Moonstruck (1987) [Deluxe Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 24, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Nicolas Cage, Romance

**/****
DVD – Image B Sound B+ Extras B+
BD – Image B- Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis
screenplay by John Patrick Shanley
directed by Norman Jewison

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. If you were to make a film about African-Americans in which everyone is shiftless, ignorant, and constantly eating watermelon or fried chicken and acting lascivious, you'd be rightly vilified for your inherent racism. But if you were to make a film about Italian-Americans in which everyone is loud, hilarious, and constantly eating pasta and acting lascivious, apparently you'd be rewarded with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. That, at least, is the conclusion one draws from watching the stereotype cavalcade that is Moonstruck, which, however affectionate, creates a tedious minstrel show out of those wacky Eye-talians while minimizing their pain. There's plenty of talk about the chaos of love and the torment of attraction, but who are they kidding? That everything works out in the end for problems that would normally rip a family apart is par for the course in a Norman Jewison film, meaning baked ziti for all and true drama for none.

I Spit on Your Grave (1978) + I Spit On Your Grave (2010) – Blu-ray Discs

March 21, 2011Posted in1970s, 2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Revenge

Ispitonyourgrave78cap

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE (a.k.a. Day of the Woman)
**/**** Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Camille Keaton, Eron Tabor, Richard Pace, Anthony Nichols
written and directed by Meir Zarchi

I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
*/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Sarah Butler, Jeff Branson, Daniel Franzese, Andrew Howard
screenplay by Stuart Morse, based on a screenplay by Meir Zarchi
directed by Steven R. Monroe

by Bryant Frazer Rape-revenge is the basest of movie formulas. What amounts to a social contract exists with the audience: during the first half of the film, you will experience the sadistic, brutal, misogynistic sexual abuse of an innocent, probably naïve young woman at the hands of cavalier thugs. And during the second half of the film, you will see this broken woman–this survivor–pull herself together long enough to exact a terrible revenge on those who wronged her.

All-Star Superman (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

March 14, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Sci-Fi, Superhero

**½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A-
screenplay by Dwayne McDuffie, based on the comic book series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
directed by Sam Liu

by Jefferson Robbins It's an adaptation so infatuated with its admirable source material that it fails to leap the gap between the two media. Anyone who glanced at the first page of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's "All-Star Superman" when it was published in 2005 knew it was special–a book that intended to crystallize the Superman legend and then refract the character to his logical/mythological extremes. That's been one of Morrison's most alluring talents as a comics scriptor. This is the guy, after all, who had "New X-Men"'s Beast evolving into a giant blue cat-man and shitting in a litterbox. So his Superman is a guy who can read your genetic code with a glance and temper a chunk of dwarf star into a housekey; someone whose goodness is so acute he can shame superhuman tyrants into working for the commonweal, all while he's knocking on death's door. In fact, in this twelve-issue interpretation, Superman is not only the saviour of his world, but also the creator of our own. It demands repeat visits–unlike its Blu-ray spin-off. The DC Universe direct-to-video films, from the shop of producer Bruce Timm, almost all share one common element: seen once, they never need to be seen again.

Hereafter (2010) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

March 13, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Documentary, Drama, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Spielberg

½*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
starring Matt Damon, Cécile De France, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard
screenplay by Peter Morgan
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Ian Pugh It's an age-old problem: how do you make a movie (or write a book, or stage a play) about the broad and ultimately philosophical subject of death? Not like this, that's for sure. Looking and feeling like it was shot from inside an aquarium, Clint Eastwood's Hereafter is a failure of staggering proportions. Three stories intertwine to form a bland whole: George (Matt Damon) is an honest-to-gosh psychic who's trying and failing to stay out of the racket; Marie (Cécile De France) is a French TV presenter who recalls visions of the afterlife after being caught in the Indian Ocean tsunami; and Marcus (Frankie McLaren) is a young lad who seeks answers when his twin brother dies in a traffic accident. Rest assured their paths will cross in profoundly obvious ways as they wrap their heads around the very concept of death and what comes next. I'm certainly not the first person to compare Hereafter to Babel, but Eastwood offers little alternative. Hereafter approaches the various perceptions of death in the same way that Alejandro González Iñárritu approached "life," and the end result is equally bloated and condescending.

