Posts Tagged ‘dvd review’

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was released on DVD on April 15th, so I’m a few days behind on my DVD review. The movie, as you probably don’t know, is about two brothers (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) who, after some rough times, decide to commit an armed robbery. Their target of choice? Their parents’ jewelry store.

As one might suspect, their robbery goes horribly wrong and the two find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game against the police, their consciences and even each other. Oh, and they’re both sleeping with the same woman (Marisa Tomei, who spends most of the movie walking around naked).

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a pretty good movie. It’s a pretty decent crime thriller, with good performances and a good story. It’s unique in that it blends family drama with an increasingly dark crime story, though what it lacks is the big twists that really could have taken it to the next level. However, since this blog post is about the DVD and not about the movie itself, you can read my full Before the Devil movie review here.

The DVD, unfortunately, gives little reason to buy this good-but-not-great movie. While I would still recommend a rental, the DVD only offers three special features:

• A theatrical commentary with Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman and director Sidney Lumet. I can imagine this commentary is quite good, but since I never listen to commentaries, I have not made the exception here.
• A making-of featurette, which is about as interesting as watching a sack of coal get transformed into diamonds over a thousand years. It’s more promotional than anything else and really doesn’t offer much insight into the creation of the movie.
• The theatrical trailer. Whoopdy-do!

The Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead DVD is really a lackluster product from ThinkFilm. Even though the movie was never really considered a wide release, I was expecting something a little more substantial in terms of a DVD package.

The movie is still worth it, but those looking for bonus features won’t be satisfied with this release.

Some people hated Cloverfield. I honestly don’t get it. The movie is fast-paced, action-packed, has great special effects and is rarely, if ever, cheesy. How many monster movies, especially movies about big monsters that attack cities, can make that claim? Cloverfield is probably the closest thing you’ll get to a “realistic” monster movie.

As for the people who claim they got motion sickness or what not, give me a break. How come people react so poorly to shaky cameras? The camera work was really not that shaky and, besides, you should have known what you were setting yourself up for. By the way, I took my mom to the theater to watch the movie, and she was suffering from massive vertigo at the time (she was on medicine and was supposed to do these stupid exercises). She didn’t notice anything wrong with the camera work, and loved the movie.

Anyway, if you want to read my Cloverfield movie review, you can, but the following is about the Cloverfield DVD special features.

There aren’t a ton of Cloverfield special features, but where they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality (and how much you want to bet that a 2-disc special edition is on its way out for the holidays?). There’s an audio commentary from the director, which I didn’t listen to – because unlike some reviewers, I don’t have time to re-watch every DVD release with voice-over narration.

I did watch the deleted scenes and alternate endings. As one might suspect, the deleted scenes and alternate endings are minor variations of what we got in the final release. That are a few cut scenes from the party sequence which don’t add much but are fun to watch anyway, while the alternate endings have subtle but significant adjustments. Ultimately, the director went with the right choice of endings, as the other ones lack the emotional punch. All of the scenes come with optional director’s commentary, of which I did listen to!

There’s also a 28-minute making-of featurette, which looks behind the scenes of Cloverfield. This is one of the better making-of featurettes I’ve seen recently, as we really get a pretty good look at what went into making the film, including the green screen action, set design, so on and so forth. One of the most interesting things is that it appears as though most of the actors have no idea what the movie is about while filming; they are constantly talking about how they know a few scenes, but that’s about it. J.J. Abrams and everyone else took the secrecy of the movie quite seriously.

There is also a featurette dedicated to the Cloverfield special effects. While this one doesn’t vary too much from special effect documentaries for other movies, it’s always interesting to see how the people approached the creature design, CGI and so on and so forth.

There’s also a small blooper reel for those of you who like seeing other people who make more money than you do mess up.

Overall, I enjoyed the Cloverfield special features. I know a little more about the movie than I did before, and that’s always a good thing. If you didn’t like Cloverfield the first time, I suggest watching it again – maybe you’ll like it this time around, or maybe you’ll just settle for being wrong and having bad taste. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a shame you didn’t see it in theaters, but the DVD comes out April 22nd, so you’ll just have to do with that.

