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

February 12, 2013Posted in2000s, 2010, 2013, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Martin Scorsese, Drama, DVD, Gangster, Television

Boardwalkempire

Image A- Sound A+ Extras A
“Boardwalk Empire,” “The Ivory Tower,” “Broadway Limited,” “Anastasia,” “Nights in Ballygran,” “Family Limitation,” “Home,” “Hold Me in Paradise,” “Belle Femme,” “The Emerald City,” “Paris Green,” “A Return to Normalcy”

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Two things right off the bat about HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire”. First, the Martin Scorsese who directed the pilot would eat the tedious old guy who made Hugo for lunch. Second, for as good as the first season turns out to be, it’s based almost entirely on the strength of a cast minimizing the disappointment of opportunities lost. Even the actors, though, can be something of a liability, in that the mere presence of Michael Shannon cues us that straitlaced, proto-Untouchable Agent Nelson Van Alden is on his way to becoming a full-blown nutter. The premise is tired, too, as almost a century’s remove from the 1920s American gangster cycle has made the whole genre exhausted. There are no new delights in a midnight Tommy-gun execution in the woods, or an unhinged Guido unloading on a hapless shopkeeper. There’s not much joy, either, in trainspotting the parade of gangsters, the Lucky Lucianos (Vincent Piazza) and Al Capones (Stephen Graham, late of Public Enemies) and Meyer Lanskys (Anatol Yusef), partly because if you’re a student of gangland history, you’re immediately cued to their fates. Implanted spoilers, if you will. The real revelations of “Boardwalk Empire” are Jack Huston as a mutilated WWI doughboy and Gretchen Mol, who spent the first half of her career as Cameron Diaz’s haircut (see also: Malin Akerman) but emerges in this venue as an actress of complexity and intelligence. It’s enough to wonder what the series might have been were the casting not so otherwise on the nose–a strange liability, I know.

Peter Pan (1953) [Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

February 4, 2013Posted in1950s, 2013, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, DVD, Family, Fantasy, Revenge

Peterpan1

**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
directed by Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronomi, Wilfred Jackson

by Bill Chambers Since the 1950s, mainstream audiences have grown up knowing Walt Disney’s Peter Pan as the definitive adaptation of J.M. Barrie’s play and its subsequent novelization (Peter and Wendy), and that’s a mixed blessing. For everything the Disney movie does well, like the swashbuckling, it does something horribly wrong, like compounding Barrie’s 19th-century notions with retrograde values all the movie’s own. For instance, the English Barrie may have regarded Native Americans as exotic creatures by locating them in Never Land, but it’s Disney who immortalized them in literal red skin, then gave them a song celebrating their mono-syllabic cretinism:

The Apparition (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 27, 2013Posted in2012, 2013, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror

Apparition6

*/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras HILARIOUS
starring Ashley Greene, Sebastian Stan, Tom Felton, Julianna Guill
written and directed by Todd Lincoln

by Walter Chaw I think you enter into a handshake agreement with The Apparition that it’s never, not for a moment, going to be scary when in its prologue, we’re introduced to Harry Potter alum Tom “Draco” Felton as a grad student or something in a Doc Brown helmet prattling on about “anomalistic psychology” in that affected, pained way the Harry Potter alums (see: Emma “Hermione” Watson in The Perks of Being a Wallflower) seem to have adopted post-franchise. Or maybe it’s the first scene between central pretties Kelly and Ben (Ashley Greene and Sebastian Stan), which, without fail, sports extra, meaningless, unintentionally hysterical blank reaction shots, thus announcing, in addition to hyphenate Todd Lincoln’s inability to cast, his inability to frame shots or hire an editor (or three, as the case may be). To The Apparition‘s credit, though, milquetoast hero Ben is wearing the Bauhaus T-shirt I used to wear in high school when I wasn’t trying to be hip, so…yay for being old enough to have a direct connection to a hipster reference. As for the rest of it, it’s kind of astonishing that this didn’t land as a dtv relic submitted for the immediate disapproval of the Netflix-streaming peanut gallery.

