Category Archives: DVD/Blu-Ray

Piranha 3D (2010)

Posted on August 23, 2010 | 1 comment

3D film is a gimmick.  It doesn’t contribute in any regard other than the visual experience, and despite all the current hype, it’s a one-trick pony that seems to have been mostly explored.  That’s not to say everything has been done, but ultimately the 3D experience has only so much to offer.  With this in mind I was actually excited by the prospect of Piranha 3D. If 3D film is a purely visual device with essentially zero regard for story, then it stands to reason that the perfect platform for this technology is a film like Piranha; an over-the-top celebration of boobs and blood.  Much like pornography the film is quite apparently unconcerned with story, doing just enough to get you to the next massacre.  I was eager to see how this would play out and came into the film with high hopes.  Much like the endless hotties dancing on boats, those hopes got really drunk, took off their tops and were promptly eaten alive.

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Toy Story (1995)

Posted on August 18, 2010 | 1 comment

It’s ironic how entirely nostalgic it is viewing Toy Story for the first time in a decade.  Though I suppose that nostalgia shouldn’t surprise me, as nearly any Disney title awakens vivid memories of childhood and the wonder of animated cinema.  Obviously the world of Disney pre-Pixar is iconic, particularly for those of us lucky enough to grow up during their late 80s/early 90s renaissance.  My particular favorite was Aladdin, but I’ve never been picky, and would gladly sit through a viewing of The Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. Heck, I’d even watch Pocahontas. Still, while Disney’s astounding talent for inserting themselves into childhood is something I’m grateful for, it’s only part of what makes my adult viewing of Toy Story ironic.  The more relevant aspect of that irony is the reality that Toy Story is a movie about nostalgia.  Or at the very least it’s a movie that recognizes the heft of it.  Memories of childhood are either beautiful or awful, and rarely of the mundane; what trauma or drama is there in the tedium of childhood?  Though we catch only glimpses of the story from adolescent Andy’s perspective, the one requirement for enjoying this film is to have been that age, and to have loved those toys.  Perhaps one of Disney’s, Pixar’s and director John Lasseter‘s most charming notions is imagining that those toys could love you back.

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Eat Pray Love (2010)

Posted on August 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

I never read Eat Pray Love.  It never seemed like a book written for me.  Vaguely, my understanding of the novel was as one written by a woman and for women.  A self-help memoir for the divorced.  Now that I’ve seen the book’s celluloid abridgement my notions have been, to an extent altered.  Not entirely, for this is still a story about mending a broken heart and Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) surely begins that process with the old standby of eating mass quantities of food.  But to say my vague awareness of this incredibly popular book was on point would discount the deeper ideas present in this story.  Gilbert (with help from director and screenwriter Ryan Murphy) isn’t just moaning about her losses.  She’s giving an account of an adventure she had; a journey to the center of her soul.  It’s not perfect, with moments of cloying joy that don’t feel real enough, but it’s all true, and it represents a search as eternal as any.  Whether recently divorced or recently preadolescent, we are all of us looking for our place in the world, and we are all of us praying that it will bring with it some love.

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The A-Team (2010)

Posted on June 13, 2010 | Leave a comment

I never watched the show.  Mr. T was the only aspect that seemed at all intriguing, and he just wasn’t enough to pull me.  And the chafing part of watching The A-Team in theaters is how much of a problem that became.  Without an understanding, without an awareness of the minor characters and the relationships and the dated sense of humor, this film becomes work.  There’s an ever-present potential for reference, which means the under prepared viewer is never able to settle down and simply have an experience.  An experience which, besides it’s desperate obligation to the source, is mostly scrambled and frenetic.  Like most of the summer movies you’ve ever seen, the first priority of The A-Team is to bombard you with action.  I’m not sure what it is about these productions that precludes the possibility of spectacular action AND an enjoyable story.  Certainly it’s not as though we’ve never seen it before (A couple Mission Impossible movies, a few James Bond‘s, the Bourne flicks, etc.), but whatever the logic, The A-Team is definitively just one piece of the pie, ghosting everything else and smirking, as it inevitably and perhaps appropriately, makes stupid amounts of money.

