New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/4/13

The lowest grossing and most critically panned of the long running DIE HARD series, John Moore’s A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, comes out today in a 2-disc Blu Ray edition, packaged with DVD + Digital Copy, and on a single disc DVD. The fifth in the popular Bruce Willis action franchise is packed with Special Features including an extended cut of the movie, commentary by Director John Moore and First Assistant Director Mark Cotone, deleted scenes, plus a bevy of featurettes like “Anatomy of a Car Chase,” VFX sequences, storyboards, and something called “Maximum McClane.”



If you missed it in the theaters, as most people did, and are partial to John McClane, who calls himself “The 007 of Plainfield, New Jersey,” being able to again say “Yipee Ki-Yay motherfucker! (he couldn’t in the last one as it was PG-13), then this is the release for you.

Jonathan Levine's zombie rom com WARM BODIES hits Blu ray (+ Digital Copy and UltraViolet) and DVD today. The movie, which I dissed in my review during its theatrical run in February, has a bevy of bonus material including a Commentary with Director Jonathan Levine and Actors Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer, gag reel, deleted scenes, a bunch of featurettes, and the Screen Junkies snippet of Zombie Acting Tips with Rob Corddry.

Another fairly forgettable film from earlier this year, Seth Gordon’s IDENTITY THIEF, starring Jason Bateman and Melissa McCarthy, is also out today. Available in a 2-disc Blu ray set (+ Digital Copy, DVD, and UltraViolet), or 1 disc DVD, the sloppy comedy can be seen in both theatrical and unrated cuts, with several featurettes, alternate takes, and a gag reel. Read how un-amused I was by it in my review last February: “The Soon To Be Forgotten Off Season Folly Of IDENTITY THIEF” (2/8/13).

Carl Brunker’s 3D animated Canadian production, ESCAPE FROM PLANET EARTH, a family film I didn’t even notice in its theatrical release, drops today in a deluxe 3-disc Blu ray edition (+ Digital Copy, DVD, and UltraViolet) and a single disc DVD. Special Features: Commentary with Director Brunker, a few “Making Of” featurettes, Alternate Takes, Deleted Scenes, and Music Featurettes. Rob Corddry is involved in this one too, for whatever that's worth.



TV show sets releasing today on Blu ray and DVD: Falling Skies: The Complete Second Season, Breaking Bad: The Fifth Season, Pretty Little Liars: The Complete Third Season (there are three seasons of that already?!!?), and Appleseed XIII: Complete Series (Limited Edition), whatever the Hell that is.

If you’re looking for some Country music related titles, there’s the Lifetime Original Movie RING OF FIRE (DVD only), from GRACE OF MY HEART director Allison Anders, which tells the same story as the Johnny Cash/June Carter Cash biopic WALK THE LINE, but from June's point of view. Jewell steps into shoes previously worn by Resse Witherspoon, while Big Love/American Horror Story star Matt Ross takes on the Man in Black. The movie is better than it looks like - i.e. that awful DVD cover, but it's still pretty bad. Still, a full-length Biography special on Johnny Cash is included as a special feature so that alone may make it worthwhile for Cash fans.

Another Country title out today is Harry Thomason's THE LAST RIDE (2012), starring Henry Thomas, Jesse James, and The Big Bang Theory's Kaley Cuoco. Haven't seen it so I can't vouch for it, but it only having one Special Feature, a brief featurette, doesn't bode well.

In the old movies making their debut on Blu ray department there's EARTHQUAKE (1974), THE SHADOW (Alec Baldwin's version!) (1994), The MAD MAX Trilogy (the first and second have been available before on the format, but this is the first time for the third one: MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME, also available as a stand alone Blu ray), MIDWAY (1976), and Gene Saks' 1968 comedy classic THE ODD COUPLE.

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Blu Ray Reviews: THE EXPENDABLES 2 & A Stallone 3-Fer

 

THE EXPENDABLES 2 

(Dir. Simon West, 2012)


Sylvester Stallone and his army of aging action movie icons are back in this big noisy sequel that’s actually better than the first one. Don't get me wrong - it's a bad movie, but it's a much more gloriously stupid experience the second time out.

2010’s THE EXPENDABLES only had a grasp on half a formula, but the follow-up is full on formula and much more big dumb fun. 

It also tops the first one by having much more of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis, who both just put in cameos in the original, and it has a lot more explosions - the first 10 minutes feels like it’s packed with more explosions than in Michael Bay’s entire career! There’s a lot more CGI-ed blood splatter too.

