Category: Movie DVD Quicktakes (Page 21 of 41)

Splinter

April 18, 2009 /

Independent horror films are a dime a dozen these days (they’re cheap to make and even cheaper to market), but every once in a while, a gem slides through the cracks that makes you wonder how much better it could have been with the proper financial backing. Writer/director Toby Wilkins’ “Splinter” might not feature the world’s greatest script, or even quality acting, but it does have something that the genre is sorely lacking: one of the most original movie monsters in years. Paulo Costanzo and Jill Wagner star as a young couple whose romantic getaway is interrupted when a pair of criminals (Shea Whigham and Rachel Kerbs) steal their car and take them hostage. The rest of the plot is pretty standard stuff, but horror fans will get a kick out of the film’s creepy beast – a prickly parasite that transforms its victims into deadly hosts. Though the filmmakers too often resort to the kind of quick-cut editing that prevents the viewer from ever getting a really good look at the monster, the premise is just cool enough to ensure that you’ll be glued to the screen throughout the film’s brisk 82-minute runtime. It’s not particularly gruesome (except for a brutal amputation à la “The Ruins”), but “Splinter” has just enough going for it that you’ll wish it was given the theatrical release it deserved.

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Goal II: Living the Dream

April 1, 2009 /

When “Goal” was released back in 2006, I was tentatively excited about the prospect of two more films centered on the exploits of Santiago Muñez (Kuno Becker). American soccer enthusiasts rarely get the kind of fan service that an entire trilogy of movies offers, but after finally seeing the oft-delayed follow-up, “Goal II: Living the Dream,” my expectations have warmed significantly. The story picks up where the last one left off, with Santiago enjoying great success at Newcastle United. When he’s traded to Spanish side Real Madrid, however, his relationships with Roz (Anna Friel) and Glen (Stephen Dillane) begin to crumble as his new superstar status goes to his head. As always, the on-the-field action is a blast to watch, but while Real Madrid’s cooperation helps bring a sense of reality to the movie (David Beckham gets so much screen time you’d think he had a supporting role), the different storylines feel like something you’d find in a telenovela. There’s one subplot involving Santiago’s mother (Elizabeth Peña) and her new family that’s particularly stupid, while some of the actors that made the first movie a joy to watch (like Dillane and Alessandro Nivola) are given even less to do the second time around. “Goal II” is still worth seeing, but you’ll probably feel guiltier and get less pleasure from watching it.

Click to buy “Goal II: Living the Dream”

Movie Dramas, Movie DVD Quicktakes, Movie DVDs, Movies

The Last House on the Left (Collector’s Edition)

March 27, 2009 /

If the aim of filmmaking is to provoke a response in the viewer, then Wes Craven’s original “The Last House on the Left” must be considered a massive success. For anyone with even a shred of decency, it’s a tough movie to sit through, and I found it be just that some 15 years ago when I first saw it. With the remake in theatres, a DVD re-release of the 1972 “classic” was a no-brainer, and I figured I’d give it another spin and see how I felt about it today. The good news is that my decency-ometer must still be working, because the first half of the film had me squirming and made me feel ill. On the other hand, as I’ve since seen far more depraved fare such as Pasolini’s “Salo” and Will Ferrell’s “Talladega Nights,” I also came away from it with more of an appreciation for what Craven unleashed all those years ago. One wonders if the Manson family killings were an influence on the piece, as it strongly evokes that time and place.

The story, if you can call it such, revolves around escaped convict Krug (David Hess) and his posse of animal followers, and what happens when they kidnap two teenage girls, Mari (Sandra Cassel) and Phyllis (Lucy Grantham). What follows amounts to little more than rape, torture and death. It goes on seemingly forever, and it’s all done in a documentary style for maximum effect. The happenings are juxtaposed with scenes of two bumbling, ineffective cops, who might be there for comic relief, but really serve the narrative’s third act, which is all about taking the law into your own hands. In the last half-hour, Krug and Co. by chance arrive at the home of Mari, where her parents discover the fate of their daughter and exact revenge against the lunatics. Once you get past the generally off-putting nature of the entire affair, the biggest problem with “Last House” is that the climax isn’t anywhere near as harrowing as the setup. You never really feel that Krug and his cronies get what’s coming to them, although there may be a point buried somewhere beneath it all that people such as the parents could never achieve the same levels of brutality as Krug. Finally, there’s the weird, folksy score written and sung by Hess himself, which serves as unsettling narration. If the movie weren’t twisted enough, those songs take it to a whole other level of sickness.

