As far as mockumentaries go, Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney has a great set-up, or hook — one that would in theory allow for an exploration of the navel-gazing boomer generation, and how a kissed, chance moment of celebrity interaction can turn one’s world into a hermetically sealed diorama. Unfortunately, however, it never really coalesces in a meaningful way that elevates the movie into something more than a fleeting curio for Beatles-obsessed completists.

The background here is rooted in fact. Ruth Anson, a fresh-faced reporter for ABC television covering teen issues and the entertainment beat in the 1960s, got a chance in August of 1965 to stick a microphone in the face of Beatle Paul McCartney, who jokingly responded to her question about marriage plans by saying he intended to wed only if she would get hitched with him, “right now.” The film replays footage of this moment over and over (and over), but uses it as a launching point for the sunny Anson’s journey of self-discovery. Claiming she’s looking for “closure,” Anson attends a Hollywood pitch session where she talks up a possible film project built around her suddenly awakened desire to track down McCartney and ask him whether or not he was serious — a quixotic quest flick loosely in the vein of Brian Herzlinger’s My Date with Drew, in other words. Director Marc Cushman (who also appears onscreen, playing himself) takes to Anson’s idea, but finds that he and his production team keep hitting brick walls as they try to track McCartney down. Desperate to keep moving forward, he re-contextualizes Anson’s yearning, positioning her at the center of a reality show in which even her friends and family start to think maybe she’s a bit of a nutter.

There’s potential here, and by Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney by and large plays things fairly dry and tongue-in-cheek. Gratefully, it doesn’t tip over into histrionics (even though Anson gets all teary when she’s goaded into visiting a therapist, at Cushman’s insistence), but instead just follows around Cushman’s production team as they try to go about constructing embarrassing and/or air-quote dramatic scenarios for their unaware star. The chief problem is that the viewer gets out in front of the movie. It’s too slow-moving; its conflicts and jokes take too long to develop and then tend to drag on, and certain bits (like a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy-style makeover for Anson, as she preps to try to crash the Grammys with a set of phony IDs cooked up by Cushman) fall flat entirely. There isn’t enough rangy shock value or psychological insight to match the topic, so when the whole thing ends with an interview with porn star Ron Jeremy (since he was putatively able to gain access to the Grammys, and Anson wasn’t), well… one just has to shrug.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney comes to DVD presented in 1.33:1 full frame, with English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio mixes. Bonus features consist of some touted “Beatles-type songs,” which is almost precisely as painful as that sounds. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

Based on the bestselling children’s book by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is one of those movies that leaves you wanting to break out the thesaurus, because the phrase “sheer, unadulterated pleasure” has been sullied by the likes of Joel Siegel’s overuse. Yet that’s what it is, simply and most directly — an engaging, funny and warmly designed animated flick that doesn’t pander to kids or pull a muscle trying to unnecessarily reach up and out to older audiences.

Co-directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the film tells the story of an affable outcast inventor who creates a machine that rains down food on his hungry island town. Ever since he was a kid, Flint Lockwood (voiced by Bill Hader) has felt out of step and out of sorts with the world around him, and the inability of his emotionally withholding father (voiced by James Caan), a taciturn bait-and-tackle shop owner, to connect has only served to heighten his isolation. Every invention that seems like a breakthrough eventually — and sooner rather than later — comes crashing down around Flint, so when his latest contraption accidentally destroys the town square and rockets up into the clouds, he thinks his inventing career is over.

Then something amazing happens: delicious cheeseburgers start raining from the sky — a godsend to the populace of Swallow Falls, who have subsisted for years on nothing but sardines, and various (unsavory) iterations thereof. With visiting cable weather intern Sam Sparks (Anna Faris) on hand to report Flint’s triumph, the town’s ambitious, appetite-driven mayor (voiced by Bruce Campbell) both sees and seizes on a once-in-a-lifetime tourism opportunity, re-branding his island “Chews and Swallows,” a sort of foodie paradise getaway. When greed gets the best of people, though, the machine starts to run amok, unleashing spaghetti tornadoes and giant meatballs that threaten the world. Flint and Sam must swing into action, to try to find some way to shut down the machine before the world is overrun by giant food raining from the sky.

