You can frequently gauge the monetary outlay and impending quality of a thriller with the sort of computer programs they display on-screen to show the tracing of cell phone calls and the like. Bad films feature cheap-looking gimmickry, high-budget affairs look state-of-the-art — with seemingly often light-blue text, and menu screens with lots of graphic elements — and low-budget flicks that are smart about what sort of field upon which they’re playing do a good job of faking things, by just having people look busy, and/or harried. Contract Killers is one of those films that cuts away to a cheesy-looking screen in an already chintzy-looking office, and thus earns cringes early on that never really subside.

Co-written by Ric Moxley and Justin Rhodes, and directed by Rhodes, Contract Killers follows Sarah Bentley (Swedish-born Frida Farrell, aka Frida Show), a former CIA agent (codename: Jane) who finds herself on the lam after she’s framed for the murder of her husband. Forced in order to uncover the mystery of his death to return to a life that she tried hard to abandon, Sarah/Jane discovers that the particulars of her last official mission were entered into a database before it was ordered and completed, and that her former boss, Witkoff (Nick Mancuso), is behind a conspiracy. Now, she must get to the bottom of Witkoff’s dark secret before he and his men catch her first.

There’s no cool, breezy Mr. & Mrs. Smith-type snappishness to Contract Killers, and the film isn’t briskly shot or slickly constructed enough to stack up with any of the Bourne films, a wayward spy series that it clearly wants to emulate. I guess Jennifer Garner‘s kick-ass Sydney Bristow would be a good sort of comparison, but the dialogue here is marked by a preponderance of empty, coded vagaries (“Reality is just a buzz deep in your skull, isn’t it?” a character asks at one point, in a line that’s not even meant as a tossed-off, dismissive quip), and the action sequences aren’t particularly clever or interestingly staged. There’s lots of squib-hit cutaways, in other words — close-range shooting and missing by paid assassins.

Then there’s the acting. Physically, just in the face and as far as her body type, Farrell (above, in close-up) comes across as a cut-rate Amanda Peet, but she has problems convincingly wielding both dialogue and a weapon. Rhodes, meanwhile, directs the entire affair like an episode of 24, which is to say heavy on the lingering frames and handheld camerawork. In episodic television this sort of tack can take on an extra gravity or importance, because viewers have presumably come to know and identify with the lead characters over a significant period of time; if the story in a feature isn’t sufficiently gripping, however, it comes off as empty distraction, which is unfortunately the case here.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Contract Killers is presented in 16×9 widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby 2.0 stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. Apart from a four-minute music video for Machel Montano’s “Toro Toro,” featuring Shaggy, and a collection of five trailers for other First Look releases, there are no other supplemental features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) D (Disc)

Between 1977 and 1980 Chic produced some of the most successful and memorable music of the disco era. Their sublime blend of soul, funk and disco took a genre not best remembered for musical innovation and longevity to new heights. This 83-minute concert DVD, recorded in April 1996 at Tokyo’s famed Budokan Stadium, was destined to be the group’s last performance, since sadly co-founder Bernard Edwards died shortly afterward, from rapid-onset pneumonia.

Boasting top-notch sound, if only so-so picture quality and less than stellar live event direction and shot selection, the concert features superb, extended versions of the group’s greatest hits, including “Le Freak,” “Dance, Dance, Dance,” “I Want Your Love” and “Good Times.” All in all, there are nine tunes on Chic: Live at the Budokan, and the group — outfitted in fashions circa 1988 — is joined by Sister
Sledge for stellar performances of that group’s two biggest hits, “He’s the Greatest Dancer” and “We Are Family,” both of which were written
and produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Edwards. Even if “We Are Family” is, for me, forever tainted by its association with the end credits of the dreadful Lethal Weapon IV, it’s a blast to see these musicians try to breathe some fresh energy back into it. Improbably enough, Guns ‘N’ Roses guitarist Slash
also makes a guest appearance, dropping guitar back-up and a monstrous solo jam on five-week chart-topping hit “Le
Freak.” Turns out he and Rodgers are friends… who knew?

