DVD Archives - Page 24 of 85 - FILM FREAK CENTRAL

Year of the Dog (2007) – DVD

August 20, 20072000s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, Drama, DVD

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Molly Shannon, Laura Dern, Regina King, Tom McCarthy
written and directed by Mike White

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover A sea change has happened in cinematic irony. Where the well-dressed snarky bastard of the Eighties would scapegoat the consumer mentality of the expendable poor, the ironist of the new century knows the landscape is manufactured and that he or she is implicated in an artificiality nigh impossible to avoid. Thoughtful Wes Anderson occupies the high end of this movement, oblivious Jared Hess its nadir; Year of the Dog resides somewhere in the low-middle. It's intriguing to see Mike White–author of scripts for more naturalistic filmmakers Miguel Arteta and Richard Linklater–resort to this tactic for his directorial debut, and it certainly adds a layer of meaning that could've helped his screenplay for Arteta's The Good Girl. Though I fear the approach goes for instant recognition instead of entering deeper and pretty much says that resistance is futile, Year of the Dog still manages to wring a little moisture out of the damp rag of the style.

The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

August 15, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Horror, Thriller, Wes Craven, ZERO STARS

The Hills Have Eyes II
ZERO STARS/**** Image N/A Sound A Extras D
starring Michael McMillian, Jessica Stroup, Daniella Alonso, Jacob Vargas
screenplay by Wes Craven & Jonathan Craven
directed by Martin Weisz

by Walter Chaw I don't have any real objection to anything depicted in The Hills Have Eyes II: not to the live-birth prologue that ends with the grisly murder of the mother; not to the greenstick demise of one National Guardsman or the death-by-feces of another; not even to the brutal rape of still another enlistee whose very existence opens the door for an ugly sequel. No: testament to the howling ineptitude of the enterprise is that its every desperate attempt to offend fails miserably. It's so poorly directed and edited, in fact, that not only is nothing frightening (which is to be expected, frankly)–nothing's surprising, either. Every jump scare is completely telegraphed, the nigh-invulnerability of the bad guys is totally predictable, and every fatality of every alleged hero is delivered sans pathos or, really, consequence. It doesn't matter who dies because who lives has already been decided within the first few minutes. What's more, it's already been divined by the dullest member of the audience–said dull member the only one who gives enough of a shit to try to figure it out in the first place and stick it out through to the end. The sole reason why anyone would watch the whole thing would be if they were paid to do so, and even then, it's only money. Let me stress, though, that you're not leaving because the movie is horrific, appalling, and a moral vacuum–you're leaving because it sucks balls.

Disturbia (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

August 13, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A Extras C+
BD – Image B+ Sound A- (DD)/A (DTS) Extras C+
starring Shia LaBeouf, David Morse, Sarah Roemer, Carrie-Anne Moss
screenplay by Christopher Landon and Carl Ellsworth
directed by D.J. Caruso

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I’m not terribly upset that Disturbia directly steals from the infinitely superior Rear Window. If ever there was a time to resurrect the lesson in voyeurism that is Hitchcock’s masterpiece, it’s now, at the dawn of the closed-circuited twenty-first century. The problem with the newer film isn’t that it’s a rip-off, but that it fundamentally misunderstands its source. The terribly ambiguous stance on Jimmy Stewart’s Peeping Tom tendencies has become 100% gung-ho support of illegal surveillance, a development problematic for reasons that go beyond ethical considerations and political ramifications. I get that nobody involved means for Disturbia to champion creep behaviour–they’re merely fulfilling the hormonal wishes of the adolescents who made it a surprise hit last spring. It’s just that, stripped of any theme beyond catching a killer, Rear Window‘s not that interesting to watch.

Looking for Kitty (2006) – DVD

August 12, 20072000s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Comedy, Drama, DVD

*/**** Image C Sound C Extras C-
starring Edward Burns, David Krumholtz, Max Baker, Connie Britton
written and directed by Edward Burns

by Alex Jackson This is Edward Burns's fifth feature. Wouldn't you think he'd have learned a little something about filmmaking by now? If Burns were a complete unknown outside the margins of the industry and this were his directorial debut, maybe we could pat him on the head, tell him good job, and stick Looking for Kitty on the refrigerator door, all the while assuming that now that he's proven he can make a movie and get it seen, he'll move on to something he actually cares about. But this is his fifth film. Looking for Kitty feels like the first attempt at narrative storytelling by a young, inexperienced screenwriter who's just glad to have finished something. It's the kind of thing you write before you've found your voice. This is where you start out, not where you end up.