Bambi (1942) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD

March 9, 2011Posted in1940s, 2011, Animation, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family

Bambicapredux

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras A-
story direction Perce Pearce and story adaptation Larry Morey, from the story by Felix Salten
supervising director David D. Hand

by Bryant Frazer Bambi is just 70 minutes long, but it’s one of the more versatile features in the Disney canon. It’s a cute circle-of-life story, sure, populated by talking rabbits, nominally sweet-smelling skunks, and wise old owls (not to mention the adorable chipmunks that the owl, for some reason, hasn’t preyed upon). But look what else is going on in this slice-of-wildlife film: an attempt at an animated nature documentary; a tract in opposition to sport hunting; and the impetus for generations of children to weep in terror at the prospect of losing their mothers.

The American (2010) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

March 3, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

***½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B-
starring George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli
screenplay by Rowan Joffe, based on the novel A Very Private Gentlman by Martin Booth
directed by Anton Corbijn

by Walter Chaw Though nothing more than a well-made Jean-Pierre Melville shrine at first glance, Anton Corbijn's lovely The American leaves a surprising amount of aftertaste in a year of film that will probably be remembered for the number of "growers" among its roster of resonant pictures. An unusual take on the monotony of any profession (be it prostitution or engineering to-order weapons for assassins), it's more evidence that George Clooney, with this tribute to Melville, his Kaufman-scripted Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and his Tarkovsky redux Solaris, is quietly becoming a visible, above-the-line champion for smart American genre flicks–fomenting his own little underground Nouvelle Vague with movies that audiences, for the most part, are anxious to dismiss. The American is provocatively self-conscious in the way of its best French antecedents; aware of the shoulders upon which it stands (everything from Le Samourai to Breathless to later stuff like the homegrown Eye of the Needle), it also has the gumption to title itself after the original title for Citizen Kane. In so doing, it announces itself as something like a commentary on how the passionate, bloody carnality at the foundation of the United States has aged into an almost bored functionality in the first decade post-9/11.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) [Unrated] – Blu-ray + Digital Copy

March 1, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Romance, Sci-Fi, Time Travel

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Chevy Chase
screenplay by Josh Heald and Sean Anders & John Morris
directed by Steve Pink

by Walter Chaw Emboldened, perhaps, by the surprisingly good The Other Guys and the surprisingly great Get Him to the Greek, I went into Steve Pink's Hot Tub Time Machine with the belief that its high-concept idea–not the time travel, but the casting of '80s icon John Cusack in a film that would return him to his decade of greatest power and influence–would be at least enough for it to function as a fairly smart nostalgia piece. Sadly, it's not very smart, nor is it very funny–and the parts of it that work do so in spite of what feels like Cusack's disdain for this period that made him famous. It's pretty standard fare, really, full of obvious jokes about changing the past and the obvious "rebellion" of not honouring the Prime Directive by introducing The Black-Eyed Peas into an eighties music scene that, for everything you could say about Falco or Flock of Seagulls, never produced anything remotely as odious as The Black-Eyed Peas. No, not even Billy Joel. In other words, Pink and his stable of writers can't seem to tell what's ironic from what isn't, meaning the whole project was doomed before it left the starting gate.

Vampire Circus (1972) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

February 28, 2011Posted in1970s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, UK, Vampire

***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Adrienne Corri, Laurence Payne, Thorley Walters, Anthony Corlan
screenplay by Judson Kinberg
directed by Robert Young

by Jefferson Robbins I’m risking all kinds of things here, not least the prospect of becoming That Guy At FFC Who Finds Too Much Depth In Hammer Horror Movies, but this is my take: Vampire Circus is about the plight of the Jews in Christian Europe. I rubbed my eyes and swabbed my ears at first, but attentive viewing didn’t dispel this impression. And looking at Hammer’s entire output in the fright genre, it seems like a logical consequence. The British studio always made shockers that grappled with subtext, but by 1972, Hammer was fighting for life. Its bread-and-butter franchises had been comedically pricked five years earlier by Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, which threatened to bleed gothic horror of its frights just as Blazing Saddles would soon gutshoot the Western. As Hammer’s market power waned and it threw open the doors to more explicit sex and more visceral gore, some larger story ideas were bound to creep in.

