Reviews of Notorious, The Wrestler, Caprica and Wolverine and the X-Men

Notorious
Fox
$29.98
3-Disc Edition: $34.98
Blu-ray: $39.99

Plot: The story of Christopher Smalls a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. (Jamal Woolard), the Brooklyn born rapper who lived large and changed the hip-hop world before his untimely death.

Opinion: Musical biopics tend to follow a similar series of beats and Notorious is no exception.  Like Ray and Walk the Line before it, the film takes a greatest-hits approach to its subject’s life story, condensing his rise to fame, fall from grace and steps towards redemption into an easily digestible narrative that entertains, but rarely enlightens.  The “rise to fame” chapter is generally the most enjoyable section of any musical biopic and its handled particularly well here.  Director George Tillman Jr. shot the film in a lightning quick 38 days largely in Wallace’s home borough of Brooklyn and while the short production schedule is sometimes too apparent in the interchangeable locations and jagged camerawork, the pace mirrors the speed of life in the go-go ’90s when New York seemed like a place where anyone with a dream and the drive to pursue it could become a star.  But Notorious stars to falter is in its second half, largely because the story becomes bigger than Biggie.  Viewers who walk into the film with a working knowledge of the larger events occurring in the hip-hop world at that time will be able to fill in the blanks, but the uninitiated may find themselves wondering what all the various beefs are about.  Considering the hurdles the filmmakers faced in getting the movie made, we should be glad that Notorious turned out better than anyone could have expected.  At the same time, the film’s strengths makes its omissions and contrivances that much more apparent.  The truth is, it’ll probably be at least another decade before we get the definitive movie about Biggie and the ’90s rap industry.

Bonus Features: Kudos to Fox for packing this DVD with lots of fresh cuts for Biggie fans.  Once you get past the generic making-of documentary that leads off the extras, there’s some interesting stuff to be found here, from vintage video of Wallace and Diddy performing “Party and Bullshit” live (footage that is carefully recreated in the film) to a featurette that chronicles the “Biggie Boot Camp” that Woolard went through to become the B.I.G. man.  Other extras include 8 deleted scenes, two commentary tracks—one with the director and screenwriters and the other with Biggie’s mom and manager—and a panorama shot of the street where the rapper was gunned down, illustrated with pop-up facts about the shooting.  Kinda morbid if you ask me, but there are true-crime buffs that love that level of detail.

Verdict: Buy It

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The Wrestler
Fox
$29.98
Blu-ray: $39.99

Plot: A past-his-prime professional wrestler (Mickey Rourke) struggles to decide whether he should retire from the game after experiencing a massive heart attack.

Opinion: The Wrestler is first and foremost an exercise in career rehabilitation for its star and its director (Darren Aronofsky), both of whom burst onto the scene to great acclaim, but saw their careers nosedive thanks to self-indulgence.  The film’s visual style is raw and stripped-down, lacking any of the beautifully stylized cinematography seen in Aronofsky’s last film The Fountain.  Rourke’s performance–to say nothing of his physical appearance–is similarly glamour free.  The actor is subjected to dozens of emotional and physical blows throughout the film and one gets the sense that he’s enjoying taking the pain as much as Aronofsky is enjoying dishing it out from behind the camera.  From a plot standpoint, The Wrestler bears a passing resemblance to Sylvester Stallone’s final Rocky flick and while the film isn’t going to win points for originality, but it’s a solid, sturdy melodrama that tells its familiar story well.

Bonus Features: A 45-minute making-of documentary does a great job showing viewers how the film’s memorable wrestling sequences were made, but loses points for not scoring sit-down interviews with Rourke or his co-star Marisa Tomei.

Verdict: Rent It

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Caprica
Universal
$26.98

Plot: Set 60 years before Battlestar Galactica, Caprica follows the destinies of two prominent families—the Greystones and the Adamas—who unwittingly set into motion the events that will lead to the Cylon uprising.

Opinion: Following up a series like Battlestar Galactica is an impossible task and, to Ronald Moore’s credit, he’s gone to great lengths to ensure that Caprica is a very different show…perhaps too different.  Based on this 90-minute pilot, which is being released on DVD almost a full year before the series is set to debut on the Sci Fi Channel (which will then be known as SyFy), I’m not sure who the intended audience for Caprica is.  There’s little of the action and “Who is the fifth Cylon?”-style mystery that drew viewers—even those of whom claimed they weren’t science-fiction fans—to BSG and it’s hard to imagine new viewers going crazy for the lengthy discussions of religion and morality that permeate the prequel.  That said, I have to admit that I’m intrigued enough by this first glimpse of Caprica to want to stick around for the series.  Moore is attempting something here we haven’t really seen on television before—a sci-fi series that’s closer in spirit to the work of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke than George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  If he succeeds, the result could be something spectacular and if he falls short, at least it’ll be an interesting failure.

Bonus Features: A handful of deleted scenes—several of which contain some major plot revelations that may or may not pop up in the series—and four behind-the-scenes video blogs.

Verdict: Rent It

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