Blu-ray Disc Archives - Page 42 of 47

The Uninvited (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

April 27, 20092000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, Germany, Horror, Mystery, Thriller

***½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras C
starring Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks, Arielle Kebbel, David Strathairn
screenplay by Craig Rosenberg and Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, based on the motion picture Janghwa, Hongryeon written by Ji-woon Kim
directed by The Guard Brothers

by Ian Pugh The title The Uninvited doesn't refer to the diabolical nanny/usurper driving the plot or to the undead spirits that torture our heroine, but rather to the damning intrusiveness of memory: inadequate, incomplete, and weighting down its victims with the guilt of bad decisions and lives ill-spent. It begins with a dream, as unassuming teenager Anna (Emily Browning) expresses her concern that she can't remember the night her bedridden mother died in a freak explosion. "Maybe it's not such a bad thing to forget," a well-meaning psychologist tells her, and from this innocent bit of wisdom springs all the misery and death that follows. Not exactly a tale of two sisters, the picture demonstrates how the black holes of misanthropy and insanity come not from our harrowing experiences, but from the fact that we try so hard to bottle them up.

Event Horizon (1997) – Blu-ray Disc

April 23, 20091990s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK

*/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B
starring Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Kathleen Quinlan, Joely Richardson
screenplay by Philip Eisner
directed by Paul Anderson

by Walter Chaw Event Horizon approaches the science-fiction idea of a mysterium tremens, hints that it will be about the inscrutability of an alien intelligence–like Lem's and Tarkovsky's (and Soderbergh's) variations on the theme of Solaris, for instance, or that monolith in 2001. But with lowbrow hack Paul W.S. Anderson (then simply Paul Anderson) at the helm, Event Horizon washes out as just another assembly-line jump-scare factory. A particular shame, as with this project Anderson attracted an unusually competent cast, only to ask the likes of Laurence Fishburne, Joely Richardson, Sam Neill, Jason Isaacs, and Kathleen Quinlan to respond to cats-by-any-other-name jumping through allegorical windows. It goes beyond wearisome to actually being insulting. The first hour is spent establishing the brave crew of the Lewis & Clark, setting off to somewhere near Neptune on the rescue and salvage of experimental ship Event Horizon, which disappeared a few months prior. Outfitted with a new "gravity drive" suspiciously like the fold-space/grasshopper spice drive from Dune, the Event Horizon has not only managed to travel beyond our Universe–it has also succeeded in theologically blowing our minds! Weird visions ensue (bad dreams and worse), and then there's the captain's log that our heroes spend the bulk of the film "filtering" before finally discovering that the warnings contained therein are in Latin for a reason. Doesn't anyone in the future watch The Exorcist? Good thing medico D.J. (Isaacs) speaks Latin, or they'd never know what it wouldn't help them to know.

Gigi (1958) – Blu-ray Disc

April 20, 20091950s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Musical, Romance

GIGI (1958)
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A-
starring Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Hermione Gingold
screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, based on the novel by Colette
directed by Vincente Minnelli

GIGI (1949)
**/**** Image C+ Sound C
starring Gaby Morlay, Danièle Delorme, Jean Tissier, Yvonne de Bray
scteenplay by Pierre Laroche, based on the novel by Colette
directed by Jacqueline Audry

by Alex Jackson How weird is it that Vincente Minnelli's Gigi won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1958, when four years later Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Lolita barely got the seal of approval? I suppose we shouldn't underestimate the power of sex to scandalize when it isn't disguised as love. In Gigi, wealthy Parisian playboy Gaston Lachaille (Louis Jourdan) is fixated on 15-year-old Gigi (27-year-old Leslie Caron), the granddaughter of family friend Madame Alvarez (Hermione Gingold). He likes her precisely because she is still a child. Most of the women Gaston goes with are accustomed and entitled to a certain standard of living. By contrast, Gigi can appreciate being spoiled. Gaston also admires her irreverence–how she can cheat at cards and tease him about it, or how she can effortlessly tell him off after he insults her dress. She hasn't learned how to be a lady yet; her rough edges haven't been smoothed out and she's capable of challenging him. There's a life to her that's drained out of most of the other women he meets long before he gets there.

