In the spring of 1997, a beer slinger/bouncer named Troy Duffy hit the aspirant-filmmaker lottery when he sold his gritty screenplay, The Boondock Saints, for $300,000 to Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, who promptly attached Duffy to direct, agreed to let his band do the soundtrack and, as a goodwill bonus, even offered to buy and throw in co-ownership of the Melrose Avenue bar where Duffy worked. If Schwab’s was the old symbol of Tinseltown discovery, this was a radical new overhaul for the post-Tarantino age of underclass, videostore-fed auteurism.

Cutto a couple years later. After enduring months of Duffy’s boorish, bizarre behavior, and all manner of contretemps over casting and budget, Miramax put the film — about two avenging angel Irish brothers and the Latin they intone before blasting various criminal-types in the head — into turnaround, and dumped it back into the marketplace, mortally wounded in reputation. It would eventually get made on a relative shoestring budget, suffer an ignominious, deservedly bashed New York/Los Angeles theatrical release and find on video a small, drunken audience addicted to a surfeit of late ’90s, indie-style crime flick posturing. All of which brings us to the special new Blu-ray release of The Boondock Saints, ostensibly prelude to a not-nearly-long-enough-awaited (direct-to-video?) sequel.



The story centers on Murphy and Connor MacManus (Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery, respectively, left to right), blue-collar Irish twin brothers who work in a Boston meat-packing plant and experience a religious awakening that leads them to believe they’ve been chosen to rid the world of evil. No, not with good works, mind you — this is a movie! — but with bullets, of course. As they unleash a brutal stream of retribution on various tubby, Russian underworld criminals, FBI agent Paul Smecker (Willem Dafoe), leading the investigation into the assailants behind these bloody murders, comes closer and closer to cracking the case. Surprisingly, Smecker finds himself torn between busting the vigilantes and joining them.

An orgiastic assemblage of genre clichés you’ve seen hundreds of times before, from balletic gun shoot-outs and slow-mo deaths to block-headed, epithet-fueled dialogue exchanges, The Boondock Saints does score some minor points for making Smecker gay, an interesting character choice that sets him apart from most lawman-types in movies of this ilk. But its story is a bunch of blarney, and its rendering both garish and amateurish. Some films develop a cult following based on their actual inherent appeal and the skill with which they’re crafted; other films are labeled “cult hits” because they tap into the aspirant impulses of the lowest-common-denominator crowd to which they cater. The Boondock Saints is an instance of the latter.

The film comes to Blu-ray in 2.35:1 non-anamorphic widescreen 1080p, with an English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track, and optional English and Spanish subtitles. Both the movie’s theatrical cut and its unrated director’s cut — really amounting to a handful of frames of excised violence, nothing radically different in terms of story content or even overall tone — are included here, and the pictures on each offer up strong colors, free from artifacting or any edge enhancement.

The rest of the content is imported from the title’s special edition director’s cut release. Most notable, of course, is an audio commentary track from Duffy that is at times borderline contrite, but also willfully abstruse when it comes to specifics about the project’s fall from grace. Hardcore devotees of the title may find tidbits about the haphazardness of the movie’s set detail and construction interesting, but Hollywood rumor junkies will feel largely unfulfilled by this track. Duffy can be amusing, as when wryly recalling a two-page letter from the archdiocese of Toronto calling him “the spawn of Satan,” but he showcases his functional unawareness of production savvy when confessing first choices for various musical cues came from the Beatles, the Doors and Led Zeppelin, and then expressing surprise at their cost. He’s also amazingly myopic; Duffy still blames the Columbine shootout for scuttling the movie’s chances at a wider distribution pick-up, and claims it was “literally blacklisted” from American screens, like it was some sort of international smash. Co-star Billy Connolly, who plays enigmatic assassin Il Duce, also sits for a separate audio commentary track, but his remarks deteriorate rather quickly into generalized observations about low-budget, independent filmmaking. A clutch of deleted scenes runs just under 15 minutes, and a small batch of outtakes and the original theatrical trailer round things out. The disc is also D-box motion control capable, for those interested. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B+ (Disc)

From 2000 to 2002, Christopher Titus had a brief cup of coffee at the network level as the producer-star of his own eponymous sitcom, based on his dysfunctional adolescence. But Titus the show didn’t fully showcase the comedian’s fierce, if demon-derived talents. Instead, that’s best left to his all-new Comedy Central stand-up special, Love is Evol, new to DVD this week.

A tour de force on all things love, Love is Evol is a hilarious and unflinching look at dating, romance, marriage and especially heartache and divorce — the “psychological barbed wire” of relationships. Building on the same sort of very personal material explored in 2004’s Norman Rockwell is Bleeding and 2007’s The 5th Annual End of the World Tour specials, Titus plumbs dark places for some genuine, slack-jawed laughs, without the gimmickry of empty shock through manufactured coarseness. There’s a lot of material about his parents — his father was an emotionally abusive heavy drinker, his mother a manic-depressive schizophrenic alcoholic who eventually killed her second husband, but also showed up at her son’s high school graduation in “white, thigh-high go-go boots and an Army jacket, looking like the commander of a stripper battalion.” Titus confesses that this tumultuous upbringing has resulted in a permanent mocking inner monologue, a feeling of always being one step away from screwing things up.

He doesn’t shy away from also turning the fire on his ex-wife, though. While Titus assays the process of divorce harshly (“I’d rather be majority stockholder in a chain of Alec Baldwin daycares with Britney Spears as the CEO”), he argues that the June 6, 2006 filing date of the end of his marriage was an ironic gift from God. If your loved one comes from a screwed up family background but you think they got out sane, think again, Titus advises — they’re more likely just “a psycho Tylenol gelcap.” Jealousy seems to have been a big issue in Titus’ marriage — he claims he was accused of sleeping with people he hadn’t even met — so that issue gets plenty of workout. In broader, slightly less personal, or at least less psychologically penetrating, areas of focus Titus also advises against Capri pants for ladies, and says that women can believe a man really loves them if he goes to the mall with them. “At the mall,” Titus says, “men are always thinking, ‘I wish I was doing something productive — like cleaning out the gutter, coming up with life goals or inventing a car that runs on shattered dreams and lost faith in myself.'”

While the hard-hitting personal material may on the surface seem an odd match with some of the more generally observant comedy that rounds out the last leg of the show, Titus finds smart ways to interweave the two. It helps, too, that he’s not afraid to tag the harshest of his jokes with small, puncturing laughs of self-evisceration, making his own foibles and perceived inadequacies always part of the punchline. It’s this tack — the never vain, shrewdly perceptive ability to mine truth from personal angst — that helps elevate Titus’ material from merely funny to both amusing and painfully insightful, in its best passages.

Housed in a regular Amaray case, Christopher Titus: Love is Evol comes to DVD on a single disc, presented in full screen. Bonus materials include over 40 minutes of material not aired from the show’s Valentine’s Day premiere on Comedy Central, as well as a behind-the-scenes featurette on the photo shoot for the special, man-on-the-street interviews with fans and “Countdown to V-Day,” a segment in which Titus gives love advice. To purchase the DVD via Comedy Central, click here; to purchase it via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A- (Concert) B (Disc)

Plying their trade with deep-cut albums that allowed for maximum mood-noodling, Vanilla Fudge first came to prominence in 1967, and recorded a number of albums over a course of three years. Originally formed by Carmine Appice, keyboardist Mark Stein and bassist
Tim Bogert, the group added guitarist Vince Martell and enjoyed success in the American singles chart with a slowed-down arrangement of the Supremes hit “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” before finally parting ways in 1970. Now they’re back, on a concert DVD from five years ago.

Recorded in 2004, Vanilla Fudge: When Two Worlds Collide features core members Bogert and Appice alongside newer members Teddy Rondinelli, on guitar, and Bill Pascali, on keyboards. In this performance, the band run through key Vanilla Fudge songs including “Take Me For a Little While,” “Season of the Witch,” “She’s Not There” and, of course, “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” An orchestral opening gives way to “Good Livin’,” and other tunes here include “Ain’t That Peculiar,” “People Get Ready,” “Shotgun,” “Tearin’ Up My Heart,” “Need Love” and “You Can’t Do That.” There’s also a cover of the Rod Stewart Hit “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,” which seems like a weird cheat until you realize that Appice wrote while a member of Rod Stewart’s band during the ’70s.

In truth, though, this isn’t the greatest showcase for the group. The direction is overly processed, powered by too many cuts, and this undercuts the otherwise solid amount of close-ups that comprise the show. Apart from these misguided editorial choices, it’s also just a weird presentation of the music, to be honest. Pascali sports three stick-on diamonds on his face, under his mouth, and there’s faaaaar too much jam-band instrumental noodling for these tunes to take hold, even if it is mixed with some admittedly nice contributions from a sit-in orchestra.