For more Cloverfield movie details, click here.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the movie musical starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton, arrives on DVD today (Tuesday). Personally, I thought the movie was a disaster – the music is terrible, the story boring (amazing, considering the movie is about a serial killer who slices people’s necks and then has his “girlfriend” turn the bodies into meat pies to serve to unsuspecting patrons) and the acting overrated, but apparently I am in the minority. A lot of people loved Sweeney Todd for a reason I cannot fathom… usually, when I hate a movie and others love it, I at least can identify the reason; with this one, the only thing that comes to mind is that people are so consumed by the fact that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are teaming up once again that they have convinced themselves it must be good.

Anyway, regardless of how good (or bad) Sweeney Todd is, I have to say the DVD is excellent. I have the two-disc Special Collector’s Edition, and it is jam-packed full of behind-the-scenes featurettes, documentaries and more that give you all kinds of insights into the film. It basically looks like the DVD staff went out and found every random thing they could find about Sweeney Todd, the movie or otherwise, and shoved them onto the discs… and the result is surprisingly good.

While there are plenty more features than this, the memorable ones that stand out are:

• Sweeney Todd movie press release, with Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and the rest. Basically, the cast and crew take questions from the press and answer them in an insightful but often funny way. I realized that I had never before actually heard Burton speak. Some of Helena Bonham Carter’s comments about having to sleep with the director (and then about Depp not having slept with anyone, ever) to get her role are quite entertaining.
•  The truth about Sweeney Todd, an examination of the facts and fictions that are built into the character. I was surprised to see that the character has actually been around for centuries in some form or another, and that there is actually debate as to whether the man really lived or not. It seems clear to me that there is no real Sweeney Todd, and instead his character is a result of many different real-life and legendary people that have cropped up over the years.

Okay, that’s only two, but there are a slew of special features, all of which are useful in their own way. Not are overwhelmingly long, but have just the right running length to be useful without being boring.

I still think the music in the film sucks, though. I like musicals, but I clearly don’t like musicals where the characters sing sentences.

Read my Sweeney Todd movie review here.

Sean Penn’s Into the Wild is now available on DVD in a 2-disc Collector’s Edition. While the movie is one of the better films of 2007 (I hesitate to say one of the year’s best), the DVD is lackluster by anyone’s definition.

The second disc, which houses the special features, contains only two featurettes, one titled “The Story, the Characters”, the other “The Experience.” Both of these go on to explain the creation of the characters, the sets and so on and so forth, but I found neither of these to be particularly informative or memorable. Mind you that I watched these features while going on 30-hours of only a couple hours of plane sleep, but there is nothing here worth noting. In fact, I found the featurettes to be rather promotional, as if they were made before the Into the Wild‘s release to get more people excited in this interesting tale.

That’s not much of a DVD review, but that is all Into the Wild has to offer. Why Paramount Vantage has to waste such resources to create a second disc for those featurettes is beyond me, as the set seems more comparable to a standard, single-disc release.

Nevertheless, the movie Into the Wild is still a good one, featuring great acting and an incredibly unique story. You can read my full Into the Wild movie review here.

The Kite Runner, considered one of the better foreign language films of 2007, comes to DVD today. The film actually got a lot of attention, even though it was nowhere to be found at the Academy Awards (other than a nomination for music). While a lot of people liked this film, I found The Kite Runner to be nothing more than a quality TV movie. The first half of the movie is quite good, but the modern day scenes suffered from stale directing (and Marc Forster is directing the new James Bond movie, no!!!!) and flat acting. The final part of the movie plays out like an action movie, but the action is rudimentary at best (Marc Forster, no!!!!).

You can read my full Kite Runner movie review here.

That being said, The Kite Runner isn’t that bad. It might even be worth watching, but I wouldn’t expect an amazing film by any means. The DVD offers these bonus features:

• Commentary by Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, no!!!), Khaled Hosseini and David Benioff (wouldn’t it have been cooler to have the two young boys provide commentary?)
• “Words from The Kite Runner” – I don’t know what this is, but I don’t really care
• Images from The Kite Runner – Seriously? How can companies still market image galleries as real bonus features? Why would you even want to look at an image gallery when you can just watch the movie?
• Theatrical trailer

Again, The Kite Runner is probably worth seeing, but I get annoyed at the praise this film undeservedly receives.

The Aristocats arrived on DVD in February. I was supposed to review it in February. I didn’t. It’s now March, and I finally got to the film. As much as I could watch anyway.

