DVD Picks of the Week: September 8th, 2009

Lots of great material to look out for this week in the form of brand new films, older titles debuting on Blu-ray and a few treats from the Criterion Collection.

Crank 2: High Voltage [DVD][Blu-ray]


The second installment of the high-adrenaline and energetic Crank series is easily one of the highlights for this week. The film was some of the most fun I've had in theaters this year. It goes one step further than the first film does, and with great results. Jason Statham may be type-casted to hell and back, but he does it well. Directors Neveldine/Taylor didn't strike box office gold with Gamer, but this release should reward them financially.

Creepshow [Blu-ray]


I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I wasn't aware that this macabre classic was being released on Blu-ray. Creepshow was a teaming of two of the greatest talents in the horror genre in the 1970s/1980s, director George A. Romero and writer (and actor here) Stephen King. Creepshow plays on the old E.C. comics of the 1950s and tells five tales of supreme macabre terror to life. All five are a good time, with actors like Ed Harris, Ted Danson and Leslie Nielsen making appearances. Creepshow truly is horror fan heaven with its ghoulish tales and results as one of the most creative genre titles of the 1980s. And for those that are still with DVD, they reissued the title in a keepcase! The film was previously only available in one of those ugly looking snap cases. Good news for OCD people all across America!

Parks & Recreation [Season One]
The Office [Season Five]


I'm grouping these two together, not because they are on the same level, but because they are quite similar. Parks & Recreation is a sort of spin-off of The Office, lending itself to the same mockumentary style. Parks survived its first season, and with great success. Aziz Ansari made himself into a dependable character on the show, and one of the main reasons to watch. Now, I may be biased, as I work for my town's parks and rec office during the summers -- and I have done so for the last five summers -- but this perfectly captures some of the foolhardy and large than life beliefs some of the higher level employees actually have. On to The Office, one of the more popular shows on television. I enjoyed the latest season enough to recommend it. Not the greatest, but it sure had its moments. Some great writing going on with that show.

Homicide [Criterion Collection DVD]


It seems almost ritualistic that every time a Criterion release drops I have to talk about it. If only you would just watch a few of these great films and you'd understand why I get so giddy at seeing what they have in store on these special Tuesdays. One of this week's most interesting releases from Criterion is David Mamet's Homicide. Briefly, the film details a Jewish homicide detective who investigates a seemingly minor murder and falls in with a Zionist group as a result. The film stars most notably William H. Macy. Mamet already is on the Criterion Collection's roster with House of Games, and Homicide looks just as appetizing. Check out the short trailer below.



That Hamilton Woman [Criterion Collection DVD]


I don't know much of anything about where this film came from, what it's about or why you should see it. I don't know who Alexander Korda is and why I should watch one of his films either. But I'm sure ready to find out why. I know Laurence Olivier makes for good cinema, so that's a start. Beautiful UK cinema in the 1940s was really overlooked, we Americans were busy with our brooding and ambiguous antiheroes of the noir genre. Anyways, Criterion describes this films plot to be the following: "Set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars of the late eighteenth century, That Hamilton Woman is a gripping account of the scandalous adulterous affair between the British Royal Navy officer Lord Horatio Nelson and the renowned beauty Emma, Lady Hamilton, the wife of a British ambassador." I'm sold.

The Human Condition [Criterion Collection DVD]


Here's Criterion's big release of the week. It's a 4-disc set of Masaki Kobayashi's three part, nine-and-a-half-hour epic titled The Human Condition, what Criterion calls one of the most staggering achievements in Japanese cinema. What a bold statement, with such greats like Akira Kurosawa roaming the countryside. The epic film tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Sounds as riveting as they say it is. Only trouble here might be finding time to dedicate to such a lengthy adventure. Sure seems like it'd be worth it.

Requiem for a Dream [Blu-ray]


I figured I owed it to everyone with a Blu-ray player to at least make mention of this release. Requiem for a Dream is the film that made director Darren Aronofsky important. Sure, Pi was great, but this one his name around like nothing else good. It's a startling film for all first time users, a deeply disheartening story lies at the root of it. And this is indeed the unrated version of the film, giving you more than you've ever asked for.

