Funny People
Universal
$30
2-Disc: $35
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: After he’s diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, a superstar comedian (Adam Sandler) contemplates how he wants to spend his last days on Earth.

Opinion: Judd Apatow’s name has been attached to so many films in recent years it’s a surprise when you recall that Funny People is only his third directorial effort.  Then again, in the course of those three movies, Apatow has tackled weightier subjects than some directors attempt in their entire careers.  The 40-Year-Old-Virgin was about falling in love, Knocked Up was about making babies and now Funny People tackles the hilarious subject of death.   Apatow’s comedies have never been overly dependent on plot; his approach is to drop his characters into a situation and allow the comedy to emerge from their behavior.  Thus, Sandler receives his diagnosis in the first or second scene and the bulk of the film’s first half finds him struggling to come to terms with this development.  This section of the movie is classic Apatow, stuffed with hilarious and clearly semi-improvised dialogue, surprise celebrity cameos and moments of surprising emotional depth.  But then a development occurs midway through the film that sends Funny People off in an entirely different direction, one that deliberately doesn’t make room for the comic highs of the first half.  I fully expect this Funny People to lose some viewers, particularly those going in expecting the non-stop yuks of Virgin and Knocked Up.  Apatow and Sandler are pushing themselves out of their comfort zones here and that’s reflected in the somewhat awkward pacing.  It doesn’t help that the director can’t keep himself from lingering on his children’s adorable faces or his wife’s ass in tight jeans.  Despite or maybe even because of these third-act stumbles, Funny People is an immensely rewarding film that displays artistic ambitions you might not have thought either Sandler or Apatow were capable of.  More than any other film he’s directed over produced to date, Funny People puts Apatow’s private fears, neuroses and joys onscreen for everyone to see.  The resulting film isn’t always pretty, but more often than not it is pretty damn funny.

Bonus Features: Apatow always goes all-out when it comes to DVD extras and Funny People is no exception.  In addition to the dozens upon dozens of deleted and alternate scenes, there are several gag reels, a commentary track with the director and his cast, featurettes and, best of all, a half-hour mockumentary following the film’s raunchy Dane Cook-like comedian Randy, played by Parks and Recreation scene-stealer Aziz Ansari.

Verdict: Buy It

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Kobe Doin’ Work
Buena Vista
$30

Plot: A day in the life of NBA superstar Kobe Bryant.

Opinion: Talk about getting up close and personal: for his new doc about NBA icon Kobe Bryant, Spike Lee filmed an entire game from the 2008 MVP’s perspective, placing dozens of cameras around the Staples Center court that followed his every move.  Bryant also wore a mic that captured all of his grunts, shot-calls and words of advice to teammates.  It’s a fascinating, if occasionally annoying, way to watch a basketball game, but must for Lakers’ fans. 

Bonus Features: The main feature can be watched two ways-with or without a Bryant commentary describing the on-court action.  There are also two deleted scenes, a video introduction with Lee and a making-of doc originally made for ESPN.

Verdict: Buy It

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Angels & Demons
Sony
$29
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: Someone is killing priests in the Vatican…and Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is gonna find out who is responsible.

Opinion: Like the new Star Trek film, Angels & Demons-the follow-up to the extremely popular film version of The Da Vinci Code-employs a frenetic ticking-clock pace to distract the audience from its narrative absurdities.  But Trek offered a number of other pleasures as well, including lots of humor, exciting brawls and lively performances from a fresh-faced cast.  This movie has none of those things; it’s a glum, by-the-numbers potboiler distinguished only by its admittedly handsome production values.  Director Ron Howard is nothing if not a skilled craftsman and he puts his sizable budget to good use.  To his credit, he also takes great care not to repeat some of the mistakes he made with his botched Da Vinci Code adaptation.  For one thing, there are none of the leaden monologues and drawn-out expository conversations that turned that film the perfect cure for insomnia.  Much of the exposition here is delivered on the run, so even if you miss what exactly it is that the characters are trying to achieve, you’ll see them achieve it a few moments later.  Besides, Howard knows that the details are too perpostrous to explain at length anyway; best just to keep the characters in motion and let viewers pick the story apart later.

Bonus Features: A handful of making-of featurettes.

Verdict: Skip It

Star Trek
Paramount
$30
2-Disc: $35
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, Uhura and the rest of the crew of the starship Enterprise embark on their very first mission that pits them against a mysterious warlord from the future.

Opinion: Growing up, I was always more into Star Trek as a film franchise than as a TV-series.  Sure, the movies were essentially just longer episodes, but the best installments-i.e. the even-numbered ones-had a scope and grandeur that captured my imagination far more than the series’ steady stream of technobabble.  Naturally, my favorite films are the ones featuring the original crew, but I still found things to enjoy in some of the Next Generation‘s big-screen adventures, even their last outing, Nemesis, which brought the franchise to a screeching halt when it earned an embarrassing $43 million in its brief theatrical run.  Clearly, the time was right for a fresh take on Star Trek, but what’s funny about J.J. Abrams’ lavishly-produced reboot is how closely it sticks to the spirit-and in some cases, the letter-of the original show.  That’s the genius of Abrams film-it’s a blockbuster sci-fi adventure that’s been designed to reach the broadest possible audience, yet still looks and feels like Star Trek.  The cast is strong across the board, with the standouts being Karl Urban’s McCoy, Simon Pegg’s Scotty and, of course, the ship’s top officers, Kirk and Spock, played by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto respectively.  Those two actors accomplish the seemingly impossible task of making viewers forget about their predecessors-William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy-and accept them as the new faces of these sci-fi icons.  With an ensemble like this manning the Enterprise, Star Trek‘s future is looking very bright indeed.

Bonus Features: It couldn’t have been easy relaunching a massive franchise like Star Trek, but Abrams and his core creative team sound like they had a blast, at least judging from the lively commentary track that accompanies the feature.  The cast and crew are equally enthusiastic and upbeat in the myriad featurettes included on the second disc, which cover such topics as the casting process, the special effects and the design of the new Enterprise.  There are also 12 deleted scenes, two of which go a long way to clearing up the film’s biggest mystery-what exactly did the bad guy do while hanging around in the middle of deep space for 25 years?

Verdict: Buy It

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Brüno
Universal
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: Austrian fashion expert Brüno comes to America in pursuit of fame and fortune…but finds mainly farce.

Opinion: On the surface, Borat and Brüno more or less seem like the same movie.  Both involve British comic Sacha Baron Cohen dressing up as an outrageous caricature and putting himself in the middle of real (or, in some cases, semi-scripted) situations with real people while several cameras film the results.  Because of this deliberately chaotic production process, it stands to reason that neither film has much of a story; instead, they are basically an assembly of sketches strung loosely together by voiceover.

Given that they are so similar in style and structure, one would think that the films deliver an equal number of laughs as well.  From my standpoint though, Brüno is a smarter, savvier and all-around funnier movie than its predecessor.  Aside from more creative and emotionally charged encounters with real people, Brüno’s arrogance is far funnier than Borat’s wide-eyed naïveté.  I will also say that the film’s climactic 15 minutes are crazier than anything in Borat (yes, including the infamous nude wrestling scene) while also providing some potent social commentary and a surprisingly emotional-and staunchly pro-gay-finale.  Quite frankly, based on the shit he pulls in this last sequence, I’m amazed that Cohen made it out of the South alive, but kudos to him for putting his own well-being on the line for our enjoyment and enlightenment.

Bonus Features: A half-hour’s worth of deleted scenes-including one featuring La Toya Jackson that was cut from the movie at the eleventh hour following her brother’s sudden death-and another twenty minutes of extended scenes.  Cohen also contributes an in-character commentary track with director Larry Charles.

Verdict: Buy It

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Fight Club: 10th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray Disc
20^th Century Fox
$35

Plot: An insomniac and a home soap manufacturer start an underground boxing club that eventually morphs into something very, very different.

Opinion: Most tenth-anniversary special edition platters load up on exclusive new bonus features in an effort to convince film fanatics to double dip.  That’s what makes Fox’s Blu-ray only anniversary edition of David Fincher’s incendiary 1999 mindfuck Fight Club such a curiosity.  This single-disc release comes with just three new extras, including footage from Spike TV’s 2009 Guys Choice Awards, where the film was voted into the Guy Movie Hall of Fame, and an interactive featurette that walks you through the movie’s elaborate sound design.  You’ve gotta ask yourself: are a measly three new extras really worth the $35 sticker price?  Actually, the lack of fresh bonus material speaks less to what this edition does wrong than what the previous edition did right.  Released in 2000, the original two-disc Fight Club set was one of the most forward-thinking discs on the market.  In addition to a whopping four commentaries, that version also offered a comprehensive gallery of the film’s inventive ad campaign and, best of all, a series of behind-the-scenes featurettes that perfectly exploited the format’s multi-angle, multi-audio track capability.  All of that material has wisely been preserved on the Blu-ray version, with the added bonus of a comprehensive search index that easily ranks as the disc’s best new feature.  Using the index, you can jump instantly to any subject discussed on one of the four commentaries or the documentaries without having to return to the main menu.  As for the movie itself, Fight Club remains a one-of-a-kind gem, an audacious act of cinematic terrorism carried out on a major studio’s dime.  If the film doesn’t already have a place on your DVD shelf, picking up the Blu-ray version is a no-brainer.  On the other hand, those space monkeys who are already club members shouldn’t feel obligated to upgrade.

Verdict: Buy It

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Farscape: The Complete Series
A&E
$150

Plot: Astronaut John Crichton teleports through a wormhole and winds up in a far, far away galaxy where he has all sorts of crazy, cool and dangerous adventures.

Opinion: One of the best science-fiction shows ever to grace the airwaves, Farscape offered its small, but devoted fanbase four seasons worth of out-of-this-world storytelling before being unceremoniously canceled by its network right before its final season.  (Thankfully the show was able to wrap up most of its loose ends in an independently produced mini-series that aired a few years later.)  Sporting a terrific ensemble, led by Ben Browder as Crichton and Claudia Black as his on and off again lover and kick-ass soldier Aeryn Sun, the series also distinguished itself with some truly daring storytelling decisions and breakneck pacing.  If the new Star Trek movie whet your appetite for more pulse-pounding space opera, Farscape is the next logical second course.

Bonus Features: Don’t let the modest size of this box set fool you-A&E has packed it full of fan-friendly extras.  In addition to numerous commentary tracks, there are dozens of featurettes and deleted scenes, as well as a whole extra disc of archival material that includes a hard-to-find behind-the-scenes documentary.

Verdict: Buy It

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Also on DVD
Two of 2009′s very best movies debut on DVD this week from the good folks at Focus Features.  With Thirst (Focus, $30) South Korean bad boy Park Chan-wook injects some much-needed creative energy into the increasingly tired vampire genre.  Employing the same mixture of dark comedy, soap-opera melodramatics and gonzo gore that made his best-known film-2003′s Oldboy-such a trip to watch, the director concocts a story that follows a devout priest whose faith is tested after he is transformed into a vampire following a blood transfusion.  Thirst is probably Chan-wook’s most commercially accessible film, lacking the scrambled narrative chronology and disturbing incest subplot that scared some viewers off of Oldboy.  But the director’s fans needn’t worry about him selling out; Park’s greatest skill as a director is meshing wildly different tones-comedy, horror and romantic melodrama-into a coherent whole and Thirst offers all the thrills, laughs and “Holy shit!” moments we’ve come to expect from him.

Like blank verse poetry or atonal jazz, Jim Jarmusch films are an acquired taste.  Either you dig the fiercely independent director’s offbeat vibe or you find his movies about as appealing as invasive surgery.  The director’s latest feature, The Limits of Control (Focus, $30) may be his most abstract yet-a virtually plot-free “thriller” that follows the adventures of the so-called Lone Man on his journey across Spain to complete an unspecified mission.  Along the way, he encounters a series of strange associates-played by an all-star supporting cast that includes Tilda Swinton, John Hurt and Gael García Bernal-who may or may not be figments of his imagination.  Working with the great cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Jarmusch crafts what may be his best-looking film to date.  The compositions are so beautiful, the lighting so exquisite, any frame of this movie could be snipped out of the film print and hung in a gallery.

In other new releases news, The Canyon (Magnet, $27) casts Chuck hottie Yvonne Strahovski as one-half of a pair of newlyweds that decide to spend their honeymoon touring the Grand Canyon and end up fighting for their very survival after their guide gets hurt and their supplies disappear. On the heels of the lavish Wizard of Oz box set, here comes Gone With the Wind: 70^th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros.) available in both standard and Blu-ray formats with all kinds of extra goodies, including documentaries, film stills and reproductions of actual studio documents.  Finally, it may only have lasted two seasons, but Rome: The Complete Series (HBO, $140) remains one of HBO’s most entertaining shows.  Check out what you missed via this handsome box set that offers the complete run of the series plus some nifty behind-the-scenes material.

Up
Disney
$30
2-Disc: $40
4-Disc Combo Pack: $46

Plot: An elderly widower unexpectedly embarks on the adventure of a lifetime when he straps helium balloons to the roof of his house and flies off into the wild blue yonder.

Opinion: Up isn’t just a good movie-it’s a glorious movie, certainly the best to come along so far this year and one of Pixar’s greatest achievements to date.  In a beautiful and brilliantly executed 15-minute prologue, co-directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson (who also wrote the screenplay) guide us through the nearly 80-year adventure Carl experienced before he embarked on his current aerial escapade, including the death of the love of his life.  If Up sound almost unbearably sad-particularly for an animated feature-that’s because, at times, it is.  But it’s a good kind of sad, a sadness that feels honest and true instead of forced on the audience by plot machinations.  It’s also balanced by scenes of hysterical comedy and eye-popping action, including a climactic chase set atop…no wait, I’ve said too much already.  Carl may not be looking for an adventure, but adventure finds him in a big way and forces him to move forward instead of standing still.  And that’s why Up is such a marvel.  Only Pixar could take a simple adventure story and turn it into a profound statement about life’s infinite possibilities.

Bonus Features: Docter discusses the process of making the film on an entertaining and informative commentary track and additional featurettes take viewers behind-the-scenes at Pixar.  Naturally, there are also lots of kid-oriented extras, including a new animated short featuring one of the movie’s best supporting characters and interactive games.

Verdict: Buy It

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Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut
Warner Bros.
$44
Blu-ray: $60

Plot: When a retired superhero is killed, his former colleagues investigate his death and wind up stumbling upon an apocalyptic plot that may have been hatched by one of their own.

Opinion: Like every other fanboy who discovered Alan Moore’s groundbreaking graphic novel Watchmen as a teenager, I anticipated and dreaded the arrival of Zack Snyder’s film version.  On the one hand, it’s hard not to geek out at the promise of seeing the comic’s beautifully drawn panels recreated so meticulously on the big screen.  At the same time though, I had enormous reservations about Snyder, whose previous film-the slow-mo-a-go-go adaptation of Frank Miller’s ultraviolent 300-was a triumph of style over substance.  I’m sorry to say that my fears were justified.  On a purely technical level, Watchmen is undeniably impressive.  The special effects are largely seamless, the production design is obsessively detailed and the characters all look like they’ve stepped right off the page onto the screen.  But as an adaptation-as well as a movie in its own right-it’s a profound disappointment.  The problem is that the filmmakers have tried to include too much of the book onscreen.  While it would have been hard to lose certain fan-favorite moments and subplots, a trimmer running time would have forced Snyder to really focus the film’s narrative, as well as find a way to make its themes relevant to modern audiences.  As it is, it’s difficult to tell what Watchmen is about…and this is coming from someone that has read the book multiple times.

Bonus Features: The third-and supposedly the last-version of Watchmen to be released on DVD this year, the most notable addition here is a 210-minute cut of the film that incorporates a half-hour’s worth of animated material originally released as a separate short.  Otherwise, the bulk of the extras appeared on previous editions, but it is nice to have them all collected in one place.

