Disney production since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, seems to have been eclipsed in the public consciousness from a genre standpoint by 101 Dalmatians and from a cinematographic standpoint by Sleeping Beauty, each of which followed so closely on Lady and the Tramp‘s heels as to reduce history’s perception of it to a dry run. It’s a bit better than that, but, coveted “Diamond” status to the contrary, frankly not one of the greats.

Night Train Murders (1975) – Blu-ray Disc

February 21, 20121970s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Horror, Italy, Revenge

L'ultimo treno della notte
*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Flavio Bucci, Macha Méril, Gianfranco De Grassi, Enrico Maria Salerno
screenplay by Renato Izzo, Ettore Sanzò and Aldo Lado
directed by Aldo Lado

by Bryant Frazer It's feeding time for the monsters again in director Aldo Lado's 1974 quasi-giallo¹ Night Train Murders, which sees the young and lovely Margaret and Lisa (Irene Miracle and Laura D'Angelo, respectively, making their film debuts) cross paths with violent criminals while travelling overnight by rail from Germany through Austria to Italy. The stage is set as Pacino-esque stickup man Blackie and his harmonica-blowing sidekick Curly (Flavio Bucci and Gianfranco De Grassi) mug an alcoholic sidewalk Santa Claus in Munich's Marienplatz. Menace! With that kind of element loose in the cities, why would two girls choose to ride some skeevy midnight train into Italy instead of opting for a sensible air flight? From one mother to another, via telephone: "Planes are never on time these days."

Annie Hall (1977) + Manhattan (1979) – Blu-ray Discs

February 20, 2012****/****, 1970s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Romance

ANNIE HALL
****/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts, Carol Kane
screenplay by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
directed by Woody Allen

MANHATTAN
****/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Michael Murphy, Mariel Hemingway
screenplay by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
directed by Woody Allen

by Bryant Frazer I’ve fantasized for a good twenty years now about Anhedonia, the 140-minute workprint of what eventually became Annie Hall. The original title of the project–which seems in its reflexive analysis of Allen’s public persona to have been intended as something akin to an essay film–referred to an inability to experience pleasure. As unseen movies go, it has a lower pedigree than Tod Browning’s London After Midnight, Hitchcock’s The Mountain Eagle, or Orson Welles’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons; the few who have seen it would agree that the released version was infinitely superior. But it’s tantalizing, because Woody Allen in 1976 and 1977 was such a formidable comic.

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

February 6, 20122011, 2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, DVD

**/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Danny Trejo, Neil Patrick Harris
screenplay by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson

by Angelo Muredda The funniest moment in A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas lasts about three seconds and comes at the end of a barrage of trite digs at the Occupy Wall Street movement that could have been written by Herman Cain at the height of his powers of lucidity. Harold (John Cho), who over the course of these movies has graduated from restless investment banker to high-rolling trader, has just been given a 3D TV that's promised to "make Avatar look Avatarded," and he's about to leave the office through a mass of protestors when Princeton pal-turned-assistant Ken (Bobby Lee) begs to take the bullet for him. The bullet turns out to be a bunch of eggs, launched at the screen at various speeds and from various angles in the first of at least a dozen meta-3D gags that are supposed to be hilarious because having things thrown at you in 3D sucks. It's a shock when the shot of the aftermath is actually pretty good: poor Ken lies traumatized (or dead?) in a pool of yolk as a Lisa Gerrard knockoff wails incomprehensibly on the soundtrack, à la Black Hawk Down.

J. Edgar (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

February 6, 20122011, 2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Drama, DVD, Romance

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench
screenplay by Dustin Lance Black
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Angelo Muredda To say that latter-day Clint Eastwood is an acquired taste seems slightly inaccurate, in that it implies a certain consistency on both the filmmaker's and the viewer's part: while even Invictus and the "Touched by an Angel" outtake Hereafter have their fans, you don't find many of them championing, say, the delirious Europop ballads that punctuate the former. ("And it's not just a game/They can't throw me away/I put all I had on the line," sings a mysterious crooner whose song is played in toto as Mandela descends his helicopter and paces the rugby field.) So let's propose instead that the master of sepia's recent output has been rather like a series of inkblots, in which perfectly smart people have seen completely different things. Some, for instance, find much to admire in the simultaneously milquetoast and monstrous Million Dollar Baby, which I've always read as Eastwood's last laugh at disability-rights activists for a failed lawsuit involving an inaccessible inn he ran years prior; others dismiss Gran Torino, his most watchable film since Unforgiven, as a rare spot of trash. All of this is to say, rather sheepishly, that I kind of liked fusty old J. Edgar, even as I recognized it as a train-wreck throughout. People have been very kind to Eastwood in this restless period, calling his choice of projects as disparate as Changeling and Letters from Iwo Jima "varied," but it's only with J. Edgar that I've understood their spirit of generosity: It's such a chameleonic grab-bag of ideas, good and bad, that some of it can't help but appeal, regardless of whether the entire thing works. (It doesn't.)

