Blu-ray Disc Archives - Page 41 of 48

The Ruins (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

July 22, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Adventure, Australia, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A
starring Jonathan Tucker, Jena Malone, Shawn Ashmore, Laura Ramsey
screenplay by Scott Smith, based on his novel
directed by Carter Smith

by Walter Chaw Based on a novel by the guy who wrote A Simple Plan and directed by first-timer Carter Smith, The Ruins was lost in the shuffle of a seeming barrage of beautiful-tourists-getting-slaughtered splatter flicks, which may prove to be one of the many genre legacies of the ugly-American, difference-abhorrent Bush Jr. administration. (Not to mention that the flick could easily be read as an eco-horror picture. Lots of legacies, that W., all of them fertile for the horror genre.) What distinguishes it from the Hostels and the Turistas‘ and Club Dreads is a seriousness in its execution and a feeling that there’s nothing happening in the film that is a result of stupidity or even caprice–that the gauntlet our gorgeous heroes go through is only the best example of the futility of our evolution since The Blair Witch Project. It’s a fable of that Sophoclean idea that knowledge brings no profit to the wise, and though it might be a reach, it feels in this time and place like a story about how knowing that we’re going to get blown up by an angry young man over a large body of water doesn’t do a thing to prevent it from occurring. It’s a film that talks about hopelessness and, like in a powerful moment from Marcus Nispel’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the youth of its cast suddenly bespeaks a squeezing-off of potential rather than just tits-and-ass exploitation. Closer to the point, the titillation you feel during the prologue of our cast bathing on a Mexican beach before embarking on their bloody, intimate deaths is brutally punished. The destruction of beauty in The Ruins (the title finally makes sense) becomes allegory for a collective fear of suffering: just as porn works on some level as a fantasy of “if she’ll do that, she’ll do me,” The Ruins works on the level of, If it could happen to these kids, smart and beautiful, then it sure as shit is going to happen to me.

Blue Thunder (1983) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

July 20, 20091980s, 2009, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A-
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A-
starring Roy Scheider, Warren Oates, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern
screenplay by Dan O'Bannon & Don Jakoby
directed by John Badham

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover When I was in university, the off-campus students always had a cast-off '80s couch in their shared houses and apartments–you would go to a party and without fail encounter something upholstered in what looked like tan burlap with a collection of thick and thin brown or rust stripes close to the centre. I honestly couldn't remember seeing anything so horrid in anyone's house I knew during the '80s, but now that it was there in front of me, it brought back all the uncool childhood memories that the decade's official style story lives to deny. Blue Thunder is exactly like that couch: it's a ridiculous farrago of clichés intended to turn the cop movie into Star Wars (and The Parallax View into both) that winds up roping in a variety of cheesy tropes most people would rather forget they once responded to–though I dare say anyone of a certain generation will grin at least a little at what once passed for entertainment.

Air Force One (1997) + Gran Torino (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

July 16, 2009****/****, 1990s, 2000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Germany, Thriller

AIR FORCE ONE
**/**** Image B+ Sound A Commentary B-
starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Wendy Crewson, Paul Guilfoyle
screenplay by Andrew W. Marlowe
directed by Wolfgang Petersen

GRAN TORINO
****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her
screenplay by Nick Schenk
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Ian Pugh In Wolfgang Petersen’s Air Force One, a band of Soviet ex-soldiers (whose leader is played by Gary Oldman, in full Boris Badenov mode) hijacks the President’s personal aircraft and in the process facilitates a double-dose of old-fashioned, flag-waving cinematic convention for the good old U.S. of A., just a few short years before 9/11 would fuck up that whole dynamic. The film is nothing more than a dying gasp of Cold War good-versus-evil nostalgia, complete with a no-nonsense Commander-in-Chief impossible to dislike or defy. Harrison Ford is cast as the beloved President/Vietnam vet/all-around ass-kicker, who establishes a stern anti-terrorism decree shortly before literally becoming the one to see his policies through. (He was easily American cinema’s most ridiculous angelic-politician fantasy until Petersen outdid himself with Poseidon‘s New York mayor/firefighter/super-patriot.) Nothing really matters in this scenario, and nothing really has to matter: not the reasons for the hijacking (something to do with commie dictator Jürgen Prochnow and Kazakhstan–almost ten years before Borat established that country as the former Soviet territory no one in the West knows anything about), nor the White House staffers executed during the hijack. It’s all pretext for Ford saving his family and the proverbial day.

Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience (2009) [Deluxe Extended Movie] – Blu-ray Disc

July 14, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Concert Doc, Disney, DVD, Music

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
directed by Bruce Hendricks

by Bryant Frazer There’s nary an unguarded moment on display in Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, a fluffy rock-concert documentary on a lighter-than-air boy band that’s packed to the gills with generic rock-star moves and odes to highly appreciative, wholly uncritical fandom. Running under 90 minutes even in the “deluxe extended” version issued on home video, it at least boasts brevity as a virtue. In everything else, it’s overstuffed. Documentary footage pads the running time, but the vérité stuff feels stage-managed at best. (The opening scene, in which an actress pretends to be an infatuated room-service girl attending the sleepy brothers at breakfast in their hotel suite, is transparently phoney.) A little later, the film explicitly references Beatlemania, as the boys are seen watching a TV program that draws a line from Lennon/McCartney to the Jonases. In their cutesy, aw-shucks hijinks offstage, these kids may ape The Beatles, who represented the beginning of the modern rock era, but it’s quite possible that the Jonas Brothers represent the tail-end of rock culture. Delivered into the homes of America via cable-TV, they are a group of squeaky-clean, enthusiastically unthreatening, market-focused popsters, their surname so synonymous with state-of-the-art fun that the name above the title is Walt Disney’s.

Chick Flick Politick – DVDs + Blu-ray Disc

July 12, 20092000s, 2009, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

BRIDE WARS (2009)
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound C Extras F
starring Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, Kristen Johnston, Candice Bergen
screenplay by Greg DePaul and Casey Wilson & June Diane Raphael
directed by Gary Winick

CATCH AND RELEASE (2007)
ZERO STARS/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Garner, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Juliette Lewis
written and directed by Susannah Grant

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS (2008)
[JACKPOT EDITION]
***/**** Image N/A Sound B Extras B+
starring Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher, Rob Corddry, Dennis Miller
screenplay by Dana Fox
directed by Tom Vaughan

27 DRESSES (2008)
[WIDESCREEN EDITION]
**/**** Image N/A Sound B Extras B+
starring Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman, Edward Burns
screenplay by Aline Brosh McKenna
directed by Anne Fletcher

ENCHANTED (2007)
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Susan Sarandon
screenplay by Bill Kelly
directed by Kevin Lima

by Walter Chaw I’m not kidding: Bride Wars is reptilian, hateful stuff, biologically engineered to disrespect–with maximum efficiency–the precise demographic to which it targets itself. It’s like an antibody to the middle-class, medium-attractive girl by virtue of encouraging her to associate herself with upper-middle-class, gorgeous avatars and, through that agency, act in ways completely hostile towards common sense and decency. It’s an epidemic of bad taste: there’s no other way to read the suggestion that size-zero Kate Hudson is a fat, disgusting swine for gaining five pounds pounding chocolate and cookies for a couple of weeks, is there? What’s harder to explain is a scene in the middle where rivals/best friends Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Anne Hathaway) do a slutty dance-off in a strip-club for the crown of “sexiest bride.” Here’s the weird part: one of them actually cares when the other one wins. In the middle of a movie that can only hope to attract women as its audience, here’s a scenario that physically exploits women as opposed to just emotionally or situationally (as is more to be expected). It’s like a soul kiss and a reach-around between Vin Diesel and Paul Walker to cap off a nice street race. But does it have the same chilling effect on its would-be audience, or does it instead feed into the electric lesbian tension that serves as the motor for all these “Sex and the City” knock-offs? Never mind, it’s not important. What is somewhat important is that Gary Winick, the heir-apparent to Garry Marshall’s chick-flick throne, be discouraged from ever directing another movie.

The Deep (1977) – Blu-ray Disc

July 8, 20091970s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B
starring Robert Shaw, Jacqueline Bisset, Nick Nolte, Eli Wallach
screenplay by Peter Benchley and Tracy Keenan Wynn, based on Benchley’s novel
directed by Peter Yates

by Bryant Frazer English cinematographer Christopher Challis got his start working on newsreels and travelogues before getting a gig with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s production company, The Archers. There, he worked on a team with the great Jack Cardiff before serving as the DP on The Tales of Hoffmann, a lush Technicolor envisioning of the Jacques Offenbach opera. While Challis isn’t among the best-known directors of photography, his technical facility kept him in demand for the next 40 years. He shot films for Stanley Donen, Carol Reed, and Blake Edwards, but there may have been no movie where his sense of colour and light was more critical than on The Deep. Rushed into production at Columbia Pictures to capitalize on the success of Jaws, another seafaring adventure based on a Peter Benchley novel, The Deep has a humdrum story, generally uncommitted performances, and a phoney Moray eel (nicknamed “Percy” on set) that gives the much-maligned mechanical shark “Bruce” from Jaws a run for its money in the department of unconvincing animal attacks. Yet the quality of the imagery is something else.