This time, Stallone along with Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, and Terry Crews, (Steve Austin doesn’t return, and sadly there’s no Mickey Rourke) are taking on Jean-Claude Van Damme as an evil arms dealer. 



There’s a new Expendable, the young Liam Hemsworth, but the second he starts talking about one last mission before he goes home to his girlfriend we know he’s going to die (my wife called it, and she was on her laptop not even really paying attention to the movie).

As if Stallone, along with co-writer Richard Wenk, knew that there was way too much testosterone on the screen, we’ve also got the addition of Chinese actress Yu Nan, as a CIA agent brought in by Willis. Nan is in charge of the movie’s MacGuffin, a computer that contains the location of tons of plutonium, but is it any surprise that the plot doesn’t matter?

It’s just an excuse to get all these guys together for a bunch of shoot-outs, stunts, quick-cut instances of hand to hand combat, and, yep, ginormous explosions all set in Foreign locales (Bulgaria, China).



The film really falters in its downtime when we are reminded that these guys aren’t great actors, something the horribly written dialogue immensely highlights. 

Willis, maybe the best actor here, is given what’s possibly the single worst line of 2012: “For all this male pattern badness I’ve got to put you in the deepest darkest hole at Gitmo.”

There’s more humor here than before too, albeit some is unintentional, like when Chuck Norris in what amounts to a cameo, throws a bad guy out a window yet still fires his machine gun at him. 

Also there’s a bunch of shout-outs to the principal’s previous roles - Schwarzenegger, who is told that he may be terminated, mocks Willis’ “Yippee Ki Yay” catchphrase from DIE HARD, Rambo is mentioned, and Norris’ nickname is “Lone Wolf.” That’s fine by me, these guys can self reference all they want, it only adds to the film’s awareness that it’s a colossal collection of action movie clichés, a thorough homage to the genre’s ‘80s heyday.

Stallone was right to hand over direction duties to Simon West. West (CON AIR, the first LAURA CROFT) is no wunderkind, but his handling of all this noisy spectacle, along with veteran action cinematographer Shelly Johnson, comes together much more cohesively than Stallone’s ham fisted helming of the first one.

My biggest complaint is that for a Blu ray of a new movie, the image is really grainy, grimy even, and out of focus at times, but I’ve read that it looked that way in theaters. Maybe that’s just keeping in line with how crappy visually the ‘80s action standards this movie apes were, but I doubt it was that intentional.

Special Features: By far the best of the bonus material is a half hour featurette called “Big Guns, Bigger Heroes,” which puts THE EXPENDABLES movies in their proper context by examining the rise of the action film genre in the Reagan era. Other features include an audio commentary by Simon West, featurettes entitled “Gods of War,” “On the Assault,” “Guns For Hire” (about real life government mercenaries for hire), a couple of minutes of deleted scenes, and a gag reel.



Bonus Blu ray review:

Released last August right when THE EXPENDABLES 2 hit theaters, was a 3 film collection of Stallone titles: RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD, COP LAND, and the lesser known LOCK UP.


I’m not usually a fan of those DVD or Blu ray deals that you see for sale in supermarkets or big- box stores that package random films together or in this case, three films by a well known actor, but if you’re a fan and are running out of shelf space, maybe they’re ideal. It doesn’t bode well that the Blu ray cover sports an image of Stallone with a mustache and shades that’s not from any of the films in the set (it’s from GET CARTER), but the movies aren’t bare boned like in other packages; they feature all the bonus materials that accompanied their DVD special editions.

Makes me wonder why they didn’t just package the first 3 Rambo movies together, but I digress. The first Rambo film, originally just titled FIRST BLOOD (Dir. Ted Kotcheff, 1982), holds up as Stallone as his sweaty best as a dead-eyed Vietnam vet taking on the entire police force of a small town in Washington, largely because the local hard-ass Sherriff (Brian Dennehey) is an asshole.

Dennehey thinks Stallone is just an aimless drifter, but a grizzled Colonel (Richard Crenna) corrects him: “You don't seem to want to accept the fact you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands.” So Rambo builds traps, destroys a lot of property with a machine gun, and blows up buildings (there were a lot more explosions than I remember when I saw it as a kid), but actually doesn’t kill anybody.

Stallone, who co-wrote, gives a crazed cried-out speech at the end, that plays the sympathy card for Vietnam vets who got a raw deal for what it’s worth, then a laughably dated power ballad (“It’s a Long Road,” written by Jerry Goldsmith, sung by Dan Hill, whoever that is) plays over the end credits. Great cornball stuff through and through that’s been satirized a zillion times yet still packs a whallop. Funny how the picture quality of the FIRST BLOOD Blu ray is a lot sharper than THE EXPENDABLES 2 Blu ray too.

