From New DVD Releases January 25 2011 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies January 25 2011

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. January 25 2011

Secretariat
From Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
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The "greatest racehorse of all time" mantle fits easily around the neck of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner. So why not a movie version of this champion's life? Secretariat begins in the late '60s, with some good behind-the-scenes material on how thoroughbreds come to be (there's flavorful atmosphere inside the horsey world, including an account of Secretariat's ownership being decided by a coin flip as part of an old-school agreement). A highly lacquered Diane Lane plays Penny Chenery, the inheritor of her father's stables, who segues from being an all-American mom to running a major horse-racing franchise; reliable character-actor support comes in the form of John Malkovich, as a gaudily outfitted trainer, and Margo Martindale, as Chenery's assistant. Screenwriter Mike Rich and director Randall Wallace must do some heavy lifting to make Lane's privileged millionaire into some sort of underdog--luckily, the hidebound traditions of the male-dominated racing scene provide some sources of outrage. The need to stack the deck even more leads the movie into its more contrived scenes, unfortunately, as though we needed dastardly villains in order to root for Penny and her horse. Meanwhile, attempts to reach for a little Seabiscuit-style social relevance don't come off, and a curious religious undertone might make you wonder whether we're meant to assume that God chose Secretariat over some less-deserving equine. The actual excitement of the races can't be denied, however, and Secretariat's awe-inspiring win at the Belmont Stakes remains a jaw-dropping, still-unequaled display of domination in that event. And maybe in sports.

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From New DVD Releases January 18 2011 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies January 18 2011

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. January 18 2011

Stone
Directed by John Curran
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Edward Norton is always fascinating to watch--something slippery always lingers behind his eyes. In Stone, Norton plays a convicted arsonist nicknamed Stone who's desperate to persuade his parole officer, Jack Mabry (Robert De Niro), to argue for his early release--so desperate that he asks his wife, Lucetta (Milla Jovovich, The Fifth Element), to seduce Mabry. But while these machinations play out, Stone starts having a spiritual awakening … or is this another attempt at manipulation? Director John Curran and Norton worked together previously on The Painted Veil, and they clearly have a rapport: Norton's performance is fluid and sinuous, working its way into Mabry's consciousness and, potentially, the audience's. De Niro is, of course, solid, though he projects such a steely will that it's difficult to accept him as a man who succumbs to base appetites. Writer Angus MacLachlan wrote the luminous Junebug; while Stone doesn't manage the same rich humanity--despite the excellent acting by all involved, the story feels cramped and schematic--there are strong passages. But fundamentally, it's Norton who makes the movie worth watching; even the scenes he's not in feel like they're about him, how his influence ripples out into the people around him.

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From New DVD Releases January 11 2011 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies January 11 2011

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. January 11 2011

The Social Network (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
Directed by David Fincher
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They all laughed at college nerd Mark Zuckerberg, whose idea for a social-networking site made him a billionaire. And they all laughed at the idea of a Facebook movie--except writer Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, merely two of the more extravagantly talented filmmakers around. Sorkin and Fincher's breathless picture, The Social Network, is a fast and witty creation myth about how Facebook grew from Zuckerberg's insecure geek-at-Harvard days into a phenomenon with 500 million users. Sorkin frames the movie around two lawsuits aimed at the lofty but brilliant Zuckerberg (deftly played by Adventureland's Jesse Eisenberg): a claim that he stole the idea from Ivy League classmates, and a suit by his original, now slighted, business partner (Andrew Garfield). The movie follows a familiar rise-and-fall pattern, with temptation in the form of a sunny California Beelzebub (an expert Justin Timberlake as former Napster founder Sean Parker) and an increasingly tangled legal mess. Emphasizing the legal morass gives Sorkin and Fincher a chance to explore how unsocial this social-networking business can be, although the irony seems a little facile. More damagingly, the film steers away from the prickly figure of Zuckerberg in the latter stages--and yet Zuckerberg presents the most intriguing personality in the movie, even if the movie takes pains to make us understand his shortcomings. Fincher's command of pacing and his eye for the clean spaces of Aughts-era America are bracing, and he can't resist the technical trickery involved in turning actor Armie Hammer into privileged Harvard twins (Hammer is letter-perfect). Even with its flaws, The Social Network is a galloping piece of entertainment, a smart ride with smart people… who sometimes do dumb things.