Two Evil Eyes (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

July 2, 20091990s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, Directors: George A. Romero, Horror, Italy

*/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B-
starring Harvey Keitel, Adrienne Barbeau, Ramy Zada, Sally Kirkland
screenplay by George Romero and Dario Argento & Franco Ferrini
directed by George Romero and Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a groundbreaking satire of our consumerist state, says the party line, the first film to be shot in that new phenomenon of a shopping mall and full of cogent commentary on how capitalism has become at once a Skinner box and religion instead of merely an organizing principle. That it’s also deadening and sophomoric–or that it’s dated in a way that Night and Day haven’t, or that it’s just not very scary, or tense, or, at the end of the day, deep–is seldom mentioned. Still, and despite the failure of Land of the Dead, there’s Night of, Day of, and Diary of to confirm that Romero’s zombie flicks are worthy genre pieces alight with insight into social issues.

Passengers (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 30, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, David Morse, Dianne Wiest
screenplay by Ronnie Christensen
directed by Rodrigo Garcia

by Bryant Frazer Even if you haven’t read the jacket promo copy, you’ll suspect Passengers is up to some kind of supernatural wish-fulfillment from its first few minutes, as a slumbering Anne Hathaway is awakened on a rainy night by a phone call from a colleague who tells her something terrible has happened requiring her presence at a nearby hospital. It’s not just that Hathaway plays Dr. Claire Summers, a therapist charged with helping a group of plane-crash survivors cope with their near-death experiences and the accompanying trauma–it’s that the chilly, insistently otherworldly production design strongly implies something strange (but comforting, very comforting) is going on, too. Early hints that Claire’s flirty, devil-may-care patient, Eric Clark (Patrick Wilson), has gained psychic powers, or that the other survivors are being eliminated, one by one, by a nefarious airline bent on protecting shareholder value, turn out to be red herrings as Passengers works its way to a hoary final-reel revelation that would have felt tired a decade ago.

Spaceballs (1987) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 28, 20091980s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Satire, Sci-Fi

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Mel Brooks, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Bill Pullman
screenplay by Mel Brooks & Thomas Meehan & Ronny Graham
directed by Mel Brooks

by Bill Chambers Neither the audacity of Mel Brooks’s perpetually relevant Blazing Saddles nor the movie-love that manifested itself in his uncanny genre parodies Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety inhabit Brooks’s Spaceballs, a spoof tailored to the undiscriminating palate of preteens and people who can’t resist a joke at the expense of Star Wars hobbyists. It is, in other words, Brooks’s very own Return of the Jedi, and although it’s being reissued in a Collector’s Edition DVD to capitalize on the release of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, it’s not really in a position to take the piss out of the new Star Wars trilogy. In fact, the most interesting thing about Spaceballs circa 2005 is that what was once spectacularly stale–by the time it came out, the first wave of Star Wars mania had passed–now elicits nostalgia for a Star Wars saga that was so classical and (visually / narratively / allegorically) uncluttered as to lend itself to burlesque. Because nothing in the current “episodes” has a prayer of becoming an institution, a contemporary Spaceballs would just be a succession of insults–you can’t mock Jar Jar Binks with any affection.

Roxanne (1987) – Blu-ray Disc

June 24, 20091980s, 2009, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, Romance

*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring Steve Martin, Daryl Hannah, Shelley Duvall, Rick Rossovich
screenplay by Steve Martin, based on the play “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Edmond Rostand
directed by Fred Schepisi

by Walter Chaw After The Devil’s Playground and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith–both appearing in the middle of the Australian New Wave–the conventional wisdom was that Fred Schepisi was someone to watch. Then Hollywood called and he did what fellow ‘wavers Peter Weir and Phillip Noyce did, punching the timecard on shit like Patriot Games, Sliver, and Dead Poets Society. A re-telling of Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmund Rostand’s play about a proboscis-challenged swordsman armed with the Blarney (in spades), Schepisi’s noxious Roxanne stars a downhill-sliding Steve Martin and a Daryl Hannah who didn’t yet know that Blade Runner and Splash would be the only things anyone would know her for until a career resurrection of sorts some 15 years later with Kill Bill. I used to love this film. Time has been unkind.