Housed in a clear plastic Amaray case, Vanilla Fudge: When Two Worlds Collide comes presented on a region-free disc in 1.33:1 fullscreen, with an entirely adequate Dolby digital audio track. A too-long, literal-minded (look… it’s two planets… and they’re colliding!) animated set-up that can’t be force-stopped gives way to the main menu screen, where viewers can play the concert in its entirety or jump to specific tracks. Other bonus materials consists of an optional commentary track on the main concert, a nine-minute photo gallery with commentary from Appice and Bogert — probably the highlight of the disc, given some of their wry reminiscences — and a five-minute mini-documentary on the group comprised of interviews with all the players. Oh, there’s also five minutes of festival footage of the band performing the Back Street Boys song “I Want It That Way.” Yes, seriously. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. D (Concert) B (Disc)

A good number of Steven Seagal’s films over the past half dozen years can be enjoyed as comedies by right-minded (and possibly intoxicated) genre fans, owing to their, umm… how to put it, streamlined production values, and penchant for hilarious ADR throw-aways during various bad guy beatdowns. Against the Dark, which actually holds some intrigue on a certain level — inserting its star into a supernatural genre that he’s thus far scrupulously avoided — unfortunately doesn’t even really offer much of a kick on that level. It’s just bad. Baaaaaaad…

The back cover of this straight-to-video release describes the film thusly: “Katana master Tao (Seagal) leads a special ops squad of ex-military vigilantes on a massacre mission. Their target: vampires. On the post-apocalyptic globe, sucked dry by bloodthirsty vampires, a few remaining survivors are trapped in an infected hospital. Tao is their only hope and he knows the only cure is execution. Now it’s time for the last stand against the flesh-eating vampires, and there’s nothing left to lose but the last of humanity.”

Yes, seriously, that’s exactly how it reads, “post-apocalyptic globe” and all. Now, for the specifics. Given how little he appears in the film, viewers wouldn’t necessarily know until late in the movie that Seagal’s character is named Tao, unless perhaps they’d read the back cover box. Most of the movie actually centers on two different groups of survivors, including Dylan (Daniel Percival, of Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj), Dorothy (Jenna Harrison), Morgan (Danny Midwinter) and young Charlotte (tyke Skye Bennett, looking baffled by the amateurishness around her), supposedly holed up in this “safe” hospital, which seems to house an awful lot of marauding vampires.

They all come together and then spend an inordinate amount of time talking about how they have to make it to an exit passageway “before the generator shuts down” and locks them in. (Nevermind that one couple has been chilling there for a couple weeks, just biding time.) Intercut with this main arc is a story strand — with Keith David and Linden Ashby — about an ordered military strike on the sector that houses the hospital, and Seagal’s Tao wandering about with his group of hunters.

Against the Dark was written by Matthew Klickstein (Dinner Time) and helmed by first-time director Richard Crudo, a seasoned cinematographer whose two most interesting credits — as director of photography on the original American Pie, and camera operator on Donnie Darko — are counterbalanced by the vast amount of cruddy straight-to-video product that otherwise litters his resumé. Neither scribe nor director shows much convincing imagination, and the dialogue is howlingly bad. In the “cold open” action sequence that kick-starts the movie, when there’s some modest bickering about the ensuing course of action, and where to next go, Seagal ends debate by growling, “We’re not here to decide what’s wrong or right, we’re here to decide who lives and dies.”

I’m not really sure what that means. But, worse, when they meet up, none of the other characters glom onto or even treat Tao as a heroic figure (or thank him for saving their lives, in the one or two instances he does), and even in scenes without Tao it seems as though large swatches of dialogue were assigned randomly, with no premium placed on the words spoken by other characters, either before or after it. Adding insult to injury, the film’s vampire hunting action is pretty lame, and even when Seagal is on screen most of the heavy lifting is left to Tanoai Reed, a cousin of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson who previously smashed heads on TV’s American Gladiators. He plays a character named Tagart (a shout-out to Fire Down Below?), the sole member of Tao’s crew that could be defined as anything more than a glorified extra. The other two? Chicks who don’t speak (perhaps because they can’t speak English?), which leads to an awkward mock-emotional moment where a grimacing Seagal silently eulogizes a character the audience doesn’t really know.

Housed in a regular Amaray plastic case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Against the Dark is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital audio track, and a French language Dolby surround track. Optional English and French subtitles are included, and the only supplemental material comes by way of a short featurette, “Fighting the Shadows: Behind the Scenes of Against the Dark,” that showcases much more production savvy than the actual film itself. Including interviews with a solid array of below-the-line players and a few cast members — Crudo talks authoritatively about having worked with Seagal before, never mentioning
that it was only as a cinematographer, while Seagal,
lounging in his trailer, coughs up a few monosyllabic plot-point recaps — this eight-minute-ish tidbit makes a convincing case that the in-house featurette folks should be given their own production fund. Oh, there’s also an amusing tidbit where the stunt coordinator talks about reworking action blocking with Seagal on the fly, and incorporating the producer-actor’s thoughts. There’s no bitterness or acrimony to his recollection, though; dude just seems to recognize it’s all part of the paycheck on a Seagal movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. F (Movie) D+ (Disc)

A passably engaging claustrophobic horror thriller that a little more
than halfway through reveals the limitations of its mode of
storytelling and visual scheme, Quarantine is told entirely via
hand-held footage shot by one of its characters. The story — about a
television reporter who accompanies a group of firefighters and emergency responders into a Los
Angeles tenement building, only to get sealed in after encountering a
virulent, mutant strain of rabies — works for a while as a goosing
stylistic exercise before descending into nonsensical confusion,
hamstrung by aggressively panicked camerawork, a lack of spatial
clarity and a clumsy attempt at backstory explanation.

A remake of Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza’s 2007 Spanish thriller [Rec], Quarantine
skips any introductory credits, opening with human interest news reporter
Angela Vidal (Jennifer Carpenter, above) and her cameraman, Scott
Percival (Steve Harris), on a shadow assignment and on site with a Los
Angeles fire department crew. Two firemen (Jay Hernandez and Johnathon
Schaech) are assigned as their guides for the evening, and some
flirting and good-natured chiding ensues between Angela and the guys.

Eventually responding to a late-night call with Angela and Scott in tow, the firefighters, as well as some policemen, come upon an elderly woman who bites one of the officers. When they attempt to get medical help, Angela and the first responders
find that they have been sealed in the building. They try to get out, but are repeatedly unsuccessful. With no power, cell
phone reception or immediate answers about their predicament, panic
mounts. Soon some of the rest of the residents — including a
veterinarian, an accountant and an immigrant couple — succumb to bites from both infected animals and humans, setting off a mad dash by
survivors to try to barricade themselves away from the frenzied,
foaming-mouthed diseased.

In similar fashion to The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield, Quarantine posits itself as an exercise in found footage. Director John Eric Dowdle
does a good job blending lurking, corner-of-one’s-eye mayhem with some
in-camera effects (one memorable sequence finds Scott using the camera
as a blunt-force weapon), but the script has trouble establishing a
clear timeline as it relates to the infected, so many times its switch-overs come across as cheaply dramatically convenient. Also, somewhat fatally, there’s never a keen sense of space established within the building. This renders much of Quarantine‘s shaky-cam action especially unclear and unsatisfying. Finally, a finale which attempts to further clarify the origin of the strain of rabies comes across as very puzzlingly conceived, and entirely at cross purposes with the adrenalized nature of the entire rest of the story.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case with a cover shot that, quite curiously, is its own sort of spoiler, Quarantine comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and a French language Dolby surround sound track, as well as optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. A feature-length audio commentary track with writer-director Dowdle and writer-producer Drew Dowdle, who previously collaborated on The Poughkeepsie Tapes, kicks off the supplemental features, but the brothers don’t talk very much about the source material, and how it inspired and interested them, or how they might have diverged from it. A trio of short EPK-type, behind-the-scenes chat-fests serves as the crux of the bonus material; there’s your standard 10-minute making-of featurette, a special look at one of the movie’s stunts and also an eight-minute featurette on the movie’s make-up design, which showcases Robert Hall’s work. He’s one of the more interesting figures interviewed here, so kudos for the breakout recognition. Trailers for other Sony home video releases round out the affair. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

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Testing the maxim that happiness can’t be contrived, High School Musical 3: Senior Year
sets off a joy bomb, and attempts to charm tween-leaning audiences
through an explosion of primary colors, bright production design and
sheer, indefatigable force of will. The fact that the first film in the Disney
Channel’s huge hit TV movie series to receive a proper theatrical release is bluntly effective in its staged
cathartic moments but generally powered by a puttering dramatic engine didn’t seem to impair the
relentlessly chipper toe-tapper’s box office haul — the film grossed $250 million, with an impressive 64 percent of that total coming overseas.