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Splice (2010)

Posted on June 6, 2010 | 1 comment

Mostly I felt uncomfortable during Splice. I wrung my hands a lot and rubbed my eyes; the kind of anxious fiddling that should spell trouble for a film.  The thing is though, I’m not sure how much of my discomfort was intended by the filmmakers, and how much was just a product of poor decision making.  On one hand, Splice is intentionally brimming with disconcerting genetic science, it’s hazy morality and ghastly creatures tantalizing.  On the other, it’s lousy with unlikeable characters, maddening choices and awkward exchanges.  Trying to gauge what’s intended and what isn’t can be taxing to say the least, which shouldn’t necessarily guide judgment.   But it does, and that inconsistency, coupled with the assumption that I probably wouldn’t like the filmmakers all that much, means an unstable experience that’s more down then up.

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Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985)

Posted on June 3, 2010 | 2 comments

Growing up, I watched what can only be called an excessive amount of television.  I wasn’t a critical viewer by any means, though there were certain shows I recognized as distinct.  While any number of kid’s shows are quite apparently written with their primary audience in mind, there’s that special neighborhood of children’s programming that bridges the gap between kids and adults.  Growing up it was shows like Rocco’s Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy, and perhaps the paramount example of walking that tightrope, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Though the bizarre and shamefully over dramatized Paul Reubens porno theater incident relegated the man and his show to some sleazy back alley of my mind for a few years, adulthood has shed a little more light on the reality and I can thankfully appreciate Pee-Wee again.  The real life cartoon character.  The technicolor man child.  The adult who somehow established precisely the life and lifestyle I envisioned for myself as a seven-year-old sugar fiend.

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MacGruber (2010)

Posted on May 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m torn with MacGruber.  On one hand I did my fair share of laughing.  It’s ridiculous and silly and you get to see Ryan Phillipe put a piece of celery in his butt.  On the other hand it’s yet another SNL extenda-sketch with very little consistency, continuity, or rhythm.  There are hilarious moments and stupid moments, and it’s hard to say which way the scale shifts.  I can see a lot of people walking out of the theater perfectly happy with their experience.  Certainly the conversations I’ve had suggest low expectations; all most folks are looking for are some hard laughs, and the film has it’s fair share.  But the experience of MacGruber seems a little empty.  It’s like cereal without milk.  Still good, but you’re pretty aware that something’s missing.

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Iron Man II (2010)

Posted on May 10, 2010 | 1 comment

Here’s what I’m going to do: In honor of this being an Iron Man II review, I’m going to break it down into two parts: My general opinions of the film and my thoughts on the incredibly frustrating Terrence Howard/Don Cheadle fiasco.  The first is important to you, while the second is mostly important to me.  You’ll read it anyway.

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Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

Posted on May 9, 2010 | Leave a comment

Whatever happened to movies like Psycho and The Birds?  Alfred Hitchcock is lauded as one of the horror/thriller genre’s most significant forebears, yet there seem to be no attempts made by modern day Hollywood to recapture his unique approach.  These films were effecting in their lack of blood and guts, yet somehow the genre has come to entirely ignore that concept, leaving us with a trend of gory one-upmanship.  Scary movies no longer leave anything to the imagination (unless the MPAA insists on it), and the supposed thrill that an audience gets from seeing so much human destruction takes utter precedence over the kinds of subtleties Hitchcock tended so masterfully. Nightmare on Elm Street lives safely in this trend; an absurd, callow, unoriginal assemblage of grisly vignettes with no obligation to story or plot or character development or, well, anything that might make a movie worth your nine bucks.  To put it another way: I want my nine bucks back.

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Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Posted on May 5, 2010 | 2 comments

The American Film Institute lists Bonnie and Clyde at number 5 on their list of the top ten gangster films of all time, and 42 on their “100 Years…100 Movies” collection.  IMDb holds it at 218 on their top five hundred.  For the older film generation this will come as no surprise.  Bonnie and Clyde‘s release was loud and unforgettable, and represented a jump to the “New Hollywood.”  Violence and sex were no longer suggestions, and the previously established style of filmmaking was beginning to unravel.  In hindsight the film still distinguishes itself from it’s peers, along with The Graduate, a fellow Best Picture nominee from that year.  But the unfortunate truth of Bonnie and Clyde‘s place in modern day cinema is it’s senescence.  The film simply hasn’t aged well.  It’s legacy lives in it’s forward momentum, and less and less in it’s quality.  It glimpses at things to come, but is by no means an example of transitional perfection.  A brave film that comes from a time where progress was as significant as caliber.

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