Movie & TV DVD Releases this week. January 18 2011
Stone
Directed by John Curran
Average customer review:
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.
Takers
From Sony Pictures
Average customer review:
Slick, stylish, and flush with studliness, Takers follows a cadre of thieves as they plot a tricky new heist. The movie has two strengths: it deftly juggles three intertwining plot lines (the mechanics of the heist itself; the maneuvering of the police hunting the thieves; and the scheming of a former member of the gang who feels betrayed) and it walks a fine line between just enough realism to make us care about the thieves (the performances are effectively understated) and just enough absurdity to make everything entertaining (each of the guys has his own fancy car!). It doesn't hurt that the man flesh is all ridiculously handsome (Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Chris Brown, Jan Hernandez, Hayden Christensen, even old-school hunk Matt Dillon) and smashingly tailored in swank suits. And there are a handful of high-energy sequences--including a chase that features zippy parkour climbing stunts through moving traffic--that give the story clichés a nice jolt of pep. All in all, Takers probably won't stick in your memory very long, but it's good fun while it lasts.
Paper Man
Directed by Kieran Mulroney, Michele Mulroney
Average customer review:
In the tradition of Lost In Translation and The Squid and the Whale, PAPER MAN is a wonderfully quirky drama about people trying desperately to find the same joy in real life as they do in their imagination. Golden Globe and Tony nominee Jeff Daniels stars as Richard Dunn, a no-hit wonder of a novelist squirreled away in Long Island by his sensible, surgeon wife (Emmy winner Lisa Kudrow) to get cracking on his next novel. Richard isn t totally alone: along for the ride is a local teen (Emma Stone in a breakout performance) who befriends Richard after he hires her to be a babysitter...his babysitter. Plus, there s Richard s imaginary best friend from childhood, Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds), a confidante always ready to prod him along towards adulthood, whether Richard wants it or not. Aching, funny and true, PAPER MAN is a genuinely offbeat gem that marks the promising debut of writing and directing team Kieran and Michele Mulroney.
Jack Goes Boating
Directed by Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Average customer review:
Philip Seymour Hoffman plunders social awkwardness for comic effect in Jack Goes Boating. At first, the movie seems like a sad-sack love story: Jack (Hoffman, Academy Award winner for Capote), a limo driver who likes reggae music for its positivity, gets set up with Connie (Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone), a trouble-magnet telemarketer, by their mutual friends Clyde (John Ortiz, Fast & Furious) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega, Wild Things). Connie inspires Jack to improve himself: he starts learning to cook and to swim (so that he and Connie can go boating in the summer to come). But as Jack and Connie take tentative, sometimes clumsy steps toward love, Clyde and Lucy's relationship threatens to collapse from betrayal and jealousy. In the wrong hands, Jack Goes Boating would flounder in angst and sappiness. Fortunately, Hoffman and Ryan always reach for the hopeful (and often humorous) side of their characters, while Ortiz and Rubin-Vega vacillate between tenderness and unsettling bitterness. Hoffman makes his directorial debut with this movie, and his eye for telling social detail comes through as strongly as a director as it does as an actor; Jack Goes Boating's greatest strength is the psychological richness of its characters.
Virginity Hit
Directed by Andrew Gurland Huck Botko
Average customer review:
If every generation gets the American Pie or Porky's it deserves, then the arrival of The Virginity Hit in 2010 makes sense. This tale of four high-school friends agreeing to lose their virginity is entirely seen through the lens of a video camera, as the guys themselves document the process. Actually, three of them are dispatched within the first couple of minutes; mostly we focus on Matt (Matt Bennett), the geekiest of the bunch, who's been going out with Nicole (Nicole Weaver) for a couple of years. They've finally "set a date," and--perhaps appropriately for the communal, no-privacy zone of the Facebook age--they've shared their intentions with all their friends. In fact, some of Matt's bumbling preparations for the big night end up on YouTube, as do the disasters that surround the scheduled liaison: Matt learns that Nicole might have cheated on him at a frat party, and he goes into a tailspin that includes a confrontation with his absent father and a date with a porn star (played by porn star Sunny Leone). All of this is digitally documented by the pals, of course, a process directors Huck Botko and Andrew Gurland seem to consider perfectly normal rather than sadistic. Their angle (they also wrote the faux-documentary The Last Exorcism) could be perfectly acceptable if the movie were funnier and maybe had a few characters who weren't repellent. The film makes a half-hearted attempt to pass itself off as real, but it can sustain itself even if you don't buy that--the jokes about bodily functions and transsexual blow-up dolls require no particular gimmick to translate them into lowbrow humor. But that's about the best that can be said for this buffoonish exercise.