Hader gives a solid vocal turn as Flint, laced with his characteristic dryness, but also infused with heart. Faris, a delightful comedienne most recently seen to winning effect in The House Bunny, is also pitch-perfect; there’s fun had as well with the character of “Baby Brent” (voiced by Andy Samberg), a now-grown air-quote celebrity from Swallow Falls’ sardine days who’s wrecked by his sudden obsolescence. The writing here is all smart but not showy (there’s a joke that employs “amuse-bouche,” while also acknowledging its throwaway status), and a good bit of delight can be found in keeping an ear pricked for sotto voce or off-camera asides. In the broadest strokes, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs holds allegorical value as a cautionary tale against unchecked rapaciousness. Mostly, though, this is just a well-made movie, with plenty of heart, energy and fun characters.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs comes to DVD in a two-disc version housed in a regular plastic Amaray case with a snap-in tray, and an accompanying cardboard slipcover. In addition to a feature-length audio commentary track with the
co-directors and Hader, there’s also a pair of making-of featurettes
detailing the animation, voiceover work and other behind-the-scenes
aspects of production, plus a clutch of interesting progression reels/deleted scenes with
introductions by visual effects supervisor Rob Bredow. Also included
are a music video and interactive sing-a-long for Miranda Cosgrove’s “Raining Sunshine,” and an amusing “Food
Fight” game where players can help Flint battle against rogue edibles by
navigating his spaceship and avoiding hits from flying pizzas, gummy
bears, ice cream scoops and the like. All in all, a winning film with a great collection of supplemental material. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

A campy, sci-fi, gleefully gross-out adventure loosely in the vein of fellow budget-challenged romps like Feast or Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Infestation is written and directed by Kyle Rankin, one of the co-directors behind The Battle of Shaker Heights — the final Project Greenlight flick, which whiffed commercially but helped put Shia LaBeouf on the path toward big screen domination on which he now seems to be. It’s not a movie that reinvents the wheel (or in any way, shape or form really desires to), but it is fun, and well done, benefiting from the jocular presence of Christopher Marquette. Genre fans will assuredly dig it.

A mundane office workday takes a sudden turn for the worse when twentysomething chronic underachiever Cooper is rendered unconscious by an earsplitting noise. He wakes up several days later, in a massive cocoon spun by mutant, flesh-eating insects. Upon hooking up with Sara (Brooke Nevin), the daughter of his deceased boss, Cooper unwraps a couple more coworkers at the downtown office park around him, forming a team of strangers to eventually strike out into the great unknown, and fight off the infestation. In addition to gruff, tough-talking Sara, there’s Cindy (Kinsey Packard), plus Al (Wesley Thompson) and his deaf son, a hulking man-child named Hugo (Quincy Sloan). A plan is forged to check on a select handful of loved ones and then work toward safety; Cooper eventually crosses paths with emotionally withholding dad Ethan (Ray Wise), who can’t even sincerely compliment his son for making it across the city, and back to his house.

In movies like Fanboys and the underrated The Girl Next Door, Marquette has provided solid comic relief, but here he anchors the entire film, in winning fashion. Rankin also plays with audience expectation and genre convention in fresh, slightly amusing ways. Sometimes the manner in which he leapfrogs story hurdles is funny right through the fog of shrugs (a character, playing a massage therapy student, uses a home pregnancy test to determine the venomous nature of a captured spider), but a couple times Rankin requires characters to nakedly intuit things that don’t entirely make sense. Efram Potelle, Rankin’s Shaker Heights co-director, scores a visual effects supervisor credit here (a big part of the duo’s short film work, for those who remember), and it’s undeniably true that Infestation‘s giant bugs — a smart, seamless mixture of practical and CGI effects — go a long way toward making one believe enough in the conceit of the film to lie back and just have a good time.