Special features include the alternate ending in which Rambo dies, a half hour featurette (“Drawing First Blood”), and 2 commentaries – one by Stallone, the other by writer David Morrell.

An odd choice for this 3 Blu ray set, is James Mangold’s COP LAND (1997), which Stallone himself described as a more thoughtful film than he had been known for when he hosted SNL to promote the film’s release. It is, but despite its amazing cast, including Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Rapaport, Robert Patrick, Peter Berg, Arthur Nascarella, and John Spencer, and cool premise (the town of Garrison, New Jersey is run by corrupt New York City cops who reside there), the movie isn’t fleshed out enough to really make an impact, and it comes off like second hand Scorsese.

Still, it’s one of Stallone’s best roles: Freddy Heflin, the schlubby (he gained a gut for this part) good guy Sheriff of Garrison, who’s pushed around by just about everybody, as he pines for Annabella Sciorra (married to one of the corrupt cops). I love that the guy falls asleep drunk on his beat up couch listening to Springsteen’s “The River.” For once, Stallone pulls off a performance of pained powerlessness with none of his trademark alpha-male-isms. It’s also cool to see De Niro and Keitel sparring in their last film together, along with almost every Sopranos bit player you can think of on the sidelines. Plus it has a great well paced bloody ending, so, hmm, maybe I'm selling this one short.

Special Features: Commentary with Stallone, Patrick, Mangold, and producer Cathy Konrad, a 15 minute featurette (“Cop Land: The Making of an Urban Western”), and deleted scenes.

Lastly, there’s John Flynn’s 1989 prison thriller, LOCK UP, which puts Stallone behind bars under the evil eye of Warden Donald Sutherland. This is the cheesiest of the Stallone offerings in this set, with a supremely cheesy score by extremely cheesy film composer Bill Conti. A skinny Tom Sizemore (it was his 3rd film) is on hand for comic relief as a fellow inmate, and Sutherland (mostly spending his role looking menacing out the window) has a great hammy speech (“This is Hell, and I’m going to give you the guided tour”), but this is a by-the-numbers rundown of prison movie clichés, that wears out its welcome really fast.

Special Features: Only a 6 minute “making of” featurette, the theatrical trailer, and a lame Stallone profile, but that’s just as well.

Okay! I think I’ve had as much as I can take of “The Itallian Stallion” for now.

More later…

LOOPER: A Compellingly Crafted Time Travel Thriller

Now playing at nearly every multiplex in Raleigh and the Triangle area:

LOOPER (Dir. Rian Johnson, 2012)


At first, it’s a bit jarring to see Joseph Gordon-Levitt made to look like Bruce Willis via prosthetic makeup. But Gordon-Levitt, has so got Willis’ mannerisms, and soft spoken voice down that the impression works, that is, until the real Willis shows up and it’s a little jarring again. However, it still works.



Set in Kansas City in 2044, Gordon-Levitt, as he tells us in his opening voice-over narration, is a low-level “Looper,” a hit-man who kills people that the mafia in 2074 sends back via illegal time travel technology. To close a looper’s contract, they send back the older version to be killed by their younger selves, and are paid off with gold bars. It’s a job that doesn’t attract “forward thinking people,” Gordon Levitt notes.

A frantic fellow looper (Paul Dano), when confronted with his older self, is unable to “close the loop,” as they call it, he goes into hiding in a floor safe in Gordon-Levitt’s apartment. A bearded wizened and jaded Jeff Daniels, as a gang boss from the future, offers a deal in which if Gordon-Levitt gives up Dano’s location, he can keep all the silver he’s been saving up. Gordon-Levitt takes the deal, but then finds out that his own loop is set to be closed.

Willis is able to escape from his younger self, upon appearing from the future, but not long after that they have a face-to-face at a diner, and Willis speaks of how, in 30 years, his wife (Qing Xu) will be murdered love by a powerful villain called “The Rainmaker.” Willis came back in time to kill the child who will grow up to be this bigwig baddie.

Did you get all that? Yes, it’s a movie in which the convolutions swirl around you, but you can’t help to get caught up in them. Even when the film downshifts from the expected, yet still engrossing action sequences (shoot-ups, chases, fight scenes, etc.), into a quieter second half that takes place on a farm owned by Emily Blunt, who just may be the mother of the future “Rainmaker,” its spell still holds you.