The Guns of Navarone (1961) [2-Disc DVD Set] – DVD

August 10, 20071960s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, UK, War

*½/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, James Darren
screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on the novel by Alistair MacLean
directed by J. Lee Thompson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover My brother Oliver is fond of citing movies where you actually root for the Nazis. Not because you like what they stand for, of course, but because the cinematic alternative suddenly seems much worse: fact of the matter is those fucking Von Trapps will simply not shut up in The Sound of Music, while anyone who would voluntarily off Jon Bon Jovi, as the Nazis do in U-571, can't possibly be ALL bad. To this very short list we may add the inexplicably popular guy-movie staple The Guns of Navarone. Supposedly trading on the selfless heroism of a commando unit behind enemy lines, the film has such a hair up its ass about the virtue of grim determination that it manages to bore you into an early grave within the first five minutes. Nearly three hours of watching Gregory Peck and his group of he-men bicker over ethics and strategy would make any thinking adult pray for some kind of violent deliverance. Nazis, Italian Fascists, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir–I'm not choosy about who shoots these jerks dead, just as long as somebody does it.

Summer School (1987) [Life’s a Beach Edition] – DVD

August 7, 20071980s, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance, Teen

*½/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Mark Harmon, Kirstie Alley, Robin Thomas, Patrick Labyorteaux
screenplay by Jeff Franklin
directed by Carl Reiner

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover We at FFC ride ourselves on sussing out the subtleties in what is widely condemned as popular junk, and more power to us. But if you're expecting a review of Summer School that illuminates the film's hidden complexities, you've sadly come to the wrong place. Although there are certain thematic features that identify it as an atypical entry in the '80s teen-comedy genre, not the least of which a sort-of social conscience that suggests National Lampoon's Degrassi High, these anomalous credentials are largely wiped out by a thudding lack of wit and a functional ugliness of craft that makes the film barely tolerable at the best of times. While the actors generally convey personality beyond the limited means of the production, they're fighting an uphill battle against a pervasive laziness behind the camera.

Reign Over Me (2007) + TMNT (2007)|TMNT – DVD

August 5, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Family, Hong Kong, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

REIGN OVER ME
**/****
starring Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler
written and directed by Mike Binder

TMNT
*/****
written and directed by Kevin Munroe

by Walter Chaw In response to the charge that critics are "downers" because they're too judgmental, a colleague and friend said on a panel that I participated in that some films only deserve judgment. It's a wonderfully bleak declaration, and dead on–think of it as an expansion of Pauline Kael's belief that no one ever takes the time to bash terrible pictures. But there's more to it than simply that brittle shattering of cinema's impregnable mythic mystique. I think certain movies deflect even judgment–movies that are the exact equivalent of, say, Michael Bolton and Kenny G collaborating on a cover of a Richard Marx song. Rail against them if you must, but there's no sport in it, and definitely no swaying of the assembled masses. There are films that are what they are, deserving neither praise nor condemnation in providing precisely the comfort of a tattered terry cloth robe worn ritualistically until disintegration. It's possible to meticulously, ruthlessly, intellectually deconstruct the aesthetic and functional properties of a favourite pair of sneakers, you know, but it's masturbatory and redundant and like swatting a fly with a Buick. I suspect that deep down everyone knows films like Reign Over Me and TMNT are as worthless as a plug nickel, that their appeal lies entirely in the fact that they'll present no surprises along with their usual meek payload of cheap emotional prattle and pocket uplift. And I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with that, either–I'm just saying I feel like I don't have much more to say after reviewing the same fucking movie about a dozen times a year.