Infestation arrives on DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. Apart from trailers for other releases, the only supplemental extra is a feature-length audio commentary track from Rankin that is fairly low-key, to the point it could be legitimately described as enervated. Rankin talks some about Wise’s penchant for improvisation, and cops to the fact that the movie’s abortive ending is a naked ploy to set up a potential sequel. In fact, he says, he has a two-film arc sketched out, if Infestation catches on as a viral DVD smash. Hey… far worse things could happen. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C (Disc)

As micro-brews continue to surge in popularity, and Americans of a certain age start to become at least a bit more invested in their ale quaffing habits (if not quite to the same degree that they typically are with wine), entertaining and informative glimpses behind the sociocultural curtain like this new-to-DVD documentary will continue to find welcome reception. Clocking in at only an hour, The American Brew doesn’t quite have the contemporary pop of Anat Baron’s Beer Wars, which examined in fascinating fashion how the three (now two) major brewer-bottlers look to trick consumers and put the squeeze on upstart competitors. Still, in exploring the rich and surprising history of beer making from colonial settlers through the present day, this movie offers up sudsy intrigue.

Writer Jesse Sweet and director Roger Sherman share the unique history of America’s favorite beverage (sorry, Coke), charting a history from the Prohibition era right on through the unending success of national breweries. The American Brew explores the evolution of beer throughout the centuries, interweaving compelling personal tales and interviews with industry experts to provide an inside look at brewing innovations, and how those changes have impacted the national palette.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, The American Brew comes to DVD in widescreen, with an English language 5.1 surround sound audio track that more than adequately handles the meager aural demands of the title. Hearteningly, the DVD also features over 45 minutes of bonus footage, including conversations with restaurateur Danny Meyer, premier beer critic Michael Jackson (no, not that guy), and the editors of All About Beer. There’s also a look inside the hidden cellar of New York City’s Prohibition-era 21 Club, Paul Brady’s breweriana collection, and a cheeky short, “Cheese Wars,” which pits wine and beer against one another in an effort to determine cheese’s perfect match. To order a copy of The American Brew directly from PBS, call (800) PLAY-PBS or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Remember being taught origami in school when you were a child? You were pretty crappy at it, weren’t you? Marvel, then, at those who are far more at home at the intersection of art and math; with this compelling, new-to-DVD, hour-long documentary, PBS gives audiences an amazing look at artists who have abandoned their ordinary, mundane jobs in favor of turning paper-folding into not only art, but also their new life’s work.

Directed by Vanessa Gould, Between the Folds chronicles the stories of 10 fine artists and intrepid scientists who have alternately abandoned their careers and scoffed at hard-earned graduate degrees — all to forge unconventional lives as modern day paper-folders. As these offbeat and provocative characters converge on the unusual medium of origami, they reinvent an ancient art and demonstrate the innumerable ways that ingenuity and expression come to bear.

Delving into the math involved in some of the intricate work, but not to an unpleasant degree, the documentary paints an arresting portrait of the remarkable artistic
and scientific creativity that fuels this ever-changing art form —
fusing science and sculpture, form and function, the old and the new. The creations on display are of course arresting; perhaps most so is MIT mechanical engineering student Brian Chan’s single-sheet mock-up of his school’s seal, complete with blacksmith and hammer on one side, and scholar and open book on the other. Also interesting is a discussion of the so-called “bug wars” that defined public origami showcases of the 1990s, when one competitor’s six-legged beetle was later trumped by spiders (eight legs!) and scorpions (eight legs, plus pinchers). These aren’t tossed-off creations, obviously; the most complex efforts take weeks to design, and sometimes up to 100 working hours to fold into shape.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Between the Folds comes to DVD presented in anamorphic widescreen. Unlike many PBS titles, there’s also a nice smattering of supplemental content, in the form of the program’s two-minute trailer, and a collection of seven deleted scenes. In these, Erik Demaine talks about the future influence of computer programming on the art, and Paul Jackson lays into an analysis of, well, what’s wrong with paper as a medium. There’s also an eight-minute short film, Origametria, which centers around Miri Golan and the Israeli Origami Center, where paper-folding is used as a tool to teach kids geometry’s more abstract principles. American charter schools take note. To purchase the DVD, call (800) PLAY-PBS. Or to purchase via Amazon, click here. B+ (Movie) B (Disc)