Watching Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert 3-D, and looking into the faces of thousands of screaming pre-teens, I feel a strange kinship with the citizenry of sacked civilizations throughout time and the world. Seeing something at once so foreign to your being and day-to-day existence, and so full of force, vigor and furious noise — oh, the noise! — is partly how I imagine the Romans felt in 410, when the Visigoths came a-knockin’.

I don’t necessarily want to give the impression that Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds, a nice, three-dimensional concert film stunt spun off from a road tour from the hit Disney Channel series that stars the daughter of former mulleted, “Achy Breaky Heart” country crooner Billy Ray Cyrus, is bad, per se. Or that it will rape, pillage and plunder. It’s actually quite impressive. It’s just that it’s also such a fiercely indefatigable, in-your-face thing that it kind of takes one’s breath away.

Well staged by director Bruce Hendricks, the briskly paced concert features Cyrus belting out a bunch of tunes, and frequently waving her arm in triumphant declaration. I’m not super-familiar with her as a performer, but Cyrus certainly knows how to pull all the strings of an audience. She throws in plenty of friendly winks and waves to all the kids, works both sides of the stage, and, from the outset, says “I just have one rule — no sitting down!” Cue approving tween shrieks.

Performing for the first time ever as her pop star alter ego, Hannah Montana, Cyrus kicks off the show in high-energy fashion with “Rock Star,” and the production continues to pulls out all the stops, with solid sets, production design and dancing choreographed by Kenny Ortega, of the High School Musical franchise. There’s lots of colorful, cute, accessorized outfits that are a bit glammed-up (like this one), but not too slutty, a la Britney Spears’ cringe-inducing cock-tease years. Segueing into her own persona, Cyrus lets loose with “Start All Over,” the Jonas brothers also come out for a few tunes — “We Got the Party With Us” and “Year 3,000.” Little anecdotal behind-the-scenes bits and crowd interviews from the road tour are also interspersed throughout.

A to-scale smash at the box office this February, where it opened to over $30 million and went on to gross $65 million domestically, this is sunny, feel-good family entertainment… basically a Twinkie. But adults often forget that most tweens and teenagers have the metabolism to handle such artificially processed sugary delights, and in massive quantities too. Ergo, no harm, no foul — for its base constituency, at least. Others may be rightfully a bit bewildered.

The DVD benefits from superlative packaging and message control, too. Spread out on two discs — one of which contains the movie in regular form, and the other of which features the concert in 3-D, which can be enjoyed with the four pairs of 3-D glasses that accompany the release — the DVD is housed in a regular Amray case with a snap-in tray, and it comes with sturdy cardboard, holographic slipcover that, well, underscores the title, showing Cyrus in both brunette and blonde, in-character form.

A solid slate of bonus features includes a sing-along mode, additional songs not seen in the theatrical cut of the concert film (“Good and Broken,” “SOS”), and an 11-minute personal backstage tour from the very personable Cyrus that gives viewers a look at her costume-change area and the trap door she uses to pop up on the stage. I place the over/under on the number of times Cyrus playfully sticks out her tongue somewhere in the mid-40s, but she still seems a pretty grounded, friendly, reasonably normal young woman in her interview tidbits. The best chats come from supporting players and audience members. “It’s like standing behind a jet engine when it revs up, actually worse” says a sound tech of when Cyrus first appears on stage. Then there’s a weary, bewigged father, standing between his two beaming girls, decked out in Hannah Montana merchandise: “You know, I didn’t expect so much screaming.” You’re telling me! To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Based on the novel by Sarah Waters, Affinity is a tale of power and possession set in the late 19th century — part gothic-tinged doomed romance, part supernatural mystery. For forgiving fans of sapphic-flavored period pieces (perhaps that most niche of niche sub-genres), this film will undeniably delight, but others most have trouble with its disjointed pacing.

The film unfolds in Great Britain in the 1870s, where a London socialite, Margaret Prior (Anna Madeley, an ethereal beauty), finds escape and
purpose in a world in which she is not able to be with her lover, Helen (Ferelith Young), by becoming a mentor who brings hope and comfort to the female inmates
at Millbank Prison. It’s there that Margaret, thwarting the advances of Theophilus (Vincent Leclerc), becomes infatuated with Selina Dawes
(Zoe Tapper), a medium who was incarcerated after a séance gone horribly awry. As the story unfolds, Margaret, who is at first
skeptical of Selina’s gifts, soon discovers a world of secrets and
shadows, heightened passions, and the allure of the supernatural.

The melodramatic plottings here are fairly familiar, but, as with a lot of modestly budgeted, flip-side Victorian tales, there’s a certain indulgence one must embrace — namely a concession for all the dialogue that tells us how things are, rather than showing us. That, and the purely utilitarian nature of many of its supporting characters, mark Affinity as fairly predictable, mood-dipped entertainment. On the other hand, its solid acting and production value help elevate the material, so one certainly doesn’t grow too weary of watching.

Though the movie just recently premiered on the Logo cable channel, this DVD bills itself as featuring an extended version
of the Victorian-era suspense thriller. Housed in a regular Amray case, the DVD is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo track. Bonus features consist of a brief making-of featurette, a single deleted scene and candid one-on-one interviews with
award-winning novelist Waters (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith) as well as Madeley, Tapper and the movie’s screenwriter, Andrew Bate. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B (Disc)

Despite the fact that it’s still, you know, illegal, there’s an entire cottage industry devoted to celebrating and promoting marijuana and its attendant “lifestyle,” and that’s where a DVD like The 20th Anniversary Cannabis Cup comes into play — filling that void between the time spent lighting up, missing community college classes, munching on Cool Ranch Doritos, wondering where your copy of Dazed and Confused went, and waiting for your roommate to figure out how to download that pirated copy of Pineapple Express.



Presented by High Times (naturally), this disc brings the world’s biggest annual pot party to your very own living room. Running about an hour, it’s made up of just the sort of short-attention-span bits that one would expect on a compilation title like this — a musical performance from noted marijuana advocate Redman here, chuckle-laden interview tidbits there. There’s also footage of both 100-gram joints and the world’s biggest bong, a peek inside the Sacred Temple with celebrity judges as they choose the world’s greatest pot, and, as the cover promises, high-resolution photos of the winning buds. Wow. If something other than weed could be a “must-have” for habitual stoners, then I suppose it would be this DVD.

The 20th Anniversary Cannabis Cup comes housed in a regular Amray case, along with a 36-page color booklet that includes plenty of, umm, educational photographs, as well as an Amsterdam coffeeshop map (yes, seriously). It’s presented on a region-free disc with a stereo audio track, but you have to provide your own blacklight, sorry. Free hippie lettuce samples not included, either. A (Movie, if I were a stoner) B- (Disc)

Nostalgia is frequently a funny thing. Revisiting past pop cultural flames can underscore just how much of a warping influence something like the innate catchiness (or sheer volume) of a commercial jingle had in shaping the rallying affection of adolescent identification and embrace. Weirder still, though, are second-generation rebirths of trends, toy lines and the like, as when something like Cabbage Patch Kids get rebooted. “Didn’t the popularity of this game/item run its course for a reason?” one can’t help but wonder.

The latter comes to mind with Transformers Animated, new to DVD. With the fanboy-fueled heat over last summer’s action extravaganza Transformers still not fully abated, and its live-action sequel already in full swing, the toys which ruled a decent part of the 1980s as a hugely popular line of toys, comic books and accompanying “lifestyle” gear and whats-its for young boys — picking up the action figure mantle from the Star Wars franchise and giving it a tech-age, presto-chango kick in the pants — are back. This animated series, launched on the Cartoon Network late last year, re-hashes a lot of the same basic story points as the original animated series from the ’80s; the most remarkable thing, though, may be that here revival means not radical reinvention, but streamlining.

Eschewing the more artistically involved animé style of previous small screen efforts, this series trades in big, grabby, colorful 2-D animation, and the angles, joints and movements of its star subjects come across less as those of transforming big rigs and airplanes and more as giant hunks of weaponized metal. The main story is still familiar, though it’s a weird marriage of past series lore and Bay’s film: led by Optimus Prime (voiced by David Kaye), the Autobots take to defending both the Allspark and their new adopted home (that would be Earth), as well as 8-year-old Sari Sumdac (voiced by Tara Strong, who also voiced Princess Clara on Drawn Together). Sari not only becomes an honorary Autobot, but a vital component of the team and the keeper of a key which serves as an emergency power supply and source of healing for the Autobots. Naturally, the evil Decepticons want the key and Allspark for themselves. Much noisy grappling ensues.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Transformers Animated seems like a downgrade in almost every conceivable way. This is brand-name, space-filling entertainment, pure and simple. However ridiculous its main conceit (space-traveling robots who happen to take the form of human forms of transportation) might have once been, there was a sense of forward-leaning imaginativeness to it all back in the ’80s. Now, with a cross-platform re-launching designed to bring in nostalgic Gen-Xers and their little kids, the seams show. And I yawn.

Transformers Animated: Season One is spread out over two discs, comes housed in a regular plastic Amray case, and is presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with English and Spanish language Dolby digital stereo audio tracks, each of which capably capture all those whirring sounds (yeah… technical description) that fans of the original series will remember. Apart from a photo gallery sneak peek at two dozen character design sketches from the forthcoming second season release, there are no supplemental bonus features. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Series) D+ (Disc)

The 2007 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters is a well acted, strikingly photographed war drama rooted in palpably difficult human choices and emotions. Written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Inheritors, All the Queen’s Men), the film centers around the true story of Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics, below), a swindler who during World War II made a name for himself as Berlin’s “King of the Counterfeiters.”