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From New DVD Releases January 4 2011 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies January 4 2011

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. January 4 2011

Dinner for Schmucks
Directed by Jay Roach
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Steve Carell, whose gift for playing dumb yet remaining sympathetic is unparalleled, and the astoundingly likable Paul Rudd make an excellent comedy team in Dinner for Schmucks. Tim (Rudd, I Love You, Man) gets invited to take part in a game his boss plays every year: each of his executives has to bring a perfect idiot to dinner; the biggest loser wins an award and the executive who brought him gets a promotion. Tim's girlfriend thinks the idea is appalling, and Tim reluctantly agrees--until he literally runs into Barry (Carell), an obtuse IRS agent who makes dioramas with stuffed dead mice. Barry is so perfect for the game that Tim can't resist inviting him to dinner--but by inviting Barry into his life, Tim loses control of everything he wants as Barry's bumbling attempts to help go hopelessly awry. Dinner for Schmucks has its share of broad slapstick, but what may surprise some viewers is the mix of verbal wit and elegant visual jokes (some of Barry's dioramas are both funny and truly beautiful). The movie's farcical formula is familiar and threadbare, but Rudd and Carell give it genuine heart as well as humor and the supporting performances from Jemaine Clement (Eagle vs. Shark), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), and Kristin Schaal (Flight of the Conchords) are all deliriously funny. A loose but honorable remake of the French comedy The Dinner Game.

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From New DVD Releases December 28 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies December 28 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. December 28 2010

The American
Directed by Anton Corbijn
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Control's Anton Corbijn gives the crime film a distinctly European twist in this understated thriller (think The Day of the Jackal). A trim George Clooney plays Jack, a hit man who relocates from Sweden to Italy after assailants try to take his life. Jack's handler (Johan Leysen) advises him not to make any friends, which proves easier said than done. Ensconced in medieval Abruzzo, the assassin passes himself off as a photographer (in Martin Booth's novel, A Very Private Gentleman, he claimed to be an illustrator), but he's actually customizing an assault rifle for Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), his female counterpart. Upon his excursions through town, Jack meets Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), who senses he has something to confess--"A priest sees everything," he explains--but Jack would prefer to share a brandy. He also befriends Clara, a prostitute (Violante Placido, perfectly comfortable with onscreen nudity). What starts out as a sexual relationship deepens as Jack's sensitive side--he has a thing for butterflies--emerges, but then the Swedes discover his hiding place, and Jack develops doubts about his lady friends, leading to a showdown that plays like a scene from an old Western, a debt Corbijn acknowledges when Jack chances upon a broadcast of Once upon a Time in the West. If the conclusion doesn't cut as deep as the director intends, his admirable restraint throughout keeps the tension at a low boil, while Clooney tamps down his charisma to play a dogged professional with redemption on his mind.

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From New DVD Releases December 21 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies December 21 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. December 21 2010

Salt
Directed by Philip Noyce
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Angelina Jolie confirms her status as action-heroine supreme in the sinewy thriller Salt. Evelyn Salt (Jolie) is a respected high-ranking CIA agent… until a defecting Russian operative declares that she's a Russian mole in deep cover, launching her on the most delicious chase sequence since the Bourne movies. When the film's over you'll realize the motivations for much of what happened didn't make much sense, but while the movie's going on the pell-mell pace will brush such concerns from your mind. Director Phillip Noyce (Patriot Games, Dead Calm) has a gift for staging action sequences you can actually follow moment to moment, which is infinitely more engaging than frenzied editing that blurs everything into cattle-prod jolts--the movie's first third is top-notch orchestration. Jolie's star magnetism provides the cool, calm axis around which everything else revolves; the sturdy supporting performances of Liev Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Inside Man, Dirty Pretty Things) give enough heft to the plot to keep you from questioning anything. Salt is an old-fashioned entertainment, a skillfully made mechanism with enough grace notes to let it breathe and catch you by surprise.

