If one were to ruminate on the equivalent of a Mother Teresa-type figure for the advocacy of natural animal research and wildlife conservation, it would likely be Dr. Jane Goodall, a world-famous icon known for her groundbreaking scientific field work accrued while living amongst chimpanzees in Africa. Directed by Lorenz Knauer, the documentary Jane’s Journey offers up a biographical snapshot of both the personal and professional Goodall. Inclusive of some compelling piecemeal details, it’s a film that’s hard to assail with much enthusiasm or gusto, but the truth is that it’s an awkward and generally unfocused mash-up of mixed perspectives and mission statements.

It’s hard to believe, but the British-born Goodall was in her early 20s when she first headed to Africa, lacking any formal graduate degree. She’d been enamored with animals from a young age, and seized on this quixotic idea of living alongside and studying them — nevermind that such a plan was wildly unrealistic, especially for a woman. Nevertheless, she persisted, visiting and eventually securing employment at the Kenya National Museum, and winning the confidence of its director, Louis Leakey, with a combination of otherworldly patience and extensively annotated behavioral observations. She eventually enrolled at Cambridge University in 1962, and obtained her PhD three years later.

Goodall’s pioneering research of wild chimpanzee behavior — including the first confirmation of their creation and use of tools, which required a change in the scientific definition of humankind — earned her the moniker of “Ambassador of the Apes,” and made her a superstar in environmental and animal studies subsets. More than five decades on the research still continues, under the auspices of her eponymous institute.

It’s this facet that provides Jane’s Journey with its first big hiccup. Much of the early portion of the movie trades in straight biography, charting the life events that took Goodall to Kenya, and informed her seemingly unshakable sense of purpose. Eventually, though, the film starts wandering all over the map. Its disparate areas of inquiry aren’t at all mutually exclusive, but it’s clear that Goodall submitted to a film like this in large part to push the educational agenda of her eponymous institute. Knauer, however, seems not to have gotten the memo — or at least received it too late, since the Jane Goodall Institute and its expansive, global “Roots & Chutes” program is not first mentioned until 50 minutes into the movie, and only then in an abrupt and jarring fashion that doesn’t fully elucidate its mission. Largely lacking in any sort of natural pivot points or more focused narrative cohesiveness, Knauer just throws scenes and sequences together willy-nilly.

A few celebrities (Pierce Brosnan, Angelina Jolie) familiar with Goodall’s advocacy pop up to offer testimonials to her piety, but for every moment of genuine interest or revelation, there are padded-out, trivial reactions from lecture tour attendees (even at 77 years of age, Goodall still travels more than 300 days a year, giving speeches, doing book-readings and attending conferences), or other tertiary figures. Knauer, too, fails to dig substantively into passages of conflict and difficulty in Goodall’s personal life, and peg them to attitudinal shifts (or the lack thereof) in professional behavior. When Goodall’s lone son, known as Grub, reflects on the scariness of chimpanzees from his perspective as a child, or the later friction in his adult relationship with his mother caused by his decision to go into a lobster import-export business, it hints at something deeply interesting — not only because it’s humanizing, but also because it reflects tests of Goodall’s core values. Goodall’s life and work is fascinating and worthy of praise; Jane’s Journey fitfully captures that, but also misses the mark for most of its running time.

Nevertheless, Jane’s Journey comes to DVD packaged in a regular plastic Amaray case, presented in a 16×9 aspect ratio, with a Dolby stereo audio track and optional English subtitles. Supplemental bonus features include Jolie interview footage, as well as more information about the aforementioned “Roots & Chutes” program. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. C (Movie) C (Disc)

A sequel to Uwe Boll’s 2008 The Lord of the Rings rip-off/videogame adaptation In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, this only loosely related sequel finds Dolph Lundgren tripping back in time, but unfortunately unable to stably reach a point prior to his committing to do this movie.

The story centers on Granger (Lundgren), a present-day former special forces soldier, characteristically haunted by the memories of his fallen comrades, who finds himself transported back to a mystical age of sorcery and shenanigans. One day, after a karate seminar with a bunch of tykes, he’s just minding his business in his apartment when a bunch of ninjas come bursting through a vortex. A mysterious woman helps him escape, and before he knows it Granger is in the presence of a crafty young king, Raven (Lochlyn Munro), who rules over the realm of Ehb and is
looking to expand the parameters of his kingdom, perhaps through time and space.

There’s lots of talk of Granger’s appearance fulfilling a prophecy, naturally, and the king’s chief henchman, Allard (Aleks Paunovic), does that thing where he demands obsequious deference, but eventually comes to begrudgingly respect Granger. Oh, and there’s a girl, of course, this time in the form of Manhatten (a miscast Natassia Malthe). Lots of running through the woods and effects-buoyed fisticuffs ensue.

Yawning, going-through-the-motions genre fare through and through, the movie additionally suffers from its obviously rushed production, which helps render the staging for its fight scenes downright farcical in their simplicity. The acting ranges from autopilot and disengaged/disinterested to flat-out unconvincing, though Kerry Weinrauch’s costumes at least achieve a functional degree of success on an obviously constrained budget. Still, if the devil is in the details, then Boll never met the devil, as In the Name of the King 2 again exhibits his penchant for making a day’s schedule above all else. He’s surely not the first filmmaker to encounter an actress with a nose piercing having to play a period character, but he is perhaps the first to employ such slipshod make-up artists and framing choices as to make that fact readily apparent to audiences.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, In the Name of the King 2 comes to DVD presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. Boll sits for a feature-length audio commentary track, which means plenty of his wacky anecdotes and dubious insights, inclusive of stories of his dogs on the set. A brief behind-the-scenes featurette includes a decent bit of on-set footage, and interview material with Lundgren and others. Lundgren gives it the old college try, genially talking about Boll’s indefatigable energy and vision, and says that he hadn’t done a fantasy film in a long while, which made the project intriguing to him. But then Boll shows up while they’re filming this EPK chat, and things get weird and forced, like when your idiot boss shows up at a happy hour where you’re commiserating with your colleagues. Writer Michael Nachoff also submits to an interview and gets a stand-alone six-minute featurette, wherein he praises Lundgren’s performance and also talks about his writing process and the loads of voiceover narration that were excised from his screenplay. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here; for a characteristically entertaining interview with Boll, meanwhile, click here. D (Movie) C (Disc)

For my latest DVD/Blu-ray column, over at ShockYa, I celebrate Buster Keaton’s work in Seven Chances and Andy Serkis’ work in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, examine how the Straw Dogs remake stacks up against both the original and a couple other slices of screen vengeance, get animated with Futurama and CatDog, and ponder T-Pain and the Lonely Island’s reaction to Killer Yacht Party. Again, it’s all over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

The differences between French cinema and Hollywood studio offerings are various and sundry, but perhaps best illustrated by something like Rapt, a sprawling and inventive kidnap drama which doesn’t so much deliver an adrenaline shot of nervy thrills as steadily ooze disquieting tension over the course of its two-hour running time. Watching this superb high-wire balancing act unfold, one is struck by the myriad ways American thrillers typically angle for car chases and other jolts of immediacy, even if it doesn’t always make sense within the confines of the narrative. So when word of a planned English-language remake of Rapt broke not long before its slotting at the City of Lights City of Angels (COLCOA) Festival in 2010, it elicited both tingles of anticipation (it’s rich material) and knowing sighs of all the misguided compromises and tweaks that would almost certainly distill the grim effectiveness of writer-director Lucas Belvaux’s morally grey film.