Willis doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, and doesn’t need much, but what he has, like when he talks of the woman whose life he’s trying save, he really sells. Considering his younger self to be a self absorbed junkie, Willis provides a gruff contrast to Gordon-Levitt’s stoic smoothness.

The rest of the well-chosen cast have their moments. Daniels basically has one major speech to give before spending the rest of the movie as an order barking heavy, but he pulls off both superbly.

Blunt, could be seen as a gratuitous love-interest for Gordon-Levitt, yet her frightened eyed delivery is “on,” and it’s fun to see her smoke an invisible cigarette (another thing to look forward to in the future).

A few of Daniels’ thugs are notable too - Noah Segan, as a clumsily trigger happy goon, and Garret Dillahunt as a much more professional assassin.

With its superb sci-fi premise, exemplary effects, and top-notch performances, Rian Johnson, who directed the brilliant BRICK (also starring Gordon-Levitt), and the not-bad THE BROTHERS BLOOM, has compellingly crafted a well above average action thriller. Its ending might feel a little off, but the fact that it doesn’t allow easily for a sequel makes it all the more refreshing.

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Wes Anderson's MOONRISE KINGDOM Is Twee-rific

MOONRISE KINGDOM (Dir. Wes Anderson, 2012)

There are times during this film, Wes Anderson’s seventh as director, that I felt like I was paging through an old slightly faded and yellowed picture book of Rhode Island landscapes and settings.

The world that Anderson creates here will be familiar in its tone and eccentricity to those who’ve seen his previous movies, but his usual hallmarks - actors positioned in dead center frame, extreme shots of handwriting on notebook paper, a bold primary color scheme, kids who are too smart for their own good, and very formal dialogue - all come together much more naturally than before.

As whimsically titled as it is executed, MOONRISE KINGDOM concerns Jared Gillman and Kara Hayward, as a couple of kids in the summer of 1965 who don’t fit in their respective lives - he in his “Khaki” Scout troup; she in her dysfunctional family. They run off together across the fictitious island of New Penzance, off the coast of New England, in the days before a storm of “historic proportions” hits (as Bob Balaban, our onscreen narrator tells us).

This triggers the Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton), the local police Captain (Bruce Willis), and the girl’s lawyer parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand), to form a search party to find the missing children.

Although he was the most unpopular scout in his troup, Gillman has mad camping skills so the kids are able to survive just fine in the woods. Hayward helps pass the time reading aloud from a stack of unreturned library books (all fictitious children’s titles with authentic period aesthetics).

The pair reach a secluded cove protected by steep cliffs where they dance on the beach to Françoise Hardy’s “Le Temps de l’Amour” on a battery-powered record player. They kiss and fall in love, but the search party soon swoops in to separate them.

Meanwhile there is a palpable chill in the air around Murray and McDormand as she is having an affair with Willis. There’s no real time to flesh this out so it’s on a back burner as Tilda Swinton as Social Services (that’s actually how she’s credited) shows up to take away Gillman and place him in a “juvenile refuge.” 

Gillman’s scout troup decides to help the love-smitten kids escape again, and with the help of Anderson regular Jason Scwartzman, as a Khaki scout leader, a makeshift marriage ceremony goes down. Then there’s that pesky violent storm to deal with.

Sure there’s a preciousness to the precision that some may find pretentious, and maybe it is a bit. But it’s touching how faithful Anderson is to that little inner kid of his.

We don’t learn much about these people as the characterizations don’t go very deep, and some details seem a bit too quirky (McDormand using a megaphone to order around her family - and I know that comes from co-screenwriter Roman Coppola’s real life), but the overriding sweetness and colorful aura casts too big a spell for that to matter.

Despite that it's set in the mid '60s, there surprisingly isn't any British invasion pop present. Apart from the Françoise Hardy tune and some Hank Williams, classical music dominates the soundtrack by way of a 7 part suite by noted composerAlexandre Desplat, some apt Leonard Bernsteinselections, and Benjamin Britten's “The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra.”

Of Anderson’s films, I was most reminded of THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS in such elements as the yellow tent aesthetics, Murray’s wife having an affair, a dog getting accidentally killed, and the ancient turntable, among some other more subtle similarities. Maybe it’s true that every film maker is essentially making the same movie over and over until they get it right.

Well, Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM is a twee-rific try.

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RED: The Film Babble Blog Review

RED (Dir. Robert Schwentke, 2010)

Sometimes it seems like every other movie opening this year at the multiplex is a comic throwback to ‘80s action movies or based on a graphic novel I wasn’t aware of before.