I don’t believe that, even in my childhood, I ever saw The Aristocats, and as such, my childhood sentiment for the film isn’t there. The movie, about four cats who try to make it back home to Paris after they are abandoned in the countryside by an evil butler, is a Disney classic, but it’s certainly a film that shows its age.

The Aristocats is moderately funny at times and has some quality entertainment; a scene where the butler hides in a haystack and carefully tries to steal a bunch of stuff from a couple of dogs is pretty amusing, and there are other highlights as well. The animation is good given that the film originally hit theaters 38 years ago (yes, 1970 was 38 years ago); actually, I miss this style of animation a lot. All the cartoons these days look so glossy; the roughness of The Aristocats really works in its favor.

I expect little kids will still find this movie entertaining, but I’d be curious to see if that’s the truth. The style of humor is certainly different than that found in modern movies, and I wonder if children are still able to appreciate calmer, more laid back cartoons like this film. Unlike most cartoons, The Aristocats really doesn’t have a prominent villain, and the film takes its time moving from sequence to sequence without any sense of excitement or tension. This isn’t bad – it’s just different.

Nevertheless, I found The Aristocats a little boring. Had I grown up on the film, I’d probably think differently, but since I didn’t, I didn’t see anything very spectacular here.  Little kids may still enjoy it, but the film certainly feels dated.

The DVD offers several games and activities, deleted scenes and some behind-the-scenes featurettes, none of which I bothered to watch.

American Gangster, the well-received cop/gangster movie starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, is now out on DVD. The movie is pretty good, though I’d say it’s a bit overrated. The pacing could have been a little better, and American Gangster definitely doesn’t compare to any Scorcese gangster flick (and it has been compared to those films). Still, American Gangster is a pretty good film with two really great actors squaring off against one another, and so if you haven’t seen it, you definitely need to check it out.

You can read my full American Gangster movie review here.

I just watched the bonus features on the 2-disc unrated extended edition DVD of American Gangster, and its value will largely depend on what you value as extra features. The DVD set comes with both the theatrical version and an unrated extended version which includes an extra 18 minutes. Considering that the regular American Gangster was long enough, I can’t say that an extended version is an improvement. Still, it’s great that Universal includes both versions in the release.

As for the bonus features, there are a couple of relatively uninteresting deleted scenes, including an alternate opening. Things get better when you move onto the making-of featurette, an over-hour-long look at several aspects from the film, including the elaborate Frazier v. Ali fight. There are segments that aren’t that interesting, but other segments are quite the opposite. What I liked most were the interviews with the real Frank Lucas, who speaks pretty candidly about his experiences. I would have liked to see a full featurette on the real Frank Lucas, however, or a feature commentary with Lucas and the real Richie Roberts.

The only other bonus feature on the disc is a collection of “case files”, which are some behind-the-scene looks at how the filmmakers prepared for the movie. It’s was fun to see Ridley Scott discussing minute details with the real Roberts, and also meeting with police officers to find out the best and most realistic way to show drug tests.

Overall, there’s really not much here, but there are some very nice nuggets to feast your eyes on. If you’re thinking of purchasing American Gangster, you should buy this 2-disc version, since you get two separate versions of the film and some unique insights into the making of the production.

Why do I subject myself to watching movies like this? Lake Placid 2: Unrated, a direct-to-DVD horror movie release, was just asking to be bad, and guess what? It is bad. Really bad.

I have to admit that I sort of liked the original Lake Placid, starring Bill Pullman. It was cheesy and not the least bit realistic, but it was a funny little horror movie with a big crocodile. That doesn’t mean I wanted to see a sequel. This movie, starring John Schneider (“Smallville”) and several unrecognizable actors, is once again set at Lake Placid, making you wonder why anyone would go near the water ever again. Two groups find themselves stranded in the wilderness with a giant crocodile (or several giant crocodiles?), one a sheriff, his hot deputy and a few other pieces of fodder, the other the sheriff’s son, his love interest and some more pieces of fodder. As they get picked off one by one by the cheesy-looking monster, one questions whether the budget of the film was a million… pesos.