Nominated for four Cesar Awards in its native France, including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Film, Rapt was inspired in part by the real-life 1978 kidnapping and rescue of businessman Edouard-Jean Empain. Its story centers around Stanislas Graff (Yvan Attal, above), a wealthy, powerful and politically connected industrialist/CEO with a couple dark secrets (a mistress, an affinity for gambling) that a group of criminals may have used as leverage in their plot. On the eve of a trip abroad with the French president, Graff is kidnapped in a brilliantly executed snatch-and-grab on a city street. His kidnappers want cash, and lots of it, so they promptly cut off his middle finger to show the police and Graff’s wife Francoise (Anne Consigny) that they mean business.

While the particulars of the ransom are being hashed out, the man charged with overseeing Graff’s corporation in his absence, Andre Peyrac (Andre Marcon), tries to walk a tightrope between legitimate concern and the protection of broader, multi-national business assests. As tabloids threaten to get hold of some of the less than flattering particulars of Graff’s personal life, Peyrac worries about how it will impact the value and worth of the company. The police, meanwhile, often seemed more concerned with merely apprehending the kidnappers and holding them up as a public example than actually ensuring Graff’s physical well-being.

What’s most remarkable about Belvaux’s film is the way it habitually avoids pat judgments about its characters, while also coming up with interesting story twists and simultaneously burrowing deeper and deeper into its characters’ individual emotional states. No one gets off easy here. It spoils nothing, really, to say that Graff is separated from his kidnappers much earlier than the film’s final reel, leaving his family and others to grapple with the changes in their lives, and the fact that this act is not some discrete threat to be overcome and shelved away, but rather a stone thrown in the placid pond of their privileged existences, with ripples spreading farther and father after the fact, and in unknown directions.

Attal gives a superlative performance, morphing from cocksure captain of industry to an emaciated and ruminative victim of prey, and Marcon and the rest of the cast are similarly effective in projecting the interior monologues of their characters. It will be interesting to see who plays the role of Graff in Rapt‘s American remake, but it’s almost certain that the film will be injected with the sort of muscular, pop-out set pieces that chip away at the opportunity for the sort of unique nonverbal connection that Rapt affords. It may yet land in the right hands (witness the artful Swedish film Let the Right One In and its equally beautiful American counterpart, Let Me In, or David Fincher’s take on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), but Rapt should definitely be given a chance by American fans of quality arthouse cinema; it’s undeniably one of the better thrillers in recent years.

Rapt comes to Blu-ray packaged in a complementary cardboard slipcover, with bold red lettering that draws a Stateside consumer’s eye to a title that perhaps holds a bit less familiar gut-punch connection than other single-word monikers for such genre product. Or maybe that’s the canny plan here — inferring a bit of canted artiness, since general audiences are going to glance at the names Yvan Attal and Lucas Belvaux and not get past those. Either way, the 2.35:1 anamorphic 1080p transfer is superb — retaining all sorts of subtle nuance in cinematographer Pierre Milon’s shadowy work, plus suffering not at all from any artifacting or edge enhancement issues — and ably complemented by a DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track. Supplemental features are unfortunately fairly spare, consisting only of a handful of trailers for other Kino Lorber titles, and a scrollable gallery of around two dozen photo stills. Such paucity seems rather criminal given the intriguing and well designed blend of thrills and character work herein, but Rapt is still enough of a sleek, smart gem that it merits a picking up, if even only for rental. For more information, visit Kino’s website; to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. A- (Movie) C (Disc)

An underdog, blue-collar sports film whose atmospheric plausibility and passionate, committed performances mostly win out over plotting that can sometimes feel calculated and tedious, Warrior shines a light on the increasingly popular spectator sport of mixed martial arts, blending in a story of familial reconciliation for good measure. For co-writer/director Gavin O’Connor (Miracle), it’s a nice return to form, and for rising stars Joel Edgerton and particularly Tom Hardy, it will serve as solid career stepping stone.

Haunted by the traumas of war, AWOL Marine and former amateur wrestling prodigy Tommy Conlon (Hardy) returns home for the first time in 14 years to visit his estranged father Paddy (Nick Nolte), a reformed alcoholic. After dispatching a major mixed martial arts title contender in a local boxing club sparring match, Tommy decides to train for Sparta, a new winner-takes-all special tournament event featuring 16 fighters.

Nearby, his brother Brendan (Edgerton), a former fighter turned physics teacher, returns to the ring in a desperate attempt to scrape together much-needed money that will allow his young family to keep their house. As the brothers train and then cut respective swaths through their more well known competition, old resentments bubble up, illuminating the back story of their separation and alienation from their father.

O’Connor attempted an injection of familial discord and contention into the cop drama genre with Pride and Glory, but Warrior tracks much more closely to 2004’s Miracle, which told the story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s stunning gold medal victory. It’s a movie that pushes the traditional buttons and pull the expected levers of physical competition in order to provide a surging sense of uplift and surrogate catharsis for its audience.

The particular formatting of its competition is rather ridiculous (matches on consecutive days would never be allowed), and other dramatic touches (Tommy kicking a pill-popping habit with seemingly no difficulty, for instance) come across as unnecessary flourishes. But O’Connor’s treatment of the concept is humanistic, and for every expected big story beat there are two or three moments of small, character-reflecting delight, such as the manner Brendan’s wife (Jennifer Morrison), who can’t bear to watch her husband on TV, awaits a call from him after the match.

Even less than the recent, Oscar-winning The Fighter, Warrior is less about the fighting or even the training and more about the family dynamics, though its fraternal settlement is observed at something of a remove. (Somewhat implausibly, the brothers don’t even know they are each competing in the nationally televised Sparta until they see each other the first day of the event.)

The proud, gruff performances of its leads mark Warrior as something engaging, and even memorable. Edgerton makes one believe in his deep-seeding need to keep his family intact, as his own father failed to do. Hardy, meanwhile, is brutish and intense, but also honestly recalls Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, in terms of being a bundle of barely subjugated rubbed-raw emotions. Additionally, as the friend and trainer that helps build Brendan back into shape, Frank Grillo is quite striking — easygoing and engaging, yet always believable.

