The Most Deceptive DVD Box Art

It is painfully clear that those who come up with the movie posters, previews, movie ads, and DVD box art are not the same those who have carefully, meticulously, blood, sweat, and tears-ed the content of the actual movies they’re trying to pimp. Instead, those advertising materials are the product of studio ad flacks, whose sole priority is to get in the seats and DVD sales and rental bucks in the till. And, if their money-grubbing machinations mean that they have to grossly misrepresent the content of the movies? Well…f-you, thanks for the bucks, don’t forget to buy some grossly overpriced concessions on the way in.

1. Smoke.  This is one of my favorite films of all time.  A slice of life about the denizens of a Brooklyn neighborhood and how their lives intersect in and around the corner tobacconist’s, Smoke boasts a nimble wit, heartfelt but hard-edged sentiment, and a full handful of truly great character performances.  William Hurt and Harvey Keitel have never been better, and it’s great to see them inhabit a couple of characters who are just ordinary guys.  Stunning.

The Problem: This is the DVD/VHS artwork, which makes it look like a smiley, happy-go-lucky, stylish romantic comedy.  Maybe something Nora Ephron had a hand in.  I have several objections to this.  1.  Where are the black people?  Two of the main characters in the film, each of who have about as much screen time and thematic relevance as Hurt and Keitel (and much more than Stockard Channing and Ashley Judd) are played by Forrest Whittaker and Harold Perrineau.  Umm…where are they?  The lesson in marketing seems to be: “Black men=scary and offputting, blonde chicks smoking stogies=rental gold.”  2.  Channing, Judd and Keitel are significantly more dressed up and stylin’ than their characters ever are in the film.  Keitel’s everyman is a working class shlub in short sleeves and chinos, Judd plays (in her one scene!) a strung out, be-bathrobed crackhead with bad skin and red eyes, and the ever-lovely Ms. Channing sports a freaking eye patch, for crying out loud!  (Hurt’s bemused, cameo-cropped appearance on the cover is difficult to assess).  The whole cover looks like it was taken from a Cannes festival photo op to promote the film, which it may have actually been.  I preface my frequent recommendations of this movie by saying, “Don’t pay any attention to the cover; the movie’s actually really good”, which seems like the opposite of what you’re trying to do with your cover art.

2. Cronos.  Director Guillermo Del Toro’s pre Pan’s Labyrinth sort-of vampire movie was, sure, maybe a hard sell;  it was literate, clever, moody, and all foreign-y and stuff, with a main character of an old man in his sixties.

The Problem:  It’s the old horror movie bait-and-switch.  I’m reminded of the tale of an Italian-made horror movie about murderous fish-men, which was retitled as Screamers, I believe;  the American low-budget trailer-makers made up some footage of a guy seemingly turning inside out and stuck it in the coming attractions.  Well, when people got pissed that the inside-out man wasn’t in the film, the studio just slapped it in there. Anything to get the asses in the seats.  Well, the sultry lass on the box here, shockingly, does not appear in the film.  Nor does anyone, while being drained of blood by the gold bug vampire thingy in the film appear to be having an orgasm while it does its thing.  In fact, when having their blood sucked out by the mystical doodad, said doodad’s victims seem to be quite upset.  Still- hot chicks=rentals.  Truth and beauty is for sissies.

3. Hellcab.  I love this movie.  Another slice-of-life working man’s tale, this time about the long, long nightly grind of a decent, normal (if slightlyscary looking) Chicago cabbie (played with heartbreaking normalcy by Paul Dillon) dealing with his daily allotment of kooks, creeps, and garden variety passengers.  It’s just loaded with great, small roles for the likes of John Cusack, John C. Reilly, Gillian Anderson, Julianne Moore, Michael Shannon, Kevin J. O’Connor, and Harry Lennix, and anchored by Dillon’s beleaguered everyman.

The Problem: The film was originally called Chicago Cab.  It was retitled HELLCAB!!!!  And look at the cover art!  It looks like Christine!  It must be about a haunted taxicab!   And look at that tagline: “Do you dare pay the fare?”  Man…I don’t know if I actually do.  So I’ll take this home and strap myself in for the haunted taxicab Stephen King gorefest of my life!!!  Yeah…except none of that happens.  Not even remotely.  Sure, there are two creepy passengers (Shannon’s tweaker and Cusack’s menacingly mysterious figure), but nothing out of the realm of what a cabbie has to deal with on an average shift (just ask Videoport pal the Guak about that sometime).  Plus, hey, where’s any mention or picture of the actual star, the central figure of the movie?  Sure, Paul Dillon’s not going to bring in any converts by himself, but you’ve already got the ‘real stars’ featured prominently, and, anyways, fair is fair.  And who cares if some poor sap customer rents your movie under false pretenses, or if some even poorer video store jerk has to explain your chicanery.  A-holes.

4. Fever Pitch.  No, not the terminally limp Jimmy Fallon remake, this original, based on the memoir by High Fidelity author Nick Hornby and starring Colin Firth is excellent.  A lightly-fictionalized version of Hornby’s lifelong obsession with his favorite soccer team, coupled with his difficulty in balancing that obsession with any sort of mature relationship, Fever Pitch is a solid, funny, and engaging drama/comedy, with Firth lending his considerable intelligence and charm to the lead.

The Problem:  Well this is just shameless.  It’s Soccer Boobs!  And look at that tagline: “There’s more than one way score!”  Score, get it?  Like with a lady, with boobs!  This cover art alone assures that absolutely no one who would actually enjoy this movie will ever rent it, and that anyone attracted by the cover art will be furious, with the grunting, inarticulate rage of the boob-deprived, and driven to violence.  At the very least they’ll want their money back.  Again, this is a DVD I actually have to fight people into renting because the cover art is so god-awful and misleading.  Oh, and why put Colin Firth’s picture on the cover? It’s not like women everywhere love him unconditionally or anything…

5. The Room Upstairs. I haven’t seen this movie.  Nor will I (I mean, c’mon).  But here’s the IMDb description of this 1987 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie “The life of a lonely and isolated woman is transformed when she opens herself up to the outside world and to a gentle, romantic relationship.”

The Problem:  Well, Parker was 22 at the time, and therefore unlikely to be the ‘lonely and isolated’ woman of the description.  In fact, she was listed sixth on the cast list, after the real stars like Stockard Channing (again!), Sam Waterston, and some others.  And yet look- there she is, all glammed up blotting out the DVD cover.  It’s another case of rebranding an obscure movie once a minor player has gotten super famous (I can think of similar shenanigans with early Demi Moore and Sharon Stone obscurities).  Oh, and if you look at the back cover cast photo, Parker still looked like a real girl, still sporting her ‘Square Pegs’ hair and real nose.

6. Irreversible.  I only put this one in because it doesn’t adequately prepare you for the unmitagated horror inside (that Monica Belucci sure is purty, huh?).  But I don’t know what in hell could…maybe this is one case when I applaud the deception.

7. 24 Hour Party People.  A funny, prankishly metatextual biopic about the Manchester music scene (Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, etc.) and Tony Wilson, the TV presenter/hustler (played brilliantly by Steve Coogan) who kept startup record label Factory going with fast talk and smoke and mirrors, 24 Hour Party People is a fun, satirical slice of little-known Britpop arcana.

The Problem: Sure, some of the music was rave-friendly, but the main thrust of the film is less (as in none) a portrait of pierced-tongued, morally-flexible party bunnies than it is a seriocomic biopic of the humorously-weaselly, in-over-his-head, middle-aged Wilson.  Sure, there’s some drugs, and Wilson gets an hilariously-furtive hummer in the back of a van (and through a hole in his boxers), but those things are not the hedonistic, slap-happy craziness the cover seems to promise.  Nice tongue, though.

8. What Happened Was… Another great little movie, this one is basically a two-person play about two people on a blind date who, through the course of their deepening conversation, reveal their particular secrets and peculiarities.  Stars Karen Sillas and writer/director Tom Noonan are great, each inbuing their lonely, sad characters with surprising complexity.

The Problem:  If it can be said to be a problem that the lovely, talented Ms. Sillas is all upside down in a peach-colored nightie it’s that, well, you know:  there is no sexual content at all in the movie and neither Karen (awww) nor big Tom (that’s okay) ever gets even close to naked, or even lingeree-ed up.  Instead, we get 91 minutes of conversation between a pretty (but fully-clothed) lady and a huge, odd-looking (he plays a lot of serial killers) giant-man.  Again, I question the marketing as it’ll drive away the arthouse crowd it’s intended for and disappoint the boobie patrol.

So that’s my initial salvo.  Have you been fooled by your DVD packaging?  Are you pissed off about it?  If so, don’t blame the innocent Videoport guys and gals you rented it from; ask us next time…we’ll steer you right.

VideoReport #234

Volume CCXXXIV- Rodan in the Iron Mask

For the Week of 2/7/10

Videoport gives you a free rental every day, has payment plans that’ll get you five or ten free bucks, will validate your parking, can answer all of your movie questions, and has the best selection of movies on the planet. If that makes us awesome, well, we’ll just have to live with that.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Former Videoporter STOCKMAN suggests Krull (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). Yeah that’s right. I’m recommending Krull. Jeremy would be so proud! He loves that Cyclops! He’s the creepiest friend you’ll ever have. The Cyclops that is, not Jeremy. My new favorite part about the movie Krull, I found a connection between it and my love of Animal Planet’s The Most Extreme! I WIN! The red backed spider is the most extreme lover. In order to get a little somethin’ somethin’ the male spider has to pluck a little tune on the web and if plucks something crappy he gets his ass eaten. THE SAME THING HAPPENS IN KRULL! I bet a red backed spider wouldn’t follow his own father to the black fortress! Unless there were horses with fire hooves. The visual of a spider riding a horse is nutty. GO KRULL!

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests The Tall T (in Classics). Videoport recently acquired a boxed set of Westerns from director Budd Boetticher. You’re welcome. Boetticher was a crusty, talented director, and the boxed set contains his series of exceptional, low-budget Westerns, most starring Western icon Randolph Scott. In The Tall T (probably my favorite), Scott plays Pat Brennan, a retired gunslinger trying to live a quiet life. When his stagecoach, also containing a newlywed couple (fiery Maureen O’ Sullivan and a weakling) gets hijacked by Richard Boone and his gang of desperadoes, Brennan has to summon up his own violent past in order to set things right. It’s a well-acted, occasionally-intense Western drama (based on an Elmore Leonard story), with the simmering attraction between Scott and the brave but vulnerable O’Sullivan and the mirror image recognition of their common past of Scott and Boone being especially compelling. Like all of the Boetticher Westerns (Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station), The Tall T is a complex, well-crafted entry in the genre.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Annie Hall (in Comedy). Memo to Hollywood: romantic comedies don’t have to be stupid, frothy vehicles for gorgeous dummies. Take Annie Hall, for example. [spoiler alert!] Though it doesn’t have the unmitigated happy ending that some folks will crave on Valentine’s Day, Woody Allen’s beloved classic could be a model for future makers of romantic comedies: rather than taking two cardboard cutouts and jamming them into a meet-cute scenario, Annie Hall put complex, idiosyncratic characters into heightened but realistic situations and watches the interplay, comedic and dramatic, then intercuts them with the kind of hilariously heightened internal monologue that we all have running in our heads. It’s affecting, it’s knee-slappingly funny, it’s heartbreaking. It’s delightful.

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Cache (in Foreign Language). By far my favorite film from controversial director Michael Haneke, Caché is utterly naturalistic (without the fourth-wall tricks and twists of Funny Games), but utterly unsettling. Georges and Anne (Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche), a comfortable couple settled into their comfortable lives, receive a very uncomfortable series of anonymous missives, starting with a videotape surveillance of their home. Unlike many of Haneke’s works, where he jams a cruel thumb in the eye of the viewer, Caché works on several levels: he leaves the viewer free to delve into the social history that underlies the story, engage with the metatextual questions that arise, or be satisfied with the straightforward narrative of bourgeois angst that is the surface story. It’s masterfully balanced and acted with great delicacy, and builds to a dreadful pitch without any of the cheap cinematic tension-building tricks we’re all so familiar with.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Former Videoporter STOCKMAN suggests This Film Is Not Yet Rated (in Documentary). I haven’t loved non-fiction based entertainment so much since my obsession with Animal Planet’s The Most Extreme! Seriously you do NOT want to f**k with termites or Tasmanian devils- those things are wicked extreme! You should also avoid the naked mole rat, just to be on the safe side. Speaking of nudity! I find the increasingly ridiculous reasons things are rated what they are rated to be highly entertaining. For instance…Two Towers is rated PG-13 for epic battle sequences and scary images, as if to imply if those battles were just slightly less epic the movie would’ve been much more suitable for children under 13. Groundhog Day is PG for thematic elements. Oh Groundhog Day if only you were a pointless movie with no theme you could’ve grabbed that coveted G rating! The Day After Tomorrow, intense situations of peril! What entails a mild situation of peril? Mean Girls, some teen partying. You know, not a ton, but more than a little. Here is the secret to where all this comes from, and its one you can discover in a most fascinating and educational manner. It comes from NOWHERE! For all intents and purposes a bunch of tools just make s**t up. My favorite part was if you want to argue your rating. If you think you had just a smidge of teen partying, which is way less than some, you are banned from past precedent! So you could not say…well you know Sixteen Candles is rated PG and you get rampant partying, slight underpants, and at least a little boob! You can’t say that. You also can’t be a male whip tailed lizard, because there aren’t any. EXTREME!

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that you let your kids play, unsupervised, with your wedding china. Oh, wait- you don’t think that’s a great idea since the kids lack the judgement and motor skills necessary to treat it with care and respect and will undoubtedly smear, chip, and basically destroy the delicate things you hold dear? Hmmm- I wonder how that lesson could be applied to the renting of DVDs…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests ‘Lost’ (in Mystery/Thriller). It’s a frustrating mix — the show has interesting characters, compelling mysteries, and a fascinating and diverse cast. But the big narrative arcs get so muddled and muddied served up in 45-minute bites, After a few seasons of being alternately excited, confounded, and (mostly) exasperated by weekly episodes, I gave up on watching Lost as a weekly broadcast. Only now do I realize that Lost is a show that understands its long-term medium: it was made to be watched on DVD, where you can see two or three episodes or more in quick succession, see the character interactions and the storylines loop together. Watching the program in long stretches is like stepping back from a pointillist painting: all the little dots start to resolve and give you a sense of the bigger picture. (I’m still not persuaded the writers can pull a series-end rabbit out of their hat, but on DVD, it’s entertaining enough to stick with anyhow.)

>>>For Sunday, Regan suggests White Palace (in Feature Drama). After hearing about Susan Sarandon and Tim Robins’ breakup and that she may have been having a tryst with a young table tennis enthusiast, I felt it would be appropriate to pop this steamy number into the DVD machine. And its preeeeeety good. I loves me some Spader and Sarandon does working class real good. And she smokes in a grocery store!! Jeezum crowbars! As I’m watching, I can’t help picturing Susan telling Tim Robbins, “Hit the road Timmy; you’ve gotten too old for me kid.”

New Releases this week at Videoport: A Serious Man (the new Coen Brothers movie, a dark comedy about Job-like Jewish man in the 1960’s trying to figure out why God has seemingly decided to beat the crap out of him), The Time Traveler’s Wife (Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams star in this swoony romantic drama about a guy who keeps time traveling against his will), Couples Retreat (Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau, and their beleaguered spouses all go to the titular relationship spa in this comedy directed by Ralphie from A Christmas Story; he’s gonna get his mouth washed out with soap…), Emma (lavish new BBC adaptation of the Jane Austen novel), The Stepfather (failed in every way remake of the underrated in every way horror thriller from the 80’s which starred the excellent Terry O’Quinn [Locke from 'Lost']), I Hate Valentine’s Day (My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s Nia Vardalos is back as yet another sad-yet-spunky single gal opposite John Corbett in this romantic comedy), Serious Moonlight (dark comedy was the last script by the late Adrienne Shelley [Waitress] about a wife [Meg Ryan] who duct tapes her adulterous husband [Timothy Hutton] to a toilet when she finds out he’s leaving her), Bronson (hyperviolent, crazy-ass British film about the titular psycho, a real-life career criminal called ‘the most dangerous prisoner in British history’), ‘The Life and Times of Tim’- season 1 (HBO animated comedy series is described as a cross between ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ and ‘Dr. Katz’), ‘The Sarah Silverman Program’- season 2 (potty-mouthed cutie-pie comedian Silverman is back, charming and offending in equal measure), Hurricane Season (Forrest Whittaker stars in this true story of a high school basketball coach in post-Katrina New Orleans who tries to take a rag-tag team of students displaced by the disaster to the state championship), XIII: The Conspiracy (Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer try to rejuvenate their careers in this thriller miniseries about the assassination of the first female US president; sadly for them, I hadn’t heard of this one before today…), Aziz Ansari: Intimate Moments for a Sensual Evening (you know him as part of the sketch comedy troupe Human Giant [check out their series in the Comedy section], you love him as that weird little dude on ‘Parks and Recreation’, or as RAAAAAAAANDY! in Funny People; now check out Ansari’s standup styling in his first comedy special), Endgame (the always-excellent Chiwetel Ejiofor [Serenity, Talk to Me, Redbelt] and the always-darned-good William Hurt costar in this true story of the negotiations that brought about the Apartheid regime in South Africa), The Pleasure of Being Robbed (super low-budget [Variety called it 'sub-mumblecore'] film about an eccentric, yet thoroughly larcenous, young woman), Peter and Vandy (Indie romantic drama shows a couple’s history all twisted and post-modern-y, contrasting their typically-screwed-up present with the cutesy-poo way they got together; watch the Harold Pinter-written Betrayal, starring Ben Kingsley and Jeremy Irons, for a much more insightful whack at the problem), I Can’t Think Straight (star-crossed lesbian lovers deal with the usual jerks trying to make them unhappy and repressed in this indie drama), Mr. Right (soapy British romantic drama/comedy about a group of gay men looking for, well, look at the title…).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (yup, that’s what the man said- it’s an animated version of Dante’s Divine Comedy; Mark Hammill does a voice!), Free Style (Corbin Bleu, apparently a star of High School Musical, stars as a cutie-pie motocross rider), The Trial Begins (legendary French actress Fanny Ardant stars in this Italian thriller about a Talented Mr. Ripley- style con man), The Song of Sparrows (an Iranian ostrich-rancher [you gotta love any movie that opens with that description...] heads from his mountain village to the big, throbbing metropolis of Tehran in order to get his daughter a new hearing aid in this Iranian film), Far and Away (bowing to intermittent pressures, Videoport has finally added a DVD version of this truly dreadful Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman film, featuring Tom’s hilarious version of an Irish accent), Troubled Water (a new movie from the Film Movement series, this Scandinavian film follows a young man, recently released from prison for the murder of a child [which he claims he didn't do] who is recognized and spied on by the dead boy’s mother), Deewarein (Indian drama/thriller about the intertwined fates of three prisoners; fins it in Videoport’s ‘Indian Film/Bollywood’ section).

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: Land of the Dead, Near Dark, Appaloosa, Boogie Nights, Heat, Pan’s Labyrinth, Casablanca, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Blazing Saddles, Mongol, Battle of the Bulge, Knocked Up, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Hidalgo, Lord of War, Death Proof, Planet Terror, KIll Bill Part One, Kill Bill Part Two, Sin City, Terminator 3, Swordfish, Eyes Wide Shut, Universal Soldier, Napoleon Dynamite, The Searchers, The Brave One, Beerfest, The Jewel of the Nile, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Speed Racer, Burn After Reading, Bronson, The Hurt Locker, Zombieland, Planet of the Apes (2001), The Transporter, The Transporter 2, True Romance, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & ! on the new releases for 2/2/10!

Normally it would be a good week, in fact a high-performing week, if movies featuring zombies, NBA stars and Paul Giamatti were all released on DVD. You would think that. But this week you’d be wrong. Gazing over this week’s new offerings, Videoport Jones is already feeling a tad more surly than usual.