Animal Kingdom
Directed by David Michôd
Average customer review:
The title leaves no doubt about the nature contained in this Australian crime picture: the law of the jungle prevails, and it's kill or be killed out there. That's the belief within the Cody clan, anyway, the Melbourne criminal family whose exploits give Animal Kingdom its fire. The central character is something of a deliberate vacancy, a blank slate for the movie to write on: 17-year-old Joshua, known as J (James Frechville), is taken in by his grandmother after his mother dies of an overdose (a memorably chilling opening scene). Grandma (Jacki Weaver) is known as Smurf, but don't let the name fool you: she's the Ma Barker-like matriarch of a brood of sociopaths, none more lethal than oldest son Andrew, known as the Pope (a blood-curdling performance by Ben Mendelsohn). Luke Ford and Sullivan Stapleton play her other sons, and Joel Edgerton (The Square) is on hand as an outlaw associate. The way J is brought in and tested in this world of blood-spattered machismo is director David Michod's subject, and even if the film has a few heavy-handed moments along the way, the overall effect is tense and unsettling. J's journey comes up short compared to a contemporaneous study of another unformed youth learning the ropes of crime (Jacques Audiard's A Prophet), but its portrait of amorality thriving in a somewhat ordinary-looking urban landscape is effective. Bonus: Guy Pearce's role as a detective who tries to catch J on the course of his tragic trajectory, a rare glimpse of humanity in an otherwise chaotic zoo.
Justified: The Complete First Season
From Fox
Average customer review:
Justified is the story of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), a true-blue hero and something of a throwback, given to wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots, carrying his sidearm in a hip holster – a weapon he only draws when he has to, and when he does, he shoots to kill, because, as he sees it, that’s the purpose of a gun. The character of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens was created by America’s pre-eminent crime novelist Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Out of Sight) and is played by Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Live Free or Die Hard). The Chief Deputy of the Lexington USMS office is Art Mullen, played by Nick Searcy (Cast Away, From the Earth to the Moon). Working alongside Raylan are fellow deputies Tim Gutterson – played by Jacob Pitts (The Pacific) – and Rachel Brooks – played by Erica Tazel (Life, The Office). Raylan, Art and the other deputies do what all U.S. Marshals do – chase down fugitives, protect witnesses, transport prisoners.
Merlin: The Complete Second Season
From Warner Brothers
Average customer review:
Arthurian legend meets Beverly Hills 90210 in this BBC series that imagines the lives of King Arthur and the wizard Merlin as teenagers. The show takes any number of liberties with the traditional mythos, but two are crucial: Arthur's father, Uther (Anthony Head, Buffy the Vampire Slayer), has banished magic from Camelot on pain of death; and Guinevere (Angel Coulby), Arthur's destined queen, is the servant of Uther's ward, Morgana (Katie McGrath), setting up a class schism between her and Arthur (Bradley James). This developing romance is one of the strongest throughlines of the second season, which also sees Morgana cultivating her magical powers and Merlin (Colin Morgan) learning about his mysterious father. In fact, season 2 is much more about Arthur than Merlin--episode after episode features Arthur maturing, learning a little humility and patience whilst engaging in a lot of swordplay and jousting, while Merlin spends a lot of time observing from the sidelines and muttering the occasional spell. (Though fans of the young sorcerer shouldn't fear--Merlin has plenty of dashing moments himself.)
The special effects budget has clearly been upped--the show teems with monstrous creatures, including gargoyles, giant scorpions, a troll, a were-panther, and of course the last dragon from season 1 (voiced by John Hurt, Alien, 1984). Merlin has its flaws; the young actors seem more modern than Arthurian thanks to their wonderful teeth and contemporary attitudes, and the scripts and direction can be a bit pedestrian. But that's not what connects viewers to the show--it's the passions of adolescence merged with the pageantry and derring-do of British legends, enacted by a charismatic cast. The climactic episodes will leave fans hungry for season 3. In addition to 13 episodes, Merlin: The Complete Second Season offers an entire disc of behind-the-scenes footage and other extras.
21 Jump Street - The Complete Fourth Season
Directed by Various
Average customer review:
The fourth season of Fox's hip undercover cop phenomenon opens with Ioki (Dustin Nguyen) in the hospital and Hanson (Johnny Depp) in prison (falsely convicted of murder). The end of the premiere ("Draw the Line") brings good news for one of them when Penhall (Peter DeLuise) and Booker (Richard Greico) join forces, while the fate of the other looks promising. This is confirmed in the following episode ("Say It Ain’t So, Pete"), but by then, Booker will have split the scene (to return for the Booker-Jump Street crossover, "Wheels & Deals").
Other notable episodes include "Eternal Flame," directed by Mario Van Peebles (Baadasssss!) and guest starring a longhaired Thomas Haden Church (Sideways). There's also "Come From the Shadows," in which Penhall marries a Salvadoran refugee to prevent her deportation (and adopts her nephew when he becomes orphaned), "Stand By Your Man," in which Hoffs (Holly Robinson Peete) is the victim of date rape, and "Mike's P.O.V." with a scruffy Donovan Leitch (Gas, Food Lodging) and preppy Vince Vaughn (Swingers).
The rap on the fourth year is that Depp started turning in lackluster performances when he couldn't get out of his contract. Fortunately, he doesn't sink the show, but it's clear his heart isn't in it anymore. On the bright side, 21 Jump Street remained as much a time capsule of the late-1980s as ever with music from the B-52s and Devo and references to Ghostbusters and Back to the Future. (Hoffs’ surname was even taken from a notable 1980s figure: Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles.) Once Depp was set free, Fox pulled the plug on the program, which ran for a final season in syndication. In exchange for the Booker episode, this set deletes the season finale, "Blackout," which featured Depp's final appearance as Officer Tom Hanson.
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