Frankenweenie (2012) – Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

January 20, 2013Posted in2012, 2013, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Disney, DVD, Family, Horror

Frankenweenie1

**/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras C+
screenplay by John August, based on a screenplay by Lenny Ripps
directed by Tim Burton

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Back in the early Eighties, Tim Burton was part of the conveyor belt at the Walt Disney Company, cranking out artwork for films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron. But drawing cuddly animals proved as bad a fit for Burton as it did for R. Crumb, and the studio eventually allowed him to separate from the pack, giving him a chance to hone his voice that was kind of unprecedented. Under the Disney umbrella, Burton produced two black-and-white shorts: the animated Vincent, a sweet and Seussian ode to his idol, Vincent Price (who narrated); and the live-action Frankenweenie, about a boy who uses mad science to bring his departed canine back to life. The latter scandalized Disney (too “scary,” plus dead dogs and black-and-white have got to be roughly equivalent anathema to kiddie fare), and plans were shelved to attach the film to prints of Pinocchio in 1984. Three decades later, Disney confidently bankrolled a feature-length remake of Frankenweenie, stop-motion animated this time but still in black-and-white, and still with an undead dog at the crux of the narrative. What changed in the interim?

Trouble with the Curve (2012) [Combo Pack] – Blu-ray + DVD + Ultraviolet

December 16, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Drama, DVD, Sports

Troublewiththecurve

*½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D
starring Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, John Goodman
screenplay by Randy Brown
directed by Robert Lorenz

by Angelo Muredda Trouble with the Curve is an unfortunate title for a film beset with problems on every side. Helmed by longtime Clint Eastwood producer/assistant director/close friend Robert Lorenz, making his equally unfortunate feature debut, it isn’t directed so much as stiffly pushed in the direction of new events once every ten minutes or so. A father-daughter family drama, a sports movie, and a portrait of a career woman swimming with the sharks, first-timer Randy Brown’s screenplay is a mess beyond even an experienced director’s fixing.

The Bourne Legacy (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + Ultraviolet

December 11, 2012Posted in2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Espionage, Japan, Thriller

Bournelegacy1

½*/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras B-
starring Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Stacy Keach
screenplay by Tony Gilroy & Dan Gilroy
directed by Tony Gilroy

by Walter Chaw By the end of Tony Gilroy’s unbearably long and talky The Bourne Legacy, one is left feeling as though the film hasn’t even started yet. Nothing happens in it, and the only thing it inspires is anticipation: it’s all first act; all supplementary material; all self-importance and hot air. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) sits this one out while another similar soldier, Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), occupies a space parallel to the first three films, climbing mountains, Grey-ing wolves, and saving hot virologist Dr. Marta (Rachel Weisz) from the clutches of our evil government so that she can infect him with a virus that makes him smart. This leads to a moment, inevitable, where Cross suggests that losing 12 points off his artificially inflated IQ would result in some personal “Flowers for Algernon” apocalypse where 12 points would probably result in him forgetting his phone number at worst. It also leads to a series of incoherent flashbacks that fit in perfectly with Gilroy’s impossible-to-follow action sequences; if you’re just going to turn a camera on and throw it out a window, why bother trying to set it up? For those keeping score, there are more spinning Lazy Susan shots here than in Transformers: Asshole. You’ve been warned.

New Year’s Eve (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

December 9, 2012Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Robert De Niro, Romance

Newyearseve1

*/**** Image A Sound C+ Extras C-
starring Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin
screenplay by Katherine Fugate
directed by Garry Marshall

by Jefferson Robbins Refining the Hollywood gravity well–the kind of cinematic drain-spiral that A-listers and aspirants can’t not be in–he first manufactured with Valentine’s Day, Garry Marshall’s New Year’s Eve hinges for me on the thought that Robert De Niro got paid at least seven figures to literally lie in bed. The movie feints at the larger symbolism of the holiday: A progression forward in light of what’s come before, the passages between immaturity and adulthood and life and death. But this is a romcom from the godfather of the modern romcom, albeit a too-long one that’s neither very funny nor very romantic, and it ultimately takes its importance from the infantile imperative to kiss somebody, almost anybody, at midnight when the year turns. If you don’t, you’re worth nothing.