For my latest DVD/Blu-ray column, over at ShockYa, I take a gander at Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Kino Lorber’s two-disc release of the documentary Great Directors, and more. It’s inclusive of a nice photo of David Lynch and an even better one of Amber Heard. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full read.

Its tagline (“Finally, a funny church sex scandal”) hints at something perhaps irredeemably coarse, but For Christ’s Sake is a comedy very much in the vein of Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno and the more recent A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy, which is to say that it goes to considerable lengths to counterbalance the outrageousness of its premise with a healthy dollop of heart.

After inheriting control of his parish’s top ministerial spot, much to the chagrin of rival man-of-the-cloth Carl (Matt Champagne), earnest small town priest Robert (Jed Rees) is paid a visit by his estranged, deadbeat brother Alan (Will Sasso), who tells him he’s dying of cancer. Robert makes an impulsive decision to borrow $54,000 from the church’s emergency fund, to underwrite Alan’s treatment. A couple weeks later, when the church needs some money to book John Schneider (yes, that John Schneider, playing himself) for the country fair, Robert learns that Alan is using the money to finance a porn movie, which makes him the unwitting producer.

As Carl digs around and starts to come close to discovering the truth about the money, a wildly uncomfortable Robert finds himself the unlikely hub of advice and confession for a crew and cast that includes Buster Cherry (Ike Barinholtz) and porn star Candy Walls (Sara Rue), the latter of whom develops a crush on him that it not entirely unrequited. Madcap complications ensue, naturally.

Written by Jeff Lewis and produced by Sasso, For Christ’s Sake reunites a bunch of MADtv players, including Alex Borstein and Michael Hitchcock in smaller roles. Owing to this familiarity with one another, the movie has a pleasant, jocular tone throughout, and doesn’t spin off into campy excess. The performances are engaging and well modulated with respect to each other, and if the movie doesn’t reinvent the wheel neither does it have a need to. Fans of any/all of those involved will certainly appreciate this saucy, off-the-beaten-path little comic delight.

For Christ’s Sake comes to DVD in a regular plastic Amaray case, on a region-free disc with a 5.1 surround sound audio mix that’s honestly more than a bit lacking in its deeper registers. Partitioned into 15 chapters via a static menu screen, the disc’s only bonus features consist of a five-minute photo montage scroll consisting of 98 pictures, as well as trailers for the movie and five other Cinevolve home video offerings. To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) D+ (Disc)

A tender, well sketched drama of familial reconnection and rebirth in the wake of tragedy, Julie Bertucelli’s The Tree, set in the rural environs of Australia, for the most part successfully balances the literal and metaphorical in its telling of coping with loss, and trying to move on after the death of a loved one. Engaging acting and some gorgeous and involving cinematography make this movie a treat for arthouse audiences.

When her truck-driver husband Peter (Aden Young) has a heart attack, Dawn O’Neil (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is devastated, but tries to put on a good face and provide a solid foundation for her four children, including teenager Tim (Christian Bayers), Lou (Tom Russell), and young Charlie (Gabriel Gotting), who stops talking entirely. It may be eight-year-old Simone (Morgana Davies, above left), however, who takes things the hardest. A daddy’s girl through and through, she becomes convinced that her father is whispering to her through the huge fig tree that towers over their house — an assertion fraught with significance given that it’s this tree into which Peter lightly crashed when he died. As months pass, Dawn doesn’t push or try to dissuade Simone of her belief, but when she eventually goes into the nearby town seeking employment, and meets store owner George Elrick (Marton Csokas), his increasing presence at family gatherings — along with the deteriorating condition of the tree — upsets Simone and rekindles all sorts of unsettled feelings.

Taken from Judy Pascoe’s novel Our Father Who Art in the Tree, Bertucelli’s movie passingly registers as a sort of gender-swap version of another Australian-set drama, The Boys Are Back, starring Clive Owen as a widowed working dad trying to repair relationships with his sons, and also navigate his way into a possible new relationship. Bertucelli, who worked as an assistant director under Bertrand Tavernier, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Otar Iosseliani, won numerous awards — including the Grand Jury Prize of the Critic’s Week at the Cannes Film Festival, and the Cesar for Best First Film — for her narrative feature debut, Since Otar Left. With The Tree, she segues into what may on the surface seem more conventionally dramatic territory, but for the most part with a deft avoidance of the sort of cliches that mark far more mawkish genre entries of this type.

Adapted by Bertucelli from a separately credited screenplay by Elizabeth Mars, The Tree doesn’t merely dote on Simone’s connection to her father. It invests in the other characters, illustrating in savvy fashion how everyone grieves in their own manner, and on their own timetable. (Teenager Tim, for instance, is sad, but matter-of-fact about his father’s passing, and tries to help his mother and family by getting a job to generate extra income.) As the tree becomes a sort of nuisance and hazard to match its beauty (a storm snaps off a dead branch that comes through the house’s roof, while its invasive roots, already above ground, wreak havoc on the house’s plumbing lines and foundation), Bertucelli doesn’t dramatically press down on the keys of metaphorical parallel, the way a less confident director might, or certainly an American studio version of this same story.

The film only really falters in its third act. A pivot point where George arrives, at Dawn’s request, to finally cut down the tree, only to encounter Simone staging a sort of protest sit-in, rings false in the manner in which it plays out. And the finale, involving another act of Mother Nature, also takes too long to play out, stretching out over 20 minutes and padding the movie’s running time to just over 100 minutes.

It’s not wildly original in the moves it makes, but still The Tree is an engaging drama of emotional regeneration that avoids pandering to the lowest-common-denominator in the mode of its telling. Nigel Bluck’s fine cinematography makes beautiful showcase of the movie’s location settings. And while Gainsbourg is known for her famous father, her singing and, most recently, her edgy work in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, it’s easy to forget her considerable facility with open-hearted normalcy; she delivers a fine, anchoring turn as Dawn. The young Davies, meanwhile, is also quite good — engaging and natural. She makes you feel sorry for young Simone without making her pitiable and one-dimensional. Together, they’re the strongest roots of Bertucelli’s Tree.

Housed in a regular, clear plastic Amaray case, The Tree comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, with a Dolby 2.0 stereo audio track and optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired. In addition to the movie’s theatrical trailer, bonus features consist of a clutch of nine deleted scenes, as well as a 30-minute behind-the-scenes making-of documentary, replete with cast and crew interviews and on-set footage, which details the tangential inspiration of Italian novelist Italo Calvino and the filmmaker’s overwhelming desire to make a nature-focused drama. An insert booklet, meanwhile, also features a short Q&A with Bertuccelli. For more information, visit www.ZeitgeistFilms.com; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. B- (Movie) B (Disc)

Its perfectly anonymous, sex-and-violence-tinged title is enough to mistake it for a Shannon Tweed thriller circa the early to mid-1990s, but writer-director Sean Weathers’ Lust for Vengeance is a whole different type of terrible, thank you very much.

