New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 10/22/13

Last summer’s horror hit THE CONJURING brought about old school scares with aesthetics that recall such classics as THE EXORCIST, POLTERGEIST, and an obvious spiritual connection, THE AMITYVILLE HORROR. James Wan’s film, based on the real-life account of a pair of paranormal investigators (Ed and Lorraine Warren played by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga), releases today just in time for Halloween on a 2 disc Blu ray edition (DVD + UltraViolet), and a single disc DVD.

Special Features: 3 featurettes (“A Life in Demonology,” “THE CONJURING: Face-To-Face With Terror,” and something called “Scaring the ‘@$*%’ Out of You”) equaling around 30 minutes.

One of my favorite films of the year, Richard Linklater’s BEFORE MIDNIGHT, the third film in the ongoing series about the talky relationship between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, also comes out today on home video in single disc Blu ray and DVD editions. Read my review, which contains info about the film’s Special Features, here.

A film that definitely won’t make my top ten of favorites, Shawn Levy’s THE INTERNSHIP (my review), the comedy that had Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson goofin’ on Google, is our this week in a 2 disc Blu ray Combo Pack, and a single disc DVD edition. Special Features include Theatrical and Unrated versions of the film, deleted scenes, a mocumentary about the Quidditch Match: “Any Given Monday,” and commentary with Director Levy.

The writing duo from THE DESCENDANTS, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, scored box office success with their directorial debut THE WAY, WAY BACK, as I saw by week after week of appreciative audiences last summer at the indie theater I work at part-time. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the film – it’s a pretty routine kid-comes-of-age-while-on-a-family-trip-to-the-beach scenario, but its decent cast including Steve Carrell, Allison Janey, Toni Collette, Sam Rockwell, and Maya Rudolf keep it somewhat afloat. Bonus material includes deleted scenes and several behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Another comedy that doesn’t quite cut it that’s out today on Blu ray and DVD is Dan Mazer’s I GIVE IT A YEAR. The British rom com is about a couple, Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne, who get married only to find they’re in love with other people in the form of Anna Farris and Simon Baker. Being that first time director Mazer co-wrote BORAT and BRUNO, there’s a lot of crude humor epitomized by how Spall puts the premise in one of the film’s making-of featurettes in the Special Features:

“In all relationships, you get together with someone, you spend the first four months of the relationship stifling farts. Then they get married and let it rip. And they realize that they don’t like the smell of each other’s farts.”

For those who happen to like this film’s farts, there’s also a blooper reel, deleted/extended scenes, outtakes (of one wacky scene involving doves) and multiple interviews with cast/crew.

Nicholas Winding Rehn and Ryan Gosling’s crime thriller follow-up to DRIVE, ONLY GOD FORGIVES also drops in single disc Blu ray/DVD editions today. Special features include a commentary with Director Rehn, 12 short behind-the-scenes segments, “The Music of ONLY GOD FORGIVES with Cliff Martinez, and over 10 minutes of interviews with Rehn.

Also out today: Max Mayer’s comedy drama AS COOL AS I AM (starring Claire Danes, Sarah Bolger, and James Marsden), Rachid Bouchareb’s JUST LIKE A WOMAN (2012), Roel Reiné’s action fantasy DEAD IN TOMBSTONE (for those who can’t get enough Danny Trejo), Verena Paravel’s 2012 documentary LEVIATHAN, and Lavinia Currier’s 2011 drama OKA!



On the older films out today front, there’s the Bruce Lee: The Legacy Edition (4 Blu ray/7 DVD), The Vincent Price Collection, Michael Findlay and Horacio Fredriksson's 1976 thriller SNUFF, and the Criterion Collection Edition of Lewis Allen’s 1944 horror classic THE UNINVITED, starring Ray Milland.

TV series sets out this week include Nikita: The Complete Third Season, Call The Midwife: Seasons 1 & 2, The Young Riders: Season 2, and Silk Stalkings Complete Seasons 6, 7, & 8.

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Current Indie Films Offer Big Stars Without The Blockbuster Bombast

You don’t have to wait for the summer super hero sequel season (kicking off this Friday with IRON MAN 3) to see big name stars for a bunch of them are currently starring in indie films at your local art house. 

