John Tucker Must Die, a harmless
confection of teen entertainment and one of the bigger box office surprises of
last summer and early fall. Buoyed by savvy, his-and-hers commercials on Comedy
Central and smart trailer placement on The
Devil Wears Prada — which was a big July hit for 20th Century Fox — John Tucker turned a tidy profit in
pulling in more than $40 million domestically, and stands to do well on DVD now
that star and Desperate Housewives
hunk Jesse Metcalfe is back on the small screen to remind younger viewers of his
shirtless screen time in this film.

The story itself is pure boilerplate. High school jock John
(Metcalfe, above left) is immensely popular — the captain of the basketball team, and
dating three girls (Arielle Krebbel, Ashanti and
Sophia Bush, above right) at once, none of whom know about each other. Wallflower Kate (Brittany
Snow) witnesses John’s duplicity, and conspires with the girls to get revenge
through a series of schemes both somewhat shrewd and familiarly lowbrow (i.e., replacing
John’s bodybuilding powder with estrogen).

Director Betty Thomas (The
Brady Bunch Movie, Private Parts,
28 Days) is skilled in capturing
comedic rhythms in a smooth, bright, unfussy manner, and she certainly does that
here. She’s also given a script that, if completely functional and doughy on a
macro level, also really gets right the balance between spurned hurt and sassy,
empowered flippancy. Ergo, you have a story of femme-centric revenge that will
play to the same sort of 13-18-year-old set that helped make Mean Girls a hit, but a movie that also
delivers a few nice helpings of attractive ladies cavorting about in skimpy
outfits. For teen guys, that’s quite easy
to “suffer.”

John Tucker Must Die
is presented in a decent transfer, though there’s an irksome bit of edge
enhancement present, especially in the movie’s first two-thirds. Both a full
screen cut and a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation — the latter preserving
the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation — grace this disc, as
do the original and an “extended cut” of the movie, which clocks in at a
whopping 10 indistinguishable seconds longer. Audio arrives in an English
language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track which amply captures the movie’s
rather meager dialogue demands, but pops nicely with its bouncy song
interludes. Spanish and French Dolby digital 2.0 surround sound tracks are also
available, as are optional English and Spanish subtitles.

A smattering of so-so, EPK-type featurettes (“Grrrl Power,” “Kodiak
Yearbook,” “On the Rebound”) will please the teen-core set in their
gum-snapping buoyancy, but don’t offer much in the way of replay value. Metcalfe
provides a four-minute on-set tour, though, which is a nice touch. Thomas sits
for a full-length audio commentary track with her editor, Matthew Friedman, and
along with a few anecdotes about the cast they also fairly impartially assay
the film’s place alongside other, like-minded teen flicks. Two deleted scenes
and a dating quiz round things out, alongside the obligatory gallery of trailers.
C (Movie) B- (Disc)

The commercial success of Eli Roth’s Hostel has — in addition to the normal birthing of a sequel — lead
to a lot of people both scrambling to resituate developing spec scripts and locate/purchase
more of the same in lands aboard (see
Turistas) and to reposition their schlocky B-movie horror pictures as somehow of that same
grim, torture-centric ethos. While billed as “the Spanish answer to Hostel,” first-time director Martin
Garrido Barón’s H6: Diary of a Serial
Killer is actually much more of a piece with 1986’s appropriately well
regarded cult classic Henry: Portrait of
a Serial Killer or writer-director David Jacobson’s 2002 indie Dahmer, starring Jeremy Renner.

