| |
The Orphanage
BD - Belén Rueda, whom you
might remember as Julia in Alejandro Amenábar's Mar Adentro, is
Laura. This is the first time she has had to carry a film, and
carry it she does. At one point her character is asked her age.
I think she says 33, or something close to that. Rueda is
actually 10 years older and looks it. I remember thinking that
these Spaniards really live life – they don't hide their years
or their life experience on the faces. Laura should look ten
years older for all she has been through and is about to go
through. She won all kinds of acting awards for her performance
in this film, and justly deserved. It's just the sort of role
the Academy usually eats up: pained, angry, loving, sensitive,
frightened and brave all at once and by turns. Bravo!
Blu-ray Release Date: April 22nd,
2008
The Great Dictator
BD - Chaplin conceived and
filmed "The Great Dictator" during a period when an
accommodation with Hitler was still thought possible in some
quarters; indeed, he must have been filming when Neville
Chamberlain went to Munich. But Chaplin himself had no such
optimism, and his portrait of Adenoid Hynkel, dictator of
Tomania, was among the first declarations of war on Hitler. The
film also prophesied the persecution of the Jews, and the scenes
of storm troopers terrorizing the Ghetto were thought at the
time to go too far. What a sad joke that seems today.
Blu-ray Release Date: May 6th, 2010
The Vengeance Trilogy - The
ultimate collection of three films by acclaimed Korean director
Chan-wook Park that includes SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE,
OLDBOY, and LADY VENGEANCE, 3 of Tartan s all-time
top releases. DVD Release Date: March 16th, 2010
The Royal Tramp Collection
- Both film's mostly center around a conman character named Wei
Siu Bo, who is flawlessly portrayed by Stephen Chow (Shaolin
Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle). The most enjoyable aspect of these
film's is watching the Wei Siu Bo overcome all the obstacles
which befall him. Besides the Wei Siu Bo there are a wide
variety of colorful characters who populate both film's like one
of the Emperor's advisers who pretends to be blind and a traitor
general who is only vulnerable if you hit him in his eyes or
groin. DVD Release Date: February 12th, 2008
Razor's Ring - While on his
morning jog, businessman Scott (Wayne Casey) is abducted at
gunpoint by white trash criminals Razor (Paul Schilens) and
Julie (Lisa Wharton). When Julie shoots a cop and Razor has to
finish him off, Scott panics and there is a struggle over a gun
which causes the car to run over a man on a family picnic. The
family of the dead man pull the three from the car and beat them
before taking them back to their home for matriarch Red (AnnieScott
Rogers) to decide on their fate. Red decides to hold them for a
while and tells them she will let them go one at a time so as
not to arouse suspicion. In the meantime, she and the family
subject them to further abuse while making them toil on their
farm. When it seems that Razor and Julie have been let go, Scott
is hopeful that he will be released too until they invite him up
for dinner and he finds Razor's ring in the food. Realizing that
the family are cannibals, Scott knows he must get away before he
becomes the main course. DVD Release Date: May 3rd, 2010
Armageddon
BD - Well, Armageddon
worked for this lab rat. The electrodes were cannily placed, the
jolts administered at regular intervals. Along with the rest of
the audience, I jumped when I was meant to jump, laughed when I
was meant to laugh, and swallowed a lump in my throat when I was
meant to feel moved. It's true, little irritants kept creeping
in. It gets harder and harder to like Affleck, especially when
he plays dumb guys by putting every line in the same generic,
working-Joe italics. Liv Tyler is a lollipop for the eyes but
doesn't speak, dress, or move like someone raised on a deep-sea
oil derrick. Blu-ray Release
date: April 27th, 2010
Apollo 13
BD - Howard doesn't soar to
the satirical heights of The Right Stuff, Philip
Kaufman's film of the Tom Wolfe best seller about the space
program. But his view is cleareyed. The public grew cynical
about the space program when the government used it as a costly
political PR tool, and boredom set in after Neil Armstrong
walked on the moon in 1969. Boredom was never in the picture for
those who risked their lives exploring a dream. In honoring a
failed mission, Apollo 13 celebrates the rebel part of the
American character that won't accept boundaries.
Blu-ray Release date: April 13th,
2010
Traffic
BD - Intertwining vignettes
frame this tale of America's escalating War on Drugs. Ohio
Supreme Court judge Robert Wakefield has been appointed the
nation's Drug Czar, his new position made more daunting by the
discovery that his teenage daughter Caroline is a heroin addict.
