The DVD Shelf
A chronological list of DVD releases by week. As always, recommended movies are underlined and all ratings are out of 5 stars.
(Next week: Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo, Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are, Paul Giamatti in Cold Souls and Roland Emmerich’s 2012)
(Pre-order: George Clooney in Up in the Air, multiple Oscar nominee Precious, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side, Robert Downey Jr. in Sherlock Holmes, Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, LiC favorite Summer Hours, Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones; Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus; Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin in It’s Complicated and more)
(LiC Recommends: Recent LiC favorites now available on DVD)
Available now:
\/ Feb. 16
(recommended movies underlined where appropriate. All ratings out of 5 stars)
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The Informant! (*** 1/2). Based on a true story, Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! stars Matt Damon as Mark Whitacre, an executive at agricultural giant ADM who turns whistle blower on his company’s price fixing scheme to cover up his own embezzling operation. Is the kind of movie that delivers smart chuckles rather than belly laughs. Matt Damon gives a great comic performance and the bits involve his bizarre running internal monologue. All in all, this is a Soderbergh quicky that offers some light entertainment with a dark streak to it. Terrific score from Marvin Hamlisch. Scott Bakula and Melanie Lynskey also star.
(Opened: 9/18/09) Trailer |
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The Damned United (****). Going in, I didn’t have a great deal of interest in the ’60s-’70s UK football milieu of The Damned United, but in the end it’s really more of a character study about two partners and lifelong friends played by Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall. Sheen is Brian Clough, the controversial young manager who inherits the job coaching Leeds United when their legendary coach Don Revie (Colin Montgomery) moves on to guide the English national team. Spall is Peter Taylor, Clough’s right hand man and the real brains behind the operation. Of course the impetuous Clough clashes with the culture established by Revie and his ego doesn’t let him see how important Taylor is to him. It’s a recipe for disaster, but will he manage to find success? You can probably figure he will, but you’ll have to see it for yourself to find out. I recommend you do.
(Opened: 10/9/09) Trailer |
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The End of the Line (*** 1/2). Narrated by Ted Danson, The End of the Line is a disturbing rejoinder to the notion that the world’s oceans are an endless source of abundance. In fact, according to the numerous scientists featured in the film, fish stocks the world over will collapse in 40 to 50 years if they continue to be depleted at the current rates. The exact time frame is debatable, but what’s clear is that since the rise of factory fishing in the 1950s, we’ve been taking fish out of the ocean faster than they can be replaced. Some species, like cod off of Newfoundland, have already effectively disappeared due to over fishing. Unlike The Cove which relies on the slaughter of a revered creature as an emotional hook in lieu of heavy facts, The End of the Line admittedly comes across as a bit pedantic at times. While the simple solutions it offers at the end hardly seem enough to turn back the apocalyptic doom and gloom scenario it has carefully laid out, it’s still a useful wakeup call and a first step to alerting people to a problem they might not be aware of.
(Opened: 6/19/09) Trailer |
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Flame & Citron (**** 1/2). Denmark’s World War II thriller about the anti-Nazi resistance in Copenhagen was an LiC Top 10 favorite of 2009. Thure Lindhardt and Mads Mikkelson both deliver terrific performances as two real life freedom fighters codenamed Flame and Citron. The deeper they get into the gray area between the good guys and the bad guys, the harder it is to tell which is which. Suspenseful and at times dryly humorous this moodily photographed little number is highly recommended. The Flame & Citron Blu-ray has been available overseas for some time, but now it’s available in the US in a standard version.
(Opened: 7/31/09) Trailer |
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The Box. Richard Kelly gets one more chance to prove the cult success of Donnie Darko wasn’t a fluke. Southland Tales didn’t get the job done, but will this glorified Twilight Zone episode? Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are an ordinary married couple who are presented with a mysterious box by a disfigured stranger (Frank Langella). He tells them that pressing a button inside the box will earn them 1 million dollars while simultaneously causing the death of someone they don’t know.
(Opened: 11/6/09) Trailer |
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Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant. We’re up to our asses in vampires. These ones are from Darren Shan’s popular series of teen fantasy-adventure novels. A suburban 16-year-old falls in with a traveling freak show of vampires, wolfmen and whatnot and gets involved in an old conflict between two warring vampire clans.