One Swayze Summer: A DVD Tribute to Patrick Swayze

February 24, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, France, Japan, Romance, Sports, Thriller, Tom Cruise, UK
Swayzedvdstitle

“Good-looking people turn me off. Myself included.”
–Patrick Wayne Swayze

RED DAWN (1984) [COLLECTOR’S EDITION] – DVD
**½/**** Image B Sound C+ Extras N/A
starring Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Powers Boothe
screenplay by Kevin Reynolds and John Milius
directed by John Milius

THE OUTSIDERS (THE COMPLETE NOVEL) (1983) [TWO-DISC SPECIAL EDITION] – DVD
****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A+
starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Leif Garrett
screenplay by Kathleen Knutsen Rowell, based on the novel by S.E. Hinton
directed by Francis Ford Coppola

YOUNGBLOOD (1986) [TOTALLY AWESOME 80s DOUBLE FEATURE] – DVD
ZERO STARS/**** Image D+ Sound C-
starring Rob Lowe, Cynthia Gibb, Ed Lauter, Patrick Swayze, Jim Youngs
written and directed by Peter Markle

POINT BREAK (1991) [PURE ADRENALINE EDITION] – DVD + [WARNER REISSUE] – BLU-RAY DISC
***/****
DVD – Image B- Sound A Extras C
BD – Image B- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves, Gary Busey, Lori Petty
screenplay by W. Peter Iliff, based on the novel by Rick King
directed by Kathryn Bigelow

DIRTY DANCING (1987) [TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY] – DVD
½*/**** Image B Sound A Extras B
starring Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Jerry Orbach, Steven Reuther
screenplay by Eleanor Bergstein
directed by Emile Ardolino

GHOST (1990) [SPECIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION] – DVD + BLU-RAY DISC
*/****
DVD – Image A- Sound B Extras B
BD – Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Tony Goldwyn
screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin
directed by Jerry Zucker

KEEPING MUM (2006) – DVD
½*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Patrick Swayze
screenplay by Richard Russo and Niall Johnson
directed by Niall Johnson

by Walter Chaw Early on in the stupidest/smartest movie of 1984, a band of high-schoolers, having just witnessed a few planeloads of Cuban paratroopers land in their football field and machine gun their history teacher (“Education this!”), stock up for a stay in forest exile by cleaning out a gas-n-sip. Sleeping bags, canned goods, and the last thing off the shelf? That’s right: a football. I spent the rest of Red Dawn trying to figure out if the football played some role in the eventual fighting prowess of our carbuncular guerrillas or if it was merely a big “fuck you” to the rest of the world that thinks “football” is soccer. The jury’s still out, because while there’s an awful lot of grenade-chucking in the last hour of the picture, none of it looks particularly football-like (or athletic come to think of it) despite the deadly accuracy of each toss aimed at the hapless commie combatants. (So clueless are they about modern-day conventional warfare that they’re repeatedly ambushed by this untrained makeshift militia; they’re the Washington Generals to our Harlem Globetrotters.) It’s just one puzzle in an altogether puzzling film–one that has Patrick Swayze playing Charlie Sheen’s older brother (and Jennifer Grey the sister of Lea Thompson in an even greater genetic stretch) and C. Thomas Howell as a remorseless, psychopathic nihilist who takes his dose of glory by Rambo’ing up against a Russian attack helicopter. Maybe his transformation from ’80s-wallpaper milquetoast to tough-guy killing machine had something to do with being forced by the brothers Swayze-Sheen to drink fresh deer blood from a tin cup.

Justified: The Complete First Season (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

February 22, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Television, Thriller

Image A- Sound B Extras B
"Fire in the Hole," "Riverbrook," "Fixer," "Long in the Tooth," "The Lord of War and Thunder," "The Collection," "Blind Spot," "Blowback," "Hatless," "The Hammer," "Veterans," "Fathers and Sons," "Bulletville"

by Jefferson Robbins Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Timothy Olyphant gotta sidle. It's the actor's natural means of locomotion–he may approach an object or adversary or inamorata head-on at first, but by the time he's within arm's length, his gaze has tilted to squint at his target with one coyote eye dominant. It's the walk not only of an actor who's thoroughly considered the best way to present himself to a camera, but also of a man who might have to reach for his pistol at any time. It may be an actorly crutch, but Olyphant can alternately wield it as a wedge, a hook, or a truncheon to coerce a viewer into watching him more closely. We want to know what he sees that makes his glare go askance.