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Essential Art House Vol. II

March 24, 2009 /

The second collection of past Criterion releases – stripped of their DVD extras (and more than half their cost) – presents an even better, more accessible collection of films from the cinephile-sanctified vaults of legendary distributor Janus Films than the prior volume. This boxed set (the titles are also sold separately) is highlighted by three of the most entertaining and emotionally open films by three of the mid-20th century’s most revered filmmaking powerhouses: François Truffaut’s innovative 1959 coming-of-age drama, “The 400 Blows”, starring a 14-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud, set the pattern for the genre worldwide, while also launching France’s iconoclastic New Wave of the 1960s; Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 “Ikiru” is a deeply moving and gently humorous film about a milquetoast bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura, the fish-faced badass leader of “The Seven Samurai”) facing certain death from stomach cancer without benefit of a billionaire buddy or bucket list; and 1954’s “La Strada” is a wondrous surefire tearjerker by the great Federico Fellini and starring his wife, the even greater Giulietta Masina, as a Chaplinesque waif, and America’s own Anthony Quinn as a very mean muscleman. England’s 1944 “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” starring Roger Livesay and Anton Walbrook – two great actors, too little remembered – and featuring an astonishing film debut by gorgeous 24-year-old A-lister-to-be, Deborah Kerr, is from the still-not-legendary-enough team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It’s one of the most enjoyable comedy-dramas ever made, as well as an eye-opening, Technicolor, quasi-wartime propaganda epic, and my current unofficial “all-time favorite movie,” if you really want me to name one.

Definitely worthwhile, but not anyway near the same category, is another British entry, George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” Co-directed by star Leslie Howard (“Gone with the Wind”) and stage-to-screen specialist Anthony Asquith, and with Wendy Hiller as the definitive Eliza Doolittle, it’s a solid but sometimes slow adaptation of the Shaw play, which you may know as “My Fair Lady,” but without the music or sentiment, or “Pretty Woman,” but without hookers and with actual wit. Finally, we have 1959’s “Black Orpheus”, Marcel Camus’ retelling of the myth of Orpheus, samba style. It’s a beautiful but slow ride that has millions of fans – just not me. All in all, there’s no faulting this collection. However, the absence of DVD extras makes a strong case for curious viewers to simply join Netflix and rent the original Criterion releases, great bonus features and all.

Click to buy “Essential Art House Vol. II”

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Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter

March 20, 2009 /

When Zack Snyder announced that he would be taking on the seemingly impossible task of adapting “Watchmen” for the big screen, the only question that was asked more than “Will the squid be in it?” was “What about ‘The Black Freighter’?” The graphic novel’s story within a story is one of the most famous things about Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s groundbreaking comic because of the parallels that can be drawn between the journey of its unnamed protagonist and several of the main story’s characters. It’s all about a shipwrecked mariner (voiced by Gerard Butler) trying to make it back home to Davidstown in order to save his family from an impending attack by a demonic ship called the Black Freighter.

With the film already clocking in at 163 minutes, however, it just wasn’t conceivable to include “Tales of the Black Freighter” in the final cut, and so Warner Bros. decided to release the animated tale as a direct-to-DVD supplement to the film. Unfortunately, when viewed out of context, “The Black Freighter” loses any relevance it might have had to the story. Instead, it’s just a 21-minute pirate cartoon that, while it still retains its basic meaning, fails to serve the purpose it was originally intended for. The addition of a faux news program about Hollis Mason’s autobiography, “Under the Hood,” is a fun little extra that would work great as a DVD special feature, but as the B-side to the main feature, it’s hardly worth paying for. That pretty much sums up the disc as a whole, because if “The Black Freighter” really was as essential as many would lead you to believe, they would have included it in the film. Not even the most diehard fan should waste their money on this cash grab – especially when it will be included on the Special Edition DVD the way it was meant to be seen.

Click to buy “Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter”

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