Verdict: Personally I say Skip It, but who am I kidding?  If you’re a fan of the comic, you’re obviously going to Buy It or at least Rent It.

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I Love You, Beth Cooper
Fox
$28
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: A high-school outcast improbably ends up riding shotgun alongside his dream girl over the course of one long day and night.

Opinion: I wasn’t expecting much when I randomly picked up ex-Simpsons writer Larry Doyle’s debut novel I Love You, Beth Cooper a few years back.  Within the first few pages though, I was laughing hysterically at Doyle’s hilarious prose, which deftly balanced broad comedy with painfully true descriptions of the draconian social caste system that is high school.  It made perfect sense to bring Doyle’s book to the big screen-unfortunately the humor and emotion got completely lost in translation.  It’s hard to blame the young cast, who show up ready to have some fun; Heroes knockout Hayden Panettiere is a natural choice for the role of the hottest girl in school (expect her legion of male admirers to pick up the film on DVD for her split-second topless scene) and Paul Rust, making his leading man debut, is genuinely nerdy instead of “movie star” nerdy.  From the opening scenes though, the movie’s pace and timing are noticeably off; scenes that played like gangbusters on the page are awkward and improbable on screen.  Instead of picking up I Love You, Beth Cooper on DVD, head to your local library and check out Doyle’s book for free.  It’s cheaper and funnier than sitting through the movie version.

Bonus Features: Deleted scenes, including an alternate ending, a featurette about the book and a making-of documentary produced for the Fox Movie Channel.

Verdict: Skip It

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Also on DVD
Has it really been two decades since John Cusack stood outside Ione Skye’s bedroom window blasting “In Your Eyes” from his boombox?  Apparently it has.  Say Anything: 20^th Anniversary Edition (Fox, $15) hits shelves today with a new commentary from the movie’s stars and writer/director Cameron Crowe, a batch of deleted and alternate scenes and a vintage late-’80s featurette.  The entertaining History Channel series Expedition: Africa (History Channel, $35) finds a group of modern-day explorers re-tracing Stanley and Livingstone’s famous trek across the African continent.  Along the way, they encounter many of the same problems their predecessors did over a century ago…and a few modern-world concerns besides.

Look out world–Precious has arrived.

Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire
Directed by Lee Daniels
Starring Gabourey Sidibe, Mo’Nique, Paula Patton, Mariah Carey
****

Anyone that has ever complained about the lack of good roles for actresses—especially black actresses—in Hollywood should make a point of buying a ticket for Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire. It’s the kind of film that’s rarely seen on the contemporary cinematic landscape: a serious, emotional drama about women with bigger problems than finding a date for Friday night or picking the right pair of Manolos to go with that little black dress. More than anything though, Precious is a remarkable showcase for its all-female ensemble cast, challenging them in ways most mainstream films can’t – or won’t.

Like the unwieldy title says, Precious is adapted from the 1996 novel by African-American poet Sapphire, which chronicles the life of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an obese, illiterate teenager who relies on her overactive imagination to help her endure a hellish reality. Trapped in a dilapidated Harlem apartment with her emotionally and physically abusive mother (Mo’Nique), Precious grew up being repeatedly raped by her now-absent father. At 16, she’s already given birth to one of his children and has another on the way. After she’s expelled from public school, Precious enrolls in alternative education program and starts to turn her life around with the help of a no-nonsense teacher (Paula Patton) and a sympathetic social worker (Mariah Carey).

In the wrong hands, Precious could easily have turned mawkish and treacly, but director Lee Daniels avoids Lifetime movie-of-the-week sentimentality, producing an inspirational drama that’s genuinely inspiring. Much of the film’s power lies in the performances; Patton displays a steeliness we’ve never seen from her before and, in her screen debut, Sidibe brings an authenticity to the title role a more experienced actress wouldn’t be able to replicate. But it’s Mo’Nique’s ferocious turn that will really have audiences buzzing. In the film’s closing moments, she delivers a devastating monologue that is guaranteed to win her an Oscar. That one scene encapsulates the experience of watching Precious—it’s emotionally exhausting but also, exhilarating to watch these women work.

Verdict: See It

Click here to see GIANT’s exclusive photo shoot with Paula Patton

After months of hype, Michael Jackson’s final concert arrives on the big screen.

Michael Jackson’s This Is It
Directed by Kenny Ortega
***1/2

Ever since the project was first announced in August, the new documentary Michael Jackson’s This Is It has been shrouded in mystery.  According to initial reports, Sony Pictures paid $60 million to acquire hundreds of hours of behind-the-scenes footage showing Jackson–who had died a little over a month before–rehearsing for his big comeback concert series in London.  What exactly would that footage reveal?  Would Jackson be a slurry, stumbling mess?  Or would we see a flicker of the great entertainer– the King of Pop–who dazzled audiences for decades with thrilling dance moves and unstoppable tunes?  Sony stoked the mystery by putting the footage on instant lockdown; aside from a short trailer, no scenes from This Is It have found their way onto TV or the web, which, in theory, only heightens its must-see appeal.  To further fuel the hype, the studio decreed that the movie would only play in theaters for two weeks, borrowing a successful gimmick that Disney employed last year for its Hannah Montana concert flick.  Not even critics got the chance to check out This Is It ahead of time.  Instead, the press would see the movie on the same date and time as the rest of the world–specifically on Tuesday, October 27 at 6pm Los Angeles time when the movie premiered at the city’s Nokia Theater and then went live in theaters in 17 other cities around the globe.

So that’s why I, along with the rest of New York’s media gadflies, found myself at Regal Cinema’s Times Square theater last night.  Sony had taken over the entire multiplex for the evening, booking This is It in all 13 theaters, each of which was accessible by special invite only.  I made my way to my assigned theater past a literal army of security guards who stopped me every ten feet or so to run their hands over my special red ticket in what ‘m assuming was an authentication procedure of some kind.  When I finally got into the auditorium, live footage from the red carpet in L.A. was playing onscreen.  Celebrities started arriving at around 7:30pm (5:30 Pacific time) and made their way past paparazzi flashbulbs and screaming fans, occasionally stopping to answer inane questions from hapless red carpet interviewer Leanza Cornet, while we in New York waited patiently for the actual movie to start.  Finally, at 9:15, the lights went down, the screen went dark and…and…and…

And we saw a movie.  The world didn’t spontaneously heal itself, the future of the music industry didn’t automatically become brighter and Michael Jackson didn’t rise from the dead and start doing the moonwalk.  After all the pre-release and pre-show hype, This Is It is just a movie–a surprisingly well-made and compelling movie, but a movie nonetheless.  In a way, all the studio-manufactured brouhaha surrounding the film may be doing it a disservice, as it leads viewers to expect a cinematic spectacle to rival a summer blockbuster like Star Trek or Transformers 2.  But in reality This Is It is a more modest picture.  This isn’t a concert movie–it’s a movie about the making of a concert.

Director Kenny Ortega, a longtime Jackson friend and colleague, takes the audience through the show’s set list song by song–beginning with “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” (of course) and concluding with “Man in the Mirror”–revealing how each tune was going to be performed live onstage from the choreography, to the special effects to the King of Pop’s own vocals.  Much of the footage is taken from a series of almost complete rehearsals, where the dancing is in place, but not all of the effects are complete and Jackson often sings along to backing vocals in order to go easy on his voice.  There are also clips of additional material that would have been worked into the show; for “Smooth Criminal,” Jackson had himself digitally inserted into a series of film clips from old ’40s gangster pictures and Ortega shot new 3D footage of monsters tearing it up in a graveyard to accompany “Thriller.”  In some cases, CGI-animatronics stand in for effects that were never finalized; “Earth Song,” for example, would have climaxed with an actual bulldozer rolling onstage to confront Jackson.  If you’re at all interested in the art of stagecraft, This is It provides an invaluable look at what goes on behind-the-scenes of a mega-budgeted concert.  Indeed, in some ways, seeing the process by which the show was put together is almost more interesting than the finished product ever would have been.

But what about the man at the center of the spectacle?  Well Jackson–or as the entire crew calls him, MJ–is alternately engaged, enraged, enthusiastic, impatient and joyful.  In other words, he’s an artist in his element, doing what he loves to do.  His voice is strong and clear and he moves with the same grace he displayed throughout his life.  Clearly the film has been edited to show him at his best, but, to his credit, Ortega does occasionally allow us to see behind his beatific exterior.  In some scenes, Jackson is visibly frustrated when the band misses a note or a dancer doesn’t execute a move correctly.  And while we never see him offstage, a few moments do hint at his personal troubles.  After rehearsing “Beat It” Jackson is so winded, he can barely speak–his age finally catches up with his body.  Earlier, Jackson stops singing right in the middle of a medley of Jackson 5 tunes and launches into a rambling, nonsensical speech about his inner ear problems while Ortega humors him from offstage.  One wonders how many more moments like that one are on the cutting room floor.

Clocking in at almost two hours, This Is It does feel overlong.  Part of that can be chalked up to the normal ebb and flow of a concert–some songs are simply better than others and everyone will have their own opinions about which tunes they would rather have seen cut from the set list.  Personally, I could have watched Jackson rehearse “The Way Your Make Me Feel” and “Billie Jean” for a half-hour without growing tired of either song.  On the other hand, his renditions of the spectacularly cheesy “Earth Song” and “They Don’t Care About Us” almost put me to sleep.  Those dud songs aside, This Is It is far better than it had any right to be, largely because Ortega avoids turning the film into an overly sentimental obituary for Jackson.  There are no images of teary-eyed fans despondent over the sudden death of their idol or awkward testimonials from Jackson’s peers and colleagues.  In fact, the movie never addresses his death at all beyond a closing dedication.  The focus here is entirely on the work that Jackson did while he was still alive.  There is obviously much more to Michael Jackson’s legacy than this single concert, but that’s for future films to explore.  For now, This is It provides a valuable service–it allows a gifted musician to deliver the career-capping performance he wanted the world to see, but never got the chance.

Verdict: See It

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Also In Theaters:

Gentleman Broncos
Directed by Jared Hess
Starring Michael Angarano, Jennifer Coolidge, Jemaine Celement
*1/2

I’ve always suspected that Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess may be a one-trick pony and those feelings are confirmed by his third feature, Gentleman Broncos, a virtually laugh-free comedy that has no clear idea who or what it’s attempting to satirize.  Michael Angarano, the go-to actor for neurotic teenagers when Jesse Eisenberg isn’t available, stars as a painfully awkward amateur sci-fi writer whose unpublished space opera Yeast Lords: The Bronco Years is stolen by his idol, bestselling author Ronald Chevalier (Jemaine Clement, one-half of the New Zealand folk-parody band Flight of the Conchords and the only redeeming thing about this movie).  Interspersed with the real-world narrative are clips from the book-within-the-film, starring a game Sam Rockwell as the hero of Angarano’s bizarre story.  Hess has always seemed to regard his characters with a noticeable distaste and that bubbles over into outright rage here; it’s not just that these characters are unlikeable–they’re downright freakish and lack any of the somewhat sweet naivete of a Napoleon or Kip.  Misanthropy can be funny, but not when its wielded with this heavy a hand.              
Verdict: Skip It

Skin
Directed by Anthony Fabian
Starring Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill
***
Sophie Okonedo delivers a passionate star turn in this movie version of a fascinating, troubling piece of South African history.  The Oscar-nominated actress plays Sandra Laing, a dark-skinned woman born to white Afrikaner parents in the ’50s.  After being classified by the official state board as “colored,” Sandra’s family fought to have that ruling overturned and she was re-categorized as “white” but continued to face prejudice and discrimination.  Eventually, she petitioned to have her racial identity changed again after she fell in love with a black man.  Sandra’s choice forever severed her ties to her mother and father and when her relationship fell apart, she was forced to live through the country’s turbulent post-Apartheid years on her own.  While Skin does a fine job outlining Sandra’s life and Okonedo’s performance is undeniably powerful, the movie’s emotional heft is blunted somewhat by many of the predictable conventions that accompany biopics suggesting that maybe the documentary route would have been the way to go for this particular story. 
Verdict: See It

The House of the Devil
Directed by Ti West
Starring Jocelin Donahue, Tom Noonan, Gerta Gerwig
***1/2
More than a nifty homage to low-budget ’80s horror flicks, Ti West’s The House of the Devil is an inventive, enjoyable and, yes, genuinely scary movie in its own right.  Jocelin Donahue plays a money-starved college student who unwisely agrees to take a babysitting job for a family that lives in a big dark house on the outskirts of town.  A welcome relief from the glossy, over-edited studio-produced horror pictures clogging multiplexes these days, The House of the Devil is a movie that takes its time building up to the big scares, which gives you plenty of time to appreciate how closely West has replicated the mise-en-scene of the early ’80s.  Once the scary stuff arrives though, don’t be surprised if you finds yourself clutching your date–or, if you’re solo, your arm rest–a little more tightly.
Verdict: See It

Edward James Olmos discusses his experiences as the star and director of the new direct-to-DVD film Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

GIANT: Did the studio have to twist your arm to get you to act in and direct The Plan.
Edward James Olmos: It took me awhile-about two seconds, maybe two-and-a-half, I’m not quite sure.  [Laughs]  I wouldn’t have said yes had I not understand that The Plan was needed to enhance the viewing of the piece itself.  To understand how and why the Cylons did what they did is important to the enjoyment of this entire story.  It was a privilege to be on the show and an incredible honor to be asked to direct my first feature film in this universe.  This has become a labor of love; I get paid for it, but it is something beyond my wildest dreams.  It’s truly a gift in my career and the most extraordinary TV event I’ve ever been a part of.

GIANT: How closely did you work with the writer, Jane Espenson, to shape the finished film?
Olmos: We worked very hard on it together for many, many days and went over every moment, every beat and every single word.  Jane hadn’t been with us for the first year and a half of the show so she had to research and that’s always a process that is so overwhelming.  That’s probably one of the reasons they asked me to direct the piece because I spent every episode in that world from the beginning, from the very first shot of the very first day.

GIANT: You’ve taken advantage of the DVD format to do things you couldn’t do on the show-nudity, for example.
Olmos: In the reality of what we’re doing, this is something that’s really important.  The sexuality and the nudity are not done for effect, they have their story points.  We couldn’t show it in its entirety during the series because of TV regulations, but when we got to the film, all of the constraints were off.

GIANT: The Plan also contains one of the most shocking scenes in the entire series, featuring the Cylon leader Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell) and a little boy who seeks to befriend him.
Olmos: What viewers won’t really get is that Dean did a film back in 1948 called The Boy With Green Hair in which he played the title character.  For this movie, I wanted the boy to have green hair out of nowhere, but the studio and the producers dismissed it as something too over the top.  I felt just the opposite-The Boy With Green Hair is one of the strongest anti-war films ever made.  So what my clothing designer did was recreate every stitch of clothing Dean wore in that movie.  Someday, they’re going to allow me to go back and put in green hair through CGI and then people will realize what that character really represents.

GIANT: What do you hope viewers take away from The Plan?
Olmos: I would just like them to know that this is the second movie we’ve made and the studio told me that we can visit this universe again if this DVD sells 5 million copies or more.  The sadness is that someone uploaded The Plan on the Internet and you can see it for nothing.  People don’t realize that if they see it for nothing, this is the last time you’ll see this universe again.  So if you’ve seen it for nothing and you appreciate it, please buy it and give it to friends.  Place your vote-invest your time and money.  Tell the studio that you want to see more of it and then we’ll get the opportunity to do stuff nobody can imagine.  Like, wouldn’t you like to know where the Final Five came from?

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is available on DVD now.