Despite its claimed running time of 85 minutes, Lust for Vengeance actually runs 10 merciful minutes shorter than that. Also, despite a descriptive cover blurb touting it as some sort of inventive twist on the Italian giallo formula, the film is in reality nothing more than a loosely connected series of sex-soaked stalking set pieces. (For a much better genre homage, check out Belgian co-directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Amer, a woozy and unsettling fever dream.) True, giallo touchstones like straight-razor slashings and a motorcycle-helmet-clad killer do come into play, but there’s no artful tension here.

Long takes do little to mask the terrible acting, and awkward lines of dialogue are lifted from Chris Rock stand-up specials (“Men are basically as faithful as their options”) and delivered in stillborn, witless fashion as intellectually insightful. The cinematography, while inclusive of a couple interesting (in theory more than practice) overlays, achieves distinction mainly through the use of a variety pack of primary color camera and light-set filters, while also somehow managing to be shot through a used coffee filter. In short, this is a bad, bad film, despite its seeming inclusion of real sex and (perhaps) real drugs.

Housed in a regular white plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle, Lust for Vengeance comes to DVD in what is billed as a “10th anniversary explicit edition,” tricked out with a surprisingly nice complement of supplemental material. Though divided into an unnecessarily dense 34 chapters, the film comes with outtakes and deleted scenes, as well as trivia, a host of trailers for some of Weathers’ other movies (Hookers in Revolt and House of the Damned) and abandoned projects, the first part of a podcast interview, and more. For more information on Weathers and his films, click here. To purchase the movie via Amazon, meanwhile, click here. F (Movie) B- (Disc)

For my latest Blu-ray/DVD column, over at ShockYa, I assay how Samuel L. Jackson’s narration weighs down the otherwise engaging nature documentary African Cats, plus take a gander at tween fairy tale Monte Carlo, and give thanks for a documentary hosted by Last Comic Standing winner Iliza Shlesinger, as well as a clutch of horror films, including one featuring a talking killer turkey. Its title? Thankskilling, naturally. For the full, fun read, over at ShockYa, click here.

Coming more than a decade since the last franchise entry, Scream 4 again mixes murder, mystery and self-awareness, to adequate if not exceptional effect. A meta horror entry which re-teams writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven, the film introduces a fresh crop of victims and suspects, blending them together with old characters and past grudges, and succeeds on its own carefully prescribed terms as a piece of diversionary puzzlebox entertainment, but doesn’t pack the wallop of the best moments of its forebears.

Years after the traumatic events of her past, tangled up in a web of multiple murders, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) has finally achieved a measure of peace, and turned her terrible experiences into the basis for a self-help book. When she returns to her tiny hometown of Woodsboro on the last stop in her book tour, she reconnects with Sheriff Dewey Riley (David Arquette) and tabloid-reporter-turned-novelist Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), who are now married.

Unfortunately, Sidney’s arrival also elicits the return of a costume-clad, knife-wielding Ghostface, who again heralds his acts of violence by first terrorising her, and others, over the phone. Soon Sidney’s cousin Jill (Emma Roberts, above) finds herself in the killer’s crosshairs, along with her boyfriend Trevor (Nico Tortorella), her best friend Kirby (Hayden Panettiere), and two A/V club geeks, Robbie (Erik Knudsen) and Charlie (Rory Culkin), who use webcams to live-stream their entire high school experience.

For all of the original film’s referential genre bits, from Psycho to Halloween, Scream 4 doesn’t really strongly attempt to echo or comment upon the plot turns of any recent horror franchises, like Saw or Paranormal Activity, instead investing more generically in advances in technology and social media over the last decade.

It’s undeniable that Scream 4, despite some grim and bloody set pieces and squirm-inducing stalking from Ghostface, doesn’t really work or hold together, in the conventional sense, as a scary movie. Audiences need not have seen the earlier films recently, but must have some sort of trace memory and rooting investment in the shared plight of the older characters. Apart from a multi-layered genre deconstruction that opens the film, Scream 4 is thematically most similar to the original 1996 movie, in much the same way that Rocky and 2006’s Rocky Balboa could be viewed as satisfying bookends, divorced from the rest of the series.

While a hallmark of Scream franchise has been its nimbleness and narrative cleverness, there here seems a missed opportunity to delve deeper into notions of celebrity victimhood, and the strange complicity of the town of Woodsboro, for which the apparently annual marking of the murders remains a bizarre sort of cottage industry. The reasoning and motivations behind this most recent set of murders come tumbling awkwardly forth in the last act, but since they are deployed chiefly in the service of twists, their exploration thus comes across as a bit disappointingly shallow.

Working again with cinematographer Peter Deming, series helmer Craven frames much the violence in widescreen, which runs counter to the gory close-ups of a certain subset of horror films. Given both the perfunctory nature of large chunks of dialogue and the large degree to which Scream 4 is a type of cinematic exercise in pulled levers, there is not much opportunity for performers to shine, though Roberts and Brie make the most notable impacts amongst the newcomers.

Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of Scream 4 comes to the format of advanced choice in a beautiful 1080p AVC encoded high definition transfer with deep, consistent blacks, and no edge enhancement or digital scrubbing. Audio arrives by way of a 5.1 DTS-HD master audio track with a nice mixture of levels across the board, and optional subtitles. The supplemental package on this release, unfortunately, doesn’t rise to the level of the audio-visual presentation. Craven, Panettiere and Roberts sit together for a feature-length audio commentary track, and Campbell phones in (literally) for about 45 minutes, but perhaps owing to Craven’s naturally droll, laid back personality and the relative youth of the aforementioned pair, this isn’t exactly a dynamic listen by any stretch of the imagination.

The release’s other elements are OK, but hardly superlative. A making-of featurette only clocks in at 10 minutes, which seems like (and is) an inadequate amount of time to get into a franchise this intricate, and attempts to rekindle interest in it. Of the more than 25 minutes of deleted and extended material (which is heavy on the latter classification, really), the only things that really stand out are an alternate opening and ending. Trailers, a brief gag reel, and a promotional piece for a Scream videogame round things out, while, nicely a digital copy of the movie is also included. The multi-format options are the big selling point here, but Scream 4 honestly still doesn’t rise past the level of rental, even for hardcore fans of the series. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack via Amazon, click here. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

What if Death Race were cross-pollinated with a Mountain Dew commercial and 30 Minutes Or Less, and then vacuumed free of any of the inherent comedy? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Freerunner, a parkour-themed direct-to-video actioner from director Lawrence Silverstein.

When young free-runner Ryan (Sean Faris) tries to break free from mobster Reese (Tamer Hassen), he ends up with an exploding collar locked around his neck, and — along with his girlfriend Chelsea (Rebecca Da Costa) — has to make it across town in a hour, all for the amusement of the slimy Mr. Frank (Danny Dyer), and a betting organization who enables high-stakes gamblers to place bids on who will live and who will die. Yawning action hijinks ensue. World champion free-runner Ryan Doyle, still-alive Seymour Cassel and model/speaker-of-words Casey Durkin all also appear, but the latter is not nearly in the state of undress for which one might hope.