Sorowitsch’s life of women and easy money is cut short when he’s arrested and
placed in a Nazi concentration camp. With the German army on the verge
of bankruptcy, he’s offered a sobering deal by his captors: in
exchange for a comfortable bed, good food and reasonably fair
treatment, Sorowitsch, along with a number of other hand-picked
specialists, must counterfeit bank notes to fund the Nazi war effort.
If he does as they say, he lives another day. If he rebels, he faces
the same fate as the rest of the camp’s prisoners.

Sorowitsch yields quickly, and goes along to get along. The British pound is cracked without much trouble, giving the Nazis hope in their plan to flood the British economy with phony notes. The American dollar, the real prize, is a much harder task. Still, even though he starts to seemingly purposefully drag his feet a bit, Sorowitsch keeps working on the project, and his acquiesance rankles the dissenting Adolf Burger (August Diehl), a fellow prisoner who starts to subtly, habitually sabotage the finalizing ink trays for the task.

With his gaunt, hangdog visage, Markovics is an arresting screen presence, and Ruzowitzky knows how to locate the small details (one of the more moving scenes involves a father finding his children’s passports in a stack of detritus used to forge and re-purpose documents) that give depth and shading to the grand-scale tragedy that forms the movie’s backdrop. Sorowitsch’s relationship with Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow) — the Nazi who first arrests him, and then later comes to oversee his counterfeit operations — is also an interesting, complicated thing. One scene finds Herzog taking his prisoner home to meet his family, positioning himself as a bureaucrat who on a certain level realizes not only the abject cruelty of the camps at large but also the absurdity of his task. When the tables are turned and Friedrich is put in a subordinate position, we come to see manifested the true nature of Sorowitsch’s character.

Housed in a regular plastic Amray case, The Counterfeiters comes to DVD with one of the best produced, most robust slate of supplemental extras of any foreign language title this year. An audio commentary track with director Ruzowitzky kicks off the special features, and it’s a rich, anecdote-laden affair; the filmmaker talks about being in Paris for a screenwriters conference and meeting Dolores Chaplin, granddaughter of screen legend Charlie, at a party, and then remembering her when casting a bit part for his movie, of a woman Salomon beds before he gets arrested and hauled away to a concentration camp.

Four deleted scenes and a 10-minute, full screen making-of featurette are also included, and these are not without their charms. The best bonus feature, though, might well be the 20-minute featurette detailing the authentic historical artifacts of Salomon Smolianoff, the real-life figure upon whom the character of Sorowitsch is based. Morally substantial, subtitle-optioned interviews with actor Markovics, the real-life counterfeiter Burger and director Ruzowitzky each run in the 16- to 20-minute range; also included is a Q&A session with Ruzowitzky from the movie’s presentation at AFI Fest in 2007. Rounding things out is rehearsal footage, the movie’s trailer, and previews for David Mamet’s Redbelt and other Sony titles. The only strike on this title, a minor mitigating detail, comes in the form of the movie’s transfer, which — perhaps owing to its roots, and less exacting standards of storage — is a bit marred by grain. For a clip from the film, click here. Meanwhile, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) A- (Disc)

Jennifer Carpenter called her shot. During an interview with the actress for a piece on The Exorcism of Emily Rose, she talked about how stoked she was to have been cast in Dexter, opposite Michael C. Hall, how she thought the Showtime series had a chance to break some new narrative ground on the small screen, and definitely hang around several seasons. For a lot of up-and-coming actresses, these cheery sentiments are just part of the amiable self-sell — talking up the next project in case the one on the front burner doesn’t really come to a boil — but Carpenter seemed uniquely sincere in her sentiments regarding the series, which at that time was just getting off the ground.

With good reason, it turns out. Based on Jeff Lindsay novel’s Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and developed for television by James Manos, Jr., Dexter has turned into a solid performer for Showtime — so much so that it was nabbed for reruns over the past year on CBS, a corporate bedfellow. The show’s first season introduced Dexter Morgan (Hall), a Miami forensics expert who moonlights as a serial slayer of other habitual murderers. Naturally, this line of work shades, strains and otherwise complicates Dexter’s relationships — including with his cop sister Deborah (Carpenter), his single-mom girlfriend Rita Bennett (Julie Benz), and department colleagues Sergeant James Doakes (Erik King) and Lieutenant Maria Maguerta (Lauren Velez).

After Dexter having survived an encounter with the Ice Truck Killer, who also terrorized Deborah, at the end of the previous season, the series’ sophomore effort opens with more unwanted attention being focused on his acts. The flashbacks to Dexter’s childhood, intermittently filling in the gaps of his psychological and emotional development, continue, though it’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the heavy lifting is done by Hall, who nicely walks the tightrope between outright monster and sympathetic moral equalizer. There’s a cerebal quality to Hall that greatly benefits this character, serving as counterpoint for some of his brash actions.

Over the dozen episodes of season two, Dexter also begins to doubt his murderous capabilities, or at least their shelf-life. Although still committed to carrying out his brand of twisted vigilante justice — a methodology learned from and channeled by his adopted father Harry (James Remar) — Dexter continues to be haunted by his tortured past, including the brutal murder of his mother. His difficulties multiply when evidence of his deadly after-hours activities begins to surface, and the FBI, in the form of Special Agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine), is brought in to investigate the city’s new serial killer, dubbed the Bay Harbor Butcher. Hard-charging Sergeant Doakes has suspicions as well, and mysterious ex-meth addict Lila (Jaime Murray), a rehab pal who forges a quick and seemingly deep bond with Dexter, only further complicates matters. With the noose of suspicion seemingly tightening around his neck, will Dexter be able to continue his serial-killing ways or will his dark, extreme ways finally be uncovered?

Spread out over four discs housed in two slimline cases in turn stored in a nice cardboard slipcover, Dexter: The Second Season comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with Dolby digital 2.0 stereo and Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound English language audio tracks, and a complementary Spanish language track in Dolby digital 2.0 mono. For better or worse, most of the set’s DVD bonus materials actually throw a spotlight on other Showtime shows. There are two episodes of the series Brotherhood, the first two episodes from the second season of The Tudors, and the pilot of Californication, starring David Duchovny. From a marketing standpoint, these are smart inclusions, and certainly worthy for the average television fan, who may not have premium pay-cable, and would want to dabble before purchasing an entire season on DVD. Unfortunately, their inclusion somewhat limits the amount of material related specifically to Dexter, which consists of a podcast interview with Hall. Some director audio commentaries or an interview with source material author Lindsay would be most welcome in the future. To purchase the set via Amazon, click here. B (Series) C+ (Disc)

“Dog movies” will always have a place on family video shelves, a matter proven by the fact that we’re already four films deep in the Beethoven franchise, and reconfirmed by the existence of Frank, a genial family flick about reconnection as facilitated by a big, slobbering pooch.

Directed by Douglas Cheney — who presumably isn’t listed in the phone book as D. Cheney, or else he would have had to field some crank calls — Frank follows the story of a mangy mutt and how he brings a troubled family closer together. When the York clan, headed by Colin (Jon Gries, aka Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite) and Jennifer (Cynthia Watros), retreat to their summer cabin, they hope the idyllic lakeside setting will wash away their petty squabbles and day-to-day worries. But before the coals on the first campfire are cool, their world is turned upside down when 9-year-old Patrick (Ashton Dierks) stumbles upon the creature “terrorizing” the locals — a big, drooling, lovable bull mastiff that comes to be known as Frank. Much to the initial dismay of their dad, whose lunches and fix-it projects suffer mightily courtesy of his paws and drool, Frank reminds both rambunctious Patrick and teenage daughter Anna (Brittany Robertson) that family vacations are about being together and loving one another. Colin comes around in the end, and Jennifer rekindles her love of drawing — something she put on hold to have a family.

Written by Robin Bradford, Frank is aimed chiefly at kids, and for that less demanding subset it works OK as a piece of entertainment. It isn’t purely slapstick-y, but the musical selections and framing are all canted to their predetermined likes, and whittled down so as to accommodate their points-of-view. The acting is for the most part so-so, with Robertson proving the real find of the film. Newcomer Dierks is no Spencer Breslin, that’s for sure, and he doesn’t even really successfully emulate the kiddie actor that he’s clearly been most coached to impersonate — Jonathan Lipnicki, of Jerry Maguire (and, later, The Little Vampire). Not fair to bag on a kid actor? Maybe, but if you’re trying to match human-cute with dog-cute, you need someone a bit more pliable, to set up the pity the story looks to plumb. That said, the production value here is fairly nice, and the wonderful, in-the-round setting gives the movie a warm, lived-in feeling that separates it from a lot of straight-to-video product.

Frank comes in a regular Amray case, presented in 16×9 widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound audio track, and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. As for supplemental extras, there are seven minutes of deleted scenes, presented in time-coded fashion. There’s also a five-minute featurette on Littlebrook Farm, where the movie was shot. The bit is produced a bit like a salad dressing commercial, but property owners Deneise (yeah, that’s how she spells it) and Paul Hastings talk warmly about their connection to the home and land (the log cabin in the movie was built by Deneise’s grandfather), and come across as earnest, decent folk. Wrapping things up are previews for other First Look Studios releases and Summer in Siberia’s three-minute, flash-laden music video “Starving for Salmon,” produced for the movie and featuring lots of integrated clips of its cast and crew. To purchase the movie on DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

A solid earner that premiered to $20.8 million on April 11, en route to a $43.8 million domestic haul, Prom Night is a moderately well done slice of stalking teen horror, courtesy of some invested work by first-time feature director Nelson McCormick. Starring Brittany Snow in the Neve Campbell role, as a teenager who’s also the object of obsession for the murderer of her mother, the movie doesn’t offer much that’s new in the way of story or twists,  or even revelatory performances, but the glossy finish and snap-fit of its component parts at least make it palatable for those for whom it was chiefly designed.