The Rules of the Game (1939) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

January 30, 2012****/****, 1930s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Jean Renoir, Drama, FFC Must-Own, France, Satire, The Criterion Collection

La règle du jeu
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras A+
starring Nora Grégor, Marcel Dalio, Mila Parély, Roland Toutain
screenplay by Jean Renoir and Carl Koch
directed by Jean Renoir

by Jefferson Robbins One political cue most firmly plants Jean Renoir’s masterwork in pre-World War II France, and it doesn’t come amidst the posturing of the elegant rich at La Colinière country manor. Rather, it’s in the kitchen, where the domestic staff breaks bread and gossips about the master of the house, the Marquis Robert De La Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio), outed by the help as a “yid” whose family made good with money and a title. The gossipers turn for confirmation to the huntsman who’s just materialized on the stairs, and the combination of words is chilling: “Isn’t that right, Schumacher?” The italics are mine, and despite the fierce Teutonic consonants of his name, the Marquis’s game warden (Gaston Modot) is Alsatian. He remains metaphorically sticky, though, since his home state was variously French or German for 200 years, and his dress and cap bespeak armed authority. He’s rough and field-hardened, arguably ignorant, and looked down upon by his fellow servants, who see him as a thing apart from their world. Cuckolded and exiled from his wife, the housemaid Lisette (Paulette Dubost), he’s also the most prone to physical violence as he seeks to control her and eliminate all rivalry. On the matter of La Chesnaye’s Jewishness, Schumacher demurs: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But the point is made, the knife already twisted.

Batman: Year One (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 16, 20122011, 2012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Superhero

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Tab Murphy, from the comics story by Frank Miller
directed by Sam Liu and Lauren Montgomery

by Jefferson Robbins Before he was a grouchy and politically-nearsighted old man with enough clout to cast Scarlett Johansson in a $60M fetish video, Frank Miller truly did change the face of mainstream superhero comics. Doing so brought him fame as a visionary, a label that implies prophetic or pioneering concepts but–at least in comics art–is most commonly applied to artists fusing pre-existing styles into a successful hybrid, or distilling an old story to its barest elements. Miller did both. In fact, between 1986's "The Dark Knight Returns" and the 1987 "Batman: Year One" arc, his reengineering of the Batman mythos wasn't so much a thrusting of the character forward into the 1980s as a slingshotting back to the 1970s. The core fact of Batman, viewed in the light of Taxi Driver, is that he's Travis Bickle with a cape and lots of money. What is Travis's mohawk if not a costume to strike fear into the hearts of criminals? What is his trick pistol sling, fashioned from a typewriter carriage, but a blue-collar utility belt? And what is the hardboiled dialogue Miller puts in Bruce Wayne's mouth–better read than spoken–but Bicklean self-justification? No coincidence that Batman's first, badly-botched outing as a crimefighter in "Year One" involves the violent rescue of an underaged prostitute.

Contagion (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 12, 20122011, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Hong Kong, Thriller

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law
screenplay by Scott Z. Burns
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Walter Chaw Less smug (if only be a few degrees) than Steven Soderbergh's other starfucker balls, Contagion surprises with its consistent serious-mindedness, even as it finally disappoints by contenting itself to be a cautionary tale rather than, in a year of world-busters, an end-of-times tale. Even Fail Safe and the inch of dust settled on it has Hank Fonda levelling NYC–all Contagion does is kill Gwyneth Paltrow ugly, which, in the grand scheme of things, is only what every sentient human being in the United States has contemplated already. (I confess I amused myself during the scene in which Paltrow's afflicted adulteress has her brain scooped out of her head by muttering "Goop, indeed." Sue me.) Still, it earns pith points for making Paltrow, typecast as a woman of privilege and longueurs, the Typhoid Mary of the new millennium, and more points still for being resolutely unafraid to characterize all of Asia as a giant petri dish ready to make a mass grave out of the rest of the world. Essentially, Contagion, as it goes about what it's about with absolute professionalism and class, earns its keep by being right, more or less, about everything it bothers to talk about.