The co-writer and star of the blaxploitation spoof Black Dynamite discusses movies, martial arts and making people laugh.

GIANT: You’ve said that the character Black Dynamite is modeled after football player, blaxploitation star and your personal idol Jim Brown.
Michael Jai White: Yes, I met him some years ago and became involved with his organization called The Amer-I-Can Program, but I felt a real kinship with Jim before even meeting him. He’d been a big inspiration for me ever since I was a kid.  I do motivational speaking in between acting projects and we worked closely with his foundations where I would speak to children.  One day I was over at his house and I found a box of the clothes he wore in his movies, so a lot of the stuff I wore are based on those outfits.  I always said that I wanted to look like that when I grow up and with Black Dynamite I got that chance.

GIANT: You spoof the genre as a whole in the film, but was there one specific movie you had in mind while writing it?
White: The biggest one was Three the Hard Way, which starred three icons of the genre-Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly.  That would be like if you were to put Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis in the same movie.  The plot for Black Dynamite was borrowed from Three the Hard Way: the white man’s plot for how to destroy black people.  They took it seriously back then, now it’s a commentary for what things were like in the ’70s.

GIANT: There have been several movies that have spoofed the blaxploitation genre over the years, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and Undercover Brother.  Did you find those films funny?
White: I have issues with them; I don’t feel they could possibly be spoofs because they don’t even occur in the ’70s.  They’re some kind of strange hybrid that robs folks of what made the ’70s special.  It’s funny when you do a period piece, because there are conventions that they took seriously then that make for great comedy today.

GIANT: Black Dynamite is definitely as un-PC as a lot of those ’70s movies.
White: A lot of comedies that come from studios today are safe comedies.  I don’t think studios are keeping up with how sophisticated the average audience is now.  In this movie there’s a lot that’s commentary and poking fun at the movie industry as a whole and not just blaxploitation.  It was interesting to look at a time that was sexually charged and awake with the garishness of music and fashion.  These days, political correctness looms over our heads like a cloud.  I think I’m rebelling against the corporate nature of entertainment and I absolutely cherished being politically incorrect.

GIANT: You’re an actor, writer and martial arts choreographer.  What’s your favorite aspect of the filmmaking process?
White: I enjoy the whole process because I’m a very eclectic person by nature.  Unfortunately as a black actor, people are used to putting you on a specific shelf.  If there’s a movie that has a number of black people in it, it’s considered an urban movie, which I think is asinine.  I’ve written a comedy-it wasn’t made for one type of people, just like Borat was just made for white people.  I’ve been writing scripts for years and I have things under different names, because people aren’t always ready to believe that I can be an accomplished writer.  Even my own manager will read a script that came from me and will have no idea that I wrote it.

GIANT: Since comic-book movies are so huge right now, do you ever think about suiting up as Spawn again?
White: I hear that question ten times a day.  [Laughs]  There’s a hunger for Spawn 2, but I know there’s a political battle between Todd and the studio.  They need to resolve that because a non-warm and fuzzy superhero is exactly what’s needed right now.  Darker has worked better in the cases of Spider-Man and Batman and here’s a character that’s written dark.  It should be an R-rated movie and it should do what the comic book did.  I do have to say that being in that suit was probably the most miserable working experience I’ve had in my life being in that suit, but I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.  I owe it to the fans because they’re responsible for getting me to where I am today.  The first movie was the introduction of Spawn; in the second you can start with who he is and he can be ripping out spinal cords.

GIANT: Have you forgiven Quentin Tarantino for cutting your big fight scene out of Kill Bill, Vol. 2?
White: That was originally a much longer sequence that he wound up omitting.  But he still wants me to do something with the character.  We’re big fans of the kung-fu genre and a lot of times when we’re in the same room together, we’re speaking a language other people don’t know.  We watched the same exact movies growing up.

GIANT: How has your extensive martial arts background helped you as an actor?
White: I practice and teach a style called kyokushin.  It’s the most popular style of karate in the world.  The cornerstone of martial arts is that it teaches you discipline.  The body gets conditioned as a result of what your mind is doing.  When you build that discipline and focus, you can shut out anything that you need to.  And acting is also all about discipline.  With discipline, you can accomplish anything.

GIANT: You’re primarily an action guy, but are there any other roles you’d like to take on?
White: I would love to one play the captain of a starship.  I’ve done Shakespeare in the past and I think it would be a great fit for me.  I’d love to do romantic comedies as well.  But the action market is completely under-served these days and I want to exploit that.  I’m very pro American and you look around today and you see that all of our action heroes are imports.  There’s Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler-it keeps going.  Our manly men are imports.  Where are the new American action heroes coming from?

Black Dynamite opens in limited release on Friday.  Visit the film’s official website to find out when it opens in your town.

Freddy Krueger returns for another round of slicing-and-dicing

You knew this day was coming.  After Jason Voorhees was given a 21st century makeover, it was inevitable that his fellow ’80s horror icon Freddy Krueger would get the remake treatment.  So next April, prepare for an all-new Nightmare on Elm Street, produced by Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes outfit–the same company behind the remakes of Friday the 13th, The Hitcher and The Amityville Horror.  Taking over the iconic role from the beloved Robert Englund is Jackie Earle Haley, who recently cracked skulls as the anti-hero Rorschach in Watchmen and a whole crew of interchangeable young actors have been cast as Freddy’s teenage victims.  Look for A Nightmare on Elm Street Version 2.0 in theaters on April 30, 2010.

Reviews of Drag Me To Hell, American Violet and The Proposal

Drag Me To Hell
Universal
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: After kicking an elderly lady out of her home, loan officer Christine (Alison Lohman) is hit with a supernatural curse that turns her life into a literal hell.

Opinion: Before he jumped to Hollywood’s A-list as the director of the Spider-Man franchise, Sam Raimi was best known for his groundbreaking Evil Dead trilogy.  Raimi’s first post-Spidey outing Drag Me To Hell puts the filmmaker back in touch with his genre roots.  But like the second and third Evil Dead outings, Drag Me To Hell is really a comedy in horror movie clothing with poor Lohman forced to endure all manner of slimy, gross humiliations because of her poor decision-making.  Perhaps the film’s goofy tone (in addition to an underwhelming marketing campaign) is the reason it struggled to find an audience in its theatrical release last May; after all, the horror movies that tend to succeed these days are the ones that take death and/or dismemberment more seriously.  Fortunately, there are still old-school folks like Raimi around who remember that sometimes it’s fun(ny) to be scared.

Bonus Features: A comprehensive production diary that focuses primarily on the impressive special effects.

Verdict: Buy It

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American Violet
Image
$28
Blu-ray: $36

Plot: A single mother (Nicole Beharie) takes on the Texas judicial system when she’s falsely imprisoned on drug charges.

Opinion: It’s hard to watch American Violet and not come away feeling outraged over what happened to Dee Roberts, the real-life person on whom this ripped-from-the-headlines courtroom drama is based.  That fury is enhanced by a very strong lead performance from Beharie, who accomplishes the difficult task of playing Roberts as a three-dimensional person with flaws and faults, not just an innocent victim.  As a movie though, American Violet is a little too static and bland, lacking the emotional fireworks that distinguish the best dramas about race relations in America.  Still, it’s important that stories like these are brought to the attention of the moviegoing public.

Bonus Features: An impassioned, but dull commentary track from director Tim Disney (great-nephew of Walt) and a short interview with Disney and Beharie from the Telluride Film Festival.

Verdict:  Rent It

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The Proposal
Touchstone
$30
2-Disc: $40
Blu-ray: $45

Plot: In order to avoid deportation, a high-powered, high-maintenance editor (Sandra Bullock) forces her ambitious assistant (Ryan Reynolds) into holy matrimony.  But first, she’s got to survive a weekend meeting his family.

Opinion: The Proposal is Exhibit A in how casting can make or break a romantic comedy.  If it weren’t for the unlikely pairing of Bullock and Reynolds as the central odd couple, this movie would be too obnoxious to endure.  But the actors make this very familiar material play, generating a real romantic chemistry and a fair number of laughs as well.  Unfortunately, even their appeal can’t enliven some of the film’s more tedious stretches, including the entirely too predictable finale.

Bonus Features: Two deleted scenes and a wisely jettisoned alternate ending, accompanied by commentary with Fletcher and writer Peter Chiarelli.  The pair also contribute a yak track to the feature and a ten-minute gag reel gives you some pretty funny bloopers from the set.

Verdict: Rent It

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Futurama: The Complete Collection
Fox
$200

Plot: A pizza delivery boy is accidentally frozen and re-awakens in the year 3000 to a brave new world.

Opinion: Futurama, Matt Groening’s follow-up to The Simpsons, never really got the respect it deserved during its abbreviated four-season run on Fox.  Funnily enough, it took premature cancellation to make viewers realize what a great series they were missing out on.  Futurama‘s successful afterlife on cable and DVD eventually led the studio to produce four new direct-to-DVD movies, which weren’t quite as good as the original series but still offered more than a few great zingers.  This past summer it was announced that the show would go back into production for 26 more episodes, to air sometime next year.  In the meantime, Fox has put every Futurama-related DVD released to date in this new box set, making it an instant must-have for any geeks on your holiday shopping list.  The future for Futrama has never looked brighter.

Bonus Features: All of the extras featured in this new set have appeared on previous editions, but there’s still plenty to chew on.  You could spend a week combing through the copious commentary tracks, featurettes, deleted scenes and other goodies.

Verdict: Buy It

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Also On DVD:
A singular sensation in its day, A Chorus Line remains one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals.  But don’t go into the documentary Every Little Step (Sony Pictures Classics, $29) expecting a full account of how the groundbreaking show came to be.  The focus here remains primarily on the arduous casting process for A Chorus Line‘s 2006 revival.  While skimpy on details of how this new production was conceived and mounted, Every Little Step does offer the immensely pleasurable sight of gifted performers dancing and singing their hearts out for the chance to make their Broadway dreams come true.  It’s like America’s Got Talent…only with actual talent.  Can’t decide between animated features starring The Hulk, Iron Man or Dr. Strange?  Collect ‘em all courtesy of the Marvel Animtation 6-Film Gift Set (Lionsgate, $50), a box set of all six Marvel Comics animated features released in the past few years.  While not up to the quality of the animated movies put out by their rivals over at DC Comics, movies like Hulk Vs. and New Avengers offer some fun.  (Skip the turgid Dr. Strange movie though.)  Finally, The Mighty Boosh: Special Edition (BBC, $80) offers all three seasons of the cult British comedy with lots and lots of excellent bonus material including commentary tracks, outtakes, galleries and a booklet.

Paranormal Activity makes you jump at things that go bump in the night.

Paranormal Activity
Directed by Oren Peli
Starring Katie Featherstone, Micah Stoat
***

Nothing kills a movie’s momentum like over-hype, so I want to make it very clear that Paranormal Activity-the much buzzed about new horror film from first-time director Oren Peli-is not the scariest movie ever made.  It’s not even one of the Top 5 scariest movies ever made.  What it is though, is a very clever, very compelling and very creepy haunted house tale that owes as much to the spooky ghost stories of yesteryear-I’m thinking of black-and-white classics like Val Lewton’s Cat People and Robert Wise’s The Haunting-as it does to more contemporary scary movies like The Blair Witch Project.

Like the latter film, Paranormal Activity is shot entirely from a first-person point-of-view perspective, specifically the perspective of Micah (Micah Stoat) a goofy day-trader who lives with his girlfriend Katie (Katie Featherstone) in a handsome two-story home in a well-off neighborhood.  As the movie begins, we learn that Micah has just purchased some video equipment to record some strange goings-on in the house that Katie believes might be supernatural in nature.  These incidents always go down after dark, so he rigs up the camera in their bedroom to videotape everything that happens after they fall asleep.  At first, very little of note seems to occur; there are a few creeks in the hallway and the bedroom door swings open in the dead of night, but none of these things necessarily indicate the presence of a poltergeist.  As Micah continues to film though, his camera captures after-hours activities that seem to defy any logical explanation.  Could it be that they are really sharing their house with a ghost?  And if so, why don’t they get the hell out of dodge already?

That second question is one that Peli never really answers successfully, which becomes a problem in the third act when events reach a point that would make any rational person would pack up his or her suitcase and make a run for the border.  Then again, it’s difficult to think of any horror movie where the main characters did the smart thing and just left the scene of the haunting.  (Let’s face it, if they did, none of these films would last longer than twenty minutes.)  Given that, it’s a little easier to forgive-if not entirely forget-the movie’s occasional gaps in logic, especially since Peli orchestrates the movie’s scariest sequences so effectively.  As with The Haunting and Cat People, much of Paranormal Activity‘s fear factor is derived from what the audience doesn’t see.  There’s none of the sadomasochistic gore that’s on display in torture porn like the Hostel movies or the CG-enhanced bloodletting in bigger-budgeted productions like The Haunting in Connecticut.  Instead, Peli relies on little details-like lights going on and off in the hallway or a booming crash in a dark room-to put the audience of the edge of their seats.  The best compliment I can pay Paranormal Activity is that, hours after I saw the movie, a noise woke me up in the middle of the night and for a split-second, I thought Peli’s ghost had followed me home.

Verdict: See It

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Also In Theaters:

Trucker
Directed by James Mottern
Starring Michelle Monaghan, Nathan Fillion, Benjamin Bratt
**

Hollywood has been trying to turn Michelle Monaghan into a movie star for several years now, but since success has consistently eluded this pleasant, but bland actress she’s now aiming for artistic cred instead.  Her chosen vehicle to respect is a cloying indie drama about a rough and tumble female big rig driver whose life is upended when she’s suddenly asked to take care of the son she abandoned years ago.  Rounding out the cast is Benjamin Bratt as the boy’s father and her ex-lover and Nathan Fillion as the married man that’s completely under Monaghan’s spell.  Impersonally written and directed by James Mottern, Trucker is the kind of movie that longs to be praised for its “realism” and “grit,” but deep down the film is just as phony and artificial as any Hollywood fantasy.
Verdict: Skip It

St. Trinian’s
Directed by Oliver Parker and Barnaby Thompson
Starring Rupert Everett, Gemma Arterton
*1/2
Originally released in England two years ago to withering reviews and mediocre box office, this update of a popular ’50s British film franchise is crossing the pond only because some members of the large ensemble cast-specifically bad-boy comic Russell Brand-have begun acquiring some name recognition stateside.  But even the most devoted Brand fanatic will have a hard time sitting through the film’s witless antics and aggressively annoying performances from such normally reliable actors as Rupert Everett and Colin Firth.  Apparently a sequel is already in the works, but don’t expect to see that one on U.S. screens anytime soon.
Verdict: Skip It

Adventures of Power
Directed by Ari Gold
Starring Ari Gold, Michael McKean, Adrien Grenier
*1/2
A feature-length rip-off of…uh, I mean homage to Napoleon Dynamite, Adventures of Power features writer/director/star Ari Gold as a dorky small-town loser with a big dream: to be the best air drummer in the world.  That mission takes him from his backwater burg to the bright lights of the big city, where he joins up with a down-on-its-luck air-instrument band and enters the premiere competition for air-musicians everywhere.  Imagine a lame Saturday Night Live sketch stretched out to 90 minutes and you’ll have an idea of how painful Adventures of Power is to endure.
Verdict: Skip It

Reviews of Trick ‘r Treat, Year One, Not Quite Hollywood and Assassination of a High School President

Trick ‘r Treat
Warner Home Video
$28
Blu-ray: $36

Plot: Four short scary stories set over the course of one Halloween night in a small American town.