The idea here is of course nothing particularly new or special, but nothing about the execution “upscales” this slice of slapstick genre junk. The characters are cardboard-thin, the dialogue terrible, and the acting not much better, especially in the secondary and supporting roles. Also, part of the appeal of parkour — and the reason both Luc Besson has had fun with it and it’s been folded into big, mainstream Hollywood productions — is that it’s inherently low-fi, and a kind of antidote to big, overblown, overly slick special effects. By this movie’s logic, though, a 40-foot jump from a bridge onto a moving boat is no big deal, and doesn’t even require a flex of the knees upon landing. By perverting the realities of parkour and its basic premise so much, Freerunner fumbles away any chance at even being a stupid little guilty pleasure. It’s just bad, period.

Housed in a regular Blu-ray case, Freerunner comes to the format presented in 1080p high-definition, in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with a DTS-HD master audio 5.1 audio track and optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles. If the movie itself is lacking then at least the special bonus features are quantitatively ample, including a behind-the-scenes featurette, outtakes and bloopers, a separate featurette on parkour and free-running, a look at the movie’s fights and stunt work, trailers, and more. No free pair of athletic shoes, though. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B (Disc)

If one could entirely banish certain ideas for scenes from the minds of all screenwriters, then surely on the top 10 list for such cinematic excommunication would be press conference confessionals, which at some point must have seemed really bold and original but by now almost without fail come across as lazy and pat — an entirely synthetic way to give an audience the feeling of a character-awakening conclusion without any of the heavy lifting that accompanies honest reflection. Such is the dispiriting end point for Father of Invention, a weird and fitfully fresh comedy with a name-heavy cast that almost methodically fumbles away a viewer’s engagement, leaving them instead with thoughts of what could have been.

Robert Axle (Kevin Spacey) is an ego-driven infomercial guru who made his fortune fabricating mash-up inventions that maximized “the atomic and molecular potential” of purchasers (think a pepper spray-camera hybrid, so that one could snap photos of their attacker). A class action lawsuit related to one of his products landed him in jail, though, and when he gets out eight years later his wife Lorraine (Virginia Madsen) is remarried to Jerry (Craig Robinson). Robert lands a retail job working at a wholesale discount store under the high-strung Troy Coangelo (Johnny Knoxville), and soon after his semi-estranged daughter Claire (Camilla Belle), now 22, grants him a place to live. Almost immediately, though, Robert butts heads with one of Claire’s roommates, lesbian gym teacher Phoebe (Heather Graham). Robert’s big dream is get back into business, however, so he starts hitting the pavement and trying to come up with partners and financial backers for a new idea. Will a return to some of his old habits, however, land him back in trouble?

Spacey sly and slightly oily charismatic touch is custom-built for a guy like Axle — half heart, and half ambitious huckster — and he anchors Father of Invention with aplomb. The other performances, though, don’t always feel like they’re from the same movie, even though some decent joke-writing gives the actors piecemeal opportunities to shine. Director Trent Cooper cycles through lots of set-ups (somewhat refreshingly, the movie isn’t afraid to haul in a new character or setting for a joke), but after a while the narrative just seems manic and unfocused.

There are so many elements to serve — from father/daughter reconciliation and Jerry and Lorraine’s pending bankruptcy to an eventual thawing and flirtation between Robert and Phoebe and even the parental divorce of Claire’s other roommate — that Father of Invention takes on the quality of a high school term paper thrown together at the last minute, all unconnected facts and half-baked assertions. Does the movie desire to be a wacky ensemble comedy? Does it want to be a comedic-leaning tale of familial redemption? Or is it more expressly about Robert’s professional journey? The filmmakers can’t decide, ultimately, so a viewer mostly stops caring.

Father of Invention comes to Blu-ray presented in a 2.40:1 non-anamorphic widescreen presentation in 1080p, with a Dolby TrueHD audio track that more than adequately handles the fairly straightforward and meager aural requirements of the title. Apart from the requisite chapter stops, its sole supplemental feature is a brief making-of featurette that doesn’t dig much deeper than a thumbnail’s scratch into the making of the movie. Nevertheless, to purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C- (Disc)

FX sitcom It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is sort of like Dijon mustard; it’s an acquired taste that certainly isn’t going to play well with a wide, mainstream audience. Myself, I’d heard raves from a couple friends whose opinions I don’t entirely distrust, so several years back I grabbed a couple episodes on TiVo and… nothing. I have little recollection of the specifics, but I just wasn’t feeling it. The series centered around a band of misfit/miscreant friends who gathered at the serially uninhabited Paddy’s Pub, and treated each other (and everyone else) pretty horribly. The tone struck me as at once spiteful and manic, and the comedy seemed forced — driven by doggedly persistent overlapping patter that augured a snappish screwball sensibility that really wasn’t there in the jokes.

And yet, some time later, I returned, maybe lured into giving it another chance by an off-season promo that favorably stacked up a bunch of clips. When I tried it again… well, I wasn’t hooked, per se, but I certainly did appreciate its wonked, preening and entirely narcissistic style of deadpan humor. I embraced and laughed at its outrageousness, some of it approaching the absurdist sensibility of a live-action South Park, only except with multiple Cartmans instead of just one. Especially brilliant was the episode D.E.N.N.I.S., in which Dennis (Glenn Howerton) presents and takes a bet regarding his sociopathic method of seducing vulnerable members of the opposite sex, only to find Mac (Rob McElhenney) and Frank (Danny DeVito) doing battle with their own systematic schemes to feast on his “sloppy seconds” (or thirds, as the case may be).

The Blu-ray version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Season 6 collects a dozen episodes of this type of serial inappropriateness, including what has to be the season’s high point — an extended, unrated cut of Charlie (Charlie Day) and Mac’s self-financed production of Lethal Weapon 5 (don’t ask). Another highlight is definitely the gang’s quest to find out who knocked up Dee (Kaitlin Olson). Housed on 50GB dual layer discs stored in a standard Blu-ray snap-case, the two-disc set comes with a blooper reel, anarchic audio commentaries on select episodes, a clutch of deleted and extended scenes, special podcasts featuring Dennis and Dee, and a special “Flip Cup” trivia challenge. A DVD version is also available, but to purchase the Blu-ray version from Amazon, click here. B- (Show) B+ (Disc)

Because he knows the subject matter well (err… horror films of a certain era, not frat houses or actual massacres, per se), it seemed like a good idea to give FOSD Telly Davidson a crack at reviewing Frat House Massacre. His take appears below:

There’s a popular if crude term for putting one’s guy friends above temporary, whiny girlfriends: “Bros before ‘hos!” In Synapse Films’ newly released “director’s cut” of Alex Pucci and screenwriter Draven Gonzalez’s micro-budget slasher Frat House Massacre, almost every character fits into one category or the other. And if nothing else, this picture definitely puts the “slash” in slasher.