The plot, as if you either didn’t already know, or simply didn’t care? Against the spring backdrop of their senior year, a half dozen students
at New Mexico’s Eastern High try to juggle competing interests for
their time and attention, and figure out the paths for their respective
futures. Fresh off winning their second state basketball championship,
school hunk and big-man-on-campus Troy (Zac Efron) seems destined to
follow in his father’s footsteps to the local university, by accepting
a basketball scholarship alongside his best friend Chad (Corbin Bleu).
Giving Troy pause, though, is the fact that his girlfriend Gabriella
(Vanessa Hudgens) is headed out-of-state to Stanford. As they
prepare for one last school musical, eagerly anticipated by the
self-involved Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and her more open-hearted twin
brother Ryan (Lucas Grabeel), the group’s drama teacher adds a wrinkle
to events by announcing that recruiters from Juilliard, the prestigious
performing arts academy, will be on hand to observe the award one
scholarship to a student at yet to be determined.

Returning
series director Kenny Ortega creates an immaculately presented fashion
showcase, and places a heavy emphasis on theatrical gesticulation that
makes High School Musical 3 seem ever solicitous of its
audience’s feelings, in ways perhaps contrived but no less forceful and
effective. A couple musical numbers are shot in seemingly hurried
fashion, with tight alternating close-ups, but the up-tempo songs generally work, even when trading in boys-are-back clichés, and for the most part
there’s a nice fleshing-out consistent with the bump in production
value from the previous made-for-television movies.

Somewhat
unfortunately, all the conflict here is of the paint-by-numbers variety,
even for teen dramas. Sharpay’s conniving and antagonism is rather
blithely dismissed, never carrying over to later scenes. Similarly,
because it’s not evidenced by actual friction in their relationship,
the emotional drift between Gabriella and Troy as they prepare for
different post-high school paths never seems like more than a set-up for song. Troy, too, often seems an incidental bystander in his own
unfolding future, the one exception to this being “My Own Dream,” which
is the movie’s requisite Footloose-style, solo freak-out
number, complete with shifting floor and ceiling dance bits to simulate
angsty teen disorientation and confusion. That said, there’s not
much in the film’s look or execution to dissuade embrace by its core
audience; the movie’s production design and overall packaging are slick, and the
performances are sunny and engaging.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a glossy cardboard slipcover, High School Musical 3: Senior Year comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track anchoring the aural presentation. The video transfer is solid, with crisp, bright colors, consistent blacks and no problems with artifacting or edge enhancement. The two-disc DVD showcases the extended version of the film, plus a smattering of not-very-lengthy supplemental features that exhibit an emphasis on quantity over quality. Hug-laden, EPK-style interviews with the cast total around six minutes, as do a collection of deleted scenes. There’s also a squeaky-clean (i.e., curse-free), three-minute blooper reel, which offers only marginal amusement. The other featurettes, the seven-minute “Night of Nights” and the two-and-a-half-minute “It’s All in the Dress,” spotlight the film’s big prom scene blowout musical number and all the prom costumes, respectively, and aren’t necessarily heavy on replay value. Granted, this entire series isn’t perhaps worthy of much deep psychological examination, but it would’ve actually been interesting to get a studio/executive perspective of what helped launch and shape High School Musical, and its sequels. Perhaps of most special note for extroverted tween audiences is the
disc’s sing-along feature, which lets viewers jump to a specific song or play the entire movie in this mode, with karaoke-style lyrics along the
bottom of the screen to assist in belting out tunes with the movie’s
characters. Finally, in addition to the theatrical trailer, there’s also a “DisneyFile” digital copy of the movie. To purchase the extended edition DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B- (Disc)

Written and directed by Courtney Hunt, Frozen River could — if perhaps reset in Spain and helmed by Pedro Almodovar — just as easily be titled Women on the Edge, for it’s a movie all about the struggle of blue-collar, dirty-fingernailed retail moms for whom life doesn’t quite work, and cigarettes are a luxurious escape. A slice of socioeconomically depressed cinema very loosely in the vein of George Washington or Come Early Morning, Hunt’s feature debut is anchored by Best Actress Oscar nominee Melissa Leo’s fiercely prideful, stirring performance, which recommends the title for fans of smart, quiet acting.

Life in Massena, New York, a small border town of 13,000 along on the northern edge of St. Lawrence County, is as harsh and barren as the frigid landscape. In this bleak terrain, two hardened single mothers trying to make a life for their children cross paths in unlikely fashion. Lila (Misty Upham) is a widowed Mohawk whose mother-in-law “stole” her newborn son a year ago. Ray (Leo) is the mother of two boys, 15-year-old T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and little Ricky (James Reilly), whose unreliable, come-and-go, gambling-addicted husband just disappeared with the $1,500 down payment for their new double-wide trailer home. Faced with little opportunity to make ends meet, Ray and Lila embark on an illegal venture transporting immigrants into the U.S. across an iced-over river on Native American reservation territory. With the money for the completion/delivery payment within Ray’s grasp, the women are determined to make one last run. When circumstances spiral out of control, the two women must make life or death decisions based on their love for their children and quasi-friendship.

Hunt fetishizes the worried, working woman’s creases of Leo’s face, and in this regard (smartly? by chance?) lets Leo do a lot of the film’s emotional heavy lifting. Much of the rest of Frozen River is all surface drama, though, which is problematic both because of Upham’s limited professional resumé and the fact that Hunt has trouble crafting dialogue that doesn’t come across like a hammer on a nail. (“I don’t usually work with whites,” says Lila at one point, then, “They won’t stop you — you’re white.” Later, a character literally searches for money in the couch cushions, something I don’t believe I’ve done since I was seven, no matter how desperate to pay the rent.) The inherent dramatic conflict here is all telegraphed, in other words. Some nonverbalized details work much better (Ray’s oldest son spreading burnt popcorn to mask the smell of an accident, for instance), and the movie is both nicely photographed and has an additional pinch of timeliness due to the foreclosure crisis sweeping the nation. But mostly Frozen River, a sort of pencil sketch character flick, runs out of natural mesmeric pull, and coasts on the strength of its steely star — a career supporting actress now reborn as a leading lady.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Frozen River comes presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 audio track and optional French subtitles. Somewhat dishearteningly, the sole supplemental bonus feature is an audio commentary track with Hunt and producer Heather Rae. The women speak glowingly of their collaborators, and talk some about the inspiration for the film (some non-fiction articles and research Hunt did), but the track is punctuated by long silences, and would have benefited from a moderator’s presence to help coax out not just more production anecdotes but a grander discussion of the movie’s thematic social content. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

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Straight-up horror gets intermingled with the supernatural in Red Mist, a stylishly lensed straight-to-video shocker that delivers some decently imaginative thrill-kills. No great points for narrative invention or depth of performance, but hardcore genre fans will more or less be able to get on board with this flick.

Set at Forthaven Hospital, a teaching institution where the hard-partying medical interns are apparently boning up on their self-obsessed navel-gaving, indiscriminate sexual canoodling and general indifference so that they might graduate to glossier, Grey’s Anatomy-type shenanigans, Red Mist takes as its quietly dangerous protagonist a loner janitor, Kenneth (Andrew Lee Potts), whose life at the hospital consists of a series of endless torments from said ambitious, snooty medical students. When their latest stunt goes too far, Kenneth ends up in a coma, and practically brain dead.

Determined to save his life, guilt-ridden Catherine (Arielle Kebbel, most recently of The Uninvited) administers a powerful and
untested cocktail of drugs to the coma victim. Rather than cure Kenneth,
however, it triggers a powerful out-of-body experience and enables him to temporarily inhabit other people’s bodies and, through them,
take revenge on those responsible for his vegetative state. (At this point, cue R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” for alternate soundtrack play-along-at-home amusement.) As her colleagues are savagely picked off in one-by-one fashion, Catherine soon
realizes that what started as a medical miracle has now transformed into a
medical monstrosity. She’s forced to confront a comatose killer who
moves in and out of bodies at will, getting ever closer to her as his
supernatural powers increase.