For Donna Keppel (Snow, above) senior prom is supposed to be the best night of her life. After surviving a horrible tragedy several years earlier, she’s moved in with her aunt and uncle (Jessalyn Gilsig and Linden Ashby) and finally moved on a bit, enjoying her last year of high school. Surrounded by her best friends, she should be safe from the horrors of her past. But when her prom night turns deadly, there’s only one person who could be responsible — former teacher Richard Fenton (Johnathon Schaech), a man Donna thought was gone forever. Now, as Detective Winn (Idris Elba) works to track Fenton down, Donna and her friends (a group that includes Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis, Brianne Davis and Kellan Lutz) must find a way to escape the sadistic rampage of an obsessed killer, and survive a night “to die for.”

The big screen debut of acclaimed television director McCormick (Prison Break, and many other hour-long serials), Prom Night is a film that gets the most out of its meager budget. Penned by horror veteran J.S. Cardone (The Covenant, The Forsaken), the movie invests both in back story and the investigatory strand headed up by Winn, to decently differentiating effect. There’s a half-hour to 35 minutes spanning the second and third acts that very much recalls something like When a Stranger Calls, wherein Donna’s friends are cornered and picked off. But eventually the movie escapes its hotel setting, providing a small gasp of originality before a very pat, familiar ending.

Fairly attractive but still snakebit by bad small screen habits, Snow does that scrunchy-face thing an awful lot, like she’s entering some Renee Zellweger impersonation contest. The best work is actually turned in by Schaech, who captures the zombification of true obsessiveness, wherein psychotics kill not in willy-nilly fashion, but based on need and opportunity, to escape a particular situation or do away with a (human) obstacle to their pursuit. The rest of the kids generally acquit themselves; certainly they’ll have an easier time booking gigs based on the film’s commercial performance.

A cardboard slipcover masks the regular, plastic Amray case in which the unrated edition of Prom Night is sold. Presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio mix, the movie not too surprisingly embraces the concept of volume when it comes to supplemental extras. An audio commentary track with director McCormick, Snow and Schaech kicks things off, and there are plenty of compliments to go around, in addition to production detail provided by McCormick.

A two-minute gag reel finds Stroup getting a door handle to the butt in one sequence; there’s also a completely worthless five-minute “video yearbook” comprised of material strung together to play in the background at the movie’s prom. Five minutes of deleted scenes with optional commentary show more character stuff, including more of Fenton’s escape from prison (modeled after one of Ted Bundy’s escapes, McCormick tells us), while the sticker-touted alternate ending is in actuality just a 30-second clip that freeze-frames a portion of the original ending, and slaps on it a line of whispery voiceover.

A 13-minute making-of featurette includes interviews with cast and crew; most interesting is cinematographer Checco Varese, a former CNN stringer and war photojournalist, who talks about closing the shutter angle of the camera to achieve the jittery, fractious look of its final chase sequences. There’s a five-minute look at the creation of the Grand Hotel set (yawn), while another featurette, “Profile of a Killer,” runs about six minutes, and finds writer Cardone mostly explaining his research process in crafting the screenplay. Most amusing, though, may be a six-minute bit which finds the cast sharing real prom stories of their own; Porter turns out to be the pimp of the group, racking up six total prom nights. Well played, kid — hope that worked out for you. Click here for a clip from the film. To purchase the movie on unrated DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) B (Disc)

A difficult journey that begins in loneliness and shame for thousands of Ethiopian women ends in a productive new life and hope for the future in this award-winning film, co-directed by Mary Olive Smith and Amy Bucher. Shot against a starkly beautiful landscape, A Walk to Beautiful shares the inspiring stories of three women, rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities, who leave home in search of treatment for obstetric fistula.

“Huh?” you say. In the simplest, if most cringe-inducing, terms, fistulas refer to a tear, or hole, between the vagina and rectum or bladder, frequently the result of inadequate prenatal and childbirth medical care. Once fairly common in the pre-industrial United States, this life-shattering complication of childbirth is now relegated mostly to the poorest regions of the world; in Ethiopia alone, there are an estimated 100,000 women suffering from untreated fistulas. Somewhat understandably, their shared plight is one not frequently discussed. The women are shunned, and looked down upon.

A Walk to Beautiful tells their story, in somewhat short-form fashion. In a courageous attempt to reclaim their lives, these women embark on a journey to a remarkable hospital — walking for hours to the nearest road, searching for public transportation to Addis Ababa, the capital. Finally, surrounded by women like themselves and a compassionate medical team of Western and African doctors, they find a haven that they never imagined, transforming their long and arduous trek into a “walk to beautiful.”

Smith and Bucher have an outsiders’ perspective, true, but their documentary neither condescends or rages inappropriately. Instead, it’s both coldly factual (pointing out that there are under 150 OB/GYNs for 77 million patients) and supremely sympathetic, suffused with humanity and optimism. Watching, one grasps the supreme challenges of medical modernization, but also just how much can be accomplished — in terms of winning hearts and minds through helping bodies — with minimal resources.

Packaged in a regular Amray plastic case and presented in anamorphic widescreen enhanced for 16×9 televisions, A Walk to Beautiful runs about five minutes short of an hour, and comes with a scrollable discussion guide for educators and a bonus video, Fistula Worldwide: The Hidden Epidemic, that underlines the feature presentation’s points in quantitative fashion. Closed captions and described video for the visually impaired are also included. To purchase this DVD, or other WGBH titles, click here. To learn more about the Fistula Foundation, click here. B+ (Movie) C (Disc)

Co-created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, South Park debuted in the late 1990s in the shadow of The Simpsons, but about five or six years into its run on Comedy Central the series lapped its groundbreaking predecessor as the funniest and most consistently shrewd animated peddler of sociopolitical commentary on television. The release of its 11th season on DVD only confirms its ongoing genius, featuring a number of new classic episodes.



Coming off a year in which Parker and Stone memorably assayed the hybrid car craze (“Smug Alert!”), the James Frey memoir debacle (“A Million Little Fibers”), the debate over evolution being taught in school (the two-part “Go God Go”) and the online gaming craze (the groundbreaking “Make Love, Not Warcraft,” portions of which featured the show’s kids doing battle as their animated avatars), the creative bar was set awfully high. Right from the start, though, the 11th season of South Park delivers.

Season opener “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” finds Randy Marsh, little Stan’s father, appearing on Wheel of Fortune and making a rather unfortunate guess during the game, choosing the word “niggers” instead of “naggers” as the correct answer to the clue “People Who Annoy You.” While Stan tries to understand Token’s feelings on the matter, Randy embarks on a self-centered campaign to ban the word, burdened as he is by the discrimination he feels from being known as “That Nigger Guy.” An amazing, razor-sharp send-up of the Michael Richards/Laugh Factory debacle, the episode is side-splittingly funny (without even getting into Cartman’s battles with a dwarf who comes to speak at the kids’ school), and it makes a powerful social point to boot — African-Americans don’t need whites trying to convince them that they “feel their pain” with respect to racial slurs, they only need them to acknowledge that they’re probably not in a position to truly understand the deep-seated hurtfulness of a word with that much of a nasty, oppressive history.

The next episode, “Cartman Sucks,” finds Cartman pranking an asleep Butters by taking a series of photos of him in sexually compromising positions… including one with his penis in Cartman’s mouth (?!). Naturally, Butters, unaware of any of this, misunderstands the definition of the word “bi-curious,” which prompts his parents to send him to a right-wing de-homosexualization camp. (Paging Ted Haggard!) Another instant classic, this episode attacks religious intolerance and hypocrisy, all while letting Stan and Kyle blister a panicked Cartman — who works to cover up the existence of the photos before they get out — as gay, something he hadn’t considered when mock-fellating Butters.

Other episodes include “Le Petite Tourette,” which finds Cartman learning about Tourette’s Syndrome, and feigning his affliction with it so that he might go around cursing people out (it’s hard to believe it took 11 seasons for Parker and Stone to work this idea in); and “The Snuke,” a faux-political thriller, presented in the style of 24, in which a nuclear weapon is hidden in Hillary Clinton’s… well, I don’t want to spoil it. Bono gets rapped in “More Crap,” wherein Randy battles the U2 frontman for the record of the world’s largest “number two.” (There’s a twist ending here that helps save this otherwise bizarrely personal salvo against Bono, along with the fact that crap sizes are measured in “Courics,” as in Katie.)

Tackling, in (relatively) epic visual scope, the spectre of terrorism as applied to a literal war on the mind, the three-episode “Imaginationland” arc is the 11th season’s putative sociopolitical highwater mark, but in fact the aforementioned “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson” is probably the most focused, eviscerating political statement on this set. Running a close second is the equally hilarious “Night of the Living Homeless” (above), a zombie movie send-up in which shuffling, change-needing homeless folk overrun South Park, scaring the bejesus out of the locals and forcing the kids to again save the day.

