Movie Reviews

Kate Beckinsale. Kate Beckinsale in tight, black leather. Kate Beckinsale sucking blood and making nooky with a hairy vampire. This stuff sells tickets, folks.

The first Underworld is the perfect example of glitz over substance, but a fast-paced storyline, lots of action, R-rated gore and yes, Kate Beckinsale in black leather, made it a worthwhile entry in the action-horror genre, if there is such a thing. Unfortunately, such a film inevitably led to a sequel, which tried to be bigger and better but suffered from the typical sequel issues. Underworld: Evolution was entertaining, but overblown.

Now, with the release of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans – which replaces Kate Beckinsale with Rhona Mitra – Sony is bringing Underworld and Underworld: Evolution back to DVD in an all-new Double Feature DVD set, which includes the unrated director’s cut of the original film (15 extra minutes, give or take) and its sequel.

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Fox’s hit TV show 24 starts today, January 11th, so it’s no surprise that its main character, Jack Bauer, is getting three straight days of action. Two hours of 24 on Sunday, two more hours on Monday, and then, on Tuesday, Kiefer Sutherland’s horror movie Mirrors arrives on DVD.

Mirrors is a creepy movie, for obvious reasons. Think of all of the horror movies you’ve watched in your lifetime, of the good ones and the bad ones: one of the most reliable scare tactic in any of these films is the predictable yet effective mirror sequence… you know, where the character goes to pop a couple pills in the bathroom, closes the cabinet door and – bam! – something is behind the character, waiting to strike. You know it’s coming, yet is scares you nonetheless.

The first horror movie I ever remember watching – in elementary school – was Candyman. Say his name six times into the mirror and you are one dead bastard. For years, I never went into the bathroom when the lights were off – I snaked my hand inside to find the light switch. I finally overcame this fear when I went to college.

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This February, audiences will be greeted to an all-new 3D adventure in the form of My Bloody Valentine 3D, a remake of the 1981 horror film My Bloody Valentine, which is about a crazy miner who goes around murdering people.

In anticipation of the new 3D film, it’s no surprise that Paramount and Lionsgate have released a new Special Edition version of the original “classic.” Having never seen the film before, I didn’t know what to expect. After all, it looks and sounds like a rather cheesy and unoriginal slasher flick… and, guess what? It is!

Thankfully, My Bloody Valentine is also entertaining. There isn’t a clever moment in the entire picture, save for the ending; people get picked off one by one, the local sheriff runs around like an idiot and a bunch of young people sneak off to screw around only to get impaled in one way or another (or get their faces boiled out or their hearts ripped out). The movie isn’t suspenseful or scary, as it’s quite clear who will live and who will die. The direction bears the traits of typical B-grade 80′s horror films; not very crisp, not very gritty and not very deep.

Still, if you don’t expect much, you may be pleasantly surprised. There isn’t any nudity, which was a bit of a shocker, but there is a fair amount of gore – and the gore is pretty decent. Furthermore, I really liked one of the final scenes of the movie, where the killer lurks off into the depths of the mines, cackling away. It’s a creepy moment that resonated well.

Compared to the classic slasher films we all know and love, My Bloody Valentine doesn’t stand out in any way or form, but it’s fast-paced, entertaining and relatively gory.

The DVD allows you to watch either the regular theatrical version or the extended version. However, please take note: the DVD did not, for some reason, work in my Denon DVD player; I had to watch this on my computer.

In my continued case to see all things Audrey Hepburn, I popped Funny Face into my DVD player today. Thankfully, Paramount Pictures has been releasing Hepburn films over the last few months under its Centennial Edition banner, and Funny Face is the latest to be re-released. Having just watched Sabrina, Roman Holiday and, of course, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, my expectations were set pretty high – little did I know that Funny Face was an annoying musical that definitely does not stand the test of time.

Funny Face is about a fashion magazine photographer (Fred Astaire) who, in order to get a perfect shot, storms into an old bookstore to perform a photo shoot – taking the poor bookkeeper (Hepburn) by surprise. Though she has a “funny face,” Mr. Astaire sees something in the young women and selects her to be his next model. Hepburn is swept away to Paris for her big premiere, though her intentions are more to philosophize with Parisians than walk down a runway. At the same time, an awkward relationship forms between the two.