American Gangster (2007); I’m Not There (2007); No Country for Old Men (2007) + No Country for Old Men [’08 BD + 2-Disc Collector’s Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

April 15, 2009****/****, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Coen Brothers, Crime, Directors: Ridley Scott, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, France, Gangster, Germany, Music, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

AMERICAN GANGSTER
***/****
starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding, Jr.
screenplay by Steven Zaillian
directed by Ridley Scott

I'M NOT THERE
***½/****
starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere
screenplay by Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman
directed by Todd Haynes

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
****/****
'08 BD – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B-
CE – Image A+ Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly Macdonald
screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

by Walter Chaw Consider the moment when an overly enthusiastic police search results in the demolition of a replica dresser commissioned by Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) for the Carolina plantation he's bought to house his extended family. In one canny instant, there's the suggestion that nothing ever changes: the things we lose in time we will always lose. The image Ridley Scott provides for us as he moves the Lucas clan into their new digs is loaded and dangerous, with a group of African-Americans walking up the lush green lawn of an antebellum plantation–usurpers of a corrupt American Dream that, American Gangster posits, is still corrupt and in essentially the same way. True, there's a cartoon bogey in a New York cop (Josh Brolin) erected as the straw man for all of New York's Finest who's profiting off French Connection junk (gasp, he shoots a dog, and probably also smokes)–but the real villainy in the picture is the idea that the path to true status and achievement in the United States is on the backs of not just others, but entire groups of others.

Dead Like Me: The Complete Collection + Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009) – DVDs + Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season (2007) – Blu-ray Disc

April 13, 20092000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Fantasy, Television

DEAD LIKE ME (2003-2004)
Image B+ Sound B Extras D
"Pilot," "Dead Girl Walking," "Curious George," "Reapercussions," "Reaping Havoc," "My Room," "Reaper Madness," "A Cook," "Sunday Mornings," "Business Unfinished," "The Bicycle Thief," "Nighthawks," "Vacation," "Rest in Peace," "Send in the Clown," "The Ledger," "Ghost Story," "The Shallow End," "Hurry," "In Escrow," "Rites of Passage," "The Escape Artist," "Be Still My Heart," "Death Defying," "Ashes to Ashes," "Forget Me Not," "Last Call," "Always," "Haunted"

DEAD LIKE ME: LIFE AFTER DEATH
½*/**** Image C+ Sound C+ Extras D
starring Ellen Muth, Callum Blue, Sarah Wynter, Henry Ian Cusick
screenplay by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux
directed by Stephen Herek

PUSHING DAISIES: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON
Image A Sound B Extras D
"Pie-lette," "Dummy," "The Fun in Funeral," "Pigeon," "Girth," "Bitches," "Smell of Success," "Bitter Sweets," "Corpsicle"

by Walter Chaw Diagnosing the ills of Showtime original productions is a tricky deal, but whatever's wrong with them seems consistent across the board. Compared against HBO's output, there's nothing that can hold a candle to "The Sopranos" or "Six Feet Under" or "Big Love"; there aren't any masterpieces like "Deadwood", much less fascinating failures like "Carnivàle" or "Rome". To be brutally honest, it doesn't matter if we lower the bar, since not a single Showtime series could be called good on network TV terms, either. Flagships "Dexter" and "Weeds" are both overwritten and under-thought, jumping sharks regularly beginning somewhere around the middle of their first seasons and betraying their unsustainability faster than "Heroes". It's not for lack of star power or high concept that Showtime shows suck–not a surfeit of budgets or production values, no. I'd argue that the reason they're awful is because Showtime is incapable of hiring writers who aren't twee asswipes molding themselves to pop morality and rote, conventional character sketches and plot outcomes. Those hailing "Dexter" as an antiheroic crime thriller need to consider the storyline about the tough-talking Latina cop who has her heart softened by an Elian Gonzalez clone, or the revelation that Dexter might not be a serial killer after all, but a teddy bear with issues. And just as "Dexter" wastes the wonderful Michael C. Hall in its title role (ditto "Weeds"/Mary-Louise Parker), so, too, does another bit of Showtime dreck, "Dead Like Me", boast the excellent Ellen Muth and Mandy Patinkin in the pursuit of decidedly modest returns.

