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.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) + Cedar Rapids (2011)

February 11, 2011Posted in2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Musical, Romance, Theatrical, UK

GNOMEO & JULIET
**/****
screenplay by Kelly Asbury & Mark Burton & Kevin Cecil & Emily Cook & Kathy Greenberg & Andy Riley & Steve Hamilton Shaw, based on an original screenplay by John R. Smith & Rob Sprackling
directed by Kelly Asbury

CEDAR RAPIDS
**½/****
starring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver
screenplay by Phil Johnston
directed by Miguel Arteta

by Ian Pugh Gnomeo & Juliet is pretty much exactly the movie you’d expect from one of the directors of Shrek 2. On the bright side, it’s also a little bit more. In this latest iteration of Shakespeare’s timeless classic, Montague and Capulet are a couple of pensioners living on Verona Drive whose lawn gnomes spring to life every now and then to wage war on each other. The lad and lass of the title (voiced by James McAvoy and Emily Blunt) meet from opposite sides and fall in love, and so on and so forth. As you may have already guessed, Gnomeo & Juliet makes room for its cutesy puns and pop-culture references by robbing “Romeo & Juliet”‘s premise of all emotional heft: the warring tribes have no sense of familial bond, which renders the central romance completely weightless; and it’s all performed with an absolute minimum amount of bloodshed, culminating in, yes, a happy ending. It’s tempting to cry anti-intellectualism until one considers the film’s predominantly British cast–after all, hasn’t British culture earned the right to make self-deprecating jokes about Shakespeare’s influence? (It just feels right knowing that Michael Caine and Maggie Smith are leading the charge in this gnome war–though Jason Statham voicing an angry, Napoleonic Tybalt sounds more subversive than it actually plays.) In fact, the film’s generally cavalier attitude towards “unassailable” literature gives the impression that it was trying to piss someone off, what with most of the loathing and introspection replaced by the requisite noisy action sequences.

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.

Sundance ’11: Salvation Boulevard

February 6, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Film Festivals, Sundance, Thriller
*½/****starring Pierce Brosnan, Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Greg Kinnearscreenplay by Doug Max Stone & George Ratliff, based on the novel by Larry Beinhartdirected by George Ratliff by Alex Jackson What a waste. The cast assembled for George Ratliff's Salvation Boulevard is one for the ages. You have Pierce Bronson as super-evangelist Reverend Dan Day, Jennifer Connelly as infatuated housewife Gwen Vandeveer, Ciarán Hinds as Gwen's hard-ass Naval vet father Billy, and Ed Harris as pompous, bearded intellectual Dr. Paul Blaycock. These are traditionally serious dramatic actors in roles that lend themselves to caricature, yet they invest these characters with history…

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.

Sundance ’11: The Woods

January 30, 2011Posted in2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Sundance
*/****starring Justin Phillips, Toby David, Nicola Persky, Brian Woodswritten and directed by Matthew Lessner by Alex Jackson A bunch of twentysomething idealists go out into the woods to get away from civilization, lugging plasma-screen displays and a refrigerator full of Capri Suns along with them. That's basically the one joke of Matthew Lessner's The Woods. It's a pretty good joke. The image of these pseudo-hippies playing "Wii Sports" in the middle of a forest is evocative in a way that cannot be readily communicated with words. Wyatt Garfield's cinematography effectively parodies the look of a Land's End or L.L. Bean…

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.

Sundance ’11: Hobo with a Shotgun

January 24, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Film Festivals, Horror, Sundance, Thriller
**½/****starring Rutger Hauer, Brian Downey, Gregory Smith, Molly Dunsworthscreenplay by John Daviesdirected by Jason Eisener by Alex Jackson Director Jason Eisener and screenwriter John Davies must have been left in the care of a particularly negligent babysitter throughout the 1980s. Their Hobo with a Shotgun, an adaptation of a fake trailer the two made for Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse contest back in 2007 (it won, and was subsequently attached to Canadian prints of the film), not only cites Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Robocop, and probably Cobra among its myriad references but also pays what I think is an incontrovertible homage to…

Barney’s Version (2010) + No Strings Attached (2011)

January 21, 2011Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Ian Pugh, Canada, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

BARNEY'S VERSION
***/****
starring Paul Giamatti, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Dustin Hoffman
screenplay by Michael Konyves, based on the novel by Mordecai Richler
directed by Richard J. Lewis