Spread out over three discs, and housed, like previous seasonal releases, in expansive gatefold packaging in a nice (and this time light purple) cardboard slipcase, the DVD extras here consist only of episodic mini-commentaries by Stone and Parker. Running several minutes apiece, these introductions contain a few bon mots here and there, like the fact that “Imaginationland” was originally thought of as potentially another long-form movie idea. The series itself is of course the main thing, with enough legitimate laughs to sincerely earn repeat-viewing enjoyment. That said, a bit more behind-the-scenes material on these sets would really send the collectible factor through the roof. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. A+ (Show) C+ (Discs)

Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami takes what at first blush might seem a rather tenuous hypothesis — that the city helped make the man — and makes diverting enough, micro-biographic hay out of it that one doesn’t hold the lasting credibility of the thesis (only half run up the flagpole to begin with) too much against it. It is what it so obviously is — merely a lens through which this hour-long PBS title can cast backwards glances, and examine one of the more inherently intriguing cultural figures of the 50 years.

In 1960, a young, hungry, Olympic gold medal-winning boxer named Cassius Clay came to Miami, determined to become a professional world heavyweight champion. In the end, he became something more — a towering legend, a figure who transcended his sport. Blending together period piece footage with modern-day interviews, this film chronicles Clay’s life in Overtown — a neighborhood considered “Harlem South” in days gone by — his affiliation with and training at the famed Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach, and his adoption of the black separatist teachings of the nation of Islam, which of course led to him changing his name to Muhammad Ali. The film also includes a consideration of Ali’s friendship with Malcolm X, his famed encounter with the Beatles, his dramatic victory over heavyweight champion Sonny Liston and his subsequent refusal to fight in the Vietnam War — all episodes that played out, to one degree or another, in this bustling southern Florida city, which Ali enjoyed for its cuisine and weather as much as its gregarious locals.

The talking-head boxing stuff in Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami is fairly old hat, having been well chewed over by all sorts of ESPN and Sports Century retrospectives over the past decade. Even if you know just the broad strokes of the run-up to the Liston fight, the detail here is garnish, additional color that pales next to the colorful banter of Ali in general. Much more interesting is the additional shading provided on Ali’s relationship with Malcolm X, a friendship that was (and is, owing to the fact one was taken from us long ago by an assassin’s bullet, and the other more or less so by disease) widely misunderstood. Ali’s quest for enlightenment and spiritual peace wasn’t some lark, and it’s interesting to ponder what would have developed had the two had an opportunity to remain close.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Muhammad Ali: Made in Miami comes presented in a 1.78:1 widescreen format, enhanced for 16×9 televisions. The English language 2.0 stereo mix more than adequately handles its meager aural demands, and in addition to a preview trailer, there’s also a supplemental featurette — a conversation with the film’s writer-producers, Gaspar Gonzalez and Alan Tomlinson. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

In 1940, relentless and punishing Nazi air strikes had Great Britain on its knees. The Royal Air Force was desperate for planes, and their supply of U.S. aircraft, sent on ship convoys, had been sunk in the icy Atlantic Ocean by prowling German U-boats. In response, a remarkable decision was made — to fly the planes individually across the unforgiving expanse of sea. Because of the official position of American neutrality, a message went out through only the “aviation grapevine” — that a secret operation in Montreal needed experienced civilian pilots. The benefits were irresistible — a large paycheck, a chance to fly the latest aircraft, and a vital and important job in aiding America’s ally to boot — but the risks were also colossal. These so-called cowboys of the air are among the forgotten heroes of World War II, can-do volunteers who embodied the improvisational spirit that was key to the eventual Allied victory.

Narrated by Carlo Rota, Flying the Secret Sky tells their story — of passionate, risk-taking young men braving treacherous winter skies over the North Atlantic in primitive, unarmed airplanes. Told largely by the pilots themselves, including one American civilian who ferried about Winston Churchill, this 75-minute film uses never-before-seen home movies and rare footage of the “Ferry Command” aircraft and crews to reveal one of the great unknown stories of both WW II and aviation history in general — the secret transfer of hundreds of military aircraft. Director William Vanderkloot skillfully interweaves the personal anecdotes into a compelling larger tapestry, and composer James Oliverio’s original work subtly underscores the tension of some of these voyages.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Flying the Secret Sky is presented in 16×9 anamorphic widescreen. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, but for history buffs interested in more than just the formal, macro-picture provided in textbooks, this is a compelling documentary. To purchase the disc via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C- (Disc)

Multi-hyphenate Stephen Chow’s CJ7 is a sweet, imaginatively told family fable — a movie that comes by its emotions and feelings of rooting identification sincerely, without clomping insistence or maudlin marionette-string pulling.

Co-written and directed by Chow (Kung Fu Hustle, Shaolin Soccer), the movie centers around Ti (Chow again), a poor but loving single father who works such long hours that he barely has any time to spend with his young son Dicky (Jiao Xu, above right). Unable to afford the latest toy his boy desperately wants, Ti instead goes to the best place he knows to get “new” stuff for Dicky — the junk yard. There he finds a mysterious orb, and brings it home for his son to play with.

When the cuddly creature — which, it should be pointed out, looks at least a little bit like the creature Kristin Chenoweth portrays in the animated Space Chimps (or, more accurately, that creature looks like the one here, given their respective dates of creation and release) — turns out to be a friendly, fun-loving extraterrestrial able to perform miraculous deeds, both father and son experience some changes in their lives, and learn a few important lessons along the way. At first Dicky seizes this chance to overcome his poor background and shabby clothes, and impress his fellow schoolmates for the first time in his life. But CJ7 has other ideas, and chaos ensues when Dicky brings it to class.

A lot of the supplemental material here (more on this later) points up inspirational, point-of-origin comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s E.T., and it’s true that there are definitely some similarities, CJ7 is far from some mere Hollywood knock-off. The design and tone, first of all, is all vintage Chow — saturated in color, full of canted angles and hyper-stylized designs. Chow plays jokes and visual gags quickly, without an eye or ear for audience pandering. This touch helps give the movie a sense of forward-leaning momentum, almost all throughout its running time.

Sometimes — OK, at least half the time, actually — the special effects work isn’t quite up to par with what one has come to expect from mainstream Hollywood films, and one wishes a bit more had been done practically. There’s a simple, affecting, poetic quality to some of the early scenes of bonding — both between Dicky and Ti, killing cockroaches in their cramped home, and Dicky and CJ7 — that gets overwhelmed by later choices, when the creature helps Dicky score 100 on a school test, and then graces him with super sneakers that make him the envy of the schoolyard. That said, young Jiao has an appealing screen presence, and while this story may be subtitled the arc of his learning is a universally recognizable one.

Packaged in a regular plastic Amray case, CJ7 comes presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English and Chinese Mandarin Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks, and a French language Dolby surround sound track. French and English subtitles are also available. Chow anchors a feature-length audio commentary track with cast and crew, and a 22-minute TV special, though subtitled, is a decent piece of promotional agitprop for the movie. Like many of the other special features, this segment includes a lot of talk about the inspiration for making a family film.

A 13-minute making-of featurette details the movie’s 2005 shoot in Ningbo, China, and Chow and co-writer Vincent Kok discuss the genesis of the script, as well as their desire to make the movie as broadly appealing as possible. Two other featurettes — “How to Bully a Bully” and “How to Make a Lollipop” — run four minutes apiece, and are fluffy filler, just a way to include some extra behind-the-scenes footage. Similarly lacking in repeat-play value is an easy, snooze-inducing “mission control” game, in which viewer-players see how far they can launch CJ7 into space. It’s too unwieldly for small kids, and older kids will find it a yawn. Finally, there’s a six-and-a-half-minute segment that chronicles the filming of a pivotal, effects-laden bathroom sequence. Preview trailers for The Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep and 14 other films round things out. It’s a quantitatively impressive slate, that’s for sure; the only downside of such a packed disc is that its navigation is quite slow-moving. For the film’s trailer, click here; to purchase the movie via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B (Movie) B (Disc)

Smart People fancies itself an urbane comedy in the vein of Sideways, As Good As it Gets and The Squid and the Whale. In fact, it’s from one of the same producers of Sideways, as its cover-pitch text and same-shaded lime green color indicate. Hell, it’s even got Thomas Haden Church as a rascally n’er-do-well! What more could one want for? A lot, actually. Unfortunately, this movie is a mess — a collection of precious, and preciously false, characters bumping up against one another in a sometimes mildly colorful but ultimately droning fashion.



Focusing on a dysfunctional Pennsylvania family with lots to learn, Smart People centers around a widowed, once idealistic and ambitious Carnegie Mellon classics/English professor, Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid), who has lost his passion for both teaching and, seemingly, day-to-day interaction with people he looks down upon, which is pretty much everyone. When a sudden head injury after a stupid accident sends Lawrence briefly to the hospital, he finds his world turned upside down. Forced to depend on his under-achieving step-brother Chuck (Church, above left), a freeloading oddball, for transportation, Lawrence is surprised to find himself attracted to an emergency room doctor and former ex-student, Janet Hartigan (Sarah Jessica Parker, playing a blank).

His acerbically witty daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) is none too pleased by this development, but as Lawrence begins to emerge from his isolation, this is but the first of several surprising consequences for the entire family. Things that were previously important to him — chairing a search committee for a new department head and trying to surreptitiously push himself into contention, as well as peddling a condescending sociocultural text — become slightly less so. Vanessa, meanwhile, moves from viewing Chuck in chiding and disdainful terms (“You should really make your bed — it sets the tone for the day”) to slowly realizing the value in his advice to loosen up a little bit.

Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Noam Murro and scripted by novelist Mark Poirier, Smart People has the look, feel and plump, well-fed density of an adapted novel, even though it’s an original work. Yet there’s no payoff of hidden pain or fire-born resilience behind all this colorful dysfunction, and the movie isn’t across-the-board whipsmart and wildly loquacious enough to compete on the same playing field as something like Metropolitan. The problems in pacing boil down to the fact that you don’t really know these characters, especially Lawrence’s college-age son James (Ashton Holmes). They’re types, all, meant to just colorfully bounce off one another. Lawrence and Janet’s stop-and-start relationship is additionally baffling, and certainly not aided by the movie’s difficulty at clearly conveying the passage of time.

Page, as she proved in both Hard Candy and Juno, has a wonderful way with intellectual patter, but the role of a bearded academic doesn’t suit Quaid very well; he’s too much of an everyman, and the self-involved dialogue he’s required to deliver sounds mannered and considered coming out of his mouth. Honestly, I laughed more times, apropos of nothing, at Church’s moustache-and-Kentucky-bedhead combo than anything else, and would have been perfectly happy to follow his character around, away from everyone else in the movie.

Housed in a regular Amray case with a cardboard slipcover, Smart People comes presented in anamorphic widescreen, with a 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound audio track. Castand crew interviews bolster an EPK-style making-of featurette that runs 16-plus minutes. There’s also a feature-length audio commentary track with Munro and screenwriter Poirer in which the pair ladle praise on their cast and discuss the challenges of a 29-day production schedule. Running 10 minutes, a hearty collection of deleted scenes provides more background and detail to Vanessa and Chuck’s relationship, and the emotional drift Vanessa is experiencing, the latter shown in her rebellious, against-character embrace of smoking, which baffles Lawrence. There’s also a two-minute blooper/gag reel, which offers lots of shots of Quaid and Parker cracking up, and extra footage of Church lounging around in his character’s back-flap pajamas. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C- (Movie) B (Disc)

Small business owner Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) lives a modest life with his fiancée Laura (Marisol Nichols)
and their three-year-old son. Everything changes in an instant, though,
when he’s convicted of killing a man who breaks into his home.
Sentenced to state prison, Wade ends up in a hellish facility overseen
by a guard (Harold Perrineau) who encourages gladiatorial fights among
the inmates. Though wanting to neither “fight or fornicate”
(the two delightful options given by one inmate, in slightly saltier
terms), Wade eventually yields to the former activity, in a paradoxical
attempt to protect himself and try to triangulate a position between competing Latino, African-American and Aryan skinhead gangs. When trouble mounts, his new cell mate,
John Smith, (Val Kilmer),
a burly, goateed “lifer” with his own dark devastation, provides
Wade with important guidance, all while ruminatively stroking his own tattoos.

Shot in hand-held,
super-confessional close-up, and on color-saturated Super16 blown up to
35mm, Felon doesn’t have much of revelatory value to say about the nature of violence
— indeed, its closing narration seems to endorse whatever-you-gotta-do
means. The flimsy, cardboard-thin set-up is meant to only get Wade into
prison (he cops to a murder charge since the fleeing culprit was
technically no longer on his property?), and the setting is meant to
only serve as an excuse for heavily tatted muscle-heads to use gang
slang, prison acronyms and flip each other around in gritty,
bare-knuckle fashion. See how that works? Still, in this regard, writer-director Ric Roman Waugh’s heavy background in stuntwork certainly pays off, as Felon, with its many boxers-and-sneakers brawls, rivals Eastern Promises in padding-free fisticuffs.

The
chief problem is that, despite invested performances by Dorff and
Kilmer, and after going to significant lengths to both establish a
sense of claustrophobic realism and depict Wade as being punished by an
unjust system, for not wanting to stoop to its calibrated levels of further dehumanization,
Waugh chucks all this for a contrived, mad-dash finale that requires
his protagonist bash in the brains of an “innocent” (a relative term
here, I realize) guy to get the proper attention of higher-ups, and
secure his release. Part cop-out, part simply bizarre, seemingly
concessional flourish, it’s a weird ending for a film that otherwise decently captures the grimness of prison life, and how it corrodes even those ostensibly in charge. One hopes, at least, the stuntmen were well compensated.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Felon comes presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with English 5.1 Dolby digital and French Dolby surround audio tracks, and optional English and French subtitles. Apart from previews for other Sony home video releases, its sole bonus feature is a 13-minute making-of featurette — one of those deals that eats up its first 30 seconds with a clip-laden introduction. This irksome detail aside, Waugh charts the course of the film from inception through production (he even used gang-bangers as script consultants, for authenticity’s sake), and Dorff and stunt coordinator Mike Davis also pop up in a few interview clips. All in all, it’s OK, but a bit even more input from Waugh — both about his aesthetic decisions, but especially about the film’s location shoot at the New Mexico State Penitentiary — would greatly increase a sympathetic reading of this Felon. To view the film’s trailer, click here. To purchase it on DVD, click here. C+ (Movie) C (Disc)

Adapted from Wendy Orr’s same-named children’s novel, Nim’s Island tells the story of 11-year-old Nim (Abigail Breslin, Oscar-nominated for Little Miss Sunshine),
a precocious girl who lives alone on a remote island in the South
Pacific with her widowed, marine biologist father, Jack Rusoe (300‘s Gerard
Butler).
The lack of human companionship doesn’t bother them, though — Nim plays
with and talks to her pet lizard and sea lion, and enthusiastically
devours a once-a-month shipment of adventure novels featuring a
swashbuckling, fedora-sporting character named Alex Rover (also Butler, below).

When a huge storm unexpectedly sweeps her father out to sea, Nim finds
herself truly alone, and scared. A series of research email queries
from the real-life author Alexandra Rover (Jodie Foster), in actuality an agoraphobic recluse living in San Francisco, awakens, to various degrees, adventurous and heroic impulses in both parties.
As Nim looks to protect her island home from the intrusive tourism
inroads of Buccaneer Cruise Lines — a company peddling virginal beach
expeditions to their loud, gawking clientele — Alexandra faces up to
her own considerable fears, packs a suitcase full of Progresso soup and
Purell hand sanitizer, and embarks on a far-flung voyage to help her young fan.

More intimately scaled than a lot of other recent children’s book adaptations, the sweet-natured and light-hearted Nim’s Island nonetheless achieves a nice hold over its audience, courtesy in no
small part to Barry Robison’s superb production design. Co-directed by
Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin (Little Manhattan), the movie is pitched just a little to the left of naturalistic
but it’s never so outlandish as to come off as completely unrealistic,
as long as one is prepared to make a few acquiescences — mostly with
regards to the interacting-with-animals bits.

The obvious touchstone here is Disney’s 1960 family adventure classic Swiss Family Robinson, a sick-day staple for many a kid courtesy of its theatrical reissue and subsequent VHS
peddling in the 1980s. (There are a few brief allusions to that movie,
and Nim and her father’s last name, Rusoe, is another nod of homage, to
Daniel Defoe’s castaway tale Robinson Crusoe.) Many other movies, though — from Matilda and Zathura to Jumanji and even The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep — share the same sort of fantastical, flight-of-fancy imagination that powers this movie. While Nim’s Island
is in the end far less explicitly effects-driven than some of those
films, it does open and close with hand-crafted credit sequences that
frames this tale as a metaphorical yarn as much as anything else.

It gets the detail right, though. I’ve written some before about the difficulty a lot of movies have in tackling, let alone making comedic hay out of, the realities of airport security in a post-September 11 world, but when Alexandra heads to the airport, the movie scrupulously makes a point of adhering to the three-ounce baggie rule. It’s bits like these that provide an underpinning which allows one to buy into the rest of the film. As
for the performances, Breslin is suitably bright-eyed, and energetic.
Butler, meanwhile, has great fun portraying both Jack and the more
rugged, roguish Alex, who appears both in Nim’s imagination during her
reading and in several spirited arguments with Alexandra, who is the
antithesis of the best-selling character of her own creation. The movie
also benefits greatly from a
pitch-perfect manic turn by Foster, who knows how to take formulaic
bits of slapstick and uptight unease and make them ring amusingly true.

Nim’s Island isn’t without a few moments of over-familiarity, and in some ways it’s
actually demure when compared to a lot of other movies aimed these days
chiefly at kids — which may be a bit of a strike for those raised on
the Harry Potter films and The Chronicles of Narnia. Its greatest success, though, is the manner in which it taps into the pleasurable feeling of awakened imagination that surges during adolescence. Rekindling fond memories of childhood is never a bad thing.

Housed in a regular Amray case with an accompanying cardboard slipcover, Nim’s Island comes presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound audio mix, and Spanish and French language Dolby surround sound mixes. Two audio commentary tracks kick-start the slate of supplemental features — one with co-directors Flackett and Levin, and the other, quite pleasingly, with Foster and Breslin. These pairings make for a nice match; while the former focuses a bit more on production detail, such as the volcano matte paintings and details of the movie’s Australian production, Foster and Breslin are left to chat about books, animals and the environment, and how those elements all intersect the narrative.

Next up are a collection deleted scenes, which run in total around 15 minutes. Some illuminate Alexandra’s Stateside life a bit more, and three sketch out some of the imaginary literary characters (Huck Finn, Alice in Wonderland and Longjohn Silver) that are Nim’s imaginary friends — a plot strand entirely deleted from the final theatrical cut. Finally, there are three separate six-minute featurettes, with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. One looks at the animals in the movie, another at its water work (anything with the sea lion on the beach was composited, for instance, since there was a fear the animal would make a break for the ocean), and the last one focuses more exclusively on Breslin, and her on-set routines, including time with her tutor. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

Watching the third season of The Hills on DVD, I totally get its immediate appeal, in much the same way that I understand why people like crack, without actually having to try it myself. Sure, there are a bevy of well-manicured chicks who occasionally appear in bikinis. Mainly, though, a special group shout-out is owed to Mark Petersen, Rachel Morrison, Dave West, Hisham Abed and Dave Jones. Who, you ask? Why, The Hills‘ credited cinematographers, who make the show and Los Angeles in general look like, especially to every land-locked Midwestern teenager, the most gorgeous, alluring and exciting thing, like, ever, almost to the point that the tedious “narrative” — gossip, back-stabbing, boy troubles, shopping and dreadfully inane fretting about nascent-career woes — can be turned off entirely, allowing one to gorge on and bask in the refracted glow of magic-hour lighting, crisply presented new fashion trends and way-cool clubs. Hell, I’ve lived in Los Angeles for more than a decade, and it made me want to move here!