Zombieland

Videoport Jones: “I’m gonna get the review of this zombie comedy (or ‘zombedy,’ as the genre shall now be known) over in a hurry. Here goes: Not bad at all, with solid work from the poor man’s Michael Cera (or the rich man’s Michael Cera) Jesse Eisenberg, ‘Superbad’s’ Emma Stone, even ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ herself Abigail Breslin, and a movie-stealing turn from Woody Harrelson as the redneckiest of the bunch. There’s a nice mix of humor, drama, and action (and extreme gore), and one great cameo, even if the humor is a little too flip and self-aware (let’s call that brand of movie dialogue ‘Diablo’-ed from now on to save time). As far as the zombedy genre goes, it’s right up there, although the inevitable comparisons to ‘Shaun of the Dead’ do ‘Zombieland’ no favors: ‘Shaun’ is simply better in every department at what it does – its soulful moments are more genuine and wrenching, its comedy funnier and less pleased with itself, and its violence more impactful and less CGI-lookin’. (Oh, and ‘Shaun’ isn’t cheapened every ten minutes with the most blatant product placement since the plot of ‘Regarding Henry’ turned on Harrison Ford remembering, and displaying, a certain brand of cracker.) There – ‘Zombieland’ = pretty good. Now, let’s talk about the film’s central flaw, shall we? FAST ZOMBIES ARE AN ABOMINATION. Not in the sense that they’re walking (or running, in this case) around, in defiance of god and nature, but that they, the recently reanimated, mindless corpses of horribly-mutilated zombie victims, are sprinting like Usain Bolt and leaping around after people like ninjas. The recent trend towards Carl Lewis-ing up the zombie threat is symptomatic of the Red Bull-addicted, short attention-span-addled PS3 generation of horror fans (and the ‘who gives a crap’ movie execs who cater to them), and it is WRONG WRONG WRONG! See if you can follow me: The true horror of the zombie phenomenon in horror (as it will be when it actually occurs, probably in 2012, if the Mayans know their lionclothed backsides from a plucked cockatoo) is not that a zombie is gonna chase you down like a puma or leap down on you like Spider-Man, but that it is inexorable. Sure, one zombie is slow, uncoordinated, stupid and easy to dispatch (assuming you’ve got a suitable weapon, lots of open space to maneuver, and don’t get even a drop of its blood into any open cuts). But there isn’t just

Stupid...fast...zombies...

one zombie. There are thousands. They are everywhere. And, as they sweep over your town in a shambling, single-minded mass of murder, their numbers are growing. Soon there won’t be one, or thousands, but millions, and then billions. And sure, maybe you can seal yourself off in a boarded up house (or shopping mall), but once they know you’re in there, they will never leave, and the noise they make as they try to get you will attract more, and more. And even if they can’t get in, you will eventually have to get out, once you need food, or water. And then you’re on the run, always looking for somewhere to rest, to hide, and they keep coming, and they are everywhere, and they will…never…stop… Now that’s scary. This fast zombie stuff is for the unimaginative. Now GET OFF MY LAWN!!!”

Justin: “Strap yourselves in kids. Jonesy’s on fire right out of the chute. Someone may lose an eye. Or at the least a hand. I too, will cut to the chase with ‘Zombieland,’ I loved this movie. It is supremely enjoyable and easily the best turn from Woody I’ve seen in a very long time. Stone, and Bresslin I think deserve special mention here for not just carrying their weight but really balancing out the cast well, and not just in a ‘we need chicks to eventually endanger’ kind of way in most movies. As we all know, Justin is not a big fan of the horror game. (Yes, I just went third person there.) But any time you can mix up the scares with some genuine laughs and other surprises – and skewer a genre – then you’ve got me. It’s the equivalent of when your parents snuck veggies into dinner. Go rent this, I plan to buy it, because ‘Zombieland’ just shot into the zombedy pantheon (On another note, when can we stop with the bad abbreviations and genre-slang? Either they’re funny horror flicks or a horror comedy.) While the comparisons to ‘Shaun’ may not be fair, they are apt, I think, because even as comedies I think they give an almost realistic ‘holy crap if the apocalypse came that’s what I’d do’ feel. Now, as to your central argument, I’m 100 percent onboard. It’s not just lazy, but doesn’t make a lot of sense. If these junkie zombies are always zipping around like some sort of combination of The Flash and a ninja, at what point do their batteries run out? I know some will say ‘that’s why they need adrenaline/plasma/brain McNuggets from the living.” But it seems like their bodies would just explode or collapse. But more on your point, zombies, in the vision of some, are metaphors for a plodding, unthinking populace that cares for little other than the basics. They are legion, they endure. So how do super zombies fit into that? Like many bad ideas that sprung to life from Hollywood, this act of genius was a quick and dirty fix. ‘How do we make zombies scarier? Can we give them laser beam eyes? Telekinesis? We’ll call it Z-Men! Wait, let’s just make them fast!’ Think of this: Jonesy and I are on the top floor of Press Herald Plaza and zombies are approaching. What scenario is scarier: The slow, inevitable terror as they advance wave after wave at a dread-building pace, OR, they swoop onto the scene, clog the stair cases and overtake the building in minutes? You know what I think old chum? I think we HAVE to make a zombie movie now. We have no choice. I think we make an old-school zombie flick featuring the plucky, pop-culture geeked employees of an upstart video store facing off against a horde of the undead in a quiet seaside town. We could call it ‘Zombieport…’”

Cold Souls

VPJ: “What do you call a movie that is both endearingly odd and imaginative and painfully derivative at the same time? Well, I’ll give you a guess… ‘Cold Souls’ is a neat little movie that, had another, better, shockingly-similar movie not come out before it, would be hailed a lot more for its original premise. Unfortunately, that other, earlier, better movie was called ‘Being John Malkovich, and ‘Cold Souls’ suffers in comparison. Like ‘BJM’, ‘Cold Souls’ stars a noted, respected actor as ‘himself’ who finds ‘himself’ at the center of an inexplicable supernatural phenomenon which threatens his very identity and ends up going to great and oddball lengths to recover his autonomy. It’s too bad, because if the movie had had Paul Giamatti playing a character not named ‘Paul Giamatti’, the movie would probably have an easier time being judged on its own merits, which are significant. Giamatti plays ‘Giamatti’, a shlumphy-but-respected film and stage actor who finds himself in a slough of despond and, hearing of an experimental new technique which can temporarily remove his soul, goes in for a session with it’s avuncular, seemingly-sane inventor (the ever-wonderful David Strathairn, radiating calm). When the pesky soul’s out, however, ‘Giamatti’ finds that his acting chops have dropped to dangerous, Keanu-esque levels (Giamatti’s success at portraying a suddenly bad actor are funny and fascinating), and he goes to get his mojo back, only to find out it’s been stolen. It’s a cool idea, full of possibilities for satire, introspection, and all the rest of it, but, unlike spiritual forebears like ‘BJM’, ‘Synechdoche, NY’, and ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ this one doesn’t have Charlie Kaufman’s mind at the controls, and the whole enterprise never quite takes off. It’s not bad, but a disappointment, which is too bad, because the world would be a better place if studios were racing out dueling quirky indie projects as much as they were ‘big asteroid go boom’ movies.”

JE: “But doesn’t that assume studios place as much faith and resources behind ‘quirky indies’ as they do in summer tent pole extravaganzas? They only bankroll sure bets, which is why you wind up with reboots, updates, sequels and clones. As a general rule can we say it’s a risky proposition for actors to play ‘themselves.’ Sometimes it works, others you feel like asking why the writers couldn’t flesh out a real character. Still, there is an exclusive club of people who have pulled off the ‘Myself as I,’ including Malkovich, Bruce Campbell in ‘My Name is Bruce,’ and of course Billy Zane in ‘Zoolander.’ In the case of this film, I think this could be considered the central problem. The movie is nice enough, just a little quirky and emotional, but not heavy lifting, and Paul Giamatti is who we thought he was. Which is to say moody but enjoyable. And while your enthusiasm for Kaufman’s touch may be well placed, I’d like to see more directors try and get in the ’surreality’ game that he and Michel Gondry have cornered. But at the end of the day I think this movie gets a few more points if the lead is named Rory St. Christopher…or something.”

The House of the Devil

VPJ: “Those nostalgic for the days when you’d go to your local video store’s horror section and see row after row of slasher flicks and spooky house movies you’d never heard of before all laid out before you in big, unwieldy VHS cases from companies like Embassy Home Video or Thorn/EMI

Like this, maybe...

(with the white plastic cases), should be right pleased at this, a deliberately 80s-style devil worshippers vs. innocent babysitter movie that, along with its obvious attention to period detail, actually manages to deliver some decent scares. From the on-purpose washed out, grainy look, to the fashions, music (The Fixx makes an appearance), and inclusion of genre stalwarts Mary Woronov (‘Eating Raoul,’ a million others) and Tom Noonan, ‘The House of the Devil’ is a straight-facedly fun and affectionate throwback to your fondest childhood horror movie memories, the kind of flick you’d (ok, I’d) sneak on Cinemax when the parents weren’t paying attention. A little poky, although things really pick up towards the end, and all-around pretty good stuff.”

JE: “‘She was a normal girl, looking forward to a future of kittens and unicorns before she took a job at the last house on Deathmaim Lane…’ And let me guess, maybe she has a penchant for wearing Leo Sayer T-Shirts and really loves ‘Too Close for Comfort?’ I joke. Mostly. I think we may have struck at one of the main differences between us. As young lads we both snuck away to watch these flicks, many with names like like ‘Death Monkey,’ ‘Momma Was a Rusty Clever,’ ‘Blood Gate’ and ‘Sorority of Terror!’ But instead of gaining hours of glee and formative video knowledge like you, I was mostly terrorized. The appeal of something forbidden was great, but unfortunately it made for a cold sweat trying to sleep the night after. And that kids, is why I don’t trust the Danish. ANYWAY, if you are of the mind that horror films should have Meghan Fox, zombies tweaking on amphetamines or sexy vampires, then you probably have no need for a horror flick like this. And you were probably born in the 90s. And your name is Chad. If none of these things apply to you and you can relate to Jonesy or my experience, then rent this.”

Love Happens

VPJ: “Jennifer Aniston. Aaron Eckhart, in twinkly hunk mode. A story about a grieving widower who’s on a book tour for his memoir about dealing with the death of the love of your life when he meets a beautiful lady who reawakens his ability to love again. A title like ‘Love Happens’. No, I have not watched this, and I’m willing to bet real money that you haven’t watched this either, Justin. No offense to Aniston, Eckhart, and love, all of which I like very much indeed, but it’s equally unlikely that we will see this movie until, well, ever, I guess.”

JE: “You know what I like? Cake. You know what I also like? Beer? You know what I am also fond of? Kindness. I like all of these things. But I would not strap in to see a movie about a baker who falls in love with a bartender…wait, actually I might. Bad example. Let me start over. Ham, new cars and laughing. But you know what, that doesn’t mean I would…ah screw it. I’m not seeing this movie. You’re not seeing this movie. We have no need – short of spite or drunkenness – to see this romantic comedy. It just ain’t happening. Let’s move on. But I really do like cake, don’t forget that.”

More Than a Game

VPJ: “This documentary follows a young hoopster named LeBron something when he, and some Ohio high school teammates were dealing with the pressures of playing the basketball. Haven’t seen this yet, but, well, I liked ‘Hoop Dreams’ a lot. I sure hope that LeBron kid turns out okay…”

JE: “You know you’ve turned out OK if you pronounce yourself ‘The Global Icon’ and no one laughs. Yes, I think this kid will be alright. The kid of course, is LeBron ‘The Chosen One’ James, now of the Cleveland Cavaliers, who even as early as middle school was attracting attention for his on-court skills. But this movie is about more than him as it follows the LBJ and his friends/teammates at the St. Vincent-St. Mary’s prep school in Akron, Ohio. These were guys that by their senior year were shattering records and drawing insane crowds for high school basketball, even to the point of eclipsing some college and pro sports. ‘More Than a Game’ is an interesting look at their friendship,  the role basktball played in shaping them and the level of status high school basketball has reached in some communities. And that last part is why I have mixed feelings about the movie. I love a good ‘kids come from nothing to big time’ sports documentary, but I feel like LeBron (as spectacular as he is) and the hype machine around him have elevated high school basketball to a status that really makes the sport kind of, I’ll say shady. I could go into a rant about AAU basketball and sneaker support, but I’ll just say this – is it a good thing to have high school basketball nationally televised on ESPN?”

Amelia

VPJ: “Hilary Swank as Amelia Earhart. There you go. Yeah, I really have so little use for Hilary Swank when she’s playing a regular woman; she’s an odd duck – capable of some interesting work (although two best actress Oscars? Seriously?) when she’s playing someone coping with some extreme situation, and utterly inconsequential when she’s just standing around being a person. Then she’s just exposed as the smiling, pleasant also-ran that she seems more suited to play. Oh, in this one, she smooches Richard Gere for a while and then gets lost. Hope I didn’t spoil anything there…”

JE: “I think what they were going for with ‘Amelia’ was a classic Swank role of a singular woman dealing with improbably circumstances. Just like in ‘Million Dollar Baby,’ ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ and ‘Freedom Writers’…wait, scratch that last one…ANYWAY, I think the producers thought the role of Amelia Earhart was on par with those other characters Swank has embodied. The studio said ‘Hey! she’s played lady boxers, lady-boys, and a lady Karate Kid, she can do Earhart!” But the problem is this is a biopic – to a certain degree – and a plodding one at that. When you have to go through all the hoops of a typical biopic, how much wiggle room do you have? And how tortured can you really make Amelia Earhart? I think it’s impossible for Earhart to not be a fascinating historical figure, but I don’t think this movie, or the Swankster, did her any favors.”

LIGHTNING ROUND! And the also-rans this week at Videoport: Universal Soldier: Regeneration (Jean Claude and Dolph are back! Running home to the sci-fi action series they abandoned decades ago when they thought their careers were going to take them on to bigger and better things), New York, I Love You (Remember that film “Paris, I Love You,” where all the famous directors made short films about Paris? Well this one is just the same…except in New York!), Bonekickers’ – Season 1 (A new BBC mystery series about some unexpectedly spy archaeologists getting their Indy on stars the cool Adrien Lester from “Hustle” and “Primary Colors”), The Secret of the Grain (French film about an old man who wants to open a restaurant).

PARTING SHOTS:

- Are “fast zombies” an abomination? Would Jonesy and I survive the assault on Press Herald Plaza?

- What’s your favorite movie where an actor plays him or herself?

- Is it a bad thing to have high school basketball games on ESPN?

VideoReport #233

Volume CCXXXIII- Rodan Who Knew Too Much

For the Week of 2/2/10

Videoport gives you a free movie every, single day. Just try and leave without a free movie…you can’t do it, can ya’?

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis suggests The Holy Mountain (in Incredibly Strange). One of Videoport’s most beloved and distinctive features, apart from our Andy, is our Incredibly Strange section, where all the unclassifiable, twisted, and outright bananas movies in the store go to be admired, and

Look at this poster. Good. Now you know as much about this movie as you ever will.

feared. Still, as we bustle busily through the aisles, occasionally we Videoport minions will hear a complaint, like “I don’t see whats so weird about these”, or “The Mexican? Why is THAT in here?!” First of all, don’t do that. It’s really boring. We put things in the Incredibly Strange section because we want to and because we know better than you. Second, to quiet any nay sayers (we hear you saying ‘nay’) who doubt the weirdness, strangeness, or absolute bug-nuts craziness of our Incredibly Strange section I’d like to trot out this legendary 1973 psychedelically-out-of-its-tiny-little-mind film from equally-loopy director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Now some people (everyone) thought that his previous film El Topo was impenetrably-insane. They were right, but his follow-up makes El Topo look like Baby’s Day Out. Jodorowsky thought, ‘Hey, why don’t I take LSD before I write it! And I’ll give my cast magic mushrooms before some scenes!’ What does this get us? Well, according to the IMDb, The Holy Mountain is a tale where “A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide’s assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.” Upon seeing the film, I shrugged and said, “well, if you say so…” What I can assure you is that you’ll see: a dwarf with no hands or feet, a guy eating the face off of a wax statue of Christ, a guy pooping in a box, the poop turning to gold, burning money, a hooker, an ape, and some trapeze artists. Fade to white. Enjoy the Incredibly Strange section. Stop your whining.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> April suggests Sunrise- A Story of Two Humans (in Classics). Yes, this is a silent film, but it’s an AWESOME silent film, directed by F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu) and starring Janet Gaynor (who won the best actress Oscar for her performance), George O’Brien (who should have won an Oscar for his performance) and Margaret Livingstone as the ‘woman from the city’ who O’Brien falls for. Livingstone tries to convince O’Brien to kill his wife and run away to the city with her, but when he can’t go through with it, he and his wife travel to the city and rediscover their love. Beautifully photographed by Charles Rosher and Karl Strauss (winners of an Oscar for their cinematography!), Sunrise- A Story of Two Humans should be on everyone’s list of films they need to see before they die.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> The Office suggests Dying of Laughter (in Foreign Language). An assault of absurdity from director Alex de la Iglesia. Comic duo Nino and Bruno take the concept of live slapstick from performances at dive bars and discos into the modern age of casual handgun violence on live TV!  …and the more they hate each other the more the audience loves them…naturally success goes to their heads and they split up, one becoming a snotty preening big spending  aging “star” whilst the other blows his money on booze and coke until they both need that requisite rock star reunion to pay the mortgage. The hilarious results should be required viewing by anyone who is not an original member of the cast/band on any reunion tour, or by anyone who likes their comedy on the dark side.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests you make your own Lost season premier, Videoport Style! Take a few of Rod Serling’s classic sci-fi morality tales from The Twilight Zone, add the entire series of loopy island adventure The Prisoner, the boys-school castaway tragedy Lord of the Flies (either version is fine), and mix in a soupçon of Ken Russell — ideally, the existential body horror of Altered States. Remove all characters’ curiosity about their predicament and — bingo! — you’ve got Lost: infuriatingly compelling, narratively confusing, and with a big dose of ambiguity to keep you hooked!

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that we are all happy that Videoport has brought in new kids movies to the Children’s section like Sesame Street: Abby in Wonderland, Yo Gabba Gabba, and new

We're watching you...

Spongebob Squarepants and Go Diego Go! And we also suggest that, with brand new shiny DVDs, it’s real easy to determine who is allowing their children to treat our DVDs like their second-least favorite toy. Enjoy!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Sid and Nancy (in Feature Drama). Sid and Nancy is a modern tragedy, but one with deep comedic undertones. It chronicles the short, tempestuous relationship between Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and his brash girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Together, the two of them sank deeply into herion addiction, anger, and self-amusement. Gary Oldman delivers a soulful, deep performance as Vicious, and Chloe Webb’s performance will make you wonder why she’s not an enormous star. It’s a sad, sordid story, and a tricky one to tell, but director

Ha ha ha...yeah...we're not gonna end well...

Alex Cox (Repo Man, Straight to Hell) makes it work. (If, in doing so, he takes some liberties with history, well, all storytelling does that to some extent.) This is not a post-punk history lesson, it’s a story about to outcasts scrabbling for love and acceptance even as they destroy and reject the world around them. Unlike most drug-abuse parables, this one neither glamorized not preaches — it simply tells a gripping, awful story, and tells it with verve and humor and passion, never trading the terrible human drama for trite moralizing. If you’ve never seen it before, rent it now. If you have seen it before, watch it again this week. Think of it as a commemoration of sorts; Sid Vicious’ brief life ended on February 2nd, 1979.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Groundhog Day (in Comedy). Oh, what the hell- I suppose somebody had to do it, since this issue of the VideoReport comes out on, well, you know. Utter predictability of this review aside, Groundhog Day is still a damned great movie, isn’t it? Here are an as-yet-undetermined number of reasons why I love it: 1. Bill-freaking-Murray. He does a funny and worshipful cameo in one of this week’s new releases (no, I’m not telling which one), and, while said movie is only okay, the utter devotion it lavishes on Murray speaks for me, and the entire thinking world. There is no one, and I mean no one in this world, whose presence guarantees I will seek out and watch a movie more than him. I even watched most of the first Garfield movie. 2. “Ned! Ned Ryerson! Needlenose Ned, Ned the

Ned!?!

Head, c’mon buddy, Case Western high!”- I hear this in my head anytime someone has trapped me in an unwanted conversation. 3. The scene where Murray sits on a low wall and dreamily recites everything that’s going to happen next (“A gust of wind. A dog barks.”) is worthy of Beckett. 4. Similarly, the scene in the diner when he convinces Rita that he knows everything by reciting the life histories of everyone there, and doing it with such compassion in his voice…Bill Murray, ladies and gentlemen. 5. Even Andie MacDowell isn’t too bad. 6. Director Harold Ramis’ cameo; I just like seeing Ramis. 7. “I’ll see you tomorrow…maybe!” 8. The stuff with the old homeless guy, culminating with Murray’s “Not today.” 9. No one in the history of earth can turn a one-liner like Bill Murray. Too many to name, but I was always partial to, “Chance of departure today, one hundred percent.” 10. It works for the all important, “Do you have a really funny movie the whole family can enjoy?” recommendation. Seriously, it’s like a safety blanket for Videoport employees. There, that’s ten…

New Releases this week at Videoport: Zombieland (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Little Miss Sunshine fight the undead in this pretty funny, and definitely gross, zombie comedy [or 'zombedy']; I’d rate it higher except that it falls prey to the stupidest godd*mned idea in the horror genre, fast zombies!! Fast zombies are for stupid people.), ‘Bonekickers’- season 1 (new BBC mystery series about some unexpectedly spy archaeologists getting their Indy on stars the cool Adrien Lester from ‘Hustle’ and Primary Colors), The Secret of the Grain (French film about an old man who wants to open a restaurant), Love Happens (Romantic comedy. Jennifer Anniston. Aaron Eckhart. What more do you need to know?), The House of the Devil (deliberately, unashamedly retro-sleazy horror movie about the requisite innocent babysitter who discovers that the people she babysits for are the requisite human-sacrificing Satan worshippers; starring genre kooks Tom Noonan and Mary Woronov), More That a Game (documentary about a young high school basketballer named, what was it?…Oh yeah, Lebron James! I hope he makes it okay…), Cold Souls (Paul Giamatti stars as himself, sort of, in this very Being John Malkovich-esque film about a famous actor who finds out about a service that can remove your pesky soul for ya’; you can find it, unsurprisingly, in the Incredibly Strange section), Amelia (Hilary Swank stars as legendarily-missing aviatrix Amelia Earhart in this biopic), Universal Soldier: Regeneration (Jean Claude and Dolph are back! Running home to the sci-fi action series they abandoned decades ago when they thought their careers were going to take them on to bigger and better things), New York, I Love You (remember that film Paris, I Love You, where all the famous directors made short films about Paris? Well this one is just the same…except in New York!).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Sesame Street: Abby in Wonderland (Sesame Street DVD starring one of those characters introduced after I stopped watching…about three years ago),‘Doc Martin’- season 3 (Videoport’s British Comedy section welcomes another season of this show about a country doctor), Black, White + Gray (artsy documentary about photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, curator Sam Wagstaff, and the ever-cool Patti Smith), ‘Doctor Who’- Waters of Mars (is this the last go-round for David Tennant’s Doctor? Someone hipper/nerdier than I will have to tell you…), Yo Gabba Gabba: Birthday Boogie (seems to be some sort of thing for kids? Am I right?), Noam Chomsky: Gaza (another chunk of wisdom from the recently-deceased great man; find lots more of the man’s wisdom in DVD form in Videoport’s documentary section), Spongebob Squarepants Viking-Sized (more for the kids!), Go Diego Go! Lion Cub Rescue (man, Videoport must really like your kids or something…), Barefoot in the Park (the Neil Simon comedy of newlyweds in conflict starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford finally hits DVD), Mouth to Mouth (look at this Spanish comedy starring a very young Javier Bardem being all adorable and cute! Look at ‘im!).