Opinion: A deliberate throwback to the anthology horror films of yesteryear-movies like Creepshow and Trilogy of Terror-Trick ‘r Treat avoids the gross-out tactics of torture porn for a more creepy-comic vibe.  It’s a tricky chord to strike and not all of the film’s four segments are able to carry it off.  The most successful narratives involve a freaky prank a group of kids pull on a junior-high outcast and a wild bacchanal deep in the woods that turns out to be a kind of ritual sacrifice.  Less compelling is an extended segment that pits an elderly shut-in against a pumpkin-headed demon, which goes on too long for such a flat payoff.  But writer/director Michael Dougherty brings a light touch to the proceedings that keeps you engaged-if not always scared-throughout.

Bonus Features: The animated short that inspired the feature film, with commentary from Dougherty.

Verdict: Rent It

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Year One
Sony
$29
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: Two ancient hunter-gatherers (Jack Black and Michael Cera) wander the pre-historic landscape encountering all sorts of eccentric characters.

Opinion: It’s hard to believe that Harold Ramis-the man who has written, directed and acted in such generation defining comedies as Caddyshack, Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day-could produce such a lame, lazy, laugh-free film as Year One.  The Chicago-born comedy icon has certainly produced his fair share of disappointments in the past (think Bedazzled and Multiplicity) but even those movies had sparks of wit and invention.  Year One just lies there onscreen, noticeably devoid of any energy or enthusiasm either in front of or behind the camera.  Ramis has said that he was inspired by such comedies as Monty Python’s Life of Brian but the movies that I kept thinking of while watching Year One were Mel Brooks’ late-career efforts like Robin Hood: Men in Tights.  Those films had the musty feel of an aging comic desperately trying to prove he still knew how to make ‘em laugh, but could barely get anyone to crack a smile. Individually, Cera and Black can be very funny actors, but here, they seem to be carefully taking turns delivering their lines instead of mixing it up and riffing off each other in the moment.  The supporting cast doesn’t fare any better, as usually reliable scene-stealers like Rudd, Cross and Oliver Platt are somehow unable to generate a single chuckle.

Bonus Features: Ramis, Black and Cera discuss the film on a commentary track and a making-of featurette; viewers can check out what was left on the cutting room floor via an extensive batch of deleted scenes, alternate/extended scenes and a gag reel.

Verdict: Skip It

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Not Quite Hollywood
Magnet
$27

Plot: The three-decade history of Australia’s seedy genre film industry, encapsulated into 103 minutes.

Opinion: Film buffs and horror fans will have a terrific time watching Mark Hartley’s lively documentary about Australia’s grindhouse cinema culture.  Divided into three sections, the movie explores the three major categories of exploitation flicks churned out by enterprising producers in the ’70s and ’80s: sex comedies, action thrillers and, of course, horror pictures.  Fortunately for Hartley, many of the actors, directors and producers from that era are still alive and kicking and they’ve all agreed to sit in front of his camera for insightful, candid interviews.  At times though, I found myself wishing that Hartley would ask his subjects tougher questions.  One subject that is rarely broached, for example, is how Australia’s problematic history with race relations factored into the kinds of films produced by the exploitation industry.  It also would have been interesting to pay a brief visit to New Zealand to see how a young Peter Jackson was inspired by the Australian genre industry to create his own brand of extreme horror.  Despite these missed opportunities, Not Quite Hollywood is a fast, fun introduction to an era of filmmaking that deserves more exposure.

Bonus Features: Almost an hour’s worth of bonus clips and interviews; a conversation between Hartley and grindhouse guru Quentin Tarantino.

Verdict: Buy It

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Assassination of a High School President
Sony
$25

Plot: When a batch of SAT tests are stolen, an intrepid student journalist (Reece Daniel Thompson) tries to get to the bottom of the case, despite distractions from the school’s resident femme fatale (Mischa Barton)

Opinion: Originally slated for a theatrical premiere last year, this oddball high school comedy got stuck in limbo when its original distributor went belly-up.  Eventually Sony stepped in and nabbed the rights, opting for a direct-to-DVD release.  While that’s probably disappointing for the cast and crew involved in the movie, Assassination is the kind of film that plays better at home than it would in a theater.  The small-screen makes it easier to forgive, if not exactly forget, the movie’s tonal inconsistencies, with broad comic performances like Bruce Willis as a foul-mouthed principal sitting uneasily alongside more deadpan humor like the faux-film noir voiceover.  While Barton is still a wash as an actress, the supporting cast features some promising young performers who will hopefully be able to use this movie as a launching pad to bigger and better things.       

Bonus Features: A commentary track with the director and several deleted and extended scenes.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD:

Frequently ranked as one of the scariest movies of all time, Takashi Miike’s 1999 freak-out Audition is about a widowed businessman’s search for a new wife will disturb even the most hardened horror fan.  Re-issued just in time for Halloween in a new 10^th anniversary 2-Disc Collector’s Edition (Shout, $25) also available in Blu-ray-this set includes a recently recorded audio commentary with the eccentric Japanese director as well as 75 minutes worth of new on-camera interviews.  Just be prepared for a sleepless night after you shut the TV off.  If you, like me, start watching Anvil!  The Story of Anvil (VH1, $25) not knowing a heck of a lot of about the early-’80s heavy metal scene, chances are you’ll find yourself wondering if this is another Spinal Tap-style mockumentary about a fake hair band.  But take a second to Google Anvil and you’ll discover that they actually are the real deal.  Even more amazingly, at one point in time they were among the most popular bands in the world and served as an inspiration for numerous metal acts that followed, including Metallica and Guns ‘n’ Roses.  Unfortunately, Anvil’s career peaked early and they were soon eclipsed by their descendents.  Director Sacha Gervasi picks up their story in 2005, when Anvil mounts a European tour with an inexperienced road manager and enlists a skilled producer to oversee their comeback record.  While you may start out laughing at these now-50 year old rockers, by the end of the movie, you’ll likely find yourself cheering them on.  If you grew up in the ’80s, chances are you remember the Canadian horror film, The Gate (Lionsgate, $20) about a kid who discovers a gateway to hell in his backyard.  Extraordinary cheesy by today’s standards, The Gate is still a potent nostalgia trip for a certain generation of moviegoers.  Finally, the animated feature that started it all gets a lavish DVD release.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Disney, $40) hits DVD in a two-disc set that includes both a Blu-ray and standard version of the film and dozens of great extras.

Precious tops the list of must-see movies at the 2009 edition of New York’s most prominent film festival.

Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire
****
Anyone that has ever complained about the lack of good roles for actresses-especially black actresses-in Hollywood should make a point of buying a ticket for Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.  It’s the kind of film that’s rarely seen on the contemporary cinematic landscape: a serious, emotional drama about women with bigger problems than finding a date for Friday night or picking the right pair of Manolos to go with that little black dress.  More than anything though, Precious is a remarkable showcase for its all-female ensemble cast, challenging them in ways most mainstream films can’t – or won’t.

Like the unwieldy title says, Precious is adapted from the 1996 novel by African-American poet Sapphire, which chronicles the life of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), an obese, illiterate teenager who relies on her overactive imagination to help her endure a hellish reality.  Trapped in a dilapidated Harlem apartment with her emotionally and physically abusive mother (Mo’Nique), Precious grew up being repeatedly raped by her now-absent father.  At 16, she’s already given birth to one of his children and has another on the way.  After she’s expelled from public school, Precious enrolls in alternative education program and starts to turn her life around with the help of a no-nonsense teacher (Paula Patton) and a sympathetic social worker (Mariah Carey).

In the wrong hands, Precious could easily have turned mawkish and treacly, but director Lee Daniels avoids Lifetime movie-of-the-week sentimentality, producing an inspirational drama that’s genuinely inspiring.  Much of the film’s power lies in the performances; Patton displays a steeliness we’ve never seen from her before and, in her screen debut, Sidibe brings an authenticity to the title role a more experienced actress wouldn’t be able to replicate.  But it’s Mo’Nique’s ferocious turn that will really have audiences buzzing.  In the film’s closing moments, she delivers a devastating monologue that is guaranteed to win her an Oscar.  That one scene encapsulates the experience of watching Precious-it’s emotionally exhausting but also, exhilarating.
Precious is the NYFF’s Centerpiece attraction and screens Saturday, October 3 at 7 and 10pm.  It will open theatrically in November.

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Also at the Festival:

Antichrist
***
Ever wonder what Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead would have looked like if it had been directed by Danish bad boy Lars von Trier?  Antichrist is your answer.  After experiencing the tragic death of their young son, a married couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) retreats to a remote cabin in the woods for some spiritual healing, bizarre mind games and good old fashioned assault and battery.  While it doesn’t rank with von Trier’s best work, Antichrist is a cult movie in the making, marrying compelling psychological drama with over-the-top gore. Screens Friday, October 2 at 9pm and Saturday October 3 at 1pm.  Opens theatrically on October 23.

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Trash Humpers
*
Would-be enfant terrible Harmony Korine desperately tries to re-establish the artistic cred he lost after the back-to-back flops Gummo and Julien Donkey Boy with this send-up of homemade video pranksters like MTV’s Jackass crew.  Hidden underneath crude latex masks designed to evoke Deliverance-style hillbillies, a trio of performers go wild on camera, humping garbage cans, smashing TVs and telling absurdly racist jokes.  Like the Jackass feature films, there’s not plot to speak of, just scene after scene of these over-the-top Southern stereotypes acting like…well, jackasses.  It’s funny for about five minutes until you realize that its becoming the exact thing it sets out to parody.  
Screens Friday, October 2 at 11:30pm.  Currently without theatrical distribution.

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Min Ye…(Tell Me Who You Are)
***1/2
African filmmaker Souleyman Cisse presents a fascinating depiction of contemporary life in the nation of Mali through this story of a married couple whose relationship is seriously on the rocks.  Having willingly entered into a polygamous marriage a decade ago, Mimi (Sokona Gakou) now finds herself hating the fact that she shares her filmmaker husband Issam (Assane Kouyate) with another woman.  Eager to prove her independent, she strikes up a flirtation with a local fish merchant that lands both of them in trouble with the law.  Although slow-moving at times, Min Ye… offers a window into a society and culture we know too little about.
Screens Monday, October 5 at 9pm and Tuesday, October 6 at 6pm.  Currently without theatrical distribution.

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Ne Change Rien
***
Never heard of French singer Jeanne Balibar?  Neither had I, but after watching this extremely intimate look at her cutting a record in the studio, I’m ready to download her album off iTunes.  Unlike most behind-the-music docs, Ne Change Rien doesn’t offer any biographical background about its subject. In fact, director Pedro Costa doesn’t even make Balibar sit down for a conventional interview.  Instead, he sets up his tripod in the studio and shoots static black-and-white scenes that run on for five to ten minutes apiece.  The effect is almost trance-like; it’s a movie to meditate to rather than watch.
Screens Thursday, October 8 at 6pm.  Currently without theatrical distribution.

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White Material
***
It takes at least 20 minutes to get your bearings in the newest film from French director Claire Denis, a fragmented story set in an unspecified African country that’s in the throes of a war between the government and a group of well-armed rebels.  Caught in the middle of this conflict is a white French family that operates a coffee plantation.  While the patriarch (played by the Highlander himself, Christopher Lambert) tries to ingratiate himself with the local authorities, his estranged wife (the superb Isabelle Huppert) tries to complete the current harvest season, even as her workers flee and her own son joins the guerrillas.  While the narrative could stand to be a little clearer, the performances and vivid location shooting makes this a compelling tale.

Screens Friday, October 9 at 9:15pm and Saturday, October 10 at 6pm.  Currently without theatrical distribution.

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Mother
***1/2
Korean director Bong Joon-Ho follows up his acclaimed monster movie The Host with a consistently surprising melodrama/murder mystery about a fiercely devoted mother (Kim Hye-ja) who goes to extreme lengths to clear her incarcerated son of a murder charge. Much more than just a Law & Order: South Korean Unit procedural, Mother offers a complex and often downright disturbing look at how far maternal love can go.
Screens Friday, October 9 at 6pm and Saturday, October 10 at noon.  Acquired by Magnolia Pictures, theatrical release date TBA.

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Broken Embraces
***
Pedro Almodovar has never made a flat-out bad movie, but he has helmed several films that don’t fully realize his talents.  Such is the case with Broken Embraces, the story of a blind filmmaker with a tragic past that’s like something out of a ’50s melodrama.  Penelope Cruz plays the director’s muse and she’s as stunning and vivacious here as she is in every Almodovar production she graces.  Too bad the movie itself meanders all over the map, building to a climax that’s head-scratching at best, laughably implausible at worst.  There’s still lots to like about Broken Embraces, but consider this one second-tier Pedro.
Screens Sunday, October 11 at 8pm.  Opens theatrically on November 20.

The director and producer of the new LeBron James documentary More than a Game discuss their labor of love.

GIANT: How did your involvement in More Than a Game come about?
Kristopher Belman: I started working on it about eight years ago. I was a junior at LA’s Loyola Marymount college, but I’m from Akron originally so I wanted to make a film about my hometown. At that point, LeBron and those guys were making some noise on the high school basketball level so I thought it would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone: I’d make something positive about my hometown and also silence some of the jokes about Ohio I was hearing in school. So I approached the school with the idea of making a 10-minute short film and they let me attend one practice. I went to that one practice and then happened to show up the next day and nobody said anything. So I turned that one practice into the next eight years of my life. At some point, I knew I needed to figure out a way to bring in the professional finishing touches and that’s when I ended up meeting with Harvey.

Harvey Mason Jr.: I was introduced to Kris by my babysitter, who was a friend of his. I met him and was blown away by the three-minute trailer he showed me. I knew there was a great story there. Since I wasn’t a film producer, I initially tried to introduce him to a few people I knew in the industry. But no one really seemed to really get the message of the movie, so after four months of meetings, we decided to do it ourselves.

GIANT: Was LeBron involved with the project already at that point or did you have to secure his permission during production?
Mason Jr.: We made the movie and when we got to a place where we were confident about it, we approached LeBron. We wanted him to be involved in the marketing, so I wanted to make sure he was happy with it. We brought him on a little more than a year ago when the movie was 65% complete and he was involved from that point forward.

GIANT: I noticed that he has an executive producer credit on the film. Did he have any say in the editing process?
Belman: None of the players saw a finished version of the movie until the Toronto premiere. His credit was more about support than anything. Once he saw what I was doing and felt I could do it on a professional level, he was like “What can we do to make this the best film possible?”

GIANT: Kris, was it a little weird to be an independent filmmaker struggling to pay the bills while the subject of your first film was making millions of dollars in the NBA?
Belman: It was definitely interesting. My graduation from college was definitely one of the lowest points in the process of making the film, because once LeBron entered the NBA, it became a different situation getting in touch with him. Meanwhile, I’m working at a coffee shop and the student loans are kicking in and I don’t have camera equipment for free anymore. I was looking for financial support and everyone’s offer would be “Let’s write you a check for six figures to buy the footage off you.” That was something I never entertained, but it did get a little depressing to be working at a coffee shop and someone is offering you a lot of money–just not for the right reasons. I remember thinking, “This is never going to happen, I’m never going to get this done the way it needs to be done.” But I felt this story had to be told no matter what.

GIANT: What was your working relationship like? Were there any times that you butted heads over the content of the film?
Mason Jr.: I don’t remember us ever having a disagreement. Kris was the driving force in the editing room, while I made sure the special effects and marketing stuff was happening. But we definitely had a good partnership; if he liked something, I said “Let’s try it” and if I liked something he said “Let’s try it.” There was never a point where we took anything personally and it became “Don’t do this” or “Don’t do that.” We were both ready to try anything and more often than not, the right choice won out.

GIANT: What were some of the documentaries that influenced you?  Hoop Dreams had to be in the mix right?
Belman: The ones that spoke to me the most where those that followed multiple characters, so films like Murderball, Spellbound and Go Tigers.  Hoop Dreams was always on my radar because I love it–it’s one of my top ten films of all time.  I can’t say it directly influenced the style of More Than a Game, but it was inspirational in that it took two characters no one had ever heard of and made them compelling for two hours.  So every time that someone would tell me, “You should just focus on LeBron, because no one cares about Coach Dru Joyce,” I’d just think about Hoop Dreams and how brave the filmmakers were to explore these lesser-known characters.

