After the creative and commercial highs of films like New Jack City, Jungle Fever, White Men Can’t Jump, The Waterdance and even the original Blade, it didn’t seem like the most plausible career path for Wesley Snipes — a string of anonymous, C-grade, mostly internationally-lensed action flicks, followed by incarceration for tax evasion. That’s how it shook out, however. And it’s those long-lingering legal/financial woes, which for years prior to his 2010 sentencing hung over Snipes’ head like a comic strip’s black rain cloud, that most likely explain the existence of something like Game of Death, another yawning, paycheck-inspired action programmer in which, you know, a CIA hit man is caught up between shady underworld-types and those at his agency that would double-cross him.

Snipes stars as Marcus Jones, a special agent tasked with cozying up next to a mobster named Smith (Robert Davi). A pair of rogue agents, Zander (Gary Daniels) and Floria (Zoë Bell, of Kill Bill stunt double
and later Grindhouse fame), try to frame Jones and kill him to boot, and escape and other on-the-fly, name-clearing shenanigans then ensue.

Director Giorgio Serafini does the material no great favors of elevation by ladling on stylistic excess and gimmickry in orgiastic fashion. A straighter, simpler, grittier visual scheme and emotional template would have worked far better here. Snipes, too, seems (perhaps understandably) depressed and bored — just going through the motions. There’s no real pop or excitement here, either in execution or narrative adventurousness. Additionally, just in passing, the DVD front and back cover art does Bell no favors, featuring some terrible airbrushing that makes her look like Jeremy Renner. Yikes!

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Game of Death comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 soundtrack, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. Special features consist of a half dozen very short behind-the-scenes featurettes that explore the movie’s Detroit location shoot and other various aspects of the production, interspersing film clips with rah-rah, back-slapping interview footage. A small collection of trailers for other Sony DVD releases rounds out the material. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Writer-director David Michôd’s Animal Kingdom, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Festival, is an involving, rangy and sneakily ambitious crime drama that pulses with a low electrical hum of menace. Unfolding against an unfussy, decidedly non-glamorous criminal backdrop of modern-day Melbourne, the movie has intriguing characters and a broad canvas, like it could easily be spun off into a miniseries or TV serial.

When his junkie mom dies of an overdose, introverted 17-year-old Joshua (James Frecheville) gets taken in by his doting grandmother (Jacki Weaver), which would seem to be a good thing. Problem is, she’s den mother to a cabal of ne’er-do-wells, whose armed bank robberies have made them marked men by cops, some of whom play by the rules and some of whom have no qualms with vigilante justice. As one officer (Guy Pearce) tries to flip Joshua and make him a source, a series of shocking twists and turns ensue.

Frecheville believably exudes naivety, and is a great anchor for Animal Kingdom, but Michôd smartly trades in organic rather than artificial thrills, making a movie about the legacy of violence that doesn’t often indulge in it. The result is something that works its hooks into an audience slowly, and feels like it could be compellingly adapted into a recurring small screen serial, actually. For Los Angelenos, one thing certainly awaits — a double-feature playdate at the New Beverly with fellow Aussie crime drama The Square. Other audiences will have to settle for discovering this little gem on the small screen.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Animal Kingdom comes to DVD presented in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio, via a transfer absent any significant grain, edge enhancement or major flaws. Audio consists of English, Spanish and Portuguese language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound tracks, with complementary subtitles. Bonus features are anchored by a nice feature-length audio commentary track with Michôd, as well as a 15-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, a soundtrack promotional spot and a half-hour-plus Q&A with the filmmaker and two of his stars, Frecheville and Weaver. Allegedly exclusive to the Blu-ray, for what it’s worth, is a separate hour-long featurette on the making of the movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) B- (Disc)

Look, you just don’t know. If you run in film nerd circles or play a lot of Trivial Pursuit, it may at some point come up — the question of in which movie Jodie Foster is gifted with two penguins, one of which is subsequently beaten to death. Well, the answer is Five Corners. And I’m sure it’s a film to which John Hinckley could relate.