Taken (2008) [2-Disc Extended Cut] – Blu-ray Disc

June 21, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, France, Thriller, UK

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Leland Orser, Famke Janssen
screenplay by Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Pierre Morel

by Ian Pugh Director Pierre Morel’s last film was that cookie-cutter nonsense District B13, while co-writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen have in recent times mainly presided over the Transporter series. So what surprises most about the trio’s Taken is that, given its pedigree of orgiastic excess, every single one of its attributes is delivered in quantities that are just enough. All of its action sequences are just tightly edited enough to be exciting without becoming hyperactive; all of its characters are just developed enough to warrant analysis without interfering with the thrills; and its screaming misanthropy is just equal-opportunity enough not to feel like xenophobia. There’s certainly a pathetic loneliness to ex-Black Ops agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), still taking ersatz family photos with a disposable camera and struggling to direct the attention of his teenaged daughter Kim (25-year-old Maggie Grace, in a borderline grotesque woman-child performance) away from the rich asshole (Xander Berkeley) now married to his ex-wife (Famke Janssen). But when Kim is kidnapped by sex traffickers in Paris, it’s a chance to utilize his training and indulge in wish-fulfilment of the most literal variety. Blowing past government procedure and busting up prostitution rings run by the upper class, Bryan’s search eventually culminates in a violent showdown with a Middle Eastern sheikh.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) [2-Disc DVD Collector’s Set – Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 18, 20091960s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, DVD, Italy, Spain, West Germany, Western

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Extended English-language Version)
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras A
starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Aldo Giuffrè
screenplay by Age & Scarpelli & Luciano Vincenzoni & Sergio Leone
directed by Sergio Leone

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Perhaps it had been too long between screenings, or perhaps my mind had been playing tricks on me, but my most recent viewing The Good, the Bad and the Ugly wasn’t as good as the others. There was still much to admire: the wild structure, which doesn’t properly introduce its MacGuffin until about half an hour in; the hilariously cavalier attitude towards human decency; the raw-meat attitude towards bodies and faces; and, of course, the idea of Eli Wallach playing a Mexican, which is always appealing. But all of this seems somehow only fitfully successful now, the film’s conceptual high points surrounded by the same arid desert that nearly finishes off two out of three of the protagonists. Perhaps I should chalk it up to the distance of memory–even downgraded, the experience has something bizarre for just about everybody, whether their memories will be kind to it or not.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) [Extended Version] – Blu-ray Disc + Waterworld (1995) [2-Disc Extended Edition] – DVD

June 15, 20091990s, 2009, Action, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Romance, Sci-Fi, UK

ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES
½*/**** Image C Sound B Extras B
starring Kevin Costner, Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
screenplay by Pen Densham & John Watson
directed by Kevin Reynolds

WATERWORLD
***/**** Image B Sound B
starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino
screenplay by Peter Rader and David Twohy
directed by Kevin Reynolds

by Walter Chaw In the “careful what you wish for” sweepstakes, here’s Kevin Costner, fresh off an Oscar victory for his naïve idyll Dances with Wolves, spending his hard-won Hollywood currency indulging best buddy Kevin Reynolds in a trilogy of pictures (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Rapa Nui, Waterworld) he produced for the express purpose of giving Reynolds more than enough rope. If you’re in the sport of charting the positively Greek decline of the late-’80s box-office king, mark 1991 as Exhibit A, as his sad attempt at an English accent for Robin of Loxley was notoriously overdubbed in post-production after being deemed the stuff of legend in initial cuts. Aside from providing schadenfreudians endless fodder, it was the first real evidence that the Golden Boy’s tragic flaw was the belief that his charm was based on something other than Gary Cooper’s mantle of Everybody’s All-American Doofus.

Friday the 13th (2009) [Killer Cut – Digital Copy Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

June 15, 20092000s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

*/**** Image C+ Sound A- Extras C
starring Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis van Winkle
screenplay by Damian Shannon & Mark Swift, based on characters created by Victor Miller
directed by Marcus Nispel