H6 centers around Antonio
Frau (Fernando Asaco), a convicted murderer who, recently freed after 25 years
in prison in the death of his girlfriend, inherits an old brothel from an aunt
he never knew. Taking this as a sign to “cleanse” the surrounding area of the women
who work the streets, Antonio embarks upon a course of ritualistic purification.
He sets up a little torture shop and meticulously records his misdeeds in bloodletting
— all while, in parallel fashion, beginning a new life with a new wife

Like it or loathe it, Hostel
had both a garish and darkly humorous side to ostensibly counterbalance the bleak,
unremitting torture and gore of its late second and third acts. Even if you
could in no way, shape or form feel good about yourself after it was over, it
was the story of a descent into hell. H6,
meanwhile, is less forcefully convincing in its narrative specifics, as well as
its setting. It feels cobbled together, distilled from other American genre
entries, and if the killer’s diary is an original element, it’s never quite
fully utilized to the degree that one might guess from the title. It never
offers a deeper glimpse into Antonio’s soul that might be described as
lastingly haunting. He seems withdrawn and almost taciturn — a shallow proxy of
wickedness for the audience to impress their own ideas of evil onto.

That said, the movie certainly looks well put together, and achieves
swatches of not inconsiderable psychological sway courtesy of this production
design and cinematographer Sergio Delgado’s murky palettes. While not driven by
gore to the degree many American independent and low-budget genre productions are,
diehard fans of psychopathic fare with a forgiveness or indulgence for psychological
affliction and/or foreign flicks will find in H6 some… well, enjoyment?

Presented on a dual layer disc in anamorphic 1.85:1
widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound 5.1 audio
tracks, H6’s special features consist
of eight minutes of interviews with director Barón and lead Asaco, plus the
movie’s theatrical trailer and a trailer gallery of other releases from
distributor Tartan. Naturally, for this Spanish flick, English subtitles are
also included, though hey, violence is universal. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Richard Grant, however, make the
leap, and certainly not with deeply felt semi-memoirs like Wah-Wah, which recounts in only slightly compacted fashion his
coming-of-age in the late 1960s during the final stages of British rule in
Swaziland, South Africa.

Careening charmingly to and fro in a fashion that — if one
is charitably inclined toward its indie rhythms and indulgences — gives full,
contradictory three-dimensionality to all of its main characters, Wah-Wah takes as its lead young teenager
Ralph Compton (About a Boy’s Nicholas
Hoult), who is beset by nervous tics. After his father Harry (Gabriel Byrne, above left),
the local Minister of Education, and philandering mother Lauren (Miranda
Richardson) split up, pop capriciously takes up with an American, brassy
erstwhile stewardess Ruby (Emily Watson, above right), as well as, more frequently, the bottle.
Prone to violent rages and weepy, morning-after apologies, Harry becomes a more
and more erratic figure in his son’s life, leading Ralph to both develop strong
bonds with Ruby and explore his own creativity, through puppetry and acting.
Ruby causes waves, much to the consternation of stuffy neighbor Lady Hardwick
(Celia Imrie), by teaching the maid to read and sponsoring the (black) gardener
for a spot in a theater production; Ralph, meanwhile, scandalously cons his way
into a screening of A Clockwork Orange.

While all of this content could easily be played for pathos,
menace or boozy laughs, Grant isn’t afraid to showcase a fuller emotional
spectrum. As in life, the feelings and rationalizations on display in Wah-Wah change, sometimes at a moment’s
notice. Perhaps most interesting is the manner in which the movie assays a
slowly healthily step-parent relationship, as well as its meticulous attention
in regard to the detail of its hermetically sealed, colonial ex-pat setting,
and the inherent panic that living there at that time must have induced.

All of these things said, and Grant’s impressive
elicitations of performance from his ensemble cast notwithstanding, I still
found my attention wandering a good bit during Wah-Wah. It feels longer than its 98 minutes. The movie certainly
bears the undeniable stamp of auteurism, but its novel and abrupt shifts in
rhythm also just as frequently undercut both any traditional sense of mounting
tension and, paradoxically, at least some of its realistic sense of rooted place.
For all its idiosyncratic delights, one can’t help but want a little more
firmly laid track underneath the narrative.

Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, Wah-Wah benefits from a fairly solid
video transfer with rich and consistent colors and very little grain, and also
comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track. There are unfortunately no
supplemental features, which is both fairly puzzling and mortally wounding for
the release of such a personal film. C (Movie) D+ (Disc)