An unusual little 1987 flick starring Foster, John Turturro, and Tim Robbins, Five Corners is a period piece drama whose intensity of feeling and somewhat haughty sense of social-statement importance far exceed the grasp of its execution. It’s set in the Bronx in the early 1960s, and centers on Heinz Sabatino (Turturro), a scummy and not-quite-right-in-the-head kid newly released from prison, who returns to his old neighborhood with his stalking obsession for Linda Komkowski (Foster), the woman he attacked, unabated. There’s hatred, too, for Harry Fitzgerald (Robbins), a one-time friend who tried to protect Linda by crowning Heinz with a beer bottle, but Harry won’t re-engage with Heinz in antagonistic fashion, as he’s now a pacifist looking to hook on with the Freedom Riders and head south. Also thrown into the mix is Jamie (Todd Graff), Linda’s doofus ex-boyfriend, and a pair of cops who get sucked into things when Heinz starts acting out in aggressive fashion, and imperils Linda.

On the outside looking in, Five Corners‘ pedigree is impressive; there’s the cast, of course, and the script is by John Patrick Shanley, and the director is Tony Bill. Still, set against this chaotic backdrop of political and societal upheaval, the film goes to the well of metaphorical relevance a bit too often and heartily, and never really coalesces into anything more than a kind of passably engaging ping-pong drama — meaning something that holds one’s attention in stumble-bum fashion rather than with any precision. A massive and time-consuming subplot in which a couple of yahoos who seem to have wandered off the set of Happy Days hook up with a pair of drugged-out party girls and ride elevators goes nowhere. Well… actually, it “pays off,” if you will, in a late revelation that ties into a recent neighborhood murder involving a bow-and-arrow (yes, seriously), but these attempts at writerly parallelism come across as overly didactic, and never particularly realistic or thought-provoking.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Five Corners comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo track and optional English subtitles. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features here, which is really a shame, as the title’s star power merits if not a retrospective with some of the players’ thoughts on the movie (Foster has to have thought about the parallels to Hinckley when shooting the film) then certainly some sort of talking-head inclusion about it, which is easy and cheap enough to produce (I say this having taken part in a couple such interviews myself) should the right production company or distributor get hold of the rights. As is, this is a yawning curio, but only for completists… well, obsessed with the cast. Let’s hope Hinckley’s prison library doesn’t get a copy. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

I’ve mocked Hilary Duff and her sister before, for appearing in movies with 19 credited producers, but really, there are plenty of times (in fact, most of the time, I’d say) when she is not the biggest problem in whatever piece of entertainment she is appearing. Beauty & The Briefcase, which debuted on the ABC Family Channel last April, is one such exhibit. Based on Daniella Brodsky’s cloying novel Diary of a Working Girl, the movie is so nakedly a stab at modern-young-chick relevance and Duff’s stab at The Devil Wears Prada and Confessions of a Shopaholic-style up-with-sisters! appeal that it induces sighs fairly early out of the gate, and never deviates much if at all from its wan lessons of faux-empowerment.

Duff stars as Lane Daniels, a young, fresh-faced, wide-eyed and ambitious journalist who dreams of writing for her favorite magazine, Cosmopolitan. When she finally gets the chance to pitch an article to Cosmo‘s hard-edged editor Kate White (Jaime Pressly), it is enthusiastically received — with the condition that Lane must live out her (dubious) pitch of switching careers to bag a guy. Kate tasks Lane with landing a corporate job, and then dating as many eligible co-workers as possible. As Lane navigates her way through her new world, she meets first Tom (Michael McMillan), then Seth (Matt Dallas), and finally Liam (Chris Carmack), a dashing music producer working outside her office. Dating him would mean breaking the rules, so, you know, what’s a girl to do — live her life, or adhere rigidly and irrationally to some cockamamie scheme?

