Reviews of Furturama: Into the Wild Green Yonder and Dear Zachary: A Letter To a Son About His Father
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder
Fox
$29.99
Blu-ray: $39.99
Plot: When an interplanetary real estate developer wants to dynamite a galaxy filled with exotic species, Fry, Leela and Bender become militant environmentalists…in a funny way, of course.
Opinion: Like many Futurama fans, I was thrilled when Fox announced they had ordered four direct-to-DVD movies for a show they basically ignored during its short-live TV-run. Unfortunately, the quality of Futurama‘s feature-length adventures has been wildly uneven so far. The first two, Bender’s Big Score and The Beast With a Billion Backs, got off to strong starts before flying off on weird tangents, while the third entry, Bender’s Game, was a total flop. So I’m happy to report that the fourth and final installment in this series is the most consistent of the bunch, offering a solid mixture of laughs and coherent storytelling that recalls some of the better episodes of the series, though not the absolute cream of the crop. As of now, there’s no word whether Futurama will be coming back for more movies (or even a new TV-series), but Into the Wild Green Yonder does allow the entire Planet Express crew to fly towards the final frontier with their heads held high.
Bonus Features: A commentary track with co-creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen as well as many other cast and crew members, deleted scenes and a handful of funny featurettes, including one that find Groening and Cohen experiencing weightlessness for real courtesy of Zero G, a company that operates flights that allow ordinary people to briefly live like professional astronauts do.
Verdict: Buy It
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Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
Oscilloscope
$30
Plot: A documentary filmmaker re-traces the life of a childhood friend, who was tragically murdered before he got to meet his unborn son.
Opinion: Dear Zachary is one of those documentaries that’s difficult to critique, because you have to separate the story the film tells from the movie itself. And the story of Dear Zachary is genuinely heartbreaking–believe me, my plot synopsis only scratches the surface of where this tragic tale heads. That said, I can’t help but take issue with some of the stylistic choices director Kurt Kuenne made, including a heavy-handed score and a number of awkwardly edited scenes. It’s understandable that Kuenne felt he was the right person to tell this story based on his close relationship with the film’s subject, but he often undercuts the story’s inherent drama with his clumsiness behind the camera. Nevertheless, you’d have to be made of stone not to be overwhelmed by feelings of sadness, anger and hope as the credits roll.
Bonus Features: Additional interviews, expanded scenes and web links.
Verdict: Rent It
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Also on DVD
A pair of raunchy teen comedies debut on disc today, the road movie Sex Drive (Summit $26.99) and the sketch-comedy anthology Extreme Movie (The Weinstein Company, $19.97) and they have more in common than you might imagine. Both feature a cameo by a popular young comic actor whose presence is advertised prominently on the cover (Seth Green in the case of Sex Drive and Michael Cera for Extreme Movie); both are being released in nudity-enhanced unrated editions; and both aren’t really all that funny. If you absolutely have to see one though, pick Sex Drive over Extreme Movie. At least that one has one or two decent chuckles, whereas the other is just relentlessly dumb. Also in teen-movie news, The Haunting of Molly Hartley ($29.99) stars Gossip Girl heartthrob Chace Crawford in one of those ubiquitous PG-13 rated horror movies that real horror fans scoff at while younger viewers scream along with at slumber parties. If you’re in the mood for more adult fare, there’s What Just Happened (Magnolia, $29.98), a disappointingly scattershot Hollywood satire that does feature Robert De Niro’s strongest performance in years.
Going old school for a moment, William Friedkin’s landmark 1971 crime thriller The French Connection (Fox, $34.98) and the John Frankenheimer-helmed sequel The French Connection II (Fox, $34.98) debut on Blu-ray today, while the period drama Ironweed (Lionsgate, $14.98)–so far the only movie in which Hollywood legends Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep share the screen–arrives on standard DVD. And for those folks in need of their Damon Wayans fix, My Wife & Kids: Season One (Lionsgate, $29.98) offers the freshman year of the comic’s defunct sitcom.