Meanwhile, DEA agents Montel Gordon and Ray Castro are pursuing
Helena Ayala, wife of jailed kingpin Carlos Ayala, as she seeks
to the control the business that her husband had kept hidden
from her. South of the Border, duplicitous local constable
Javier Rodriguez is fighting the battle with his own jaded,
questionable ethical code. Blu-ray
Release Date: April 27th, 2010
Two Evil Eyes - A Double
Dose of Terror from the Directors of DAWN OF THE DEAD and
SUSPIRIA - The masters of modern horror - George Romero
and Dario Argento - bring you an unprecedented pair of shockers
inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. In Romero's "The Facts
In The Case Of Mr. Valdemar," a conniving wife (Adrienne Barbeau
of THE FOG) and her lover use a hypnotic trance to
embezzle a fortune from her dying husband, only to receive some
chilling surprises from beyond the grave. Then in Argento's "The
Black Cat," a deranged crime scene photographer (Harvey Keitel
of RESERVOIR DOGS) is driven to brutal acts of madness
and murder by his girlfriend's new pet. But will this cunning
feline deliver a final sickening twist of its own? DVD
Release Date: April 26th, 2010
In the Electric Mist
BD - The movie, which will
first see the light of U.S. distribution a week or so before its
release on DVD, is based on the novel "In the Electric Mist
with Confederate Dead" by James Lee Burke - a much better
title by the way – makes you wonder why it wasn't used. Bertrand
Tavernier's film is beautifully photographed by Bruno de Keyzer
and urgently and flavorfully scored (Marco Beltrami). Louisiana
locales convey a sense of time standing still. Tommy Lee Jones,
echoing a too-familiar role, plays veteran detective Dave
Robicheaux, a recovering alcoholic with a penchant for dialogue
with a long dead Confederate general (Levon Holm). When the
40-year old remains of a black man, evidently shot while still
in chains, are unearthed by Katrina, Robideaux asks if the
cultural climate of Reconstruction is still alive in the South.
UK Blu-ray Release Date:
February 8th, 2010
The Lovely Bones
BD - “The Lovely Bones,”
Alice Sebold’s 2002 best seller, now a film directed by Peter
Jackson, stands out as a singularly bold and complex treatment
of this grim and apparently inexhaustible theme. In spite of the
horrific act at the center of the story — the rape, murder and
dismemberment of a 14-year-old girl — the novel is not
depressing or assaultive but rather, somewhat perversely, warm,
hopeful and even occasionally funny.
Blu-ray Release date: April 20th, 2010
Dune
BD - Even more than most of David Lynch's
deliberately bizarre and idiosyncratic movies, Dune is a
"love-it-or-hate-it" affair. An ambitious, epic, utterly
mind-boggling--and, let's admit it, all-out weird--adaptation of
Frank Herbert's classic science fiction novel, Dune remains one
of the most controversial films in the director's exceedingly
provocative career. The story (if Dune can be said to
have just one story) is complex and convoluted in the epic
tradition; it has something to do with political intrigue and a
planet that is home to a precious spice and gigantic sand worms.
