The A.V. Club - Review

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: April 14, 2010

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Do you like montages, but grow bored with the tedious plot bits between them? Then Pirate Radio is the movie for you. Director Richard Curtis, the one-man British rom-com machine behind the scripts for Four Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill, and the Bridget Jones movies, follows up Love Actually with another spirited ensemble piece, featuring such big talents as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Emma Thompson, and Nick Frost. Most of them play the DJs of Radio Rock, a 1966 pirate radio ship that piped the devil’s music to the British populace from offshore. But the ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: April 7, 2010

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

When it was first announced that Werner Herzog and Nicolas Cage were collaborating on a Bad Lieutenant remake, there was justifiable excitement over the weird, wonderful train-wreck that might ensue. At the same time, pre-fab cult movies rarely deserve actual cult status. But Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (First Look) is a happy exception, an in-name-only remake that gets the most out of Cage’s batshit persona and Herzog’s highly unconventional evocation of the city post-Katrina. Add in “iguana-cam” and the lucky crack-pipe, and here’s a film that lives up to the hype… Writer-director (and sometime ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: March 31, 2010

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

The Guy Ritchie-directed Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros.) is truer to the letter of Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective stories than the spirit. The film throws in a lot of details from Doyle's tales, but the tone is very much that of a big action blockbuster. Thankfully, it's a pretty good blockbuster, thanks to Ritchie's spirited direction (and a toning down of his usual chaotic style) and especially a winning, eccentric performance from Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes… There’s nothing more dangerous than a sequel to bad blockbuster, because the filmmakers inevitably devote themselves to re-bottling ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: March 24, 2010

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Perhaps no film last year radiated more pure joy than Fantastic Mr. Fox (Fox) Wes Anderson’s loving, witty, ferociously verbal adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1970 children’s book about a rakish fox in a battle of wits with a trio of nasty farmers. As the title character, George Clooney delivers a performance of boundless charm and rascally good humor; if the Academy were to add a category for Best Voiceover by a devilishly handsome leading man, he’d be the man to beat… Though generally (and properly) reviled by critics, The Blind Side (Warner Bros.) was the sleeper ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: March 17, 2010

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Twilight mania has become so pervasive that even people who’ve never read Stephenie Meyer’s books or watched the two (so far) movie adaptations may feel like they’re nonetheless hip-deep in the romance between a mopey teen (Kristen Stewart) and a broody vampire (Robert Pattinson). And the warmed-over Romeo And Juliet clichés just heighten that sensation. At least there’s something in movie No. 2, The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Summit) that most people won’t have already seen: the spectacle of Stewart woodenly doing dangerous things in order to provoke hallucinations of the departed Pattinson dourly ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: March 10, 2010

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Once the Best Picture frontrunner for 2010, Jason Reitman’s Up In The Air (Paramount) has faded significantly in the months since its theatrical release. That may be partially due to the sheer dominance of Avatar, or The Hurt Locker’s clean sweep of critics’ guild awards, but it also may speak to the quality of a film that seems more substantive and vital on the surface than it actually is. To be sure, the story of a frequent flier (George Clooney) who makes his living firing people has a lot of resonance in today’s dire economic climate, but ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: March 3, 2010

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0600

The trailer for 2012 (Sony) was built around the film’s disturbing hook: Wouldn’t it be fun to witness a natural catastrophe cracking open the earth, sliding entire major cities into the ocean, and leading to the deaths of almost everyone on the planet? Turns out, watching those same apocalyptic money shots spread out over 158 minutes of boilerplate disaster-movie cheese is more stultifying than offensive. This feels like the end of an unloved subgenre… Spike Jonze’s liberal interpretation of Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are (Warner Bros.) expands Sendak’s simple picture book into a ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: February 24, 2010

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

The miracle of Kurt Eichenwald’s book The Informant is how it turned a seemingly mundane biochemical price-fixing case into a thriller as wild and compulsively readable as any John Grisham or Michael Crichton novel. The exclamation point that writer Scott Burns and director Steven Soderbergh put on their adaptation, The Informant! (Warner Bros.), is just the first indication that it goes one step further, into the realm of high comedy. For the most part, it succeeds overwhelmingly, thanks to a breezy tone and Matt Damon’s wonderful turn as a would-be double-dealer awash in self-delusion… Adapting a sturdy Richard ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: February 17, 2010

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Continuing his charitable quest to save other actors from taking roles from the worst scripts in Hollywood, Gerard Butler stars as a part-righteous/part-psycho vigilante in Law Abiding Citizen (Anchor Bay), a profoundly stupid thriller that plays like Saw gone legit. After his wife and daughter are killed by home invaders, and the local D.A. (Jamie Foxx) cuts a plea deal with one of the murderers, Butler decides to take down the whole justice system, one gimmicky death contraption at a time… The biopic Coco Before Chanel (Sony) has one electrifying scene, when its famed French designer (played by ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: February 10, 2010

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

The Coen brothers have made a habit of alternating between goofball larks and weightier, more personal dramas. True to form, they followed the defiantly silly Burn After Reading with the quietly philosophical black comedy/drama A Serious Man (Universal), a ’60s take on the story of Job that has the curious quality of being simultaneously profound and goofy, serious and smartass. In a star-making turn, theater actor Michael Stuhlbarg carries the film as a good man who goes looking for answers as his world unravels, only to discover that life is one big cosmic joke without a punchline… The title ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: February 3, 2010