ParaNorman (2012) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 30, 2012Posted in2012, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, DVD, Horror, Zombie

Paranorman3

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
screenplay by Chris Butler & Sam Fell
directed by Chris Butler

by Walter Chaw Norman (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee) can see and speak with ghosts, which, if you squint a little, is only a metaphor for the kind of sensitivity that, in a boy, will invariably lead to about a decade of being brutalized by his disconnected male peer group. (Everything will change once he invents Microsoft or Pixar.) Norman’s chief tormentor is barely-verbal Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse, already past his sell-by date); his shallow and image-obsessed teenaged sister with a heart of gold™ is Courtney (the awesome Anna Kendrick), who has the hots for the captain of the football team, pre-verbal Mitch (Casey Affleck); and Norman’s best friend, whether he likes it or not, is Mitch’s weird, fat little brother, Neil (Tucker Albrizzi). The first problem of ParaNorman is that, in its rush to be sensitive to intelligent outcasts like Norman and Neil, it dehumanizes and mocks its tormentors, robbing them of the depth and complexity that would have resulted in a better film than this beautifully-wrought, entirely predictable package. (It’s like a jack-in-the-box made by Faberge.) The only moment in which one of these “inside” characters is given any kind of depth (it’s Mitch) is used as a sort of sitcom punchline that doesn’t lend the moment gravity so much as it continues the road of taking sloppy aim at an easy target.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

November 11, 2012Posted in2012, Action, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Superhero, Thriller

Tdkreturns1

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras B+
screenplay by Bob Goodman, based upon the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Klaus Janson
directed by Jay Oliva

by Jefferson Robbins There’s nothing left. Batman: Year One is so last year, The Killing Joke basically got turned into The Dark Knight, and “Watchmen” has become both a big-movie flopola and a prequel comics series. With Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 on shelves now and its concluding Part 2 due on direct-to-video disc this winter, the DC Universe has basically wrung itself dry of compelling product from the ’80s comics revolution that it can repurpose into features and animated editions. The bones remain for new stories, but the cost-benefit on original work vs. revivified fan favourites ever tilts towards the latter. Those of us who discovered or returned to superhero comics as a result of Frank Miller’s and Alan Moore’s mature deconstructions are seeing their final fruits. The only burning question is how many shmoes bought this package from Amazon thinking they were getting The Dark Knight Rises in half of a special two-disc edition.

Strangers on a Train (1951) [Two-Disc Special Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc

October 31, 2012Posted in****/****, 1950s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

Strangers5

****/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll
screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde, based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Alfred Hitchcock’s queerest film (Rope notwithstanding) and proof positive of the director’s knack for casting men of ambiguous sexual mooring in roles that cannily exploit it, Strangers on a Train, shot in vibrant contrasts by the great Robert Burks, is best read as a dark comedy–a noir in the most perverse sense of the term. Find in it the finest performance by troubled Robert Walker, tormented to his grave by David O. Selznick’s infatuation with and eventual theft of wife Jennifer Jones and committed, not long after Strangers on a Train finished shooting, to a mental institution, where he was the victim of an accidentally-lethal dose of sedative. Playing a character named after the kidnapper and murderer of the Lindbergh baby, Walker is Bruno, a spatted dandy who bumps shoes with hero Guy (Farley Granger–the “girl” in the Rope dyad) on a train and ostensibly hatches a plan with the pliant tennis star to “criss-cross” murders (trade assassinations, as it were), freeing each of them from the burden of blood motive. Bruno wants his father dead; Guy, involved in a very public affair with the senator’s daughter Anne (Ruth Roman) but shackled to loathsome Miriam (Kasey Rogers), would benefit from Miriam’s timely demise. So when Miriam turns up dead by Bruno’s hand, Guy is trapped by circumstance into either murdering Bruno’s dad or going to the police and implicating himself and his lover in a conspiracy.