GIANT: Is there a reason that the film doesn’t address the “student” part of being a student athlete?
Belman: There were a lot of different elements I tried to tackle.  I interviewed teachers and fellow students, but during the editing process we realized that while these themes were interesting and served one purpose, they were disrupting the flow of the narrative.  The film explores six main characters and that’s a lot of people to support and develop.  So to keep the flow, we decided to pull out those themes.  Also, they were really good students, so there wasn’t a lot of conflict with the scholastic aspect of things.  LeBron graduated with a 3.5 GPA and all the other guys were right there behind him or ahead.

GIANT: While LeBron has enjoyed tremendous success, none of his high-school pals have made the leap to the NBA.  Is there really no ill-will between them as the film would have us believe?
Mason Jr.: All these guys know they’re not LeBron and that he’s a very special athlete.  By the same token, they’re all still best friends.  They all still hang out together and LeBron is very generous with them.  He doesn’t elevate himself above the rest of them; he does everything he can to make sure they’re on the same level.

GIANT: What do you hope that moviegoers take away from More Than a Game?
Mason Jr.: I hope they get a good feeling at the bottom of their stomach and that they leave the theaters feeling that anything is possible.  It takes hard work and dedication and loyalty, but you can do great things.

More Than a Game opens in limited release on Friday and expands to more theaters in mid-October.

Marty McFly has nothing on these time-travelers….

The time-traveling comedy Hot Tub Time Machine doesn’t open until February 2010, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this movie will wind up being next year’s funniest studio-made comedy.  Start with the premise: four pals discover that their hot tub is actually a gateway to the past, transporting them from the present day to the 1980s.  Then just take a look at the cast, which includes John Cusack, Rob Corddry and, best of all, Craig Robinson from The Office, finally scoring what will likely be his breakout feature film role.  If the finished film is as funny as the trailer, moviegoers will being taking multiple dips in this particular hot tub.

Reviews of Away We Go, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, The Girlfriend Experience and Monsters vs. Aliens.

Away We Go
Universal
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: An unmarried pair of soon-to-be parents (John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph) set off on a cross-country trip in search of a new place to call home.

Opinion: Already big names in the television biz, Away We Go confirms that Krasinski (a.k.a. Jim from The Office) and Rudolph (a.k.a. Whitney/Beyonce/Oprah from Saturday Night Live) have the movie star goods. Their moving, funny and emotionally honest performances help distract from the film’s uneven supporting cast, some of whom go so far over the top, it’s painful to watch (we’re looking right at you Allison Janey).  It helps that director Sam Mendes displays a lighter touch here than he has in virtually every other film he’s made to date; in fact, in many ways this movie is an antidote to his last outing, the overbearing Revolutionary Road.  The episodic structure results in a few dead patches, but whenever Rudolph and Krasinski are onscreen, you’re happy to spend time in their company.  

Bonus Features: A commentary track with Mendes and the film’s writers, real-life married couple Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida and a making-of featurette.

Verdict: Buy It

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Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
Warner Home Video
$25
Blu-ray: $30

Plot: After Lex Luthor frames Superman and Batman for a crime they didn’t commit, the Caped Crusader and The Dark Knight have to fight off hoards of their enemies-and a few of their friends.

Opinion: A more accurate title for the latest direct-to-DVD animated feature from DC Comics would be: Superman and Batman Fight the DC Universe.  The majority of this movie’s slender 67-minute runtime is given over to epic battles that pit Batman and Superman against such villains as Mongul and Solomon Grundy and supposed good guys like Captain Atom and Power Girl.  At least these action sequences are very well executed-in fact, they’re far more exciting and innovative than the fights on display in most live-action superhero movies.  But compared to such previous DC cartoons as The New Frontier, Public Enemies doesn’t have much to offer in the way of a great story or eye-catching animation.  Still, if you’ve ever wondered how Batman would fare in a fight with Captain Marvel, Public Enemies is worth a look.

Bonus Features: Lots of fun sneak peeks at past and future projects from DC’s animation wing, most notably their Spring 2010 release Crisis on Two Earths.  There’s also a twenty-minute documentary exploring the psychologies of Superman and Batman, a half-hour conversation between actor Kevin Conroy (who voices Batman) and the film’s creative team, and two episodes from Superman: The Animated Series, which ran in the mid-’90s.

Verdict: Rent It

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The Girlfriend Experience
Magnolia
$27
Blu-ray: $35

Plot: Steven Soderbergh chronicles a few weeks in the life of a high-end Manhattan escort (porn star Sasha Grey).

Opinion: Coming off one of his biggest-and best-films, a four-hour profile of controversial revolutionary Che Guevera, Soderbergh switches gears and delivers a small-scale character study that lasts a mere 80 minutes.  Filmed on the streets and in the luxurious high-rises of Manhattan in October 2008 just as the economy was starting to crumble, The Girlfriend Experience is a captivating portrait of a city in transition.  Never one to shy away from challenging the audience, Soderbergh scambles the film’s chronology, recounting events out of sequence and building towards a deliberately ambigious ending.  It’s the kind of movie that rewards repeat viewings.  Beautifully shot by Soderbergh (who, as usual, served as his own director of photography) and well acted by its non-professional cast, The Girlfriend Experience is a minor gem from one of the most consistently interesting filmmakers working today.

Bonus Features: Soderbergh contributes another one of his eloquent, insightful commentary tracks, which at times into an extended interview with his star and fellow commentator Grey.  Also tucked away in the extras menus is an unrated alternate cut of the movie that does feature some striking differences from the theatrical version.

Verdict: Buy It

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Monsters vs. Aliens
Paramount
$30
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: The title pretty much says it all: a crew of monsters battle an invading army of aliens.

Opinion: In the never-ending Pixar vs. DreamWorks Animation debate, I tend to come down on Pixar’s side.  That said, with Monsters vs. Aliens, the DreamWorks guys have achieved something their rivals have yet to accomplish: they’ve built an entertaining adventure entirely around a female protagonist.  MvA puts girl power front and center in the form of Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), an ordinary small-town woman who is transformed into a 50-foot-tall giantess following a freak encounter with a glowing meteorite.  While the female empowerment aspect of MvA is worth celebrating, there are plenty of other things to like here as well.  The action sequences are lots of fun and the characters are wonderfully realized by the animators and the vocal cast.  As enjoyable as MvA is, I have to concede that it doesn’t measure up to Pixar’s best efforts.  The truth is we’ve been spoiled by films like Wall-E and Toy Story-to say nothing of such exceptional non-Pixar productions as Spirited Away and Coraline-which seek to both entertain and elevate animation as an art form.  MvA is purely interested in the first half of this equation.  It deserves praise for succeeding at what it sets out to do, but you might leave the theater wishing it had aspired to just a little bit more.

Bonus Features: There’s plenty here to entertain both adult and kid viewers alike; the 25 and older set will likely enjoy the commentary track and making-of featurettes, while those 15 and under will want to check out the games and bonus animated adventure B.O.B.’s Big Break on the second disc.

Verdict: Buy It

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Also on DVD:

One of Hollywood’s most beloved movies turns the big seven-oh this year and what better way to celebrate than with a super-deluxe box set?  The Wizard of Oz: 70^th Anniversary Edition (Warner Home Video, $70) offers a remastered and restored version of the 1939 Judy Garland classic along with a host extras ranging from new documentaries and featurettes to four silent short films based on the writing of the real wizard behind the curtain, author L. Frank Baum.  How I Met Your Mother: Season Four (CBS, $40) collects the fourth season of the best sitcom currently on the air–yes, even better than The Office.  Last but certainly not least, The Unit: The Complete Giftset (20^th Century Fox, $200) contains the entire run of CBS’s underrated action series, created by playwright David Mamet and The Shield mastermind Shawn Ryan.  A terrific showcase for leading man Dennis Haysbert, The Unit mixed impressive action sequences with a lot of juicy drama.  It’s a shame it didn’t last beyond four seasons, but at least viewers who missed the show the first time around will be able to get hooked on it with this set.

Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair are among the offerings at this year’s Urbanworld Film Festival

The Urbanworld Film Festival, one of the largest annual African-American cinema festivals out there, kicked off its 13th year on Wednesday night with a premiere screening of the new Jamie Foxx movie Law Abiding Citizen, which arrives in theaters on October 16.  It’s not the only high-profile movie premiering at the festival–Chris Rock shows off his documentary Good Hair (which opens October 9) and Sophie Okonedo delivers a powerful performance in the drama Skin, the based-on-a-true-story tale of a seemingly black South African woman born to two white Afrikaners.  (The movie will open in New York on October 30).  Mixed in with these bigger titles are an intriguing mix of independent narrative features and documentaries which tackle topics as diverse as soldiers serving abroad to a homecoming queen competition.  HEre some of the highlights of the last few days of the festival, which concludes on Sunday.

Mississippi Damned
What’s swept under the rug rarely stays hidden. Taking place in 1986 and 1998 and based on a true story, three poor, black kids in rural Mississippi suffer the consequences of their family’s cycle of abuse, addiction, and violence. They independently struggle to escape their circumstances and must decide whether to confront what has plagued their family for generations or succumb to the same crippling fate, forever damned in Mississippi.
Friday at 12:30pm
Saturday at 5:45pm

Pressure Cooker
This documentary profiles the lives of three high school seniors from Northeast Philadelphia, each with unique hardships but with the shared goal of winning scholarships to the country’s best culinary schools. Their unlikely hero is the irreverent culinary arts teacher, Mrs. Stephenson, whose teaching style is hilariously blunt. Mrs. Stephenson is both a surrogate mother and a culinary boot-camp instructor, as she pushes her kids to achieve beyond what anyone else expects from them.
Friday at 6pm
Saturday at 1:30pm

Say My Name
In a Hip Hop and R&B world dominated by men and noted for misogyny, the unstoppable female lyricists of Say My Name speak candidly about the influences of class, race, and gender on pursuing their passions. From Hip Hop’s birthplace in the Bronx to grime on London’s Eastside, emerging artists like Chocolate Thai, Invincible, Jean Grae and Miz Korona as well as world-renowned pioneers like MC Lyte, Erykah Badu, Estelle, and Monie Love demonstrate how they have made art from adversity.
Friday at 8pm

Skin
Ten-year-old Sandra is distinctly African looking. Her parents are white Afrikaners and have lovingly brought her up as their ‘white’ little girl. When she is 17, Sandra defies her father and elopes to Swaziland with Petrus, a local black man. Now she must live her life, for the first time, as a black woman in South Africa — with no running water, no sanitation, and little income.  Although she feels more at home in this community, she desperately misses her parents. As the years pass, the possibility of reunion appears increasingly remote. But Sandra carries her father’s advice with her wherever she goes: ‘Never give up!’
Friday at 8pm

‘Bama Girl
‘Bama Girl follows a black woman’s quest to become the 2005 Homecoming Queen at the University of Alabama, one of the great Deep South institutions. Homecoming has a rich history there, tied into centuries of privilege, old money, and racial exclusivity. We follow Jessica Thomas’ campaign for Queen, running against not only 15 other co-eds, but a strictly segregated Greek system, internal black politics, and, most ominously, a secret all-white association called ‘The Machine’ that has been controlling politics at the University for most of the past century.
Saturday at 10am

Good Hair
Chris Rock visits beauty salons, hairstyling battles, scientific laboratories and Indian temples to explore the way hairstyles impact the activities, pocketbooks, sexual relationships, and self-esteem of the black community. Chris Rock’s raucous adventure was prompted by his daughter’s approaching him to ask: “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” Haircare professionals, beauty shop and barbershop patrons, and celebrities – including Ice-T, Nia Long, Paul Mooney, Raven Symoné, Dr. Maya Angelou, Salt n Pepa, Eve and Reverend Al Sharpton – candidly offer their stories and observations to Rock as he searches for an answer to his daughter’s question.
Saturday at 5:30pm

Americana
This documentary explores American identity at home and abroad by juxtaposing the personal stories of Americans overseas and those of two teenagers in their last three months of high school before their U.S. Army enlistment.
Saturday at 5:45pm

The former pop star turned actress talks exclusively with GIANT about her role in the new musical Fame

GIANT: After you signed on to star in the new Fame, did you watch the original movie?
Naturi Naughton: Yes I did watch the original awhile back and looking at it, I could see how our movie was going to be different.  The style, music and fashion today are so different from 1980, so this is a great opportunity to bring a fresh edge to the movie.  I thought the original did do an excellent job exposing the rawness of the entertainment world.  Fame doesn’t come overnight, some people make it and some people don’t and that’s kind of the same theme this Fame is preaching.

GIANT: Your character Denise is based on the role Irene Cara played in the first film.  Are there any similarities between them?
Naughton: There are some similar elements, but I feel like Denise has different struggles.  She’s been trained as a classical pianist and her parents don’t support her desire to pursue R&B and hip-hop.  So she’s afraid to even reach for the stars, to branch out and try something new.  That’s not the case in the original movie.  But I do get to sing the same songs as Irene, including “Out Here On My Own.”  I learned to play the piano so that I could play and sing that song.

GIANT: The movie is filled with fresh young faces like yourself.  How did you guys get along between takes?
Naughton: We spent a lot of time together, because we lived in the same apartment building while we were shooting.  It was like dorm life.  Even before rehearsals, we had get-togethers like game nights and pot lucks.  That way we got to know each other so there wouldn’t be any fake chemistry onscreen.  We spent too much time together, probably.  After awhile, it was kind of like having a brother and sister-like, “I’ve had enough of you!” [Laughs]

GIANT: You got cast as the prim-and-proper type in Fame right after you played the down-and-dirty Lil’ Kim in the Biggie biopic Notorious.  Was that a strange transition?
Naughton: It was hard-I’m not going to lie.  I had just finished this grown and sexy role and then I had to play a timid, all-covered-up little girl trying to find herself in high school. It takes work and professionalism to really stay focused on the heart of the character.  I wanted to portray the rawness of Biggie and Kim’s love affair.  If I watered her down, it wouldn’t be Lil’ Kim.  She’s a person fans know and love and I wanted to make sure I did her justice.  It’s funny, since that movie came out I’ve had people come up to me and say “What up, Kim!  You killed it in Notorious.”  And I’m like “Well, my name is Naturi, but I appreciate the love!”

GIANT: You got your start in the business as a singer in the group 3LW.  When did you decide that what you really wanted to do was act?
Naughton: Well, I always wanted to pursue acting; I just don’t think it was heavy on my mind at first.  I was young when I started with 3LW and at that point, being in that group was what I wanted to do.  I wanted to be a performer, a recording artist.  But the acting bug really hit me when I was in college.  After the group broke up, I had been scarred by the music business and I took some time off to attend Seton Hall University.  I was focusing on school but also auditioned for theater.  Then I got cast as Little Inez in the touring production of Hairspray and got to Broadway six months later.  I remember my opening night: April 4, 2006.  Going out onstage in front of that audience, I was like “Okay, this is for real!”  And that’s when I got serious about acting, taking classes, working with a coach and looking for an agent.

GIANT: You alluded to a rough break-up with 3LW.  What’s your memory of that time?
Naughton: It wasn’t pleasant.  It’s unfortunate because we were all young girls of color trying to represent and be the next Destiny’s Child or TLC.  We really wanted to be a positive image for other young girls to aspire to.  After the success of the first album, there were all these outside people telling us we needed a different look and a different sound when in my mind, things were working.  Before we knew it, we were being broken apart.  I was pushed out of the group and I couldn’t take some of the ways I was being treated any longer.  I realized that I’d rather be happy than be stuck in a situation where I’m not respected.  I still don’t talk to [my former bandmates] on a regular basis.  I’ve seen Adrienne Bailon at different events and its all cordial.  The way I look at it now is that I’m grateful for the bad stuff, because if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.  Who knows if I would have been on Broadway or been in Notorious or Fame?

