Coming soon to DVD
Below are some of the highlights of what’s coming down the DVD pipeline in the next couple of months.
Recently added to the pipeline:
Oscar-winning costume drama The Young Victoria (4/20)
LiC favorite from Japan Tokyo Sonata (5/4)
Amy Adams in Leap Year (5/4)
Alternative vampire flick Daybreakers (5/11)
Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson in The Messenger (5/18)
For next week’s releases including Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Oscar winner Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, John Woo’s Red Cliff, LiC favorite Seraphine, George Clooney in The Men Who Stare at Goats and Jim Sheridan’s Brothers starring Toby Maguire, Natalie Portman and Jake Gyllenhaal, click here.
For recent LiC favorites now available on DVD click here
For other DVDs available now click here
March 30:
\/ April 6
An Education (*** 1/2). Journo pervs and festival monkeys the world over have been salivating over Carey Mulligan’s turn as Jenny in this 1960s coming of age drama ever since it premiered at Sundance. The thing is, they largely have a point. She’s sparklingly adorable and her performance combined with a couple of thematic wrinkles elevate An Education from what would otherwise be pretty routine stuff. It’s the early 1960s and England is at a turning point between the uptight 1950s and the social turmoil that came in with the Beatles. Trapped between both worlds, 16-year-old Oxford bound Jenny is smarter than all her friends and all the potential boyfriends her age, but she also has a zest for experiencing the wide world outside of her repressed London suburb. At first Oxford seems like the ticket, but along comes David (Peter Sarsgaard), a 30-something bon vivant and man of the world who seems to offer a shortcut to the life she sees herself living. An Education sets up an interesting paradox for young Jenny who is forced to pick between a series of seemingly imperfect options, but then the story veers into a melodramatic twist and a too-neat ending that doesn’t take advantage of the set-up. It’s too bad. An Education could’ve been great. Fine supporting work from Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams, Dominic Cooper and especially Rosamund Pike as a dimwitted material girl.
(Opened: 10/9/09) Trailer
Buy: DVD
Rent
Sherlock Holmes. The lazy marketing for this played into my worst fears about Guy Ritchie making a movie of Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved detective character – basically a modern buddy movie where everyone is wearing Victorian era clothes – but if Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law’s chemistry is anything close to what it should be, this could turn out to be solid holiday fun. Let’s say expectations are modest.
(Opened: 12/25/09) Trailer
Buy: DVD
Rent
April 6:
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (*** 1/2). Nicolas Cage is unhinged in Werner Herzog’s non-sequel to Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult hit Bad Lieutenant, but not as unhinged as I expected. The amusing irony of the film is that Cage’s character – a police lieutenant who descends into a personal hell of prescription drug addiction and worse after he’s injured performing a heroic act – is a decent person motivated by good intentions who ends up doing increasingly bad things to get himself out of a series of unfortunate situations. Neither Cage nor Herzog are playing this with a completely straight face, but it’s not all fun and games either. There’s an earnest message in here too… somewhere. Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Xzibit, Fairuza Balk, Jennifer Coolidge, Brad Dourif and Michael Shannon co-star.
(Opened: 11/20/09) Trailer
DVD
April 13:
Pirate Radio. Retitled and slightly re-edited from its original UK version, Pirate Radio wrangles a great cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and January Jones; a great soundtrack featuring The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Troggs, The Easybeats, The Turtles and Jimi Hendrix; all in the service of the story of a group of renegade DJs who illegally broadcast rock and roll music to the UK in the 1960s. Critical response has been mixed on both sides of the Atlantic, but there are too many good things to ignore this one.
(Opened: 11/13/09)
DVD
April 20:
35 Shots of Rum (****). I caught Claire Denis’ lovely and restrained character study during a busy LA Film Festival and it’s really a movie that deserves to breathe on its own. The plot is feather light as it follows the days and nights of a single father and his grown daughter, but this is one of those terrific films that is more about tone and character than it is about action. It’s the kind of movie that sneaks up on you as you find yourself thinking about it days later. Highly recommended.
