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Steve Carell really kicked off his big screen career with the awkward innocent in THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. Now he plays another awkward innocent, however Barry makes VIRGIN’s Andy look world weary. This mouse taxidermist might be the most clueless character to arrive in theaters since DUMB AND DUMBER.

Barry becomes the perfect idiot for Tim (Paul Rudd, ROLE MODELS), an eager analyst at an equity firm. He’s hoping for a big promotion and his boss Lance (Bruce Greenwood, STAR TREK) has invited him to a big wigs’ dinner where each person must bring the biggest misfit they can find so that they can make fun of them. Tim desperately wants to get the promotion so he can impress his successful art curator girlfriend Julie (Stephanie Szostak, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA). But Julie thinks the whole idea of this “dinner for winners” is cruel.
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This orphan from hell flick is one of the best killer kids movies I’ve ever seen. It takes its premise and genuinely develops its characters in compelling ways. It begins down clichés of this type of film, but does so with creepiness and real dread thanks to the time spent making us care for the characters. Then it delivers a whopper of a twist that is simply fabulous trash.

Kate (Vera Farmiga, UP IN THE AIR) and John Coleman (Peter Sarsgaard, AN EDUCATION) have a stillborn child. The tragedy hits Kate particularly hard. We jump forward in time and Kate and John have decided to adopt. They go to an orphanage where they meet the smart, talented Russian girl named Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman, HOUNDDOG). She’s a bit of an outsider, dressed in clothes out of the American Girl catalog. The Colemans’ son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett, STAR TREK) gets jealous of the attention his parents give the strange new girl in their house, but their deaf-mute daughter Max (Aryana Engineer) finds a new friend.
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This character-driven animated feature reminded me of the landmark BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES. The production from Warner Premiere takes the “Under the Hood” story arc from the comics and creates the best filmic treatment of the relationship between Batman and Robin.

Shockingly the story begins with The Joker (John DiMaggio, TV’s FUTURAMA) beating Robin with a crowbar. Batman (Bruce Greenwood, STAR TREK) races to save him, but as he arrives and explosion rocks the building and he carries out the body of his dead ward Jason Todd (Jensen Ackles, TV’s SUPERNATURAL). Struggling to cope with the loss, Batman continues his crusade against the underbelly of Gotham City. However, he’s more brutal and cold than ever. His original ward Dick Grayson (Neil Patrick Harris, TV’s HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER), who moved on from being Robin to don the identity of Nightwing, can’t even get him to open up.
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Buy It Now!

From Warner Bros. Animation comes another beautiful looking HD release. The most memorable element is the vibrant colors. Darkly lit sets often find their way to bright locations whether it be the glow orange ooze bubbling in vats or train stations. Flashbacks to happier times utilize a wider color palette, helped by the presence of Robin’s costume. I say this with every one of these DC Direct titles, but animation looks so good in 1080p and Warner Direct serves it up well. The picture is so crystal clear that it makes for increased engagement. The stormy title sequence looks amazing. Just seeing the episodes of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES on the disc one can see the difference high definition makes in picture quality. Now this isn’t a perfect release. There is some banding in backgrounds, but I never noticed artifacts, aliasing, pixelation or noise like I read in other reviews. But the problems are minor in the larger scope of the release.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is dynamic. I was impressed the directionality of the soundscape. Machine gun blasts sound like they’re buzzing past you. It really helps make the sound seem more robust than it really is. This isn’t the most immersive experience, but it feels like a full sonic world, which is important for animation. One element no one will miss is the LFE channel because it booms during explosions.
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Red Hood rocks

This is another packed week with some great new releases and a slew of titles I’m curious to hear what others think about. Lots of action and intrigue… and some laughs too.
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Based on Jack Ketchum’s book, which is based on the real life murder of Sylvia Likens, this realistic horror flick suffers more depending on what you take into it. The more you know about the real life story the film’s exaggerations seem gratuitous. If you’ve seen the film AN AMERICAN CRIME, which is based more directly on the real story, you’ll find the acting in this film lacking. But the biggest problem with the film is Gregory Wilson’s voyeuristic direction, which makes the audience uncomfortable in all the wrong ways.