Mr. Skeffington (1944) + The Star (1952) – DVDs

July 25, 20071940s, 1950s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Drama, DVD, Romance

MR. SKEFFINGTON
½*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B
starring Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, Richard Waring
screenplay by Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein
directed by Vincent Sherman

THE STAR
*/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood, Warner Anderson
screenplay by Katherine Albert and Dale Eunson
directed by Stuart Heisler

by Walter Chaw Biographers and geeks would be right to point out that Bette Davis spent her late career–on screen and, abortively, on stage–getting in her own way, while cynics and realists would be right to point out that the one most probably led to the other, if we're to take "the other" as autobiographical. Even people resistant to the auteur theory tend to recognize that matinee idols shoulder at least a fair share of the blame for picking vanity pieces and assorted flaming trainwrecks from the piles of projects offered them. If there's a fair modern, distaff analogue to Bette Davis's embarrassing epilogue in self-abnegating camp artifacts, it's Burt Reynolds's own squandering of his status as the biggest thing on planet Hollywood for a series of vainglorious redneck "gorsh!" spectacles that tied him eternally with Dom DeLuise and, oh my, Hal Needham. Consider that both have earned a small, rabid band of indefatigable defenders of their late, self-inflicted careers (gay men for Bette, assholes for Burt) for nothing more than confirming their respective lifestyles of bitchy flamboyance on the one side and dimwitted macho rebellion on the other. They're cults of personality by the very definition of "cultism," founded on the shale of limited appeal and the arrested desire to emulate someone you admire. (See also: the army of SAHMs shuffling after Oprah.) I guess you could say that although I get it, I'm not down with the cult of Bette.

Curse of the Golden Flower (2006) – DVD

July 24, 20072000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, China, Drama, DVD, Hong Kong, Romance

**½/**** Image B Sound A Extras D
starring Chow Yun Fat, Gong Li, Jay Chou, Liu Ye
screenplay by Zhang Yimou, Wu Nan, Bian Zhihong
directed by Zhang Yimou

by Walter Chaw I recently had the opportunity to see for the first time the cut of Zhang Yimou's virtuoso Hero prepared for Yankee viewers, complete with the subtitles and framing cards slapped on by American distributors. Before now, the only contact I'd had with the film was through a region-free DVD from Hong Kong that preceded the U.S. theatrical release by a couple of years. (After buying the rights to it, Miramax, you'll recall, decided to sit on it until such time as its unleashing wouldn't somehow interfere with timeless masterpieces of misguided schlock like Cold Mountain.) Anyway, I was appalled. The extent to which Hero has been dumbed-down–the insertion of "our country" for a term that means, in Mandarin, "beneath the sky" drums up this weird nationalistic gumbo at the end where, before, it was sober and idealistic–manages to paint Zhang as the worst kind of toad. There's an animated map at the beginning now, I guess to show the great unwashed American moron that there is land outside the range of purple mountains majesty, while much mystical bullshit about "over two thousand years ago" mainly obscures the fact that Hero takes place well over two thousand years ago. I feel a lot of anger towards what's been done to one of the best films ever to come out of the Mainland to make it more suited for white consumption, both because of the sacrilege and because whoever's responsible has a lot of answering to do for how far they've undersold the intelligence of Western audiences. I finally understand why a lot of people in the United States didn't think much of Hero: the version I saw was a Zhang Yimou picture, whereas the version most in this country saw was a Miramax picture.

Regarding Henry: FFC Interviews Henry Rollins/Henry Rollins: Uncut from NYC + The Henry Rollins Show: Season One – DVDs

July 22, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, DVD, Esoterica, Interviews, Music, Television

HENRY ROLLINS: UNCUT FROM NYC (2006)
*1/2 (out of four)

THE HENRY ROLLINS SHOW: SEASON ONE (2006)
*** (out of four)

INTERVIEWING HENRY ROLLINS (2007)
Priceless

July 22, 2007|Black Flag was the first hardcore punk band in the United States, spearheading a mad Southern California scene that belched forth this idea that James Taylor was not the voice of a generation in much the same way that the cinema of the '60s rejected that of the '50s. Marked by violence and speed, the band–the brainchild of guitarist Greg Ginn–went through multiple rosters before Henry Rollins, a 20-year-old fan living his dream as a roadie for the band, replaced Dez Cadena (who lost his voice and ambition to front the group at the end of the summer of 1981) as its lead singer. Instantly the spokesman for the group, the heavily-tattooed Rollins, muscular to the point of looking like a bullet with eyes and known for performing shirtless in black shorts (as well as getting into fistfights with audience members), also demonstrated a great deal of verbal agility and improvisational ability. A tireless, stubborn autodidact, he was quick on his feet, and final shows saw the band jumping into jazz-like improvisational bursts with Rollins shouting things as they came to his mind. Think about it for a minute and it has the potential to be retarded; but Rollins, for everything he is and isn't, has an amazingly nimble mind and a pit of outrage that seems bottomless.