(Opened: 9/18/09) Trailer
DVD
Cloud 9 (****). Few people under the age of 60 probably give much thought to the emotional and sex lives of people in their 70s and fewer still are going to be easily convinced to witness such a thing unfolding explicitly before them on the big screen. That’s too bad because they’ll be missing out on one of the more interesting movies to come along in a while. From Germany, Cloud 9 is a moving and at times tender portrayal of a married woman in her late 60s who embarks on a sudden and unexpected love affair with a man in his 70s. There aren’t any revelations here about the workings of the human heart, but it’s a bracing reminder that the heart doesn’t die when you hit 70. The movie faltered a bit for me when the woman ultimately lost my sympathy – not because of her infidelity but because of how she handled it – yet perhaps there’s a lesson in that too. Even with a wealth of life experience behind us, we’re never perfect.
(Opened: 8/14/09) Trailer
DVD
Summer Hours (*****). In short, Olivier Assayas’ lovely and melancholy rumination on the passing of generations was my favorite movie of 2009. It is a sad film but it’s balanced with a measure of hope as a family copes with the demise of their past and the uncertainty of their future as a unit following the death of their mother. Beautiful and bittersweet, it’s a very nearly perfect film. Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling and Jérémie Renier star.
(Opened: 5/15/09) Trailer / Review
DVD
The Lovely Bones (***). Peter Jackson’s flawed but bold attempt to bring Alice Sebold’s difficult to adapt novel to the big screen probably never should’ve been lumped in with the end of year awards bait where it floundered. Saoirse Ronan is terrific as a 14-year-old murdered girl who narrates the story from the in-between as she watches over her family and the killer across the street. A chilling Stanley Tucci meanshile leaves a nasty mark as murderer George Harvey. Jackson captures a kind of swoony teen girl’s romanticism that is anathema to the fanboys who worship at the Jackson altar but The Lovely Bones might appeal to a different audience. Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Michael Imperioli and Susan Sarandon co-star.
(Opened: 12/11/09) Trailer / Review
DVD
The Young Victoria. You wouldn’t think it, but I have an unusually high threshold for historical costume dramas. I even liked The Duchess. Emily Blunt is Queen Victoria, Britain’s longest ruling monarch and the longest reigning queen in history. Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson and Jim Broadbent also star. Reviews were mixed and for a movie that had Oscar’s stink all over it, Victoria got very little play though it did manage a win for costume design.
(Opened: 12/18/09) Trailer
DVD
April 27:
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (****). To say this is the best film Terry Gilliam has done in a decade won’t mean much to anyone who was burned by The Brothers Grimm and/or Tideland, but there it is. This is Gilliam at his most imaginatively exuberant. The story kind of stumbles and threatens to fall apart at every turn, but it just manages to hold together into a satisfying whole if you stick with it. Along the way it’s a celebration of imagination and the power of storytelling bursting with the kind of visual inventiveness Gilliam has made a career out of since his days with Monty Python. Christopher Plummer plays the head of a traveling band of ragged performers. He may hold the power of fantasy and dreams, he may be a charlatan or he might be both. Either way, he’s got an ongoing bet with The Devil (Tom Waits) and the soul of his beautiful daughter (Lily Cole) is at stake. Heath Ledger (in his last role), Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law are… well it’s difficult to describe. You’ll have to see it for yourself and if you’re a fan of Gilliam or the cast, I recommend you do.
(Opened: 12/25/09) Trailer / Review
DVD
Five Minutes of Heaven (****). Based on the true stories of two men caught up on opposite sides of the Irish “troubles” in the 1970s, this film from Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall) imagines what would happen today if the two enemies were to confront each other on a televised interview program long after peace in Ireland has been secured. Liam Neeson plays Alistair Little who, as a 17-year-old member of the Ulster Volunteer Force, murdered Catholic Jim Griffin. James Nesbitt (Bloody Sunday, Match Point) plays Joe Griffin who was 11 years old when he witnessed his brother Jim’s murder. From that night onward, the two men’s lives followed completely different trajectories. Alistair ultimately served 12 years in prison for his crime, repented, paid his debt to society and emerged to forge a successful life for himself. Joe meanwhile never quite recovered. His family was destroyed by the loss and he remained haunted by the guilt he was unable to prevent the murder of his brother. Great performances from Neeson and Nesbitt. Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) co-stars.