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The funny Judd Apatow action-comedy Pineapple Express arrives on DVD this Tuesday, and comes packed with more than just a dime bag of bonus features.

Seth Rogen and James Franco star as two potheads who become involved in a murder plot, forcing them to go on the run and, eventually, to attack the drugdealers who are hunting them head on. The pairing is a match made in heaven, as Rogen once again shows he has great comic timing and Franco turns in a Golden Globe-nominated performance (no kidding) with stupid grins and paranoid delusions. A great supporting cast also helps.

The movie itself benefits from the influence of an indie director, as it doesn’t become an idiotic pothead movie a la Dude, Where’s My Car? Instead, Pineapple Express is an authentic action-comedy that just happens to be about a bunch of idiotic characters. You can read Robert Bell’s Pineapple Express movie review, though I liked the picture a little more than he did.

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December is the month when the really good films come to theaters. It’s a known fact, because all of these movies want to be known and on voters’ minds when Oscar ballots go out in January. And while you can’t always trust the critics for 11 months out of the year when it comes to blockbusters, action films and comedies, they can be pretty reliable when it comes to dramas. You won’t always agree, but if there’s one genre that professional critics know, it’s drama.

So, I watched Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. Good movie. Great acting, and strong dialogue. But a great movie? One that deserves a Golden Globe nomination? No. And Ron Howard, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director? Over Christopher Nolan and several other directors? Absolutely no way.

Read my Frost/Nixon movie review to see what I have to say about the film.

On January 16th, Battlestar Galactica returns with its final season, the end of a glorious run. BSG is easily one of the best sci-fi shows ever made, and one of the best dramas, too. It’s had its ups and downs, of course, but even it’s worst episode is better than the best episodes of some pretty decent shows.

If you can’t wait that long, Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 comes to DVD on January 6th.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 begins with the return of Starbuck, who was assumed dead. Her return is regarded with suspicion, as her death was witnessed and the logical assumption is that she is indeed a Cylon. But Adama puts his faith in her anyway, and lets her set out with a crew of dedicated soldiers to search for Earth, something she realizes she has been dreaming about since she was a child.

Other storylines continue the revelation of the Final Five Cylons, whose destinies are yet to be determined. The defintion of what it is to be human is explored in greater detail, especially when the Cylons fraction, causing a civil war. Adama, President Roslin and others find themselves forced to make a huge leap of faith: join forces with one faction to eliminate the other, all in the quest to discover Earth.

BSG: Season 4.0 is as rich as the other seasons, and its character and story developments continue to expand our expectations and make us question what is right and what is wrong. At the same time, the show also presses further on its ideas of destiny and fate, something I’ve never really liked, at least not when the production is otherwise grounded in reality. While it works, the show’s mysticism continues to irk me some.

Every episode comes with a series of deleted scenes, and also included is the one-off BSG movie Razor (strangely with different, rather rudimentary font and packaging compared to the rest of the discs). Special features include those previously included on the Razor disc that was available to own last year, and a bunch of featurettes and video blogs. The featurettes found on disc four are pretty interesting and include each actor’s perspective on their characters. The Music of Battlestar Galactica is surprisingly funny. I didn’t watch all of the video blogs.

This DVD review is pretty useless, as fans of the show no doubt already have preordered Battlestar Galactica: Season 4.0 to own. If you haven’t watched the show, you have to start from Season One, Episode One. BSG is one of the best shows ever made.

Eagle Eye is the perfect B-grade thriller, a fast-paced, excited and well budgeted picture with quality acting and enough chaos to satisfy most fans. It is also ridiculous at times, forcing you to stretch your imagination far beyond what you expected. Still, if you accept that, the movie is pretty damn entertaining.

The 2-Disc Special Edition DVD, however, is not. The Special Edition is not very special at all, as it contains just a few mediocre bonus features that no one really wants to see. The Alternate Ending, which is short and to-the-point, is okay – but thank God they didn’t use it in the theatrical release.  However, the series of featurettes included on the discs are dull, dull, dull.