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport*: X Men, X Men 2, The Seventh Seal.

*speaking of the rise of Blu Ray, here comes the Videoport VHS Blowout Sale! Dang! I guess, since we’re officially two technologies past VHS now, Videoport’s owner Bill has decided to let go, sadly, regretfully, of some of the best of our once-mighty VHS collection at ridiculously low prices. Just check out the big wire bin heaped with some of the best movies of all time, now let loose dirt cheap because they’re tied to an obsolete gizmo. Check out some of the titles I saw in one quick glance in the bin tonight: Blue Velvet, Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, The Opposite of Sex, JFK, Apocolypse Now, Days of Heaven, Koyaanisqatsi, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls…and that was only the top layer! Holy crap! And check out these prices already: $3.99 each or 3 for $10! Man, that’s a good deal…but…what? You get a free Videoport rental with every one you buy?!?! Double holy crap! That means if you buy three movies for ten bucks, you’re getting three rentals (worth more than ten bucks!) That means, if you follow the logic, that you’re getting the three VHS movies for free!! Yeah…Videoport*.

*Oh, and before you get all huffy and snotty and supercilious and say something like, “Well, Videoport is really going downhill… I can’t believe they’re getting rid of such good movies…I have a huge stick up my butt..”, just relax. Videoport knows what we’re doing; pretty much everything in the bin is duplicated on DVD. Calm down. (We did save movies like Come Back to the 5 and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Betrayal, and John Sayles’ great City of Hope, which have never been on DVD, and which you should really rent right about…now.)

Free Money at Videoport!

You think I’m kiddin’? Well, check this out, you. Videoport’s got these payment plans which give you more money than you started with. What?! I know! If you prepay $20 on your Videoport account, we’ll give you $25 worth of rental credit, and if you prepay $30 on your rental account, you magically get a whopping $40 worth of rental credit. And that credit lasts forever (until you use it up), works with all our (absurdly-already-generous) daily specials, and it also works for any pesky extra day charges you might rack up.

Park for free at Videoport!

1. Parking meters are turned off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday. 2. The parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on the weekends. 3. Videoport participates in the Park & Shop program, which means we can get you a free hour of parking at any downtown Portland parking garage (including the courthouse garage which is, literally, a two minute walk away). Just bring us your parking stub, and we’ll give you one of our magic stickers!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I take on the new releases for 1/26/10

On this day we do not just celebrate the release of another mediocre science fiction movie about humanity led astray by technology, no, we also celebrate the degredation of the dead (in the form of Michael Jackson) and the rejection of morals and shame (by Mr. Tucker Max.) Fortunately we’ve got a funky little music documentary spun from one of history’s greatest boxing matches and a roller derby comedy. Oh, wait, also, we’re celebrating my esteemed colleague’s BIRTHDAY! It is difficult to come across documentation of how old Videoport Jones is, or where he was born. Some say he was conceived by midichlorians and discovered on the steps of Videoport.

Either way, raise a pint to him today.

Surrogates

Videoport Jones: “‘It’s like AVATAR!’ Or so the filmmakers (and, perhaps, Videoport owner Bill) would like you to think, since that might bump up this one’s dismal box office/video rental grosses. It is sort of like ‘AVATAR’ (now that that thing’s passed the 500 kajillion dollar mark, I am legally required to use all caps), in that the people doing the things are actually not doing the things but use AVATARS (or the decidedly lower-case, in this case, ’surrogates’) to do the derring for them, while the real people actually recline in crapulent comfort. Bruce Willis is in this one, playing both an appropriately-bald and grizzled real cop in an electronic barcalounger and his oddly also appropriately-waxy blonde robot dopplegager out on the streets trying to find out what’s causing people’s brains to explode when something bad happens to their own robot pals. It’s not a bad setup – science fiction is, at heart, a very sneaky vehicle for social satire – and the concept that humanity would only too happily renounce fresh air, physical effort, and chasing butterflies for a sedentary lifestyle where a physically-perfect version of yourself that you control with your mind gets to have superpowers and boink everything in sight without danger of repercussions ain’t bad either. The problem, of course, is that most science fiction writers (and especially movie and TV science fiction writers) suck, and feel the need to bask in their own cleverness (showing and overexplaining every idea they come up with) and to dumb down a potentially-evocative concept in order not to lose even the slowest among their viewers. So we get the requisite opening montage which lays out the premise in about three minutes, a kickoff aciton scene to illuminate the concept with cool ’splosions, the requisite conflicted hero with a sad secret (which is explained quickly so as not to piss anybody off) and then some more action set-pieces so nobody goes to the bathroom. Along the way, the original idea and all of its potential satirical power is left congealing on the back burner until the loud blandness of the enterprise has numbed us out to the point where we don’t care anymore. The movie’s serviceable, as is Willis (although that waxy, mannequin Bruce seems a tad too comfortable a role for him at times), and it’s nice to see Ving Rhames, although I am hard-pressed to think of how they could have made him look sillier – I’ve seen better fake beards on fake Santas.”

Justin: “Maybe we should just get our own AVATARS to do the heavily lifting for this review while we sit back in our crapulence, drinking High Lifes. Inevitably Jonesy 2.0 and Justin 2.0 would grow thirsty for booze and their tolerance for B-list talent in D-list movies would wear thin. And then what? The urge to slaughter all mankind. This is how it happens people! And then who would save us? Ben Affleck? Gerald Butler? Bruce Willis (2009 edition)? We’re doomed. I think we can all generally agree that anytime humans muck around with clones, robots, virtual reality or cyborgs someone is bound to get blown up. Especially scientists. It’s always scientists. I don’t get why these movies end up being the equivalent of a warm beer, do you? It looks like a sure thing until you open it, get a taste and instantly want to throw it in the trash. We’re reasonable men, right? We like ’splosions! We like sci if! We like Bruce Willis! I would watch the original ‘Die Hard’ once a week if I could, and sometimes do if it’s on TV. I think the problem is that the act of ‘mainstreaming’ anything is essentially like tweaking a menu for a dinner party because each of the guest has particular likes and dietary needs. No dairy? Sure! Everyone likes chicken? Right! The problem is that unlike comedy, horror or drama, sci fi almost by nature is supposed to be a little challenging, and apparently most of us don’t like to get challenged anymore. So you end up with ’splody-McSex-chase with a dash of moral quandary. Tell me if any of these movies don’t fit that: ‘The Island,’ ‘I, Robot,’ ‘The Matrix Reloaded,’ ‘Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey.’ Maybe I’ve just got this all backwards and we’re the ones who are out of touch. Maybe society wants its satire to go 10 feet from the edge, but not over, because if you start making movies about how obese, ignorant and shallow humanity is you may not break even on opening weekend.”

Michael Jackson: This Is It!

VPJ: “I am hard-pressed to decide what the titular ‘it’ refers to. Unless ‘it’ refers to ‘a cynical cash-in on Jackson’s death by releasing a cobbled together hodge-podge of incomplete musical numbers culled from substandard rehearsal footage of the mammoth concert series aborted when Jackson died, probably at least in part due to the obvious stress he was putting himself through in order to prepare for it.’ I wanna take my man Conan O’Brien’s farewell advice to heart and not be cynical, but this whole endeavor just screams words like ‘creepy,’ ‘cash grab,’ and ‘plundering the dead,’ and the film (so-called) is bound to disappoint anyone not interested in seeing incomplete versions of songs they’ve heard a million times. Jackson was, well, let’s just say a complicated figure whose life was largely defined by others’ wanton exploitation of him. And it continues from beyond the grave.”

JE: “Whoa, whoa, whoa Jonesy! Careful! Give the people what they want! Now that the gloved one is dead we cannot speak ill of him. What if Jermaine and Tito come for us? Look, you’re talking to someone who was on the ’stop the spectacle-go-round, I’d like to get off’ campaign months ago. I had enough of the speculation, I had enough of the exploitation of the kids, I had enough of the so-called ‘funeral’ 3 minutes after it began. I am not a heartless man, I understand the public wanting just one more piece of him, or wanting to say goodbye. I know that he was many things to many people, all of which, like you said, more than likely contributed to Jackson’s state of mind. As poor as this movie is, it undoubtedly will provide people with that last peek behind the curtain, giving them what they think is insight into the man and his incredible talents. But it is a creeptastic cash grab and there is no other way to say that. And it was only the advance man, because in a matter of months there’ll be a parade of books, tributes, documentaries and more. As someone who loves Michael Jackson’s music I can’t deny that I’d love to know more about him (come on people, we all watched that made-for-TV mini series about the Jacksons from the 90s), but I think there will never be a clear, definitive picture of him. That’s why I’ll stick to the albums and music videos on YouTube.”

Soul Power

VPJ: “Now here’s some musical exploitation I can fully get behind! Remember the awesome-looking music festival playing in snatches behind the action in the equally-awesome Mohammed Ali- George Foreman documentary ‘When We Were Kings?’ Well this is the companion documentary where that musical extravaganza (co-created by co-champion creepy guys Don King and Zaire’s dictator Mobutu) featuring performances from James Brown, BB King, The Spinners, Bill Withers, Celia Cruz and more takes center stage. Sure, it’s a little rough, and the African musicians on the bill get short shrift, but it was clearly a labor of love from the filmmakers and there’s some great stuff here.”

JE: “So, so, so very funky. I am a sucker for old school music documentaries or performance flicks like ‘Wattstax’ and ‘The Song Remains the Same.’ I could watch these for hours on end. It helps of course that it’s often music I love. What makes this a remarkable documentary and not just a performance pic, is all the behind the scenes wrangling and anxiety that led up to the event. If putting together the Rumble in the Jungle was an epic task, seeing to it that a handful of America’s most dynamic performers get to Zaire on time must have felt like moving a mountain. It’s movies like this that just make you feel a little electric when watching a documentary, largely because of the fact that this was footage that the crew sat on for years. Can you imagine if no one ever proposed giving it new life and putting together a film? It makes you wonder how many other people out there are sitting on ridiculous footage from concerts and festivals. Rent this.”

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

VPJ: “Ever heard of Tucker Max? No? Well, that’s probably for the best. A lousy writer and a seemingly hateful little toad, Max is a shockingly-successful blogger (and NYT best selling author?!) who turned his sexist, juvenile scribblings into a thinly-fictionalized novel (about some hateful creeps going to a bachelor party at a strip club) and now into this film which is – surprise! – hateful, juvenile, sexist, and badly-written. Glib, snarky, woefully-shot and acted, and willfully-misogynist and awful, this movie is tailor-made for the date rapist fratboy on your shopping list. Enjoy!”

JE: “Can I just go on the record for one quick second with what I feel is my duty as a writer: How the HELL does this repugnant scum trader get book and movie deals, and I don’t? Do I need to sellout completely? Do I need to give up on my morals? Seriously, is there just something wrong with the entertainment industry in this country, or is it me? Even as a flop of a movie, it’s still a movie, and a paycheck. End Rant. ANYWAY, onto the review: Oh, what’s that, you have taste, self-resepct and a shred of decency America? Well-done. Then this is not for you. Well, most of you. For the 1.3 percent of the population that considers this their cup of Miller Light, well, just stay in the shadows until we’re looking away and then rent this thing. And guess what? Even you’ll feel embarrassed about renting it! You’ll discover an oily, stomach-churning sensation followed by chills and vomiting. It’s your soul, trying desperately to escape. Let it. Next time just watch a snuff film.”

Whip It

VPJ: “Drew Barrymore directs this girl-power-through-sports roller derby flick, which Videoport has stocked up on in a big way, at least partly due to the popularity of the Maine Roller Derby (at least two of whose members Killer Quick and Punchy O’Guts are Videoport members). Haven’t seen it yet, but Videoport’s JackieO (a huge MRD fan) says, ‘It was actually pretty good, although the sheer number of uncalled fouls was very unrealistic.’ Co-starring some cool tough chicks like Kristin Wiig, Zoe Bell, Alia Shawkat, Barrymore herself, and Eve. Also, that girl from Juno.”

JE: “Chick-fight! Chick-fight! CHICK-FIGHT! Ah-WOOOOOOOOO! Sorry, I was still stuck in the Tucker Max zone. Never let me fall there again Jonesy. Please. Ah yes, ‘Whip It.’ For fear of running afoul of the MRD, I will have nothing but praise for this fine, female-powered flick. They’re like the lady mob, utter a bad word and a skate with a note attached to it comes flying through your window. Part small-town escape, part coming-of-age, part ‘Kansas City Bomber,’ ‘Whip It’ may qualify as ‘cute,’ (i.e., parents it’s OK to let the kids see it) plus it features two ladies I think are funny and a little underrated, Ms. Ellen Page and Ms. Alia ‘Maeby Funke’ Shawkat. If we could get them in some sort of buddy movie along the lines of ‘Superbad,’ I would very much appreciate that.”

Little Ashes

VPJ: “I know – lets make a movie about the friendship and contentious artistic relationship among semi-legendary artists Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel, and Frederico Garcia Lorca! Well, I dunno…it doesn’t sound very commercial… Well, why don’t we get that little guy from the teen vampire movie to play Dali! Um, won’t people just point at him and laugh? Who cares, we’ll have their money by then! (A brief playlet outlining the birth of ‘Little Ashes.’) Well, he doesn’t exactly embarrass himself, does Robert Pattinson, but this strikes me as one of those ‘my agent thinks I need to broaden my appeal to make people take me seriously’ projects which makes people take an actor actually less seriously. It happened (before Scorcese resurrected him) to Leonardo DiCaprio when he played poet Arthur Rimbaud in 1995’s misbegotten ‘Total Eclipse,’ and it happens here, with the teen hunklet sporting Dali’s signature kooky mustache with all the authority of a kid in a Groucho nose. Oh, and please feel free to rent Luis Bunuel’s actual (brilliant, maddening) films; we’ve got ‘em all at Videoport.”

JE: “Salvador Dali was a vampire? Seriously? Cause that would explain a lot. Look, let’s be honest, I have nothing to add here because I got no time for the hunklet of the moment and I always paid more attention to Dutch painters in art history class. But since it’s your birthday I thought I’d just throw in this quote, which I think sums up Mr. Pattinson: ‘Angel’s lame. His hair goes straight up, and he’s bloody stupid.’ Happy birthday old chum.”

LIGHTENING ROUND! And the rest: The Boys Are Back (Clive Owen stars in this weepie about a sportswriter dad turned single father after something horrible happens; directed by the guy who did “Shine”), Act of God (An oddball documentary explores the experiences of several people who have been struck by lightning, including some who feel that God had something to do with it. Presumably because they were saying something like, “…and may God strike me dead if…” at the time), St. Trinian’s (A wacky British comedy about an all-girls school’s students’ attempts to save the place from closing down), Outrage (Documentarian Kirby Dick, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” brings his tenacious investigative method – some might call it stalking – to this film exposing gay-bashing, conservative Republican politicians who are, shocker!, secretly-gay, self-hating hypocrites!)

PARTING SHOTS!

- Seen a science fiction movie recently that doesn’t pass Justin’s “splody-McSex-chase” test?

- Is “Michael Jackson: This Is It” a worthy tribute or creeptastic cash-grab?

- Would you rather watch ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” or the Maine Roller Derby hunt Tucker Max for sport?

VideoReport #232

Volume CCXXXII- The Revengenator

For the Week of 1/26/10

Videoport gives you a free rental every single day. And is therefore awesome.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). I can recommend this movie for the solid half that is reminiscent of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The space battles between the Enterprise crew and the murderous Kilngons are as exciting as anything in Khan. But the rest of the movie strains believability. You’ll see…

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Regan, Andy and Dennis2/The Rage recommend Chopper (in Action/Adventure). What do your favorite Videoport nerds do when they’re not at work? Well, get drunk and watch movies. Duh. The following is the transcript of their ‘Australian Night’ viewing of the excellent, insane Aussie film Chopper (starring a very young and completely-unrecognizable Eric Bana). Strap yourselves in:

7:15- ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’!

7:53- G.I. Jane license plate spotted.

8:07- MoNique wins. Oh yeah.

8:15- Montgomery. Flea market. Dinette set. YouTube it.

8:34- Pom’s Thai Taste. Andy gets free pain reliever with his Thai wrap!

9:04- Chopper begins. No subtitles.

9:05- Just like. Mini-mall. Montgomery. It’s just like. Oh yeah.

9:09- Second Foster’s. We all unbutton pants. Except Andy.

9:26- “Sh*t! Mom stabbed me; better get to the hospital.”- Chopper

9:38- “Cheers, big ears.”- Chopper’s Dad

9:57- Golden Globes break!

10:13- “You havin’ a winge?”- Chopper

10:22- Add Bana to the d*ck list!*

10:40- Downey wins a Globe. He’s still funny sober. Go figure.

10:43- It’s snowing!

10:43- Andy’s tried Akavit for the first time.

10:44- Andy’s a little drunk.

10:45- Best Actor…Jeff Bridges!! T- Bone!!

10:54- That skag Julia Roberts is on. She looks a bit toasted. Good for her. Oh, Avatar. BOOOO…OO…OO. D*cks. Tarantino. Atrophied. Floss. Dry hump.**

11:05- “Tastes like soda.”- Andy, about Foster’s lager.

11:16- “And other assorted scalliwag behavior.”- Chopper

11:38- Dissolves into total nonsense.

11:40- “The year 2000!”- Chopper

“Oh no, he’s gonna kill the chicken!”- Regan

11:48- “We should get t-shirts! For our club!”- Dennis2

“Akavit” X2. “Akavit!”

*This appears to be a reference to VideoReport #229 in which we ran an in-depth listing of all the male celebrities who have appeared with their tackle out on screen. We overlooked Mr. Bana’s private parts on that list; we heartily apologize for the oversight.

**This appears to be a reference to…um…

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests ‘Mad Men’ (in Feature Drama). Note: in this review and the next, I will reveal the flaws that keep me from wholeheartedly recommending two TV series that I actually quite like, because I’m so smart and I can’t just sit back and enjoy something but have to obsessively pick it apart, thus robbing myself of all joy and laughter. So- Mad Men. Everybody loves it; cool, stylish 1960’s glamour, some snappy, smart satire, and that John Hamm is easy on the eyes, I’ll tell you that for free. Plus, the architectural marvel that is Christina Hendricks…sweet fancy Moses! Anyway, I recently watched the first two seasons, about the sexy, sexist, swingin’ shenanigans at a high-powered Madison Avenue advertising firm, and I really liked it; Hamm’s brilliant, conflicted, legendarily-philandering exec is the nicely shaded moral center of the show, while the supporting cast is solid and there’s some pretty affecting stuff and some unexpected humor. Of course, I have some complaints. As the beleaguered Mrs. Draper, January Jones is just right at the start, when she’s required to be all pretty and blank and in a daze of cocktails and denial, but when Betty is required to show the stirrings of a repressed soul, well, she’s just seemingly not up to the task of playing a human. And the satire seems a little too pat and cute from time to time: sexism/racism is bad! People sure smoked and drank a lot! But my main complaint is that the series need to provide Don Draper with a big, dark buried secret seems so beside the point; instead of concentrating on deepening the examination of early-60s America, or advertising, or the transformation of sex roles, much of the show gets devoted to unraveling a pretty contrived little mystery that’s none too compelling or convincing in its own right. Like ‘The Sopranos’, ‘Mad Men’ is limited by its limited view of its characters; like I said about the wiseguys, examining the complexities of meerkat behavior is pretty fascinating, but, in the end, you’re still watching ‘Meerkat Manor’. All that being said, I still liked the show a lot. And that Christina Hendricks…as my (purportedly-heterosexual) wife keep exclaiming whenever she comes on the screen, “That’s just over the line!”

