On DVD: July 7, 2009

Reviews of A Day in the Life, Push, The Unborn and Knowing

A Day in the Life
Lionsgate
$20

Plot: An LA gangsta (rapper/actor Kirk “Sticky Fingaz” Jones) tries to get out of the life to be with his true love, but gets pulled back in by a bloody gang war.

Opinion: A bizarre cross between Menace II Society and R. Kelly’s Trapped in a Closet, Kirk Jones’ directorial debut A Day in the Life takes a familiar hood movie narrative and tells it entirely in rap.  It sounds absolutely wretched and, to be sure, this can in no way be described as a good movie.  But where else are you going to get the chance to see actors like Omar Epps, Michael Rappaport and Faizon Love rapping their dialogue?  The novelty value alone makes A Day in the Life worth watching, particularly in the company of friends and copious amounts of alcohol.  While it’s a shame that Jones, unlike R. Kelly, didn’t seem to realize he was making a comedy, the fact that the movie takes itself so seriously makes it even funnier.

Bonus Features: A poorly produced making-of featurette and a bonus music video.

Verdict: Rent It

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Push
Summit
$27
Blu-ray: $35

Plot: A telekinetic (Chris Klein) and a psychic (Dakota Fanning) have to beat a bunch of other super-powered folks to finding a mysterious serum.

Opinion: How could a film with such promise go so wrong?  When it’s handed to Paul McGuigan, the director that made the double feature that killed Josh Hartnett’s career, Lucky Number Slevin and Wicker Park.  Of course, McGuigan’s lackluster filmmaking skills are only half of Push’s problem.  David Bourla’s script is equally to blame in that it takes a great premise and screws it up with an incoherent, plodding story.  I’d love to see someone else take this same material and fashion another movie (or ongoing comic book series) out of it.  McGuigan and Bourla do deserve credit for setting the movie in Hong Kong, which is an inspired backdrop, and there are certainly plenty of great tales that can be told in a world filled with psychic superheroes.  It’s just a shame this specific story wasn’t one of them.

Bonus Features: The cast joins director Paul McGuigan for a commentary track and McGuigan chats over a few deleted scenes as well.  A featurette about the so-called “science” behind the superheroics rounds out the set.

Verdict: Skip It

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The Unborn
Universal
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: After experiencing a series of bizarre nightmares, Casey (Megan Fox clone Odette Yustman) learns that she’s being haunted by the ghost of a relative that perished in the Holocaust.

Opinion: Using the Holocaust as the basis for a horror movie is pretty distasteful, but what offended me the most about The Unborn is how sloppy it is.  I had held out some small sliver of hope for this one because it was written and directed by David S. Goyer, who knows his way around genre pictures.  His resume includes the scripts for all three Blade movies (he also directed the final installment in that franchise, Blade: Trinity) and story credit on Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.  Of course, superhero sagas require a different skill set that horror movies and Goyer shows that he learned all of the worst lessons from The Exorcist, going overboard on demonic special effects instead of building a palpable atmosphere of tension and fear.  While Yustman definitely rocks the panty shots, she’s hopeless as an actress.

Bonus Features: Nothing besides a few deleted scenes.

Verdict: Skip It

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Knowing
Summit
$27
Blu-ray: $35

Plot: After his son comes into possession of a document that predicts past and future global disasters, a scientist (Nicolas Cage) tries to find a way to save the world.

Opinion: Why didn’t anyone warn me that Knowing was Christian propaganda in disguise?  All of the trailers sold the numerology aspect and while that does dominate the first half of the film, midway through the narrative starts moving in a not-so-subtle spiritual direction.  The final 15 minutes are straight out of the Left Behind series, with the Earth threatened by fiery destruction while the few “true believers” that heard the call of the movie’s unnamed higher power are spirited away into the heavens.  Even without its shameless bait-and-switch plotting, Knowing deserves ridicule for its sub-par special effects, banal dialogue and awful acting.  At least Cage occasionally breaks through the tedium to offer some of his patented moments of extreme overacting.  But even his efforts can’t save Knowing from its assigned place in movie hell.

Bonus Features: A commentary track from Alex Proyas and two featurettes.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also on DVD:

They may not be as subversive as The Simpsons or as outrageous as South Park, but the ’60s-era Peanuts animated specials remain some of the best cartoons ever broadcast on TV.  Let’s face it: childhood just isn’t complete without regular viewings of A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  In addition to those classics, the two-disc Peanuts 1960s Collection (Warner Home Video, $30) includes the new-to-DVD He’s Your Dog, Charlie Brown and It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown and a featurette about jazz musician Vince Guaraldi, who composed the famous Peanuts theme.  The much beloved cult series Mystery Science Theater 3000 collected classics of a different sort: awful, awful movies.  MST3K: Volume XV (Shout! $60), the latest set from Shout! Factory, offers such dubious titles as Zombie Nightmares and The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy.  The horror title Night Train (National Entertainment Media, $25) features one of the year’s oddest casts—Danny Glover, Steve Zahn and Leelee Sobieski—playing a trio of strangers trapped on an after-hours train.  Screen legend Shirley MacLaine plays fashion icon Coco Chanel in Coco Chanel (Screen Media, $25), the well-received made-for-cable biopic that scooped up some award nominations earlier this year.  Finally, Horsemen (Lionsgate, $28) stars Dennis Quaid as a widowed detective who investigates a crime of apocalyptic proportions.