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (1982) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 29, 2012Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, DVD, Horror

Death Dorm
Pranks
***/**** Image B- Sound B- Extras A
starring Laurie Lapinski, Stephen Sachs, David Snow, Daphne Zuniga
screenplay by Stephen Carpenter, Jeffrey Obrow, Stacey Giachino
directed by Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter

by Jefferson Robbins There may be nothing groundbreaking or new about a bunch of film nerds in their early twenties running around making a horror movie on the cheap, but that’s because Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter probably did it first. Created with the kind of zeal, energy, inventiveness-on-a-budget, and adherence to forms that are symptomatic of most youthful endeavours, The Dorm That Dripped Blood–written, shot, and released under a multiplicity of titles–is very much a product of its time and zeitgeist. That doesn’t mean it lacks worth–in fact, it manages to be both fun (in an ironic, cheesemongering way) and, in its final minutes, quite compelling and suspenseful.

The Raven (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack

October 24, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, DVD, Horror, Hungary, Mystery, Spain, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Raven1

ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, Brendan Gleeson
screenplay by Ben Livingston & Hannah Shakespeare
directed by James McTeigue

by Walter Chaw I’m no nineteenth-century cop, but I personally would begin by interrogating the guillotine-pendulum maker. James McTeigue’s abominable The Raven posits legendary Marylander Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) as a crazed, alcoholic, frustrated-artist type who has a bar tab the length of his arm to go with a fiery temper and a quite-requited, it turns out, affair with toothy Emily (from Aardman Studios: Alice Eve), daughter of Captain Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson). Alack-alay, what should happen but a wax museum breaks out as a critics-hating serial killer (just like Theatre of Blood, which I should’ve revisited instead) enacts scenes from Poe’s stories whilst dressed in the hat and cape of McTeigue’s V for Vendetta protag. Good copper Det. Fields (Luke Evans) is hot on the miscreant’s trail, enlisting Poe as a Poe expert to try to get one step ahead of the well-read marauder. There is, alas, no ratiocination the equal of the mystery of Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare’s (no relation, I hope) bewilderingly bad screenplay. No one, no one, could deliver these lines–a mush of anachronistic phrases and “period” posh–with conviction, much less the miscast Cusack and a motley band of supporting players. The good news is that The Raven is funny. The bad news is that it’s so awful, it makes you the kind of person who watches a movie just to be superior to it.

Magic Mike (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

October 22, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Directors: Steven Soderbergh, Drama, DVD, Theatrical

Magicmike1

**½/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matthew McConaughey
screenplay by Reid Carolin
directed by Steven Soderbergh

by Angelo Muredda Magic Mike opens with Saul Bass’s red-and-black Warner Bros. logo, retired in 1984. That gesture is meant, I think, to pitch what follows as a throwback to smarter studio fare along the lines of Hal Ashby’s Being There, but it also courts less flattering comparisons to the likes of the Police Academy movies. Steven Soderbergh’s latest pop exercise falls somewhere between those two poles–a little too close for comfort to the Guttenberg side. Conceived as a loose riff on star Channing Tatum’s time as a male stripper, it has a solid run as a cheerful smut delivery mechanism before hanging up its thong to become a rote ‘80s melodrama about good kids corrupted by bad drugs. If the howl of “Yes!” that greeted the first bared ass at my screening is any indication, that transformation won’t hurt the bottom line (a figure these strippers always seem to have on their minds), though it does make Magic Mike another promising yet half-baked Soderbergh project instead of a good movie, sans asterisks.

Child’s Play (1988) [Chucky’s 20th Birthday Edition] – DVD|Blu-ray Disc + Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

October 1, 2012Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Romania, Satire, Thriller, UK

CHILD'S PLAY
***/****
DVD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
BD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
starring Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini and John Lafia and Tom Holland
directed by Tom Holland

CHILD'S PLAY 2 (1990)
**/**** Image C+ Sound A-
starring Alex Vincent, Jenny Agutter, Gerrit Graham, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by John Lafia

CHILD'S PLAY 3 (1991)
*/**** Image B- Sound A-
starring Justin Whalin, Perrey Reeves, Jeremy Sylvers, Brad Dourif
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Jack Bender

BRIDE OF CHUCKY (1998)
**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Katherine Heigl, Nick Stabile
screenplay by Don Mancini
directed by Ronny Yu

