Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. September 7 2010
KillersDirected by Robert Luketic
Average customer review:
Killers has been murdered by most film critics, and the box-office receipts haven't been too impressive either. But that's kind of a bad rap. Granted, it isn't likely to make many year's best (or even month's best) lists, but this is an entertaining little diversion that at the very least offers an appealing cast, a few laughs, and some cool chase scenes. Katherine Heigl plays Jen, who, having recently been dumped by her boyfriend, is vacationing in Nice with her parents (Tom Selleck and Catherine O'Hara). Enter Spencer (Ashton Kutcher), a hired assassin (hey, it's a comedy) who happens to be on the scene for a job. The couple's cutesy flirting turns into a romantic dinner, which leads to some heavy drinking… and before you know it, Spencer has renounced the killing gig, married Jen, and moved back to her hometown in the States, where he becomes a "corporate consultant." Three years later his past catches up to him, as we knew it would, and a seemingly limitless array of hired guns emerges from the woodwork, intent on collecting the $20 million bounty that's been put on Spencer's head. Exactly why this is, and who's responsible for it, are secrets revealed only at the end, although perspicacious viewers will no doubt have seen it coming. In the meantime, Spencer's revelation of who he really is and Jen's reaction to it are mildly reminiscent of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-Jamie Lee Curtis relationship in True Lies, as issues of trust, safety, and Jen's newly discovered pregnancy complicate Spencer's attempts to keep the two of them alive while he tries to figure out what's going on. Director Robert Luketic displays a sure hand during the action sequences, but he's working with a thin script and a pair of attractive young actors whose chemistry doesn't exactly burn up the screen. Those are serious drawbacks, but all in all, there are far worse ways to kill a couple of hours than watching Killers.
MacGruber
Directed by Jorma Taccone
Average customer review:
No comic explosion, but not quite a dud, no Wayne's World, but not The Ladies Man either, MacGruber does manage to pull off the seemingly impossible mission of expanding a 90-second one-joke Saturday Night Live sketch into a feature film. What's next: "Toonces the Cat Who Could Drive a Car"? In those MacGruber sketches, Will Forte's mullet-maned hero "makes life-saving inventions out of household materials" but always gets sidetracked as the bomb he's defusing ticks down to its last 20 seconds. Blown up for the big screen, MacGruber finds a bigger payoff whenever the film sidetracks from the standard-issue '80s action movie plot, as witness MacGruber's deranged revenge fantasies toward a driver who hurled a drive-by insult at his car. MacGruber's secret weapon is Val Kilmer as a megalomaniacal villain (his name, not appropriate for a family website, is a profanely puerile running joke) with a stolen Russian nuclear warhead and a grudge against MacGruber. MacGruber's somewhat less than A-team includes Vicki St. Elmo (SNL MVP Kristin Wiig), more into her music than into saving the world, and straight arrow Lieutenant Piper (Ryan Phillippe), who begins to question MacGruber's unorthodox tactics (one involving a diversionary stalk of celery is just one of the film's more jaw-dropping gross-out gags). MacGruber may not set the world on fire, but the insanely committed Forte, like MacGruber, will do anything, no matter how obscene, to complete his mission. Mission pretty much accomplished, particularly in a sex scene that is the most outrageous of its kind since Team America: World Police (albeit, thankfully, not as graphic).