Penned by Spencer Wright and directed by Paddy Breathnach (Blow Dry, I Went Down), Red Mist is a moderately engaging horror flick that scores points in the execution of its gruesome dispatches. The body-swap and foreign-control element gives the movie most of its dramatic juice — as in Mirrors, Kenneth can essentially force people to harm themselves — even if the actual set-up of said conceit is a bit eye-rollingly familiar, and over-the-top. (Could self-centered students fast-tracked for success really be bothered to engage in high school-level bullying in the first place?) Breathnach is forced by the story to set his proceedings in some relatively drab locations, but he injects energy and color where he can, with strobe effects and other devices. General audiences may more or less yawn, but hardcore genre fans will dig some of the blood-letting on display here.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with the above, nicely impressionistic cover art, Red Mist comes to DVD via Anchor Bay, and is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with solid black levels and a barely detectable trace of edge compression in solid colors. An English language 5.1 Dolby surround sound audio track anchors the aural presentation, and there are also optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired. The DVD’s special features consist of three different featurettes. The first is an extended interview with Kebbel, who’s certainly easy on the eyes, but offers no great insights about her character or the material. There’s also a 21-minute making-of featurette, rife with behind-the-scenes and on-set footage, that comes across as a bit muddled; it’s partly a music video-type tone piece, meant to broadly convey the impression of actually shooting the movie, and partly a collection of EPK-style chats with various on-screen and off-screen players. A four-minute chat with other cast members on location in Northern Ireland and previews for other Anchor Bay releases round out this affair. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

In the shadows of this year’s impending Oscar ceremony, where his The Curious Case of Benjamin Button stands tall, if somewhat quietly on the buzz-meter, with 13 nominations, the most of any film, director David Fincher’s grossly underrated previous effort behind the camera, Zodiac, arrives to Blu-ray.

A dense but hypnotic and starkly involving account of the unsolved murders in California that spanned the late 1960s and 1970s. Part brooding investigative ensemble, part journalistic procedural in the vein of All The President’s Men, the film is a strikingly well stitched together vivisection of crime and obsession, marked by a painstaking, novelistic richness that showcases the heavy existential toll of the pursuit of punishment. Up to this point in time Fincher’s most mature work, as well as, on the surface, his least stylistically ambitious, Zodiac lacks the overt cop-versus-killer thrills of his genre hit Seven, but it will surely stand the test of time as a superlative entry in the crime canon, eventually sharing many a big city double-bill during retrospectives of the filmmaker’s work.

Based on the true story of a serial killer who for many years terrified the Northern California area and taunted authorities across the state with cryptic letters to the press, Zodiac is adapted from the non-fiction book of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a shy editorial cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle. On August 1, 1969, similar letters arrive in the press rooms of three different newspapers claiming responsibility for two previous attacks which left three young people dead and another critically injured. Along with details of the crimes are a series of coded messages, with instructions to publish them. By mid-October, two more assaults leave another two dead and one injured.

While San Francisco homicide detectives Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) work the case from their side, Graysmith indulges a growing interest in the awful affair with his gifted but cynical colleague, scruffy crime beat reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr). Graysmith even unlocks a key reference to the 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game in one of the Zodiac’s ciphers; Avery becomes a stated target of the killer, touching off his downward descent into drugs and alcohol.

Inter-jurisdictional nightmares ensue. In decided contrast to the inviolabilities of modern-day forensics often showcased in such genre pieces, the police in Zodiac are shown to be continually frustrated by problems with respect to evidence analysis, tracing and simple coordination. Conflicting modes of exploit and the Zodiac’s contradictory staked claims to crimes he likely didn’t commit only muddy the waters. Over the course of many months and years, though, a tangled labyrinth of evidence eventually points to a compelling suspect. When this individual is cleared, Armstrong begs off the case. Graysmith, meanwhile, launches his own dogged investigation, conferring occasionally with a still haunted Toschi. Many more years pass. As much as the rigorously detailed Zodiac is about specifically its namesake case, it’s also a movie about the associated effects of the hunt for a murderer, and the heavy price — materially, socially, psychologically, emotionally — those seekers pay.

That screenwriter James Vanderbilt (Basic, The Rundown) avoids conventional payoffs is somewhat of a given knowing the nature of the material. It’s the dark humor and digressive details of his script, though, which help truly moor the story and add to its overall tension. They make the expansive backdrop, its galloping pace — weeks, months and sometimes even years flit by with dispassionate textual cards — and the manner in which characters flow in and out of the story feel even more real.

Zodiac‘s actual violence is relatively minimal, but frontloaded and grimly depicted. Fincher captures the sudden and arbitrary nastiness of these acts, and they carry a nasty wallop and enduring influence that hang menacingly over the rest of the film. Visually, Fincher applies the same exacting sense of detail and framing to Zodiac as his other films, abetted by Donald Graham Burt’s fantastic production design and occasional collaborator Harris Savides’ cinematography. Everything from the spot-on costumes, setting and newsroom lighting to David Shire’s score and a discerning selection of period rock tunes (Boz Scaggs, Donovan, Marvin Gaye, et al) exudes the time period in question. Fincher furthermore makes savvy use of a variety of directorial techniques — from a compressed montage of talk radio chatter to a time-lapsed sequence involving the construction of the city’s iconic Transamerica Building — to briskly and artfully convey wide swaths of time.

The cast is superbly chosen, and the performances are uniformly engaging in their own ways. Downey, Jr, impresses his own idiosyncratic charm onto the role of Avery, while Fincher bleeds Ruffalo of the undue earnestness that has weighed down some of his recent work, resulting in the actor’s most lingeringly memorable performance since You Can Count On Me. A brilliant new classic of its field, Zodiac breathes life into the police procedural drama, weaving a deeply humanistic tapestry.

Its outer cover a canted replication of the envelope from the first letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by the killer, Zodiac is presented on Blu-ray in 2.35:1 non-anamorphic 1080p widescreen, with an English language TrueHD 5.1 surround sound audio track and optional subtitles in English, English SDH, French and Spanish. Since it’s spread out over two discs, just like the double-disc director’s cut of the film that hit regular DVD last year, the picture and sound quality of the feature has plenty of room to breathe, and is of course superb — free from digital artifacting, and marked by deep, consistent colors. Two audio commentary tracks sit on the first disc with the film itself — one with Fincher and one a patchwork affair with Gyllenhaal, Downey, Jr., Vanderbilt, producer Brad Fischer and writer James Ellroy, who is unaffiliated with the movie itself but obviously knows a lot about criminal non-fiction. Of these, Fincher’s is marked by an impressive breadth and easygoing listenability, though both are superlative when stacked up against the vast majority of chat-alongs, simply owing to the intellect of their participants.

A quartet of meaty featurettes and a feature-length documentary occupy the set’s second disc, and collectively serve as a prime, top-shelf example of how Blu-ray’s extra space can be used to spotlight both production detail as well as extracurricular, but extremely relevant corroborative material. Running about an hour and 40 minutes, This is the Zodiac Speaking is a fascinating, comprehensive examination of the Zodiac case that includes sit-down chats with many of the real investigators and other people involved in the case. The movie itself, meanwhile, gets a in-depth, start-to-edit-bay overview that’s divided into seven chapters, and runs just under 55 minutes. A separate, chilling, 42-minute look at prime suspect Arthur Leigh Allen culls extra interview material from This is the Zodiac Speaking to take a closer look at the man Graysmith makes a convincing case was the Zodiac killer. In addition to the film’s theatrical trailer, shorter looks at Fincher’s great ease with digital effects and previsualization technique showcase how he was able to meticulously recreate entire neighborhoods, with spatial exactitude and great detail. To purchase the double-disc Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. A+ (Movie) A (Disc)

Written and directed by Richard Brooks, 1971’s Dollars is a weird, freewheeling genre mash-up — part heist flick drama, part screwball character comedy. Parts work, parts don’t, but it’s still an instructive watch, if mainly to suss out how genre filmmaking has changed over the past 35 years.

A Nebraska-born con man working abroad in Hamburg as a security consultant, Joe Collins (Warren Beatty, sporting a Rod Blagojevich-esque helmet of hair) crafts a plan for a bank heist with ditsy hooker Dawn Divine (Goldie Hawn), whose line of work puts her in contact with a shady, money-skimming army sergeant (Scott Brady), a German drug dealer/assassin (Arthur Brauss) and a Vegas mobster (Robert Webber), among others. Operating under the assumption that criminals can’t squeal to the cops if their ill-gotten gains suddenly go missing from a safety deposit box, Joe concocts a scheme by which he and Dawn target only the secret stashes of the aforementioned crooks. After Dawn phones in a fake bomb/theft threat, Joe locks himself in the bank’s vault and deftly avoids the timed, oscillating security camera, emptying a trio of safety deposit boxes into one opened by Dawn, who arrives to empty it the next day, after news coverage of the phony foiled theft. But when these thugs realize they’ve been double-crossed, Dawn and Joe must run for their lives in order to keep the loot.

And when I say run, I mean that seriously. There’s a lot of set-up here… more than an hour’s worth of character stuff (we get to know all the marks, individually), and plenty of faux-scenic dawdling. But when the movie stretches its third act legs, it gets even more bizarre, culminating in an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods finale that finds Joe, hot suitcase in hand, fleeing through snow on foot, in car and in train. This sequence goes on forever, to absurdly comic lengths. Perhaps this is part of some subtextual point, running parallel to the movie’s character-based comedy, but given that overall Dollars treats the heist stuff rather seriously this seems somewhat doubtful.