SEED OF CHUCKY (2004)
*/**** Image A- Sound B Extras C-
starring Jennifer Tilly, Brad Dourif, Billy Boyd, Redman
written and directed by Don Mancini

Childsplaycap

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Twenty years and four sequels later, it's obviously pointless to try to conceal that Child's Play is about a serial killer (Brad Dourif) who transfers his soul into an innocuous doll, but watching it today–more than a decade after it thoroughly traumatized me as an impressionable preteen–I was surprised to learn that the film itself didn't do much to hide that fact from the start. Oh, sure, when you first approach Child's Play, you're ostensibly supposed to wonder whether little Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) is responsible for the murders peppered throughout, despite his loud protestations that Chucky did it. But no, it never really tries to pretend that these horrible acts are being committed by anyone other than that godawful doll. In taking that perspective, Child's Play preys upon the irrational fears we all harbour–that sting of dread we get at the sight of an unintentionally unsettling toy, immediately wished away by safe, immutable reason: that's impossible–a doll can't hurt you.

Dark Shadows (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

September 23, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, DVD, Horror, Vampire, Werewolf

Darkshadows3

*½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green
screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, based on the television series “Dark Shadows” by Dan Curtis
directed by Tim Burton

by Angelo Muredda Like so many of his recent dioramas, Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows starts off looking suspiciously like a real movie. The director’s tendency to Burtonize cherished texts into gauche self-portraits is suppressed in an economical opening that tells with a straight face the dolorous tale of Barnabas Collins, once-imprisoned and newly-freed vampire star of Dan Curtis’s late-afternoon soap. The mood is sombre–a nice hat-tip to Curtis’s morose series, which, if you’ll pardon the wonky chronology, played out like a Smiths song drained of irony. Alas, before long Barnabas awakens in 1972 to meet his distant relatives and dissipated hangers-on, and the mere presence of pasty-white, pink-shaded, ginger-wigged Helena Bonham Carter as family psychiatrist Julia Hoffman is enough to break the spell. Carter’s mannered and carefully sculpted weirdness alerts us that this is yet another wax museum standing in for a film no one had the heart to finish.

Friday the 13th: From Crystal Lake to Manhattan [Ultimate Edition DVD Collection] + Friday the 13th [Uncut]|Friday the 13th Part 2|Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D – Blu-ray Discs

September 22, 2012Posted in1980s, Authors: Alex Jackson, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Revenge

FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980)
**½/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B-
BD – Image A Sound B Extras B+
starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram
screenplay by Victor Miller
directed by Sean S. Cunningham

F131capby Alex Jackson

“Do you think you can get through the summer?”

“I don’t think I can get through the week.”

One look at the teenagers in Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th and we can see they’re displaced, without religion or identity. Shallow, dim, they don’t have any past and they don’t have any future. Their existence is entirely ephemeral and half-developed. Their lives consist solely of pot, sex, and menial work. We know that they’re really talking about life in the above-quoted exchange–life as a biological process that will come to an abrupt stop for most of them by the end of the week, if not by the end of the summer. They think they’re just talking about work and boredom.

Ed Wood (1994) – [Special Edition] DVD + Blu-ray Disc

September 16, 2012Posted in1990s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Directors: Tim Burton, Drama, DVD

***½/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras A
BD – Image A Sound A Extras A
starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette
screenplay by Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski
directed by Tim Burton

by Walter Chaw Raging Bull for starfuckers, Ed Wood is in a lot of ways the quintessential dissection of the allure of Hollywood, allying it more closely, perhaps, with a different Martin Scorsese film, The King of Comedy. (It’s The King of Comedy recast with the stalked celebrity a willing participant in the stalker’s obsessive lunacy.) Ed Wood diverges from most biopics in director Tim Burton’s tactic of skewing the film towards the same sort of kitsch-surreal of Wood’s films, managing in so doing the trick that David Cronenberg performed with Naked Lunch: a hagiography that’s as much critical analysis as hommage. It engages in a conversation about how Wood’s films are seen at the same time that it endeavours to tell the highlights of Wood’s life. The result is a picture that bridges the gap between cult and camp classic; the melancholic and the melodramatic; and the difference between a director of vision and a director with a vision that sucks.