GIANT: What’s next for you on the acting front?
Naughton: I booked an independent movie called Yelling to the Sky that hopefully starts shooting later this year.  It stars Don Cheadle and Zoë Kravitz.  And other than that, I’m still auditioning.  Some actors think, “Okay, I made one movie, I’m going to sit back and let the offers roll in.”  Not me-I go right back to work.  I want people to realize this is not an overnight thing.  I have a few ideas and passion projects that I hope to do one day when I get to be big time.

GIANT: Such as?
Naughton: I would love to do a story about young Coretta Scott King.  We always see the story of the Civil Rights movement through Dr. King’s eyes and it would be interesting to get her perspective.  I’ve also always wanted to work with Spike Lee, John Singleton and Denzel Washington as either an actor or a director.  And I would love to act alongside Taraji P. Henson.  She’s great and I think we would do so well together.  Those are my people-somebody better call me! [Laughs]

GIANT: What do you hope audiences take away from Fame?
Naughton: I hope young people in the audience realize that anything is possible.  We all have been in situations where we didn’t think something was possible, where we didn’t know if were going to get the job.  I really hope this movie shows people your biggest dreams can be reality.

Fame opens in theaters nationwide tomorrow.

Check out the trailer for Paranormal Activity, the first horror movie of the year that’s genuinely scary.

If you’re the kind of person that gets freaked out by creaks and bumps in the dead of night, you may have trouble falling asleep for at least a week after watching the low-budget horror film Paranormal Activity.  Made for only $10,000, this haunted house tale offers more chills than any studio-produced scary movie released so far this year.  Using the first-person point-of-view approach popularized by The Blair Witch Project, first-time director Oren Peli tells the story of a pair of lovebirds (Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat) who purchase a video camera to record the strange, possibly supernatural goings-on in their home.  The haunting starts small with loud noises in the hallway and doors that swing open and shut mysteriously, but quickly escalates into far stranger and spookier occurances.  Don’t expect any Saw-like bloodshed: this is one of those horror films where the scares are based on what you don’t see.  Opening in extremely limited release this Friday, Paranormal Activity is following a unique distribution strategy that asks moviegoers to log onto the film’s official website and demand that it come to their hometown.  So check out the trailer below and if you like what you see, hit the web to bring the movie to a theater near you.

Reviews of Observe and Report, two Star Trek box sets and a Paul Newman collection

Observe and Report
Warner Home Video
$29
Blu-ray: $36

Plot: A borderline psychotic mall cop (Seth Rogen) launches a reign of terror at his suburban shopping complex after his object of desire (Anna Faris) is assaulted by a flasher in the parking lot.

Opinion: When the infamous red-band trailer for Observe and Report surfaced online prior to its theatrical release last spring, people knew to expect a comedy that was a little darker than previous Seth Rogen fare like Knocked Up and Zack and Miri Make a Porno.  But I don’t think anyone could have anticipated how dark this hard-R rated comedy from writer/director Jody Hill would be.  Observe and Report feels like a movie that was conceived from the beginning to be a future cult classic and I’m sure the movie will attract a devoted following, particularly now that its on DVD.  Whether it deserves cult classic status is going to be a matter of intense debate.  In all honesty, I’m a bit conflicted myself.  There are scenes here that rank as some of the funniest moments I’ve seen all year and I admire how committed all of the actors are to their characters’ inherent nastiness.  Unfortunately, Hill lets the audience down by pulling back from the edge at the very moment he should be plunging over it.  The movie’s climax ends up transforming this psychopath into some kind of hero, a leap that is tonally inconsistent with everything that’s come before.  If Hill had stuck to his guns, Observe and Report could have been one of the all time great dark comedies.  As it is, it’s a twisted, daring movie that’s just not twisted or daring enough.

Bonus Features: Surprisingly there’s not a single extra on this disc.  C’mon guys-there had to be some great outtakes and deleted material, right?  And were Hill and Rogen to busy to sit down for a commentary track or something?

Verdict: Rent It

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Star Trek: The Original Motion Picture Collection
Paramount
$90
Blu-ray: $140

Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection
Paramount
$56
Blu-ray: $70

Plot: Follow the crew of the starship Enterprise-both the NCC-1701 and the NCC-1701-C-on their continuing mission to explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before.

Opinion: Now that J.J. Abrams has made Star Trek cool again, Paramount is wasting no time re-releasing the first ten installments in one of science-fiction’s premiere film franchises.  Previously available in individual 2-disc editions, all six films starring the Enterprise‘s first crew and the four movies featuring the Next Generation officers are now collected in their own box sets.  It’s common knowledge by now that the even-numbered Trek films are the best of the bunch, with No. 2 (The Wrath of Khan), No. 4 (The Voyage Home) and No. 8 (First Contact) being particular stand-outs.  Still, some of the odd-numbered entries–most notably No. 1 (The Motion Picture), No. 3 (The Search for Spock) and No. 7 (Generations)–have things to recommend.  On the other hand, the worst Treks–that would be No. 5 (The Final Frontier) and No. 9 (Insurrection)–have only gotten uglier with age.

Bonus Features: You name it, these two sets have got it.  Commentary tracks?  Choose from newly recorded commentaries as well as a few select tracks ported over from previous editions.  Featurettes?  Get all the behind-the-scenes scoop on every Trek flick from The Motion Picture to Nemesis.  There’s also tons of trivia, actor profiles and roundtable discussions with various cast and crew members.  All in all, this is the definitive DVD send-off to the first 10 Trek films.

Verdict: Buy It

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Paul Newman: The Tribute Collection
20^th Century Fox
$90

Plot: Witness the evolution of one of Hollywood’s greatest movie stars from early movies like Rally ‘Round the Flag Boys to such late-career hits as The Verdict.

Opinion: Even though he had retired from acting several years ago, Paul Newman’s legacy still loomed large over Hollywood up until his death last September.  For many, he represented the ideal movie star: an actor of impressive dramatic range who led an exemplary life offscreen as well.  Even when stuck in bad movies–which happened more than once–Newman was a model of charm and charisma.  While this box set is missing some of the actor’s essential movies, most notably The Hustler and Hud, it does make room for a satisfying mixture of well-known and obscure titles, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Quintet.  With the holiday gift season about to begin in earnest, keep this set in mind if you have a budding film buff in your family.

Bonus Features: Most of the bonus features included in this set can be found on previous editions of the individual movies, so if you already own the 2-disc Butch Cassidy or Towering Inferno sets, don’t worry about missing anything here.  That said, if your DVD library suffers from a general lack of Newman, having 13 of his films in one place is a pretty damn good feature.  Fox has also included a handsome 136-page book that includes photos, biographic information and quotes from the star himself.

Verdict: Buy It

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Also on DVD

If you’re at all curious about how that nice cold brewskie in your hand got from the brewery to the liquor store to your refrigerator, the independently produced documentary Beer Wars ($20) is a must-see.  Directed by and starring Anat Baron, the former general manager of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, the film provides a comprehensive look at the challenges independent brewers face in getting their product sampled with corporate beers like Bud, Miller and Coors dominating U.S. shelves.  It’s been four years since the last Wallace and Gromit outing, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and now the pair are back in an all-new (and dependably hilarious) stop-motion animated adventure, A Matter of Loaf and Death available as an individual DVD or as part of the four-disc Wallace & Gromit: The Complete Collection (Lionsgate, $30),which also includes their three previous award-winning short films. Three of Hong Kong’s most famous filmmakers-Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and Johnnie To-teamed up to direct the heist movie Triangle (Magnet, $27).  The result sadly isn’t quite as awesome as their fans might hope; although it has a few memorable scenes, the story is muddled and the action set-pieces disappointing.  The coming-of-age drama Lymelife (Screen Media, $28) feels like a loose sequel to Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, chronicling the troubled lives of a family in suburban New York in the late 1970s.  The ensemble cast-including Alec Baldwin, Cynthia Nixon and two Culkin brothers (neither of which are Macaulay)-is solid, but the material is way too familiar.  The well-reviewed Norwegian comedy O’Horten (Sony, $29) tells the offbeat story of an elderly train engineer anticipating (or, to be more accurate, dreading) his impending retirement.  Finally, it’s a big week for TV-on-DVD as 30 Rock: Season 3 (Universal, $50) arrives just two days after the show won its second-straight Emmy for Best Comedy Series.  ABC releases box sets of two of their returning shows, Castle: The Complete First Season (ABC Studios, $40), in which Nathan Fillion plays a crime novelist turned cop-in-training and Ugly Betty: Season Three (ABC Studios, $60), which follows the continuing adventures of the title character in the topsy-turvy world of magazine publishing.  And last but not least, there’s Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles-The Complete Second Season (Warner Home Video, $60), which collects the last season of the cult Fox series based on the blockbuster movie franchise.

Check out the new music video for the upcoming remake of Fame

It’s one of the most famous dance numbers of the 1980s.  At the end of the original Fame, the entire cast spills out of the fictional institution the High School of Performing Arts and shakes their groove things on the sidewalks (and on top of taxi cabs) of New York City.  Now that sequence is recreated in the just-released music video for the 2009 Fame remake, which is scheduled to hit theaters on Friday.  Sung by two of the movie’s stars, Naturi Naughton and Collins Pennie, this version of the Fame theme song incorporates some of the hip-hop flavor the new movie is reportedly aiming for.  Will it work?  Everyone (myself included) will have to find out on Friday, since the movie won’t be screening in advance for critics.  In the meantime, look for excerpts from my interview with Naughton later this week.

Reviews of Jennifer’s Body, The Informant! and Bright Star

Jennifer’s Body
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Starring Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, J.K. Simmons
**1/2

In terms of physical appearance, you couldn’t ask for a better actress to play the title role of the new horror comedy Jennifer’s Body than Hollywood’s current It Girl Megan Fox.  While she frequently comes across as charisma-challenged in interviews (although flashes of dark wit have bubbled to the surface in a few of her press encounters), she is a genuine stunner on-screen.  So it makes complete sense to cast her as the high-school vixen every teenage girl wants to be and every teenage boy wants to be with.  If you’ve seen the trailer, of course, you already know the central joke of the movie: Jennifer is a literal man-eater-feasting off the flesh of the horny boys at school is what keeps her looking so hot.  In addition to being a pretty funny set-up for a high-school horror picture, this premise also allows Fox to prove she can do more than just stand around in skin-tight, cleavage baring clothes looking at giant transforming robots with her mouth oh-so-subtly parted.

If only that were the case.  Sadly, it becomes clear about five minutes in that Fox hasn’t been holding back on us all this time-she really is a terrible actress.  Even when she manages to nail a line reading, you only have to look at her eyes to see that there’s nothing going beneath that pretty, placid exterior.  A juicy bitch-from-hell part like this one cries out for a performer that can milk the role’s humor and horror for all its worth.  Think of what an Opposite of Sex-era Christina Ricci or Billy Bob Thornton-era Angelina Jolie (the actress Fox aspires to replace) could have done with this character.  Hell, even Amanda Seyfried, cast here as Fox’s plain-jane best friend Anita, would be a funnier, freakier, sexier Jennifer than her more downloaded co-star.

To be fair to Fox for a moment, she’s not the sole reason the movie ultimately falls short of what it could have been; that blame has to fall on Diablo Cody, the former stripper-turned-screenwriter who won an Oscar two years ago for penning the much-loved indie comedy Juno.  As irritating as that movie is in some respects (“This is one doodle that can’t be undid, homeskillet” remains one of the worst lines in the entire history of cinema), it is a model of narrative efficiency and tonal consistency.  Jennifer’s Body, on the other hand, is all over the place and Cody and her director Karyn Kusama can’t seem to keep up with their own creation.

The movie is at its best when it chronicles the sexual hang-ups of teenagers, a subject that Cody exploits more successfully than 99% of the other screenwriters in Hollywood, largely because her teen characters aren’t ashamed of their libidos.  Like Juno, Jennifer’s Body treats sex in a refreshingly matter-of-fact manner, most notably in a storyline involving Anita’s relationship with her dorky boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons).  Instead of the usual “will-they-or-won’t-they” tension, it’s made obvious very early on that they already have and plan to again.  Cody also deserves credit for turning the old horror movie cliché of the town slut that’s punished for enjoying sex on its head by allowing the unapologetically promiscuous Jennifer to have her guys and eat them too.

While Cody has a knack for capturing the way teenagers think, she still goes overboard trying to mimic the way they speak.  Perhaps not realizing-or, more likely, not caring-how grating Juno‘s pop-culture laden dialogue was to listen to, she continues to force faux-hip slang into the characters’ vernacular.  In Cody’s universe, people aren’t just “jealous,” they’re “jello” (“lime green jello” if they’re extra jealous), attractive guys are “salty” and “move on dot org” is what you tell someone who is still obsessing over something that’s so five minutes ago.  If you think this stuff sounds stupid on paper, just imagine how it comes across on screen.

Which brings us to the movie’s biggest failing: Jennifer’s Body is a horror comedy that’s neither very scary nor very funny.  Interestingly, both Cody and Kusama seem most comfortable when avoiding the material’s genre trappings and focusing on the mundanity of life at a small-town high school.  There’s also a funny running gag involving an emo indie rock band (led by The O.C.‘s Adam Brody, finally playing a character that’s not simply a clone of Seth Cohen) that could be spun off into its own movie.  But the actual “horror” elements-most notably the scenes involving gore-are poorly handled.  Setting their sights on crafting a 21^st century version of Heathers and Scream, the creative forces behind Jennifer’s Body instead deliver a movie that’s just slightly superior to C-grade material like Teaching Mrs. Tingle.  There’s a good movie in here somewhere-it just required a few more rewrites to find it.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also In Theaters:

The Informant!
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale
***1/2

There’s one thing you can always count on with Steven Soderbergh: he’s one-hundred percent committed to his creative vision, even when that vision results in a disappointing finished product.  (Cases in point: Solaris and Bubble.)  Fortunately, his latest film The Informant! is an experiment that clicks.  With this twisty based-on-a-true-story tale of a corporate whistle-blower (played by Matt Damon) who helps the FBI investigate his giant agri-business employer, Soderbergh takes a narrative that would normally drive a white-collar thriller and instead plays it as a boardroom farce.  It’s a tricky approach, but he pulls it off thanks to Scott Z. Burns’ clever script and a terrific lead performance by Damon, who completely abandons any movie star vanity to play this schlubby, deluded and yet still strangely affable loser.  The Informant! isn’t quite as artistically challenging  as Soderbergh’s last two pictures, Che and The Girlfriend Experience, but it still takes chances most big-budget, star-driven studio fare would never dare attempt.  And that’s something to celebrate.
Verdict: See It

Bright Star
Directed by Jane Campion
Starring Abbie Cornish, Ben Wishaw, Paul Schneider
***1/2
Most costume dramas expend so much energy on getting the physical trappings of the era right-the clothes, the cars (or carriages), the hair-they rarely capture the feel of that time period.  That’s the difficult task Jane Campion accomplishes in Bright Star, which recounts the short-lived love affair between poet John Keats (Ben Wishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish).  The narrative itself is nothing special, but the performances and Campion’s lyrical, yet focused direction keeps viewers engaged throughout.  Instead of feeling like a museum piece, Bright Star makes history come alive.
Verdict: See It

Denzel Washington survives the Apocalypse in The Book of Eli

Move over Mel Gibson–Denzel Washington is our newest post-apocalyptic Road Warrior.  In the upcoming thriller The Book of Eli, the actor stars as Eli, a one-man army marching through what’s left of America after a devastating war has reduced much of the country to ruin.  Before you say, “Hey, that sounds just like The Road!,” which we previewed in this space last week, there is one major difference between that film and this one and it has to do with the titular tome.  Apparently, Eli is carrying a book that holds the secret to rescuing the human race from extinction.  Also unlike The Road, The Book of Eli appears to be a rock ‘em sock ‘em action movie, with Denzel taking on all comers with nifty martial arts moves and a bow and arrow.  The film marks the return of the long-absent filmmaking team The Hughes Brothers (best known for their blistering debut film, Menace II Society), who haven’t made a flick together since 2001′s From Hell.  Starring alongside Washington are Gary Oldman, Malcolm McDowell and Mila Kunis.  Look for The Book of Eli in theaters on January 15, 2010.