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests ‘Battlestar Galactica’ (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). And here’s the second universally-adored show I have a few bones to pick with. (Yeah, I’m ending a sentence with a preposition; that’s how annoyed I am just thinking about it). Now, sure, I’m a geek. Of various kinds. Even a sort-of sci fi geek (‘Firefly’ is one of the greatest series, of any kind, I’ve ever seen). And so I dutifully checked out this reboot of the terminally-silly 70s show about the last few thousand human beings in the universe fleeing from their would-be executioners, the robotic Cylons and things were zipping along nicely; the acting was a decided upgrade (Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell are standouts), as were the special effects, and the general level of script sophistication. And then, like on ‘Mad Men’, the show tosses in a completely-unnecessary plot device which, apart from being on the silly side, detracts from the dramatic potential and intensity of the set-up. You know what I’m talking about- weaselly sort-of traitor Baltar (James Callis is pretty good at acting utterly untrustworthy) starts seeing visions of a sexy, slutty Cylon lady and that introduces a whole level of metaphysical, melodramatic whim-wham that does absolutely nothing for me; the central concept is sure-fire stuff, what with THE HUMAN RACE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION!!! Shepherding resources, making wrenching, impossible sacrifices for the sake of the big picture, exploring the concepts of society, politics, biology- man, there’s just so much inherent drama there that I question the need to introduce trampy head-ghosts. Dumb, dumb idea in an otherwise pretty good series.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that we save the “let’s teach the kids how to put the DVD in the player” lessons for a day when we’re using our own DVDs, and not the ones that belong to those nice people at Videoport!

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests The King of Comedy (in Feature Drama). Aspiring comic Rupert Pupkin (Robert DeNiro) has one dream: to meet late-night TV host Jerry Langford (played with startling acuity by Jerry Lewis) and, through him, to achieve fame. The problem: he has no experience, no bookings, no act except the one he’s practiced in his mother’s basement for years. Pupkin doesn’t see that this might be a problem. He believes, with the fervent belief of the slightly mad, that if he can just meet Jerry, everything else will miraculously fall into place. His only friends are similarly starstuck and mad (particularly notable is Sandra Bernhard as another stage-door stalker), and they only reinforce his loony certainty, giving him a curious air of confidence. Revisiting Scorsese’s underwatched film The King of Comedy, I saw that it was a perfect companion piece to his much-lauded Taxi Driver. Once again, Scorsese and DeNiro conspire to create an indelible portrait of a man obsessed. Indeed, King of Comedy presents a hellishly complete anxiety by repressing every chance for emotional release; where Taxi Driver offers moments of recognizable violence and vulgarity to relieve the audience’s building tension, King of Comedy simmers with a terrible submerged anger and a deep sense of dread. The plot unfolds with excruciating deliberation and dreadful humor that only Scorsese could deliver. This movie is all about the power of the pathetic and the pathological, and — boy oh boy — does it deliver.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests he not forget to put a Sunday review in the hard copy of the VideoReport….available now at Videoport!

New Releases this week at Videoport: Michael Jackson: This Is It (sort-of concert movie cobbled together from the hours of rehearsal footage filmed of Jackson’s last set of concerts, you know, the ones that didn’t happen because he died while rehearsing for them…), ‘MI-5′- season 7 (new season of the gritty, gripping British spy series), ‘Southland’- season 1 (first season of the critically-acclaimed cop show), Soul Power (remember the awesome Mohammed Ali documentary When We Were Kings, about the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight with George Foreman in Zaire? Well, remember how, as part of the festivities, there was an equally-awesome lineup of American and African soul musicians, like BB King, James Brown and others? Well this companion documentary shows those performances in their entirety…you should really watch this.), I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell (lucky-ass blogger Tucker Max has his juvenile, sexist inline scribblings turned into a- wait for it- juvenile, sexist movie!), The Boys Are Back (Clive Owen stars in this weepie about a sportswriter dad turned single father after something horrible happens; directed by the guy who did Shine), Act of God (oddball documentary explores the experiences of several people who have been struck by lightning, including some who feel that God had something to do with it [presumably because they were saying something like, "...and may God strike me dead if..." at the time]), Import Export (two Eastern Europeans, unsatisfied with life in the Ukraine and Austria respectively, head in opposite directions, thinking the grass has got to be greener elsewhere), St. Trinian’s (wacky British comedy about an all-girls school’s students’ attempts to save the place from closing down), Outrage (documentarian Kirby Dick [This Film Is Not Yet Rated] brings his tenacious investigative method [some might call it stalking] to this film exposing gay-bashing, conservative Republican politicians who are, shocker!, secretly-gay, self-hating hypocrites!), Surrogates (Bruce Willis stars in this sci fi action flick about a society where everybody just sits at home getting fat while their robotic…surrogates!…go around in the outside; the filmmakers’d like you to think of it like Avatar), Whip It (Videoport’s got lots of copies of this Drew Barrymore-directed sports drama about a young girl who finds herself when she straps on some skates and some elbow pads and kicks ass with a local roller derby team; don’t forget to check out Portland’s own Maine Roller Derby for some serious local lady butt-kickers, some of whom rent at Videoport…so watch yourself!), Saw VI (they’re still making these? Well, enjoy…), Bright Star (director Jane Campion [The Piano] brings us this period romance about the love affair between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne), Little Ashes (Twilight hunklet Robert Pattinson tries to broaden his image playing legendary surrealist artist Salvador Dali as he pals around with poet Frederico Garcia Lorca and filmmaker Luis Bunuel; please check out some of Bunuel’s films at Videoport, Twilight fans- you can even rent one on a double feature with Twilight if you want…), ‘The Simpsons’- season 20 (Matt Groening jumped ahead to bring out the venerable series’ vigintennial season on DVD).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Quiet Chaos (the ever-fascinating Nanni Moretti [Caro Diario, The Son's Room] stars in this bittersweet comedy about a grieving Italian executive), Worlds Apart (Danish drama about a young Jehovah’s Witness who falls in love with a heathen), Mermaid (Russian comedy drama about a fanciful young woman whose childlike wonder is shaken when she moves to the big city), Moscow Belgium (Belgian/Dutch romantic comedy about a beleaguered houswife who falls in love with the young, hunky truck driver she backs into in a parking lot; ask Videoport’s own resident Dutch-person Dennis2/The Rage for his take on this one), Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry (documentary about the legendary tattoo artist), Mancora (Y Tu Mama Tambien-compared erotic drama about some aimless, sexually-flexible tourists on their way to the titular legendary South American vacation destination), Husbands (the long-awaited DVD release of the John Cassavetes sausage fest starring Ben Gazzarra, Peter Falk, and the director), A Charlie Brown Valentine (tune in your childhood to see if anyone Choo-choo-chooses Charlie Brown this time around), The Headless Woman (acclaimed French thriller about a well-off woman who runs someone over, doesn’t tell anyone, and then goes gradually insane with guilt and worry- enjoy!).

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: Mama Mia!, Castaway, The Golden Compass, Rock N Rolla, Dodgeball, The Day After Tomorrow, The Princess Bride, Super Troopers, 8 1/2, Magnolia, Gamer, Surrogates, Whip It, The Invention of Lying, Whiteout, Cliffhanger, Interview With the Vampire, The Visitor, A Clockwork Orange, Pandorum, The New World, Top Gun, Taken, 28 Days Later, Angel Heart, Slumbog Millionaire, Twilight.

Get free money at Videoport!

You can buy yourself $25 worth of rental credit at Videoport for only $20 (a 20% discount!), or you can buy yourself $40 worth of rental credit for only $30 (a staggering 25% discount on Videoport’s already shockingly-low prices)! What’s the catch? Well, you have to like free money, I suppose…

Write for the VideoReport! Send us your reviews at denmn@hotmail.com, our Facebook page “Videoport Jones” & our movie blog www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I on the week’s new releases (1/19/10)

In this week’s episode Justin and Videoport Jones have to contend with Three Men and a Funny Lady in the latest round-up of new DVD releases! Pot smoking suburbanites? Creepy space aliens? A world gone mad on videogames and a world that has never known a lie? It’s all in store. Will Justin and Jonesy make it out alive? Is there enough beer in the fridge? How soon until Jerry Bruckheimer comes knocking at the door with a cease and desist letter? Find out! Guest starring Ricky Gervais (yay!), Dennis Quaid (meh!), Gerald Butler (who?) and Mary-Louise Parker (swoon!).

The Invention of Lying

Videoport Jones: “I think we all can agree that Ricky Gervais is a comedy genius, right? ‘The Office’ and ‘Extras’ are two of the gems of modern television; achingly-funny, tightly-written, squirmingly-hilarious character studies both featuring Gervais as the beleaguered center of a capriciously-cruel universe. That being said, film has not been Gervais’ best friend. ‘Ghost World’ suffered from the friction of shoehorning Gervais’ prickly-smart sensibilty into the mediocre Hollywood high-formula moccasin. ‘Well’, you figure, ‘he’s just a dumpy little British guy trying to make it in big old Botoxed Hollywood – he’ll get ‘em next time, especially if he can write and direct the next movie himself.’ Well Gervais is still a unique and refreshingly-smart presence on screen (if his post-David Brent characters seem to have one thing in common, it’s that their intelligence, while setting them above the mass of standard humanity, does absolutely nothing else for them), but, again, this time the film he’s in smacks of compromise. The Jim Carrey-worthy premise is that Gervais’ typically-smarter-than-everyone shlumph is the first guy, in an alternate world where no one has ever lied, to realize that not always telling the truth can get you what you want a whole lot more expediantly. It’s a fun setup, with lots of room for social satire and, like in ‘Ghost Town,’ the whole thing holds together for about the first half, while Gervais is utilizing his newfound power to manipulate the more beautiful and fortunate (Rob Lowe does pretty well as the epitome of both), but, again like in ‘Ghost Town,’ things go a bit soft and fluffy as Ricky wrestles with his conscience and pursues his dream girl (Jennifer Garner, slightly more likable than usual, although it looks as if she had a clause in her contract that she would not show any measurable physical attraction toward her costar). This is far from a bad movie (and there are some juicy guest stars I’m not going to spoil), but it’s not the triumph that I someday expect from Gervais.”

Justin: “I will spoil them. I will spoil them so very hard: TINA FEY! TINA FEY! TINA FEY! Phew…OK. Had to get that out. I loves me some Tina Fey. But onto Mr. Ricky, who, we have to wonder will ever be a hit with American audiences. Judging by the response to his hosting duties at the Golden Globes this past weekend, some loved him, others could have done without him. And I find that to be the case no matter what the set-up. People who aren’t fans of “The Office” UK have a sort of begrudging respect for him because he’s the reason we have “The Office” US. Along those same lines, I think David Brent tracked a little close with Gervais own personality (at least in terms of snarkiness, but not intelligence), and that rubbed folks the wrong way. What am I getting at with all of this? When you have a charming, but prickly, short British guy who half the crowd loves and the other half is unsure, projects that aren’t 100 percent aren’t going to get him very far. I think that was definitely the case with ‘Ghost Town,’ which looked cute, in a ‘lets just leave this to Greg Kinnear’ sort of way. So along comes “The Invention of Lying,’ which has a better premise and seems to suit Gervais so much better, and yet it ends up leaving you feeling like you ate a piece of chocolate you thought would taste better. I personally think Gervais talents and special brand of wit are better in the controlled doses of TV (like say, oh, ‘Extras’), but I’d like to think he’ll nail down the right feature film at some point, if only to see him dance.”

Pandorum

VPJ: “Let’s talk about Dennis Quaid for a moment, shall we? (He stars in this dark sci-fi thriller about space soldiers waking up with amnesia and lots of bad stuff going on. In space.) I’m never

More of this...

displeased to see him around, sort of like I’m never displeased when I open my fridge and find an unexpected can of light beer; it’s serviceable, moderately-pleasing, gets the job done, at least until a more Bass Ale-level actor shows up (an Edward Norton, maybe). From the height of his fame (I’d place that around the ‘Innerspace’ /’The Big Easy’ era), I’ve always rooted for DQ, even though his range wasn’t much and, for a period of about fifteen years he clearly had it written into his contracts that he got to show off his abs once per film. He had a nice, rascally charisma that was pretty winning. As he’s gotten older, though, his talent hasn’t really progressed, and he keeps trying on a soldier-y tough guy persona that just doesn’t suit his essentially-goofy likability. In this one (sort of a plodding, mean-spirited cross between ‘Event Horizon’ and ‘Memento’), he’s

...less of this.

gotta act both tortured and hardassed, which is a pretty deadening combination. C’mon, Dennis – I think ‘Innerspace 2′ would actually be a lot of fun. Loosen up again, big guy…”

JE: “I could use more ‘Undercover Blues,’ am I right! Heck YEAH I’m right! Can we get a sequel in development already? I probably shouldn’t joke about that too loud. Next thing we know he’s gotta play opposite Miley Cyrus as his grown-up, precocious, and DEADLY daughter the spy. They don’t really get along, but when mom is…crap, I’ve probably already said too much. STOP LISTENING NOW HOLLYWOOD! OK, as for D-Quaid, I think the best word I can come up for him is ’serviceable.’ He’s pretty much the go-to guy if you’ve got a middling sports movie

...and maybe a little bit more of this?

that needs a coach or aging, ‘wily’ veteran, or aging ‘wily’ cop, or aging ‘wily’ orthodontist. On paper he’s the right type for a lot of movies, he has a rugged look that producers can attach to tons of roles, but you are right when you say his range is not wide. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This guy’s not going to play Hamlet, and that’s fine by me. But I could use a bit less of him in these menial roles, such as ‘Pandorum,’ which I would call ‘Event Horizon’ meets ‘Alien’ meets every science fiction movie or TV show you’ve ever seen where the characters don’t immediately remember who they are and what they are doing. Ah, Tabula Rasa…IN SPACE. Somehow that’s not as catchy a title…”

Weeds – Season 5

VPJ: “I’ve gone on record as not being one of the gang on this show; there’s no bigger fan of the lovely and talented Mary-Louise Parker than I, and I salute the fact that a drug dealer heroine is so popular on American TV, but I maintain that this is a pretty badly-written series. I like watching Parker, with her sensibly-daffy kewpie doll delivery, navigating her mom/pot dealer character

I'm not stoned, but I play one on TV. Wait...what?

through some morally-tricky crises, but I still find her, and literally every other character on the show, both glib and unpleasant. Cable TV series have set a high standard, and ‘Weeds’ certainly has it’s share of followers (only half of whom are stoned, according to demographics), and has had staying power, but I’d call it second-tier cable dramedy- more ‘Californication’ than ‘Eastbound and Down’. At least this season brings in the ever-welcome Jennifer Jason Leigh for a while.”

JE: “Oh Mary-Louise Parker, when will you come back to non-pay cable and series TV that is more than passingly watchable? WHEN?! I feel both you and I have a soft spot for MLP thanks to her stint on ‘The West Wing’ as Amy Gardner, the romantic and intellectual foil to Mr. Josh Lyman. I’ll be the first to admit that I liked the original concept of ‘Weeds’ and MLP seemed perfect for the role of widowed suburbanite soccer mom Nancy Botwin. The problem is the writers and other creative forces behind the show came to realize that the world of drugs, even when it’s marijuana, is not always comedic and kind. So they pushed the tone a bit down the slide, and that gets us to the later seasons, which involve all sorts of plots with Mexican drug cartels and violence (the unfunny kind). As you say, I am sure there are loyalists to this show, but even they have to be getting tired of the story at this point. Then again, they could be so baked that an episode of ‘Yo Gabba Gabba’ would be as dramatically gripping. Please, MLP, come back to non-pay cable. It’s rather nice now.”

Gamer

VPJ: “Gerard Butler! ‘Dexter’s’ Michael C. Hall! Video games where people use – dare I say it – AVATARS!!! in, as the IMDb says, “a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments…!” Yeah! Kind of like ‘AVATAR!’ (Or that one movie with Bruce Willis with the almost identical plot that no one remembers). I dunno, I maintain that I can not actually recall what Butler looks like from one moment to the next (not Mr. Charisma, he), and the premise is a little too tech-y for me. From what I hear, it’s good enough, though, to hold the – dare I say it – nerds until ‘AVATAR!!’ shows up.”

JE: “As keen observers of the film world, we know that it’s not uncommon to see several films rolled out at the same time all having similar themes. ‘Deep Impact’ and ‘Armageddon,’ ‘The Fast and The Furious’ and ‘Redline,’ ‘Donnie Darko’ and ‘Bridget Jones Diary.’ This is what the industry does, it sees a promising trend or proto-trend and fires up the development machine. A year later there are five movies all roughly about the same thing with varying levels of talented actors. And thus, we end up with ‘Gamer,’ which, really, let’s just say it, is ‘Tron’ meets ‘Running Man’ meets, you know what, I could keep doing this, but you get the point. Here is a pro-tip humanity: Don’t let your lust for robots or video games lead to the downfall of society, or the almost downfall requiring a beefy hero like Butler, aging hero like Bruce or maniac like James Cameron to save the day. I’d say that’s far worse than the actual apocalypse itself, right?”

LIGHTENING ROUND! And more this week at Videoport: You the Living (Another mysterious, darkly comic Scandinavian film from Swedish director Roy Andersson, “Songs from the Second Floor”), Death In Love (Two sons of a woman who, they discover, had an affair with her concentration camp doctor, try to deal with their legacy in this no-doubt heavy drama; starring Jacqueline Bissett, Lukas Hass and Josh Lucas), Chuck - Season 2 (He’s a nerd! He’s a secret agent! He’s got a cult following!), Left Bank (Dutch/Belgian thriller about an athlete, sidelined by a mysterious ailment, who starts to suspect her European-y boyfriend is up to no good; talk to Videoport’s resident Dutch-fellow Dennis/the Rage if it’s accurate about how creepy the Dutch are…), Brothers at War (Documentary follows a young filmmaker as he embeds himself as a journalist in Iraq, partly in order to understand the experiences of his two soldier brothers), The Keeper (Steven Seagal…those who want to rent this need no more information; neither do those who don’t), Damages - Season 2 (Glenn Close continues to be terrifying in this lawyer series; seriously, she scares me), No Impact Man (A documentary about a Manhattan family who decide to live for a year without having any environmental impact whatsoever; and yes, Mr. Smartypants, the DVDs were packaged in carbon-neutral materials, which, unfortunately, we’ve had to replace with plastic immediately so that the case doesn’t disintegrate immediately upon the first rental…).

PARTING SHOTS:

- Has Ricky Gervais film efforts just missed the mark or does he not fit the taste of US audiences?

- If you were casting Dennis Quaid, what would you throw him in?

- Seriously, should we be worried video games or robots will be the downfall of civilization?

VideoReport #231

Volume CCXXXI- The Lion King Kong

For the Week of 1/19/10

Videoport gives you a free movie every day. You know…for kids!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests I Walked With a Zombie (in Classics). From the producer/director team behind Cat People (1942) comes I Walked With a Zombie (1943). I saw this years ago, and I didn’t really get into it. As a teenager, I wanted a zombie movie with rotting flesh and some brain-eating, not a moody melodrama with complex characters and no clear villain. Watching the movie again as a totally mature adult*, I was struck by the beautiful photography, spooky imagery, and intelligent writing. Now I see what all the fuss is about when people rave about Val Lewton’s low-budget, atmospheric chillers. Judging from this movie and Cat People , Lewton earned his reputation because he knew that good scripts don’t cost extra, and moody lighting goes a long way. Zombie’s story is basically Jane Eyre crossed with Rebecca, with some authentic-seeming voodoo mysticism thrown in.

*Editor’s note: hmmmm…

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis recommends The Golden Age of Television (in the Criterion Collection). The shadowy people behind the Crterion Collection are your heroes. You might not know this fact, but look at the evidence: they buy the distribution rights to pretty much every worthwhile movie in the history of the world, rescuing overlooked gems from obscurity and giving the deluxe treament to the classics of world cinema. Plus, every once in a while, they throw a completely unpredicatble screwball of a release at us, (cult films like Equinox, experimental shorts from Stan Brakhage, and Jean Painleve), and this selection of some of the best dramatic productions from the golden age of television. Check out this lineup: Marty (1953) starring Rod Steiger, Patterns (1955) written by Rod Serling, No Time for Sergeants (1955) starring Andy Griffith, A Wind from the South (1955) starring Julie Harris, Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956), a heartbreaker written by Palance and starring Jack Palance, the original version of 1956’s Bang the Drum Slowly starring a very young Paul Newman, The Comedian (1957), written by Serling again and starring Mickey Rooney, and The Days of Wine and Roses (1958) starring Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson. Television has always been that vast wasteland everybody’s always thought it was, but, even in the bland fifties, it was occasionally a haven for the best and the brightest. Of course, that was before reality shows.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Cookie’s Fortune (in Comedy [and the Robert Altman shrine currently in the 'Staff Picks' section in the middle aisle). There's no bigger Robert Altman idolator than I am, but this one usually slips my mind; luckily, that means I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it when I watched it again recently. I guess I always remember it as rather slight. And it is- it's a slightly woozy Southern comic, sort-of crime melodrama that, in typical Altman style, takes it's time introducing characters, relationships, and it's plot (about the eccentric denizens of a small town dealing with an unexpected death). Maybe the inclusion of noted non-favorites like Liv Tyler and Chris

Even O'Donnell and Tyler are good in it. No, really...