Brooks, a 1961 Oscar winner for Best Screenplay for Elmer Gantry, crafts a nice character for Beatty, and has a deft touch with dialogue to boot. There’s some tart double entendres about “boxes,” and the film may be — I’m not totally sure — the original source of the infamous, frat-friendly quote, “One thing that doesn’t belong in her mouth is words.” But Dawn Divine is thinly sketched, and Hawn’s portrayal — distractably flitting to and fro — is overly broad and not rooted in any recognizable choice of character or background. Joe and Dawn’s motivations are parceled out in big, manic monologues, and the film feels flimsy when it tries to milk Dawn’s angsty doubt for comedy. (Terrible ADR in a couple scenes sure doesn’t help, either.) Things work a lot better, and feel more natural, when Brooks is trading in small, telling details, like a nervous bank employee slipping a cigarette into his mouth the wrong end first, or Joe concocting an at-moment’s-notice fib to get out of some unanticipated questioning. One thing’s for sure — Hollywood heist movies, like Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s series, have gone slick, and grown much more convoluted. But there’s a plenty rich screen history of cracked, cocksure slightly eccentric grifters and white-collar smooth operators, as Dollars proves.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Dollars comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital English and French audio tracks, and optional subtitles in both languages as well. The billed supplemental extras here are pretty slight — they amount to the movie’s theatrical trailer and a minute-long “Martini Movies Collection” (the banner under which this title was released) promo clip that ends with a martini recipe. To purchase Dollars via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Despite being directed by a guy with the first name Nimrod, 2007’s Vacancy, a thriller about the dangers of leaving the comfortable asphalt confines of the
interstate, managed to locate some primal,
gut-level reactions to darkness, jarring noise, faceless killers and
the like. Its straight-to-DVD sequel jumps back to the beginning of the bare-bones mythology laid out in that film, sketching out another stalking tale of very bad acts at a desolate hotel — this time in the form of some peeping Toms who catch a psychotic killer in the act, and then decide to enter into a black-market snuff film pact with him.

At the end of the first film, authorities shut down the remote Pinewood Motel after discovering over 200 videotaped murders on the premises. Vacancy 2: The First Cut charts how the grisly terror began, fleshing out a tale that’s three parts barbarism to one part unlikely opportunism. Suspecting only a night of hard beds and tacky decor, Caleb (Trevor
Wright), his sexy new fiancée Jessica (Agnes Bruckner) and his
sarcastic best friend Tanner (Arjay Smith, very much the token black
guy), the ultimate strange third wheel, check into a rundown rural inn. They have no idea that it’s not
just another lonely motel, but in fact a horrific trap where guests are
brutally tortured and murdered while the sadistic Smith (Scott G. Anderson, reprising his homicidal character from the original movie) and his greedy accomplices, Gordon and Reece (David Moscow and Brian Klugman), film the grisly slayings for profit. Caught in
a deadly game of cat and mouse, the three young friends now must fight
to survive. Can they outwit the deranged killers and escape the roadside trap by morning, or will their fate be forever sealed on video cassette?

Vacancy 2 works in a couple good, or at least good-ish, head feints, including an elongated set-up that introduces a just-wed couple who don’t get axed. Gordon and Reece, you see, are at first just into taping sex acts of randy travelers passing through; it’s Smith who whets their appetite for artery-severing mayhem, after they catch him in the fact of murdering a prostitute. While narratively improbable, I give the movie some credit for piecing things together in a way that interestingly fits with the original film. There’s also some decent performances here, considering the laid track of the script. Still, it remains undeniable that certain character combinations and actions make no sense, be it a honeymooning couple who lay over on a whim or the fact that Tanner is even around in the first place. Also, director Eric Bross (Restaurant, Ten Benny), while slipping in a few moments of downbeat menace, can’t fully resist the impulse to cram in a couple thunderously stupid scene cappers — one early sequence ends with a character menacingly stabbed a dart onto a nearby countertop, and intoning, in chilly fashion, “Let’s get to work.” I mean… really? Do killers, or even those who have yet to kill, say stuff like that?

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Vacancy 2: The First Cut is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Owing to its whopping slate of Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks — six different languages, plus a group commentary track — the DVD is fairly slow to navigate, unfortunately. And that grates. Subtitles in seven languages are also available, so if you speak only Thai but still really like stalking American horror pictures of contained space, then by all means this is right up your alley.

In addition to a collection of deleted scenes, two making-of featurettes are included, including a 13-minute general-interest/behind-the-scenes piece and a stand-alone seven-minute bit that examines the construction of the movie’s exterior inn location. The most engaging supplemental inclusion, however, might be a feature-length group audio commentary track consisting of actors Moscow and Bruckner, director Bross, executive producer Brian Paschal and producer Hal Lieberman. Sharing anecdotes of rampant poison oak outbreaks amongst cast and crew, this lively chat-fest covers a lot of ground. It’s perhaps a bit eyeroll-inducing when Bross starts talking about the “continually shifting balance of power between the antagonists,” the contrast in visual levels, and how certain framing (in the door jamb of a car, for instance) is designed to evoke a “V,” for the movie’s title. Still, there’s some fun, engaging stuff here; it’s not all just empty back-patting. For the movie’s trailer, click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

A screwball-style, Hollywood-tweaking romantic comedy starring William H. Macy and Meg Ryan, version 2.0, The Deal is a movie that overcomes one of the most terribly obvious PhotoShopped covers of recent memory, as well as a back cover that misspells the name of one of its main characters. In addition to affording screen capture enthusiasts more opportunities to gawk at Macy’s bare ass, the film gives its talented multi-hyphenate a fun chance to play roguish and oblivious. Put it on the front end of a double bill with a Chinese takeout buffet and David Mamet’s State and Main, also starring Macy, and you have yourself a pleasant little evening.

Adapted by Macy and director Steven Schachter from Peter Lefcourt’s book of the same name, The Deal opens with despondent, washed-up Hollywood producer Charlie Berns (Macy) trying to off himself, only to be interrupted by his nephew Lionel (Jason Ritter), an idealistic screenwriter who’s penned a script about former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. Seizing on the touted desires of Bobby Mason (LL Cool J, standing in for, oh, Vin Diesel, let’s say), a meatheaded action star and recent convert to Judiasm, to delve into more Jewish-centric material, Berns gets it in his head to take Lionel’s earnest, wholly uncommercial script and turn it into a wildly reimagined, thunderously stupid “freedom fighter” biopic. Wheeling and dealing, planting bogus stories of a bidding war in the trades, Charlie gets a hit-hungry studio desperate to get onboard a Mason picture to snap up the screenplay, and he then shrewdly taps Mason’s manager for rewrite duties. Along the way, Charlie becomes enamored with Deidre Hearn (Ryan), the slightly stuffy, self-serious development executive assigned to fast track the project.

Beginning with the second act, The Deal pivots to South Africa (where it was actually entirely filmed), chronicling the making of Berns and Hearn’s movie, where all sorts of various emergencies flare up, from a temperamental director to a nervous star. With cost-conscious studio execs already circling, Mason gets kidnapped by Muslim extremists. Things look bleak, but an emboldened Deidre finally comes around to Charlie’s damn-the-consequences style, and convinces him to take part in an on-the-fly refashioning of the movie as a legitimate arthouse endeavor.

The Deal‘s dialogue has a nice, ’30s-style patter to it, whether in incidental, passing fancy (“Good job, Hun,” says Charlie, walking past a costumed marauder on the studio lot) or the many scenes in which Charlie tries (and eventually succeeds in) getting into Deidre’s power-suit pants. Not everything works. In fact, the whole kidnapped-movie-star bit was much more effectively played out in last summer’s Tropic Thunder; here it’s just a throwaway gag — albeit a big, plot-shifting one — and then we’re off and running in another direction, never to actually see Mason’s character again. If that sort of abrupt, tacks-underneath-the-tires narrative switcheroo — where you think you’re headed one way, narratively speaking, only to be suddenly thrust in another direction — seems a bit like the storytelling equivalent of sand in the eyes during a playground fight, in the end it doesn’t much matter. Wry and dirty-minded, Macy absolutely steamrolls scenes, and if there’s a big tonal misstep midway through that unnecessarily tries to bring shading to his character — a maudlin sequence where Charlie finds out about the marriage of his adult daughter — most of the movie is content to just let Macy hoodwink folks, like a shrugging, devil-may-care loafer. That’s a plenty good deal, it turns out.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case with a deep-set, single circular nesting notch, The Deal comes to DVD presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo audio tracks. Apart from the theatrical trailer for the movie, the only other bonus feature is a 17-minute making-of featurette. It’s chock full of interviews from all the major players, both on screen and off, but Macy holds forth with many of the best ruminations, positing that Hollywood is for the most part a microcosm of society, and also that a writer watching a movie get made from his book is a bit like watching someone make love to one’s wife. “What are they supposed to say,” Macy jokes. “‘Good job?'” There’s also a digital download copy of the film included on the disc, for rip-and-play portability. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Written by Tom Malloy (who also co-stars in the film), The Alphabet Killer is a decently gripping psychological thriller loosely based on the still-unsolved “double initial” murders that shocked the citizens of Rochester, New York in the early 1970s. The details of the true story? From 1970 to 1973, three girls in and around Rochester were brutally raped and strangled, their bodies dumped in neighboring villages that bore the same first initial as their names. All three victims’ — young girls, aged 10 to 12 — first and last names also had matching initials. Despite the questioning of more than 800 suspects and the combined police resources of several communities, the case remains unsolved to this day.