For instance, Derek Cianfrance’s (BLUE VALENTINE) highly touted crime drama THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES, now in its 3rd week in the Triangle area, boasts star turns by Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. 

The film tells a story set in the town of Schenectady, New York, that spans 3 character threads. Gosling’s scenario involves the bleach blonde pretty boy turning to a life of crime (robbing banks with the help of his circus-honed motorcycling skills) in order to support the year old baby that former flame Eva Mendes just told him he is the father of.

One of Gosling’s robberies is foiled by Cooper as a young law student turned cop and then his scenario begins. Cooper takes advantage of his hero status to further his career, realizing the system’s just too damn corrupt (mostly in the form of a slimy, us usual, Ray Liotta - could Liotta ever play a cop that’s not corrupt?).

The third act has Cooper’s kid (Emory Cohen) growing up to be a troubled teenager who befriends a fellow student, Dane Dehan, who turns out to be Gosling’s kid. Gosling’s and Cooper’s acts crackle with energy, but the final act lost me. It felt like it could have been incorporated into the second story-line or at least not be so drawn out. Perhaps it simply lacked the star power of the first two thirds. Whatever the case, the film has just enough storytelling drive to make it worthwhile.

Nobody could accuse Robert Redford’s new political drama THE COMPANY YOU KEEP, which opened last Friday in Raleigh, of lacking star power. Apart from Redford’s lead role, there’s Shia Labeouf, Susan Sarandon, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Julie Christie, Richard Jenkins, Stephen Root, and indie darling Brit Marling. Sadly though, all this talent can’t save the film from Redford’s tired soapboxing as you can read in my review “Redford’s Vanity Project THE COMPANY YOU KEEP Is A Star-Studded Dud” (4/26/13).

Much better is Jeff Nichols’ MUD, with Matthew McConaughey in the title role, also in its first week in the Triangle. 

McConaughey, a little less confident than usual yet still somewhat slick,  plays an outlaw on the lam, living on an island in the middle of Arkansas' Lower White River, who is discovered by a couple of kids (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland). The kids help the fugitive get a boat down out of a tree (“that’s a hell of thing” McConaughey keeps saying about the boat’s predicament) and back in commission so he can escape with the love of his life, a redneck floozy played by Reese Witherspoon (the role couldn’t be more timely with her recent brush with the law and all). 

There a few glaring narrative conveniences - the kids seem to happen upon Witherspoon too easily, and later come to her hotel room at just the right time when she’s being roughed by a thug played by Stuart Greer for a few examples - but they could reasonably be chalked up to small town coincidences I reckon.

MUD is a mostly engrossing Southern drama driven by its superb cast, including Sam Shepherd, Nichols’ TAKE SHELTER star Michael Shannon, Joe Don Baker, Sarah Paulson, and Ray McKinnon, and its thoughtful screenplay by Nichols. 



But in a cast of recognizable faces, the 15 year old newcomer Sheridan, who could be considered the film’s true protagonist, stands out. Nichols’ has given the kid thematic weight in the form of a belief in love - a belief in danger of being squashed by a crush on an older girl (Bonnie Sturdivant) and the fact that his mother (Paulson) is divorcing his father (McKinnon) - but Sheridan carries it with poise.

So, if you’re looking for alternatives to the coming tidal wave of CGI-saturated blockbuster-wannabes on the big screen, THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES and MUD will provide the stars without the bombast. 

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THE IDES OF MARCH: The Film Babble Blog Review

THE IDES OF MARCH (Dir. George Clooney, 2011)

Ryan Gosling continues his dominance of the silver screen this year in George Clooney’s 4th film as director, a political drama that’s flawed yet still a gem.



As a presidential campaign advisor, Gosling utilizes the same cool confidence he had in last month’s DRIVE in his back room dealings to get Clooney, as a Democratic Pennsylvania Governor, into the White House.



Gosling answers to Philip Seymour Hoffman as Clooney’s harried campaign manager whose rival on the competing Republican candidate’s team is Paul Giamatti, which is great because I’ve wanted to see Hoffman and Giamatti in a film together for ages.