Ghost Rider (2007) [Widescreen Edition] – DVD

July 17, 20072000s, Australia, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

*½/**** Image A- Sound A (DD)/A- (DTS) Extras B-
starring Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Wes Bentley, Peter Fonda
written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Never let it be said that I have my finger on the pulse of the public. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me into a theatre showing Ghost Rider when it opened in the first quarter of this year, but that didn't stop it from ringing the box-office bell more times than it ever deserved. As it turns out, my aversion to the film proved largely justified: Though one can savour Ghost Rider's campier elements (i.e., the toploading of Nicolas Cage with nutty things to do), it's otherwise a pretty pallid affair, with professional but uninspired direction and a ludicrous screenplay both courtesy Daredevil perpetrator Mark Steven Johnson. The film cries out for the gonzo treatment of a Joe Dante, whereas Johnson acts like nothing untoward is happening as his characters say and do absurd things. Even the centrepiece action sequences have no flavour because he hasn't invested anything other than budget in the proceedings.

The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (2007) [Unrated] – DVD

July 11, 20072000s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Ian Pugh, Comedy, DVD

*/**** Image B- Sound A Extras D
starring Jonathan Bennett, Randy Wayne, April Scott, Christopher McDonald
written by Shane Morris
directed by Robert Berlinger

by Ian Pugh Jay Chandrasekhar's The Dukes of Hazzard is not one of the worst movies ever made, but it's almost certainly one of the most depressing. As it essentially amounts to an episode of the eponymous television series given to brief flashes of self-awareness, it reveals itself as a Beckett-esque nightmare in which the characters have been granted a dim perception that they're trapped in a world of hate and marginalization (particularly in regards to Daisy's contemplation of her uselessness except as eye candy) with no means of escape. In the hands of television hack Robert Berlinger, The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning (hereafter Dukes 2) is a loose prequel to some hybrid of the movie/TV franchise that jettisons Chandrasekhar's brushes with the fourth wall in favour of an "ignorance is bliss" policy that ends up being only marginally less depressing. The film encompasses the story of how teenaged cousins Bo (Jonathan Bennett) and Luke Duke (Randy Wayne) left a promising future of generic juvenile delinquency, cobbled together The General Lee, popped their cherries, and found themselves in a never-ending cycle of car chases and frat-boy leering. Never mind that "The Dukes of Hazzard" rarely bothered to rationalize its own exploitation of those small-screen vices–the prequel applies more of the same and seems to promise countless adventures to come, but really it just represents an entry point into that oppressive, infinite loop. It's a moment of stark inevitability comparable to another, similarly-titled prequel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning) and its sad march into the void of madness.

Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) + The Awful Truth (1937) – DVDs

July 9, 20071930s, 1950s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Comedy, DVD, Romance

RALLY ‘ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!
**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins, Jack Carson
screenplay by Claude Binyon and Leo McCarey
directed by Leo McCarey

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I have conflicting feelings about Leo McCarey’s Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!. Part of me thinks it’s a professional, well-crafted comedy that happily stops just this side of vulgarity; another part of me wishes it had actually crossed into the land of the vulgar and settled in Frank Tashlin’s hometown. To its advantage, it’s an extremely polished film with a nice feeling for shape and colour that’s very well acted in all the major roles. But I still wish that someone like Tashlin had directed it and turned it into the rowdy shambles it so desperately wants to be.

The Cowboys (1972) [Deluxe Edition] – DVD

June 29, 20071970s, Adventure, Drama, DVD, Western

***½/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring John Wayne, Roscoe Lee Browne, Bruce Dern, Colleen Dewhurst
screenplay by Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank, Jr. and William Dale Jennings, based on the novel by William Dale Jennings
directed by Mark Rydell

by Walter Chaw Based on a novel and co-written by William Dale Jennings, one of the co-founders of the Mattachine Society (a group interested in furthering the rights of homosexuals in society), Mark Rydell's The Cowboys betrays at its best a crystalline throughline into what it means to be bullied. It's a chronicle of oppression, a western at the genre's terminus point that, beneath the wide open skies of Colorado and New Mexico, paints an ugly picture of what happens when innocence is directed into experience by cruel hands and angry truths. I think of The Cowboys as John Wayne's The Misfits; he'd go on to do six more films, but The Cowboys' insight into the end of the line, with its collection of mismatched parts driven to violence, locates this 1972 picture as very much a product of the American New Wave–and as Wayne's final coming to terms with the mythologizing of violence. It's fine work from Wayne, too, an actor who, like many of his generation and stature, is accused of being a personality but nevertheless gave a handful of truly great performances.