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. It’s both surprising and disappointing that, after ten Friday the 13^th films (or rather, ten Jason films), it took a crossover with Freddy Krueger to coax genuine pathos out of a hulking man-child who refused to die until he could sufficiently please Mommy. So it was to my great pleasure and delight that Marcus Nispel seemed poised to exploit that potential and separate it from its less savoury aspects. (He even starts things off with a pinch of disdain for the ’80s nostalgia that brought this project to life, with the victims-to-be making weightless references to Blue Velvet and rocking out to Night Ranger.) Ironically enough, though, the remake reduces this worn-out scenario to something less complex. Using the bare essentials of the original film and its first sequel as backstory–a headless mother, oblivious campers in search of weed, and a backwoods monstrosity with a bag over his head–the amazing pre-title sequence implies that Jason Voorhees (Derek Mears) is most effective as a rumour whispered around the campfire, specifically designed to keep you awake at night. Might be heresy to say it, but in this opening salvo, Nispel’s Jason promises to become a presence of terror equal to his immediate antecedent, John Carpenter’s trend-setting Michael Myers. He’s not an amorphous bogeyman ready to leap from the shadows, but a piece of teenage folklore that by all rights shouldn’t exist, brought to murderous life by overactive imaginations.

The Fall (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 8, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Disability, Drama, Esoterica, Fantasy, India, South Africa

*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
starring Lee Pace, Justine Waddell, Catinca Untaru
screenplay by Dan Gilroy and Nico Soultanakis & Tarsem
directed by Tarsem

by Walter Chaw Beware the film that positions itself as being told from the perspective of a child, because unless you’re a child or that specific child’s parent, you’re eventually going to wish that someone would slap the kid in question. Tarsem’s labour of love The Fall, his unlikely follow-up to his serial killer movie as shot by Salvador Dali-cum-Caspar David Friedrich The Cell, is such a film, told from a child’s perspective–and rather than as an artistic decision, it plays as a plea for leniency. It’s a fairytale about a little girl’s emergence into maturity… No, it’s a fairytale about the delicacy of life… No, it’s not anything much of anything. By touching on a suicidal movie star’s convalescence after an impressively shot accident on a film set (involving a horse, Tarsem scholars take note), the picture seems to want to access some discussion concerning artificiality and its intrusion into reality–something that would make sense if The Fall positioned itself as a dyad with The Cell (which was, after all, only about film as a dream medium that acts as the brain does), but it doesn’t really do that, either. All it does, in fact, is provide Tarsem an excuse to indulge his prurience and affection for elaborate set-pieces awash in saturated colours and tableaux that often border on the grotesque. Freed of the necessity to be coherent, freed of much understanding of Bruno Bettelheim or Jung or Freud, it’s a fairytale without purpose and pretentious to boot, reminding more than a little of the also-pretty, also-empty Neil Gaiman/Dave McKean collaboration Mirrormask. It’s too bad, really, as there are images in here genuinely affecting for their visual splendour. I wonder if it’s unforgivable heresy to say The Cell is badly underestimated and due for revisionism while The Fall, despite its relative obscurity (no J-Lo anywhere in sight), is badly overestimated.

True Blood: The Complete First Season (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

June 8, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Television, Vampire

Image A- Sound A- Extras B-
“Strange Love,” “The First Taste,” “Mine,” “Escape from Dragon House,” “Sparks Fly Out,” “Cold Ground,” “Burning House of Love,” “The Fourth Man in the Fire,” “Plaisir d’amour,” “I Don’t Wanna Know,” “To Love Is to Bury,” “You’ll Be the Death of Me”

by Bryant Frazer The notion of vampires and werewolves as romantic leads isn’t exactly cutting-edge. Anyone who ever spent time in the ’80s and ’90s with cosplayers, Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts, SF conventioneers, and/or habitués of certain USENET newsgroups knows of a thriving subculture that imagines vamps and other shapeshifters to be highly potent sexual partners, if not outright preferable to human companions. In a cinematic climate where former nerd icons like Frodo Baggins, Iron Man, and even Alan Moore’s Watchmen have been reinterpreted as big-budget propositions by the men in the suits, the eventual mainstreaming of vampire erotica shouldn’t come as much surprise. In the romance aisles of your local bookstore, where “paranormal” is the preferred rubric for a burgeoning category of supernatural bodice-ripper, a reader may now find that vampires and werewolves really are that into you. On the other end of the spectrum, the brooding, outrageously popular Twilight book and film series pussyfoots around the central metaphor of vampirism, detonating a no-intercourse-before-marriage payload in the hearts and minds of a generation of teenaged girls enraptured by the idea of an impossibly ravishing, possibly fatal affair with a stormy Count Dracula type whose feelings for an awkward young thing from Arizona are stronger than his love of a virgin’s blood.