(Opened: 8/21/09) Trailer / Review
DVD
It’s Complicated. Meryl Streep has an affair with ex-husband Alec Baldwin. Steve Martin and Lake Bell are caught in the middle as the new boyfriend and the young wife. I try to avoid taking easy shots at movies for which I’m not the target audience (I don’t always succeed, but I try) so I’ll just say this one has a great cast that also includes John Krasinksi, Zoe Kazan, Mary Kay Place and Nora Dunn. Being a Nancy Meyers film, It’s Complicated will get clobbered by critics but do very well at the box office.
(Opened: 12/25/09) Trailer
DVD
May 4:
Tokyo Sonata (****). Best known in the US for his oddly twisted genre pictures like Cure and Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa turns to the domestic drama with this story of an ordinary Japanese family that begins to crumble when the father loses his job. Being Kurosawa, you can expect that the story will take a turn for the strange and it does. At a certain point, Tokyo Sonata takes an unexpected detour and it seems for a while that it’s going to turn into a cinematic train wreck. However, just when you’re about to give up on it, everything clicks into place and the film builds to a haunting, moving and beautiful climax. In the end, Tokyo Sonata ended up as one of my favorite movies of 2009.
(Opened: 3/13/09) Trailer / Review
DVD
Leap Year. When the Irish came up with idea that it was permissible for a woman to propose marriage to a man each Leap Year on February 29th, they had to ask themselves two questions: 1) Why can’t a woman propose marriage every other day of every other year and 2) how long do you suppose it will be before Hollywood turns this into a shitty high concept romantic comedy? There’s no good answer to the former (I’m not even convinced it’s an actual tradition), but the latter question can now be answered with this film starring Amy Adams. After four years waiting for a marriage proposal, Adams follows her boyfriend (Adam Scott) to Dublin where she plans to ask him to marry her on Leap Day. Alas, airlines, weather, mechanical problems and a team of Hollywood screenwriters conspire to keep an entire Emerald Isle between her and her man. Luckily, handsome Matthew Goode (A Single Man, Match Point) is around to help her get from A to B just long enough for her to fall in love with him instead. Either this isn’t very good or Universal has inched it ahead in the calendar to keep it out of the way of that Garry Marshall Valentine’s Day monstrosity coming in February.
(Opened: 1/8/10) Trailer
DVD
May 11:
Daybreakers (**). 10 years into a mysterious plague that turns human beings into vampires, there aren’t enough uninfected people left to supply fresh blood. Those who are left are rounded up and plugged into corporate blood farms while scientists work to find a synthetic substitute. Ethan Hawke plays one of the scientists – himself a reluctant vampire – while Sam Neill plays his creepy corporate boss and Willem Dafoe plays the leader of a band of human resistors who may be the key to a cure for vampirism. Daybreakers deserves credit for bringing a few interesting new ideas to an increasingly played out genre, but the delivery is so flatfooted that the film ends up wasting a talented cast. Suspense is kept to a minimum, scares are almost non-existent and the whole thing is a curiously leaden time filler. Had the brothers spent less time trying to shake up the genre and more time delivering genre thrills, they might’ve ended up with something worth seeing. As it is, it’s stylishly mounted but ultimately empty.
(Opened: 1/8/10) Trailer / Review
DVD
May 18:
/\ May 11
The Messenger (*** 1/2). Ben Foster (3:10 to Yuma) plays a wounded Iraq war veteran who is assigned to the Casualty Notification Office in the final months of his enlistment. A terrific Woody Harrelson shows him the ropes (and was nominated for an Oscar for his troubles) while Samantha Morton gives another complex performance as the wife of a dead soldier Foster becomes interested in. There was enough power in The Messenger just within the scenes where Foster and Harrelson are breaking the bad news to next of kin that it’s too bad writer/director Oren Moverman and his co-writer Allesandro Camon had to try a little too hard to make their point about the cost of war. A lighter touch would’ve been just as moving. Nevertheless, The Messenger is powerful stuff.
(Opened: 11/13/09) Trailer
DVD
(click here for DVDs now available
(For recent LiC favorites now available on DVD click here)