Due Date (2010) + Megamind (2010)|Due Date – Blu-ray Disc

February 21, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Family, Road Movie, Sci-Fi, Thriller

DUE DATE
***½/**** Image A Sound A Extras C-
starring Robert Downey Jr., Zach Galifianakis, Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan
screenplay by Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Phillips
directed by Todd Phillips

MEGAMIND
**/****
screenplay by Alan J. Schoolcraft & Brent Simons
directed by Tom McGrath

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Peter Highman (Robert Downey Jr.) is eager to fly out of Atlanta back to Los Angeles to witness the birth of his child, but a chance encounter with wannabe actor/lone weirdo Ethan Tremblay (Zach Galifianakis) lands the pair on a no-fly list and leaves Peter without his luggage or his wallet. With no alternatives, Peter becomes Ethan's unwilling passenger–taking a seat alongside a small dog and the ashes of Ethan's late father–on a road trip west. There appears to be a general consensus that the premise of Todd Phillips's Due Date too closely resembles that of John Hughes's Planes, Trains & Automobiles, but there's a vital difference in that Due Date's lead characters are legitimately crazy. The exasperated straight man is re-imagined as a sneering jerk full of jealousy and rage (Downey Jr. maintains a cold, sweaty stare throughout), while the lovable klutz is a dangerously irresponsible lout. Roger Ebert once wrote that the Hughes film was about "empathy [and] knowing what the other guy feels." So it is; by virtue of its characters, Due Date bypasses empathy altogether, yet it still talks about treating other people with a modicum of compassion. Phillips has finally made a naughty comedy that contemplates the consequences of its actions. Here's a movie in which a father-to-be grows so frustrated with an annoying boy that he socks him in the stomach, then unknowingly mocks a disabled veteran (Danny McBride) and gets his ass kicked for it.

Tron: Legacy/Tron: The Original Classic [2-Movie Collection] – Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray Disc + DVD + Digital Copy

February 18, 2011Posted in1980s, 2000s, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Sci-Fi

TRON (1982)
*½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan
screenplay by Steven Lisberger and Bonnie MacBird
directed by Steven Lisberger

by Walter Chaw When Tron came out in theatres in 1982, it was touted as a revolution in digital imaging technology (which it certainly was), but the film lost any momentum it might have garnered due to the kind of lock-step exposition that characterized the Disney formula of the Seventies and Eighties. (Think The Cat from Outer Space, or the Love Bug phenomenon.) To this day, Disney animation relies upon anthropomorphic animal sidekicks (there is a floating .gif ball named “BIT” in Tron) and the addled old geezer who’s a genius and also the father of the beautiful young love interest–hoary old chestnuts that provide as good an explanation as any for the extent to which Disney has fallen behind animé and even its Pixar affiliates in the realm of animated entertainment. Tron stinks of that kind of laziness and worse (for instance, it rips off images whole-cloth from Star Wars), leading to the surprising realization that while it touts its technological influence, Tron is actually more instructive a model for the special effects extravaganzas that continue to litter the multiplex: all bells and whistles with nary a hint of plot or character development.

The Exorcist (1973) – Blu-ray Disc (DigiBook)

February 15, 2011Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: William Friedkin, FFC Must-Own, Horror

THE EXORCIST
****/****

THE EXORCIST (THE VERSION YOU'VE NEVER SEEN)
**½/****
Image A+ Sound A+ Extras A
starring Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Wynn
screenplay by William Peter Blatty, based on his novel
directed by William Friedkin

Mustownby Walter Chaw The most visible of a spate of evil-children movies littering the cinescape in the late-Sixties and early-Seventies (remembering that even Night of the Living Dead had a baby eating her mother), William Friedkin's blockbuster The Exorcist raked in the cash even as it offered up the goods–in spades. Its "happy" ending is filthy with melancholy and menace, suggesting that whatever's been exorcised from little Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair) is actually free now (an idea itself exorcised by the extended version's ending)–that the solution presented in the book of Luke is as empty as its herd of pigs driven into the sea. For The Exorcist to make the money it did says a lot about what was in the water in the American '70s: partly the mainstream audience's desire to feel shitty when a movie was over that didn't reappear until The Dark Knight made a billion dollars, but mostly this idea, gaining currency in the cinema of the time (and again in ours), that individuals, confronted with a crossroads, are entirely incapable of affecting meaningful change. It's why author William Peter Blatty's choice of original ending–spliced onto the end of the 2000 re-release–is so cognitively dissonant. There's hope in The Exorcist, and it has nothing to do with the almost jovial reassurance that there's a better place after we die. Concluding this deeply spiritual film with a Christian platitude is, frankly, moronic, although the temptation to offer up succour is at least part of the picture's allure.