What else comes out this week: Criminal Minds: The Complete Fourth Season, Fringe: The Complete First Season, Freddy vs. Jason [Blu-ray], The New World (The Extended Cut) [Blu-ray], Harper's Island: The DVD Edition, The Postman [Blu-ray], Silverado [Blu-ray], Sphere [Blu-ray], Dead Calm [Blu-ray], The Quick and the Dead [Blu-ray], Friday [Blu-ray], Universal Horror: Classic Movie Archive, Over the Top [Blu-ray], Menace II Society [Blu-ray], Halloween Triple Pack, From Dusk Till Dawn Triple Pack, Scream Triple Pack.

What to stay away from: This abscess of a film: Dance Flick. I must have seen the trailer for that film a half a dozen times before good films in the theater before it came out. Way too many times to see a promotion for something like that.

As you can tell, this was a really deep week, full of quality. This is one of the few times where there literally is something for everyone to get at. I probably even left a few quality items out, so be sure to look extra hard. See you all next week!

No Champion, 'Gamer' Receives Average Final Score

No one will argue that there aren’t thousands of great ideas sizzling inside the brains of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the masterminds behind the Crank series.

Gamer, the duo’s third directorial feature, and first one outside of the Crank series, is the first attempt by the two to bring their staple brand of dizzying and most of the time implausible style of action together with some semblance of a plot other than the life or death situation faced by Jason Statham in both Crank films.

Set in the future, say the year 2034, in a world where mind-control technology is the number one form of escapism, Gamer focuses on a new type of video game called “Slayers”, which allows death row inmates their chance to receive a pardon. Kable (Gerard Butler) is only a few battles away from the unprecedented release, but the brains behind the technology, Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), has other things in mind.

Up until this point the Neveldine/Taylor combination has made a name for itself on original ideas and a highly unique way of presenting them. Crank, as outlandish and absurd as it may be, has given us some of the more refreshing action cinema to come out in the last few years.

The one true problem with Gamer is that while there are a few of those original ideas to be found, the whole thing just leaves you feeling slightly unimpressed. The futuristic vision of the next level of video games and game shows concepts have been done many times before, it’s a true and tried genre. Perhaps most memorably with The Running Man, in which convicted criminals also must escape death, and David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, in which a virtual video game world is entered through a bio-organic device. Whichever film you decide to reference, parallels can be greatly drawn, and Gamer hardly improves on them.

But I suppose it’s true that one of these types of films hasn’t been made lately, so the fresh and scathing satirizing from Neveldine/Taylor is very welcome. A tongue-in-cheek look at the obsessions and negative impact of technology like these comes in the form of an even more advanced version of popular websites like Second Life and console applications like Playstation 3’s Home. This gives the film its only break from the rest of the film’s more serious tone and super dark photography, as it seems like the rest of the world lives under an umbrella, and they only battle when it’s cloudy out.

And ah yes, that plot Neveldine and Taylor have been working on. It’s not that good. Okay well let me put it this way, it doesn’t really add much. Kable’s hopeful attempt to win the battles, get out of prison, find solace in revenge and return to his wife and daughter is hardly impacting and a rather conventional motive.

That action is another thing though. It’s good, not great and chock full of a huge body count, but with the way Neveldine/Taylor direct their films you sometimes can’t get a full spectrum of what exactly is going on. Yeah you see shattering explosions, guns shooting, people dying and blood splashing but it’s mostly done so in a frantic frenzy.

It’s all so gritty, depraved and brutal but yeah, I’ll admit it, also enjoyable. How many times can Gerard Butler kill an inmate is the real question of Gamer. Everything moves fast as light and makes for action sequences, while intentionally disorientating, loads of fun.

Much like the plot, the characters are kind of a bore. Butler’s Kable is just a brooding hulk of a man bent on revenge and the way Ludacris says the word game reminds me only of Allen Iverson’s classic press conference years back. Thankfully Michael C. Hall, best known for his role on Dexter, is the saving grace, breathing some hilarious life into his role as the disgustingly rich and popular brains behind “Slayers”, Ken Castle, a slithering snake of an evil man.

Regretfully, Gamer is stuck somewhere in cinema purgatory. It’s not quite equal to the piece of gum I stepped on along my way into the theater, and it certainly doesn’t exude a top of the line futuristic thriller vibe. The action is bloody and the presentation is gritty but the few developing ideas about society that Neveldine/Taylor had are never able to help the film out when all that other stuff is top priority.