Saddled with desultory voiceover that reinforces points and feelings already established twice onscreen, Beauty & The Briefcase is an exercise in rah-rah obviousness, nothing more than pabulum for young girls. The acting isn’t all that bad, really, but director Gil Junger’s stylistic stabs at effervescence and chirpy
buoyancy come across as insipid and contrived, and the dialogue is terrible to boot. Really, something like a repeat viewing of A Cinderella Story is probably the better option for, um, more discerning Duff fans.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Beauty & The Briefcase comes to DVD presented in 1.78 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Special features include… nothing, sadly. Which is strange, because one would have thought that Duff was better with self-promotion, and tossing hungry post-tweenage fans a few interview morsels here and there. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

When I first heard about 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat appearing on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines, and later being named one of the top 100 athletes of the 20th century, it all seemed quite silly. It’s a credit to the earnest film that bears his name that one leaves feeling a horse’s intangible competitive spirit merits such a distinction. (For those ascribing import to such details, an autopsy upon his death would reveal that Secretariat’s heart weighed two-and-a-half times that of an average horse.)



Directed by Randall Wallace, Secretariat tells the story of the big, famous, prizewinning chestnut colt mostly through the eyes and experiences of Penny Chenery (Diane Lane), the owner who, after the death of her father, transitions from the role of housewife and mother to driven taskmaster. In fairly straightforward fashion, the film then charts Secretariat’s training and run through the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, culminating in his record-smashing Belmont Stakes performance.

Lots of narrative contrivance, bromides and on-the-nose speechifying (“You never know how far you can run until you go”) from screenwriter Mike Rich prevent Secretariat from ever evolving into something truly special, but the movie consistently and pleasantly holds one’s attention, if perhaps only lightly so. While the drama in particular of its last hour-plus comes off understandably as predetermined, Rich is generally successful in injecting a strong feminist streak into the movie, abetted by Lane’s convincing ability to jointly convey affection, ambition and principled stubbornness.

The film has the good sense, too, to cast John Malkovich as Lucien Laurin, a colorful French Canadian trainer who sucks at golf, unironically dresses like Superfly, and lays forth an unconventional regimen that Penny is bold enough to follow through upon. Perhaps the movie’s biggest bonus, though, comes by way of Dean Semler’s superb cinematography, which grippingly incorporates but doesn’t overuse tiny, mounted cameras, thus giving a whole new sense and perspective of the word “horsepower,” for those who’ve never heard the phrase used outside of automobile and truck commercials. Yes, fans of racing dramas like Seabiscuit and Dreamer will spark to the movie, but Secretariat also slots comfortably alongside The Blind Side and the considerable back catalogue of fellow Disney sports titles as a square-jawed, nonfiction tale of uplift that’s suitable for the entire family.

Housed in a Blu-ray case, Secretariat‘s two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo pack comes to home video with never-before-shared in-depth interviews with the real-life Chenery, and loads of other exclusive behind-the-scenes materials. The AVC encoded picture, with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, is solidly rendered, and free of any edge enhancement or grain, while aural presentations for the Blu-ray disc include English language 5.1 DTS-HD master audio and DVS 2.0 Dolby digital tracks, plus French and Spanish language 5.1 Dolby digital tracks. Subtitles come by way of English, French and Spanish, in both SDH and regular versions.

A 15-minute featurette on the real Secretariat kickstarts the bonus slate, and providing a valuable historical/contextual underpinning for both younger audiences and those who might merely be unfamiliar with the story. Director Wallace offers up plenty of erudite observations and production team shout-outs in his feature-length audio commentary track, and also gives explanations for narrative trims in additional, optional, complementary commentary for a 10-minute collection of deleted scenes.

Best, though, is a 21-minute chat between Wallace and the real Chenery, discussing some of the movie’s key scenes, as well as what it was like to have been a woman in such a male-dominated sport. Seven-plus minutes of footage charting the careful choreographing of the movie’s races also proves interesting, insofar as it particularly illustrates the innovative blend of technology and old-fashioned production planning necessary to accurately recreate historical sporting events with such exactitude.

A so-called “multi-angle simulation” relives Secretariat’s triumphant 1973 Preakness race by viewing and recalling the race from a number of different perspectives; it’s a stab at something a bit different, but not particularly any more illuminating than what’s in the movie, or Chenery’s engaging recollections. There is also a music video for AJ Michalka’s “It’s Who You Are.” To purchase the combo pack via Amazon click here, or visit your favorite online or brick-and-mortar retailer of choice. For a coupon off your purchase, click here. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)