The Expendables (2010) [Extended Director’s Cut] – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

January 9, 20122000s, 2010, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain, Thriller

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras A
starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Mickey Rourke
written and directed by Sylvester Stallone

by Walter Chaw After the remarkably tough and uncompromising Rambo and the almost-unbearably poignant and transparent Rocky Balboa, it'd be fair to nurse a healthy anticipation for Sylvester Stallone's paean to the '80s blockbuster, The Expendables. Alas, what's on display owes more to Stallone's Rhinestone than to his venerable Rocky series. A redux of Wild Hogs as embarrassing, boring, and ineptly- shot and edited as the original, The Expendables even ends the same way, with geezers riding off into the sunset on the backs of their four-fifths-life-crisis choppers. Tattoos and plunging v-neck Ts the rule of the day, it's more Rogaine commercial than action movie, making fun of itself in the way that old guys who are genuinely insecure about their age make fun of themselves. It's awkward. It's also, in addition to being almost entirely free of excitement or a single line of dialogue that isn't some syncopated mix of grunting and tough-guy cliché, maybe a no-shit adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano". That's the only way to explain how it is that a film tits-deep in dialogue could have not one exchange that makes any sense whatsoever. The way the movie's put together, too, is a model of the Theatre of the Absurd's occasional dabbling in non sequiturs–something The Expendables seems to address at one point when the horsey-looking, freshly-waterboarded damsel (Giselle Itié) wonders how Stallone's Barney has magically appeared as her saviour in a Caribbean (?) dictator's dungeon. "I just am!" mumbles Barney. Who am I to argue with that?

Final Destination 5 (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

December 31, 20112011, Action, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Horror, Thriller

**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C-
starring Nicholas D'Agosto, Emma Bell, Miles Fisher, David Koechner
screenplay by Eric Heisserer
directed by Steven Quale

by Angelo Muredda "Five! Five different systems had to fail for this to happen." So shouts a slumming Courtney B. Vance as a suspicious cop on the scene of only the second or third most elaborate death in the cynically titled Final Destination 5. Who can blame him? Five, after all, is an improbably large number. Here we are, though–as many entries into a series that's sure to rival even Final Fantasy's swollen ranks once the last lighter fluid-doused fan blade hits the last neck.

The Hangover Part II (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

December 19, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Thailand

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Paul Giamatti
screenplay by Craig Mazin & Scot Armstrong & Todd Phillips
directed by Todd Phillips

by Walter Chaw I guess it says something about picking up speed at the bottom of that proverbial slippery slope that I thought The Hangover Part II was consistently funny and pleasantly vile throughout, and that the only time I felt genuinely offended was during the closing-credits snapshot montage, wherein Eddie Adams's infamous VC execution photograph is re-enacted in a digital tableau mort. That's the line, I guess, and kudos in a heartfelt way to director Todd Phillips and company for finding a lower place to draw it. Until then, The Hangover Part II is a vaguely linear instalment of Jackass, mapping the odd longitudes of male friendship set loose in fleshpot/den of iniquity Bangkok, the Asian equivalent of the first film's Las Vegas; where the original tackles that Sodom's sin-of-choice prostitution, this likewise spends some time with transvestitism and sex-trafficking. Ugly? Well, it's not pretty–but it is pretty funny as it reunites pretty boy Phil (Bradley Cooper), sociopath Alan (Zach Galifianakis), non-descript every-guy Doug (Justin Bartha), and dentist Stu (Ed Helms), for whose wedding the boys have reconvened some ill-defined months after the events of the previous film. Along for the ride this time is adorable little-bro-of-the-bride Teddy (Mason "son of Ang" Lee), who has the de facto Dragon Daddy issues as a Stanford pre-med and concert cellist and who, of course, will go through a heart-warming transformation through the loving attention of unbridled hedonism, drug abuse, organized crime, and mutilation. Oh, and there's a fellating, drug-dealing monkey in a denim Rolling Stones vest. Ah, Bangkok.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – Blu-ray Disc (Steelbook)

