DVD Releases July 27 2010

From New DVD Releases July 27 2010 & Buy Cheap New DVD Movies July 27 2010

Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. July 27 2010

Clash of the Titans
Directed by Louis Leterrier
Average customer review:

"Release the Kraken!" Ah, it could only be Clash of the Titans, the 2010 remake that retains the instruction to unleash the great beastie from the sea. The 1981 original boasted Ray Harryhausen's legendary stop-motion technique of animating various mythological creatures--it was his final feature project--and given the cornball approach of the movie in general, that was the main draw. The remake supplies new state-of-the-art special effects (released in 3-D) and a nicely muscular sense of momentum. Sam Worthington (the Avatar guy) plays Perseus, a demigod who doesn't know that Zeus (Liam Neeson) is his father. Perseus is selected to lead an expedition to find and slay the Medusa, lest Zeus's evil brother Hades (Ralph Fiennes, in fine slinking mode) rain down misery upon a seaport--and you just know that means the Kraken is coming. Ye gods, it's a mess, and we haven't even mentioned the witches and the harpies and the giant scorpions. But if we did, it would be clear that Clash of the Titans is a perfectly dandy popcorn epic, unpretentious and punchy. Director Louis Leterrier (Transporter 2) gets a fine rhythm going during Perseus's trek, and you can even forgive the hokey shafts-of-light-through-clouds look of Olympus. Leterrier also had the good sense to import the marvelous Danish star Mads Mikkelsen to provide mentoring duties to Perseus; Gemma Arterton and Alexa Davalos fulfill the eye-candy roles. It's up to individual viewers to choose which they prefer--Harryhausen's magically hand-wrought creations (his Medusa sequence is an absolute killer) or the 21st century's slick computer-generated variations. But nostalgia aside, it would be hard to deny that this is one case where the remake tops the original.



Repo Men
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik
Average customer review:

In the future, artificial internal organs will be widely available, but their high cost will lead to a thriving, if bloody, repossession business--at least that's the idea in Repo Men, whose title characters must carry scalpels, and not scruples. When clients default--and, at 19 percent interest rates, it happens all the time--it's up to Remy (Jude Law) and Jake (Forest Whitaker), the two most swashbuckling field operatives at the Union company, to reclaim the merchandise. The film's reviewers largely seemed to miss the wicked humor that underlies Repo Men's kooky futuristic world, as Remy's domestic situation is portrayed with typical backyard barbecues and typical nagging wife who wants hubby to ask his boss about that promotion, already. Everything's amusingly typical, that is, except for the fact that Remy regularly charges into people's apartments and grabs their kidneys. It would be nice to report that director Miguel Sapochnik was able to maintain the initial air of satire (RoboCop comes to mind at least as often as an obvious inspiration such as Brazil), but this movie begins to stumble in its middle section, as Remy himself becomes a subject for organ replacement. (His efforts at self-medicating procedures, especially a climactic surgery sequence, leave Patrick Swayze's similar efforts in Road House far behind.) Sudden shifts to a woman-in-peril scenario--with capable Alice Braga as the target of Union's organ hunters--make for an even more puzzling turn, and the jumbled rhythm of the second act suggests a certain amount of postproduction futzing around. The soundtrack is rife with Guy Ritchie-style song cues, some of which are fun, and Liev Schreiber has a good time smirking his way through his role as Remy's cold-hearted boss. The biggest problem here is that once the movie is over, a great many things don't make any logical sense, and a last-minute switcheroo only muddies the waters. Which are pretty bloody to begin with.

Operation: Endgame
Directed by Fouad Mikati
Average customer review:

Rival squads of sociopathic covert agents turn on each other with vicious glee when their underground facility is threatened with flaming death. The fun of Operation: Endgame lies in the cast: this is a pretty unlikely collection of assassins, played by the likes of Rob Corddry (Hot Tub Time Machine), Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover), and Emilie de Ravin (Lost), alongside more traditional Hollywood superspy types such as Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard), Ving Rhames (Dawn of the Dead), and Ellen Barkin (The Big Easy). Operation: Endgame also has fun with spook lingo (the agents are all named after tarot cards, ranging from the Devil to Temperance to the High Priestess) and extremely graphic violence (truly, at least half of the movie is watching the agents kill each other with improvised weapons, like paper shredders and golf putters). Corddry has the most fun with his part, giving the movie a jolt of energy whenever he appears, but the whole cast has their moment (though Rhames is wasted on a one-joke character). All in all, a bit flimsy, but Operation: Endgame knows that it's trash and revels in it. A candidate for cult film status.