In the film, Eliza Dushku stars Megan Paige, a police investigator whose commitment to the job borders on obsession. Megan and her partner, Lt. Ken Shine (Cary Elwes), are assigned to investigate the murder of a young girl named Carla Castillo, whose body is found in the nearby town of Churchville. Despite Megan’s considerable efforts, her inability to catch the killer leads to a nervous breakdown, eventually causing her to lose her fiancée, her career in law enforcement career, and her grip on reality.

Two years later, Megan is back at the police department, albeit in a demoted position. With the help of a mental illness support group headed by Richard Ledge (Timothy Hutton), Megan is slowly getting her life back on track. But when two more young girls are murdered with the same “alphabet” modus operandi, Megan becomes convinced the same serial killer has resurfaced. Battling hallucinations of the dead girls — as well as distrust from her colleagues — Megan dives back into the case, determined to bring the culprit to justice. With few leads and fewer concrete suspects, can she catch the “Alphabet Killer” before another victim is found?

There are hints of Flesh and Bone to this thriller, believe it or not, as well as some unreliable narrator/Insomnia-type shiftiness that Malloy craftily works in. (In this regard, the movie earns its stripes as part of a perfectly nutty Dushku double-dip, alongside the recent Nobel Son.) Director Rob Schmidt, who previously worked with Dushku on the thriller Wrong Turn, shoots the affair in a fairly straightforward fashion, but also has a nice sense of when to slow-play things to string along the tension. Dushku, who’s set to return to the small screen next month in the upcoming Fox series Dollhouse, does a fairly decent job overall, but also leans on a few mannered, TV acting tics that help keep her performance from being more of a naturalistic, rooted thing. If there’s a codifying strength here, other than the creepy fact that this is a speculative thriller, rooted in fact, it’s the movie’s superb supporting cast — the aforementioned bit players, plus Tom Noonan, recent Oscar nominee Melissa Leo, Larry Hankin, Bill Moseley, Jack McGee and Michael Ironside. They help give the film a sense of depth, and genuineness, that eludes a lot of straight-to-video crime dramas.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover with matching art, The Alphabet Killer is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track. Two audio commentaries highlight the DVD’s special features. The first is with producer Isen Robbins and director Schmidt (Crime + Punishment in Suburbia, the “Masters of Horror” series hour-long flick Right to Die), the latter of whom talks some about his cameo in the film as a cop who discovers a body in a rock quarry. Also, somewhat uncomfortably and hilariously, Schmidt picks the exact moment of Dushku’s brief topless scene to say “It felt like the right time for her to play a woman.” The audio commentary track with writer-producer-actor Malloy is thankfully much more interesting and engaging. In breathless fashion, Malloy drops mad anecdotes and mundane details alike (Elwes wearing his BlueTooth in a scene), as well as pointing out his mother’s filing secretary cameo. In more substantive monologues, he expounds upon the themes of “man versus self” (or woman, really) in the movie; he also drops an amusing sideways crack on Ralph Fiennes when he touts co-star Noonan’s work in Manhunter.

Finally, wrapping up the slate of bonus material is a three-minute, time-coded, alternate version of the movie’s opening scene — an investigatory traipse through the woods by Dushku and Elwes — and a completely pointless six-minute featurette that strings together a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage under music. Some of the latter material looks interesting on the surface, but without some context or linking interviews, however, this tells us nothing of substance about the movie. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

His life in shambles, despondent Henry Poole (Luke Wilson)
buys an abode in the same suburban, tract-house Los Angeles neighborhood where he
somewhat unhappily grew up, amidst the constant din of his parents’ arguments. Quietly withdrawn, Henry just wants to stew in his own juices, and be left alone, but one of his new neighbors, the slightly nosy
but well-meaning Esperanza (Babel‘s Adriana Barraza), happens upon a stain on his newly painted, outdoor stucco wall that she believes is the face of Christ, and thus imbued with special powers. Henry regards this as a bunch of silliness, but more interactions with those around him — including divorcée Dawn (Radha Mitchell), whose eight-year-old daughter, Millie (Morgan Lily) has stopped speaking ever since her parents’ break-up — slowly draw him out of his insular shell.

Henry Poole Is Here is directed by Mark Pellington, a filmmaker with a deep music video catalogue (including Pearl Jam’s groundbreaking “Jeremy” clip) who’s always been a master of atmosphere and mood, most notably with The Mothman Prophecies. Here, though, he rolls the dice on a much more personal story, and succeeds in crafting what is overall a fairly affecting movie about emotional waywardness and the heavy psychological lifting of substantive interpersonal reflection. The target is smaller, but Pellington’s extraordinary skill at marrying artful image and emotional content help Henry Poole
avoid a lot of treacly downward drag, and elevate the emotional punch
of debut screenwriter Albert Torres’ script, which is enough of a blank
canvas to allow one to project onto it their own feelings of
forlornness. The only nagging demerit? There’s a plummy, surface quality to Wilson’s moroseness and sullenness; watching the movie, one thinks about the deeper reservoirs of swallowed sadness that someone like Ryan Gosling could have conveyed with this role, and how those extra pangs of despair would have provided an even greater catharsis.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case in turn stored in a flat-faced (i.e., no raised text) cardboard slipcover, Henry Poole Is Here allows viewers the option of a full-frame or 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen presentation, the latter of which obviously preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. A Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track anchors the audio options, and optional Spanish and English SDH subtitles are also included. A feature-length audio commentary track with Pellington and Torres underscores the deeply felt personal pull of the material for each man; they talk about the slight changes and tweaks from inception to actualization, and their feelings both about the collaboration in general and the themes the movie explores. Pellington is an especially intelligent and persuasive advocate for the work — smart and passionate, but not given to pointy-headed intellectual diatribes. He opens up a bit about his heartrending offscreen loss (his wife died suddenly, leaving him a widower and the single father of a three-year-old girl), and how therapeutic the movie was for him.

Further personal testimonials come in a solidly produced, 16-minute making-of featurette, which includes interviews with all of the primary cast and crew. Other special features include theatrical trailers for Henry Poole and three other Anchor Bay DVD releases, as well as two short music videos — one for James Grundler’s “All Roads Lead Home,” and another, directed by Pellington, for MySpace.com theme song contest winner Ron Irizarry. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

A slickly packaged yet ultimately unpersuasive political action thriller, Eagle Eye
collapses under the weight of various story incongruities, in large
part because its sprawling, conspiratorial plot — approaching almost two hours — and supercharged, empty-dialogue mode of
storytelling don’t ever quite fully align. As a re-teaming of Disturbia director D.J. Caruso and star Shia LaBeouf,
the movie’s theatrical release last autumn represented a crucial test of commercial leading man viability
for the young actor, coming on the heels of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was a test he passed, to the tune of a $178 million worldwide gross, with almost 60 percent of that haul coming Stateside.

Set in and around Washington D.C., the movie’s story
centers on a piecemeal terrorist plot, with different “cells” being
activated against their will. Disaffected copy shop employee Jerry Shaw
(LaBeouf) finds his life turned upside down when his twin brother
mysteriously dies. Returning from the funeral, he discovers his
apartment crammed with bomb-making supplies. A strange woman calls his
cell phone and orders him to flee, but Jerry is captured, and
questioned by FBI Agent Thomas Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton).

Simultaneously, single mother Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan)
sends her 8-year-old son off on a school field trip, only to get a call
from the same woman threatening to derail his train if Rachel doesn’t
obey her orders. The voice on the phone is soon revealed to be a rogue,
omnipotent government defense computer system, who brings together
strangers Jerry and Rachel and parcels out instructions that
unwittingly lead the pair into complicity in a scheme to eliminate most
of the United States’ elected government. In pursuit of the on-the-lam
duo, along with Morgan, is Air Force investigator Zoe Perez (Rosario Dawson).