Lakeview Terrace (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

April 6, 20092000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Thriller, Will Smith

***/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Wilson, Kerry Washington, Jay Hernandez
screenplay by David Loughery and Howard Korder
directed by Neil LaBute

by Walter Chaw It's wrong to say that Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace, despite its literal miscegenation subplot and the openness of its main character's intolerance, is about race and racism in a year that's already seen its fair share of the renewal of the race conversation in the United States, both in and out of the cineplex. Because it's a LaBute picture, closer to the truth that Lakeview Terrace is a film about misanthropy–that no matter the cloth, the uniform is the general shittiness with which we treat each other–and, more, how easily we shed the raiments of civilization when confronted with the brute, caveman essence of competing for sex. It's not as scabrous as LaBute's early work, but I wonder if that isn't a function in part of the spirit of a year that found miscegenation as a secondary conceit of the mainstream's Fourth of July tentpole flick, Hancock. The twist in Lakeview Terrace is that the bigot front and centre is a black man (named after Biblical Abel, no less) and that it's all been genre-mixed in the cop-gone-rogue, Internal Affairs/Unlawful Entry tradition, speaking ultimately to the distinct '70s feeling of paranoia towards authority that's resurfaced in films of the last eight Bush years while trying, with some success, to refocus racism into generalized rage, confusion, frustration, and intolerance. After seven years of examining the lines against which society coalesces when the world falls down, here's a film about the tenuous handshake that tenants of the new world order have with the re-gelling of society. In a lot of ways, Lakeview Terrace belongs in a conversation about the recent spate of flicks concerning war veterans returning from the front (like The Lucky Ones, or Home of the Brave (also starring Samuel L. Jackson)) of an unpopular war broken, angry, and unfit for the hypocrisy of peaceful coexistence.

Chocolate (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

April 6, 20092000s, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Martial Arts, Thailand

**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras D
starring Yanin Vismitananda, Hiroshi Abe, Pongpat Wachirabunjong, Ammara Siripong
screenplay by Nepalee & Matthew Chukiat Sakveerakul
directed by Prachya Pinkaew

by Bryant Frazer If Prachya Pinkaew's 2003 Ong-bak became a worldwide hit partly on novelty value–star Tony Jaa was a new face, and Muay Thai was sufficiently under-represented in martial-arts movies to come across as a fresh new fighting style–then Chocolate is a logical next career move for the director. After all, how better to one-up your discovery of a lean, mean, ass-kicking machine than with another dazzling kickboxer who just happens to be a girl?

I’ve Loved You So Long (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

March 24, 20092000s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, France, Mystery

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime
**½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C+
starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grevill
written and directed by Philippe Claudel

by Bryant Frazer There are a number of reasons why Kristin Scott Thomas's performance, which is at the centre of I've Loved You So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t'aime), stands out. Yes, it's because she's a terrific screen presence. Yes, it's because it's invariably refreshing to see a 48-year-old Englishwoman sinking her teeth into a three-dimensional role, not just emoting with great adeptness but deploying her fluent French. But there's another reason: In a film that basically amounts to an extremely well-executed Lifetime Movie Channel special, Thomas is by far the most nuanced aspect of the production. In the sleepiness of her eyes and the weariness of her glances, you can read her acid dismissal of the world around her. In the parallel lines of tiny wrinkles around her lips–you can see them in close-up–are mapped out the quiet ravages that would be visited upon any of us by too many years in splendid isolation. Thomas is an unself-conscious beauty for sure, but an aging one. And it's that full-fledged adulthood, that great density of experience and heartbreak that she embodies, that adds weight to what could be, as scripted, an off-puttingly generic moodiness. Her presence is a beacon amongst stock characters and coy screenwriter's tricks, a canticle amidst the clichés that threaten to swamp her story.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