Ip Man
Directed by Wilson Yip
Average customer review:

One of the most astonishing displays of martial arts action on film in recent years, Wilson Yip's Ip Man chronicles the life of the eponymous Wing Chun master (Donnie Yen), who would later become instructor and mentor to Bruce Lee. Fans of Ronny Yu's Fearless, with Jet Li, will notice several similarities between the biopics--like Li's Huo Yuanjia, Ip Man is a tireless instructor whose life, largely consisting of training and jaw-dropping spar sessions with any and all, is thrown into chaos with the arrival of Japanese military forces in 1937. He soon draws the interest of the commanding Japanese colonel (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi), who exploits the starving locals by forcing them against his trainees for bags of rice. Ip must then pit his extraordinary Wing Chun against the colonel's karate for his own dignity, as well as the soul of his people. Were Yip's film simply a series of set pieces featuring Yen's incredible fighting skills, Ip Man would rank among the best martial arts films of the past three decades; the fight choreography, by Hong Kong legend Sammo Hung and Tony Leung Siu-hung (with consultation by Ip's own son, Ip Chun), offers the same sort of eye-popping, rewind-required fist and footwork that Ip's disciple, Bruce Lee, inspired in the '70s, and Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Tony Jaa displayed in subsequent years; a battle between Ip and 10 black belts, in particular, requires multiple views to absorb the speed and deftness on display. But Ip Man also succeeds as a historical drama inspired by the harsh realities of the Japanese occupation of mainland China, as well as an acting showcase for Yen, who embodies Ip's formidable physical and emotional strengths. The American DVD release of Ip Man from Well Go offers many of the same extras found on the Region 2 UK presentation, including interviews with Yen, Yip, Hung, and most of the cast, plus deleted scenes, an impressive tour of production designer Kenneth Mak's sets and location work, and several brief making-of featurettes.

Batman: Under the Red Hood
Directed by Brandon Vietti
Average customer review:

The animated adventure Batman: Under the Red Hood pits the Dark Knight against a trio of his most fearsome enemies while attempting to uncover the true identity of the vigilante known as the Red Hood. Adapted by Judd Winick from his own comic book story arc, Under the Hood, as well as the late-'80s serial A Death in the Family, Under the Red Hood is a fairly dark affair, with considerable amounts of violence, not the least of which is the act that gets the story in motion--the murder of Jason Todd, better known as the second Robin, by the Joker (voiced by John DiMaggio). The death puts Batman (Bruce Greenwood) into a guilt-ridden tailspin, but there's little time for mourning, as the arrival of the Red Hood (Jensen Ackles of Supernatural) puts the Caped Crusader on the defensive. Together with original Robin Dick Grayson (Neil Patrick Harris), now operating as Nightwing, his search for the Red Hood brings him in contact with the Joker--who, as DC Comics fans remember, started his criminal career as the Red Hood and is portrayed here as a violent psychopath à la Frank Miller's depictions--as well as the immortal Ra's al Ghul (Jason Isaacs) and Gotham's leading underworld kingpin, the fearsome Black Mask (Wade Williams). The confrontations between Batman and his foes are explosive but never overpower the dramatic weight of the story, which hinges on themes of regret, revenge, and redemption. Artwork is streamlined and expressive, while the scripting by Winick distills the essence of the comics into an action-packed hour.

The Art of the Steal
Directed by Don Argott
Average customer review:

Director Don Argott's documentary about the controversial move of the Barnes art collection to downtown Philadelphia, The Art of the Steal, is so adamantly against the relocation that it feels as if the viewer is watching evidence presented in a murder trial. Ex-Barnes student Lenny Feinberg funded the film, openly intending it to be an argument against the relocation, in recent years, of the Barnes Foundation, which was established in 1922. Albert Barnes envisioned his foundation as an art school rather than a museum, and he wrote a detailed will to dictate the future of his highly desirable collection (valued at $25 billion) of impressionist and postimpressionist works by artists like Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, van Gogh, Cezanne, and others. The film focuses on interviews given by people on both sides: advocates and art advisers, critics such as Christopher Knight, professors such as Dr. Robert Zaller, and those under fire, like Richard Glanson, ex-Barnes president who planned dubious legislation in the 1990s to move the art from its rural location. Copious research into what some call a crime shows, and one almost gets too clear a picture of, how a private art collection can be usurped through government. Yet the film's didacticism is also its weakness. Typewriters in the credits amid slips of torn paper with typewritten notes, black backdrops with title headings for each chapter that melodramatically read "The Last Living Apostle" or "The Takeover," offer little in the way of interpretative opinion. Midway through this well-played, strategic film there appears a bulletin board of "key players," those politicians and socialites who enabled Albert Barnes's art collection to move against Barnes's will. Even Philadelphia mayor John F. Scott, who holds a press conference to announce that the collection will be relocated to the city, comes out looking fiendish because some art was moved to a new location. While art-world viewers may find the story in The Art of the Steal as offensive as Argott obviously does, some viewers may be left wondering Who cares?

Don't Look Up
Directed by Fruit Chan

While filming in Transylvania, a crew unearths celluloid images of a woman’s murder and unleashes the wrath of evil spirits. Based on the story by Hideo Nakata (the creator of "The Ring") and directed by Fruit Chan. Starring Henry Thomas, Kevin Corrigan, Lothaire Bluteau and Eli Roth.

Relate Links:

Cheap New DVD Movies
DVD Releases
DVD releases UK