Blu-ray Release date: April
27th, 2010
Cocoon
BD - The story follows two
groups of characters: four couples at a Florida Retirement
Community and a quartet of aliens dressed in human skins who
have returned to Earth to resuscitate friends left here in
cocoons 10,000 years ago. The common point between the two
groups is the indoor swimming pool at a house a short walk away
from the retirement home where three of their residents (Wilfred
Brimley, Hume Cronyn and Don Ameche) sneak in for a swim every
now and then. Blu-ray Release
date: April 6th, 2010
The Monster Squad
BD - Seventh-grade horror
fanatics come to the rescue when their town is invaded by
Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and
the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Released in 1987, this
kiddie comedy has accumulated a sufficient glaze of nostalgia to
win a 20th-anniversary DVD package. But as a former
seventh-grade horror fanatic, I was seriously put off by it:
even a burlesque like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
managed to create some sense of genuine menace, yet the monsters
here seem less reminiscent of the Universal classics than of a
Universal Studios tour. Fred Dekker directed a script he cowrote
with Shane Black, who moved on to greener pastures with the
Lethal Weapon series. Blu-ray
Release date: November 24th, 2009
The Red Shoes - The notion
of a pair of pink shoes with a tendency of causing vicious
behavior in and then mutilating the unsuspecting women who put
them on would seem ludicrous on its own if it were not actually
an interesting Asian horror variation on Hans Christian
Andersons' fairy tale including its own grislier aspects (with a
bit of Cornel Woolrich's story "I'm Dangerous Tonight" thrown
in). DVD Release Date: October 24th, 2006
The Thomas Crown Affair
BD - Whereas the 1968 Thomas
Crown was an exercise in style over substance (just ask Director
Norman Jewison who admits as much on the DVD commentary), the
1999 version of the story is a riff on the old "Shell Game," a
game that extends beyond the question of who's got the Monet
(Monet!) to who is behind the mask. It is a question, posed in
terms of Trust and Control, deliberated in the film's opening
scene between Crown (a wry and very pleased with himself Pierce
Brosnan) and his therapist (Faye Dunaway – a nice touch). It is
a question that reverberates right through to the final line of
the movie. Blu-ray Release date:
April 6th, 2010
A Walk With Love and Death
- Virtually every scene in "A Walk With Love and Death"
demonstrates a concern for careful visual composition, muted
colors, dense and lovely landscapes, striking juxtapositions of
actors. Such attention to handsome presentation, the curse of
many John Huston movies, works well in this instance not only
because the film contrasts the beautiful world with the horror
men make of it but also because the world's beauty supports,
explains, but ultimately fails the two lovers. DVD Release
Date: May 26th, 2008
The Leopard
BD - Italian director
Luchino Visconti delivers one of his most ambitious works with
this sprawling historical drama. Based on the acclaimed novel by
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, THE LEOPARD is set in
Sicily during the 1800s, as the aristocracy found itself being
suffocated by a newly democratic fervor. Prince Don Fabrizio
Salina (Burt Lancaster) tries to hold on to the past, but it
appears that his glory days are waning. BFI
Blu-ray Release Date: June 21st,
2010
Apartment 1303 - Tenants
who occupy apartment 1303 have a tendency to throw themselves
off of the balcony onto the pavement or the swimming pool below.
When her younger sister suddenly commits suicide during a
housewarming party in a similar manner after having moved into
the apartment, her older sister Mariko (Eriko Hatsune) begins
collecting her sister's personal effects. While inhabiting the
apartment (and drawing out her stay to get away from her cold
mother who seems to blame her for her younger sister's wanting
to move away as well as her unexplained death) she realizes that
there is something terribly wrong with the apartment and the
strange little girl in 1302 who seems to know when each tenant
takes their plunge. DVD Release Date: October 23rd, 2007
Icons of Suspense - Hammer Films
- Hammer Films made their name with monsters and vampires, but
this third complication from Columbia Pictures – all new to DVD
– proves they could frighten you without them. Topping the set
is the uncut version of the futuristic classic THESE ARE THE
DAMNED, directed by the legendary Joseph Losey. Peter
Cushing and Andre Morell match wits in CASH ON DEMAND.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Guy Green (1947, Great
Expectations) directed THE SNORKEL, about a young girl
who can’t convince anyone her stepfather’s a murderer. The
renowned Val Guest co-wrote and directed the startling
psychodrama STOP ME BEFORE I KILL! Kerwin Matthews finds
himself in the middle of a strange mother/daughter threesome in
the Jimmy Sangster-written MANIAC. Plus, this ultimate rarity:
Cyril Frankel’s astounding NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM A STRANGER,
a serious, and still horrifyingly timely, chiller about a small
town terrorized by an elderly child molester. You won’t do
better than this impeccable collection from the darkest corners
of the Hammer imagination. DVD Release Date: April 6th, 2010
Ghost of Mae Nak - Mak (Siwat
Chotchaicharin) has been haunted by nightmares featuring a
spectral female figure. He is about to marry his childhood
sweetheart Nak (Pataratida Pacharawirapong) and they have just
been sold a one hundred year old house by shifty Mr. Angel (Meesak
Nakarat) and after the wedding all of their gifts are stolen
(including a brooch made from bone that Mak purchased for Nak).
