Check Out the Trailer

If there are awards for cutting trailers than the editor of the SURVEILLANCE trailer should win Best Polishing of a Turd award. He or she shows more understanding of filmic storytelling in a few minutes of clips than director Jennifer Lynch shows in an hour and half. She hasn’t directed a film since the laughably terrible BOXING HELENA. She has actually made a less entertaining film than that disaster.

A grizzly murder starts off the film. FBI agents Sam Hallaway (Bill Pullman, SPACEBALLS) and Elizabeth Anderson (Julia Ormond, THE FIRST KNIGHT) arrive at the small town police station where the only survivors of the killing spree are being held. Capt. Billings (Michael Ironside, TOTAL RECALL) and his bumbling officers, Degrasso (Gill Gayle, TV’s DEADWOOD) and Wright (Charlie Newmark, 1990’s LORD OF THE FLIES), haven’t even questioned the witnesses yet. Officer Jack Bennett (Kent Harper) is blooded and beaten and very defensive. Bobbi Prescott (Pell James, ZODIAC) is a drug addict with a lot to hide. Stephanie (Ryan Simpkins, A SINGLE MAN) is a perceptive little girl who has just lost her whole family.
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Check Out the Trailer

Damn, Audrey Tautou is sexy. In this French romantic comedy, she changes the charge in the air when she enters a room. This is very good for the role she plays. She’s a con woman who seduces rich men and lives off their generosity until she finds a better money source. She gets jewels and clothes and fancy rooms in fancy hotels and they get her. The millionaires are getting a steal.

But who’s not getting a steal is the sleepy waiter Jean (Gad Elmaleh, THE VALET). One night, dressed in a tux, Jean hops behind the bar to mix himself a drink. Tautou’s Irene strolls in and thinks he’s the jackpot. After a hot night in one of the empty hotel rooms, Irene discovers she was slumming it when a shocked family shows up in the morning. But Jean is still smitten and offers to pay for her as well. She humors him by bleeding his savings dry in a few hours.
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This family film is based on the American Girl toy line. That doesn’t seem very promising does it, but you’d be jumping to wrong conclusions. The popular dolls are based around stories and this one is brought to the screen with an old-fashioned charm. Patricia Rozema’s adaptation never gets cloy with its Great Depression era tale, dealing with the time period innocently, but honestly.

Kit Kittredge (Abigail Breslin, LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE) desperately wants to become of star reporter. Her father Jack (Chris O’Donnell, BATMAN & ROBIN) has just lost his car dealership and the bank is threatening to foreclose on their house. While he goes off to Chicago to find work, her mother Margaret (Julia Ormond, LEGENDS OF THE FALL) rents out their extra rooms to boarders. Mr. Berk (Stanley Tucci, THE LOVELY BONES) is a magician. Miss Dooley (Jane Krakowski, TV’s 30 ROCK) is a sexy dance instructor. Miss Bond (Joan Cusack, WORKING GIRL) is the flighty driver of a mobile library. Mrs. Howard (Glenne Headly, DICK TRACY), whose house was foreclosed on, moves in with her son Stirling Howard IV (Zach Mills, HOLLYWOODLAND), who defends Kit when boys at school pick on her for her family’s situation.
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Heartbreak and mix CDs, isn’t that what the teenage years are all about? They start off Peter Sollett’s romantic comedy in one of those one crazy night plots. As the title suggests there is a boy named Nick and a girl name Norah and there will be music involved. This hit or miss comedy does a good job with those parts, but it disconnects before the upload is finished with the rest.

Nick (Michael Cera, JUNO) is pinning over his ex-girlfriend Tris (Alexis Dziena, BROKEN FLOWERS). He keeps making her mix CDs to win her back, but she just tosses them in the trash. This is where they are recovered by Norah (Kat Dennings, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN), who loves Nick’s taste in music. She’s also loves his Queercore band, The Jerk-Offs, which also includes the gay members Thom (Aaron Yoo, DISTURBIA) and Dev (Rafi Gavron, INKHEART). Rumors hit the school that the publicity shy band Where’s Fluffy? is playing a secret concert in NYC. Thom and Dev drag Nick to find them, while separately Norah and her best friend Caroline (Ari Graynor, An AMERICAN CRIME) do the same. As one would expect the paths of Nick, Norah, Tris and Norah’s friend with benefits Tal (Jay Baruchel, KNOCKED UP) will cross during the night.
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When I was putting together my top 50 films of the 2000s list, Baz Luhrmann’s groundbreaking musical was among the top 20. Every musical of the 2000s that came after owes a bit of their success to it. The energetic flick breathed life into the dying genre both financially and artistically. Mixing tragedy with humor and song, the film tells an epic love story through a medley of modern popular music.

Christian (Ewan McGregor, STAR WARS prequels) moves to Paris to become a bohemian writer. He falls into an acting troupe led by little person Toulouse-Lautrec (John Leguizamo, SUMMER OF SAM), who believes that the naïve author will become the voice of the bohemian revolution. They go to the Moulin Rogue to pitch their new play to burlesque star Satine (Nicole Kidman, DEAD CALM). However, she mistakes Christian for The Duke (Richard Roxburgh, VAN HELSING), a wealthy man who the Moulin Rouge owner Harold Zidler (Jim Broadbent, IRIS) hopes will turn the dance hall into a legit theater. Through his song of truth, beauty and love, Christian quickly wins the heart of Satine, who must string along The Duke for the benefit of the majority.
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Buy It Now!