Briefly, for those in need of a primer, The Hills revolves around Lauren Conrad (above center), who graduated from MTV’s high school-centered Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County to another reality show even more centered around her in much the same way that Tiffany “New York” Pollard from Flavor of Love did, except with less acrylic nails, breast implants, morally repugnant self-centeredness and screeching, bitchy histrionics. The third season of MTV’s hit show charts Lauren’s job at Teen Vogue but also, in large part, the dissolution of Lauren’s friendship with Heidi Montag. Heidi, of course, is at the same time dating Spencer Pratt, whom I previously knew only for being mocked for his “flesh-colored beard” by Joel McHale on E!’s The Soup. The two move in together, and clash over decorating.

Nasty rumors of a sex tape pop up, and Lauren’s attempts to discern who started gossip about its existence lead to much acrimony. Other characters include Audrina Patridge (above left), Whitney Port (above right) and Lo Bosworth — the latter of whom rooms with Lauren in a posh little NoHo house, while Audrina takes the guest cottage out back, leading to drift and separation.

If the (constant, cartoonishly over-the-top) drinking and all the woot-woot! partying of The Real World are just too much for you, The Hills presents itself as a slightly tonier alternative. Yes, there is a modest effort to track the professional lives of in particular Lauren and Heidi, but there’s also time for lots of drinks at posh bars and restaurants, where the subjects all appear in gorgeous, perfect lighting and sometimes glare at one another under the strains of the latest emo-pop tune. Not unlike Snoop Dogg’s awful, blissfully short-lived, family-oriented reality show — which, if anyone saw it, featured awkwardly staged incidents in which it was painfully obvious the participants were either goaded into taking part, or decided to play-act, in an attempt to create a fantasy construct of reality — much of The Hills is utterly false. In contrived fashion, its players cross paths at parties and other events to ratchet up the tension. When Spencer returns to his apartment looking for Heidi after a protracted spat, there’s a camera waiting inside, to capture his reaction when he somehow intuits that she’s actually out of town, gone to Las Vegas for work. So… it’s off to Vegas, to track her down!

There’s an awful lot of manufactured drama, in other words — talking and wheel-spinning. A small handful of very concrete things happen, and most of the series deals with the protracted discussion about slights, both perceived and real. This might be OK if one could muster a true rooting interest in any of the participants. But The Hills falls victim to the same sort of bullshit rubric that’s plagued The Real World for the last God-knows-how-many years, namely that the “reality” on display seems so far removed from the lives of most of their peer set, and so everything is just one big Mardi Gras-style, name-brand jerk-off of downtime fun and invented-angst navel-gazing. It stretches credulity that a record company receptionist and magazine intern, just striking out on their own, could afford the digs that Lauren and Audrina have, but in a society where aspirational carrot-dangling passes so often for entertainment, it’s not exactly shocking, I guess. Again, the value of the the superb production value can’t be overstated; despite the fact that what The Hills is selling is patently false, it sells it quite well.

Attractively housed in a sturdy cardboard slipcover with four discs in turn stored in slimline cases with different “cover girl” photos of cast members, The Hills: The Third Season is presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a Dolby digital stereo audio track. Nice motion menus give way to a whopping 28 episodes, doubling the offerings of previous seasons. Two dozen deleted scenes include such bon mots as Lauren’s reaction to Audrina shaving her cat (like, literally… that’s not a metaphor) and Heidi talking to a friend about her trip home to Colorado, where her parents meet Spencer for the first time. This makes for some small amusement when said friend asks her, “What do you love about him?” and instead of answering in any specific fashion Heidi asserts that Spencer is the perfect living embodiment of every positive trait she can think of… oh, and much hotter than Justin Timberlake.

Other bonus supplemental features include eight “fashion life” promos, and around 40 minutes of audio commentary from the girls over scenes that span the entire season. Lauren, Heidi, Audrina and Whitney also sit for separate interviews (collections which run 12, 11, eight and seven minutes, respectively), and while there’s a hell of a drinking game to be concocted revolving around every time the words “frustrated” or “awkward” are deployed, a couple of the girls actually come off as a bit more articulate and reflective than they do when caught up in the vapid spin cycle of the show itself, and its seeming encouragement and perpetuation of the inane. There’s also a two-minute promo for “The Virtual Hills,” a bizarre interactive feature that I gather users can launch from MTV’s fan site, but seems as if it were designed in the late 1990s, before the latest generation of SIMS games. Overall, The Hills is kind of like a jumbo-sized carton of Twinkies. It kind of looks good, feels soft and comfortable, and is there for you, never judging you. Too much, though, kind of rots your soul, and leaves you feeling bloated and (in this case, mentally) fatigued. Nevertheless, to purchase the set via Amazon, click here. C- (Series) A- (Disc)

Conspiracy, which certainly wouldn’t please John McCain as an emblematic filmic greeting card for his home state of Arizona, is the latest movie in a new trend — straight-to-video works of formerly bankable (or at least consistently employable) leading men stars. The top-liner here is Val Kilmer, who gives his thousand-yard stare a workout as a stoic former Marine who helps bring justice to a small, burgeoning border town. A Walking Tall-type story co-penned by Debra Sullivan and director Adam Marcus, the movie doesn’t necessarily score very high for originality, and neither do the dusty, budgetary constraints work much in its favor. Still, Marcus elicits good work from his cast, and for the most part resists pressing and pulling all the story levers with too much force.

The story centers around “Spooky” MacPherson (Kilmer), a broken ex-military man who worked as an embedded contractor in Iraq. After he’s wounded during combat, MacPherson reluctantly agrees to join a fellow soldier, Miguel Silva (Greg Serano), in Arizona, and help him get his ranch in small, up-and-coming New Lago in shape. But when MacPherson arrives, his friend has mysteriously disappeared, and no one will admit to even knowing him. When he discovers that a corporation named Halicorp (yep, very subtle) is running illegal aliens out of town by any means possible, MacPherson becomes determined to find out the truth, and he will not be stopped until all those involved are punished.

As John Rhodes, a self-styled patriot-businessman loosely in the mold of real-life Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Gary Cole displays some fine ambling and unctuousness; he hits just all the right loathsome notes as the white-collar sleazeball that gives this movie its good-ol’-boy heart of darkness. Jennifer Esposito’s single mother, Joanna Hollis, is more problematic — shoehorned in to provide an awkward love interest (she’s reluctantly dating Rhodes, but of course finds MacPherson’s quiet nobility a huge turn-on), she’s an idea, not a realistic, fully dimensional character. Much of Conspiracy‘s intrigue lies in its first half to two-thirds, in the slow-played set-up. Once its trigger-wire is tripped, and shotgun-style revenge comes into play, it’s a lot less interesting. Still, there’s no denying that the setting and sociopolitical content of the movie reflect an undeniably modern anxiety about security, family and community in an increasingly diverse (read: “browning”) America, and for that reason, as much as Kilmer’s dispassionate glare, Conspiracy mostly holds one’s interest.

Housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Conspiracy is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, with a decently crisp transfer free from grain or edge enhancement. Apart from bonus trailers for other Sony releases, there are unfortunately no other special features. What?! I thought for sure there would at least be a detailed explanation of how the writers came up with the name Halicorp. To purchase the DVD, via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) D (Disc)

Filmed at the London Forum over the final two nights of the group’s 2007 tour in support of their most recent album, Somewhere Else, this two-DVD concert release shines a light on one of the United Kingdom’s better-kept secrets — former prog-rock peddlers Marillion, whose blistering live shows leave an audience full of appreciative, beer-swilling blue-collar-types chanting along for more.

I confess to not knowing a great deal about the band prior to this DVD, but one needn’t consult their AllMusic.com entry to divine the Tolkien-esque roots of their name (Silmarillion), or the fact that their deft touch with lush balladry is originally born not of strict compositional discipline, but rather a jam-inspired love of noodling and experimentation. At once brooding and cathartic, many of their tunes blend symphonic flourishes with straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll — a bit like Pink Floyd or U2, without the high-confessional aspect or grand-scale gestures. This release captures the group in fine form. The track listing from the “main” portion of the concert is as follows: “Splintering Heart,” “The Other Half,” “You’re Gone,” “No Such Thing,” “Faith,” “Thankyou [sic] Whoever You Are,” “Fantastic Place,” “The Wound,” “A Voice From the Past,” “Somewhere Else,” “Man of a Thousand Faces,” “Between You and Me,” “King,” “The Release” and “Neverland.”