Jaws (1975) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

August 25, 2012Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Spielberg

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras A+
starring Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary
screenplay by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, based on the novel by Benchley
directed by Steven Spielberg

by Walter Chaw What’s not mentioned in very many conversations about Jaws is the pleasure it takes in work. That it’s one of the most influential films of all time–a picture commonly identified as the one responsible for the studio summer-blockbuster mentality–is a given by now. The miracle of it, though, is that it gets better every time you see it. I have the movie memorized at this point; I can recite it like a favourite song. I still jump when Ben Gardner appears in the hole in the hull of his boat, and I still laugh when Hooper helps himself to Brody’s uneaten dinner. More than a fright flick, Jaws is a beautifully rendered character piece, establishing Spielberg as–a little like Stephen King, oddly enough–a master of the easy moment. (They’re artists I’ve conflated in my head for their popularity with and influence on a generation of people my age.) It’s a little nasty, too, Jaws is, in throwaway moments like the one on the beach where, after a giant fin appears in the water, Spielberg cuts to a group of old men picking up their binoculars. They’re there to looky-loo; they’re expecting carnage. It’s not a Hitchcockian moment of audience critique (though it functions that way), but a brilliant character beat expressed with Spielberg’s savant-like visual genius. But above all, Jaws is about function and work–not unlike Star Wars, the final nail in the New American Cinema, will be two years later.

The Rite (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

August 1, 2012Posted in2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Horror, Hungary, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras D
starring Anthony Hopkins, Colin O'Donoghue, Alice Braga, Rutger Hauer
screenplay by Michael Petroni, suggested by the book by Matt Baglio
directed by Mikael Håfström

by Walter Chaw Though it's not particularly surprising that The Rite isn't scary or innovative, it is a bit of a surprise that The Rite doesn't completely suck. It's not good, but there's some ambition in its tale of a tortured seminarian. Michael (Colin O'Donoghue) is dealing with his odd childhood at the knee of his dad, a widower and overzealous mortician (Rutger Hauer), as well as a crisis of faith handily addressed by the traumatic, traffic-related death of an innocent whom God, the picture suggests, throws in front of a truck to get Michael to reconsider leaving the priesthood. In the same stroke, God cripples Michael's mentor, Father Matthew (Toby Jones), leading one to revisit Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star" for a dose of non-Scriptural skepticism and rage if one were so inclined. No matter, as Michael, because of his lack of squeamishness, is packed off to The Vatican to attend a modern exorcism school. Which is also something of a surprise, I guess–that said exorcism school really exists and is alive and well, well into the 21st century. Although that surprise is ameliorated a little by the fact that Catholicism also still believes in a literal transubstantiation of the host. Small wonder that Catholicism is my favourite Christian sect.

American Reunion (2012) [Unrated] – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + Ultraviolet

July 17, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD

Americanreunioncap1small

**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C
starring Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Eugene Levy
written and directed by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg

by Bill Chambers The conceptual pretext for American Reunion is actually pretty brilliant when you consider that any sequel to a years-old teen movie (see also: Scream 4) holds the same ghoulish appeal as a high-school reunion–although enough of the American Pie cast has aged in the spotlight that the novelty wears off faster than it did when, say, “Still the Beaver” aired to an audience of appreciative rubberneckers back in 1983. In fact, one character appears to have been retconned in for the express purpose of providing the dramatic before-and-after contrast that’s mostly missing from the film: As Selena, the lovely Dania Ramirez is engulfed in hideous prosthetics for a yearbook photo that instantly and a little cruelly betrays her as a member of band (nicknamed “Lard Arms”) to her former classmates. At any rate, once the eyes adjust to Chris Klein’s receding hairline and Thomas Ian Nicholas’s douche beard, the big question becomes whether the American Pie formula–or should I say brand (and it is a brand, thanks to mercenary dtv sequels that catered to an audience of undiscriminating/horny teenagers)–can accommodate actors in their mid-30s. More specifically, since casting older is a genre staple, actors in their mid-30s playing their age.