As always with a late ’70s horror film (the movie is set in 1979), we start with a tragic “accident” that prefigures what later goes on. In this case, a car crash sends the slightly younger of two brothers, Bobby (Rane Jameson), into a chronic vegetative state — not needing life support, but comatose and non-responsive (a la Sunny von Bulow or Ariel Sharon) for months. Meanwhile, his brother Sean (Chris Prangley) is starting his college career, and tries to pledge to fraternity Delta Iota Epsilon, which he soon finds lives up to its nickname (as in D.I.E.), with horrific hazings and deadly basement initiation rites at the hands of status-conscious sadist frat prez Mark (Jon Fleming) and his creepy, ambiguously gay and voyeuristic sidekick, Tim (Andrew Giordiano). Strangely, no adult teacher or authority figure ever seems to notice the caravan missing student bodies from this Satan’s School for Boys.

Bobby and Sean’s parents died a few years earlier, though they’ve been looked after by a neighbor, a kind and caring black woman named Olivia (Georgia Gladden), who is like an island of dignity in these surroundings, and the only truly likeable character in the picture. After witnessing one hazing/initiation that went too far, Sean finds that he’s the next item up for bids on the incredible torture show. But just as he’s being killed, Bobby starts to awaken from his coma. Once recovered, Bobby starts school the next semester, and sure ‘nuf, suddenly some of the king bees of Delta Iota Epsilon start “DIE-ing “at the hands of a mysterious slasher. Could it be that Sean is the killer — possessing Bobby’s body to getting revenge on his own death? Has one of the frat boys turned on the others? Or is there an outside killer loose operating for past associations and motives of their own?

You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud (or even Michael Musto) to see that this movie has a White Collar or Starsky & Hutch level of gay subtext (writer Gonzalez is a specialist in gay horror), with buff young men, shirtless and in skimpy underwear, being waterboarded, whipped, stabbed and beaten as other near-nekkid young guys root and cheer and beer-shower, when they aren’t masturbating while watching each other have sex with hot sorority chicks. (And really, how many men’s fraternities are “Deltas” instead of “Alphas”, anyway?)

Understandably, given its budget constraints, the movie has built-in limitations that could be forgiven if enough style and substance were present. The film’s bright (if low-fi) digital photography and videotape-like look is a sharp contrast to the grindhouse dinginess and $1.98 film processing of the drive-in days that the movie purports to tribute. While no one will ever confuse He Knows You’re Alone or Don’t Answer the Phone or Black Christmas with a Terrence Malick picture, those movies actually got some cinematic mileage out of their low budgets. Here, where everything is brightly lit and the Blair Witch handheld camera is the staple, it works against the film’s natural aesthetic.

More “fatally”, though, the movie doesn’t really know how to draw out any longstanding suspense, as we meander from one murder set-piece to the next. While the killings are brutal, they are a far cry from the shock suspense and clock-ticking Grand Guignol of the (big-budget) Saw/Seven/Bone Collector/Final Destination school of cinema. Even more to its fault, the film has no discernible ability to build prolonged suspense leading up to most of the killings. The movie practically announces each murder up front, and the victims are likewise “disposed with” in every sense of the word. Maybe the filmmakers thought that bumps in the night and shadows in the dark and obscene phone calls and other drawn-out tricks and treats were old hat — but then again, they are making a retro movie. Rent Halloween already!

The DVD features dual audio commentary tracks (one with Pucci and Gonzalez; the other with crew commentary, something which more big-budget movies would be uplifted by adding for the DVD), plus deleted scenes and a “making of” spot that conveys the real charm of this film and others like it — “Hey guys, let’s put on a slasher film!” Technical specs are 1.78:1 aspect ratio and Dolby digital 5.1 sound, in a typical Amray package. Music by Goblin veteran Claudio Simonetti adds some level of “giallo” cred (although nobody’s going to comfuse this one with Deep Red.) To purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. D (Movie) B- (Disc)

Climate change documentaries are seemingly a dime a dozen, but the briskly paced Eye of the Future sets its sights on innovative measures to reduce our global carbon footprint, and additionally filters its discussion points through those that will eventually be in a position to enact such potential solutions — smart kids of today.

Directed by Catherine Cunningham, this 45-minute curated non-fiction flick charts five children of UN ambassadors who are called to imagine a new, sustainable future for a global society. The “questing” format and structure of the movie invites the sort of fantastical, participatory imagination most frequently found in the under-10 set, but there are factoids and other information here that older audiences can learn from as well. For general audiences there are better places to start, but for those invested in environmental issues and seeking to better explain their feelings to youngsters, this is a worthwhile movie.

Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, Eye of the Future comes to DVD on a region-free disc, presented in 1.78:1 widescreen. Special features consist of a collection of reflections from global leaders, plus a clutch of entrepreneurial ideas bundled together in a featurette entitled “Rework the World.” For more information visit distributor Cinema Libre’s website, or click here; to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. Eye of the Future is also available across various digital platforms. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)

For my latest DVD/Blu-ray column, over at ShockYa, I take a look at documentaries about dust (yes, dust!), urban farms, and Julian Assange and WikiLeaks; Maria Bello and Michael Sheen’s well-meaning Beautiful Boy; as well as the inherent falseness of a movie about a fat kid who wears continually pajamas to high school. Oh, and I also shine a light on which straight-to-video Samuel L. Jackson movie works in an Office Space in-joke. Again, it’s all over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

The word “Riverdance” isn’t really used, but that’s what the documentary Jig puts under the microscope — the story of the 40th Irish Dancing World Championships, and specifically the leg-splaying competitions between certain youth subsets. To that end, there’s some absolutely fantastic talent on display in this ambling but only passably inquisitive nonfiction film, meaning that those inclined to like this sort of thing (those who might have a TiVo season pass for TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, say) will find in this plenty to like. General audiences, however, may feel a bit danced out.

Unfolding in the final months leading up to the aforementioned March,
2010, competition in Glasgow, Jig charts a number of highly
skilled young folk dancers — precious few of whom have any connection
to the rapid step-dancing genre’s link to Irish culture — and loosely
pairs off some of them who will eventually be competing against one
another. The film is comparable to but not quite as engaging as the
recent documentary Make Believe: The Battle To Become the World’s Best
Teen Magician. The subjects in Jig all put in and exhibit
an equal amount of hard work and dedication, but the latter movie has
significantly better guides, if you will, and a sharper focus. It
succeeds in eliciting information and perspectives from its young
would-be magicians, whereas most of Jig director Sue Bourne’s
interview chats, while perfectly amiable, are less revelatory.
They do less to connect the kids’ passion for dance to the different
ways it makes them feel, and how they see it eventually integrated into
their adult lives.