NO STRINGS ATTACHED
**/****
starring Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Cary Elwes, Kevin Kline
screenplay by Elizabeth Meriwether
directed by Ivan Reitman

by Ian Pugh It's easier to accept Barney's Version once you realize it doesn't have much to say. Little more than a series of vignettes, the film surveys in piecemeal fashion the life of one Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti), a Jewish artist who endured three tumultuous marriages (the wives are played by Rachel Lefevre, Minnie Driver, and Rosamund Pike) and the mysterious death of best friend Boogie (Scott Speedman, whom I initially mistook for Hugh Jackman) along the way to producing a popular soap opera. Giamatti doesn't do outstanding work here, but he's reliable in that familiar Giamatti way: perpetually locked in a state of concentration, trying to understand the subtext of whatever fortunes or misfortunes befall him. Seems like we're all trying to figure things out, doesn't it? The film doesn't know whether to focus on life as a comedy or as a drama, and for that reason alone, it feels incredibly disjointed. It should be. It's supposed to be.

The Green Hornet (2011)

January 14, 2011Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Crime, Superhero, Theatrical, ZERO STARS

ZERO STARS/****
starring Seth Rogen, Jay Chou, Christoph Waltz, Tom Wilkinson
screenplay by Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg
directed by Michel Gondry

Greenhornetby Walter Chaw Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) asks chauffer Kato (Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou) out on a date in Michel Gondry's excrescent The Green Hornet, and then, once on that date, acts surprised when Kato makes a pass at her whilst tickling the ivories. It's the only thing of mild interest in a film that's otherwise the obvious front-runner for a few worst-of-2011 lists–a fate it'll probably avoid only because no one will remember the benighted thing an hour or two after screening it. Give The Green Hornet this, though: it's the first mainstream American film to even flirt with the idea of Yellow/White miscegenation since maybe the 18-year-old Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Rob Cohen's biopic about Chou's hero and the true antecedent to the Kato role. It's funny to me that men from one of the most populated places on the planet have, in the American cinema, been reduced to hilarious, impotent sidekicks or wise old men who know kung fu–or is there some kind of Little Richard image-castration going on here to protect delicate Caucasian egos from bedroom Yellow Peril? No, more likely the instinct that makes it funny to cast someone like Jackie Chan as Chris Tucker's bitch in the United States is the same one that fuels Chou's eventual rescue in this piece of shit by the titular lummox, played by Seth Rogen (make that rescues–the first coming when The Green Hornet tosses poor, dumb Kato a lobster-shaped inflatable to save his drowning ass). It's the same one that casts Mexicans as chulo drug-dealers hanging out on the East Side and poor Christoph Waltz, Oscar still warm, as an insecure crime lord given to monologues and bemoaning his mid-life crisis. The Green Hornet is bad stand-up, all improvisation and flop sweat you get to endure for over two full, agonizing, distended hours.

Somewhere (2010)

December 22, 2010Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Directors: Sofia Coppola, Drama, Italy, Japan, Theatrical, UK

****/****
starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning, Chris Pontius, Michelle Monaghan
written and directed by Sofia Coppola

by Walter Chaw Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere is another of her little tales of listlessness and the lost, of the beauty in the longueurs of existential crises. The summation of her riffs on loneliness and temporariness and the brief interludes of light that merely serve as punctuations for the dark, it’s her best film. Funny how one of the great, near-universally-accepted cinema fiascos could net a filmmaker damaged enough to make delicate, ambiguous pictures about the fear of growing up. It’s there at those crossroads that Coppola’s work locates itself with characters in situations larger than them, buffeted into ideological corners and forced to answer Prufrock-ian questions, cloistered in hotels and Versailles that substitute for chambers of the sea, indeed, among some talk of you and me. Somewhere feels deeply, intensely personal, though the only secrets it divulges are the obvious ones (the life of reluctant celebrity played out in anonymous rooms before invisible audiences), so that its intimacy is a product of a conversation between its impossible signs and the nostalgia for an experience of loss that we provide it. It’s gorgeous, and gorgeously broken–a movie about lifelines by a person who’s drowned.