Hearteningly, there are plenty of bonus materials in the form of extra performances. First up are four surround-sound mixes of Somewhere Else album tracks — “The Wound,” “A Voice From the Past,” “No Such Thing” and the title tune. Next up is a 38-minute special sit-down performance in Buckinghamshire, where the band was originally formed. Winners of a special competition are picked up at the local train station, and driven to see the band work through an intimate rehearsal at the Racket Club; the tunes featured here include “The Last Century for Man,” “Estonia,” “Faith,” “Neverland” and “See It Like a Baby.” Finally, there’s an entire handful of other tunes performed in concert at the Forum, including “Ocean Cloud,” “Afraid of Sunlight,” “Beautiful,” “Most Toys,” “Estonia,” “Easter” and the poignant “Sugar Mice,” on which the crowd does most of the heavy lifting with respect to the singing.

Housed in a clear, plastic Amray case with inset trays on each side, this region-free, widescreen release has a slipcover featuring a shot of the London Tube, with song credits printed on the inside, along with a smattering of photos. The audio comes in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound, and the production is top-notch, with a variety of fades and overlays creating a nice, artistic tapestry. For more information, click here. B (Concert) B+ (Disc)

Mixed martial arts and cage-fighting, as seen in the recent Stephen Dorff flick Felon, are surging in popularity, no longer merely the province of dusty swathes of the middle of the country, or backwater burghs where weekend-bleeders gather to knock the shit out of one another, and cheer on the same. Ergo a collection like Cage Rage: The Superstar Collection, which showcases the best of the best from every fighting discipline — including boxing, karate, kick-boxing, wrestling, tae kwondo, jiu-jitsu, muay thai, pankration and judo — and features a wide variety of takedowns, from big-time knockouts to slick submissions.

Spread out over three discs and comprised of 59 fights in total, from the Cage Rage VII through XI events, this collection features more than six hours of British MMA action. For those interested, the first-disc bouts here are as follows, with all the brawny nicknames removed: Philly San vs. Dave Elliot, Xavier Foupa Pokam vs. Paul Daley, Ricky Andrews vs. Jeremy Bailey, Paul Jenkins vs. Ronaldo Campos, Jean Francois Lenogue vs. Damien Riccio, Samy Schiavo vs. Robbie Oliver, Emmanuel Fernandez vs. Leigh Remedios, Jess Liaudin vs. Matt Ewin, Ollie Ellis vs. Jean Silva, Michael Bisping vs. Mark Epstein, Jorge Rivera vs. Mark Weir, Peter Tiaks vs. Ian Butlin, James Nicholle vs. Suley Mahmoud, Silvio De Souza vs. Mark Epstein, Sol Gilbert vs. Jean Francois Lenogue, Jeremy Bailey vs. Phil Gildea, Matt Ewin vs. Damien Riccio, Ryan Robison vs. Kuljit Degun, Leigh Remedios vs. Ricky Salhan, Matthias Riccio vs. James Kikic, Mark Weir vs. Johil De Oliveira, and Lee Murray vs. Anderson Silva.

The bouts on the second disc are: Brad Pickett vs. Stuart Grant, Mustapha Al Turk vs. Freidoun Naghizadeh, Sami Berik vs. Addul Mohamed, Tulio Palhares vs. Alex Reid, Paul Daley vs. Jess Liaudin, Dave Elliot vs. Robbie Oliver, Ridas Vivada vs. Sol Gilbert, Samy Schiavo vs. Jean Silva, Rentato Sobral vs. Cyrille Diabate, Michael Bisping vs. Mark Epstein, Matt Lindland vs. Mark Weir, Ryan Robinson vs. Ian Freeman, Andy Walker vs. Alex De Souza, Ricky Andrews vs. Dave Lee, Brad Pickett vs. Chris Freebourne, Robert Berry vs. Andy Harby, Daniel Buzotta vs. Andy Costello, Evangelista Santos vs. Anthony Rea, Jeremy Bailey vs. Sami Berik, Jean Silva vs. Leigh Remedios, Melvin Manhoef vs. Matthias Riccio, Alex Reid vs. Jorge Rivera, Gabriel Santos vs. Mark Weir, Curtis Stout vs. Sol Gilbert, and Pierre Guillet vs. Renato Sobral.

The third disc’s bouts are: Atilla Kubilay vs. Richard Bowkett, Tom Blackledge vs. Kuljit Degun, Jess Liaudin vs. Abdul Mohamed, Robert Berry vs. Andy Costello, Brad Pickett vs. Aaron Blackwell, Henrique Santana vs. Hassan Muridi, Paul Daley vs. Paul Jenkins, Ross Mason vs. Damien Riccio, Pierre Guillet vs. Anthony Rea, Evangelista Santos vs. Mark Epstein, Mark Weir vs. Curtis Stout, and Anderson Silva vs. Jorge Rivera.

I didn’t submit to the full menu, but I did throw this on with a meal one afternoon, and in watching for about half an hour or so, several impressions were formed. First, most of the fighters, who get some camera face-time before bouts, were very respectful of one another, doling out seemingly sincere compliments, talking up their hometowns like junior emcees (“You know I’m repping for London, repping for Nottingham!”) and engaging only in light trash-talking (“Unfortunately, Paul Jenkins is like a bad can of beans whose expiration date is up, and so I’m gonna have to knock him out”). There are exceptions, but these blockheads seem to get dismissed fairly quickly.

Almost all of the bouts consist of three five-minute rounds, but it’s interesting how weight classification dictates fighting style to such a large degree, even much more so than in just boxing. Welterweight Brad Pickett comes across as balletic, almost, and other fighters employ what might best be characterized as a spider-monkey assault-style, relying on crab clinches and quick flips to gain the advantage of a physical position that will then enable them to administer punishing head blows. Overall, Robert Berry and Paul Daley seem like quite tough fellows, but one gleans how can easily brute strength, or even foot- and arm-length advantages, be flipped on their end in competitions like this.

Housed in a thick-spined Amray case with a snap-in tray, Cage Rage: The Superstar Collection is presented in full screen, with sparse supplemental features, including some promo tags and other tidbits. The video transfer is only so-so, but the camerawork and other production value of the captured fights is pretty high, with multiple angles and solid ringside commentary that talks MMA neophytes through the action, even if audiences might be left wondering exactly what “mad position” is. For sheer buy-in-bulk value, Cage Rage gets a hearty endorsement for its core constituency. To purchase the title via Amazon, click here. B+ (Collection) B- (Disc)

Full of doleful glances and glum expressions, Sleepwalking conveys both a whole lot of wintry desolateness and the never-quite-fully-broken cycle of familial abuse that tends to keep a lot of families stuck in problematic situations, or at the very least a socioeconomic rut. Directed by William Maher (not Bill Maher, it must be stressed), from a screenplay by Zac Stanford (The Chumscrubber), Sleepwalking is not a perfect film, or even necessarily a devastatingly affecting one, but it is fairly well put together.

The film centers around an 11-year-old girl, Tara (AnnaSophia Robb, above left),
who’s abandoned by her pot-addled mother Jolene (Charlize Theron) and left with
her undependable uncle James (Nick Stahl), who ekes out a living as a
construction worker. James is unsure of what to do, but with $315, the pair set off on roadie to the old family farm in rural Utah. Returning home with swallowed,
silent expectations, James,
who has a sort of get-along-to-fit-in relationship with his
estranged, son-of-a-bitch father Reedy (Dennis Hopper), fibs and says that Tara is his daughter. He hopes this white lie will soothe things, and allow him to hit up his father for a bit of money. Unfortunately, Reedy is every bit as ornery as when James left, and he’s in no mood to display compassionate, be it as a father or grandfather.

Sleepwalking could just as easily be titled Unstated,
or something of that nature; it’s about what’s unsaid in families, and trying to
escape one’s past without even being able to articulate that journey,
or even perhaps fully realize it. A good bit of the firm, authentic
Midwestern feeling that accrues during its running time, though, melts
away during an act of late-film violence and the film’s pat conclusion
of uplift, which involves one character saying, “Today is the first day
of the rest of our lives.”

With her alligator boots, trashy demeanor
and knack for poor decision-making, Jolene could be a cousin of Amy Ryan’s
character from Gone Baby Gone.
Unfortunately, we don’t get quite enough of her to leave a lasting
impression, so the proxy battles that James and Reedy have about her
seem empty, or at least fraught with a lot less tension than they could
be. There’s a gritty realism to the film’s muted visual scheme that helps sell its relentlessly grim tone, much more than Stanford’s shruggingly vague screenplay. Still, this is fairly standard arthouse-potato drama — familial-discord genre stuff given a blue-collar, down-time Midwestern makeover.

Sleepwalking comes to DVD in a regular plastic Amray case, with an
accompanying cardboard slipcover. It’s presented in both 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen and full screen, with an English language Dolby 5.1
surround sound audio track. Bonus features consist only of a 16-minute making-of featurette with cast and crew interviews. A bit more from Stanford and Maher, especially about the look of the movie, would have been welcome. To purchase the movie on DVD via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

For reasons that will become much more evident in the coming weeks, I’m reposting this DVD review of 2004’s Man on Fire, originally published, by a now-defunct outlet, upon its release to home video in the summer of 2005. To wit:

Man on Fire is one of those movies which you can use to directly trace Hollywood’s big studio tradition from past to present. When people say they don’t make movies like they used to — which is to say well intentioned, overlong and stamped with a definable, almost maverick-cowboy personality — you can always cite the comfortably bloated Man on Fire as evidence to the contrary. (Of course, all of these movies are now adapted from novels rather than original screenplay narratives, but that’s another story.)

All of the above might sound like a backhanded compliment — and it might well be — but it’s hardly meant to be flippantly dismissive, for director Tony Scott’s feverish film is as searing a reminder as any of his leading man’s last dozen movies that Denzel Washington is not only one of the best actors alive but also probably one of the top five indicators of sheer bang-for-your-buck value working today. Even in middling melodrama like John Q, Washington can coax a genuine tear with his ferocious commitment; give him something special like Training Day and he’ll blow your mind. Like the recent Out of Time, the sweaty, unrepentant Man on Fire is qualitatively somewhere in between those two films, though far less spring-loaded than the previous crowd-pleasing thriller.