March 23, 20092000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Espionage, James Bond, Thriller, UK

½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Daniel Craig, Olga Kurylenko, Mathieu Amalric, Judi Dench
screenplay by Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade
directed by Marc Forster

by Walter Chaw Sex without foreplay, Marc Forster's limp dick of a James Bond flick Quantum of Solace takes the kinetic, angry ugliness of Casino Royale and, together with Paul Haggis's Dances with Wolves screenplay of affected naivety and wide-eyed, late-blooming outrage, fashions a most-unwelcome return to the hoary Bond franchise of old. As if aware that all that stuff about Bolivian peasants pining for water might be connected, and queasily, to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (a daring cargo-jet escape is similarly cribbed from that film), Quantum of Solace does its level best to strip entire set-pieces from the Bourne series (a knife fight, the close-quarters disarming of government agents, the roof-top flight), forgetting in the process to port over the coherence of Doug Liman or Paul Greengrass choreography. The picture's idea of an action sequence consists of extreme close-ups of two vehicles involved in some kind of ill-defined skirmish intercut with extreme close-ups of Bond and some bad guy who looks just like him intercut with flashes and body parts, ending in Bond walking away with a wry grimace on his face. What a real director could have done with the prologue on a winding mountain road in Italy that has a truck nudged off it by the baddies almost pancake 007 on the way down. And what a real screenwriter could have done with the concept of Bond as the remorseless liquid terminator from T2. Instead we get admittedly only the logical offspring of this ill-begotten union between the guy who directed The Kite Runner and Finding Neverland and the asshole who wrote Crash and a few episodes of "The Facts of Life". Whoever had the bright idea that this would be the magical, gritty duo to continue the resuscitation of Albert Broccoli's dusty old wet-dream of a crusading GOP avatar desperately needs to be shown the door.

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) – DVD + Beverly Hills Chihuahua (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

March 23, 20092000s, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Mexico, Romance, UK

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE
**/**** Image B- Sound A Extras B+
starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Danny Huston, Jeff Bridges
screenplay by Peter Straughan, based on the book by Toby Young
directed by Robert Weide

BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA
½*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Piper Perabo, Manolo Cardona, Jamie Lee Curtis, José María Yazpik
screenplay by Analisa LaBianco and Jeffrey Bushell
directed by Raja Gosnell

by Ian Pugh Tipping its hat to Godard through a poster on the wall of disillusioned magazine editor Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges), How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (hereafter How to Lose Friends) owes an enormous debt to the success of The Devil Wears Prada, but it may be more accurate to describe it as Contempt as told by Elizabethtown-era Cameron Crowe. Which is to say, it argues that the only way to beat the entertainment industry at its game of media-manipulation is to play by the rules. The idealistic writer has to sell out, temporarily at least; and when he loses the girl to some asshole "in the know," the audience can rest assured that they'll be reunited soon enough. Simon Pegg ostensibly plays boorish journo Sidney Young, a British transplant in New York City come to shake the foundations of a thinly-veiled VANITY FAIR clone only to endure several rude awakenings. Pegg really plays the part of the wacky Kirsten Dunst pixie from Elizabethtown, though, come from merry old England with a fistful of snark to teach strait-laced Kirsten Dunst (here essaying the Orlando Bloom role) about the fruitlessness of obsessing over ridiculous establishments beyond your control. Well, that and the joys of Con Air.

The One (2001) – [Special Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

March 19, 20092000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Thriller

*/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras A
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
starring Jet Li, Carla Gugino, Delroy Lindo, Jason Statham
screenplay by Glen Morgan & James Wong
directed by James Wong

by Walter Chaw The confused child of "Sliders" and Highlander, the latest attempt to translate Jet Li's appeal for an American audience is James Wong and Glen Morgan's asinine-but-breezy sci-fi actioner The One. Li is good cop Gabe, who, in a world of one-hundred-and-twenty-four parallel universes, discovers that he is one of two "Gabes" left. Li is also, in the great tradition of Twin Dragons and Double Trouble, evil universe-hopper Yulaw, who has discovered that each incarnation of himself he kills increases the strength and intelligence of his remaining selves. Blazing a trail of terror through 123 universes, Yulaw intends to become "the one" Jet Li: a super-genius killing machine.