Hatched several years ago by executive producer Steven Spielberg as a techno-phobic thriller, Eagle Eye shows the wear of much tinkering by many writers — a credited group that includes John Glenn, Travis Adam Wright, Hillary Seitz and Dan McDermott. The
wildly preposterous plot hinges on governmental vigilance and hyper-competence at a
time when, especially at the time of its theatrical release, all evidence in the real world points to the contrary,
and isn’t aided by brawny sequences that paint a colorful picture of
the super-computer’s god-like abilities, which stand in stark contrast
to the third-act messiness it spawns in trying to concoct an intelligent ruse that
will eventually frame Jerry and Rachel.

Furthermore, there’s a
baffling, poorly conceived scene mid-film — nakedly designed to pull
the audience along, and distract from narrative potholes — in which the
computer summons Jerry and Rachel to a consumer electronics store and
reveals a portion of their mission. This sequence defies credibility, even within the heightened world of the movie’s own construction; it would be akin to the Man
Behind the Curtain outing himself halfway through The Wizard of Oz, just for shits and giggles.

Former television director Caruso has proven himself a stylish shooter of genre fare, and Eagle Eye
is his biggest outing to date. From a technical point-of-view, the film
is fairly well put together, though a first act car chase sequence is
choppily edited, and lacks spatial clarity. Unfortunately, the method of conveyance doesn’t match the degree to which the story is steeped in paranoia and invasion of privacy.
A grittier treatment or more futuristic setting would have been more in
keeping with the story’s themes. Or a compelling case could be made for
a tone of polished, heightened absurdity similar to this summer’s
international hit Wanted. By spurning either of these more stylized visual approaches, however, Eagle Eye feels trapped between two very different, unconnected worlds.

For its Blu-ray release, Eagle Eye is presented in superb 1080p high definition, in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with the AVC MPEG-4. Blacks are deep and consistent, and the English 5.1 Dolby TrueHD audio track solidly captures the various and sundry mechanical swirls used to frequent, brawny effect in the movie’s many chaotic chase sequences. Other audio options includes French and Spanish language 5.1
Dolby digital surround sound tracks; optional English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles are also included.

The disc’s bonus material is all presented in high definition, save a bonus photo gallery, and is kickstarted with a 25-minute making-of featurette that includes interviews with LaBeouf and Caruso, as well as other on-screen and behind-the-scenes players. While there’s definitely a strong EPK-type feel to some of this material, they thankfully delve further into the development history of the project than most of your average, self-congratulatory featurettes, and there’s also a nice split-screen comparison of raw footage and finished, assembled product, which has the effect of underscoring some of the difficulties of directing not frequently discussed or acknowledged.

Next up is a clutch of four deleted scenes, running just under five minutes, followed by a quartet of shorter featurettes, running between three and nine minutes. Two are somewhat interchangeable, detailing location shooting in Washington, D.C., and at the Library of Congress; more interesting are a thumbnail investigation of the current state electronic surveillance and a chat between Caruso and one of his mentors, filmmaker John Badham. The professional connection between the two is Badham’s War Games, on which Caruso served as a second unit director, and it’s interesting to see them reconnect and dissect how computers and technology in general have changed with respect to their portrayal on the big screen. Rounding things out are the movie’s theatrical trailer and a seven-minute gag reel which spotlights flubbed lines galore, and showcases Thornton cutting loose. To purchase the Blu-ray disc via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B (Disc)

Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, The Wackness is a slang-laden, b-boy-style coming-of-age dramedy set against the backdrop of Brooklyn, summer 1994. The story centers around Luke Shapiro (the heavy-lidded Josh Drake), a 17-year-old
recent high school graduate who befriends a misguided, pot-smoking
therapist, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley), by trading weed for therapy. A somewhat socially awkward “technical” virgin, Luke also tumbles into
love with the therapist’s sarcastic, mature-beyond-her-years
stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). Housing his marijuana in an
antiquated ice cart, Luke escapes from an unhappy home life and the
pressures of any impending college decision by wheeling and dealing around the
sweltering city. In the process, he comes into contact with a colorful
coterie of characters — from hippies and hip-hoppers to drug pushers
and prostitutes, the colorful fringe-dwellers of the salad days of pre-Giuliani gentrification — and falls into a weird friend/mentorship with Dr.
Squires, even as his burgeoning relationship with Stephanie seems primed to fall apart.

Owing largely to its outrageous drugs-for-therapy conceit but also a twisted, marble-mouthed adolescent poetry present in some of the film’s dialogue, The Wackness won the Audience Award at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. And it’s a fun movie that doesn’t entirely abandon some of the gritty realities of teenagedom. Mostly, though, it’s nicely shot, and imagined. (At one point, after a lip-lock with Stephanie, Luke leaves and dances down the street, the sidewalk squares lighting up like a certain music video of yesteryear.) If Peck’s performance is a bit hit-and-miss, he’s still intriguing, and the scenes with he and a loopy Kingsley are amusing to watch.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, and presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen with optional French and Spanish subtitles, The Wackness comes anchored with a feature-length audio commentary track with Levine and Peck. Props are dished all around, naturally (especially since production designer Annie Spitz is Levine’s girlfriend, too), but there’s a hearteningly solid division between anecdote, thematic discussion and snarky asides.

Four deleted scenes run a bit over five minutes, and offer no new wild revelations, per se. There’s also a 17-minute making-of featurette with cast and crew interviews in which Levine confesses to smoking weed, and Kingsley jokes about taking a comedic pass at the character of Gandhi, and says that he and Peck are “the new Laurel and Hardy.” Even more interesting is the eight-minute featurette “Keeping it Real: A Day in the Life of Jonathan Levine,” in which a camera
follows the filmmaker through a day of interviews and other commitments (including a taped sit-down with his costars and Ben Lyons, who comes across as slightly doofy) prior to the movie’s premiere at the Los Angeles
Film Festival. It’s amusing to see Levine so stoked about a promotional chocolate boom box for the movie — a goodie he eventually offers up to an audience member at a post-screening Q&A. Two tossed-off minutes-long “episodes” of Luke Shapiro’s Dope Show, a mock cable access show in which Peck, in character, strikes poses and trades high-fives with his deejaying doorman, are passingly amusing, but one-joke, quick-watch things. Along with five separate trailers for the film are a slate of previews for Synecdoche, New York, Brick Lane, Ashes of Time Redux, Elegy and other Sony titles. For an interview with Levine, click here. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

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)

Another period piece about a progressive, fashionable, forward-thinking woman constrained by and struggling against the strict mores of her time, director Saul Dibb’s The Duchess is a gear-grindingly familiar romantic drama cloaked in sumptuousness. Starring Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes and Dominic Cooper, the movie is based on the true story of the Duchess of Devonshire — an “It
Girl” of her era, and a direct ancestor to Princess Diana, as the film’s theatrical campaign nudgingly reminded viewers — who must face an agonizing choice between responsibility and love.

A characteristically beguiling young noblewoman, Georgiana Spencer (Knightley, suffering some prodigious hairpieces) is handed over for marriage by her mother (Charlotte Rampling) at the age of 17 to the wealthy and influential William Cavendish (Ralph Fiennes), the fifth Duke of Devonshire. With the arrangement, Georgiana enters into a lavish world filled with shocking deceptions, decadent scandals and stifling demands of duty. As Duchess of Devonshire, she first indulges her considerable energy in high society, outshining most of the aristocratic men around her with her incredible wit. The empty, endless chatter of the party circuit is not for her, however, and fashion icon Georgiana soon becomes the toast of London as much for her outspokenness as her iconic outfits. A devoted mother and stirring voice for the common man, she become one of the most impassioned political critics in all of 18th century England. Still, all isn’t happy at home. Lovers are taken — the dour William beds Bess Foster (Hayley Atwell), while Georgiana seeks comfort in the arms of Charles Grey (the aforementioned Cooper), a rising politician — and rigid domestic battle lines are drawn.

From Pride & Prejudice to Atonement, Knightley has a certain predilection for period piece fare, and the unfussy directness that’s a staple of almost all of her screen performances may be the film’s best attribute. She takes rather shallowly scripted clichés about loneliness and imbues them with undiluted feeling. That said, she and Cooper evidence little chemistry together, and Fiennes — a long way from the two mid-’90s Oscar nominations that gave him his reputation — can skate through stuffy material like this, and does so accordingly. Its connection to the still wildly beloved Princess Diana makes The Duchess more relevant or interesting to those across the pond (and British ex-pats living here, I guess), but the drama within the movie — consternation over Georgiana producing a daughter instead of siring a male heir, and the glass-house, woe-is-me psychological hand-wringing — is all very, very familiar, to an ultimately wearying degree.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, The Duchess comes presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, along with English, French and Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks. Optional English, French and
Spanish subtitles are also available. Kicking off a so-so slate of three EPK-style bonus features is a 22-minute making-of documentary which explores the life of Georgiana, and the era that she came to define. Intercut interviews with cast and crew form the spine of this featurette, but extra footage from the many gorgeous locations that comprise the movie gives American viewers a glimpse of the old-world beauty that wide swatches of the United States just can’t match. In the seven-minute “Georgiana In Her Own Words,” Amanda Foreman, author of the award-winning book upon which the film is based, sits down with producer Gabrielle Tana at the actual home of Georgiana’s family, reviewing various letters, diary entries and artifacts that helped shape the historical landscape of her biography. Running six minutes, the final featurette shines a spotlight on costume designer Michael O’Connor, who talks about creating all of the film’s beautiful, extravagant wardrobes. An audio commentary track would have been nice, from either director Dibb (Bullet Boy) or the chatty Foreman, but a clutch of theatrical trailers for other Paramount releases round out this collection. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

Produced by comedy man-of-the-moment Judd Apatow and directed by David Gordon Green, Pineapple Express follows a pair of druggie losers (James Franco and Seth Rogen) as they reach the top of the hit-list when one witnesses a mob murder by an evil drug lord (Gary Cole) and his corrupt cop partner (Rosie Perez). Marked for death, they set off on a mad-scramble escape, as both conceived and executed by habitual pot smokers.