Donnell sabotages the film’s memory. Anyway, watching it again recently, I smacked myself around for having ignored it for so long; Cookie’s Fortune, while definitely minor-key Altman, is really delightful. Especially at home in the naturalistic Altman dialogue is Charles S. Dutton, as the drunken old family retainer/murder suspect, Ned Beatty as the avuncular sheriff, grand dame Patricia Neal as the titular Cookie, and Donald Moffat as a canny country attorney. Even O’Donnell and Tyler are actually pretty good. A charming, delightful, overlooked little minor classic from Altman.

Editor’s note: Videoport also picked up Altman’s similarly-overlooked film Streamers (out for the forst time on DVD). Check it out in the Altman shrine as well.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> April wants someone to explain the plot of Eden Log (in Sci-Fi), because by the end of the film I was confused and disappointed. All I could decipher was that this dude wakes up next to a dead guy underground and has to movie through levels to get to the top of the complex he’s in. There’s mutant monsters, some weird chick, and strange recordings that I suppose must somehow explain what was going on, but it didn’t. And then it has this bizarre, artsy ending. Keep in mind that it’s a French film, so…

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Videoport recommends taking a free kids movie. Seriously- it’s a no-brainer.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, B.S. Eliot suggests He’s Just Not That Into You (in Comedy). Going into this thing, I was bitchin’ to my cat about how Bennifer sucks and whatnot. However, as the end credits began to verticrawl, I realized that it was really the movie that was bitchin’! There is some real insight up in here, namely that you cannot help how or what you truly feel, what you truly want. You might go all Madame Bovary crash-and-burn trying to sort it out, or you may be all stylin’ and whatnot. But, such is the way of things and stuff. Really, it all boils down to the simple wisdom of Spock Nugent, “Live long, die young, and leave a prosperous-looking corpse.” The End.

>>>For Sunday, the Anonymous Drop Box reviewer* suggests Wayne’s World (in Comedy). I should warn you up front this is a rough one… Do you remember the Grey Pouopn commercial in which two fancy cars are stopped next to each other and the old, crusty, rich white guy in one car asks the old, crusty rich white guy in the other car if he has any Grey Poupon? Then the second guy responds, ‘But of course’, to the first guy because Grey Poupon is such a fancy mustard. (I remember my parents eating Grey Poupon on hot dogs, so I don’t know how fancy it is. Personally, I don’t care for mustard. That scene was recreated for comic effect in the 1992 film Wayne’s World. I realize I’m stretching to make this little rant of mine movie-related. The reason I’m mentioning this is on January 2nd, 2010, as I was walking through the parking lot of a grocery store, a woman in an SUV pulled up next to me and asked, “Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?”, to which I replied, “Ugh”, and kept walking. As they pulled away, I noticed that the woman in the passenger seat was videotaping the event. Just in case you read past it, let me reiterate the date- January 2nd, 2010…AD! The beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. I expected the next car to ask me, “Where’s the beef?” As I’m walking to my parked car, I’m already thinking of a witty retort that I wish I had said; it goes a little something like this- “Well slap a flannel shirt on my back and put a Pearl Jam Cassette in my tape deck, my time machine worked! It must be the year 1992, because that was the last time that joke was funny. By the way, if you have any desire to see Nirvana, don’t hesitate, because you have a finite amount of time to do so.” Ironically, and this is the honest truth, on my drive home I heard two different Pearl Jam songs on two different radio stations, both fro their first album. Back in the 1990s, my brother once flagged down a car on my street to ask for some Grey Poupon, my father scolded him and told him that a man once got shot for doing that. I can sympathize. Um…oh yeah, Wayne’s World. I know I’m supposed to recommend a movie here, but, honestly I can’t. I haven’t seen this movie in like 15 years. I’d like to think my taste in film has improved in that decade and a half, so I don’t trust my own recollection of it. However, if I can offer some advice to you readers, it’s this: if you’re thinking of repeating a joke once told by Mike Myers whilst wearing a wig, think twice.

*Editor’s note: we’ve pegged this person the Anonymous Drop Box Reviewer because, well, he/she (although probably ‘he’, don’t you think?) occasionally leaves reviews in Videoport’s (handy) drop box in the back parking lot, without signing them. Fair enough. If you’d like your movie reviews (or whatever this, in fact, was) in the VideoReport, go ahead and drop them in the drop box if you like, or even to us personally in the store. Also, you can send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com. Or to our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones. Or to our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”. Or to our movie site www.videoportjones.wordpress.com. Oh, and Wayne’s World is still pretty funny.

New Releases this week at Videoport: The Invention of Lying (British comedy god Ricky Gervais writes and directs this comedy about a guy in a world where no one lies, finding out that lying…well, it can get you some stuff…),Pandorum (sci-fi spookiness with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster waking up in a haunted spaceship with amnesia), Gamer (Gerard Butler and ‘Dexter’’s Michael C. Hall star in this sci-fi action flick about people playing high tech online, interactive video games and getting all killed and stuff), Facing Ali (fascinating documentary with former opponents of the former Cassius Clay recalling all the various ways the champ beat the living crap out of them), Laila’s Birthday (a former Palestinian judge, forced to drive a taxi, tries to get home in time for his daughter’s birthday; modern-day Palestine has other plans, of course), ‘Robin Hood’- season 3 (the continuing adventures of the hottest Robin Hood the BBC has to offer), ‘Chuck’- season 2 (he’s a nerd! He’s a secret agent! He’s got a cult following!), Like Stars on Earth (a rebellious little dreamer kid is getting in all manner of trouble until he hooks up with an eccentric art teacher in this touching drama), Left Bank (Dutch/Belgian thriller about an athlete, sidelined by a mysterious ailment, who starts to suspect her European-y boyfriend is up to no good; talk to Videoport’s resident Dutch-fellow Dennis/the Rage if it’s accurate about how creepy the Dutch are…), Brothers at War (documentary follows a young filmmaker as he embeds himself as a journalist in Iraq, partly in order to understand the experiences of his two soldier brothers), According to Greta (white bread tween Hilary Duff tries to broaden her audience base by playing a suicidal teen whose cuddly gramma [Ellen Burstyn deserves a lot better] smooch her into shape; I may be cynical…), The Keeper (Steven Seagal…those who want to rent this need no more information; neither do those who don’t), Smokin’ Aces 2: Assassin’s Ball (remember that action movie…the one with all the…action? Well, this direct-to-DVD sequel exists…as well), ‘Damages’- season 2 (Glenn Close continues to be terrifying in this lawyer series; seriously, she scares me), No Impact Man (documentary about a Manhattan family who decide to live for a year without having any environmental impact whatsoever; and yes, Mr. Smartypants, the DVDs were packaged in carbon-neutral materials, which, unfortunately, we’ve had to replace with plastic immediately so that the case doesn’t disintegrate immediately upon the first rental…), ‘Weeds’- season 5 (Mary-Louise Parker is back, still hoping her innate adorableness will continue to keep her from being murdered by rival drug dealers in this weed-y dramedy series), You the Living (another mysterious, darkly comic Scandinavian film from Swedish director Roy Andersson [Songs from the Second Floor]), Death In Love (two sons of a woman who, they discover, had an affair with her concentration camp doctor, try to deal with their legacy in this no-doubt heavy drama; starring Jacqueline Bissett, Lukas Hass and Josh Lucas).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Che, Parts 1 & 2 (the Criterion people give the deluxe treatment to Steven Soderbergh’s massive biopic about the Cuban guerilla leader, starring the always-magnetic Benicio Del Toro), The Cherry Orchard (Videoport’s Andy brings us yet another obscure Japanese film, this time it’s about an all-girls school whose student body parallels the titular Chekhov play), ‘Star Wars- Clone Wars’- season 1 (the animated adventures of the George Lucas-verse; genuinely better than the prequels, anyway…), Dora the Explorer: Dora’s Christmas (some sort of children’s show, right?), UFC #47 (that stands for ‘Ultimate Fighting Championship’, in case you didn’t know, you pencil-necked geek…RRAAAAUUUGHHHH!!!), Fighter (who’s up for a Danish/Turkish action drama about a young woman rebelling against her parents in order to be a kickboxer? Me too…), Cranford: Return to Cranford (Judi Dench returns in this continuation of the British costume drama), Streamers (the Robert Altman-directed version of the David Rabe play stars Matthew Modine as one of a group of young recruits, headed for Vietnam, who try to figure some stuff out; look for it in the Robert Altman shrine in the Staff Picks section in the Middle Aisle), The Golden Age of Television (the Criterion Collection, as usual, does the human race a favor by releasing this prime selection of dramas from the golden age of television; check out the Tuesday review for the too-good-to-be-true details), Heartworn Highways (musical documentary about outsider musicians like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and others), Abbot & Costello Meet Frankenstein (the title pretty much sums this one up, don’t you think?), Clive Barker’s Book of Blood (direct-to-DVD horror movie based on a couple of stories from genuinely-terrifying story collection by Barker), here comes a whole slew of skiin’, snowboardin’, surfin’, Mountain Dew-drenched EXTREEEEEME sports documentaries: The B, The Drifter, Modern Collective, and Swift, Silent, Deep, and, please don’t say that Videoport never did anything for you- the Incredibly Strange section welcomes three prime examples of the lost film genre know as ‘nunsploitation’ with suspiciously saucy ladies of the cloth neglecting their vows in Images in a Convent, The Nuns of St. Archangel, and The True Story of the Nun of Monza! Remember…Videoport loves you and wants you to be happy.

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: Riding Giants, No Reservations, 2010, Twilight, Up, Kingdom of Heaven, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Baraka, Basic Instinct, Beetlejuice, Constantine, Never Say Never Again, Moon.

Videoport Gives You Free Money!

Seriously. Here’s the deal: pay $20 up front on your Videoport account, and we magically transform that $20 into $25 of rental credit! Pay $30 and we give you $40 worth of rental credit! Yeah, I know!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I on the new stuff for 1/12/10!

Perhaps there is hope yet for the future of DVD releases in 2010! This week not only do we have a political thriller (a British one!) but a character study, a quiet little sci fi epic and two of our favorite men on the earth, Sam Rockwell and Patton Oswalt. Yes, Videoport Jones, there is hope. Also, more remakes.

Then again…

Big Fan

Videoport Jones: “In a big, big new release week, this is my pick. The pedigree is impeccable, with Robert Siegel (writer of ‘The Wrestler’) writing and directing, and personal hero/standup legend/hobbit Patton Oswalt. Oswalt stars as Paul Aufiero, a dumpy (sorry Patton) little 36-year old parking garage

You will stop calling me 'dumpy'...

attendant who lives with his mom, is looked down upon by his loathsome lawyer brother, and whose only sense of self-worth derives from his passionate devotion to the New York football Giants, and his nightly calls to a sports call-in show where his carefully-pre-written takes as ‘Paul from Staten Island’ are his one creative outlet. When Paul and his only friend (the ever-excellent Kevin Corrigan, whom I maintain will become the next generation’s Christopher Walken) follow Paul’s idol, Giant’s player Quantrell Bishop, things go as badly as they can, and Paul is beaten senseless. What follows is a heartbreaking, intense character study (think Rupert Pupkin, Travis Bickle, and Seth Rogen in ‘Observe and Report’) that allows for Oswalt to show that he is a dramatic actor to be reckoned with and one of the most unexpected and affecting films of the (admittedly new) DVD year. And yeah, before anyone else says it, my position as a rabid (Red Sox) fan, constantly decked out in game jerseys, and sporting my one tattoo (of the Red Sox “B” over my heart in payment to the baseball gods) perhaps provides me with an unique perspective, but it’s a really good movie regardless. (Would I go to Paul’s extremes if David Ortiz punched me in the face? Well, I’d like to think not…)”

Justin: “After following Papi and Jacoby Ellsbury into a Southie club they say Jonesy was never right in the head again. They tuned him up real bad…ANYWAY! ‘Big Fan,’ I am a very happy man to see you arrive on DVD. It’s been a long time since I have actively chased a movie around just to watch it. The NXT Gal and I have had near-misses with this movie in several cities that only served to make us more excited to see it. How could you NOT want to see this movie? Patton Oswalt people! A character study on sports fans! Depressing set pieces! OK, so maybe it’s not exactly in everyone’s wheelhouse, but it is in mine. What makes movies like ‘Big Fan’ interesting is that it’s like a crack in the door to a room you can’t go in and spying on what is going on inside. In this case the room is a lonely, desolate place that no one would want to spend too long in. This movie isn’t a tale of ‘what happens when someone takes their fandom too far,’ but instead a look at longing and obsession. Don’t expect to get an warm fuzzies out of this one or any life lessons, just a good (though not exactly uplifting) movie.”

Moon

VPJ: “Sam Rockwell, ladies and gentlemen. One of the most valuable supporting guys in the universe, Rockwell is usually too weird and interesting to get a lead, but here (as in ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’ and ‘Lawn Dogs’), Sam shows how he can bring a sympathetically-oddball movie to life. In this sci fi flick, Sam plays, well, Sam, the sole human employee of a mining facility on the, well, moon. He’s due for relief after a three year stint when he gets into an accident on the lunar surface and, well, I’m not

Hey, there's somebody cooler than me over there... Oh wait, that's impossible!

telling what happens next. And I grant all readers the authority to whip a battery at anybody who threatens to spill the beans; it’s one of those movies. Anyway, as Twilight Zone-y cool as the plot eventually ends up being, it’s Rockwell’s show, and he runs with it. Sure, maybe I could wish that the third act built up a little more tension, but ‘Moon’ is a pretty gripping ride, with Rockwell anchoring the enterprise with his fascinatingly-offbeat charisma. Fun, thought-provoking movie – and please, chuck batteries at anybody you even think is planning to spoil your Videoport-given right to experience it.”

JE: “Oh Sam Rockwell you have a strange combination of comic energy and intensity that always goes down smooth. I feel like I am in a small club of people who seriously enjoyed the oddity that was ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,’ which was also propelled largely by Rockwell. Heck he made watching ‘Charlie’s Angels’ somewhat bearable. Yes, even with 2.5 very attractive women in the mix it was Sammy that made me stick around. The other part being Bill Murray. ANYWAY, ‘Moon’ had what I would call a stealth release over the summer, which as you can expect is a TERRIBLE time to set free an independent sci fi movie. With giant robots, super heroes and all other kinds of big budget shenanigans running free during that time Sam’s adventure got lost in the shuffle. As you said Jonesy this flick has a very serious Twilight Zone/Outer Limits feel to it, which is to say it plays on that line between science fiction, thrillers and commentary. If you are the type of person who likes sci fi that is not watered down, go see this. If you are a person who likes watching an actor completely and utterly take over a movie, go rent this. If, like me and my esteemed colleague, you enjoy Sam Rockwell, go rent this. I guess what I’m saying is you should really be renting this right now. Go.”

The Hurt Locker

VPJ: “People are very excited about this! It’s a shoo-in Best Picture nominee! I wish I’d had time to see it! *Cough* In lieu of faking my way through a half-assed review of this purportedly-gripping Iraq War (the current one) drama about a thrill-addict bomb disposal expert, I’ll just offer one highly irrelevant factoid and then pass this over to you, Justin. Star Jeremy Renner, who’s also getting major Oscar buzz, guest starred in an episode of ‘Angel’ once; I thought he was fine and never thought I’d hear his name again. Shows me…”

JE: “Jonesy you and your quirky Whedon-related trivia. We could spend the better part of two days playing six degrees of separation in the Whedon-verse. But we’ll spare the readers that…for now. This film has a case of the ‘critically-acclaimeds,’ which is to say it is heavy with praise from critics and all other types of smart people. This may not be a bad thing. But unlike the two of us, all those smart people have the power to collectively shift public opinion in certain moments. By all indicators ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a unique war movie that looks at a contemporary conflict through ways we don’t often see as moviegoers or civilians. War flicks typical take on the everyday soldier as the hero, the kid from Iowa or the hardened vet. But here we have a group of guys who arguably have one of the worst jobs in an area filled with terrible jobs. What does it take to not only do a job like that but survive the physical and psychological dangers that go along with it? This is just part of what makes ‘The Hurt Locker’ a compelling movie and one that most people should watch and come to their own conclusions.”

Halloween 2

VPJ: “What do you want me to say? Director/rocker Rob Zombie has the reputation of a ballsy rebel filmmaker (and, while I think he’s got a lot to learn before he can be considered a ‘good’ filmmaker, I do have to admire his willingness to go right over the top), and that’s all well and good, but what to make of his penchant for remakes and sequels? Not exactly the maverick move, is it Rob? Even though he’s taking on his (and one of my) hero’s horror classics, well, it’s still a remake, and therefore highly unnecessary, especially when he misses the point so entirely. We don’t want to see Michael Myers as a sad widdle kid, all abused and stuff. Michael Myers just is, he just does, and that’s what makes him scary. Anyway, Zombie’s plowed on and remade the second Halloween movie (which Carpenter didn’t even direct), with Big Mike slashing his way through a hospital in search of his prey, and yeah it’s bloody, and the death scenes are amped up, and there are a few decent jumps (Zombie’s got some skills), and old pros Malcolm McDowell and Brad Dourif are always welcome, but the whole thing remains utterly unnecessary.”

JE: “Pat I’d like to solve the puzzle: ‘He did it for the money!’ Sorry, but as the unapologetic horror non-fan I’m gonna have to say that not only is this remake unnecessary but the original remake was too. I think I’m not taking too much of a stretch saying we’re in the same camp when it comes to remakes. The question is always ‘Why? A thousand whys?’ I mean we’re beyond the point of questioning the depths (or lack of) creativity and original storytelling, right? At this point we’re onto remaking remakes aren’t we? I’m waiting for someone to remake, oh, I’m sorry, ‘re-imagine’ this blog with Jack and DVDport Johnson! Remakes are about as useful as a dog helping you with a Mad-Lib.  And they make just about as much sense. The good remake is the exception that makes the rule, right? Or is that an oxymoron?  So when we come back to the question of ‘Halloween 2′ I’m not being too cynical when I say CA-CHING! Rob more than likely has his eye on bigger, gorier and ghastlier projects, which is good for him. But don’t expect us to tolerate an infinite loop of retreads. Which reminds me, have you seen the trailer for the ‘A-Team’ movie…”

In the Loop

VPJ: “Savagely funny political satire from England, with a British political aide’s off-the-cuff comments about the inevitability of an armed conflict providing the impetus for furious, devious political maneuverings from both American and British politicians and military men, both hawks and doves. It’s a Brit ‘Wag the Dog,’ but meaner and a little smarter, and it can boast one of the years most entertaining character performances, by Scottish actor Peter Capaldi (he was the gentle Scots oil exec in my favorite film of all time ‘Local Hero,’ way back when), playing the most hilariously and ferociously foul-mouthed screen character in a good long while. He’s great, the movie’s sly, funny, and thought-provoking – what are you people waiting for?”

JE: “Satire? The British? NOOOOOOOO! Jonesy you know no one will be able to understand what the hell they are saying half the time! It’s like that time you tried to convince me Blackadder was funny and all it was is guys speaking gibberish in poofy outfits! I say NO! Actually, on second thought, I say yes. Here’s why: The Brits dry (also mean, as you said) comedic sensibility is a joy to behold because it walks to the line of that polite/restrained aspect of British culture and then subverts it or obliterates it all together. They are never ones to hit you over the head with plot themes or jokes like, say, much American entertainment. With ‘In the Loop’ we get all of that mashed-up with the Brit’s take on political and military culture here in the U.S. of  A. So instead of getting ‘Lions for Lambs’ or ‘Rendition’ you have a film that plays with themes of politics and war with the strange glee of a knife juggler. I too am a fan of Peter Capaldi, who is a ‘that guy’ if you watch enough British TV shows and mini series, but let’s not let that overshadow the biggest casting surprise of this movie: Anna Chlumsky! Yes, that’s right the star of ‘My Girl’ and ‘My Girl 2′ has resurfaced! Also, James Gandolfini is in this one, but so is ‘MY GIRL!’ Where has she been?”

I Can Do Bad All By Myself

VPJ: “Tyler Perry’s back and all girdled up again as sassy, moralizin’ Medea in yet another (he does churn ‘em out, doesn’t he?) churchy morality play. This time about Medea forcing Taraji P. Hensen’s absentee singer mom to stop carousin’, drinkin’ and whatnot, and to take her children in hand. I haven’t seen this one, nor will I (one and a half doses of Perry in my life have been more than enough). I understand that his success is inspirational to some people, and I guess he’s basically harmless, but if I want to be lectured to for an hour and a half, I’ll take my lessons from someone much, much more talented. Hensen’s very lovely, though.”

JE: “You know you raise a very valid point. We’ve ragged on Tyler Perry from time to time for being more than a little sanctimonious in sensible pumps. But Perry clearly occupies a special place in some people’s hearts and DVD collections. Maybe not inspirational or even aspirational as a person, his stories fill a need some movie goers are looking for. Sure it may seem a little milquetoast and predictable to us, but as you say it is mostly harmless. He’s not ginnin’ up any bad feelings (he seems to actually be in the business of good feelings) or encouraging the youth of America to do dangerous stunts. And hey, he was OK in his small role in ‘Star Trek,’ so that has to be worth something, right? Now on the other hand if we’re talking about his awful TV shows that’s another issue all together.”

LIGHTENING ROUND! And the rest this week: Passing Strange (Spike Lee directs this filmed version of a Broadway musical), Fame (They really are gonna live forever. I blame the whole “High School Musical” mania for reviving this) The Burning Plain (The writer of “Amores Perros,” “21 Grams,” and “Babel” brings this similarly-wrenching tale of an estranged mother and daughter, played by Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron), Departures (Japanese whimsical drama about an unemployed musician who gets a job preparing corpses).