What’s Up, Doc? (1972) – Blu-ray Disc

February 9, 2011Posted in1970s, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy

***½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal, Kenneth Mars, Madeline Kahn
screenplay by Buck Henry and David Newman & Robert Benton
directed by Peter Bogdanovich

Whatsupdoccap

by Bryant Frazer Barely more than 45 minutes in, What's Up, Doc?, a romantic farce directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand, reaches a madcap climax set in a San Francisco hotel room–it features an especially hapless O'Neal, an increasingly angry Madeline Kahn, an exploding television set, an insistently ringing telephone, and la Streisand, wrapped in an oversized bath towel, dangling from the window ledge outside–that makes you wonder whatever the hell else the film could have up its sleeve. It's not simply that the scene is an appropriately hilarious culmination of plot threads involving mistaken identity, musicology, and pre-marital strife, but also that it demonstrates an astonishing commitment on the part of the filmmakers to physical comedy on a grand scale. It's this sequence that transforms What's Up, Doc? from a tastefully sophisticated contemporary take on the screwball comedy into a thing of real mayhem. Arriving, as it does, just halfway into the film, it's a promise of even more flamboyantly orchestrated chaos to come.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 4, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Crime, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Gangster, Italy, Robert De Niro

****/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C+
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Tuesday Weld
screenplay by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone & Stuart Kaminsky, based on the novel The Hoods by Howard Grey
directed by Sergio Leone

Onceuponatimeinamericacap

by Bill Chambers Such is the level of cinematic sophistication in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America that all of the miserable things that happen in the picture make you giddy, filling you with the joy that is basking in an artist's command of a medium. At first, the powers-that-be didn't get it: Warner Bros. took Leone's non-linear vision and straightened it out, and the result was a picture that, though chronologically told, made no sense. This was a fascinating lesson in syntax–films are composed of "meanwhile"s, not "and then"s, perhaps none more so than Once Upon a Time in America, which is about the co-existence of past, present, and future tenses. (It's like an extrapolation of the riddle of the Sphinx: what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?) Luckily, the studio saw the error of its ways and reissued Once Upon a Time in America a year after its butchered American release in its longer, knottier international form, and to illustrate the dramatic disparity between the 139-minute domestic and 227-minute global versions, critic Sheila Benson labelled the former the worst movie of 1984 and the latter the best movie of the 1980s. Pauline Kael wrote, "I don't believe I've ever seen a worse case of mutilation."

Easy A (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

February 2, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Teen

**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B
starring Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Hayden Church
screenplay by Bert V. Royal
directed by Will Gluck

by Jefferson Robbins What do I have to do these days to see a teen sex comedy where teen characters get to have sex? Filmmakers have gotten so good at larding chastity tracts with suggestiveness that you come out of the theatre believing, for fifteen minutes or so, that you actually witnessed youth in debauch. So far, the 21st century in teenage fare is like the Hays Code era all over again, only not well-written. Terrified at being accused of portraying high-schoolers doing what millions of high-schoolers do, studios have turned sexual misdirection into the best special effect since the lightsaber.

Alice in Wonderland [The Masterpiece Edition] (1951) + The Lion King 1½ (2004) – DVDs|Alice in Wonderland – Blu-ray + DVD

February 1, 2011Posted in1950s, 2000s, Adventure, Animation, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, DVD, Esoterica, Family, Fantasy, Musical

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
**/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A+
story by Winston Hibler, Ted Sears, Bill Peet, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Milt Banta, Bill Cottrell, Dick Kelsey, Joe Grant, Dick Huemer, Del Connell, Tom Oreb, John Walbridge, based on Lewis Carroll's The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
directed by Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske

THE LION KING 1½
The Lion King 3: Hakuna Matata
*/**** Image A Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by Tom Rogers, Roger Allers and Irene Mecchi and Bill Steinkeller and Evan Spiliotopoulos
directed by Bradley Raymond

by Bill Chambers It's not like Alice in Wonderland is necessary and The Lion King 1½ isn't–they're both unnecessary. The two latest animated Disney films to hit DVD, they have little in common formally save that they're jointly inessential; and yet, because of their proximate release windows, parents are likely to pick them up as a pair, and kids are likely to associate them as such. Bright, sophisticated children may arrive at the hypothesis that this is the day that animation died.