Dale Denton (Rogen) is a schlubby twentysomething who doesn’t let his job as a process server intrude too much on his prodigious weed habit. Between official duty runs, he drops in on his high school girlfriend Angela (Amber Heard), lobbies talk radio hosts for the legalization of marijuana and of course rolls a couple joints. His dealer, Saul Silver (Franco), is a kind-hearted, wide-smiling soul who wants to be Dale’s best friend a little too much. When Dale witnesses a hit by drug lord Ted Jones (Cole) and his corrupt cop lover Carol (Perez), though, he instinctively high-tails it back to Saul’s pad… but only after accidentally dropping a very special, easily identifiable joint outside Ted’s place. Looking to tie up loose ends, Ted dispatches two henchmen (Craig Robinson and Kevin Corrigan) to question Saul’s supplier, Red (Danny McBride, above center), who quickly rats out Saul. The guns come out, and with their lives in jeopardy, Saul and Dale look to try to somehow score an upper hand; fisticuffs, wild chases in police cruisers and a siege at Angela’s house ensue, all before a shootout at a secret underground drug lair.

Pineapple Express more or less works as a stoner vehicle with intermittant flashes of shock violence, owing largely to the committed character work of in particular Franco, who’s a hoot. It’s this sly interplay (with Saul and Red reminiscing about how they contracted venereal diseases, say) that carries the day, much more than the brawny action — executed in only so-so fashion — that makes up the movie’s third act. With his arthouse roots, Green (George Washington, All the Real Girls, Snow Angels) is hired to give the film some offbeat edges, as with the montage moment — somewhat evocative of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid‘s “Raindrops Are Falling on My Head” segment — when Dale and Saul play leapfrog and blow smoke on a caterpillar. Another idiosyncratic touch that works to the film’s benefit is Graeme Revell’s alternately brawny and cheesy synth score, which sounds like an Atari game gone wild. Overall, a lesser entry in the recent “bro-mance” sub-genre, perhaps, but not without its moments.

Pineapple Express comes to home video in a variety of formats and versions, including a Blu-ray disc with exclusive bonus material, including a game based on the film. Reviewing off of the unrated single-disc version, though, there’s still plenty to enjoy. Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, the movie is presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen split into 28 chapters, and comes with English and French language 5.1 Dolby digital audio tracks, as well as optional English and French subtitles. The one big problem is that a cover sticker advertises both the theatrical and extended-cut versions of the film, but the latter is available nowhere on the regular menu screen. Instead, only once the regular “play” function has been selected can the extended version (117 minutes, versus 112 minutes for the theatrical cut) be chosen. This means that quick-play aficionados can’t select the long-play version, then skip past all those annoying start-up admonitions by just jumping straight to a chapter selection and toggling back to the beginning. Ah, well… small potatoes, I guess.

As for the actual bonus material, four deleted/extended scenes run a total of 10 minutes, the biggest difference being found in the movie’s black-and-white introductory sequence with Bill Hader and James Remar; Saul and Dale’s uncomfortable drug-buy conversation at Saul’s apartment is also extended, with Saul inviting Dale to go see Phantom of the Opera with him. As might be expected, the film’s feature-length audo commentary track is a rousing, messy group affair. It starts with Rogen and co-writer Evan Goldberg, Franco, Apatow, McBride, Ed Begley, Jr., and director Green, who’s patched in via conference call from another city and gives props to the shirtwear of a bit player at the film’s premiere. Begley, who the upstarts joke is “the Rod Carew of drug stories,” leaves about halfway through, and Perez and Robinson both stop by; producer Shauna Robertson also calls in, and inspires a brief discussion about the physiques of real-life drug dealers. Naturally, plenty of out-there anecdotes get mad run, including tales of being bombarded with urine-filled balloons while shooting in downtown Los Angeles, and a story in which Perez quotes L.L. Cool J as yelling at his wife, “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna punch you in the pussy!” Special regrets also go out to Jeff Goldblum, who suffers a coarse exclamation in the movie; Rogen talks about incidentally meeting Goldblum in person during filming, but then chickening out about telling him about the line.

There’s a 21-minute making-of featurette, which includes footage from a March 2006 table read and Perez’s amusing imitation of Rogen. Producer Apatow, meanwhile, talks about the genesis of the film — watching True Romance (on laserdisc!) eight to 10 years ago, and being so enamored with Brad Pitt‘s character that he wanted to see a separate movie follow just him. A five-minute gag reel is also featured; highlights include Franco accidentally touching Rogen’s balls, Rogen baring his ass, Ed Begley, Jr. invoking the phrase “skull fucking,” and Rogen’s character pumping up McBride’s Red by telling him that he could be reincarnated “as Jenna Jameson‘s tit butter.” To view the movie’s trailer, click here; to purchase the unrated, single-disc DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Having unintentionally birthed a derisive new shorthand (“nuked the fridge”) last summer with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, high-profile screenwriter David Koepp jumps behind the camera for his fourth feature film as a director, a comedically-inflected minor misfire
about a socially maladjusted dentist, Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais),
who briefly dies, comes back to life, and finds himself able to see and
talk to dead people. Soon Bertram, much to his annoyance, is being
pestered for favors by all sorts of Earthbound ghosts, including a
philandering husband, Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), looking to break up
the impending marriage of his wife, Gwen (Téa Leoni).

Exercising his considerable skill with cud-chewing asides, and blissfully playing up his character’s inhospitality and smarmy self-regard, Gervais helps give Ghost Town a bit of a kick in the pants.
And the movie is, on a certain level, sweet enough, really — it elicits
a few smiles and nods of identification here and there. Saturday Night Live‘s Kristen Wiig pops up in a couple amusing scenes, as a doctor with an affinity for tanning cream, no matter the fact that “it smells like dirt,” as she absentmindedly notes. And, yeah, dental practice colleague Aasif Mandvi gets to give Gervais the slow burn, after putting up with his shit for years.

But mostly Ghost Town
feels full of safe choices and conventional moves, rendering it a
future sale-through, bundled-DVD companion of fellow apparitional rom-com piffle like
2005’s Just Like Heaven. Nothing truly gels, and gathers any downhill momentum. A potent comedic force in her own
right, Leoni is forced to mainly stand around, look beautiful and play
variations on sputtering uncertainty, which she capably pulls off,
scene to scene. Watching her romantically warm to Gervais and vice
versa, however, elicits indifference at best, disbelief at worst.
Koepp’s previous directorial efforts have all been small-budgeted
dramatic thrillers, with an emphasis on the human drama more than the
thrills. His first foray into more whimsical comedy, co-written with
John Kamps, unfortunately doesn’t leave one wanting for more in this vein.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Ghost Town comes presented in 1.85: anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and Dolby digital 2.0 stereo tracks in Spanish and French. A feature-length audio commentary track with Koepp and the quip-happy Gervais is a lively affair, full of plenty of quick-witted asides and amusing anecdotes. Next up is a 23-minute making-of featurette which showcases Koepp’s insights about the creative process, and how he saw the film take shape; somewhat interestingly, he says that Leoni is basically playing Cary Grant’s character from Bringing Up Baby. Billy Campbell, meanwhile, confesses his secret for not cracking up during takes with Gervais: “I clinched my butt cheeks,” he says. A two-minute montage clip with no sound shows how a few special effects sequences were composited from separate frames, while a six-and-a-half-minute blooper reel is heavy on flubbed lines and other genial screw-ups from Gervais. There are some olive-related shenanigans during a restaurant scene, and Gervais cracks up Leoni when he gazes up the remains of a mummy (in the above photo) and talks about “sniffing his knob.” Finishing off the edited-together sequence, Gervais opines, “This is why I don’t do plays — they wouldn’t get out of the theater until 12:45!” Previews for American Teen, Eagle Eye and The Duchess round things out. C (Movie) B- (Disc)