Hence the title, the film takes place in March right before the crucial Ohio primary and deals with a scandalous secret involving a young staffer (Evan Rachel Wood) who Gosling has a fling with.



Wood just happens to be the daughter of the present head of the National Democratic Party, so a tangled web is being weaved when Gosling learns incredibly damaging information about his man in the race.



Giamatti wants to woo Gosling over to his side, and that might not be such a far-fetched option, but not one he’s going to leak to Marissa Tomei, Hoffman’s co-star from BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, as a New York Times Reporter.



To have these big names reciting lofty dialogue in this tightly directed film goes a long way. Sure, it’s a story we’ve heard many times before about corruption and compromise, idealism vs. empty ambition, but with these acting heavyweights aided by a sharp screenplay it’s an essential experience.



Except for a few major moments, Clooney mainly stays in the background while Gosling carries the movie. It builds to a chilling confrontation between the 2 men that I really wish television ad spots for the film wouldn’t show clips of. It’s not a spoiler that ruins the movie, but it’s still a little too revealing.



THE IDES OF MARCH doesn’t reach the heights of Clooney’s GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, for there are some convolutions in the plot mechanics. It’s a bit of a stretch to believe that Gosling alone would be able to manipulate the situation so cunningly, but the film gets so close to brilliance that it’s easy to look past such gaps in logic.



With a stellar cast, excellent cinematography by Phaedon Pappamichael, an un-imposing score by Alexandre Desplat, and a screenplay written by Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Beau Willimon (the film is based on Willimon’s play “Farragut North”), this is certainly the definition of a prestige picture, or more crudely Oscar bait.



It does has power aplenty to take it through to awards season, but I bet it will hailed more for its performances over any statement about dirty politics that it tries to make.



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CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE: The Film Babble Blog Review

CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE (Dirs. Glenn Ficcara & John Requa, 2011)

At the beginning of this ensemble rom com, after an opening montage of the feet of restaurant patrons playing footsy, Steve Carrell is told by his wife of 25 years (Jullianne Moore) that she wants a divorce. This sets off a chain of vignettes that are more about clichéd silly lust than what the title wants us to think.



This is a simple-minded movie more concerned with setting up cheap gags than actual character connection. Like in the scenario where Carrell befriends a womanizing Ryan Gosling at a bar.



Gosling assigns himself as Carrell's wingman, so, of course, there's a shopping mall montage where Carrell gets new hip clothes and a snazzier haircut, and before you know it he's a success with the ladies. This kind of sequence should've been retired the second the '80s ended.



Meanwhile, Carrell and Moore's 13-year old son (Jonah Bobo) has a crush on their babysitter (Analeigh Tipton) who he's over-texting, Moore is fending off the further advances of a sleazy co-worker who she had an affair with (Kevin Bacon, who's really getting around this year), and a seemingly unconnected Emma Stone is pining for Josh Groban as a dorky lawyer.



There are 2 twists that are revealed in this material - one which you can see coming if you are paying attention, and the other is of the "oh, come on!" variety. I won't spoil what they are, but I will say that one of them involves Marisa Tomei as a squirmy, and completely unconvincing woman that Carrell has a one-night stand with.



The cast defintely has plenty of comic chops (as in EASY A, Stone has a way with one-liners), and there are some juicy jokes here and there in CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE, but I cringed much more than I laughed. It contains a lot of talk about soul mates, but that's just audience pandering talk. I never believed it ever really cared about matters of the heart.



In one scene, Carrell watches sadly as Moore drives off and it begins to rain. Carrell: "That is such a cliché." It sure is, yet at least in that moment the movie owns up. If only it did at its other dishonest cloying turns, then maybe it would be a movie with a soul instead of a big screen sitcom that might as well have a laugh track dubbed in.





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BLUE VALENTINE: The Film Babble Blog Review

BLUE VALENTINE (Dir. Derek Cianfrane, 2010)

It's billed as "a love story", but BLACK VALENTINE is more accurately a toxic love story.

As a couple in the final stages of their marriage, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams go through the messy motions and as the film cuts back and forth from the beginning of their relationship to the present we see that they were doomed from the start.