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, Chic: Live at the Budokan comes presented on a region-free disc in full screen, with English language Dolby digital 5.1 and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, the latter of which is not billed on the DVD’s back cover. Bonus materials consist of biographies of Chic, Sister Sledge and Slash, a Chic discography, and brief, minute-long, on-camera introductions and post-concert comments by Rodgers, the latter segment of which is subtitled in Japanese. There are also two article tributes to Bernard Edwards that scroll in slow-play fashion; the first is from Rolling Stone‘s Geoffrey Hines, from June, 1996, and the second is from Bass Player Magazine‘s Chris Jisi, from August, 1996. Finally, there’s a billed “concert commentary” with Rodgers, but it’s not a full-length, discrete audio track. Instead, if this option is selected, the concert cuts back in awkward, break-away fashion to brief song introductions from Rodgers. Sadly, this is all mostly empty fluff, or statistical self-promotion; he doesn’t even give good anecdotal backstory, like how “Le Freak”‘s memorable signature chorus came from being denied admittance to a club, and was actually a stand-in for a sing-song response of “Fuck you!” Kudos for the attempts at added-value material, but if you’re not going to bring some grade-A material, it’s really still just filler. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Concert) C+ (Disc)

As the baby boomer population ages, many adult children are grappling with an unprecedented social, cultural, economic and personal revolution as they transition into the primary caregiver role for their aging parents. When these boomers fully age out, the revolution of this role-reversed phenomenon will only deepen, widen, and grow more pronounced. Even blessed with a long-healthy set of grandparents, I’ve seen firsthand the stressful effects on siblings of having to manage or assist in health care affairs from afar.

Caring for Your Parents is a solidly made, touchy-feely documentary that draws much-needed attention to this universal reality, underscoring both today’s struggle to keep parents at home and manage tensions between siblings, some of whom may live much closer to the needy parties in question. The complexity of shifting caregiver roles is given this intimate look through prima facie interviews with five American families. It’s a difficult subject to approach, but one that certainly merits more discussion. In the end, this two-hour documentary contends that successful caregiving requires only one primary ingredient — love.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, and presented in 16×9 anamorphic widescreen, as a supplemental inclusion the DVD features a 30-minute panel discussion in which filmmaker Michael Kirk sits down with caregiving experts High Delehanty and Elinor Ginzler, co-authors of the book Caring for Your Parents: The Complete Family Guide. There’s also access to the movie’s companion web site, which includes downloadable resources and other helpful information, like a printable booklet (no need to try to get your folks to navigate the web!) to help adult children begin a helpful and comfortable dialogue with their elderly parents about making smart choices regarding their living decisions and long-term health care. B (Movie) B (Disc)

Screen legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino team up with director Jon
Avnet in Righteous Kill, a thinly sketched, utterly pedestrian cop
thriller that pivots on a very predictable twist ending. An unworthy
vehicle for its stars’ talents, the movie plays like an episodic small
screen crime serial lazily blown up for the big screen.

The film opens with black-and-white footage of a shocking confession to 14
slayings, and then winds its way back an indeterminate amount of time,
introducing Turk (De Niro) and Rooster (Pacino), two veteran New York
City cops. The long-time partners share some sympathies with a
ridiculously named vigilante killer, The Poetry Boy, who’s offing pimps, murderers and
other thugs who otherwise beat the legal system, and leaving calling
cards of rhymed composition at the crime scenes. Turk and Rooster start
investigating drug dealer Marcus “Spider” Smith (rapper 50 Cent, né
Curtis Jackson), but then get pulled into the serial killer case.

A
hard-edged forensic specialist, Karen Corelli (Carla Gugino), helps out
with some crime scene analysis; complicating factors is her
relationship with Turk. Two junior detectives, Perez and Riley (John
Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg), are also brought in to work with the
wily veterans. They quickly come to suspect that the killer is a cop —
maybe even Turk, who seems passionately invested in knocking down any theories that the
Poetry Boy has a badge.