PARTING SHOTS:

- Why is Hollywood still remaking movies?
- Have you seen “The Hurt Locker?” Is it acclaim worthy?
- Could you recover from learning your sports hero is not a decent guy?
- BONUS: Seriously, what happened to Anna Chlumsky?

VideoReport #230

Volume CCXXX- Revolutionary Rodan

For the Week of 1/12/10

Videoport makes renting fun! Well, maybe not as much fun as watching, but still- pretty darned fun!

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests If you’re renting this week’s hot new release, Moon* (masterfully directed by Duncan Jones and starring the inimitable Sam Rockwell), you’ll notice it’s artfully embroidered with references to other classic sci-fi films. And you can grab one of those classics for free! Start on Monday with 2001: A Space Odyssey (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). Kubrick’s hallowed (and hollowed-out) masterpiece, 2001 is a clear influence on Moon. Both films revolve around the relationship between a solitary human cosmonaut and his Turing-test-worthy computer companion. It’s delicate work indeed to tread this ground, so thoroughly and thoughtfully did Kubrick explore the emotional and moral complexities. It’s a compliment to both films to imagine them as companion pieces.

*Editor’s note: the lovely Ms. S. Customer is clearly a huge fan of this week’s Moon, so check out her reviews all this week, where she attempts to lure you to it by reviewing the films she feels influenced it. Sneaky? Sure- but that’s why we love her.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests you fill up this space (which, clearly, nobody did this week) with your own reviews for your favorite (or least favorite) reviews from Videoport’s Action or Classics sections (or anywhere else for that matter). Just drop your reviews off in the store or send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com, our myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones or our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com. Oh, or our Facebook page “Videoport Jones”. With all those options, I think it’s really just lazy of you if you don’t send in a review or two…

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Solyaris [in Foreign]. Andrei Tarkovsky’s meditative masterpiece from the novel by Stanislaw Lem, it presents an emotionally rich and deeply intriguing mystery of ontology and identity. In brief: the crew of a space station report strange occurrences and appearances, and a psychologist is dispatched to help determine what the trouble may be. And that brief recap is the last brief thing you’ll get; Solyaris is notorious for its deliciously long takes and slow scenes.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Alien (in Sic Fi/Fantasy). Corporations in space! Yikes! Alien (written in part by the late lamented Dan O’Bannon) helped usher in a new era in science fiction films, giving us a taste of a grubby, greedy corporate-run future rather than the sleek, clean space operas of the fifties and sixties. The aesthetic design, the plot complications, and the interweaving of humor and horror influenced a generation of filmmakers, and that influence continues to this day.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Videoport customer Meghan C. suggests Return to Oz. For the past several years I’ve been re-visiting the movies that scared the crap out of me as a kid. Mind you Videoport, in its cinematic wisdom, has moved the majority of these into categories other than the kids’ section. (Yes, I see you in the sci-fi/fantasy section, “Labyrinth” and “Dark Crystal”). That said, I remember when “Return to Oz” came out in theaters and I wanted to see it wicked bad and my mom was like, “The trailers look kind of scary…you know how you were after that episode of “Our House” and I was like, “No, Mom, I know, but I can totally handle a psychiatric hospital with some creepily S&M overtones, plus some EXTREMELY SPOOKY disembodied heads, obviously-LSD-inspired henchmen and a badly animated Mountain King,” and she took me to see it. I think I actually said something way lamer like, “Whatever, mom, Wilfred Brimley isn’t in this movie!” but having watched this movie again recently, I’d say something more like the above. Which doesn’t mean “don’t rent it,” On the contrary. As a kids’ movie, this is a failure, being a) Creepy for kids and b) Creepy for adults who didn’t connect with it as a kid. But if you, too, fell asleep in the theater with nightmares of weirdo machines and lunch-box trees and wheelie-dudes, rent it again, now that you’re a grown up. You can totally handle it.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Silent Running (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). Bruce Dern stars as Freeman Lowell, the lone botanist in a space-ship biodome, working to preserve the last remaining samples of Earth’s plant life. He cares for his charges with affection and attention, and when the order comes to destroy the samples, Lowell finds himself rebelling against the eradication of his little colony. Directed by Douglass Trumbull (who helped did special effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey) and written by Deric Washburn and Michael Cimino (writers of The Deer Hunter), this is no hot-shot space adventure, but an environmental parable complete with Joan Baez soundtrack.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Cool Runnings (in Comedy). I don’t, really (although John Candy has a few moments). I just wanted to have a weekend back-to-back all-’Running’ recommendation-fest. Thank you for indulging me.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Moon (the ever-cool Sam Rockwell stars in this excellent sci-fi thriller about…well, I’m not saying- and I give you permission to smack anyone who’s preparing to reveal any plot details to you; plus April would like to say that: “Moon is awesome, and she will be forcing it on people ’til everyone loves it as much as she does. It’s a threat!”), Big Fan (standup comedy hobbit genius Patton Oswalt reveals some serious acting chops in this great character study of a rabid New York Giants fan who, when his player idol beats him up, gets a little weirder; written by the guy who wrote The Wrestler), The Hurt Locker (Jeremy Renner becomes a big star due to his riveting lead performance in this war drama about an adrenaline-junkie bomb disposal expert), Halloween II (Rob Zombie makes another ill-advised remake, and this time, the original [sequel] wasn’t that good to start with; uh-oh…), Fame (just when you finally got that damned theme song out of your head, here comes a remake of that ‘let’s put on a show’ high school musical), In the Loop (searing, darkly-comic British political thriller stars James Gandolfini and the movie-stealing Peter Capaldi), Departures (melancholy Japanese comedy about an unemployed musician who takes on a job preparing the recently deceased at a funeral home), I Can Do Bad All By Myself (inexplicably-successful movie mogul Tyler Perry is back, both as sassy gramma Medea and as writer-director of this tale of a no-good nightclub singer [the lovely Taraji P. Henson] who learns to be all good and Christian and such), Post Grad (comedy about that girl from ‘The Gilmore Girls’ figuring out what to do after college), Passing Strange (Spike Lee directs this filmed performance of the Broadway musical about a young black artist in Europe), The Burning Plain (Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron play an estranged mother and daughter coping with infidelity and other things in this drama from the writer of Amores Perros and Babel), Amreeka (an immigrant single mom and her teenaged son try to fit in in suburbia in this drama co-starring ‘Arrested Development”s Alia Shawcat), Downloading Nancy (good cast [Jason Patric, Maria Bello, Rufus Sewell] in this drama about a dissatisfied wife who finds escape through the internet and that ’sexting’ everybody’s talking about), Tru Loved (drama about a typical teenaged girl forced to deal with all manner of American bigot when she and her lesbian moms move to a small town), The Drummer (new from the Film Movement people, this drama sees the son of a Hong Kong crime boss find sanctuary with a gang of Zen drummers in the forests of Thailand).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Evil Under the Sun and Death on the Nile (Peter Ustinov hams it up delightfully as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in these enjoyable whodunnits), Hardware (legendarily nasty 1990 sci-fi/horror film was originally rated X for its nastiness; luckily, this special edition 2 disc DVD is even nastier…), Nicholas and Alexandra (lavish historical drama about a Czar in love), Troll/Troll 2 (the latter is said to be one of the worst movies of all time [so bad it's actually the subject of an unpcoming documentary about how bad it is], the former is just plain awful), Cathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch (has the abrasive comedienne made the trek back from parasitical has been celebrity bottom feeder to D-list celeb? Watch her new standup and find out!), The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (Buddy Ebsen was the leader of the titular ensemble in this 1968 Disney film; find it in the kids’ section), Eden Log (French sci fi about an amnesiac man who, waking up in a cave next to a dead guy and seemingly tailed by some sort of creature, must try to put it all together), Objectified (another documentary from the guy who made Helvetica, this time about our relationship to manufactured objects; sounds dull? Maybe, but you didn’t think anyone could make an entertaining font documentary either…).

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: The General (Buster Keaton), Transporter 3, 10 Things I Hate About You.

Rent-one-get-one-free? That’s for losers- howsabout rent-one-get-five free?

Yeah, sure, Videoport gives you a free rental every day, and that’s, well, that’s actually pretty cool. But, hey, why settle for one of Videoport’s workaday awesome rental specials when you can work the system and get an extra one, two, three, or even more rentals for your hard-earned jack? See, movie companies often throw more than one flick on a DVD, and, since Videoport’s got some of ‘em, you can stretch your rental dollar even further; check out the daily specials outlined on page 1 to make your choices. (Sure, most of ‘em are packaged in bulk because they suck, but many of them suck in very entertaining ways.) Here’s our list:

In the Incredibly Strange Section:

The Mini-Skirt Mob/Chrome & Hot Leather

Polyester/Desperate Living

Reefer Madness/Cocaine Fiends

Wild in the Streets/Gassss…

Just for the Hell of It/Blast-off Girls

Driver 23/The Atlas Moth

Chained Girls/Daughters of Lesbos

The Acid Eaters/Weed

Bettie Page Varietease/Teaserama

White Slave/Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler

Blood, Boobs, and Beast/Nightbeast

Babette/Monique, My Love

Dementia 13/Carnival of Souls

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs/Archangel

Mondo Bizarro/Mondo Freudo

Mondo Mod/The Hippie Revolt

Night of the Bloody Apes/Feast of Flesh

Psych Out/The Trip

From Dusk ‘Til Dawn/Full Tilt Boogie

In the Foreign Language Section:

Lessons of Darkness/Fata Morgana

Legend of Suram Fortress/Ashik Carib

In the Horror Section:

Parents/Fear

Motel Hell/Deranged

Revenge of the Creature/The Creature Walks Among Us

Troll/Troll2

In the Documentary Section:

Best Boy/Best Man

Death By Design/The Life & Times of Life & Times

In the Criterion Collection:

La Jetee/Sans Soleil

Late Spring/Tokyo-Ga

In the Classics Section:

The Comedy of Terrors/The Raven

The Zombies of Mora Tau/The Werewolf

The Prisoner of Zenda (2 versions)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (2 versions)

The Giant Claw/The Creature With the Atom Brain

Go West/The Big Store

Room Service/At the Circus

Judge Priest/Doctor Bull

The Night Stalker/The Night Strangler

In the Comedy Section:

Teen Wolf/Teen Wolf 2

In the Action Section:

Tango & Cash/Cobra

Django/The Last Pistolero

El Mariachi/Desperado

In the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Section:

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2 versions)

Rebirth of Mothra/Rebirth of Mothra 2

Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla/Godzilla vs. Destroya

In the Mystery/Thriller Section:

The Truth About Charlie/Charade

Blackmail/Easy Virtue

In the Children’s Section:

Frosty the Snowman/Frosty Returns

And, here are some even bargain-y-er multiple DVDs:

Smokey and the Bandit 1-3 (in Comedy)

Olga’s House of Shame/Olga’s Dance Hall Girls/White Slaves of Chinatown (in Incredibly Strange)

The Wolf Man/Werewolf of London/Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman/She Wolf of London (in Horror)

So, just to play devil’s advocate here- say you were to rent the Frosty the Snowman/Frosty Returns double DVD alongside the Wolf Man (X4) DVD on a Thursday. That’d be six full-length movies all for just one dollar, which works out to about 17 cents a movie. Seriously, we’ll have to just stop paying Andy at this rate…

Extended Rates and Free Money!

Yup. Turn your 1 night rental (new releases) into a 3 night rental for just $1.75 more, and turn a 3 night rental (everything else) into a 7 night rental for just an additional 69 cents! And, buy yourself some free rental credit with Videoport’s pre-payment plans: buy yourself $25 worth of rental credit for only $20 or, if you’re feeling saucy, buy yourself $40 of rental credit for only $30!

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I on the New Releases for 1/5/10!

Look, we’ll be honest with you here folks, Dr. Videoport Jones and I have both been on a bit of hiatus thanks to the holidays. The Nog, it did us in. So we’re not quite in fightin’ form to take on this week’s new DVD releases. But with a new flick from Diablo Cody, some animated fare and laughable horror flicks with descriptions like “Rube Goldberg-ian murderousness” we’ll power through. For you, dear reader.

Jennifer’s Body

Videoport Jones: “Man-o-man, is it good to be back, especially since that means the holidays are over. What with the incessant traveling, and the having of the no money, and the having no time whatsoever to see any of the new movies whatsoever in the last two weeks. Yeah. Well, sadly, with this as the one exception. I made it through about a third of this, the second film written by the ubiquitous Diablo Cody after the vastly overrated ‘Juno.’ In interviews, in her pop culture column in Entertainment Weekly, and, sadly and persistently, in screenplays, Cody’s singular brand of superficial catchphrase-mongering and oh-so-precious quippery is factory-designed to make me grind my teeth. And this, her first foray into snarky horror comedy, doesn’t even have ‘Juno’s’ stellar cast to carry it past its script. Nope, instead, of Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, Allison Janney, or Rainn Wilson, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ has to make do with the girl from ‘Mama Mia!’ and, speaking of ubiquitously-popular for no reason whatsoever, Megan Fox. Is there an actress who’s done less to deserve moviestardom and internet-downloadability than this blank-eyed, flat-voiced, midriff-baring mannequin-woman? Sure, she’s attractive, I guess, but does it make me less of a guy’s guy if I find myself less attracted to her than any human being on the planet? I mean, I’d rather see Helen Mirren in low-rider jeans than ol’ Foxy any day. I find this movie, its star, and its writer absolutely insufferable. I cannot suffer them.”

Justin: “HELLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO 2010! Let’s all take a moment and pray to whatever we hold dear this is not a sign. If it is we’re gonna burn a lot of calories torching new releases this year. What to say about ‘Jennifer’s Body?’ Well, it’s about a succubus, namely a foul temptress that brings nothing but chaos and destruction in her wake. So in that sense the casting of Megan Fox was truly inspired. Seriously America, I think we all need to have an intervention on this whole Megan Fox debacle. It would be passible if she was attractive, a terrible actor and worse person. But she’s not. She strikes out on all counts. She’s frightening to look at. I’d like to take her to Fatburger and lock the doors. Something about those sunken eyes and boney, well, everything, not only is disturbing but also makes watching her awful acting the equivalent of having your face shoved in a grapefruit while getting kidney punched. Un. Bear. A. Ble. If they had gone with Mila Kunis, a similar mold as Fox with a slightly higher acting ceiling, the movie may have had a fighting chance. But that would also require El Diablo to not be so infatuated with herself and her writing. Look, I liked ‘Juno’ a lot. The sublime cast turned what was a good concept but word-heavy script into a great movie. But so help me if El Diablo keeps churning out snarky, self-aware, pithy pop-culture darlings I’ll consider her a succubus, and she will be dealt with accordingly. Up for a demon hunt old buddy? I smell a reality TV show: ‘Videoport Jones: Succubus Hunter.’”

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

VPJ: “At the risk of repeating myself, ‘If it ain’t Pixar, it ain’t worth it.’ This is another indifferently-animated, celebrity-voiced, vaguely-pleasant time waster about a humorously-nerdy scientist (voiced by SNL’s Bill Hader) who invents a way to create meat out of thin air. Sure, sure, Justin, I can see how that’s one in the plus column for you, but, well, as a pinko vegetarian, I question how well I’d cope with the necessity of scraping bacon off my windshield every morning. Hader’s a funny guy (although depriving him of his physicality halves his entertainment value), and throw in James Caan, Bruce Campbell, Anna Faris, Neil Patrick Harris, Will Forte, and Mr. T (!), and…well, it’s no Pixar.”

JE: “See, you’re talking to the wrong guy about this movie. Here’s why: I LOVED this book growing up. Wore the pages down almost as bad as my copies of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Maybe it was the ridiculousness of the story, a town where the weather is decidedly delicious. Perhaps I was just a hungry child. This adaptation takes a few liberties in fleshing out the premise into a disaster epic on par with  ‘Earthquake!’ or ‘Dante’s Peak.’ Look, I’m a big fan of Hader as well as NPH, and well, we all know I have a special place in my heart for BRUUUUUUCE! That space is also conveniently located next to the spot in my heart for bacon. Which, will probably result in a complicated surgical procedure some day. ANYHOO, this one will most likely get a viewing. Sure it’s not Pixar, so it may not make the room all dusty towards the end, but if it can sustain some laughs and be as appealing to kid Justin and adult Justin, then it wins in my book. VIVA BACON RAIN!”

The Final Destination

VPJ: “As far as horror series go, this one, while enduringly-awful, is endearingly-predictable in its Rube Goldberg-ian murderousness. The setup’s always the same: Some middling twenty-something actors survive seemingly-certain death and Death, royally pissed off, decides that ‘this time it’s personal’ and goes after the survivors with a series of needlessly-baroque deathtraps. In this, supposedly Death’s final go-round, the filmmakers have decided that it ain’t broke, and serve up a final helping of squirmy death scenes…and this time with 3-D viscera! (Videoport’s Regan assures me that the ‘death by escalator’ is the best.)”

JE: “You are back and in rare form my friend. ‘Rube Goldberg-ian murderousness!’ Eloquent and about as descriptive as you can get. I’d almost call this series ‘Death by Mad-Lib.’ Let’s see: ‘In this scene (blank) walks into a (blank) with a faulty (blank) and is (blanked). Hard.’ Look, I have absolutely no use for this film whatsoever. I’m not on the horror bandwagon and not even on the ’so-bad-it’s-freaking-hilarious’ horror movie bandwagon. I’m guessing that bandwagon departs and returns from Videoport on a regular basis. But if cheese and adorable twenty-somethings getting brutally axed (in the most hilarious fashion, of course) is your thing, then indulge friends.”

9

VPJ: “Computer-animated, post-apocalyptic sci fi anyone? Tim Burton’s tagged his name onto this one (which was actually created by Shane Acker, expanding on his original short), and it features some impressive voices, as per usual (I see Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Connelly, John C. Reilly, and the ever-weird Crispin Glover). Um…not Pixar, but I’ll see it.”

JE: “Your rules on viewing non-Pixar animated features is complicated to me. So ‘Cloudy’ is a No, but ‘9′ is a Yes? Is it the meat thing or Burton? Or do you have a thing for creepy puppet-looking animated heroes? Cause ‘9′ has that in a heaping supply. This is a post-apocalytic adventure that starts from a sobering premise: Humanity screwed it up and killed the crap out of each other, leaving only creepy doll-like people. Can you sense that I think the dolls are creepy? Cause I do. As good as this story could be,  – and frankly the feature-length has hints of sci fi-retreadedness – I have a feeling that watching it would give me nightmares. I’ll take a pass.”

Paranormal Activity

VPJ: “Boy, sure wish I’d had time to see this one in advance of this column. I’ll bet I would have had some interesting things to say. Over to you, Justin…”

JE: “And what would you have missed exactly? Another in a series of ‘faux-mentary’ horror films, this one about a young couple whose home is PLAGUED BY MYSTERIOUS EVIL FORCES! Is it The Devil? Eli Roth hiding in closet? The ghost of Rod Roddy? It’s tough to say. But fortunately the couple documented the whole thing on a…OK, I’m sorry, I can’t keep up this charade. OK, yes, I know people like getting scared, and yes, I can see the appeal of making it seem as realistic as possible from a storytelling standpoint. But this movie has the fatal flaw I find with so many other horror movies: When things get creepy just leave. Period. Don’t try to tough it out. Don’t call an expert on the occult (unless it’s Doctor Strange). And DON’T FILM IT ALL. Seriously who takes the time to set up a camera and tripod in the midst of all kinds of freaky stuff going on in your home? ‘Oh honey wait a sec, the white balance is acting up and not capturing the bleeding walls at all…’”

Trucker

VPJ: “A well-reviewed indie film co-starring one of my hetero man-crushes? Yes, please. Sure, it nominally stars the lovely Michelle Monaghan (so good in ‘Gone Baby Gone’) as the titular hard-livin’ hedonistic driver-lady who’s forced to change her ways when her long-ago-abandoned son turns up, but, for me, the real attraction is that her co-trucker boyfriend is played by Nathan Fillion of ‘Firefly,’ ‘Serenity,’ and total awesomeness fame. Sure, his film career hasn’t quite taken off yet (although he was, as ever, shamefully-ignored in the underrated horror comedy ‘Slither’), but I’m squarely in his corner…to the extent that I fully intend to watch this film at some point.”

JE: “Ah Capt. Tightpants…er, Mal Reynolds. A man’s man, and yes a member of the guy-love club. He certainly can do no wrong in my eyes and I’ve got hope he’ll make The Leap to bankable leading man on the big screen. As for Monaghan, good for her for taking on the kind of ‘uglied-down for the sake of art’ role that garners praise from critics and respect from directors (not to mention people like you and me). Since the last ‘truck drivin’ movie I saw was either ‘Smokey and the Bandit’ or ‘Black Dog’(yes I have no shame), maybe this will make the must-rent watch list.”

