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Before director John Madden went on to direct the Oscar-winning SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, he directed mysteries for British TV. One of those series was PRIME SUSPECT, which starred Helen Mirren. Now the director and actress reunite to remake the Cold War-set Israeli thriller HA-HOV.

The story cuts between 1966 and 1997. In the 1960s, Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain, THE TREE OF LIFE), Stephan Gold (Marton Csokas, LORD OF THE RINGS) and David Peretz (Sam Worthington, AVATAR) are Mossad agents assigned the task of entering East Germany, kidnapping the Nazi war criminal Dr. Dieter “Butcher of Birkenau” Vogel (Jesper Christensen, QUANTUM OF SOLACE) and smuggling him to Israel in order for him to stand trial. The mission doesn’t go as planned and it has ramifications that last the rest of the agents’ lives. In 1997, Rachel (Mirren) has a daughter who has written a book about their exploits and she might get called back into duty for something she thought was over. Stephan (Tom Wilkinson, MICHAEL CLAYTON) is a high-ranking government official who can’t let secrets leak out. David (Ciaran Hinds, MUNICH) is a shell of his former self, obsessed with what happened in East Germany.

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Read my review of IN A BETTER WORLD

This Blu-ray looks amazing. Sony’s AVC encoded 1080p transfer is as flawless as you can get. The colors are vibrant and evocative. Toward the end of the film the picture takes on a warm glow, which is fitting in context. There isn’t a single digital anomaly due to compression anywhere to be seen. Details are crisp. Even dust kicked up by trucks in the African sequences have nuance. Beautiful is the most fitting way to describe the picture quality. Cinematographer Morten Søborg should be enthralled with the way his film looks.

The DTS High Definition Master Audio soundtrack creates a great ambiance for every scene. The packed African clinic. The roar of the warlord’s trucks entering the camp. A car explosion booms the LFE track. Directionality is used well across all the speakers. Dialogue is clear and the subtitles are easy to read. The soundtrack really matches the first rate picture quality.

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The original Danish title is directly translated as “The Revenge.” I feel the American title is more fitting in that it encapsulates the humanistic ideals the film portrays. However, the original title reflects the real world that we live in. Director Susanne Bier puts her main character’s ideals up against the harsh realities that he is forced to deal with.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt, EVERLASTING MOMENTS) is a Swedish doctor who works in a war torn African country. He is confronted with the horrors of Big Man (Odiege Matthew), a warlord who on bets cuts open pregnant women just to see what the sex of their babies are. Back in Denmark where he lives, his son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is being constantly picked on by a bully and his followers. Then Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) moves to his area. His mother has recently died and he is an angry boy who doesn’t think the world is fair. He savagely beats the bully. When his well-meaning, but lost, father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen, BROTHERS) asks him why he’d do such a thing, he says, “No one will ever dare touch me now.”

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Thank God Good Movie Season is Here!

After a disappointing summer of movies, I’m quite excited about the fall “good movie” season to start this year. With the scheduled releases and the crop of potential releases coming out of the Toronto Film Festival, there could be a lot of the year’s best. But you never know until the credits roll. Nonetheless, here is what is really piqued my interest.

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This remake of a 1973 TV movie has all the classic haunted house qualities. Gothic location. Creaking doors. Dark halls. Secret rooms. Ominous help. Benevolent creatures living aside a family. By putting the youngest of the family at the center of the story, the film develops an inherent tension. The issue is how long can you buy this little girl in peril?

Sally (Bailee Madison, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA) has been dumped onto her father Alex (Guy Pearce, MEMENTO) by her mother. He is in the process of refurbishing the grand manor of nature artist Emerson Blackwood. He has a new girlfriend named Kim (Katie Holmes, BATMAN BEGINS), who tries to be nice, but Sally doesn’t want to be nice back. The situation is bad for everyone. On a walk around the grounds, Sally discovers the house has a basement, which the gruff old caretaker Harris (Jack Thompson, STAR WARS: ATTACK OF THE CLONES) seems very fearful of.