Watching Righteous Kill, one feels as if they’ve tripped back in time and landed smack dab in the middle of some anonymous, straight-to-video thriller from the 1980s.
There’s no pop to the pacing, no intrigue or slickness applied to the
homicidal stagings, which are flatly captured in stand-alone form. In
short, there’s no excitement here, or legitimate tension. Instead, director Jon Avnet
and cinematographer Denis Lenoir try to manufacture forward-leaning
energy by occasionally deploying a couple different stylistic gimmicks,
from split-screen psychiatric interviews and point-of-view hand-held
camerawork to flash-forward bits from the aforementioned confession
video. This lack of a codifying visual scheme only underscores the
narrative’s weakness.

The film’s indistinct screenplay, by Russell Gewirtz (Inside Man),
offers up wan banter and righteously thin lead characterizations, which on a certain
level makes its eventual reversals play more smoothly, yet without any
real consequence. The personal relationship between Turk and Karen,
who’s into rough sexual roleplay, is especially baffling in its
cursoriness, and the junior detectives — integral to driving the
investigatory plot, and thus Turk’s increasing agitation — aren’t given
enough front-and-center time.

A few incongruous moments of pop
cultural humor pop up (one of the victims’ surnames is Brady, spawning
a joke about Brady Bunch), but there’s never a sense that these jokes
flow from character, that they’re anything more than a couple
tossed-off bits of generic “color.” The script is perhaps best defined as being beset by missed opportunities and unexploited pay-offs;
the latter is most egregiously true in a violent sequence that feeds
the finale and yet is crucially not referenced by any of the present characters, rendering
it inconsequential and false.

Older but tanner and slimmer than
his counterpart, Pacino plays things more subdued than in many of his
recent films. De Niro, meanwhile, trades in moderately restrained
variations of moves we’ve seen in some of his previous hothead
characters. Even if familiar, there is certainly a residual trace
affection from seeing the two exercise their craft in the same frame,
but Righteous Kill slowly drains that thrill. Just set your TiVo to capture their shared scene in Michael Mann’s Heat instead.

Presented on DVD in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby 5.1 surround sound audio mix, Righteous Kill is housed in a regular plastic Amray case with accompanying cardboard slipcover, and benefits from a superb transfer that is free from edge enhancement or blips, and marked by color consistency and deep blacks. A static menu screen gives way to chapter-titled scene selection, and audio options that include a feature-length audio commentary track from Avnet. There’s also a 14-minute making-of featurette that, despite a lack of contributions from Pacino, otherwise exhibits a fairly deep interviewee roster. Producers Randall Emmett, Rob Cowan and Daniel Rosenberg all get face time, as well as Avnet and almost every other actor with more than three speaking lines — including Trilby Glover, and even prankster skateboarder Rob Drydek, who gets maybe five seconds of menacing screen time before he promptly gets popped and plays a corpse the rest of his single scene. (The diminutive Drydek’s appearance in the film — maybe part of some weird street-cred grab amongst suburban teenage Vans-gazers — does prompt the unintentionally hilarious high point of the featurette, though, when Avnet says, “The idea of a skateboarding pimp just felt right.”) It’s also kind of funny when De Niro talks about working with 50 Cent, and jokes that he wants to get him to teach him to rap.

Apart from the original theatrical trailer and previews for three other Overture/Anchor Bay DVD releases, the disc’s only other supplemental feature is a 19-minute mini-documentary, entitled “The Thin Blue Line: An Exploration of Cops and Criminals” and narrated in strangely upbeat fashion, which examines the cultural imperative of swallowed silence in the ranks of police officers. Author Philip Bonifacio and others talk about the psychological effects of investigative police work, and former lieutenant Samuel Clark, who served a 100-day suspension without pay after having the temerity to report a fellow officer who assaulted him, speaks compellingly about the at-odds missions of working to expose crime and corruption, while also policing “insiders” who would seek to do the same against their own fraternity in blue. It’s all interesting, but also a bit scattershot, and too much of a mouthful for such a short running time; stretch it out to 45 minutes to an hour and you have a terrific, PBS-type stand-alone show. To purchase the Righteous Kill DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) C+ (Disc)