Fargo (1996) – DVD|[Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

June 3, 20091990s, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Blu-ray Disc, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Drama, DVD, Thriller, UK

***½/****
DVD – Image B Sound A-
SE DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B
BD – Image B+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell
screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Vincent Suarez The critics’ knock against the Coen brothers has always admonished the filmmakers for seemingly valuing style over substance–their flamboyant camerawork frequently seemed the raison d’être for rather loosely-plotted films like Raising Arizona. It’s fitting, then, that Fargo, their most celebrated work (but not their best–that distinction belongs to the severely underrated Miller’s Crossing), champions the virtues of simplicity at nearly every level. Not only is Fargo the Coens’ most straightforwardly-told film, lacking their typical stylistic flourishes, but its cautionary tale highlights the dangers of permitting life to become more complicated than necessary. Indeed, had the title not already been assigned to their debut film, Fargo would have been more aptly christened Blood Simple.

2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) – Blu-ray Disc

June 2, 20091980s, 2009, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller

2010
*/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras F
starring Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren, Bob Balaban
screenplay by Peter Hyams, based on the novel 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
directed by Peter Hyams

by Walter Chaw As we slide ever closer to the reality of artificial intelligence, the question of functional equivalence becomes ever more pressing to our sense of ourselves. It's because of this, I think, that Peter Hyams's 2010 seems more pertinent now than it necessarily did in 1984. I watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time just a few months before I saw 2010 (this would be the summer of '84; I was twelve years old), and to that pre-teen me, 2010 gave the impression in most ways of being the better film. It appeals to the pragmatist instead of the philosopher, to the childish belief that there is nothing without an explanation under the sun and that should we encounter an alien intelligence, it will inevitably have the same desires and motivations we do. My first viewing of 2001 left me feeling angry and bored–the moments that tickled at something greater weren't moments I was able to isolate and examine (I wouldn't learn the term mysterium tremens until at least a decade later)–and in a sense 2010 allowed me to appreciate the Kubrick picture as a linear narrative. Which is, after all, not the point, and perhaps even ultimately destructive of 2001. It's easy to understand benevolence (whether it's from an alien "creator" to us, its possible creations, or from us to our machine creations), because benevolence is within the human capacity to comprehend. It's much harder to understand an astronaut waking up in a hotel room after a trip down the rabbit hole and then coming back to Earth as a glowing fetus.

Revolutionary Road (2008) + Doubt (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

June 1, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mystery, Romance, UK

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
*½/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B
starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Kathy Bates
screenplay by Justin Haythe, based on the novel by Richard Yates
directed by Sam Mendes

DOUBT
**/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Viola Davis
written and directed by John Patrick Shanley

by Walter Chaw Impeccably acted and playing out what seems to be a collective cultural fascination with the pre-Flower Power ’60s (not quite Ward and June, not quite Jimi and Janis), Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road and John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt help 2008 meet its quota of prestige-y Actors Studio pieces. Both are based on well-regarded (renowned, in the case of the first) literary sources, both sport high-octane casts in the pursuit of that delicate balance in adaptations between literal and spiritual faithfulness, and both, ultimately, have considerably less to say than the surrounding hullabaloo would suggest. Revolutionary Road plots another point on the graph of Mendes’s steeply declining returns–he’s a stage director whose greatest weakness is his desire for little epiphanies that play like Everest off the boards, and he’s guilty of too much intoxication with the medium besides. Mendes spends so much time fiddling around with his camera to a noodling Thomas Newman score that you feel like giving him some privacy.

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

May 28, 20092000s, 2008, 2009, Action, Animation, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Japan, Sci-Fi, Zombie

バイオハザードディジェネレーション
*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
animated; screenplay by Shotaro Suga
directed by Makoto Kamiya

by Bryant Frazer One of the more obnoxious trends in current filmmaking and distribution is the move towards cheapjack fansploitation movies. Masquerading as original, feature-film content, these low-budget theatrical and home-video releases are little more than expansive knock-offs of an existing, lucrative property that function as extended promos for yet another upcoming instalment of said franchise. In other words, they’re commercials, bought and paid for by the very fanbase to which they’re marketed. Not so long ago, we saw the theatrical bow of a decidedly sub-par feature animation, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, whose only reason for existence was its function as a come-on for the already-in-production Cartoon Network series. Then there’s Resident Evil: Degeneration (henceforth Degeneration), an extended videogame cut-scene created to flog the upcoming release of AAA console title “Resident Evil 5”. Taking place in the Capcom videogame’s universe and filling in the narrative gap between “Resident Evil”s 4 and 5, it has nothing to do with the popular live-action film series starring Milla Jovovich.