Dan in Real Life (2008) + Rachel Getting Married (2008) – Blu-ray Discs

March 17, 20092000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Jonathan Demme, Drama, Romance

DAN IN REAL LIFE
*/**** Image A Sound B Extras D
starring Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook, Dianne Wiest
screenplay by Pierce Gardner and Peter Hedges
directed by Peter Hedges

RACHEL GETTING MARRIED
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger
screenplay by Jenny Lumet
directed by Jonathan Demme

by Walter Chaw The Darwin chart of this breed of American indie, otherwise known as unlikely shrines to The Celebration (or Festen, if you prefer), follows in the United States with something like Margot at the Wedding near the top as most-evolved down mid-way to Rachel Getting Married and its histrionic Demme-tasse reduction, down to ankle-deep–we’re talking primordial muck–with Dan in Real Life. That last one, from Pieces of April perpetrator Peter Hedges, squanders an unusual amount of currency in Steve Carell (at his melancholic zenith), pairing him with Juliette Binoche in a bittersweet romantic imbroglio that absolutely does not deserve the happy horseshit ending slathered on it to apologize for its occasional poignancy. It’s not that I enjoy being sad, it’s that I enjoy getting a condescending handjob even less. I’m willing to forgive the bad slapstick of a group aerobics session, the casting of Dane Cook, and the set-up/knock-down mentality of it that, in fairness, mars more honest films like Rachel Getting Married, too. The picture begins in the title’s “real life,” only to sail away to a privileged, impossible Rhode Island wonderland that may as well be the setting of every Nicholas Sparks book ever written and to-be-written. It’s a movie that makes you feel good, like a barium enema, or Rolfing. What I’m saying is that a lot of things make you feel good in a dumb, animal way–not a lot of them are also art.

Ghosts of Mars (2001) [Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 16, 20092000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: John Carpenter, DVD, Horror, Sci-Fi

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars
*/****
DVD – Image B Sound B Extras C-
BD – Image B+ Sound A- Extras C-
starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham Clea Duvall
screenplay by Larry Sulkis & John Carpenter
directed by John Carpenter

by Walter Chaw An uneasy, hippified version of a cowboys and Indians shoot-'em-up, John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars is an exhausted shade of the once-hip director's oeuvre, baldly stealing from his Assault on Precinct 13 before partially resurrecting later works The Fog, Escape from N.Y./L.A., The Thing, and even They Live in the focus on an interracial pair hooking up to kick alien ass. It sounds like an agreeable enough concoction, especially when one considers the presence of the lovely Natasha Henstridge in a tight sweater perspiring alongside cult personalities Pam Grier, Ice Cube, and Snatch's Jason Statham, but Ghosts of Mars is a rudderless enterprise that doesn't know what it's doing and bores while doing it. The most disturbing thing about this aggressively tame production is the suspicion that the John Carpenter who used to make interesting socio-political genre films has been taken over by one of his own mindless zombie Martians.

Cadillac Records (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

March 10, 20092000s, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Music

**½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C+
starring Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Gabrielle Union, Beyoncé Knowles
written and directed by Darnell Martin

by Bryant Frazer Curiously underdistributed on its release last December, when it opened on fewer than 700 screens across the U.S. despite a reasonably big-name cast, Cadillac Records is a labour of love that has problems but is hard to dislike. Writer-director Darnell Martin is probably too ambitious for her own good, struggling to mount not just a Muddy Waters biopic and/or the Chess Records story, but also a conflicted look at the business acumen and chicanery that attended the rapid evolution of rock-and-roll in the 1950s. While the film suffers from kitchen-sink syndrome, at its best it's an engaging piece of advocacy for the bluesmen who transformed American music.