Ivanhoe (1952) – DVD

June 26, 20071950s, Adventure, Authors: Alex Jackson, Drama, DVD, Romance

**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras C+
starring Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
screenplay by Noel Langley, based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott
directed by Richard Thorpe

by Alex Jackson Think of Ivanhoe as the 1952 version of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy: a big-budget historical epic designed to garner prestigious Oscar buzz as well as blockbuster box-office results. Like Troy, the film's fatal flaw is in favouring superficial fidelities over a meaningful interpretation of the subject matter. This is a masochistic and defensively middlebrow idea of art, not to mention naïve. Consider, for example, that there are no gods in Troy. Yes, this is perfectly reasonable when you consider what today's filmgoers are likely to take seriously and what they are likely to laugh at; Laurence Olivier in Clash of the Titans is most definitely a camp object. Then, of course, there are the wiseasses who populate Sam Raimi's dedicatedly silly TV series "Hercules" and "Xena".

Rescue Me: The Complete Third Season (2006) – DVD

June 25, 20072000s, Authors: Walter Chaw, Comedy, Drama, DVD, Television

Image A Sound A Extras C
"Devil," "Discovery," "Torture," "Sparks," "Chlamydia," "Zombies," "Satisfaction," "Karate," "Pieces," "Retards," "Twilight," "Hell," "Beached"

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. As much a product of our post-apocalypse as "Deadwood", "Rescue Me", like that David Milch masterpiece, is about the flattening of society and the reconstruction of it according to masculine, animal logic. Indeed, it's a good argument that society has never been constructed any other way. As such, the series, Denis Leary and writing partner Peter Tolan's brainchild and baby, demonstrates a wonderful insight into the male psyche: how it deals with grief, as well as its caveman attitude towards women. The two things are compatible, after all, and authors no less than Faulkner and Freud eventually gave up trying to write women. The only sensible thing is to let the nightmare of "Rescue Me"'s exuberant misogyny wash over like a warm tide; why fight it? I've had a hard time watching Leary without wishing that they'd cast him as Garth Ennis's John Constantine, but it occurred to me some time in the middle of "Rescue Me"'s third season that Leary's firefighter Tommy Gavin is as close to a consort of the devil as Constantine ever was. Perhaps closer. Tommy's infernal, even demonic (I see that now), and the show he haunts is a very specific vision of a very personal hell. Women are bitch goddesses here: temptresses of mysterious purpose who reward misdeeds, punish valour, and steal children. They're succubae that distribute venereal diseases and, worse, get pregnant. I wonder if the premise of the whole shebang is that nobody survived 9/11–that no matter the misdeed, Tommy is rewarded with gardens of earthly delight, the price being that he lives with ghosts in an empty city that periodically bursts into flame.

The Siege (1998) [Martial Law Edition] – DVD

June 22, 20071990s, Action, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, Bruce Willis, Tony Shaloub
screenplay by Lawrence Wright and Menno Meyjes & Edward Zwick
directed by Edward Zwick

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover The Hollywood liberal is a strange beast. It has been known to speak pieties about the evils of racism, the horrors of war, and the value of freedom with what looks like conviction, if not authority–but when our backs our turned, it builds monuments to military hardware, sings praise to the power of the badge and gun, and subordinates non-whites, non-straights, and non-males to positions of zero control within even the most progressive dramas. The Siege captures this particular genus of liberal at its most confused and self-righteous. Firing in all directions at topics it can't begin to comprehend, it is in any event too in love with the rules of aesthetic engagement to commit to its 'issues' with anything approaching honesty. One hand gives, the other takes away–, and the result is a seething mass of contradictions that's almost too painful to bear.