Adapted from A.J. Quinell’s novel of the same name by Brian Helgeland, the story finds Washington cast as John W. Creasy, a sullen, highly trained onetime government “asset” whose star has long since faded and whose psychological battle scars have ossified into the steely disaffection a functional alcoholic subcontractor. Then a funny thing happens after Creasy’s friend Rayburn (Christopher Walken, always a breath-of-fresh-air hoot) helps land him a gig in Mexico City as a bodyguard for the precocious young Pita Ramos (Dakota Fanning) — he finds he still has a heart. When Pita gets kidnapped, Creasy sets out to paint the city red with the blood of the complicit.

Dark, jittery, self-involved and indulgent as all get-out, Man on Fire pits Creasy against both his shadow self — his darker instincts — and the cancerous institutional corruption of Mexico City. In a cinematic sub-genre of fuzzily drawn anti-heroes (everyone wants the cool points but little of the baggage), Man on Fire presents a man with a spiritual crisis of conscience, but it doesn’t ladle it on. Right out of the gate, the movie announces that in Latin America there’s one kidnapping every hour, and that 70 percent of the victims don’t survive. (The tourism board tagline virtually writes itself!) The rest of the film is pungently over-directed by Scott with a more grizzled, adult spin of the same swooping-crane excess he brought to Enemy of the State. In significant emotional ways Man on Fire also recalls the similarly flawed Spy Game; both films make correspondingly fresh and awkward use of their intertwined geopolitical density and interpersonal relationships.

DVD extras include two audio commentaries — one from Scott and another surprisingly interesting one with Helgeland, Fanning and producer Lucas Foster. For a movie that’s an over-baked 145 minutes, there are also somehow 15 deleted scenes (other expunged arcs include a fleshed-out affair between Creasy and Pita’s mother, played by Radha Mitchell, plus an alternate ending), a scene breakdown of the abduction sequence, a music video and more. The paramount extra, though, is a superlative, hour-plus making-of documentary that traces the project’s arduous development, casting, production and more. It may be nothing more than a sort of an exotically set 21st century Death Wish in much fancier duds, but Man on Fire sure gives good revenge. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

Woe the randy teenager who places Road Trip or, eventually, the forthcoming College on their Netflix list, and receives College Road Trip by accident. When senior Melanie Porter (Raven-Symoné), who has her heart set on attending Washington D.C.’s Georgetown University, plans a trip with her high
school girlfriends to look at colleges, her overprotective police chief
father (Martin
Lawrence) intercedes.
Hoping to convince her to attend a nearby school, he insists on
accompanying her on the trip, but his over-the-top efforts
to protect his little girl backfire, and automotive mishaps, multiple
taserings and much over-demonstrative acting-the-fool ensues.

Aiming for broad, centrist entertainment for parents and kids alike is fine, but College Road Trip
has no steady, inner throughline. It wants to sell the sincerity of
James’ love for his daughter, but alternates scenes of him tearily
watching home video footage of a young Melanie with slapsticky bits in which Lawrence screws up his face in confusion
and disdain, and rants and raves about the family pet pig giving him “the eye.” Then there’s the matter of Disney Channel staple Raven-Symoné, who overacts with such sheer, unhinged intensity that one might be forgiven for thinking she were auditioning for a high school drama club production of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

This is obviously a paycheck gig for director Roger Kumble (Just Friends), who must be wondering what happened to the trajectory of his career after the moderately warm reception that 1999’s Cruel Intentions — his adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’ oft-reworked novel, Dangerous Liaisons — received. Obliging the desultory nature of the material — which opens with a mock-trial centering around the Big Bad Wolf for wannabe-litigator Melanie, and then proceeds to make hyper-literal almost every cliché of pained, awkward teen-parent interaction — Kumble just throws air-quote style at the screen (wow, freeze frames combined with split-screen wipes!), seemingly in the hope that all the extra color and motion will distract audiences’ brains from the lack of any laughs or connection with the movie.

The film’s supporting cast includes Kym E. Whitley as Melanie’s mom Michelle and Donny Osmond, in
full-on enthusiastic goofball mode, as Doug Greenhut, a sort of cross between Ned Flanders, Ned Ryerson and Phil Stromberg. Other Disney Channel bit players, like Brenda Song (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody) and Lucas Grabeel (High School Musical), also pop up and, somewhat surprisingly, are among the least annoying, most restrained characters in the ensemble.

College Road Trip comes housed in a regular Amray case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, and the irritation starts almost immediately upon boot-up. Though billed as coming in both widescreen 2.35:1 and full screen 1.33:1, the former aspect ratio is only accessible via the “audio options” tab on the main menu, which seems silly, and mis-labeled. Auto-play start-up, scene selection or the regular “play movie” will all default to the full screen presentation.

Two different audio commentaries are included — one with writers Emi Mochizuki and Carrie Evans, and the other with Raven-Symoné and Kumble, who, among other peppy bits of trivia, points out that the facade of the Northwestern memorial library the production used was named for the movie’s location manager. A three-minute gag reel briefly showcases how they got that pig to jump on the bed (a dude in a green jumpsuit, don’t you know), as well as a toothy Osmond flubbing lines and asking with a huge grin, “Has my career come to this?” (Answer: yes.) There are also deleted scenes with optional commentary from Kumble, plus an alternate opening and endings, unfortunately none of which involve a fiery auto crash that leaves no characters alive. Raven-Symoné’s video diary finds the star bopping about set and chatting with her costars. Finally, if one needs more Raven-Symoné, there’s a music video for the movie’s signature tune, “Double Dutch Bus,” and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the music video. Though mercifully brief at 83 minutes, College Road Trip is one movie you definitely won’t want to be stuck with on a long car ride. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. D- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

I didn’t have high hopes for the straight-to-DVD imperiled-coeds thriller Asylum, based on its fairly wretched trailer, but a viewing of the movie confirmed my overall suspicion of the final product while also departing from my pre-judgment in a number of significant ways. Top-lined by Sarah Roemer (aka the chick Shia LaBeouf ogles in Disturbia), the flick is a sort of cross between Stay Alive and Session 9, with a healthy smear of down-market horror moves copped from ’80s-era DIY flicks that never made it off of VHS.

Written by Ethan Lawrence and directed by David Ellis (Snakes on a Plane, Final Destination 2), Asylum follows a group of six freshman college students as they uncover dark secrets about their new dormitory, which just happens to have once been an infamous mental institution where a demented, lobotomy-loving psychiatrist, Dr. Burke (Mark Rolston), performed all sorts of tortuous experiments on his teenage patients. The central character is Madison (Roemer), who’s had to suffer the suicides of both her father and brother Brandon (Benjamin Daniele), the latter of whom she still has nightmarish visions of, since she’s decided to attend the same university he did.

There’s also the cocky Tommy (Transformers‘ Travis Van Winkle), vaguely sympathetic Holt (Jake Muxworthy), 16-year-old String (Cody Kasch), Maya (Carolina Garcia) and Ivy (Ellen Hollman), the requisite blonde with the “fantastic tits,” according to Tommy. After orientation and a get-to-know-one-another party with some booze passed around, the students eventually find themselves trapped in their dorm, picked off one by one but looking for an escape as the ghost of the deranged Dr. Burke begins “treating them.”

The acting here kind of runs the gamut. Roemer sort of recalls, physically at least, in profile, Amy Smart, though without really any of the bite, sass or personality that (momentarily) helped distinguish her from the rest of her brethren. (For those keeping score at home — and without a subscription to Mr.
Skin — there’s a fleeting glimpse of breast from Roemer, in a sequence
where she hallucinates in the shower, and thinks she’s drowning.) Van Wickle is saddled with a ridiculous, preening character — the coarse jock, squared; he eventually wins you over with some smart, atypical line readings, though, and a back story that at least attempts to explain why he acts the way he does. The real revelation might be Kasch, who makes an impression as the requisite outsider-loner without tipping over into math-lete brooding. The other actors — including Rolston, and Lin Shaye in a small cameo as String’s mother — fail to really impress.

Powering through what was no doubt a compressed shoot, Ellis fails to elevate the material; he shoots the introductions of all the kids in a wide, awkwardly staged master shot, and does the same thing with a couple other group scenes, which are all seemingly covered by a single boom mic. He spends whatever time he presumably saved here indulging in overly affected hallucinatory scenes, with different film stocks and a variety of filters, perhaps nipped from Simon West. There’s too much speechifying by Dr. Burke for it to be scary, though. Other passages, meant to evoke tension, are far too cloaked in shadow and darkness. There’s no codifying visual scheme for this movie — it’s a case of Jackson Pollack-type filmmaking, with different styles just flung at the screen. For a movie that needs a slick packaging to lift up its cardboard-thin premise, that doesn’t do the job.

Asylum presumably comes in a regular Amray case, presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen, with an English language 5.1 Dolby surround sound audio track, a Spanish language Dolby surround track, and optional English, Spanish and French subtitles; I say “presumably” because the special slip-sleeve review screener I was sent didn’t include its packaging. Nor did it want to play in my regular DVD player either. (It finally worked fine in the PlayStation 2, oddly enough.) At any rate, apart from a few previews that play automatically upon start-up, there are no supplemental features. To purchase the movie via Amazon, click here. D+ (Movie) D- (Disc)