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From New DVD Releases December 14 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies December 14 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. December 14 2010

The Other Guys
Directed by Adam McKay
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Although the comedy team of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg does not sound like a threat to Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello, they conjure up consistent laughs in The Other Guys, yet another comedy from Talladega Nights director Adam McKay. Ferrell plays a mild-mannered police accountant partnered with Wahlberg's hothead (recently demoted to desk-jockey duty after shooting a very famous Yankee player during the World Series), and both men must endure the showboating fame of a pair of supercops (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne Johnson) in their New York City precinct house. Along with sending up cop-movie clichés, the movie basically exists to give Ferrell and Wahlberg room to work amusing variations on their characters (with grace notes for Michael Keaton's stereotypical tough captain, too). The loosey-goosey structure works especially well when Wahlberg is needling his partner's squareness or marveling, in wonderfully awestruck tones, at the unbelievable hot-i-tude of Ferrell's wife (Eva Mendes)--a discrepancy made all the more maddening because Ferrell seems indifferent to her charms. Throw in a plot about a billionaire Wall Street crook (Steve Coogan) and the revelation of Ferrell's hilariously dark past, and the movie finds a nice zone of silliness. Of course, any Will Ferrell vehicle must be judged by the opportunities for the star to launch into some borderline-surreal riff--and happily, this film comes through. From the moment Ferrell begins deconstructing Wahlberg's lion versus tuna metaphor, The Other Guys manages to find time for such nonsense, and the film--the world in general, for that matter--is the better for it.

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From New DVD Releases December 7 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies December 7 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. December 7 2010

Shrek Forever After (Single-Disc Edition)
Directed by Mike Mitchell
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Shrek Forever After delivers laughs, life lessons, and a striking picture of the realities of parenthood in this surprisingly good, fourth Shrek film. Like the original film, this fractured fairytale works because of the humor--it pokes fun at the whole fairytale genre on a multitude of intellectual levels while simultaneously offering visual humor that's appealing to all ages. After a frantic flip through a tongue-in-cheek fairytale book of the first three Shrek films, the scene opens on a beaming Shrek and Fiona as they awaken to a chorus of their noisy children standing at the foot of the bed, and it follows them through a typically hectic day of feeding, diapering, and caring for their children until they collapse into a satisfied heap at the end of the day. One of the funniest bits in the film, at least for adults, is how this scene repeats, faster and faster and in smaller and smaller excerpts, until Shrek's look of bliss slowly turns into a pained, midlife-crisis expression that screams "Help me, I'm trapped in this domestic purgatory and there's no escape in sight." As in any good fairytale, the protagonist's chance for escape comes in the form of a deal with the devil, in this case Rumpelstiltskin. Following in the footsteps of the classic film It's a Wonderful Life, Shrek is granted the opportunity to spend a day in an alternate reality in which he is the independent, terrifying ogre he once was. Of course, the deal carries some very serious, unintended consequences, and Shrek's day of freedom may just cost him Fiona, the children, and even his very existence. Mike Meyers and Cameron Diaz are once again stellar as the voices of Shrek and Fiona; Antonio Banderas is still all swagger despite Puss-in-Boots' now-portly figure and thoroughly domesticated ways; Eddie Murphy remains just as hilarious as in the first film as Donkey, who in this story doesn't recognize Shrek and can't fathom the possibility of a donkey and an ogre becoming friends; and Walt Dohrn is an extremely effective newcomer as the voice of Rumpelstiltskin. Other key players are the Pied Piper, with his new, tricked-out flute; a mob of broom-riding, jack-o'-lantern-throwing witches; an overgrown white goose; and a whole resistance movement of ogres under the command of a most unexpected leader. The battles are fierce and the lesson powerful: learn to appreciate what you've got. While 3-D digital is always nice, most viewers will completely forget that the film is in 3-D after the initial scene, and it will view just as well in the traditional format. (Rated PG, but appropriate for most ages 6 and older)