The French Connection (1971) [Five Star Collection] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

March 10, 20091970s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: William Friedkin, Drama, DVD, Thriller

***/****
DVD – Image A Sound B+ Extras A+
BD – Image D+ Sound B- Extras A+
starring Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey, Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco
screenplay by Ernest Tidyman
directed by William Friedkin

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover There's no denying the skill that went into The French Connection. It's the runner-up exciting film about people doing almost nothing, second only to All the President's Men–and I'm only half-joking when I say that. It takes a director with vision to make a couple of guys tailing a couple of other guys interesting, and William Friedkin definitely has the vision: he single-handedly creates the meaning that holds the sketchy script together and keeps us caring about whether our heroic flatfoots get their dubious man. That meaning, however, ought to give us pause, as it makes that same year's hit Dirty Harry look like Easy Rider by comparison.

Pretty Woman (1990) – Blu-ray Disc

March 2, 20091990s, 2016, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Romance

***½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras C+
starring Richard Gere, Julia Roberts, Ralph Bellamy, Hector Elizondo
screenplay by J.F. Lawton
directed by Garry Marshall

by Alex Jackson SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Well, I'm willing to admit this much: Pretty Woman has a ridiculous premise. Corporate raider Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) buys up struggling companies and liquidates their assets. While in Los Angeles planning the purchase of ship manufacturer Morse Industries, he gets lost on the way back to his Beverly Hills hotel and stops on Hollywood Blvd. to ask for directions. This is where he meets Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts), a hooker desperate to pay off a few debts. She subsequently drives him to his hotel; as Edward recently broke up with his girlfriend in New York and feels bad about making Vivian take the bus home, he invites her to spend the night. They bargain over her price, arrive at the figure of three-hundred dollars, and sleep together. In the morning, Edward has a phone conversation with his lawyer, Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander), who suggests he have dinner with James Morse, the owner and founder of Morse Industries, and that he bring a date to keep things social. Still on the phone, Edward walks in on Vivian singing along to Prince in the bathtub and offers to pay her for the entire week to be at his "beck-and-call."

High School Musical (2007) [Remix]; High School Musical 2 (2008) [Extended Edition]; High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2009) [Deluxe Extended Edition] – Blu-ray Discs

February 25, 20092000s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Musical, Romance, Teen, Television

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL
**/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
written by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 2
½*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C-
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
written by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR
*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel
screenplay by Peter Barsocchini
directed by Kenny Ortega

by Ian Pugh Not exactly the cultural apocalypse its Disney Channel roots and preteen popularity would have you believe, High School Musical is no worse, really, than any other cookie-cutter musical in recent memory. A by-product of pandering to a young, young audience, its biggest sin is that it alleges a greater basis in reality than its more "adult" contemporaries: The movie endeavours to give credence to the familiar tropes of storybook romance and rags-to-riches by applying them to the politicized zoo known as high school. Troy (Zac Efron) is captain of the basketball team and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) is a brainiac, but all it takes is one happenstance karaoke duet for them to discover they both enjoy singing a whole lot, and their pursuit of that mutual interest throws the entire clique-driven society of East High into disarray. Although it's bolstered by a few genuine chuckles, the premise can't hide the fact that the high-school backdrop actively highlights how inconsequential the whole blasted thing truly is.

Nights in Rodanthe (2008) – Blu-ray Disc

February 24, 20092000s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Romance