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Sometimes when life is out of control desperate people do things to try and gain back control that just make things worse. Director/writer Tom McCarthy, who made the fabulous THE STATION AGENT and THE VISITOR, presents us with two characters whose lives are spinning out of control. One makes the wrong decision and the other the right decision. It’s surprising that a tattooed 16-year-old is in the right.

Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti, AMERICAN SPLENDOR) is a lawyer who represents the estates of the elderly. His practice is struggling. He’s keeping the financial problems from his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan, GONE BABY GONE). One of his clients, Leo Poplar (Burt Young, ROCKY), is suffering from dementia and has been ruled incapacitated by the court. Mike knows Leo wants to stay in his house so he petitions the judge to allow him to become the old man’s guardian and make sure he can stay there. Mike isn’t just a nice guy. He gets $1,500 per month for being the guardian and he moves Leo into a home because it’s easier on him to watch over him.

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This Sundance comedy looks crisp and clean in its Blu-ray debut. Details stand out in this beautiful 1080p AVC transfer. Close-ups show the contours of the actors’ faces (even wrinkles) and the fabrics on clothing. The colors are natural, but pop at appropriate times. The green of the wrestling team’s gym and uniforms for an example. Black levels are solid as well. As for digital anomalies, I ran into none.

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack is underutilized, but that can be expected from a dialogue driven comedy. The soundscape is very front loaded even in cases of ambiance. Dialogue is clear and balanced nicely with the score, music and sound effects. Directionality across the speakers is limited though.

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A bad boss can be a life sucking experience. They hold your livelihood in their hands and they can use that against you in so many evil ways. And in bad financial times they even have more freedom to be sick individuals because they know they have you by the throat. Let’s be honest homicidal thoughts are not too far fetched in regards to coping with these types of people.

Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman, HANCOCK) kisses butt and eats crap in hopes of it all paying off one day in a big promotion. But he works for Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey, AMERICAN BEAUTY), a man who prides himself on paying mind games on his employees. Nick’s friend Dale Arbus (Charlie Day, GOING THE DISTANCE) is engaged to be married and loves his fiancée dearly. But his boss Dr. Julia Harris is a dentist with an uncontrollable ache for sex. She doesn’t simply harass him, but sexually blackmails him. Nick and Dale’s other friend Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis, TV’s SNL) actually has a great boss named Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland, KLUTE), who is grooming him to take over the business. Kurt’s problem is with the boss’s son Bobby (Colin Farrell, IN BRUGES), a balding, cokehead, karate-obsessed douchebag.

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This is one of those movies that baffles the mind. Based on the visual excitement in the previews and track record of director Zack Snyder, I eagerly anticipated his first original enterprise. After seeing it, one hopes he sticks to faithful adaptations of other people’s work. It’s epic for sure. An epic fail.

The film beats us over the head right from the start. Baby Doll (Emily Browning, LEMONY SNICKET’S) is a 20 year old woman living at home with her mother and stepfather (Gerard Plunkett, EIGHT BELOW). When her mother dies under suspicious circumstances, she fears for her and her young sister’s life at the hands of their stepfather, who doesn’t inherit the family wealth unless the girls are dead. A series of events transpire that leads the stepfather to have Baby Doll institutionalized and set up for a lobotomy. One has to give it to Snyder to tell his entire first act without dialogue, but it’s done like an aggressive music video and robs the viewer of any emotional connection with the characters and their plight.

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Brad Furman’s crime thriller can comfortably be described as a yarn. While this is at feature length, this is the kind of detective story that fans of LAW & ORDER will like. What makes this a bit more theatrical and less procedural is the central character, played smarmy and charmingly in equal doses by Matthew McConaughey.

When he’s not a soon to be tamed womanizing romantic lead, McConaughey is in a suit playing a lawyer. Here he is Mick Haller, a defender of all sorts of lowlifes. The counselor works out of his classic Lincoln and since getting a DUI has Earl (Laurence Mason, THE CROW) chauffeuring him around. Bondsman Val Valenzuela (John Leguizamo, MOULIN ROUGE!) usually forwards him the scum he represents, but he has a choice client for him this time. Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe, CRASH) comes from money and they have a family lawyer. So why would he want Haller to get him out of a battery charge for which he insistently claims he is innocent of?

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