Lake Placid 2 is entertaining enough, I’ll admit, but has absolutely nothing worthwhile about it. The crocodiles were made on the cheap, and the special effects department clearly had very little to work with. The crocs are about as scary as a little girl in her church outfit, and regardless of the special effects, director David Flores does so little to make his movie exciting, it’s pretty pathetic. With exception to the cliche underwater sequence that every monster movie must have, the audience, and the characters, see and hear the crocodiles coming from a mile away, which removes any tension the film might have been able to muster. The creators of the movie clearly have never seen a crocodile in real life; otherwise, they could have made something a little better than this piece of crap.

The only highlights of Lake Placid 2 are a few shots of nude women, some ridiculously cheesy-looking blood and… well, that’s about it. At least my mother, who loves bad monster movies, will be happy to receive a new DVD for her collection.

A new DVD edition of Braveheart comes to stores this Tuesday, December 18th, and with it comes some supposedly new special features that fans of the film might be interested in. From what I could find on Amazon.com, at least some of the special features haven’t been done before, though I can’t say for sure. Even with some new featurettes, it is clear that this DVD release is here just to make a few extra bucks around the holidays, but oh well – if you don’t own the movie, now’s your time to get it.

Braveheart is one of my favorite movies; even though it takes great historical license, it is funny, dramatic, entertaining, bloody and romantic all at the same time, and is easily one of Mel Gibson’s best movie, if not the best movie. But I don’t need to go on and on about how good Braveheart is, as everyone and their mother has probably seen it – or at least know it won Best Picture in 1995.

This new 2-disc, Special Collector’s Edition offers audio commentary by Mel Gibson (presumably the same commentary found on other versions), but the features I’m going to talk about are these:

• A Writer’s Journey
  This is an interesting look at the creative process that brought Braveheart to light, based on an interview with the writer, Randall Wallace. Interestingly enough, Wallace first learned about the hero of his movie, William Wallace, when he traveled to Scotland to learn about his heritage. From there, he wrote the screenplay, but claims he doesn’t research his work until after he writes his movies. This interview definitely shows the passion Randall Wallace had for the film.
• Alba gu Brath! The Making of Braveheart
  I think this is just a remixing of the making-of featurette found on the original Braveheart DVD, but it shows how Gibson approached the creation of the movie. Most interesting is that we get to see a lot of behind-the-scenes looks at the editing process as Gibson and his editor discuss how to make scenes work much better.
• Tales of William Wallace
  This one explores the rather vague historical facts revolving around William Wallace. Not bad, but not particularly useful, either.
• Archival Interviews
  There are some interviews with the cast. Nothing spectacular here, as it’s a bunch of actors saying what actors say about their “powerful” characters.

All in all, it’s a good DVD, but those of you who already own Braveheart should have no need to purchase this new edition, which only adds a couple rather meaningless special features.

I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is now out on DVD, and I’ve been gifted with a free copy. Since I thought the movie was one of Adam Sandler’s worst comedies ever, it’s not a very good gift, but a gift nonetheless.

You can read the full Chuck and Larry movie review here, but continue on to see whether the DVD is any good. The DVD features several features, all of which are quite good considering the type of movie we’re talking about. Of course, these behind-the-scenes looks aren’t as elaborate as the ones you’d find on the DVD for Pirates of the Caribbean, but they’re still pretty informative, and, at the very least, honest. One of my biggest pet peeves are featurettes that are purely promotion (“You’re going to see things in this movie you’ve never seen before”), and luckily the Chuck and Larry DVD stay away from that kind of thing. Thankfully, both Sandler and James are present in all of the featurettes as we get to see them both off camera and discussing the movie.

The stunts featurette is actually quite fun, and a nice reminder that even for a rather simple comedy such as this you can still require stunt men. Of course, none of the stunts are particularly mind blowing, but, then again, I wouldn’t willingly choose to roll down a flight of stairs with a fat guy on top of me. Another one looks at the various cameos in the movie, though it unfortunately isn’t that funny.

The real highlight of the DVD are the deleted scenes and outtakes. Considering that the movie was pretty crappy, the deleted scenes aren’t much to scream about, but there are a few funny moments scattered throughout. The outtakes, however, are quite good, and it’s always fun to watch people like Sandler messing up (or farting).

Guys, just to note: Jessica Biel is noticeably absent from the DVD.

Overall, the Chuck and Larry DVD has some entertaining features. I managed to get through all of the bonus features in half an hour, however, and I question whether there’s anything here really worth purchasing. Of course, I’d question if you were even considering buying this movie in the first place…