There’s a making-of featurette, which is more promotional than anything else and only provides a few real glimpses at the actual production of the movie; another one looks at filming in Washington, D.C. That’s not very exotic at all. Yet another is about the reality of the world we live in, and how it’s not that farfetched that we can be tracked most of the time; interesting subject, but there’s just too little real content to make this worthwhile. There’s also an interview between the director and his mentor, but I lost interest early on. Ironically, this one may be the most authentic of all of the bonus features, though it was a mistake to have the two just talking in a room; instead, they should have had a moderator to help lead the men down a more interesting path.

There’s also a gag real and some deleted scenes, but both features are pretty standard.

Eagle Eye is a fun movie, but the DVD bonus features are completely worthless.

Of all the films to be released in 2008, Burn After Reading is one of the more divisive of the group. Some people loved the movie, some hated it, and a few, like me, were somewhere in the middle. It’s definitely a picture of extremes, as the humor and rather aimless story went right over some people’s heads, while others recognized it as pretty standard Coen Brothers comedy. Funny enough, while sitting in the theater, you could actually identify the sections of the theater who got it: while I was laughing, two-thirds of the theater was silent. Didn’t they know what they had gotten themselves into?

In their defense, Burn After Reading is a bit aimless and not always spot on in the humor department; there are stretches where the movie isn’t that funny, and others where it is. The thing is: this is how the Coen Brothers do comedy. They don’t write a film to have every line of dialogure be hilarious; they are very up-and-down comedic writers, and I have to imagine it’s intentional. If you can’t handle that, don’t watch the movie.

Of course, for those of you who didn’t see Burn After Reading in theaters, the movie comes to DVD this Sunday, December 21st. Unfortunately, the bonus features suck. There are only three, none of which are particularly good. Finding the Burn is called the “making-of Burn After Reading,” but it has to be one of the shortest making-of featurettes I’ve seen in a long time. In other words: there ain’t much here.

DC Insiders Run Amuck looks at each individual character and their nuances, et cetera. This featurette talks about Brad Pitt’s hairstyle, the efforts needed to make George Clooney (and Pitt) look like morons, and the reasons that the cast, including Frances McDormand and John Malkovich, took the roles. There are a few funny parts in here as the actors joke about their characters, but once again the featurette is short and not very valuable.

Lastly, we have Welcome Back, George, which interviews the Coen Brothers and George Clooney about his third movie with the directors. Basically, it talks about how they love to write stupid parts for him, and how Clooney just accepts that. The featurette is mildly funny, but once again way too short.

When it takes longer to write the DVD review than it does to watch the DVD bonus features, you know you have a lame DVD on your hands. And the Burn After Reading DVD is just that.

I received a copy of In Hell in the mail this last week, as the 2003 direct-to-DVD Jean-Claude Van Damme is being re-released in a new limited edition. Why such a film deserves a re-release only a few years later is beyond me, but then again, it gave me the opportunity to watch this incredible, incredible film.

Okay, “incredible” might be a bit of an overstatement. In Hell isn’t as bad as you’d expect for a post-career peak Van Damme, but it’s surprisingly dull and uninteresting for the most part. The movie is about a guy who sentenced to life in an Eastern European prison for killing his wife’s murderer, and in this prison, the warden pits prisoners against one another. It sounds like the perfect opportunity for Van Damme to kick some serious ass.

Or, spend half his time sitting in a crap-filled prison cell trying to kill himself – and then training his body – while watching a moth fly around his head. Van Damme doesn’t get a real fight in until an hour in, and there are only one or two good sequences after that. In Hell, despite its title and premise, is much more of a character drama than one would expect; and not a very good one.

In Hell really isn’t that bad, but is it worth watching? No. It’s one of those many films that try to do too much and end up failing in every regard. Part of it wants to be a typical Van Damme action movie, but it lacks the amount of action, violence and gore to make it worth it. On the flip side, it also tries to be deeper than the typical prison fight, yet it just doesn’t have the script, actors or direction to pull it off. In other words, it’s an action movie without action, and a drama without drama.

Incredible.