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From New DVD Releases November 30 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies November 30 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. November 30 2010

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
From Summit Entertainment
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The third installment of Stephenie Meyer's blockbuster vampire series is its most action packed, both in terms of fight scenes and human-vampire-werewolf lovin'. In Eclipse, the vampiric Cullen clan and the werewolves--their sworn enemies--unite against an army of "newborn" vampires, whose remnants of human blood in their veins makes them stronger and more uncontrollable, causing a string of murders in the Seattle area. They've been created by the vengeful vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard, taking over for Rachelle Lefevre), still keen on destroying human Bella (Kristen Stewart). Thus, Bella is under careful watch, and her undead love Edward (Robert Pattinson) and werewolf best friend Jacob (Taylor Lautner) spend a lot of time arguing over who is the better man for her. (In one hilarious scene where Bella's freezing and only Jacob has the lupine body heat to warm her, he looks over at Edward and cracks, "I am hotter than you." Go Team Jacob!) But there's more at the heart of the triangle than love: Bella, against Edward's warnings, doesn't want to grow older than him and would willingly give up contact with her parents, the chance to grow old with children, and more to be turned into a bloodthirsty vampire. (Jacob's trump card is that Bella wouldn't have to give up her mortality to be with him.) But the unfolding of this love triangle is even clumsier than it was on the page; you're never really convinced Bella has romantic feelings for Jacob, even during their climactic kiss on top of the mountain. This is likely to confuse non-readers of the book series, as Stewart emotes nothing that intones there's a real competition here (clearly, she's Team Edward).

Pattinson, on the other hand, appears to have overcome his awkwardness to become a much cooler Edward; Howard, while missing Lefevre's mischief as Victoria, brings her own touch of soft-spoken manipulation; and Billy Burke, as Bella's father Charlie, continues to steal every scene he's in. The other Cullens also get far more play here, notably Rosalie (Nikki Reed), whose revealing back story is touching and tragic, and Jasper (Jackson Rathbone), who trains everyone in combat and who, halfway through the movie, adopts a sudden Southern accent that he didn't have before, once it's revealed he was a Confederate soldier (on a side note, it's mentioned in the books that Jasper can calm the emotions of others, but that trait isn't used in the movie). The climactic fight scene is well staged by director David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy); the violence, while not bloody, is still more abundant and disturbing than in the previous films; and the sex, while not actually happening between anyone (yet), is certainly on everyone's mind (but Edward wants to get married first). It seems the characters, and the series, are growing up.

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From New DVD Releases November 23 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies November 23 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. November 23 2010

Eat Pray Love
Directed by Ryan Murphy
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Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of enlightenment gets the deluxe treatment at the hands of Glee creator Ryan Murphy, who bathes every scene in a golden glow. Unaccustomed to being alone, Liz (Julia Roberts) exits her marriage to Stephen (Billy Crudup, quite good) only to enter into an affair with an actor (James Franco, curiously uncomfortable), who introduces her to meditation. Just as her editor, Delia (Doubt's Viola Davis, making the most of a small role), longed to have a baby, Liz has longed to see the world. Delia persuades her to seize the day (plus, money presents no obstacle). First, she travels to Italy, where she noshes from Rome to Naples, making new friends along the way. Then, she heads to an ashram in India, where she meets a bride-to-be and a remorseful man (Richard Jenkins, heartbreaking), who nurture her altruistic side. Her sojourn ends in Bali, where she reunites with Ketut (Hadi Subiyanto, hilarious), the healer who first encouraged her to reassess her situation. While there, she befriends a single mother and a single father (No Country for Old Men's Javier Bardem) who falls for her charms. In an improvement over his version of Running with Scissors, Murphy combines two Oscar winners, two Oscar nominees, and four countries to follow one woman's path to fulfillment. Like Julie and Julia and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Liz's story becomes more involving as she lets go of the superficial, but Murphy's movie still represents a triumph of escapism over spirituality.

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