The Untouchables: Season 1, Volume 1 (1959-1960) + The Scarface Mob (1959) – DVDs

June 20, 20071950s, 1960s, Authors: Ian Pugh, Crime, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Television

THE UNTOUCHABLES: SEASON 1, VOLUME 1
Image B+ Sound B Extras D+
“The Empty Chair,” “Ma Barker and Her Boys,” “The George ‘Bugs’ Moran Story,” “The Jake Lingle Killings,” “Ain’t We Got Fun,” “Vincent ‘Mad Dog’ Coll,” “Mexican Stake-Out,” “The Artichoke King,” “The Tri-State Gang,” “The Dutch Schultz Story,” “You Can’t Pick the Number,” “The Underground Railway,” “Syndicate Sanctuary,” “The Noise of Death”

THE SCARFACE MOB
***/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D+
starring Robert Stack, Keenan Wynn, Barbara Nichols, Pat Crowley
written by Paul Monash, based on the novel The Untouchables by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley
directed by Phil Karlson

by Ian Pugh I love Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables precisely for the self-consciously fictionalized varnish that curiously seems to have earned it disdain among the director’s devotees. Apart from its romantic, “pure cinema” thrills, however, its Hollywood gloss is the perfect complement to De Palma’s penchant for effortlessly transforming assaults on the body into assaults on the mind: an undercurrent of violence constantly threatens to erupt and destroy the gentle exterior of a make-believe 1930s Utopia dictated by fedoras and pinstripe suits. No such undercurrent exists in the original 1959-63 Robert Stack television series on which the 1987 film is ostensibly based–it, too, is pure romanticism, but of a sleazier, more straightforward breed. Corruption and greed are obvious and rampant in “The Untouchables”‘ world, and the violence that greets dissent is treated as an accepted fact of everyday life. Each episode of the series begins with a brief preview of the scene featuring the most gunfire (usually taking out some poor schmuck who crossed his superiors), which quickly establishes the down-and-dirty rules in play. The greatest aspect of “The Untouchables” lies in how these scenes incite both a visceral thrill and the soon-fulfilled desire to see justice served.

Shooter (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 19, 20072000s, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, DVD, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image B Sound A Extras B-
starring Mark Wahlberg, Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Ned Beatty
screenplay by Jonathan Lemkin, based on the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter
directed by Antoine Fuqua

by Walter Chaw Think of it as the latest in the proud tradition of Walking Tall hicksploitation: a redneck Bourne Identity with a bleeding heart tacked to its sleeve by barbed chicken wire. Or, better, think of Shooter as a noble attempt to win back the Kansan-Tennesseean-Montanan wingnut demographic from the arch-conservatives who've made men buggering one another of greater concern than their farms going under and their children fighting indefensible wars declared by an impossibly wealthy aristocracy-by-coup. Sound extreme? Shooter is all this and more: a nihilistic exercise in Old Testament revenge that has more in common with such cult classics as Next of Kin than with cult classics like the suddenly-reserved-seeming Sniper. It makes no bones about its politics, assembling talking heads in the form of a venerable Red State senator (Ned Beatty) and a too-old-for-this-shit Colonel (Danny Glover, too old for this shit almost twenty years ago) to spout on endlessly about the lack of WMDs, the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, and, for shits and giggles, the conspiracy behind the JFK assassination. No The Parallax View, the film mines the complex machinations of good guys being good and bad guys being bad: bad guys being politicians and military guys drunk on power and good guys being hillbilly guardsmen with access to the Internet and too many guns.

Breach (2007) [Widescreen] – DVD

June 11, 20072000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Travis Mackenzie Hoover, Biopic, Crime, Drama, DVD, Espionage, Thriller

***/**** Image B- Sound A- Extras A-
starring Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, Dennis Haysbert
screenplay by Adam Mazer & William Rotko and Billy Ray
directed by Billy Ray

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Breach is so good, you want it to be better; it's a tense, relentless, Alan-Pakula-in-marble chiller that sketches the schizoid ways of its real-life subject so effectively that you're eager to know more than the genre trappings can accommodate. This would be of greater cause for concern were Breach not already, as it is, much better written and light-years better directed than most of its brethren in the Washington-intrigue sub-genre. Make no mistake: it has an iron grip on the spine, and its refreshingly quiet approach eschews rapid montage for unnerving negative space. You hear every line instead of noticing the pictures, even as the pictures work overtime–and the aggregate is sweetly enthralling, if somewhat incomplete.