December 17, 20111990s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Prison, Stephen King

**/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A
starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, William Sadler
screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
directed by Frank Darabont

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. There's a moment in the middle of writer-director Frank Darabont's commentary track for the tenth-anniversary DVD and now Blu-ray release of The Shawshank Redemption in which he marvels at how swiftly and completely that Christian fundamentalists embraced the film (thus allying it with other modern klatch classics like Christmas with the Kranks, The Passion of the Christ, and George W. Bush). He feared, he says, that because the demonic warden Norton (Bob Gunton) is the film's only overtly Christian character, the herd would flock to decry it. Apart from his shocking disingenuousness (if there's a more blatant Christ parable than The Shawshank Redemption, I don't know what it is), Darabont obviously doesn't understand that for the reborn mind, the longer the climb, the better the proselytizing–hence the desertion, the nepotism, and the DUIs actually augmenting Dubya's holiness instead of casting suspicion on it.

Kuroneko (1968) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

December 13, 20111960s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Horror, Japan, The Criterion Collection

***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras B
starring Kichiemon Nakamura, Nobuko Otowa, Kiwako Taichi, Kei Sato
written and directed by Kaneto Shindo

by Walter Chaw A band of ronin alights on a clearing before a modest, thatched-roof hut and, like the dead before Odysseus's offerings of a trough of blood, drinks deep from the stream running through it. They wipe their mouths. They are underfed. They enter the residence to find Yone (Nobuko Otowa) and Shige (Kiwaki Taichi) sharing a frugal repast the starving ronin wordlessly take from them and wolf down. We learn later that all the Japanese feudal world is at war–"It's a samurai's world now… We eat our fill and take whatever we desire"–and so this band of rough men gang-rape, murder, and immolate the mother and her daughter-in-law before pressing on into the woods. The image of smoke billowing out of this little lodge is, for all the haunted moments to come, the one that lingers from Kaneto Shindo's odd, savage Kuroneko. Yone and Shige emerge from the fire newly pasty-white and as formalized as Noh performers, making the intercession of a black cat^*, in a scene borrowed directly by Tim Burton for Catwoman's resurrection in Batman Returns (still Burton's nakedest lunch), that much more glaring in its contrast.

Fright Night (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

December 12, 2011****/****, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Vampire

****/**** Image B- Sound A+ Extras C-
starring Anton Yelchin, Colin Farrell, Imogen Poots, David Tennant
screenplay by Marti Noxon, based on the screenplay by Tom Holland
directed by Craig Gillespie

by Walter Chaw After 28 Weeks Later, I wondered when Imogen Poots would become a star. It only took four years. As Amy in Craig Gillespie's really frickin' great Fright Night, she's sexy without being vacuous and tough without being masculinized–her general kick-assness undoubtedly owing in part to screenwriter Marti Noxon, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"'s showrunner from Season Six to completion. I'm spending time talking about Amy because she's a wonderful character who manages to complete an arc or two in a mere supporting role. Consider a moment in which she mentions her boyfriend's skin clearing up that locates her completely, and believably, in the film's high-school environment–that's a lot of expositional impact in a little package. A remake of Tom Holland's cult classic that was itself one of my VHS favourites (worn to breaking during my formative decade with the movies), Fright Night is delightful because it's absolutely certain of what it is and what it isn't, delivers everything it promises it will (in spades), and genuinely has fun with the 3-D innovation that's the bane of most other movies lately. Smart as hell and unapologetic about it, it presents character beats that matter and sports a performance from Colin Farrell as evil vampire-next-door Jerry that should, no shit, earn him Academy Award consideration. Between him and the chimp from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, it'd be a tough call.

The Debt (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

December 5, 20112011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Hungary, Israel, Thriller, UK

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Tom Wilkinson
screenplay by Matthew Vaughn & Jane Goldman and Peter Straughan, based on the Israeli film Ha-Hov
directed by John Madden

by Walter Chaw End-of-year prestige porn so poor in its conception that it was released at the ass-end of summer, former Miramax darling John Madden's The Debt enters into the Holocaust Remembrance sweepstakes and, in the process, demonstrates that probably nothing could slow Jessica Chastain's rising star. Sure enough, she's all that's remotely worthwhile (well, her and Jesper Christensen as the best Nazi doctor since Olivier) in a film that also parades people like Tom Wilkinson and Dame Helen Mirren in embarrassing, compromised aspects. Despsite a couple of elderly "twists," the only thing really surprising about this tale of a Mossad operation gone pear-shaped is that Mirren's hack husband Taylor Hackford didn't direct it–knowing that if he had, at least the action scenes in it, for what they're worth, would've been a good deal tighter. Oh, what a state we're in when we find ourselves wishing that Taylor Hackford had directed something instead of someone else.