Watching excellence in almost any field, and
the pursuit of the same, can be a fortifying and rewarding experience.
And it’s certainly interesting to see the wide variety of personalities
(a group of Russians, an adopted Sri Lankan teen living in Holland)
drawn to this extremely difficult and competitive discipline, which
provides an unusual juxtaposition of grace and power in the stillness of
its dancers’ upper bodies and the machine-gun rhythms of their legs.

But Jig doesn’t spend a whole lot of time elucidating the
actual steps of Irish dance (perhaps by design, as one judge later
says it’s a highly subjective art form), and the movie unfurls as a haze
of practice and performance footage — again, frequently impressive —
with neither much contextual mooring nor ambition in staging. It’s just
kids dancing, and competing. Some eventually win, and some will lose —
as often happens in life

Housed in a complementary cardboard slipcover, Jig comes to Blu-ray presented in a superb 1080p transfer, and with a decent little clutch of supplemental bonus features. Director Bourne and eight-time world champion John Carey each provide feature-length audio commentary tracks. There are also bonus story segments, and a brief featurette on world-famous costume designer Gavin Doherty. Seventeen minutes of footage centers on the Dziak family from Chicago, and their six dancing kids — obviously an extra story strand that was discarded in editing. There’s also four minutes of footage from a movie-sponsored event to break the Guinness world’s record for most dancers doing the jig at the same time; it’s a piece of feel-good, successful boosterism (652 folks participate, of all ages and shapes), though I don’t know how I feel about the celebratory use of the word “jiggers” in the special shout-out of thanks. That’s a bit… unnerving. C+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Over at ShockYa, for my latest Blu-ray/DVD column, I take a gander at Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, a bunch of horror flicks, a pair of documentaries on men that could scarcely be more different (New York Times society photographer Bill Cunningham and schlock-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis), and the film that inspired Austin Powers‘ machine-gun-breasted fembots. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so for the full read, click here.

Eschewing the expectation that he perhaps stick to cranking out hand-wringing dramas of uptight manners, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice director Joe Wright veers in a surprising new direction with the revenge thriller Hanna, which courses with an unflagging, forward-leaning vigor. The engaging results, which feel like a bold, purposeful step toward modernity on his part, show he has a good instinct for melding the dynamics of a more conventional piece of pop action entertainment with something a bit offbeat and barbed.

The film opens in the snowy wilds of Finland, where 16-year-old Hanna Heller (Saoirse Ronan) has the strength, stamina, smarts and lethal combat skill set of a soldier twice her age, thanks to the intense training of her father Erik (Eric Bana), an ex-CIA agent. The reasons for their curious, extreme isolation come into focus when Hanna indicates her readiness to finally accept a long-planned quest of revenge against a seemingly ruthless government operative from Erik’s past, Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett). As Hanna tries to carry out her solo mission and then reunite with Erik, darker secrets about both her past and her father’s relationship with Marissa color the wild, life-and-death struggle for which she’s been preparing her entire life.

Hanna starts with a bang, like a thoroughbred horse out of the starting gate, and though on rare occasion it feels like it suffers from a case of slight stylistic overreach, a narrative significance and reasoning for this tack develops, and so Wright plugs into a punkish energy arguably not as convincingly attached to a female action protagonist since Run Lola Run. Since Hanna is constantly learning more about her past, too, the movie is gripping as a quasi-amnesiac thriller, a la The Bourne Identity. The little-girl-assassin underpinnings make the film sound vaguely like Kick-Ass, but Hanna‘s human contours make it more rooted in character, and reminiscent of something like The Professional, albeit with a few booster supplements.

Cinematographer Alwin Küchler luxurious widescreen framing, combined with frequently long takes, nicely showcases Sarah Greenwood’s fabulous production design. Wright and his collaborators also seed their work with various fairytale allusions. With her severe makeup, ruby-red lipstick and stalking demeanor, Marissa echoes a wicked witch, and Erik is an earthy woodcutter in the vein of Rapunzel’s father. Various settings are similarly informed by fairytale archetypes. An undeniably strong selling point of Hanna is also found in its bristling, innovative score from the Chemical Brothers, which alternately gurgles, throbs and pulsates, sounding at times like a Madhatter’s rave. It’s an exceptionally imaginative soundtrack that expands upon staid notions of film scoring.

Blanchett’s steeliness gives Hanna a welcome edge and depth, since one hypothesizes her inflexibility is rooted in some moral reasoning. Wright, meanwhile, obviously has a good rapport with his Atonement collaborator Ronan, and it is the latter’s preternatural maturity that powers this ride. She imbues her character with depth, and also handles the considerable physical demands with aplomb.

Housed in a standard plastic case in turn stored in a cardboard slipcover, Hanna comes to Blu-ray presented in a stunning 1080p high-definition 2.40:1 widescreen transfer, and anchored by an English language DTS-HD master audio 5.1 track. (DVS 2.0, as well as Spanish and French DTS surround 5.1 tracks are also available.) In addition to BD-Live content and a digital copy, a nice slate of bonus features consist of four minutes of deleted scenes, an audio commentary track with Wright, a two-minute look at the movie’s expansive location filming, a six-minute look at Ed and Tom Rowlands’ approach to writing the score, a breakout featurette examining the film’s stunning “Camp G” escape sequence, and a 13-minute featurette with plenty of behind-the-scenes footage and fight training material showcasing Ronan’s work with stunt coordinator Jeff Imada. This is a great movie, and a right proper home video release that invites multiple viewings. To purchase the Blu-ray via Amazon, click here. A- (Movie) A- (Disc)

For all their amazing feats, athletes, even those of ferocious competitiveness and incredible and finely honed individual skill, sometimes evince a lack of joy, perhaps because their profession is dictated to some degree by body shape and size, pedigree, or simply the fact that it was drummed into their head long ago that their self-worth was entirely tied to this game or that. For me, that’s why amateur sports — particularly something like college basketball, where rivalries often span generations — possess such a special allure. There’s an innately human joy in bearing witness to someone doing something they truly and deeply love, no matter the money, and also do it well — especially if they’re a youngster. And that joy is on ample display in Make Believe: The Battle to Become the World’s Best Teen Magician, a superlative new documentary that radiates an absolutely positive energy.

Of a piece with 2003’s Spellbound and 2007’s The Kong of King: A Fistful of Quarters (no surprise, since it’s executive produced by Seth Gordon, the man behind that hit documentary), Make Believe puts a death grip on one’s attention not because of any grand understanding about the allure of magic that it imparts, but because these are bright if somewhat differently focused kids with a depth of insight and a remarkable amount of self-awareness. Ergo, it’s rewarding to listen to them talk about their interest in magic, and how it makes them feel.