The Killer/Hard-Boiled [Blu-ray Double Feature] – Blu-ray Disc

January 26, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 1990s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: John Woo, Drama, Hong Kong, Romance, Thriller

THE KILLER (1989)
****/**** Image C- Sound C Extras B
starring Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, Sally Yeh, Chu Kong
written and directed by John Woo

HARD-BOILED (1992)
***/**** Image C Sound B Extras A+
starring Chow Yun-Fat, Tony Leung, Teresa Mo, Philip Chan
screenplay by Barry Wong
directed by John Woo

by Walter Chaw It's possible to try to detail the history of John Woo at the beginning of the Heroic Bloodshed movement in Hong Kong–how, with the first two A Better Tomorrows (the second of which features a genuinely astonishing amount of violence and the infamous subtitled malapropism "don't fuck on my family!"), he created in buddy Chow Yun-Fat a fashion/role model in the James Dean mold, and how he eventually left for Hollywood's golden shore at the service of Jean-Claude Van Damme and John Travolta (twice) and Nicolas Cage (twice). It's possible–but Planet Hong Kong, City on Fire, Hong Kong Babylon, and on and on have done a pretty fair job of it already. Better to say that Woo's group of films from this period–the A Better Tomorrow pictures, his acknowledged masterpiece The Killer, his flawed but undeniably bombastic Hard-Boiled, and his ambitious, deeply felt Bullet in the Head–meant the world to me as a Chinese kid growing up in a predominantly white area in predominantly white Colorado. I saw a devastated 35mm print of The Killer at a midnight show in CU Boulder's Chem 140 auditorium in the early-'90s. It was dubbed (a mess), the screening was packed, and I, for maybe the first time in my life (and still one of the only times in my life), felt a genuine kinship with my countrymen and a certain pride in being Chinese. Here, after all, was the best action film I'd ever seen, and it wasn't John McTiernan's or Robert Zemeckis's or Steven Spielberg's name above the title, but someone called John Woo. And he was directing not Bruce Willis nor Arnie nor Sly nor any of the tools he would eventually work with in the United States, but a handsomer version of me with the same last name. As existential epiphanies go, it wasn't bad.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) + Secretariat (2010) – Blu-ray Discs + Conviction (2010)

January 24, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Family, Romance, Spain, Sports, Switzerland, Theatrical, UK

YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER
**/**** Image A Sound B
starring Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Gemma Jones
written and directed by Woody Allen

SECRETARIAT
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Diane Lane, John Malkovich, Dylan Walsh, Scott Glenn
screenplay by Mike Rich, suggested by the book Secretariat: The Making of a Champion by William Nack
directed by Randall Wallace

CONVICTION
**/****
starring Hilary Swank, Sam Rockwell, Minnie Driver, Juliette Lewis
screenplay by Pamela Gray
directed by Tony Goldwyn

by Ian Pugh You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger represents the apotheosis of what shall now be called the New Woody Allen Average–those perfectly competent nothing movies that never rate more than two, two-and-a-half stars. I say that without a hint of sarcasm, and I say that as someone who considers Allen's work a primary influence–and as the guy who regularly defends Scoop. But I have to be honest: the New Woody Allen Average has become so predictably mediocre that I just can't take it anymore. The director's latest surrogate is another novelist, Roy (Josh Brolin), who's struggling to complete his latest book. It's putting a strain on his marriage to Sally (Naomi Watts), so he looks into the window of his pretty next-door neighbour (Freida Pinto) for romantic respite. Sally, an art curator, feels the same pressure, and casually drifts closer to her boss, Greg (Antonio Banderas). Sally's father Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) has left his wife for a prostitute (Lucy Punch), while his ex, Helena (Gemma Jones), retreats to spirituality, consulting a medium to find out where she stands in the great cosmic plan. It's a matter of "what you want" versus "what you take" in a race to see which floundering/philandering idiot can make the most tragic mistakes in the span of 90 minutes. Is it any different from Vicky Cristina Barcelona? When you break it down to its most basic components…no, not really.

The Pacific (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

January 20, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Action, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Television, War

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by Jefferson Robbins The Greatest-Generation worship that Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks share is appreciable and understandable, but by the close of their latest collaborative HBO miniseries, "The Pacific", you sort of hope they've got it out of their systems. That's not to say the story encapsulated here didn't warrant telling–the flash conceptualization today is of World War II as a European war, where "rules of combat" may still obtain. The fiercely bloody Pacific campaign–very much a gazing-into-the-abyss kind of conflict, making monsters of men–has become a near-afterthought. So a big-budget TV treatment, in line with the star producers' 2001 "Band of Brothers", seems natural.1 But by remaining "true" to the experiences of the U.S. Marines who fought their way from Guadalcanal to the doorstep of Japan, the story comes across as a thing of half-reconciled parts, periscopic views of the larger picture. I mean, more than a miniseries usually does–like it's two miniseries grafted onto one another.