In the present Gosling and Williams (who also co-executive produced the film) have a 4 year old daughter (Faith Wladyka) and live a fairly unremarkable existence in Pennsylvania- he paints houses; she works as a nurse.

In the past Gosling worked for a Brooklyn moving company and met Williams in a nursing home he was re-locating a senior to. Williams, there visiting her grandmother (Jen Jones) has a giggly spark when first meeting her later beau, and before long they're an item much to the chagrin of her former lover (Mike Vogel).

Williams is pregnant with Vogel's baby so there's that too.

In several sequences like one set in a blue-lit future-themed hotel room where Gosling hopes to re-ignite the couple's dying flame get into some emotionally wretching territory, but the film never wallows in misery.

Sometimes feeling like a series of sad snapshots of a doomed romance, "Blue Valentine" captures the tone and uneasiness of fading affection without a false move.

It's surprising that Williams got a Oscar Nomination for her work here and Gosling didn't. Don't get me wrong - William's nom is well deserved, but Gosling's restless intensity definitely equals hers.

A great Grizzly Bear soundtrack and graphic instances of sex and violence are intertwined inside the abstract construction of this film, but I bet what will linger more in the memory will be the raw moments between Gosling and Williams where they ache together yet still can not connect.

Like a heart made out of barbed wire, BLUE VALENTINE really stings.

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ALL GOOD THINGS: The Film Babble Blog Review

ALL GOOD THINGS (Dir. Andrew Jarecki, 2010)

Andrew Jarecki, director of one of the best documentaries of the Aughts (CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS), stays in the world of non-fiction for his first narrative drama based on what's been called "the most notorious murder case in New York history."

Loosely based on the life on real estate mogul Robert Durst whose wife Kathleen McCormack mysteriously disappeared almost 3 decades ago, this film begins as a love story with overhanded ominous overtones.

Through a framing device of later court testimony providing narration we meet Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst as the couple, renamed David and Katie Marks, who meet in 1971 and seem initially happy, well, if she looks the other way when he mumbles to himself.

Gosling's powerful NYC property owner father played with suave menace by Frank Langella doesn't care for Dunst or his son's hippy lifestyle (the couple smokes joints and own a health food store out in the sticks in Vermont called "All Good Things").

Langella wants his son to be back in New York working for the family business - work than mainly involves shady money pick-ups from sleazy tenants. Gosling gives in to his father and the couple give up the country for the big city.

We learn from Lily Rabe as a outgoing friend of Gosling's that his mother had committed suicide in front of her son . This may explain why he demands that Dunst immediately get an abortion when she tells him she's pregnant.

The couple grow apart after that with Gosling in NY while Dunst stays at their weekend lake house pursuing a medical career.

Gosling has several violent outbursts aimed at his worried wife and after one particularly gloomy evening at their second home Dunst vanishes.

Throughout the film we see flashes of a dark figure hauling garbage bags that presumably have human remains onto a bridge in the middle of the night.

Despite the suspicion of many, Gosling is never charged with a crime and moves on until years later when he's charged with the murder of a cranky neighbor (the always welcome Phillip Baker Hall).

Though he claims self defense and is acquitted, of course, strong doubts linger.

The film gets a bit unfocused in its final third, but it was on shaky ground much earlier it must be said. Gosling is effectively cold and creepy and the film matches that demeanor beat by beat yet the overall take-away isn't one of eerie fascination.

ALL GOOD THINGS acts as if it has secrets to tell, but it really only has a few speculations up its sleeve.

It feels like a slightly glorified "made for TV" melodrama like those shown on the Lifetime network.

The supporting cast is capable - Dunst registers more realistically than she has before for me, and as her coke snotting best friend Kristen Wiig (Saturday Night Live) has a few moments as, I guess, light comic relief, but there isn't a lot of weight to this plodding procedural.

There have been great inconclusive films before such as David Fincher's ZODIAC and Jarecki's own doc CAPTURING THE FREIDMANS - films that passionately probe for the truth through a murky web of contradictions, but ALL GOOD THINGS simply doesn't have the hook or enough layers to make it anything more than a forgettable true crime thriller throwaway.

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