Read my original review of UP IN THE AIR.

Paramount brings Jason Reitman’s Oscar-nominated feature to Blu-ray with a quality transfer and interesting features package. The 1080p visuals have a nice balance of tone and film texture. While this isn’t a visual spectacle, this presentation is about as good as it can get. Details really shine in the film’s wider shots, especially in the opening title sequence where we get a bird’s eye view of various American landscapes. The color palette also stands out in the darker lit lounge scenes like the one where George Clooney and Vera Farmiga’s characters first meet. Like the visuals, the soundtrack isn’t one to show off the surround sound with. However, for those who are aware of the subtleties Blu-ray, they will be happy with this disc. While you never feel like you’re lost in the sounds of locations like the airports, the back speaker presence is used nicely to create a sense of location. This is a dialogue-centered film and the lines are crisp and clear.

The special features are interesting. Writer/director Jason Reitman, Director of Photography Eric Steelberg, and First Assistant Director Jason Blumenfeld participate in the film’s commentary. In an enthusiastic fashion, they discuss the challenges and approaches they took to creating the various scenes. It’s interesting to learn how they approached interviews with real life individuals who had been recently laid off. Reitman also delves into his creative process, which will be quite engaging for fans of the director or fledgling filmmakers.
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Disney creates a new princess to be proud of.

Forget about THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON release this Saturday, you’re not going to see that mope fest on my list. Two weeks ago was a great week for family titles and so is this one. And there is a few titles I missed that I’d love you hear your thoughts on.
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Buy It Now!

Read my original THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG review.

As they did with their other recent animated release PONYO, Disney understands that animation is the cornerstone of their company and gives due respect to its release on Blu-ray. Disney Feature Animation’s return to hand-drawn animation is an explosion of color in 1080p. From the dark night scenes in the bayou to the brightly colored Mardi Gras scenes, the painterly frames don’t loose any of their luster. I didn’t even see color banding in the deep reds. The presentation makes one very aware that there is real artwork dancing across the screen. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 audio matches the picture quality. Randy Newman’s music presentation is amazing, coming across the full range of speakers. The full soundscape is this way. The swamps come alive in the room with insects and creatures. Sounds whirl around the speakers from front to back, especially in scenes when voodoo magic comes alive. The rich picture and sound makes for an immersive home viewing experience.

For fans of the film, the presentation is supplemented wonderfully by the special features. Directors/co-writers John Musker and Ron Clements, and producer Peter Del Vecho participate in a nice audio commentary, giving behind-the-scenes details about the film’s development, as well as capturing the collaborative nature of animation by pointing out individual contributions of the artists that worked on the film. The disc also offers a Picture-in-Picture track where the film plays with a combination of pencil tests, storyboards, key animations and temp animation.
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Buy It Now!

Read my original PONYO review.

I say this a lot, but animation was made for Blu-ray. Disney does a remarkable job transferring Hayao Miyazaki’s latest world of wonder and whimsy to 1080p. The artists’ rich color palette pops. Look at Lisa’s pink car. Look at the deep blues of the fish waves. None of the details of the gorgeous hand painted art are lost. One can see the brush strokes in the backgrounds. The underwater scenes come alive with Studio Ghibli’s attention to detail from the particles in the water to flow of the water. The audio matches the picture very well. The English track is in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and the Japanese track is in Dolby Digital 5.1. Or course the former is far better than the latter. The English track has clear dialog and great directionality. At one moment a call from the rear speaker actually made me turn. The English version simply balances all the elements of the soundtrack from the dialog to the music to the sound effects better.

As for the special features, English-language executive producers Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy give a brief introduction to bringing PONYO to the U.S. in “Meet Ponyo.” In lieu of a commentary track, the disc offers a Storyboard Experience where the Japanese storyboards play in the upper right hand corner along with movie. The color watercolor paintings often match the art on the screen exactly.
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Check Out the Trailer

Lars von Trier’s disturbing film was the most controversial film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. Reactions were love it or hate it. The French reviewers who lean toward art films generally loathed it, while American reviewers were the most kind. Some called it torture porn. Others complained it was violently misogynistic. I found it a brave, unblinking decent into the abyss of the worst of human experience.

The story begins with He (Willem Dafoe, THE ENGLISH PATIENT) and She (Charlotte Gainsbourg, 1996’s JANE EYRE) having passionate sex. It’s snowing outside and their young son crawls out of his crib to get a closer look out the window. The child falls to his death. She sinks into unbearable grief. He is a therapist who doesn’t agree with the way the doctors are treating his wife and decides to treat her himself. He forces her to confront her greatest fears. The scariest place she can now imagine is their cabin in the deep woods called Eden, where she spent the previous summer with her son working on her thesis about gynocide. The more callously He pushes her, the more disturbed she becomes, which leads to violence both mental and physical.
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