½*/**** Image A- Sound A Extras C
starring Richard Gere, Diane Lane, Scott Glenn, Christopher Meloni
screenplay by Ann Peacock and John Romano, based on the novel by Nicholas Sparks
directed by George C. Wolfe

by Walter Chaw I will say this about Nights in Rodanthe: spoken Nicholas Sparks is preferable to written Nicholas Sparks, because when people speak, complete sentences and thoughts that go somewhere aren't necessarily at a premium. If there was ever an artist ill-suited for his chosen medium, it's Sparks; and if there was ever proof (as if proof were needed after the success of Robert James Waller, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, and Dean Koontz) that cuddling ignorance was a growth industry, well, there's Sparks again. And here, as further cause for divorce from the great nation of culturally-retarded people who have always comprised our metaphorical heartland, is the fourth adaptation of a bound stable of Sparks's saccharine logorrhoea (Gertrude Stein in practice in the unlikeliest of places), Nights in Rodanthe, which, in the great tradition of pieces of shit, is exactly like every other piece of shit in every other genre. (Be thankful, at least, that the picture, in a futile attempt to separate itself from The Notebook, jettisons the novel's framing device, that great staple of books by people like Sparks and Mitch Albom–in so doing depriving some dusty, geriatric, beloved television star one last paycheck.) Helpless before the towering majesty of the formula god it worships, the picture plays out like a slasher pic for girls, where the only sport is trying to figure out which of the heroes is going to die, how, when, and by what grievous hand. I'd argue that the catharsis parceled out by garbage like this is identical to the "happy ending" whored out by lower-aspiring slasher cinema: the curiosity about the hows is delicious–and perverse. If you think I've dropped a spoiler, by the way, you haven't seen Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember, or The Notebook, and–more than likely–you're not going to see Nights in Rodanthe, either.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) [2-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 23, 20091970s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, DVD, Horror, Mystery

L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Eva Renzi, Enrico Maria Salerno
written and directed by Dario Argento

by Walter Chaw Dario Argento’s uncredited adaptation of Fredric Brown’s The Screaming Mimi (brought to the screen once before in 1958 by Gerd Oswald), The Bird with the Crystal Plumage marks the “Italian Hitchcock”‘s directorial debut as well as the moment at which the Italian giallo genre gained international currency. Though the genre’s invention (named after the yellow/giallo covers of Italian penny dreadfuls) is credited to compatriot Mario Bava (see, especially, his astonishing Blood and Black Lace), Argento’s scary polish and cunning for film language bridged the cultural, mainstream/arthouse gap with agility and audacity. He’s not just borrowing from Hitchcock, he’s filtering the Master’s work through his own sensibilities. Argento did for the slasher genre with his “supernatural” pictures like Suspiria and Inferno what Sergio Leone did for the Western, making them dirtier, sexier, rhythmic, and more acceptable to the literati; and he does here for the police procedural/neo-noir a similar kind of post-modern hipster reinvention. But it’s not merely an intellectual exercise (in fact, the obscurity of the clues (its title at once revealing the identity of the killer and referring obliquely to the red herring of The Maltese Falcon) makes deciphering the procedural improbable at best)–rather, it’s the visceral nature of the exercise that delights. It’s Argento’s revelry in one part in the unrelieved nihilism and delicious confusion that would characterize the best of the ’70s’ paranoia cinema–and in the other part, in the joy of great genre filmmaking.

Max Payne (2008) – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

February 19, 20092000s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image N/A Sound B Extras C
BD – Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, Beau Bridges, Olga Kurylenko
screenplay by Beau Thorne
directed by John Moore

by Walter Chaw Valkyries: a staple of Norse mythology, right? Picking sides in fights, flying the fallen to Valhalla, and becoming winged waitstaff in that eternal beer hall in the sky. (Or fat women in Wagner.) First thing that comes to mind isn't a mind-blowing, Timothy Leary-esque freak out–unless you're John Moore's ridiculous Max Payne. That isn't the worst thing about Max Payne, but it's one of them. And while there's no crime in appropriating concepts you don't entirely understand, there probably should be. This is not a smart movie, and it doesn't know whether it should be a faithful adaptation of its videogame source material or a post-modern take on films noir, though it should be said that it looks beautiful anyway, a successful iteration of the Sin City aesthetic. The only thing really missing from its retinue of noir tropes is a stoic anti-hero at its centre; Max Payne badly miscalculates not in casting professional lump of meat Mark (Talks to Animals) Wahlberg, but in subsequently allowing him to attempt a fully fleshed-out performance when his usual monotone would've fit the pomo/homage portion of this film perfectly.