Category: DVD/BLU-RAY

I suppose the classic image of a grindhouse film is something along the lines of a bug-eyed man splattered with blood holding a knife over a half-naked woman. It’s an honest summation of the cinematic culture, but there’s an entire history here worth an examination. Elijah Drenner’s “American Grindhouse” traces the history, excesses, and glory of unsavory cinema, providing a magnificent education in the process, communicating the nuances and traditions of a brand often disregarded as forgettable schlock.

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I’d like to think that when Melissa Leo won the Academy Award this year for her supporting work in “The Fighter,” she was thinking, “Gee, the only thing that could make 2011 sweeter would be the hasty DVD release of a 1984 exploitation film I did for Roger Corman when I was brand new to the business.” Melissa Leo, I have wonderful news for you.

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The 1987 comedy “Overboard” is an incredible study of star power, displaying how a few seasoned professionals can take a limp script and turn it into something unremarkable, yet completely palatable. Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are truly the only reasons to keep watching this otherwise flaccid comedy, which feels static when it should zing and oppressive when it should soar.

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“Paul” should be a simple wacky sci-fi comedy filled with pot humor, unrelenting profanity, gay panic, and dry Brit humor. Instead, the film is primarily constructed as a valentine to the fantasy genre, showing more interest dreaming up inside movie references than spewing one-liners. “Paul” is pure geek bait, an oasis of unadulterated affection for all things sci-fi. The movie bleeds green. Thankfully, in the care of screenwriters/stars Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, the picture casts an amusing intergalactic spell, borrowing a Spielbergian concept and filling it with all sorts of enjoyable absurdity and R-rated mischief.

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With Tyler Perry spending his precious time driving his most popular character into the ground to sustain a hold on African-American entertainment dollars, burgeoning movie mogul T.D. Jakes (“Not Easily Broken”) has selected a softer approach for entertainment dominance, taking on the trials of family and marriage with the charming feature, “Jumping the Broom.”

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A blazing WWII farce, “Jackboots on Whitehall” is acted out entirely by a group of puppets, which has to be every film director’s dream. Blending the alternate history rhythms of “Inglourious Basterds” with the freewheeling cartoon impulses of “Team America,” the picture is a refreshing offering of comedic insanity. The movie tuckers out quickly, but when its mix of chaos and slapstick comes together, it makes for a highly enjoyable curiosity.

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The idea of a motion picture built around the rehabilitation efforts of a chirpy teen, with pronounced Christian messages to boot, doesn’t exactly promise a searing portrait of determination at the edge of catastrophe. Thankfully, “Soul Surfer” has an astonishing event to work with, dramatizing the incredible true story of Bethany Hamilton, a 13-year-old girl who faced an unimaginable test of survival, surrounded by her loving family, her faith, and tasty waves beckoning the surfer girl back to the spot of her greatest misfortune.

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“Take Me Home Tonight” has endured a bumpy ride on its way to theatrical distribution. Shot nearly four years ago, this comedy has been shoved around the release schedule, handled gingerly by studios that didn’t exactly know what to do with a comedy aimed at twentysomethings about the 1980s. Their hesitance is understandable, with the feature trapped between traditional coming-of-age sympathy and brazen nostalgia, presumably aimed at a generation that’s stopped going to the movies.

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A political thriller mixing an unsettling cocktail of emotional speeds, 1988’s “To Kill a Priest” successfully translates broad political situations and tight psychological spaces. Although it dissolves in the end, the tragic story of Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko makes for a surprisingly gripping statement on influence and resolve, brought vividly to life by two commanding and fairly odd performances from Ed Harris and Christopher Lambert.

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A more accurate title for “Peep World” would be “Famous People Flailing.” Here’s a wholly unpleasant dramedy, generally uneven and reckless, from director Barry Blaustein, who was last seen helming 2005’s “The Ringer.” You remember, the Johnny Knoxville comedy about the Special Olympics? Well, the filmmaker’s sense of humor hasn’t improved much in the intervening years, with his latest effort an unfinished, unlikable take on familial depression and friction.