Reviews of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Set It Off and The Shooter Series, Volume One: Brett Ratner

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
20^th Century Fox
$30
2-Disc: $35
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: At last, the origin story behind everyone’s favorite adimantium-laced mutant (played once again by Hugh Jackman) is revealed.

Opinion: Filmed from a script that doesn’t feel so much written as cut-and-pasted together out of a number of rough drafts, X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a complete and utter mess, one that makes the third X-Men flick look like The Dark Knight.  Where to begin with the film’s list of offenses?  Let’s start with the story, which attempts to shed light on Wolverine’s past but instead winds up making his origin murkier.  Nonsensical and downright dumb plot points abound, from the revelation of how Wolverine got that famous jacket (some old guy on a farm gave it to him) to the explanation for his amnesia in the original X-Men trilogy (it’s because…sorry, that bit is just too idiotic to reveal).  The film’s relentless stupidity might be easier to forgive-or at least ignore-if it offered well-executed battles or lively performances.  But director Gavin Hood appears to have little sense of how to choreograph a coherent action sequence and the sub-par special effects don’t help matters.  Despite a budget that’s reportedly in the neighborhood of $150 million, Wolverine all too often resembles a cheaply made direct-to-DVD movie, with distractingly bad CGI and digital backgrounds that are so poorly rendered, you can almost see the greenscreen.  The cast brings nothing to the table either; even Jackman seems to have lost the effortless cool that he brought to the character nine years ago in the first X-Men adventure.  That Wolverine was someone we wanted to see more of-this guy is a total drag.

Bonus Features: Two commentary tracks-one with Hood and the other with the producers-both of which avoid mentioning a lot of the behind-the-scenes turmoil that was widely reported during the shoot as well as a bland making-of featurette and an equally bland batch of deleted scenes.  There is one highlight through: a lively 16-minute chat between Marvel Comics wizard Stan Lee and Wolverine creator Len Wein who discuss, among other things, the enduring popularity of the X-Men and Wolverine’s mystery-shrouded origin in the comic book.

Verdict: Skip It

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Set It Off
Menace II Society
Friday
Warner Home Video
$15 each
Blu-ray: $29 each

Plot: Three classic mid-’90s ‘hood movies, released in new deluxe editions.

Opinion: Hood movies were all the rage in the ’90s and now three of the genre’s best-remembered titles are being re-released as extras-laden, deluxe edition DVDs.  Interestingly, the film that holds up the best is the funny one. Owing more to offbeat comedies like Clerks and Slacker than Boyz n the Hood, 1995′s Friday remains a laugh riot, thanks largely to the potent comic chemistry of co-stars Ice Cube and Chris Tucker in his first major film role. Unfortunately, the Hughes Brothers’ blistering 1993 debut, Menace II Society, hasn’t aged quite as well. Though the directors have visual flair to burn and the nihilistic ending still packs a punch, the lead character, the troubled Caine, is simply too much of a bitter pill to swallow. Both films also suffer from a dearth of complex female characters, a problem that 1996′s Set It Off attempted to resolve, with modest success. Centered around a quartet of women bank robbers (played by Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vivica A. Fox and Kimberly Elise), the movie’s fierce attitude almost makes up for its dramatic clumsiness.

Bonus Features: Each of these deluxe editions feature a new director’s cut of the film and a variety of other bonus features, including commentary tracks, retrospective featurettes and vintage music videos

Verdict: Buy It

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The Shooter Series, Volume 1: Brett Ratner
Genius Products
$25

Plot: A collection of music videos, commercials and short films culled from the archives of Hollywood heavy-hitter Brett Ratner.

Opinion: A spiritual sequel to The Director’s Series-a 2003 set of DVD’s that collected early music videos and commercials by such cult filmmakers as Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze-Lionsgate’s new Shooter Series is a grab-bag assortment of early work by filmmakers-including The Hughes Brothers and F. Gary Gray-that have since graduated to the big time.  Leading off the line-up is Brett Ratner, who went from helming Public Enemy and D’Angelo videos to directing Chris Tucker in Rush Hour and Hugh Jackman in the third X-Men flick.  Almost every music video he directed is included here, along with commentary from Ratner himself-although his comments rarely extend beyond “This was really cool” or “I really liked working with that person.”  There’s also a reel of several commercials he’s made over the years and four inscrutable short films from his NYU days.  Finally, Ratner and his past and present colleagues-among them, Russell Simmons and Mariah Carey-sing his praises in a relentlessly positive half-hour documentary about his career.  If you’re not a fan of Ratner, this disc won’t do anything to convince you otherwise.  However, if you are into some of the musicians featured here, having all their videos in one place is nice.

Bonus Features: Technically, the entire DVD is one long bonus feature.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also on DVD:

The independently produced documentary Big Pun: The Legacy (Vivendi, $20) covers the short life and premature death of one of the biggest-selling rappers of the ’90s.  Featuring new interviews with his family, friends and co-workers as well as never-before-seen home movies, The Legacy is a surprisingly compelling video biography.  From rappers to blacklisted screenwriters, Peter Askin’s Trumbo (Magnolia, $27) is a moving tribute to the author of such classic movies as Spartacus and Exodus.  The HBO series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (HBO, $60), based on the best-selling series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, debuted to strong reviews earlier this year, but costs may keep Jill Scott from reprising the role of South African sleuth Precious Ramotswe for a second season.  In other TV news, Fame: The Complete Seasons 1 & 2 (MGM, $40)-a box set containing the first two seasons of the TV-series based on the hit 1980 movie-hits shelves two weeks before the big-screen Fame remake dances its way into theaters.  Paramount continues to roll out enhanced versions of the Friday the 13^th franchise, this week releasing Part VII and Part VIII (Paramount, $17) on DVD and Blu-ray.  Jessica Biel tested her range in the British comedy Easy Virtue (Sony Pictures Classics, $29) and while the movie (as well as her performance) isn’t a revelation, it’s solid enough to merit a rental.  Finally, Miramax unleashes four recent kung-fu hits in sparkling new Blu-ray versions, including Zhang Yimou’s gorgeous Hero, the Jackie Chan adventure The Legend of Drunken Master, Takeshi Kitano’s update of Zatoichi and the very entertaining Iron Monkey (Miramax, $45 each).  Hero is also available in a standard Special Edition (Miramax, $20) with all-new bonus features.

Box-office phenom Tyler Perry claims the top spot for the fifth time

It’s been four years since an unknown (within Hollywood anyway) African-American playwright named Tyler Perry shocked the film industry with a massive first-place opening weekend for his feature-film debut, Diary of a Mad Black Woman.  Since that time, Perry has written, directed and appeared in seven movies, four of which have also topped the charts.  His newest hit is I Can Do Bad All By Myself, which earned $24 million during its first weekend in theaters.  While that’s $20 million short of Perry’s best debut–last spring’s Madea Goes to Jail bowed to $41 million–it is his second-biggest bow ever and the movie should continue to do solid business for the rest of September before the fall movie season kicks off in earnest the first week of October.

Shane Acker’s apocalyptic animated adventure 9 claimed the number two spot, banking $15.2 million since its mid-week opening.  That put the movie comfortably ahead of the weekend’s other non-Perry new releases, the college-set horror movie Sorority Row and Kate Beckinsale’s DOA Antarctica thriller Whiteout, which finished in sixth and seventh place respectively.  Expect both movies should be out of theaters and on DVD before Thanksgiving.

Elsewhere, Quentin Tarantino’s World War II epic Inglorious Basterds officially crossed the $100 million threshold and is on its way to passing Pulp Fiction as the director’s biggest box-office hit ever.  The news is equally good for District 9, which hit that milestone last weekend and continued to bank money, bringing its total cume to $108.5 million.

The full Top Ten is below, courtesy of the-numbers.com.  Next weekend, Megan Fox attempts to prove there’s more to her than meets the eye in her first post-Transformers star turn, Jennifer’s Body and Matt Damon headlines Steven Soderbergh’s latest eccentric studio flick, The Informant!

The Top Ten: September 11-13, 2009
1. I Can Do Bad All By Myself: $24
2. 9: $15.2
3. Inglorious Basterds: $6.5/$104.3
4. All About Steve: $5.8/$21.8
5. The Final Destination: $5.5/$58.2
6. Sorority Row: $5.2
7. Whiteout: $5.1
8. District 9: $3.6/$108.5
9. Julie & Julia: $3.3/$85.3
10. Gamer: $3.1/$16.1

Reviews of I Can Do Bad All By Myself and Whiteout

I Can Do Bad All By Myself
Directed by Tyler Perry
Starring Taraji P. Henson, Adam Rodriguez, Brian White, Mary J. Blige
**1/2

As a piece of storytelling, there’s little that separates Tyler Perry’s latest film from the previous batch of comedy-laced melodramas that he’s written, directed and starred in.  All of the familiar Perry elements are on display here again, from the fallen woman who can only be healed through the love of a good man (as well as some good old fashioned Bible-learning) to the no-good tomcatting boyfriend to the specter of child abuse that still haunts one of the characters.  But there are two things that distinguish I Can Do Bad All By Myself from Perry’s usual fare.  The first is the ferocious lead performance by recent Oscar-nominee Taraji P. Henson, cast here as April, a boozy blues singer at an Atlanta nightclub who drinks too much, smokes too much and carries on a guilt-free affair with a married man (Brian White).

April’s comfortably sordid life is upended by the unexpected arrival of her sister’s three kids, who have been living with their grandmother since their mom passed away from a drug overdose many years ago.  Now Grandma has gone missing too and the only person they have left to turn to is their wayward aunt.  Naturally, the last thing April wants is to become a surrogate mother and, truth be told, the kids aren’t that eager to live with her either, particularly the eldest Jennifer (Hope Olaide Wilson), who has had to carry more responsibility on her sixteen-year-old shoulder than she can bear.  Not long after the kids arrive, April takes in another houseguest against her will, a homeless Mexican handyman named Sandino (Adam Rodriguez) referred to her by the kind pastor (real-life preacher Marvin L. Winans) at her former church.

You’ve probably already guessed where this story is going–April will come to accept these children and the studly Sandino successfully captures her heart away from Mr. Wrong.  All of that indeed does come to pass and while the plot is as improbable as it sounds, Henson makes you buy almost every cliche Perry tosses her way.  Rather than try to run from the script’s melodrama, thus letting the audience know she’s aware of how silly the narrative is, she embraces it and fully commits to every emotional beat.  Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and the other stars of those ’30s-era women-in-trouble melodramas would approve of and applaud the performance Henson delivers here.

The other thing that gives the movie some juice is the music; in fact, this is more or less Perry’s first attempt at a Hollywood musical, albeit without any flashy Broadway-style dance moves.  In addition to the big musical numbers that open and close the movie, I Can Do Bad… contains three show-stopping performances from Winans and world-famous divas Gladys Knight and Mary J. Blige.  You don’t even have to be a longtime fan of R&B or gospel to be impressed by the power and passion of these performers.  If Perry continues to surround himself with great talent like this, maybe it’ll force him to step up his own game and make a movie that departs from his increasingly tired formula.

Verdict: Rent It

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Whiteout
Directed by Dominic Sena
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Gabriel Macht, Tom Skerritt, Columbus Short
*

You’d think that a movie that opens with a gratuitous Kate Beckinsale shower scene (complete with, sorry guys, PG-13 friendly nudity) couldn’t be all bad.  But you’d be wrong-Whiteout is absolutely terrible.  Originally shot almost three years ago and wisely kept out of sight since then, this would-be thriller is built on a dumb story that’s made even worse by awful execution.

Adapted from a graphic novel by the usually reliable comic-book writer Greg Rucka (he penned the acclaimed series Queen & Country and has had well-received runs on Batman and Spider-Man), Whiteout takes place in Antarctica two days before the harsh six-month winter sets in.  After spending a chilly tour of duty at a remote science station, U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Beckinsale) can’t wait to get back stateside.  Unfortunately, the unexpected discovery of a dead body puts her plans in jeopardy, especially once the station’s kindly doctor (Tom Skerritt) rules the death a homicide.  Now Carrie has to solve this murder mystery before the last plane departs or risk being stuck at the South Pole for six more months.  Luckily, the bad guys are completely incompetent, which means she doesn’t have to work all that hard to figure out their identities.

As settings for thrillers go, Antarctica is certainly unique, but the filmmakers have no idea how to exploit the location.  Too much of the action takes place indoors and whenever the characters do venture outside, director Dominic Sena keeps the camerawork tight and jerky, making it difficult to get a sense of the basic geography of the scene.  But Whiteout‘s biggest sin is that it is just flat-out boring, a hodge-podge of too-familiar genre clichés and jarringly edited action sequences.  If you do choose to sit through this movie, rest assured it will be whited out from your memory immediately after leaving the theater.

Verdict: Skip It

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White on Rice
Directed by Dave Boyle
Starring Hiroshi Watanabe, Nae, Mio Takada, Lynn Chen
**
So few American movies deal with the contemporary lives of Asian Americans, it’s tempting to overrate the rare titles that do come along in the hope that it will inspire more and better films that tackle this fertile subject matter.  Too bad that I can’t in good conscience endorse White on Rice, a well-meaning, but largely unfunny comedy about Jimmy, an emotionally stunted Japanese man (Hiroshi Watanabe) living under the same Bay Area roof as his sister, her stern (and significantly older) husband and their attention-starved son.  Still reeling from his recent divorce, Jimmy finds himself falling for his sister’s niece (an attraction that’s more creepy than hilarious) while trying to sort out what it is he wants to do with the rest of his life.  To his credit, Watanabe seems to recognize that his character has some deep-seated emotional problems, but co-writer/director Dave Boyle is all too happy to treat Jimmy as a cutesy idiot savant.                 
Verdict: Skip It

A look back at how the events of September 11, 2001 have been depicted on film.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the film industry struggled to figure out how to depict that cataclysmic day onscreen.  Not surprisingly, the first movies out of the gate were documentaries that combined news footage with interviews with survivors and their families.  Then in September 2002, one full year after the attack, two feature films premiered at the Toronto Film Festival that directly addressed 9/11, though they stopped short of recreating any of that day’s most famous images.  One was 11’09″01, a collection of 11 short films running exactly 11 minutes each directed by such internationally renowned directors as Ken Loach, Mira Nair and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.  The second was the independent film The Guys, which starred Anthony LaPaglia as a fire captain who struggles with penning eulogies for the eight men he lost at the World Trade Center.

With the floodgates finally open, September 11 became a hot topic for directors in and outside of Hollywood.  From 2002 on, a number of films were released that dealt with that day in remarkably different ways.  Here’s a recap of some of the approaches filmmakers have taken to one of the worst days in American history.

1. You-Are-There Recreations
Released within three months of each other in 2006, Paul Greengrass’ United 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center were the first major studio films to depict some of the events of that day in painstaking, and often painful, detail.