The Other Guys (2010) [The Unrated Other Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

December 13, 2010Posted in****/****, 2000s, 2010, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, FFC Must-Own

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes, Dwayne Johnson
screenplay by Adam McKay & Chris Henchy
directed by Adam McKay

Mustownby Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Think about what sort of film would place Will Ferrell's schlubby physique and vacant grin against Mark Wahlberg's sharp, furrowed brow. More than just comically mismatched, these two actors belong in different movies, different genres…on different planets, even. They share something resembling a love-hate "chemistry," but from the get-go the pairing feels off–different. Eventually you figure out that The Other Guys is the kind of movie that thrives on bizarre contradictions–the kind of movie where gun-toting heroes are sent to end corporate malfeasance, where their vehicles of choice are a Prius and a Gran Torino that runs on "100% vegetable oil," where they loudly defend not the awesomeness of Star Wars but its scientific accuracy.1 A quintessentially American response to the quintessentially British Hot Fuzz, Adam McKay's The Other Guys is the funniest, most delirious comedy I've seen in a long while, and it matches and exceeds the sharp cultural satire of McKay's Talladega Nights in tackling not so much the conventions of the buddy-cop genre as the childish drama that attends them.

Party Down: Season Two (2010) – DVD

December 8, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, DVD, Television

Image A- Sound A- Extras D+
"Jackal Onassis Backstage Party," "Precious Lights Preschool Auction," "Nick DiCintio's Orgy Night," "James Ellison Funeral," "Steve Guttenberg's Birthday," "Not On Your Wife Opening Night," "Party Down Company Picnic," "Joel Munt's Big Deal Party," "Cole Landry's Draft Day Party," "Constance Carmell Wedding"

by Jefferson Robbins Hitting its sophomore stride just in time to meet the axe, the Starz sitcom "Party Down" tries its damnedest to make an arc out of its concept: catering staff with frustrated dreams of fame passes out shrimp rolls to the Hollywood elite. Off-putting and cruel in its first season, the ensemble comedy hits its rhythm this time around, even managing to develop a theme beyond "workaday despair."

Lost in Translation (2003) – Blu-ray Disc + Anything Else (2003) – DVD

December 6, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Sofia Coppola, Drama, DVD, France, Japan, Romance, Scarlett Johansson, UK, ZERO STARS

LOST IN TRANSLATION
***½/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras B
starring Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi, Anna Faris
written and directed by Sofia Coppola

ANYTHING ELSE
ZERO STARS/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Woody Allen, Jason Biggs, Christina Ricci, Danny DeVito
written and directed by Woody Allen

Lostintranslationby Walter Chaw It feels a lot like life is an endless succession of heartsickness and anticipation of heartsickness. After a while, taking a line from Tender Mercies, it's hard to trust happiness anymore when happiness feels so ephemeral compared to the weight of grief. Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation is about the wear of time and the unbearable burden of experience–it's about how even what's new and fresh is darkened by the ghosts of regret and time. When Bill Murray's fading star Bob Harris arrives in Tokyo to lend his image to a top-shelf whiskey, he is suffused with so much of the sadness of living that the surprise of life has become something to be viewed with suspicion. Newness fades and that familiar malaise, weary and grey, inevitably takes its place, sometimes even before the exhilaration of newness can reinvigorate. Bob meets Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) in the hotel bar; she's in town with her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), and together Bob and Charlotte paint the town blue.

Mars Attacks! (1996) – Blu-ray Disc

November 29, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Jack Nicholson, Satire, Sci-Fi

***/**** Image A- Sound C
starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan
screenplay by Jonathan Gems
directed by Tim Burton

by Jefferson Robbins When Tim Burton calls in his Hollywood chips, it's usually, to our benefit, to facilitate his darker impulses. 1989's Batman gave him free reign to make Edward Scissorhands, for instance, and Warner Bros. incubated the bitter confection of Sweeney Todd after raking in more traditional bucks on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I daresay one of those Burton Unbound documents is his A-list romp Mars Attacks!, which today gives off strange vibrations that echo forward as well as back. It's a '50s UFO-invasion flick farce, of course, based on a 1962 trading card set illustrated by, among others, comics great Wally Wood. It's anarchic, unexpected ("Wha? Trading cards?" we all said at the time), and darkly funny. It plays in the massive footprint of the same year's Independence Day, and in its more biting moments, it somehow speaks to the great collapses of the subsequent decade.

