It’s impossible to write about David Wain’s The Ten without first making passing reference to Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The former, originally made for Polish TV 20 years ago and first shown in the United States in 2000, offered a modern-day take on the…
Taxi Driver: Collector’s Edition (Sony) “Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads: Here is a man who would not take it anymore.” Martin Scorsese’s 1976 vision of hell as city-of-night New York rips through the reverential treatment on this special edition like a hunter’s blade through deerskin. A second disc of eight…
This Is Elvis: Two-Disc Special Edition (Warner Bros.) This crazy-quilt of death porn gets two takes in this DVD box set: the original 1981 version and the longer ’83 VHS copy, which shows an actor playing Elvis actually slumped over the shitter within the first five minutes. Hard to say…
Director Leon Ichaso, already responsible for mucking up a made-for-TV Jimi Hendrix biopic, is back at it with this turgid film about salsa star Hector Lavoe (Marc Anthony), which doesn’t so much go behind the music as beneath it. Focusing almost solely on Lavoe’s addictions (drugs and women, ho and…
Hot Fuzz (Universal) The second feature from writer-director Edgar Wright and writer-star Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead) has been available on home video for decades: Hot Fuzz is, after all, a witty and wisecracking montage of clips from some hundred-plus A-list and bargain-bin action films, chief among them Lethal…
When first we meet nine-year-old Joshua Cairn (Jacob Kogan), there’s not an ounce of rambunctiousness in him. He’s a superior pianist, natch, and brainiac to boot, with his hair perfectly coiffed and his skin a pale shade of corpse. Joshua is more a parody of a pint-size horror-show monster than…
Hard Boiled: Two-Disc Ultimate Edition (Weinstein) The Criterion version of John Woo’s masterpiece, about two cops (the overworked Chow Yun-Fat and the undercover Tony Leung) gunning for the Hong Kong Triads, is still the “ultimate” collection. It has a better commentary track (with Woo and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary,…
Red Dawn: Collector’s Edition (MGM) John Milius’s 1984 war pic was a mighty bonkers release even back then; not since the Fifties had something come down the pike so rife with Commie paranoia. Russian and Cuban forces invade the United States with tanks and choppers and the whole shebang, only…
Mike Enslin, the travel writer played by John Cusack in 1408, could use a better travel agent. Every hotel room in which he finds himself booked is said to be occupied by the ghost of some suicidal creep or a murderous goon who left behind a pile of bodies in…
Chancer: Series 1 (Acorn) Available solely in the U.K. for years, this is a small-time release featuring a modestly big-time star at the get-go of his career: Clive Owen, looking all of 12 years old and 73 pounds, is a sacked investment banker who winds up in the employ of…
It takes Bruce Willis awhile to get warmed up. He’s always just a bit below room temperature — a cool brother, dig, dating back to his Moonlighting days as a private dick belting out “Tighten Up” while going undercover as a man of the cloth in Wayfarer shades. He’s been…
You don’t need to watch the included preview of Live Free or Die Hard to know it’s going to blow; as this set proves, only odd-numbered Die Hards are any good. The first one, of course, is the perfect popcorn flick, and the bonus-disc extras here illustrate what can happen…
Evan Almighty, the followup to Bruce Almighty, is the work of an angry God. At 89 minutes that last a lifetime, it’s a sanctimonious sitcom dolled up as the most expensive comedy ever made — $175 mil, so they say, no doubt choking — and marks an unfortunate low point…
Glastonbury (THINKFilm) Only a Julien Temple concert doc would get the R rating — for nudity (male, mostly, and not terribly flattering at that), drug use (weed, mostly — yawn), language, and sexual content. Also dig the overwrought BBC narration, in which Glastonbury is described as a former refuge for…
Mr. Brooks — in which Kevin Costner plays a respectable Seattle businessman who kills for thrills, thanks to the goading of an imaginary friend who looks a lot like William Hurt — is stunningly tepid, neither the clever and poignant metaphor for addiction it strives to be nor the darkly…
The Sergio Leone Anthology (MGM) Sergio Leone made westerns like Wagner made ditties. This essential box set — four films with four discs of supplemental material, much of it scholarly and insightful — shows the Italian director supplanting the elegiac Monument Valley iconography of John Ford with a darker, ruder,…
Hannibal Rising (Weinstein) Pointless beyond belief, Hannibal Rising serves more as a cautionary tale than horror story. Made for $50 mil, the movie pocketed half that during its U.S. run and likely wound up in the red — an appropriate adios for a franchise starring a peripheral character better served…
Porky’s: The Ultimate Collection (Fox) When writer-director Bob Clark was killed by a drunk driver in April, the obits trumpeted his holiday classic A Christmas Story . . . but were somewhat reluctant to mention that, oh, yeah, he also wrote and directed Porky’s. But there’s no question which is…
Pan’s Labyrinth (New Line) Guillermo Del Toro has made a career of mixing slam-bang special effects (Hellboy, Blade II) with creepy atmospheres (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone). But with Pan’s Labyrinth, he’s used his entire palette for what will likely be remembered as his masterpiece. Mixing Franco’s Spain with fairy tales,…
To Catch a Thief: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Starring Cary Grant as a cat burglar and Grace Kelly as a hot-to-trot heiress, this is easily one of Alfred Hitchcock’s slightest films, especially coming on the heels of Rear Window; indeed, its idyllic setting on the French Riviera suggests it was…
Little Children (New Line) In the eyes of Hollywood, our American suburbs are so filled with perversion and treachery that it seems the government ought to crack down on something. Until then, we can count on movies like Little Children to keep us informed. Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson are…
What is it with the third installments in superhero film franchises? For whatever reason — and, oh, let’s just call it the lack of fresh ideas commingled with the love of money — they always strike out swinging their third time up to bat. It happened with Superman, when Richard…