Solitary Man
Directed by David Levien Brian Koppelman
Average customer review:
Michael Douglas has spent the second half of his career perfecting playing charming, morally flawed rakes (Fatal Attraction, Wall Street, Wonder Boys). So his performance in Solitary Man--as a morally flawed rake who is somehow ingratiating, if not exactly charming--is a subtle but real revelation of Douglas's acting skills. His character in Solitary Man, Ben, shows elements of his roles in the other films, yet Ben is no master of the universe; he's one step away from pathetic--and just enough so that viewers will be invested in finding out how his story plays out, even if at the same time they'd like to see Ben get some comeuppance. Douglas's Ben gets a late start on his midlife crisis, at roughly age 60, when his doctor suggests further tests on a heart irregularity. In the aftermath of that shocking news, Ben's tidy life (beautiful wife Nancy, played by Susan Sarandon; thoughtful daughter Susan, played by Jenna Fischer) has come undone, rent by divorce, a giant fall from his career as a successful car dealer, and a string of rather nauseatingly inappropriate liaisons with far younger women. Ben should have "hit bottom" by the time Solitary Man picks up his story, some six years later, and in many ways he has--broke, despondent, lonely. Yet somehow Ben can still charm the thongs off the ladies (and this is one area that Solitary Man just doesn't ring true in; Ben may be a good salesman, but no unemployed 65-year-old is that good a salesman). The supporting cast is outstanding, especially Sarandon and Fischer, whose characters should have given up on Ben long ago, and yet still remain invested, even bailing him out, sometimes unwisely. Mary-Louise Parker is also splendid as Jordan, Ben's wealthy girlfriend, who also keeps him afloat financially. The lovely Imogen Poots plays Allyson, Jordan's teenage daughter, whom Jordan entrusts to Ben's care on a trip to check out his alma mater. (Bad idea.) "You can't cheat death, no matter how many 19-year-olds you talk into your bed," Nancy tells Ben, who seems to be listening--yet this old dog may not have it in himself to learn the new tricks he'll really need to make his life work. It's to Douglas's enormous credit, and to the script's, that Solitary Man, and Ben, manage to come off as human and real--even sympathetic.
Loss Of A Teardrop Diamond
Directed by Jodie Markell
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Synopsis: The story of Fisher Willow, a Memphis débutante daughter of a plantation owner with a distaste for narrow-minded people and a penchant for shocking and insulting those around her. After returning from studies overseas, Fisher falls in love with Jimmy, the down-and-out son of an alcoholic father and an insane mother who works at a store on her family's plantation. She tries to pass him off as an upper-class suitor to appease the spinster aunt who controls her family's fortune, but when she loses a diamond, it places their tenuous relationship in further jeopardy.
ed on the long lost screenplay from celebrated playwright Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)!
Prime Suspect: The Complete Collection
From Acorn Media
Average customer review:
Helen Mirren's Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, the only female DCI on an old boy's club London homicide squad, is like a phantom lurking around the edges of the action while the men rush through their latest murder case, joshing and winking in the kind of male camaraderie the cop genre has celebrated for decades. When DCI Shefford dies of a sudden heart attack, Tennison demands to take over. Despite her superintendent's resistance ("Give her this case and she'll start expecting more."), she becomes the squad's first woman to head a murder investigation. Scrutinized at every moment by her superior officers, Tennison is faced with a case that spirals out from a single murder to a serial spree, a second-in-command who undermines her authority and her investigation at every turn, a team resistant to taking orders from a woman, and a private life unraveling due to her professional diligence. Lynda La Plant's script is a compelling thriller riddled with ambiguity that turns dead ends, blind alleys, and the mundane legwork of real-life cops into fascinating details. Mirren commands the role of Tennison with authority, intelligence, and a touch of overachieving desperation. Superb performances, excellent writing, and understated direction make this BBC miniseries one of the most involving mysteries in years. Look for future British stars Ralph Fiennes and Tom Wilkinson in supporting roles.
That Evening Sun
Directed by Scott Teems
Average customer review:
Academy Award-nominee and ten-time Emmy-winner Hal Holbrook (Into the Wild) stars with Oscar-winner Ray McKinnon (The Blind Side) and Alice in Wonderland's Mia Wasikowska in this critically acclaimed gem. Fleeing the retirement home where his son abandoned him, Abner Meecham sets out to reclaim his beloved Tennessee farmstead - only to find it's been leased to an old enemy, the volatile Lonzo Choat. After Abner intervenes to protect Choat's daughter from her drunken father's abuse, events spiral toward a startling, violent climax in "...an exceptionally fine, richly atmospheric film." (Joe Leydon, Variety) Dedicated to the memory of the late Dixie Carter
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