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0600

There’s been no shortage of post-apocalyptic visions at the movies lately, but Zombieland (Sony) stands out for the way it offers a few big laughs in the face of undead doom. Much like the shopping-mall utopia of Dawn Of The Dead, the vacant world of Zombieland often becomes a playground for mischief, as the film’s heroes gorge themselves on Hostess Sno Balls and blow away wave after wave of zombies for sport. Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg make a winning team—one brash, the other neurotic—and an inspired cameo provides a big comic highlight… Most romantic comedies ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: January 27, 2010

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Before Michael Jackson’s body had entirely cooled, Sony spent $60 million on rehearsal footage from what would have been his comeback tour, and rushed the hastily assembled documentary Michael Jackson: This Is It (Sony) into theaters. Though it wasn’t quite the box-office phenomenon some industry analysts were expecting, This Is It proved a little more candid and interesting than cynics might have anticipated. It’s still a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie, but it reveals Jackson as a gentle taskmaster who presided over every detail of his concert productions… After spending the 17 years since The Piano ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: January 20, 2010

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

The Invention Of Lying (Warner Bros.) promises greatness with its cast (Ricky Gervais, Louis C.K., Tina Fey, and lots of other big stars in tiny roles) and premise (Gervais’ hapless loser invents lying in an alternate universe where everyone blurts out the first thing that comes to mind), but the film had the misfortune to be merely good. There are high points scattered throughout nevertheless, though the film is nearly ruined by a non-starting romantic subplot about Gervais wooing a horrible, horrible woman played by Jennifer Garner… The writing (and now directing) team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: January 13, 2010

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

When the A.V. Club film writers put together their consensus Top 20 list for 2009, only one title (the No. 1 choice) appeared on all five ballots: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (Summit), which overcame the stigma of Iraq War docudramas by offering a stunningly visceral treatment of bomb squads at work. Until a minor subplot surfaces in the late going, the film is an admirably plotless study of the day-to-day tensions and trauma shouldered by men who bravely—and at times recklessly—put themselves in harm’s way… The directorial debut of The Wrestler screenwriter (and former ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: January 6, 2010

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0600

Diablo Cody’s Oscar-winning Juno script announced the first-time screenwriter as a fresh, distinctive new voice, but her disappointing follow-up, Jennifer’s Body (Fox), suggests that Juno’s strengths weren’t necessarily in its clever-for-its-own-sake dialogue. Divorced from the fundamentals of character development and coherent themes, the Cody-isms in Jennifer’s Body are deeply annoying, tied to a familiar high-school-as-horror metaphor and a weaker take on the femme lycanthropy of Ginger Snaps. It doesn’t help that the two leads, Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried, can’t handle the language as adeptly as Ellen Page, but even Page would have ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: December 23, 2009

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

With Avatar currently stampeding into theaters, the DVD release of the late-summer science-fiction/action sleeper District 9 (Sony) couldn’t be better timed; it serves as a superior example of the humans-as-the-real-enemy alien- invasion story, and illustrates how to slip political metaphors into escapist genre fare. It’s also nimbler and wittier, using a faux-documentary approach to track the contentious relationship between humans and the giant cricket-like creatures they intend to expel from a Johannesburg slum. In a fine lead turn, first-time actor Sharlto Copley plays the mid-level functionary tasked with serving up the eviction notices… The closest thing to ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: December 16, 2009

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

The Hangover (Warner Bros.) was the breakout comedy hit of the summer, a broad ensemble farce in the Old School vein that successfully updated the raunchy Bachelor Party model with some smarts, a strong ensemble cast, and some light absurdist touches. But as gratifying as it was to see alt-comedians like Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis become potential stars of tomorrow, the film is fundamentally set up to get less funny as it goes along. The initial scene of four hard-partying bachelors waking up in Las Vegas with a baby, a tiger, and a groomsman with a tooth missing is ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: December 9, 2009

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0600

A warm-up for the big finale—to be divided into two separate films, for maximum profit—the sixth entry in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (Warner Bros.) is a movie in limbo, a necessary tone-setter for bigger things to come. It’s all buildup, backstory, and plot sidebars signifying nothing, but it’s a mighty artful nothing, an ominous mood piece that finds Harry trying to draw out information about his arch-nemesis Voldemort. The unhurried, deliberate pace is a stark reminder of how far the series has come since the bright, kid-friendly mayhem of Chris ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: November 18, 2009

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

An awful lot in J.J. Abrams’ re-imagining Star Trek (Paramount) doesn’t make much sense, starting with the way smug, show-offy asshole James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) hops over an entire military hierarchy to become captain of the starship Enterprise. But that’s par for the course in this energetic Trek, which is more interested in sleek, pretty actors and heady action than in the well-intentioned but sometimes clunky humanist preaching of Treks gone by. It isn’t always palatable or believable, but it’s almost always exciting… After Borat transformed Sacha Baron Cohen from pay-cable cult hero ...

DVD: Review: DVDs In Brief: November 11, 2009

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600

It’s frustrating to watch Disney’s increasingly mercenary tactics for wringing money out of its dutiful audience, which is already expressing outrage over the way Up (Buena Vista) is being released: The latest CGI film from hit factory Pixar (Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, etc.) is available on DVD in a standard-issue $20 disc or deluxe two-disc $30 edition (the extra $10 mostly gets you a digital copy to download onto portable media), but Blu-ray fans will have to cough up a whopping $45 for a four-disc edition. (Weirdly, one of those discs is just the film again ...