As with any number of other comfortable, more conventional teen narrative features, the dramatic arc here tracks a few months of practice leading up to the teen-classification finals of the prestigious World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas, sponsored and endorsed by various organizational bodies and world-famous magician Lance Burton. Of the five subjects on which the film focuses (one is actually a pair, from South Africa), there’s not a rotten apple in the bunch. Hiroki Hara, from a small village in Japan, has a strong affinity for nature, and utilizes rocks and leaves in his act. Seventeen-year-old rings expert and Magic Castle Junior Club member Krystyn Lambert, from Malibu, is one of those preternatural teens who seems to excel at everything. Chicago native Bill Koch, on a year’s sabbatical from college, manufactures many of his own props, including for a complex illusion involving mock iPods. The youngest interviewee, Derek McKee (above), may also be the most touchingly unguarded and eloquent — which is saying something, since all of the participants are quite candid, including a few bewildered siblings or adult caretakers.

The winner of the Best Documentary Prize at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, Make Believe could be more comprehensive and detailed with regards to its putative subject of inquiry, certainly. There’s really only one sort of behind-the-curtain tidbit, in which the ins and outs of “split fans” (also seen above) are explained, using a deck of cards. More about some of the certain tricks would have only increased an appreciation for the skill (and in particular finger dexterity) required to pull them off. Unspoken or more deeply explored, too, is the interesting fact that a good number (though not all) of the participants seem to come from broken or single parent homes. While understandably no kid would necessarily be keen to discuss the details of a messy home life, investigating this a bit, along with other surface similarities, would have provided a greater illumination of the type of personalities that find themselves drawn to magic.

Still, watching Make Believe, one’s heart sings, caught up as it is in the dreams and aspirations of these talented kids. It’s a reminder, too — removed from the harsh glare of peer judgment — that all the kids with the quirkier interests and hobbies in high school were probably the coolest, and stand a better chance today of making their own unique way in the world.

Housed in a plastic EcoTech Amaray case made from 100 percent recycled material that doesn’t sacrifice any sturdiness, Make Believe comes to DVD presented in 16×9 widescreen, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Its supplemental features are an interesting mixed bag. Character profiles give a bit more biography on the movie’s interviewees and subjects, but 90 seconds of material from Make Believe‘s Los Angeles Film Festival presentation (billed as a Q&A) is a yawn, and waste of space. Four minutes of extra interview material spotlighting Lance Burton and other professionals talking up their livelihood is revealing, again, insofar as the articulate nature of many of these gents.

There’s also a six-and-a-half-minute performance from Kyle Eschen, a sardonic youngster, and three-and-a-half minutes of deleted scenes stowed away as an Easter egg (toggle right after scrolling through all the other options on the extras menu), in which Neil Patrick Harris and a curious cat each make striking impressions. Far and away the best bonus feature, though, are the 10 magic tutorials the disc offers up, set to three different skill sets. To purchase the movie from its web site, click here. B+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Uninspired erotica of a certain rough breed seems to always possess a title comprised of some combination of the same 14 words pulled in random order from a hat. Such is the case with Nelio Rossati’s Erotic Escape, an Italian import from the mid-1980s.

Set in South America, the film centers on Manuel (Rodrigo Obregon), a fugitive political prisoner who escapes from a high security penitentiary and takes as his hostage Amparo (Eleonora Vallone), the gorgeous daughter of a wealthy businessman. With law enforcement and Amparo’s father on their trail, Manuel resorts to drastic measures to keep his freedom. Rape and “Stockholm Syndrome” identification ensue, with no sort of psychological perspicacity.

There’s nothing particularly erotic about this movie, though it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a foreign sexploitation flick suffered from ridiculous retitling. But the settings are drab and the acting uninspired, and Rossati (The Sensuous Nurse) does little to shade or make worthwhile anything having to do with the fact that Manuel is a political prisoner. There’s plenty of nudity, but this over-the-top genre entry is a wince-inducing yawner.

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby digital 2.0 mono audio track, Erotic Escape comes to DVD on a region-free disc housed in a regular plastic Amaray case. Does it contain supplemental bonus features, you ask? No, no it does not. C- (Movie) C- (Disc)

In my latest Blu-ray/DVD column, over at ShockYa, I take a gander at How I Met Your Mother (the television show… zing!), The Mentalist, Ghost Hunters, Breaking the Press, the film with summer’s best, most hilariously engaging sound effect, and more. Again, it’s over at ShockYa, so click here for the full, fun read.

Director Creep Creepersin’s Corporate Cutthroat Massacre — which bills itself as The Office meets American Psycho — is a slapdash piece of genre entertainment which elicits absolutely no slapdash, whiz-bang, cathartic thrills, be they of the comedic, gore or genre-tweaking satiric variety.

It simply exists because presumably there are shlock-genre fans who so hate mainstream Hollywood tripe that they still make rental and purchase decisions purely on outrageousness of title. So… it’s a bouillabaisse of references (one could actually throw Glengarry Glen Ross into the mix as well, since there’s a competitive sales element to the proceedings), but none are particularly inspired or deftly interwoven, and the whole thing is variously over-acted and poorly shot, to the point that it makes you want to start flicking yourself in the eye, just to feel something real. Making matters worse is the fact that the camerawork shifts to lurking hand-held mode without ever clearly establishing an outside menace.

Expanded from a short film, Late Shift, from star-producer Elina Madison, Creepersin’s movie centers on Brandi Babcock (Madison), a shrill, high-strung manager at some anonymous white collar office environment. With an edict from above to fire folks by the end of the day, Babcock puts the screws to her minions, in a none-too-polite fashion. Bodies start turning up not long after a creepy janitor surfaces, so… you know, there’s that.

Corporate Cutthroat Massacre comes to DVD in a white plastic Amaray case with a nice, deep-set spindle — the type which helps avoid disc pop-out and damage (hey, I’m not above giving credit where credit is due). Presented on a region-free disc in 1.78:1 widescreen with a simple stereo audio track, the movie includes a few bonus featurettes, anchored by Creepersin’s audio commentary track. I scratched out a few notes on this movie while watching it, but they’ve since disappeared. I do remember, however, Creepersin rather freely admitting all sorts of screw-ups and technical faux pas over the course of the rushed two-day (!) shoot, which was sort of charming at first, and then less so by increasing degrees.

There’s also a 10-minute behind-the-scenes featurette with interview material, seven minutes in which the interview subjects discuss the worsts jobs they’ve ever had, and a copy of the original, 16-minute short that “inspired” this feature. The interesting thing there is how much better that short film looks. The material is still basically dreck, but it’s at least somewhat moody and evocative in bits and pieces; the feature version, on the other hand, actually evinces less production value (offices consist of almost entirely empty desks). Nevertheless, to purchase the DVD via Amazon, click here. Or if Half is more your speed/budget, click here. F+ (Movie) C- (Disc)