Fight Club (1999) [10th Anniversary Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

November 29, 2010Posted in1990s, 2010, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: David Fincher, Drama, Esoterica

***/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras A
starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Aday
screenplay by Jim Uhls, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
directed by David Fincher

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. My on-again/off-again love affair with David Fincher began with a PREMIERE article I read about how much of an asshole he was on the set of Alien3, dumping a few-hundred baby crickets on a pretty surprised, pretty pissed, pretty skivvies-clad Sigourney Weaver. But I didn't really prick up my ears until his urban/ecclesiastical serial killer masterpiece Se7en revealed to me a key to unlocking the Coens' Barton Fink–being, as they were, thematic doppelgängers. Soaked in wet and Hemingway, Fincher declares the world a scam and appoints himself the snake-oil barker shilling from the proscenium on the wagon; Barton Fink, also stained sepia brown, also ostensibly engaged in the pursuit of a serial killer and the excoriation of deadly sins, is the spirit to Se7en's flesh. Even as he flounders at the heartbeat, Fincher finds the headlong of his carnal lather again in his adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, establishing his mission statement as subterranean explorations of masculine aggression and explaining to me my tendency to confuse Fincher's films with those of Michael Mann. Focusing on the testosterone in Fincher's pictures offers partial explanation of the movies in his oeuvre that don't work (and, within those failures, the parts that do). Too, it's explanation of why it is that Fight Club's ending is so jarringly unsatisfying–"You met me at kind of a strange time in my life" the nancy punchline to two-plus hours of quintessential asshole cinema.

The Return of the Living Dead (1985) – DVD (2002) + Collector’s Edition DVD|Blu-ray + DVD

November 26, 2010Posted in1980s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire, Sci-Fi, Zombie

***/****
'02 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
'07 DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras A
BD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A
starring Clu Gulager, James Karen, Don Calfa, Thom Mathews
written and directed by Dan O'Bannon

Returnofthelivingdeadcapby Walter Chaw Sort of a cross between Dawn of the Dead and Valley Girl, Dan O'Bannon's hysterical The Return of the Living Dead most resembles in the final analysis O'Bannon's own cult favourite Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter. Both pictures exist in an insular environment, both skewer genre and societal mores, and both, oddly enough, have something of a political conscience. Positing that Night of the Living Dead was based on a true story and that the remnants of that zombie conflagration have been stored in barrels accidentally shipped to the Uneeda Medical Supply Company (where goofy stock manager Frank (a fabulous James Karen) carelessly starts the horror cycle), The Return of the Living Dead turns a satirical eye on Reagan's hawkish heart, the sprung logic of Italian zombie movies, and John Hughes's brat-pack films.

The Kids Are All Right (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

November 23, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, France, Romance

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson
screenplay by Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg
directed by Lisa Cholodenko

by Bill Chambers Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and her younger brother Laser (Josh Hutcherson) are the offspring of lesbian couple Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) and an anonymous sperm donor named Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Nic and Jules shared the burden of pregnancy, and though The Kids Are All Right never comes right out and says who gave birth to whom, the dispositional echoes, subtle shows of favouritism, and even just the kids’ names suggest that gynecologist Nic had the overachieving Joni and hippie-dippy Jules bore impressionable, impetuous Laser. But the movie’s more intriguing when the dots are harder to connect. Nic, for instance, gets off on watching a tape of two guys fornicating as Jules pleasures her. And Laser has to guilt goodie-goodie Joni into contacting their biological father, yet it’s Joni who takes an immediate shine to the man, while Laser sniffs, “I think he’s a little into himself”–directly mirroring Nic’s subsequent assessment of Paul as “self-satisfied.” A critical callback, it shows that Nic and Jules aren’t two single mothers sharing a roof à la “Kate & Allie”, but parents whose dynamic jointly influences their children. It’s also more convincing evidence of their togetherness than their bedtime nicknames for each other (“chicken” and “pony”), which the actresses can barely utter without giving away the blooper reel.

Bored to Death: The Complete First Season (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

November 22, 2010Posted in2000s, 2010, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Television, Thriller

Image B Sound B Extras C+
"Stockholm Syndrome," "The Alanon Case," "The Case of the Missing Screenplay," "The Case of the Stolen Skateboard," The Case of the Lonely White Dove," "The Case of the Beautiful Blackmailer," "The Case of the Stolen Sperm," "Take a Dive"

by Jefferson Robbins With its accomplished but psychologically malformed boy-men, the first season of novelist-screenwriter Jonathan Ames's "Bored To Death" feels like a Judd Apatow joint transplanted to Tom Wolfe's outer boroughs. Its characters all want to be Masters of their particular Universes, but they're either hamstrung by their own neuroses or carting them along like luggage in spite of success. We know we're watching an HBO comedy, though it's often hard to discern where the comedy is supposed to be located. In Woody Allen nebbishism? In misdirection and error? In slapstick? In satirizing the hip, self-satisfied artistes of millennial New York's most fashionable burg? Barring a few episodes that succeed on the other points, the latter feels most likely.