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“Waking Madison” appears as though it emerges from a heartfelt place of concern, yet the execution of this psychological drama is thoroughly unremarkable, consumed with ambiguity and obvious mood while its critical sense of humanity is pushed aside for low-budget dreamscape showboating. Writer/director Katherine Brooks has passion, but her feel for storytelling is seriously tangled.

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For “House of the Rising Sun” to work as a thriller, it needed a new cast, a fresh script, and a director with a little more interest in properly establishing characters. Muddled and frequently comatose, the picture yearns to be a turbulent ride of crooks and cops, yet it never rises to the occasion, generating a feeble mystery sold by a cast of brutes trying to pass themselves off as actors.

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Movies based on video games always face an impossible challenge of adaptation, especially anything pulled from the 1990s, when gaming was just starting to showing interest in expansive narratives and complex characterizations. “Tekken” is a failure on many levels, but it does make a plucky attempt to replicate the flippy-floppy nature of the fighting elements, creating a limb-snapping effort of escapism surrounded by bland writing and sleepy performances.

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Personally, I harbor no romantic feelings for the 1981 Dudley Moore sleeper smash, “Arthur.” Distractingly clunky, the feature is best appreciated as a film of its time, when a mainstream comedy could be built around the antics of monstrous alcoholic and still be regarded as adorable. It’s strange to be confronted with a remake of such beloved material, which still holds to a clownish boozehound mentality to acquire laughs, though much of the overt foam has been shaved away out of respect for the disease. Then again, Moore made “Arthur 2: On the Rocks,” so perhaps the character isn’t as precious as I recall. Remake away, boys.

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“Dawning” is an exhaustively disappointing film. Co-writer/director Gregg Holtgrew appears to have his heart in the right place, staging a psychological thriller in the middle of Northern Minnesota woods, where isolation provides a sinister backdrop to vague evildoing. Unfortunately, there’s little terror within the picture, which spends too much time exploring clichéd characters, skipping fingernail-chewing suspense to cover tedious, repetitive domestic matters.

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2007’s “Rec” was a marvel of a horror film, portraying piercing POV scares with an unreal strain of screen anxiety, shaping a monumental genre exercise in sheer cinematic terror. Of course, it was quickly dumbed down into an excretal American remake titled “Quarantine,” but directors Paco Plaza and Jaume Balaguero weren’t content to let the story die there. “Rec 2” shouldn’t logically work, but the raw creativity of the filmmakers lights up the screen, reworking the premise of handheld horror into a fierce, raging mix of “Aliens” and “The Exorcist.”

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“Miral” is a film of many themes, characters, and stories, though it desires to be a singular vision of history. Chaotically arranged by director Julian Schnabel, the film is an uninvolving mess, though a thoughtfully composed jumble of emotions and time periods ambitiously reaching for a distressing screen poeticism it never achieves.

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“13 Assassins” is like watching a protracted chess game with an exquisite final move. It’s a samurai tale of allegiances and vengeance, and while its violent, blood-spattered path is engrossing, the film makes a considerable effort to slow cook the set-up, making the road to death’s door something significant, moving away from empty stylistics to stage a film of icy warrior valor.

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It’s difficult to take Nicolas Cage seriously these days. The former madman has been forced into a series of paycheck gigs for reasons obvious to anyone enjoying access to the internet, with “Season of the Witch” a solid representation of Cage’s new career direction. Unchallenged and over-wigged, the actor is merely biding his time with this serving of horror hooey, obviously more interested in hearing the sweet sound of “cut!” than trying to make a tepid screenplay shuffle with restless energy Cage is more than capable of summoning. The material needed his special sauce. Instead, Cage barely raises an eyebrow.

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“The Warrior’s Way” is an odd one. Wedged somewhere between the furious imaginations of Tsui Hark and Sergio Leone, the feature is an idiosyncratic ode to pure screen heroism thwarted by the junky instincts of its untested writer/director, Sngmoo Lee. I was never outright bored by the picture, but there’s much to jeer in this overwrought action film, which spends so much time reminding the audience of its artificiality, it forgets to have some spaghetti western fun with the limitless potential of CGI.

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