Following the death of their parents, Meg (Blythe Auffarth, KEEPING THE FAITH) and Susan Loughlin (Madeline Taylor, JOHN ADAMS) go to live with their Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker, SIXTEEN CANDLES), who has too many kids of her own to handle. She rules over Meg like a warden, severely punishing her for any presumed offense. Meg does everything she can to deflect the abuse away from her sickly little sister. Eventually Ruth chains Meg up in the basement subjecting her to continuous torture, including branding and rape. She encourages her own children and the neighbor kids to join in.
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This horror/sci-fi film comes from the Hong Kong filmmakers Oxide and Danny Pang, who are best known for making the Chinese horror film THE EYE. The story places a writer in a fantasy world where her discarded ideas go. Writers discard a lot of ideas. Like a writers trash bin this film is filled with a bunch of disjointed and under developed ideas.

Ting-yin (Angelica Lee, THE EYE) is the successful writer of a series of romance novels. She’s having trouble coming up with new material and her publisher is eager to get another book from the hot writer on shelves. In a very unfair push during a press conference for the film adaptation of her love stories, her agent Lawrence (Laurence Chou, THE EYE) announces that her new book is titled “The Recycle” and will deal with supernatural themes. Ting-yin gets to work on the new book, but isn’t satisfied. During the writing, she seems to be plagued by inexplicable events. Finally she decides to delete her novel and start over. Once she does she’s transported into the world she created, trapped within a series of her rejected things.
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This comedy actually does something that raunchy comedies rarely do – develop a full cast of compelling and original characters. Raunchy comedies often have man-boys acting like idiots, but this comedy has unique and realistic immature men at its center. They’re not role models, but that might be exactly what the kids they mentor need.

Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd, I LOVE YOU, MAN) is very unhappy with the way his life has turned out. But instead of changing anything, he just complains… a lot. His girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO), an up-and-coming lawyer, is getting tired of his cocky, pessimistic attitude. He works with his best friend Anson Wheeler (Seann William Scott, AMERICAN PIE) as a spokesperson for an energy drink, travelling from middle school to middle school giving out free samples. On one particularly pissy day, he ends up driving the work vehicle into a statue while it’s still attached to a tow truck. As part of their punishment, they are ordered to volunteer as mentors to children.
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I haven’t seen the original LAND OF THE LOST kids’ program since I was a kid, but I have fond memories of it being one of my favorite Sid and Marty Krofft production. But it’s been so long I can’t really say if it’s something worthy of a big screen adaptation. But what I know is that it certainly deserved a better adaption than this crude debacle.

Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell, ANCHORMAN) goes on TV and tells Matt Lauer that he needs millions of dollars in government grants to study time warps. This cocky blowhard is humiliated and relegated to teaching elementary school science classes. But graduate student Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel, TV’s PUSHING DAISIES) believes in his theories and encourages him to complete his tachyon amplifier and exploit a nearby time warp, which is located at a rundown roadside attraction run by Will Stanton (Danny McBride, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS). There the trio is warped into a lost land where artifacts from all over time and space are sucked in.
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This weak attempt at college humor takes all the juvenile escapades of ANIMAL HOUSE and blows them out into cartoonish proportions. All the sense of nostalgia and youthful rebellion that was in the National Lampoon classic has been replaced with pointless man-boy raunchiness. ANIMAL HOUSE relied on characterization, while OLD SCHOOL barely reaches caricature.

Mitch Martin (Luke Wilson, BOTTLE ROCKET) comes home from a business trip to find his girlfriend Heidi (Juliette Lewis, NATURAL BORN KILLERS) engaged in an orgy in their bedroom. Distraught, Mitch gets plastered at the wedding of his friend Frank Ricard (Will Ferrell, ANCHORMAN) and tries to suck spilled coffee off the dress of his high school sweetheart Nicole (Ellen Pompeo, MIDNIGHT MILE). Set up at a house close to the campus of their alma mater, Harrison University, Mitch’s best friend Bernard (Vince Vaughn, WEDDING CRASHERS), a married stereo store owner, throws an elaborate bash to lift Mitch’s spirits. The party makes Mitch a legend, but the bash draws the attention of Dead Gordon Pritchard (Jeremy Piven, TV’s ENTOURAGE), who was the butt of jokes from Mitch and friends during high school. Dean Pritchard wants to get them kicked out of the house, so the man-boys devise a plan to turn the house into a frat.
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