To its credit RED is both. But that’s the only credit I’ll give this unfunny overblown mess though.

RED is titled after the stamp on agent Frank Moses' (Bruce Willis) file, meaning "retired, extremely dangerous."

Willis leads a mundane life as a former Black Ops CIA agent who tears up his retirement checks just so he can continue to call customer service representative Mary Louise Parker because he has a crush on her.

Before you know it Willis is on the run from government assassins and he abducts Parker for the ride. She goes along with it in her typical jaded Weeds fashion, but the unbelievable and incredibly contrived nature of her role never convinces for a second.

Parker’s life before was boring and now she’s caught up in a world of espionage – I get it, but it’s such a cringing cliché with a capital C.

He re-unites his old crew – the all star cast of Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Ernest Borgnine and John Malkovich – to fight the attackers and it’s one shoot-em-up after another.

The film is solidly staged but it’s a joyless affair with really poorly written dialogue and a distinct lack of laughs.

At this point in Willis’s career it’s surprising he would be attracted to this boring by-the-numbers material.

Willis just sleep walks (sometimes in slow motion) through a barely interesting plot handled with a hodgepodge of styles and clashing tones. The narrative involves a cover-up of Guatemalan slayings orchestrated by the Vice President (Julian McMahon).

There’s some seriousness in the seams but it’s overshadowed by cloying silliness. It’s also off-putting that the film has an unbearable sense of self satisfaction.

Malkovich as a jacked up explosives expert appears to be having fun with his role, but with such lame one-liners (none of which I can remember or else I’d quote one) that feeling is far from contagious.

Freeman, who is 73, plays an 80 year old ex-agent – a role that requires no heavy lifting, just his patented homespun delivery. Borgnine is 93 and like Malkovich he’s seems to be having a good time. Maybe he’s just happy to be anywhere these days.

Then there’s Dame Helen Mirren in a white evening gown firing a machine gun. That’s supposed to be a hilarious image, but it creaks like everything else in this misguided movie.

Oh, and I shouldn’t forget Richard Dreyfuss, still channeling Dick Cheney from W, as a bad guy who is also saddled with lines that fall flat. “I did it for the money” Dreyfuss revealed in a recent interview. 

It sure shows.

I saw somebody on a message board refer to this film as THE EXPENDABLES but with people who can actually act.” I can go with that because just like that Sylvester Stallone all star vehicle, this is ultimately a lame package.

RED, which I think should stand for Really Excruciating Drivel, is a waste every way you can cut it.

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Sylvester Stallone & His All Star Band!

THE EXPENDABLES (Dir. Sylvester Stallone, 2010)



This is the definition of a critic proof movie – as its rating on the Rotten Tomatometer rapidly falls (in a week it fell from 58% to 39%) its box office rises - its been #1 since it opened with a gross nearing $70 million so far.

Apparently America wants a big badass blockbuster with a crew of well known action stars. Call it “Monsters of Mediocrity” if you will, but triple threat (actor/writer/director) Sylvester Stallone has assembled a solid B-Team of action movie mavericks including Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Dolph Lundgren.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that from the trailer that Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger are on the mission too, but they only appear in one scene that tries, but fails to make much of a punch.

That could be said of the whole movie with its generic let’s-throw-over-a-corrupt-Latin American-dictator premise, but there is some fun to be had with this ‘80s throwback even if it oddly has too much downtime.

Mickey Rourke has a longer appearance than Willis and Schwarzenegger, but it’s still another glorified cameo as he never leaves his tattoo parlor. Rourke has one of the only serious dramatic moments telling a story about a woman that he failed to save from suicide that brings tears to his eyes. In a movie like this I really didn’t expect to see Rourke cry.

It’s mainly Stallone and Stratham’s show as they spend the largest amount of screen time getting each others backs in fights and shoot outs. The ending is a giant shit-storm of machine gun fire and explosions on top of explosions as expected. It’s played out in a lot of darkness and hyper cutting that makes it hard to follow, but if you like a lot of fiery explosions it should make your day.

Oh, there’s also Giselle Itié as the underwritten damsel in distress (What - An underwritten woman role in a Stallone action flick?) fighting for her poverty stricken people, her angry General father played by David Zayas (Angel Batista on Dexter), and Eric Roberts as an evil ex-CIA man agent backing the dictatorship.

THE EXPENDABLES is undercooked and overblown at the same time, but its core audience doesn’t appear to care. I shouldn’t either because this kind of mindlessness really shouldn’t be minded.

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