The Devil’s Double (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

December 5, 20112011, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Belgium, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Netherlands, Thriller

*/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Philip Quast, Raad Rawi
screenplay by Michael Thomas
directed by Lee Tamahori

by Angelo Muredda The Devil's Double might be the first bad movie about which you can non-figuratively say, "That looked like piss." Director Lee Tamahori, who started off decently with 1994's Once Were Warriors but has since become a dependable franchise killer (Along Came A Spider, Die Another Day, xXx: State of the Union) and a Hollywood hack behind the occasional Nicolas Cage abortion (Next), bathes every shot in garish yellow lights that transform white leather couches into urine-stained gilded bars. If you're willing to excuse this aesthetic for the first few seconds of every shot as an uncomfortable and weirdly xenophobic bit of formalism–what better way to depict Iraq than to give it a nice golden shower?–good luck with the rest. When characters reposition themselves in the frame, they often seem to block the light source and thrust their companions into the dark for no good reason. DP Sam McCurdy surely considers this a clever trick, as he executes it over and over again, yet Tamahori's film, a hollow adaptation of Latif Yahia's unconfirmed autobiographical account of serving for many years as Uday Hussein's political decoy, is such a bore that the effect is one of watching someone throw buckets of neon paint on a blank canvas.

Bridesmaids (2011) – [Unrated] DVD + Something Borrowed (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

December 1, 20112011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Romance

BRIDESMAIDS
***½/**** Image A Sound B- Extras A
starring Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, Wendi McLendon-Covey
screenplay by Annie Mumolo & Kristen Wiig
directed by Paul Feig

SOMETHING BORROWED
*½/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, John Krasinski, Colin Egglesfield
screenplay by Jennie Snyder Urman, based on the novel by Emily Giffin
directed by Luke Greenfield

by Jefferson Robbins On release, everybody tried to make Paul Feig's Bridesmaids about sex (gender and the act), when its bigger issue is class. Working from a script by Annie Mumolo and star Kristen Wiig, frosted liberally with improv in the manner producer Judd Apatow has made inescapable, the creators spin Wiig's failed cake-maker Annie for an early midlife crisis rooted in bad relationships as well as economic hardship. It's easy to get stuck on the sex angle, given the opening scene: Singleton Annie is stuck in a self-hating friends-with-benefits cycle with sometime-lover Ted (Jon Hamm), doing exactly what he wants in bed–at length, in several variations, and noisily. She gets only smiling, sociopathic dismissal in return as he kicks her out of his lush Milwaukee McMansion. She's pinned some vague hope on a pretty package of a man who's not only bad for her, but vastly wealthier, too. Note how Annie is forced to vault an automatic gate to escape Ted's one-percenter compound. Bridesmaids is not just about relationships in the mush-minded romcom sense–it's about power relationships: who has the most money and thus can bring the most social clout to bear, in the snowglobe economy created by a best friend's nuptials. Goddamn, that's timely.

Rushmore (1998) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

November 28, 20111990s, 2011, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, The Criterion Collection

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Mason Gamble
screenplay by Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson
directed by Wes Anderson

by Angelo Muredda It's hard to talk about Wes Anderson these days without addressing the prevailing image of him among detractors as a precious aesthete who makes dioramas instead of movies. So let's start there. As with most shorthand characterizations of idiosyncratic artists who carve out a niche for themselves instead of diversifying, there's some truth to the charge: Mr. Fox didn't accidentally wear the same corduroy blazer as his director, and surely Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman didn't just frame themselves in the centre of the screen for the train-bound section of The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson, for his part, has owned up to his formal indulgences. On the audio commentary for Criterion's excellent edition of Rushmore, he admits sheepishly that the film's multi-ethnic, age-ranging rainbow coalition of players are basically clear types pulled from colour-coded storybooks–the sort of people you could get an easy sense of simply by drawing.