When Mak recognizes some thieves selling the gifts, he takes
after them on foot and is knocked down by their car and left in
a coma. The doctors do now know if or when he will come out of
it but Nak swears Mak talked to her, instructing her to "Fine
Mae Nak." Nak learns the legend of Mae Nak (Porntip Papanai), a
woman who married Por Mak (Jaran Ngamdee) only for them to be
separated by war. DVD Release Date: October 17th, 2006
Ride With the Devil
BD - With this new
director’s cut, Ang Lee reconstructs his original vision for
Ride with the Devil, a harrowing, unorthodox Civil War epic.
Set during the Kansas-Missouri border war, the film follows Jake
(Tobey Maguire) and Jack Bull (Skeet Ulrich), who join the
Confederate-sympathizing Bushwhackers after Jack Bull’s father
is killed by abolitionist Jayhawkers, and find an unusual ally
in Holt (Jeffrey Wright), who’s fighting for the South despite
being a former slave. A rumination on identity and loyalty, both
political and personal, Ride with the Devil is a provocative
challenge to preconceptions about America’s bloodiest conflict.
Blu-ray Release date: April
27th, 2010
The Relic
BD - Made in the tradition
of a Gothic haunted-house movie, "The Relic" doesn't so
much inject new blood into the increasingly tiresome horror mold
as "rearrange" some of the genre's most familiar characters and
themes, including science vs. myth and superstition, wild beasts
lurking in the dark, a bright female professional in peril, a
rescue mission of civilians entrapped in a confined space - and
even cynical politicians primed for a comeuppance.
Blu-ray Release date: April 6th,
2010
Modern Times
BD - Playing for a week in
the new digitally scrubbed and remastered version that closed
this year's Cannes Film Festival, Modern Times was seemingly
made under the twin influences of Walt Disney (the cartoon-like
use of sound effects) and Fritz Lang (the vast art deco factory
that initially employs the Little Tramp). More than any previous
Chaplin film, albeit setting the precedent for all subsequent
ones, Modern Times was a statement—Chaplin's conscious,
if sentimental, attempt to locate his alter ego in the context
of class struggle. The working title was supposedly The Masses.
Blu-ray Release Date: May 6th,
2010
44 Inch Chest
BD - How far would you go to
avenge betrayal? Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone, Sexy Beast) is
about to find out in this gritty, provocative thriller. After he
breaks down over the dissolution of his marriage, he kidnaps his
wife's lover, and his rage pushes him to the brink of murder as
his motley crew of buddies urges him to exact brutal revenge.
Ian McShane (HBO's Deadwood), John Hurt (V for Vendetta), Tom
Wilkinson (RocknRolla) and Stephen Dillane (Spy Game)
unforgettably co-star in this compelling story that contemplates
the nature of love and asks what it takes to be a man.
Blu-ray Release date: April 20th,
2010
District 13 - Ultimatum
BD - As many critics have
pointed out, we don't go to see movies like District 13
for its clockwork plot and character development – which reminds
me: I could have used more screen time from Elodie Yung as the
gal with the deadly braid - but for the jaw-dropping action
sequences, which, we are told, are performed pretty much as you
see them. Still, you know you're in trouble if, midway into the
movie, you find yourself longing for The Warriors (with
apologies to Walter Hill.) Blu-ray
Release date: April 27th, 2010
Jade
BD - Though the combination of Linda Fiorentino,
Chazz Palminteri and David Caruso promised "Jade" some
fire, it winds up with no more spark than a doused campfire.
That may be because the more significant threesome here is
Robert Evans (producer), William Friedkin (director) and Joe
Eszterhas (smut-obsessed screenwriter), joining forces to give
some desperate kinks to an otherwise unremarkable mystery.
Blu-ray Release date: April 6th,
2010
The Perfect Crime -
Narcissistic charmer Rafael (Guillermo Toledo) is the best
salesman in the women's department at Madrid's mammoth
department store Yeyo's. He can talk any female customer into
expensive clothes and jewelry and any female co-worker out of
her clothes. After the previous floor manager keels over dead
(while dressed as Santa for the holiday sale, no less), Rafael's
only rival for the position is older Don Antonio Fraguas (Luis
Varela) and the end of the day's sales totals will determine
which one gets the job. With Don Antonio ahead, Rafael makes a
$12,000 Euro fur coat sale at the last moment and celebrates his
victory with Roxanne (Kira Miró) in the store after hours.
DVD Release Date: March 13th, 2007
|