2. What Happened After
A dud upon its initial theatrical release, Spike Lee’s 2002 drama The 25th Hour has become a favorite for the director’s fanbase for the way it captures the dark, depressed mood of post-9/11 New York.  Three years later, The Great New Wonderful used a Crash-style narrative device to explore similar subject matter, telling the stories of several strangers whose lives occasionally intersect in unexpected ways.

3. Extreme Documentaries
It was only a matter of time until professional rabble-rouser Michael Moore tackled September 11 and its aftermath and the resulting film was 2004′s Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the top prize at that year’s Cannes Film Festival.  The makers of the new documentary Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup take conspiracy theories even further, suggesting that the Bush administration may have had a hand in the attacks.

Tyler Perry and his cast discuss I Can Do Bad All By Myself at a press conference in New York City.

Tyler Perry on how the film version differs from the stage play.
The only thing this movie has in common with the play is the title and Madea.  This is Madea’s first play, the first time I ever played her on stage.  I was scared to death that night; I had rehearsed all month without ever putting the costume on.  On opening night, I put the makeup on, looked at myself and thought “Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?” [Laughs]  There’s nothing like a live performance;  I did 300 live shows a year for ten years and I learned a great deal about what would work and what wouldn’t work. There’s nothing like that immediate give-and-take you get from an audience.

Taraji P. Henson on getting into character
My character, April, is very different from who I am.  I’m a mother, I’m a nurturer and I understand what it is to love unconditionally.  I hated her in the beginning, but I’m the type of actress that doesn’t judge my characters.  My job is to breath life and truth into them.  Hopefully if I live her truth, the audience won’t judge her, they’ll receive her.  For me, the message of the movie is “If you’re not loving, you’re not living.”

Adam Rodriguez on love
“Love is love” is the message of the movie.  Love comes in a lot of different forms and you’d be a fool to deny it because it doesn’t come in the form you expect for it to be.  That goes both ways.  Looking at my character Sandino, you think he has nothing to offer and yet he had the ability to come and reshape these people’s lives and make something beautiful because he had love.

Tyler Perry on writing an interracial romance
I’m not thinking about race a person is, I’m just writing a story.  I thought Adam and Taraji would be a good look for each other.  I had the same issues with the first two movies, where J. Anthony Brown and Tom Joyner were going off because all of my heroes seemed to be light-skinned.  It wasn’t anything I was thinking about, it just happened!  So I cast some dark-skinned heroes in my next few movies.  I’ll take this into consideration for the future: I’ll make sure the black woman finds a black man. [Laughs]

Brian White on his big fight scene with Adam Rodriguez
I almost broke my nose in that fight.  It was supposed to be one punch and Adam got a little too into it and threw like nine of them.  But stuff heals.  I was actually looking forward to getting my butt kicked to depict that there are consequences for negative actions.  Young men out there need to know that if you do wrong, there are consequences.

Mary J. Blige on the challenge of acting for the first time
Acting is not my first profession so for me it was a minute where I had to get out of my own way and let my character shine.  It was an amazing experience to be out of what Mary J. Blige the singer is and to be embraced and supported by everyone.

Hope Olaidé Wilson on performing her first major big-screen role
I think I grew throughout this entire experience, getting to play this character from a background you never really hear about.  I’m speaking on behalf of girls who have had to go through molestation.  It was challenging-you want to get it right, you don’t want to make it seem contrived.  You want to be as honest as possible.

Gladys Knight on her first exposure to Tyler Perry
My brother Bubba, who is one of the Pips, kept raving about this Tyler Perry guy.  He finally brought home one of his DVDs and I watched and said myself, “Madea is kind of raw and raunchy.”  The more I got into it though, I saw his plan.  He uses Madea to soften us up.  Laughter is a healing factor; it relaxes you and makes you open up to so many things.  One link that has been in everything Tyler has done is family. And the thing that impressed me most was when I walked in his studio to shoot the movie, I felt like part of a family.  Tyler portrays African-Americans as we are.  I love Madea for that reason.  The way she relates to the kids in this movie is something people need to see more often.  Kids have to have somebody lead them and guide them and we’re afraid of them.  They’re controlling everything.  We’ve gotta step up to the plate and Tyler is doing that right now, giving us the courage and the idea to go ahead and teach our children like they should be taught.

Tyler Perry on allowing the actors to ad-lib
There’s this one scene where Taraji and Adam are sitting on the sofa.  We were shooting the scene and Taraji leans over and she starts to kiss Adam, but it wasn’t in the script. So I’m sitting at the monitor waiting to see how long it was going to last.  It went on and on and I sat there waiting for them to finish.  It was a long, long, long kiss.  So I finally said “Cut” and then asked “What the hell was that?”  Taraji was like what “It’s in the script!”  And I’m like “Show it to me!”  So they had an ad-lib-actually it was an ad-lip! [Laughs]

Taraji: If I can defend myself, let me say that it was a very tragic moment for April.  I’m the type of actress that once I go, I’m gone.  We are conditioned to ignore that voice we have [telling us to pull back] and in acting I rely on that a lot.  It frees you and you get the most honest performance because you have an instinct and you act on it.  At your most vulnerable point, sometimes you need human touch.  April looked into Sandino’s eyes and he was warm and comforting and she needed that.  Love was something very scary for her.

The entire cast on their upcoming projects
Taraji: I’m delirious because I’ve been in Beijing the past two months for Kung Fu Kid, the remake of The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.  That kid is a rock star-he’s going to be huge.  I’ve wrapped a film here in New York with Tina Fey and Steve Carell called Date Night.

Adam: I’m doing an arc on Ugly Betty and will have a chance to do some comedy which I’m exited about.  I’m also finishing up my last season on CSI: Miami-my episodes will be spread out throughout the season.  Over the summer, I did an indie movie called Caught in the Crossfire with Chris Klein and 50 Cent.  We’ll see how that turns out.

Mary: I have an album coming out called Stronger.  And the song “Stronger” is featured in the LeBron James documentary More than a Game.

Brian: I’ve got a new series on TNT called Men of a Certain Age with Scott Bakula and Andre Braugher.  I also work with two charities, Helping Hands and a regional essay contest called Words Matter Now.  And the next movie is The Cabin in the Woods, due out in February.

Hope: I have a couple of film projects in the works, but nothing finalized.  I will be on an episode of [the CBS show] Cold Case on October 18.

Gladys: I have so many things on my plate.  I’m getting ready to go back in the studio to record more music and I’m getting ready to go to Europe for two months for my farewell tour.  Every time I go to Europe its like six or seven years before I’m back over there and we shouldn’t take time for granted.

Tyler: I just wrapped Why Did I Get Married Too, which comes out in April.  I can’t wait for you guys to see it because Janet [Jackson] was going through all that stuff with Michael at the time.  She needed to work and she brought everything she had into the film.  She has some scenes in there I can’t wait for you guys to see.  Then I start For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.  Don’t worry, there will be no Madea in it.  I really embraced the material; as you know, there’s no story, it’s all different vignettes.  But what I did is each woman has their own story and their lives cross, kind of like Crash.  Halfway through the movie, one of the women starts a For Colored Girls center where women go through a 12-step program for healing.  So a lot of the poems happen at the center when all of the women come together.  The cast is going to blow people away; it’s the most incredible cast of women of color that has ever been assembled.  It’s sixteen women, sixteen major roles and the five women I’ve spoken to said yes.  I can’t wait to tell you who they are.

I Can Do Bad All By Myself opens in theaters nationwide tomorrow

It’s the end of the world as we know it…and Viggo Mortensen isn’t feeling fine.

Between this summer’s Terminator Salvation, Shane Acker’s just-released 9 and Roland Emmerich’s upcoming 2012, Hollywood seems to be obsessed with the Apocalypse these days.  But the best film that could emerge from this current trend is The Road, a big-screen version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy (who also wrote No Country for Old Men, which was turned into an Oscar-winning film by the Coen Brothers).  Directed by John Hillcoat, the film takes place ten years after an unspecified disaster transforms America into a desolate, sunless wasteland.  Any semblance of civilization has long since disappeared and the few remaining survivors now fall into two categories: the hunters or the hunted.  McCarthy’s story follows two of the hunted, a father and son (Viggo Mortensen and newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee), making the long trek to the  coast while avoiding the roving bands of thieves and cannibals that patrol the main roads.  Based on the trailer, the movie looks like a faithful translation of McCarthy’s bleak and often horrifying book and also features supporting performances from Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron and The Wire‘s Michael K. Williams.  Look for The Road in theaters on October 16.

A post-apocalyptic animated adventure that’s definitely not for kids

9
Directed by Shane Acker
Starring Elijah Wood, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly
***1/2

The animated feature 9 takes place in a desolate wasteland formerly known as Earth where mankind is a distant memory, deadly machines patrol the planet’s bombed-out surface and the only living creatures are nine small rag dolls created by a long-dead scientist.  Before you ask, no this isn’t a cartoon version of Terminator Salvation and it ain’t cute and cuddly like Pixar’s Wall-E.  Instead, 9 falls into that narrow category of animated films that definitely aren’t for kids, but are also smarter than the average big-budget blockbuster-movies like Akira, Perfect Blue and A Scanner Darkly.

That’s not to imply that 9 is all brain food.  In fact, the majority of its slender 80-minute runtime is given over to tense chases and rousing action sequences that are as well choreographed and as violent as any live-action post-apocalyptic adventure.  Director Shane Acker-who is adapting his own Oscar-nominated short film-isn’t too hip to wear his influences on his sleeve.  The film contains obvious nods to Ridley Scott, George Miller and Tim Burton, an executive producer on the film.  At the same time, Acker clearly possesses his own distinct creative vision.  The film’s images are lush and vivid and the characters are imaginatively realized-you’ve never seen an apocalypse that looks exactly like this.

9‘s visuals are so impressive they highlight the film’s one major failing: a clunky screenplay that’s more suited to video game cut scenes than a feature film.  Acker’s original short was largely silent and it’s a shame he didn’t take a similar approach here.  While the vocal performances from the ensemble cast (which includes Elijah Wood and Jennifer Connelly) are adequate, their wooden dialogue does nothing to enhance the proceedings.  Despite its flaws, 9 is exactly the kind of adult-oriented animated feature we need more of.  After all, why should kids get to have all the fun of going to the movies to watch cartoons?

Verdict: See It

Reviews of Crank 2: High Voltage, Parks and Recreation and Valentino: The Last Emperor

Crank 2: High Voltage
Lionsgate
$30
2-Disc: $35
Blu-ray: $40

Plot: After surviving a mile-high free-fall from a helicopter, hitman Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is literally scrapped off the pavement by Chinese gangsters, who remove his heart and replace it with an artificial ticker that needs a steady stream of electricity to keep pumping.

Opinion: Complaining that the Crank films are over-the-top and stupid is like accusing reality shows of being exploitative and contrived.  Of course they are-that’s the whole point.  Both the original Crank and its even more insane sequel, Crank 2: High Voltage, are filled with gratuitous violence and nudity, as well as deliberately offensive stereotypes of just about every ethnic group out there.  If there was any hint that directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor intended for viewers to take this stuff seriously, they would instantly be locked up in jail for cinematic crimes against humanity.  But as the opening credits of both movies make clear, the Crank movies are first and foremost intended to be live-action video games, with the hero running through various levels before coming face-to-face with the final boss.  Chev even comes with his own built-in energy bar that has to be fed by regular power-ups throughout the “game.”  In the first movie, of course, he had to keep his adrenaline up in order to counteract a deadly toxin that was circulating through his bloodstream.  High Voltage has him jolting his body with electric shocks in order to keep his fake heart ticking.  Improbable?  Sure, but so are the plots of most video games or, for that matter, action movies.  If I’m being honest, the second Crank may be wilder than the first installment, but it’s a weaker movie overall, spending too much time on annoying secondary characters-like Bai Ling’s Asian hooker with an impenetrable accent-and indulging in flights of fancy (like a brief Godzilla parody) that seem like better ideas in theory than execution.  Nevertheless, both movies provide a major jolt to the system that definitely isn’t for the faint-hearted.

Bonus Features: A terrific two-part making-of documentary reveals the creative-some might say crazy-way the filmmakers made this movie.  (Think lots of little handheld cameras and one of the directors skating around on rollerblades filming the action.)  Neveldine and Taylor also contribute a commentary track and introduce a short reel of bloopers.

Verdict: Buy It

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Parks and Recreation: Season One
Universal
$30

Plot: The misadventures of public servant Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and her eccentric co-workers in the Parks & Recreation department of Pawnee, Illionis.

Opinion: Considering how strongly NBC hyped the new Amy Poehler show Parks and Recreation in the weeks leading up to its debut, people might have tuned in expecting to see the funniest show ever made.  It wasn’t, of course, but Parks proved that it had a lot of promise during its sex-episode first season.  Right now, the best thing about the series is Poehler, whose malapropisms and pratfalls provided the bulk of the series’ laughs.  The rest of the cast-with the exception of scene-stealers Aziz Ansari and Chris Pratt-are clearly still finding their groove, particularly Rashida Jones, who is primarily tasked with playing the straight woman.  Parks and Recreation was being watched particularly closely because it was the sophomore effort from the guys responsible for The Office, arguably the most popular comedy on the air right now.  What folks often forget though, is that the first season of The Office was wildly uneven too and the series didn’t really take off until its sophomore year when the cast got into a consistent rhythm.  Based on the first season at least, Parks and Recreation feels like it could follow a similar path.  So stick with it-the best is likely still to come.

Bonus Features: 20-minutes worth of deleted scenes, which do contain more than a few cutting-room gems, an extended version of the season finale and entertaining cast and crew commentary tracks on every episode

Verdict: Buy It

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Valentino: The Last Emperor
Phase 4 Films
$30
Blu-ray: $35

Plot: A portrait of the legendary Italian fashion designer Valentino Garavani as he enters the twilight of his iconic career.

Opinion: Were it simply an E! Channel mash note to Valentino, Matt Tynauer’s fly-on-the-wall documentary would be insufferable to sit through.  Fortunately, the director-a longtime contributor to Vanity Fair magazine-centers his film around the relationship between the designer and his longtime lover and business partner, Giancarlo Giammetti.  Seeing the affection these two men have for each other gives the movie an emotional core that balances its fantastical parade of glam parties and star-studded (Gwyneth!  Madonna!  Elton!) fashion shows.

Bonus Features: A 30-minute documentary about Valentino’s lavish homes in Paris and Manhattan and two short featurettes covering his last show and the making of one of the dresses seen in the film.

Verdict: Rent It

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Also in Theaters:

With the fall season about to kick off, a number of television-themed box sets arrives on shelves this week, beginning with The Office: Season 5 (Universal, $60), which collects the entire fifth season of Parks and Recreation’s sister series along with the usual cornucopia of deleted scenes and mock-featurettes.  Fox’s sci-fi procedural Fringe got off to a shaky start, but morphed into must-see TV halfway through, building to a season finale that literally changed the world.  Catch up on what you missed-plus learn everything that you wanted to know about the making of the series-with Fringe: The Complete First Season (Warner, $60).  CBS’s 13-episode murder mystery Harper’s Island: The DVD Edition (CBS, $43) was an attempt to make a short-form BBC-style series on American television.  Too bad the scripts weren’t up to BBC level-quality or, for that matter, Friday the 13^th-level quality.  After he first made a name for himself as a guest commentator on The Daily Show but before he headlined Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, comedian Demetri Martin starred in his own Comedy Central show, Important Things with Demetri Martin (Paramount, $20), a series consisting of his signature deadpan sketch comedy.  In non-TV releases, Darren Aronofksy’s freaky anti-drug drama Requiem for a Dream (Lionsgate, $30) gets a Blu-ray release and the low-budget horror flick Rise of the Gargoyles (RHI, $15) pits D-list actors like Eric Balfour and Tanya Clark against stone statues come to life.