I’ve just posted my movie review for Timecrimes, the Spanish time travel thriller about a man who sees a naked woman in the woods, goes to investigate, gets tricked into climbing into a machine and then, when he emerges, he finds that he has traveled back in time by a few hours. Told to stay put, he instead sets out to ensure that the events he went through before happened again, so he doesn’t mess up time. But, as one might imagine, he doesn’t do a very good job of that.

Timecrimes (also known as Los Cronocrímenes to those who speak español) comes to limited theaters this Friday.

Read my Timecrimes movie review.

A week from now, Jennifer Connelly and Keanu Reeves will storm onto theaters in the almost-expected remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. The 2008 version looks to be drastically different from the 1951 classic, but that might not be that bad of an idea.Smartly, 20th Century Fox is re-releasing the original in an all-new 2-Disc Special Edition, which includes director commentary and several new featurettes. However, I needed to watch the movie first. According to my roommate, I watched this movie once before in high school, but if I did, I must have been sleeping. In other words, I essentially watched The Day the Earth Stood Still for the first time tonight, and while I respected the quality of the film, it is definitely showing its age.

Aside from the super-cheap robot outfit, the 1951 film has surprisingly excellent visuals, as minimalistic as they are. The spaceship still looks great, as do the laser effects. Furthermore, the story still holds its own, supported by quality acting and a well-written screenplay.

Unfortunately, for a 26-year old, this sci-fi movie is just a tad boring. OK, maybe boring isn’t the right word, but the movie is so dialogue-driven that there isn’t much excitement. People who grew up loving this film – my mother included – will scoff at such rstrongarks, but The Day the Earth Stood Still was clearly made in a time before sci-fi films about aliens threatening to destroy the world needed to be rich with excitement. This is all fine and good, but I was expecting something a little more… animated.

The Day the Earth Stood Still is a good movie, but if you didn’t grow up enjoying the film, it might come off as a little dated.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian rides onto DVD today, and with it a good chunk of bonus features.

Prince Caspian moved the lucrative franchise out of its December time slot to May, where it stumbled mightily. A bit lost among bigger, more adult fare and lacking a major Christian holiday to play to churches, not to mention that many people, including myself, came away with mediocre reactions to the first film, the movie put the franchise on shaky ground – however, Voyage of the Dawn Treader is moving forward as planned.

Nevertheless, Prince Caspian is surprisingly entertaining and action-packed film that pushes its PG rating to the max while still holding true to its family roots. A vast improvement over the first film in terms of excitement and suspense, I highly recommend Prince Caspian. You can read my full Prince Caspian movie review here.

In other exciting news, I’m currently watching the bonus features for the movie as I fly home from Los Angeles. Having just reviewed the Wanted DVD, this one shows the difference between mediocre bonus features and good ones; the Prince Caspian bonus features are much more in-depth, informative and interesting.

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The Angelina Jolie/James McAvoy action flick Wanted comes to DVD this Tuesday. The hit film, which also stars Morgan Freeman, is an exciting, visually refreshing picture from the director of Night Watch, who’s not exactly known for stories entirely based in reality. Bullets curve, assassins drive cars at ridiculous angles and bodies fall freely, and it’s all a lot of fun.

The movie falters in the end as the story hits us with a less-than-satisfying twist ending (and a not-as-action-packed-as-expected climax), but overall, as a mindless action flick, it’s top notch. Based on the graphic novel by Mark Millar, Wanted has a unique blend of comedy and suspense, and the result is an entertaining story and screenplay. The beginning comes off as a mix between Office Space and The Matrix, and if you ever dreamed of such a combination, you’re not the only one.

OK, maybe you are, but it still works surprisingly well.

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The Longshots arrives on DVD on Tuesday, December 2nd. The movie stars Ice Cube and the girl from Akeelah and the Bee as a coach and female football quarterback respectively, who carry a rather crappy team to the playoffs. The family sports movie, directed by Fred Durst of all people, is based on a true story.

I’ve written a movie review for the film, so the only logical next step is to… read my Longshots movie review.

Alternatively, if you’re too lazy to read, you can instead enter to win a Longshots DVD.