(Opened: 10/23/09) Trailer |
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Everybody’s Fine. Remember the good old days when Robert De Niro’s involvement in a movie made it a must-see? Yeah, I barely do either. Everybody’s Fine is a remake of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Stanno Tutti Bene. De Niro plays a widower who embarks on a cross-country quest to reconnect with his grown children. The trailer looked pretty unbearable, but you never know. On the bright side, at least it’s not another Focker movie. Also, Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale and Drew Barrymore play the kids. See me struggling to find the sliver lining?
(Opened: 12/4/09) Trailer |
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The September Issue. Documentary about legendary Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour.
(Opened: 8/28/09) Trailer |
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Sorority Row. It’s I Know What You Did Last Semester at Theta-Pi when a sorority prank misfires killing one of the sisters. After graduation, the co-ed’s coldly calculated plan to sweep the accident under the carpet goes haywire when a killer turns up and starts bumping off bimbettes one-by-one.
(Opened: 9/11/09) Trailer |
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$9.99. Tatia Rosenthal’s episodic stop-motion animated tale based on the short stories of Etgar Keret (Jellyfish) promises to offer just less than $10 worth of knowledge about the meaning of life. An awards-qualifying run in Los Angeles in December 2008 earned the film less than $10 worth of Oscars. Anthony Lapaglia and Geoffrey Rush lend their voices to this tale of young man who purchases a book promising answers to the meaning of life for just $9.99.
(Opened: 12/12/08) Trailer |
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Alexander the Last. Indie favorite Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes the Stairs) turns his sights on the troubles of a young marriage. Jess Weixler (Teeth), Justin Rice, Barlow Jacobs (Shotgun Stories), Josh Hamilton (Kicking and Screaming) and Jane Adams (Happiness) star.
(Opened: 3/14/09) Trailer |
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Breakfast with Scot. If equality means everyone gets their own lame family comedies, here’s one for the gay community. A sportscaster (Tom Cavanagh) and his lawyer boyfriend (Ben Shenkman) have their blissful domestic lives turned upside down when they take temporary custody of Scot (Noah Bernett), an 11 year old who shows all the signs of growing into a flamboyantly gay young man himself.
(Opened: 10/10/08) Trailer |
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Captain Abu Raed (***). Winner of the World Cinema Audience award at Sundance in 2008 and a Best Director award for Amin Matalqa at the Seattle International Film Festival the same year, Captain Abu Raed is the kind of audience pleaser that my mom would’ve loved. That’s a good thing and a not-so-good thing depending on your taste. She was a sucker for simple films about big-hearted people that play to the emotions even if they were a little too schmaltzy for their own good. Nadim Sawalha plays an airport janitor with a tragic past. When he returns home to his working class neighborhood one evening wearing a captain’s hat he has found, the children mistake him for a real pilot. He plays along and regales them with stories of places he’s only read about in books. One of the kids is abused by his father and another is put to work selling candy on the street instead of sent to school. Meanwhile, Abu Raed befriends a pretty pilot whose father worries that she’s still unmarried. Being the gentle sort, Abu Raed insinuates himself into each situation in an attempt to make it better. |
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Dead Snow. In this Norwegian horror-comedy, eight horny med students on a Norwegian ski trip are beset by frozen Nazi zombies. “Frozen Nazi zombies…I hate these guys.”
(Opened: 6/19/09) Trailer |
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Motherhood. Revolving around a 6-year-old’s birthday party, Motherhood crams all the horrors of being a Manhattan mom into a single day to comic effect. Uma Thurman is that mom. Anthony Edwards is her husband.
(Opened: 10/23/09) Trailer |
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The Vicious Kind. When Adam Scott nabbed an Indie Spirit nomination recently for his lead performance in the comedy drama The Vicious Kind, most people scratched their heads and asked “The Vicious what??” Now you can find out. Scott plays a misanthrope estranged from his family who returns home for a rare Thanksgiving where he becomes obsessed with his younger brother’s new girlfriend (Brittany Snow). Convinced she’s going to destroy his brother, he also finds himself attracted to her.
(Opened: 12/11/09) Trailer |