LIGHTENING ROUND! And now some quick hitter reviews of movies the holidays prevented me from doing my duty towards: 50 Dead Men Walking (The true story of a brass-bollocked Irish lad who worked as a double agent for the British against the IRA), Adam (Hugh Dancy attempts to re-prove Hollywood’s assertion that even the most serious mental illnesses can be cured by the cuddly attentions of a hot neighbor in this offbeat romantic comedy), Lorna’s Silence (From the ever-heartbreaking Dardenne Brothers – “La Promesse,” “L’enfant” -  comes another tale of the crushed hopes of the European underclass), A Woman in Berlin (Heavy stuff from Germany in this true tale of a patriotic Nazi woman attempting to make the deals necessary to emerge from the Russian occupation of Berlin as little raped as possible), Diminished Capacity (Matthew Broderick and Alan Alda team up as a journalist with memory loss and the Alzheimer’s-afflicted uncle he moves in with in this darkly-comic dramedy), The Escapist (Good ol’ Brian Cox leads a mass prison break out in this British comic caper), Carriers (Now that he’s all famous and stuff, Star Trek’s Chris Pine’s heretofore-unreleased biozombie film suddenly finds itself released).

VideoReport #229

Volume CCXXIX- New Year’s Evil

For the Week of 1/5/10

Videoport thanks the nice Videoport customer who told us that her new year’s resolution was to rent with us instead of a certain online movie rental service. We’d also like to advise everyone that the domain name ‘www.neflixsucks.org’ has been taken.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>>Dennis2/The Rage suggests The Substitute (in Horror). There are two things I want to point out to start with when it comes to this movie. The first one has to do with the cover. When you look at the cover, you see some sort of female demon-like creature on it, with creepy-looking kids behind her. Clearly, the movie is targeted at people who liked movie such as The Grudge and The Ring, which, by the way, was the reason I picked this one up. Secondly, the rating seems a little odd. The cover says that the film has an R rating because of the language. Now although this might be right, I don’t remember anything too offensive to warrant a rating like this, especially when you take into account that the target crowd for this movie in Europe was more like Harry Potter viewers than anything else. So I think it’s safe to say that this movie is a little misrepresented. You’ll find this little Danish gem in our horror section, but don’t think you’ll be terrified out of a good night’s sleep. Directed by the guy who was responsible for the Danish and American versions of the excellent Nightwatch, in this one a class filled with 14 year olds is confronted by an attractive blond substitute teacher called Ulla. The new teacher appears to have some powers the best teachers don’t usually consistently display, like mind reading. It doesn’t take long for the kids to discover that their teacher is actually an alien, who traveled to earth to mate. And although they try and tell their parents about Ulla, each time the clever alien charms her way out of the students’ accusations, and inches closer toward her diabolical objectives. Just like the Swedish movie Let The Right One In, this one is pleasantly over the top when it comes to its idea, but it shows so much heart that you just can’t help but go ahead and love it.

>>> April suggests Office Killer (in the Incredibly Strange section). This is the movie you must rent tonight. It will blow your mind in very subtle ways. Directed by the amazing photographer Cindy Sherman and starring Carol Kane, Molly Ringwald, and Jeanne Tripplehorn ! C’mon! Rent it! Need more? The plot goes like this: a timid office worker accidentally kills one of her coworkers, setting off a chain of amusing deaths. Why is this film not a cult classic? Sigh.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Some Like It Hot (in Classics). It’s winter in Chicago, 1929. Two innocent musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who play old friends with marvelous on-screen chemistry) happen to witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre… and the mob ain’t keen on witnesses, y’know? Penniless and desperate to get out of town, they sign up for a gig down in Florida. There’s just one little hitch: it’s an all-girl band, starring singer/ukelele-player Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a winsome, troubled gal with a penchant for saxophone players. Billy Wilder’s gender-switching comedy of errors is arguably Monroe’s best film (and a scattery, sweet, vulnerable performance that reportedly was dragged out of her with great pains), its comedy playing simultaneously on several levels and always with a winning self-consciousness.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests ‘Freaks and Geeks’- the complete series (in Comedy). The whole ‘the complete series’ thing should be a tipoff to the fact that no one watched this hilarious, heartbreaking, breathtakingly-nigh-perfect show and so it was cancelled, presumably to make room for something dreadful, awful, and soul-deadening, and just what America deserves…and so it joins the ranks of shows like ‘Arrested Development’, ‘Police Squad’, ‘Firefly’, and ‘Futurama’, all of which were, apparently, too good for this benighted country and its slack-jawed, jabbering, nitwit inhabitants…I guess network TV needed more room for Jim Belushi sitcoms and reality shows!!! AIIIIEEEE!!! Attica! Attica! Attica! Fine, fine…I’m over it. Anyway, my sweet baby (Mrs. Elsa S. Customer, to you) bought me the boxed set for festivus, and we re-watched it all in one massive go, and, of course we fell in love

You didn't watch us, so this is all you get.

with it all over again, and now, as I’m writing this, we’re watching the very last episode ‘Discos and Dragons’, and I’m getting absolutely furious all over again!!!! AAAUUUGHHHH! Anyway. It’s the most perceptive and truthful series about teenagers ever made, which, along with Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, could make up the entire curriculum of a secondary education course. (It seriously would benefit any high school teacher or guidance counselor, or parent, I’ve ever met). Set in 1980, it begins as the portrait of Lindsay and Sam Weir, two nice kids from a middle class family, as they navigate the treacherous waters of a typical Michigan high school. Sam’s a small-for-his-age guy, just trying to survive, and Lindsay, still reeling from the death of her beloved grandmother, is an honor student who has taken to questioning things and starts taking tentative steps toward the unkempt stoner kids who seem to represent the rebellion she’s suddenly craving. Written by people like Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, and Mike White, ‘Freaks and Geeks’ combines laughs, painful teenage reminiscences, and all-around, pitch-perfection in unprecedented greatness. The cast launched Seth Rogen, Linda Cardellini, Jason Segel, James Franco, and should have launched a few more, if the world were fair (I am rooting for Martin Starr [look for him in Adventureland], whose soulful ubergeek Bill Haverchuk is easily the most affecting character on the show). The thing that struck me about the show upon the re-watch was how generous the writing of each character was, without ever losing sight of their limitations. Everybody gets their due, and all the relationships ring absolutely true. Check out this list: ‘The Wire’, ‘The West Wing’, ‘Six Feet Under’, ‘The Sopranos’…and ‘Freaks and Geeks’. Along with the previously-mentioned, they’re the best shows I’ve ever seen.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests This American Life- seasons 1 & 2 (in Documentary). For two short seasons, Ira Glass and his talented crew transferred their storytelling magic to the television screen in This American Life. And magic it is —- somehow, at crucial moments in these wildly varying stories, time slows down and seems to stand still, waiting for the next bated word. In only 12 short episodes, they bring us some indelible stories. Standout segments: in Pandora’s Box, the midnight shift at a Chicago hot dog stand unexpectedly reveals contemporary racial tensions; in Reality Check, a family tries to cope with the bull cloned at their request, resulting in a story which The Onion A.V. Club describes as “Pet Sematary by way of The New Yorker.”

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>>Take it from me:  kids love Russ Meyer.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Andy suggests Exorcist III (in Horror). Good news for fans of William Friedkin’s 1973 film The Exorcist: here’s a film that will help erase the awful memory of Exorcist II: The Heretic (which Videoport no longer owns…you’re welcome). The Exorcist III, written and directed by William Peter Blatty from his novel Legion, is a pretty solid, smart, and scary movie- not quite up there with the original, but a worthy sequel. Lieutenant Kinderman (played by Lee J. Cobb in the original, replaced by George C. Scott here) is having a bad day. First, someone is committing horrific murders in the style of the Gemini Killer,

Brad Dourif is in this as well. He is God.

who has been dead for fifteen years. Next, it’s the fifteenth anniversary of the night his friend, Father Karras, jumped down a staircase to his death. If that’s not enough, his mother-in-law is in town, and she’s keeping a live carp in the bathtub, so Kinderman hasn’t bathed in days! Yes, besides being creepy and mysterious, Exorcist III has a sense of humor that the original was lacking. Jason Miller, playing ‘Patient X’, is the only original cast member to return, but this is the only Exorcist sequel that ‘feels’ right. It’s also serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s favorite movie. So there.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Harvey (in Classics). Harvey is a pooka, an invisible animal spirit; his form happens to be a six-foot-tall white rabbit. Harvey is visible only to his best friend, Elwood P. Dowd, a harmless dipsomaniac who spends his days slowly tippling away his inheritance in a neighborhood dive. This apparent delusion distresses Elwood’s family, partly because it damages their social reputation, and they decide that he must be cured of his illness. Uh-oh. The best part of this whimsical little film is the lovable Jimmy Stewart being all gosh-darned lovable with both barrels: he dodders and stutters, speaks gently and kindly, listens with sincerity, makes thoughtful moues and nods to his fellow characters, and spends the whole films in a richly alcoholic haze of benevolence.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (middling animated movie about a scientist who can create meat from thin air at least features a varied and overqualified voice cast, nicluding Bill Hader, James Caan, Mr. T!, Will Forte, Anna Faris, Bruce Campbell, and Neil Patrick Harris), ‘Chuck’- season 2 (the cult comedy [meaning, of course, on the verge of cancellation] about a reluctant nerd-turned-superspy, hits the DVD), ‘Big Love’- season 3 (Bill Paxton and his bigamist brood are back for another season of this surprisingly-gripping HBO series), The Final Destination (purportedly the final of the Final Destination movies, wherein subpar actors cheat Death only to see Death get back at them in Rube Goldbergian ways, this one features some optional 3-D gore! Delicious!), 50 Dead Men Walking (gripping Irish thriller about a

brass-balled real life guy from Belfast who joins the IRA as an informant for the British), Trucker (well-regarded indie drama about the titular carefree, boozin’ lady truck driver who finds her estranged 11 year old kid dropped on her mudflaps one day and has to adjust; costarring my main man Nathan Fillion [that's 'Firefly''s Captain Mal Reynolds to you...), Adam (Hugh Dancy plays a brilliant, hunky guy with serious mental issues whose cute new neighbor attempts to cuddle back to health in this romantic drama), Lorna's Silence (the newest heartbreaking drama from the Dardenne brothers [La Promesse, L'enfant], this time about a trio of immigrants hatching a predictably-tragically-doomed plan to remain in Belgium), The Escapist (good ol’ Brian Cox leads an interesting cast in this British prison break movie), Diminished Capacity (dark comedy/drama about a young reporter with sudden memory loss [Matthew Broderick] who moves in with his Alzheimers-afflicted uncle [Alan Alda]), A Woman in Berlin (heavy German drama about the titular woman, a still-loyal Nazi in the days immediately after Germany surrenders, who makes a series of deals to protect herself from the rape-happy Russian invaders).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: ‘The Paper Chase’- season 1 (John Houseman wants you to look to your left, and then to your right; one of the people you just looked at will rent this 80’s law school drama series, while the other two will move on to the Incredibly Strange section), Freeze Frame (thriller about a murder suspect who films himself 24 hours a day to always provide himself with an alibi), Loren Cass (searing, daring indie drama about aimless, frustrated teens coping with 1997 Florida race riots), Frank’s Depression (this one lives in the Incredibly Strange section…you’ll have to find out the details there yourself…), Animal Love (Werner Herzog, speaking of this documentary about disenfranchised people who seek out the companionship of animals rather than humans, said “Never have I looked so directly into hell”; so, you know, have fun with that…), Models (another pseudodocumentary by Animal Love’s Ulrich Seidl, this time about the desperate, self-destructive lives of a trio of would-be models).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: A History of Violence, Body Heat, Bottle Rocket, Jennifer’s Body, 9, Star Trek (2009), Blade Runner, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

Celebrity Wang!

Yup, get a bunch of film geeks together on a busy holiday weekend (thank you for that, by the way, loyal Videoport customers) and, invariably, their conversation turns to which famous actors have shown us their weiners. (On film, of course…) Call it a feminist flip-flop (so to speak) of the age-old ogling of naked women in film, call it a shocking waste of time, call it juvenile if you must, but here is our list of all the famous dudes we could think of who’ve bared it all for your pleasure(?):

Ewan McGregor (in Young Adam, Velvet Goldmine, Trainspotting, and The Pillow Book)

Harvey Keitel (in The Piano, Bad Lieutenant, and Holy Smoke)

Robin Williams (in The Fisher King and World’s Greatest Dad)

David Bowie (The Man Who Fell to Earth)

Rip Torn (The Man Who Fell to Earth)

Sylvester Stallone (Italian Stallion)

Viggo Mortensen (Eastern Promises)

Kevin Bacon (Wild Things)

Bruce Willis (The Color of Night)

Jason Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)

Eric Stoltz (Naked in New York)

Vincent Gallo (The Brown Bunny)

Mark Rylance (Intimacy)

Peter Sarsgaard (Kinsey)

Malcolm McDowell (Caligula)

Frank Langella (Lolita)

Julian Sands (A Room With a View)

Rupert Graves (A Room With a View)

Ken Jeong (The Hangover)

Tom Berenger (At Play in the Fields of the Lord)

Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs- sort of a judgement call, but the judges rule that it counts)

So that happened… Did we overlook your favorite celebrity weenis? Send us your suggestion (along with anything else movie-related, even if it has nothing to do with penises, to denmn@hotmail.com!)

VideoReport #228

Volume CCXXVIII- 2010: The Year We Make Contact (According to 1984)

For the Week of 12/29/09

Videoport wishes us all a happy, peaceful, and slightly less shiny-side-of-disc-touchy 2010.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests ‘Futurama’ (in Animation). The brainchild of Matt Groening and helmed by obsessive geek and gifted writer David X. Cohen, Futurama is is a classic, old-timey workplace comedy: just a time traveller, his robot best friend, their Cyclopean middle manager, a mad scientist, a wealthy physics grad student, a vaguely Jamaican accountant, and a lobster-doctor from outer space muddling their way through the work day. It’s also a piece of seasonal fare right now: Futurama starts out on on New Year’s Eve, 2000, when pizza delivery guy Philip J. Fry accidentally submits himself to long-term cryogenic storage, and awakens on New Year’s Eve, 2999. Hilarity ensues, as do deeply buried mathematics jokes. Who doesn’t like a good mathematics joke?

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis 2/The Rage suggests The Proposition (in Action/Adventure). Although I am not sure if this can even be called a western, since the movie was made in Australia (an eastern, is that even a thing?), we still put it in the action section because it is westernish. Now that made me even more excited, because I am a complete waste of space when working on Tuesdays, knowing next to nothing about one of the sections that’s free on Tough and Triassic Tuesdays. Now I have a movie to recommend on the days when action movies are free! And do I recommend this movie, jeez. This is the director whose movie The Road, starring Viggo Mortensen, is playing in theaters right now. I strongly doubt that The Road is anywhere near as amazing as this one though. In Australia of the late nineteen hundreds, a man called Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is caught by local law enforcement. Charlie is part of a gang, and the guy who caught him Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone, who was also in Beowulf) strikes a deal with him, which means that Charlie has to kill his supposedly unfindable and unkillable brother. He sets out to find him, in the immense, overpowering, hot Australian outback. The screenplay was written by Nick Cave, who is also partially responsible for the movie’s stellar soundtrack. The music is really something else, co-written by Warren Ellis. Warren Ellis heads a three-piece Australian band called The Dirty Three. Youtube those guys, rent this movie, eat at Outback. Australia rules!

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Clueless (in Comedy/the hastily-assembled temporary Brittney Murphy memorial shelf in the middle aisle). I’ll admit: there’s something stomach-turning about the ghoulish desire to revisit the film catalog of an actor who’s recently died. I’ll also admit: I haven’t seen many of Brittney Murphy’s movies. But still, one night soon I’ll curl up and revisit Clueless, a saucy updating of Jane Austen’s Emma set in Beverly Hills. I’ll probably even shed a tear over the bouncy, game, gamine girl playing Tai, with her round cheeks and her cheeky voice shifting from gravel to helium. She had a pert twinkle and a bright eye, and she vanished too soon.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests every film Robert Altman ever directed (in nearly every section). The lovely Mrs. Elsa S. Customer gave me the new oral biography of Robert Altman for Christmas. Because she is a genius. It’s a fascinating read about a brilliant and fascinating filmmaker (who just happens to be my hero, so here it comes – my ranking of every Robert Altman film at Videoport!): 1. McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 2. Nashville, 3. M.A.S.H., 4. The Long Goodbye, 5. California Split, 6. Short Cuts, 7. The Player, 8. Thieves Like Us, 9. Fool for Love, 10. 3 Women, 11. Streamers, 12. Secret Honor, 13. Popeye, 13b. Brewster McCloud, 14. Gosford Park, 15. ‘Tanner ‘88′, 15b. Vincent & Theo, 16. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, 17. O.C. & Stiggs, 18. A Wedding, 19. A Prairie Home Companion, 20. Cookie’s Fortune, 21. A Perfect Couple, 21b. Buffalo Bill and the Indians, 22. The Company, 23. Kansas City, 24. Images, 25. Dr. T & the Women. And make no mistake- you can’t even go wrong with the end of the list. Well, maybe Dr. T…

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> It’s a free kids movie and you don’t have to rent anything else to get it. I genuinely don’t see anything to complain about…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (in Comedy). There are stupid movies, there are intelligent movies, and there’s a whole spectrum of movies in between. But it takes real care and to make an intelligently stupid movie. That’s exactly what you get from Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Now, don’t misunderstand me: this is not a film for sophisticated tastes. The simple story of two genial stoner roommates on an all-night quest to sate their burger craving, H&K is jam-packed with sophomoric and scatological humor, unabashedly silly sightgags, and cheerful pandering to the key munchies-and-giggles demographic. But it does it so darned well that’s it’s real fun to watch, even if you don’t fall squarely into that demographic yourself. It’s a trifle, but an admirably crafted one. The jokes are dumb, and performed with great conviction. The actors are perfectly cast and perfectly earnest. As responsible cubicle wage-slave Harold, John Cho radiates a tightly-wound affability that makes you feel for him as his troubles mount. Kumar (Kal Penn) is the classic lay-about instigator, a good-natured goofer who always escalates a situation. These loosely sketched characters feel curiously real, in part because the two stars are so sincere and pleasant. And the supporting cast is equally notable. Neil Patrick Harris appears as himself, sort of — in the world of H&K, NPH is a wild-eyed womanizer with poor impulse control and a raging appetite for drugs and trouble, no doubt a precursor to his current sit-com role. Christopher Meloni (of Law & Order fame) shows his comic chops here, bringing humor and humanity to a repulsive caricature, a pustule-covered creep straight out of an E.C. Comic. A serious note: stoner comedies traditionally rely on stereotypes, playing up homophobic or ethnically charged jokes that are more often nasty and offensive than funny. But Harold and Kumar go to White Castle does more than parrot back the same slop; to some extent, it plays with the tropes and types, turning them inside out and upside-down, pointing out the absurdity of the assumptions built into the jokes.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Funny People (in Comedy). It’s not Judd Apatow’s best film (that’s still The 40 Year Old Virgin), but it’s certainly his most ambitious. For a guy who gets written off as a lowbrow ‘d*ck and fart joke’ specialist by people who should know better, Apatow is, quite frankly, the current savior of American film comedy, his deftly-balanced mix of heart and belly laughs rising so far above what’s expected of a summer tentpole comedy that he ought to get a medal just for trying harder than he has to. Funny People is the story of a spoiled, successful movie star who discovers that he’s terminally ill, and decides to try and win back the girl that got away, and, speaking of rising above, it stars Adam Sandler, who delivers his best work since Punch Drunk Love. Sandler’s doing some pretty courageous self-parody (his character is the star of such lowbrow comedies as Mer-man), and he shows, once again, that, like Will Ferrell, when given the opportunity, a popular comedian’s gifts can translate into a surprisingly effective dramatic actor. Sure, the film bogs down at about the hour and a half mark, and yeah, it is over two hours long (not usually a good idea for comedy), but Funny People sticks in your mind. It’s a sneaky good movie.

New Releases this week at Videoport: A Perfect Getaway (Steve Zahn brings his quirky comedy guy persona to this horror flick about pretty vacationers getting bumped off in the photogenic jungle), Vampire Killers (this British horror comedy was originally called Lesbian Vampire Killers; which is, I think we can all agree, a better title…), 9 (high-tech, post-apocalyptic animated film got great reviews and is blessedly, too dark to have made much money), Paranormal Activity (the low-budget horror success story of the year, this spooky flick made a kajillion dollars and scared off a frillion pairs of pants), Jennifer’s Body (written by the utterly-obnoxious Diablo Cody [of Juno fame] and starring the utterly-talentless Megan Fox [of baring your tummy fame], this wise-ass horror film is now available for your, um, enjoyment, I guess), Staten Island (this thriller stars Ethan Hawke and Phillip D’Onofrio went right to DVD; that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, right?), Carriers (Chris Pine [that's Captain Kirk to you], stars in this low-budget horror film about a zombie plague!), Medicine for Melancholy (indie romantic drama about a young black couple out on a date), ‘Glee’- season 1 (everybody loves this show about a high school putting on musicals and such; it stars the great Jane Lynch), ‘The United States of Tara’- season 1 (Toni Colette stars as a housewife with multiple personalities in this cable comedy series), The Marine 2 (couldn’t get John Cena back for this sequel? Just get another, lesser ‘rassler to fill in!).

New Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: Hancock, Silent Hill, Stargate, Pathfinder, Walking Tall, Wall Street, Stir of Echoes, Road House, Predator, Office Space, The Devil’s Rejects, I, Robot, Bulletproof Monk, Dark Blue, Master and Commander, Total Recall, Independence Day, and Wings of Desire.

Dennis2/ The Rage brings you his best (and worst) movies and shows of 2009:

The Best:

1. I’ve Loved You So Long

2. Eldorado

3. In Treatment

4. Taken

5. Lost, Season 5

6. Let The Right One In

7. Tell No One

8. Inglourious Basterds

9. District 9

10. Drag Me To Hell

11. Frozen River

12. Breaking Bad

13. Up

14. Star Trek

15. Buck Rogers!

The Worst:

1. Happy Go Lucky

2. New In Town

3. Religulous

4. Elegy

5. The Reader

6. Choke

7. Flight of the Concords, Season 2

8. Quantum of Solace

Andy’s Worst of 2009:

5. Mirrors: Alexandre Aja did well with High Tension and The Hills Have Eyes, then fell from grace horribly with this one. Mirrors are scary, but Mirrors is not. At all.

4. The Last House on the Left: Damn. This would have been offensive if it weren’t so bad.

3. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: Simon Pegg is funny, right? Not in this movie. And Megan Fox is like a charisma black hole.

2. Lakeview Terrace: This was perfectly entertaining to watch, then, after it was over, I started thinking about how awful it was. And the thought kept…on…coming.

1. Quantum of Solace: Not super-awful, but such a huge step down from Casino Royale. Marc Forster destroys everything he touches.

Regan’s Bestest or Most Favoritest (in no order):

1. Away We Go: This has been forgotten altogether. I blame (500) Days of Blubber.

2. Adventureland: I’m having a hard time getting people to watch this. I blame Ryan Reynolds.

3. Let the Right One In: This movie succeeds as a vampire movie and as a coming-of-age movie. Unlike Twilight. Interesting.

4. A Christmas Tale: Mathieu Amalric totally stirs my soup. Watch Kings & Queen if you likey.

5. Gran Torino: Clint at his most Clintiest. And it’s about a car which is real cool.

Regan’s Worstest of the Most Awful:

1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: With the exception of the nice wardrobe and the guy who keeps gettin’ hit with lightning, oh and the fighting at sea! That was good. But otherwise, nope.

2. He’s Just Not That Into You: More Drew Barrymore, less sh***y people. That would make it a wee bit better.

3. The Ugly Truth: A child giving Katherine Heigl an orgasm. That should be the tagline.

Want some free movies at Videoport? Here are about a million ways…

1. Rent a bunch of movies. Every time you hit your next hundred rentals, we give you two free ones.

2. Rent a movie any day of the week. If you check page one of this here newsletter here, you’ll see that there’s a different special every day of the week where you get a free movie. You literally cannot come into Videoport without getting a free rental. Yeah…

3. Buy a movie. For every single movie you buy at Videoport, we give you a free rental. Now if that’s not the perfect cue to start whipping readers into a holiday buying frenzy, then I don’t know what is: this holiday season, when you’re spending all your hard-earned cash on a gang of glutinous, insatiable greed monsters (I mean your loved ones, of course), why not get a little something for yourself out of the deal? Videoport has a great selection of new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale right in the store and we can also order literally anything that’s currently in print. And, for every movie you buy from us, we give you, yourself (not them) a free rental that you can use any time.

4. Trade in your old DVDs. Got some movies or TV series that you don’t want cluttering up your shelves anymore? Bring them in to Videoport and we’ll turn them into free rentals on your Videoport account. It’s that simple!

5. Spend some money. Videoport has two different savings plans which, essentially, give you free money just for renting with us. Seriously. Put $20 onto your Videoport account and we’ll turn that twenty into $25 worth of rental credit. Pay $30 and we’ll give you $40 worth of rental credit. That’s five or ten free bucks worth of renting cash, if my math is right.

Justin Ellis (of the Portland Press Herald) and I on the week’s newness (12/22/09)!

We’re nearing the end point for 2009 and fortunately there are some sweet new releases on DVD that should get all kinds of conversation going. And not just “am I Federally mandated to like Sandra Bullock?” This week Videoport Jones and I talk bugs, Mike Judge and America’s Next Sweetheart. Also, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. These things are not related.

District 9

Videoport Jones: “Before everyone out there starts nerding out with inter-rage, I would just like to start off this review by saying I really liked ‘District 9.’ I love a ‘little movie that could’ story, and this relatively low-budget sci-fi action pic, about the unexplained arrival, and 20 year uneasy cohabitation with humanity, of a spaceship full of odd, insect-like aliens, really took off, both financially and critically. Good for it: ‘District 9′ has some witty special effects, a sly and affecting lead performance by newcomer Sharlto Copley, a smidge of the social satire that underlies most successful science fiction, some exciting, violent action sequences, a sense of humor, and a mech battle that puts the Transformers to richly-deserved shame. There. See inter-nerds? I liked the movie. That being said…there are some issues that keep me from jumping on the ‘best sci-fi movie EVER!!!’ bandwagon. To wit: (oh, and SPOILERS AHEAD!!): Boy does this movie dumb itself down as it goes along. I was frankly wowed by the set-up: A documentary intro explains that an alien ship just showed up, hovered over Johannesburg, and, when humans finally cut their way inside, they found, not the advanced, big-headed visitors we always expect, but a weird, buggy, seemingly-unintelligent race that, with its hairtrigger temper and lack of understanding or respect for human customs, quickly found itself ostracized into the titular shantytown, where it seemed content to scrounge through human refuse. It’s a unique and evocative premise, carrying within it plenty of room for social commentary and satire. And there is some of that, much of it slyly embodied by Copley’s pencil-pushing minor bureaucrat, a cheerfully racist little weasel who undertakes his assignment (to head up the eviction of all aliens from District 9 into a more remote, concentration camp-like resettlement) with humorously chilling good cheer; he’s sort of like Michael Scott as a Nazi in the beginning. But soon the film essentially abandons its initial moral complexity, introducing a ’smart’ alien with a secret agenda and, sigh, a cute little kid alien and the film essentially turns into ‘Enemy Mine,’ with Copley finally overcoming his prejudices and realizing that aliens are people too. Also, for a film that’s been praised for its anti-racism, satirical content, I’m gonna go ahead and call it a little racist. Sure, the white South Africans (or mostly the Haliburton-like evil corporation in charge of the alien evictions) are plenty bad, in a Bond villain sort of way, but at least they’re not portrayed as thuggish, voodoo-cultish, gunrunning, bloodthirsty, and cannibalistic as the (black) Nigerian gangsters in the film are. And the film’s treatment of the aliens themselves is pretty questionable; there’s only one intelligent alien in the whole film, with the millions of others portrayed as stupid, sneaky, and lazy – basically the film’s welfare class stereotype. It lends a puzzling and slightly queasy undertone to what remains an interesting and mostly-fun sci fi film.”

Justin: “Jonesy, this is why we are friends. You find a way to ground me even when I don’t know I need to be. I saw this flick in theaters and came down with a serious case of shock and awe. Going in with no expectations (and really, no knowledge of the plot), I was constantly in amazement of this movie’s combination of drama, emotion, humor and ballsy action. To put in plainly: I got sucked into the world of ‘District 9.’ Problem is, there are flaws in that world, which I am happy you pointed out. As two sci fi geeks I think we can say this movie gets a big lift from the novel premise of ‘aliens as refugees.’ We’re so used to either the friendly alien or destroyer alien that when we get around to the origin of the bugs in ‘District 9′ it’s almost disconcerting. ‘Wait…they didn’t come here to destroy us?’ And working off this we’re taken into a familiar world of refugees, one that could be the Gaza Strip or a UN camp in Liberia. And yet it’s completely foreign because of who is living there. It’s a movie that is really hard to look at during certain points (and not just because of what happens to Copley’s character), because no one is expecting a contemplation on human rights, or in this case alien rights. But the movie does begin to lose that murky footing as it slips into action mode (which, I’ll say is a pretty sweet mode. Seriously I’d watch an action sequence directed by Neil Blomkamp any day.) I think the problem here is that trying to stitch together these two halves – a classic sci fi tale meant to reflect on aspects of humanity and a guns-ablazin’ chase epic – was particularly hard to reconcile here. But more than that I think you touch on a hole in this story, which is that they drifted into a weird stereotype with many of the aliens as shifty and lazy. Of course I’m sure the filmmakers (and any student of geopolitical situations) would argue that was a result of the aliens interment. Regardless, this is a movie that has some flaws but is otherwise outstanding. And if it’s a conversation starter that’s even better. But seriously, that mech suit was pretty freakin’ sweet, right?”

Extract

VPJ: “Mike Judge has always had it rough. Either his ‘Beavis and Butthead’ is being protested by shrill, shrieking ‘Won’t someone think of the children?!’ harridans who were, as ever, incapable of perceiving satire of any kind, or his ‘King of the Hill’ is constantly overlooked in the animated comedy series sweepstakes in favor of things like the loathsome ‘Family Guy.’ Either his now cult classic ‘Office Space’ gets stuck with a minimal (and lousy) ad campaign, and dumped after some lackluster reviews (which, surprise!) missed the point entirely, or his nearly as funny ‘Idiocracy’ never gets a theatrical release at all, getting dumped directly to DVD. Seriously, only my man Joss Whedon seems to be carrying a more emphatic ‘kick me’ sign on his creative back. So I was predisposed to like ‘Extract,’ not only for the Judge’s Job-ness, but because of the stellar cast which includes Jason Bateman, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, Kristen Wiig, and others. And I did like it. But not too much. Like ‘Office Space’ and ‘Idiocracy,’ ‘Extract’ centers on a put-upon workplace everyman (the ever-dependable Bateman) who’s stuck in a sexless marriage and in his job as president of a mildly successful (and employee dysfunctional) company that manufactures manufactured food flavors. It’s a very Michael Bluth-like situation, and Bateman’s as good here as he was on ‘Arrested Development,’ and his supporting cast all have some nice moments (even Ben Affleck who, as a slim, bearded, pill popping, mellow bartender/guru is as amiable and likeable as he’s ever been). Unfortunately, like in his other two films, Judge seems unable to sustain any interest in plot, leading to the films petering out in the third act, and this time, the movie wasn’t as good to start with. ‘Extract’ starts off pretty diffuse and low energy, and this time there’s an underlying sourness to the humor that saps the fun. Sure it’s satire, but here the point of view seems to be a grumpy ‘everyone’s sort of a jerk’, and some of the plot elements (Mila Kunis’ con artist femme fatale, Bateman’s sitcommy plan to have his wife seduced) have no satirical snap to them. It’s not bad, but this one’s not headed for Judge-ian cult status.”

JE: “I think Mike Judge and Joss Whedon should start a support group. And film it. Because I would watch it. Of course the trouble is it would likely never get released on DVD or tied up in development hell. I don’t want this review to turn into a pity party for Judge, but the fact is the dude has had a hard road. You could argue ‘King of the Hill’ was his biggest commercial success after running 13 seasons on Fox. (I have to admit I had ‘come to Jesus’ moment with ‘King of the Hill’ when I finally started watching it regularly and grew to love the character of Hank Hill.) Maybe ‘Extract’ suffers because he’s just not giving it his all any more? I’m not saying he didn’t give it his best, but consider how you’d feel after consistently working on projects only to have them undercut somehow. That’s gotta nail you in the mind. But I have to admit I probably didn’t help him at all by missing this one in theaters. Even though it has many things I like (Bateman, Koechner, Simmons and Judge at the helm), I skipped it. Don’t give up Big Mike, the world still needs you. And if Joss Whedon calls schedule a lunch.”

(500) Days of Summer

VPJ: “First – the title. Was this thought up by the same so-so-clever jackass who brought us ‘Face/Off,’ ‘Se7en,’ and ‘Thr3e?’ It’s extremely un-clever (or [un]-cl37er), and it makes my teeth hurt. But that’s beside the point. This film, a non-chronological retelling of the relationship of indie darlings Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel overcomes its titular handicap pretty nicely though. As coworkers-turned-lovers-turned-exes, these two have some nice, offbeat chemistry. I can’t overstate how completely impressed I am with J G-L especially; From not caring anything about him whatsoever in that sitcom I hated, the guy has turned in some truly compelling performances in the likes of ‘Brick,’ ‘Mysterious Skin,’ and ‘The Lookout,’ and here he puts a nice, layered spin on the standard Hollywood lovesick dude role. Deschanel’s cute as ever, but a little of her blinky, quirky hipster-girl act goes a long way for me; the movie’s the better for being told from Gordon-Leavitt’s point of view as he flashes back on their relationship and tries to piece together what went wrong. Better, but not perfect – Summer suffers from some terminal cuteness (really? a wise little kid dispensing love advice? really?) which tends to undercut its cool-kid indie vibe every once in a while, but the Harold Pinter (see ‘Betrayal’…seriously) nonlinear structure imbues every happy cute moment with a knowing sadness, and, on balance, the movie is, mostly due to its male lead, pretty darned affecting.”

JE: “See, I was just too, too put off by the hipster pedigree on this one. With the music, Deschanel and JGL it all just seemed too much. Sure you could argue what constitutes ‘hipster’ these days, but something about this flick came off as too cool for school for me. They’re in LOVE! It’s TORTURED! It’s NEW YORK! Here’s THE SMITHS! Too much. Alas, that makes me uncool. Still, I do like Deschanel. She doesn’t seem to have a lot of range – she always seems to hover around cute disinterest – but she makes up for it with what you so aptly described as her ‘blinky, quirky hister-girl’ act. As for JGL (is it OK to call him that? Can we just start and see if it sticks?) you’re right to say he has really grown into a versatile actor, capable of leading man or sidekick status. There was no doubt the guy was going to have a career, he had a floppy-hair charming quality that will get producers to like you. But instead of becoming another Breckin Meyer, he’s making a name for himself. I’m sure this movie will make some of you laugh, cry and feel good about life. But I’ll probably not be watching it with you.”

All About Steve

VPJ: “I’m not watching this. Look, Sandra Bullock’s America’s sweetheart, cute as a bug, the smoochy-sweety-lovie-pie of the universe, and I am, by Federal law, unable to resist her charms. That being said, I don’t really care for her. I don’t dislike her either – she’s just there, always ready to look winsome, smooch a middling male costar, and fall over adorably, and America needs that, I suppose. I mean, it does..right? I dunno…in this one, Bullock’s reviving her ‘cutie-pie-with a teeny-tiny-dark-side’ persona (let’s call it Sandra 2.0) from ‘Forces of Nature,’ in that she’s cute, but a ‘little but crazy’. She also gets to cry a little. Here, she’s a kooky free spirit who decides that Bradley Cooper (who she’s only seen on CNN in his job as a cameraman) is her one true love and follows him in the most disturbing-yet-adorable display of cross country stalking since the last generation’s America’s sweetheart Meg Ryan terrified Tom Hanks in ‘Sleepless in Seattle.’ Can we vote on America’s next sweetheart?”

JE: “You sir may have just hit on a brand new Reality TV show! I like it! America’s Next Sweetheart, hosted by Katherine Heigl! Hmmm…that part might need fixing. Could we get Alicia Silverstone? Think of the challenges: Adorable pratfalls! Lovelorn monologing in the rain! The best friend obstacle course! See the likes of Renee Zellweger, Reese Witherspoon, Amy Adams and more face off! America decides! This could be a real hit. ANYWAY, yeah I got no read on this movie, nor do I want to. Unlike you I’m willing to pay the fine for not liking Sandra Bullock. Sure she seems to have the ability to channel this sort of Mary Tyler Moore-esque quirkiness, but I don’t find myself gravitating towards the movies she makes. Also, do you think there is a Sandra Bullock scrip generator out there? Seriously just plug in Ryan Reynolds, make her a business woman and you got her last movie.”

It Might Get Loud

VPJ: “Portland’s own guitar god Samuel James gives this documentary, about a would-be historic hang session with tri-generational guitar legends Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White a sadly lukewarm review. The problem lies in the jams, according to Sam, where the fact that each of them is unwilling to relinquish his lead guitar status means that they’re all just playing the same chords. He says it sounds like one guitar, echoing slightly. Sam knows stuff.”

JE: “I do not doubt Mr. James knowledge of these things. Though he and I may be enemies after our last encounter at SPACE Gallery. Words were exchanged. Threats made. Lives were changed forever. As for this movie it is slightly more than a jam session with the trio as they revisit what got them on their magical instrument in the first place and how they developed their playing style. But that’s not really what a good music fan renting this wants to see. They’re paying to see them play each others songs and transcend the musical universe as we know it. But apparently that transcendence got put on hold. Who woulda thought three guitar impresarios and legends in their own right (or legend-in-training in White’s case) would want to play second fiddle to anyone?”

LIGHTNING ROUND! Also this week at Videoport: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Michael Douglas does a Gordon Gekko in this thriller, playing a sleazy crooked politician), Herb & Dorothy (Documentary about two low-income workers who somehow managed to amass one of the world’s best collections of contemporary art), Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side (The show that wouldn’t die tries to wring more laughs out of yet another Star Wars parody), Blind Date (The uber-talented Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson star as an estranged couple trying to patch things up).

Parting Shots:

- Did “District 9″ muddle its message with the depiction of the aliens?
- What will it take for Mike Judge to catch a break?
- What challenges would you want on “America’s Next Sweetheart?”

VideoReport #227

Volume CCXXVII- Godzilla’s Christmas Wish

For the Week of 12/22/09

Videoport says go ahead and look at the date above. Yeah. Three days before Christmas. You can go ahead and panic now. (See Tuesday’s recommendations for our last-minute desperation gift guide!)

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Three Days of the Condor (in Mystery/Thriller). Robert Redford, in all his shaggy-blond mid-seventies glory, stars as bookish low-level CIA paper-pusher Joe Turner. His code name: Condor. His job: he sits in a small office in a Manhattan brownstone and reads novels, newspapers, and articles, compiles reports on emerging patterns, and sends off his findings to some other office somewhere. It’s the antithesis of all the glamorous spy novels and daring, resourceful agents that other films sell us. In Turner’s own panicked words, “I’m not a field agent. I just read books!” When his unassuming little office is targeted by a killer, Condor escapes by luck and finds himself on the run on the streets of New York City, not knowing who to trust or to fear. A doe-eyed, strikingly lovely Faye Dunaway plays the cool but terrified woman forced to help him, and Max von Sydow is marvelously chilling as the calm, collected killer. Three Days of the Condor takes place in New York at Christmastime, a festive background that highlights the paranoia and alienation coursing through the story.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> In lieu of our usual, scintillating Tuesday movie recommendation from the Classics or Action sections, (and at least partially because no one sent in a Tuesday recommendation this week- send yours to denmn@hotmail.com), here are some recommendations for those last-minute holiday panic presents we’ve all got hanging over us: 1. Videoport gift certificates! 2. Videoport’s selection of new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale (and remember you get a free rental for yourself when you buy one). 3. We can still special order any movie we don’t have in stock; it won’t get here in time for the big day, but we’ll issue you a gift certificate you can give to the lucky so-and-so. 4. Big-ass boxes of jelly beans. Videoport- we’ve got you covered.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests About a Boy (in Comedy). Are you being driven mad by the ever-present Christmas music piped into stores and malls? Have I got a movie for you: Will Freeman (Hugh Grant) is a free-living bachelor who dreads only two things: the emptiness of his days, and the Christmas season. You see, Will is gainfully unemployed, a lush-life layabout living off his father’s legacy: residuals from the one-hit holiday song, “Santa’s Super Sleigh.” Arrested in adolescence by a life without demands and only his own appetites to please, Will may seem like a born playboy, but in fact, he’s never progressed beyond mere “boy.” The story: an aging hipster with a deep fear of commitment and a carefully crafted personal bubble collides with the real world, here in the form of an ungainly adolescent and his deeply earnest hippie-dippie mother (Nicholas Hoult and Toni Colette, both in marvelously layered performances). It’s adapted from the novel by Nick Hornby, who endows these seemingly aimless and unpleasant characters with empathetic and deeply human traits. This is why, when Will engages in truly appalling behavior, we can almost sympathize with him; he’s really a child trying to muddle along in a man’s life. (Hugh Grant’s trademark twinkle does its work here, too; another actor would have a harder row to hoe. Boy oh boy, I respect Grant more and more as he gets older and explores these less likeable characters.)

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Eyes Wide Shut (in Feature Drama). At a time when we’re steeped in Christmas classics, it’s tempting to explore the underbelly of holiday films: Christmas movies that don’t feel like Christmas. Kubrick’s controversial final film is perhaps the least family-friendly of the bunch, unless your kids love meandering tales of urban misadventure, marital strife, and secret sexual cabals of rich, powerful men and doped-out supermodel types. After a disturbing evening at a wealthy client’s holiday party and a disillusioning argument with his beautiful wife (Nicole Kidman), Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) wanders around the streets of New York in a fit of jealousy and envy. It’s never quite clear, however, what sparks his jealousy: his wife’s fantasy revelations or the sexual power his client wields. Bill all but sleepwalks through the film, which is a vague, quasi-sexual odyssey of frustration and missed connections, all shot against the background of a city festooned with holiday ornaments. Though Eyes Wide Shut was promoted as an erotic thriller, it is anything but; it’s a dark examination of class and economic power. Even the Christmas trimmings and tinsel show the economic core of the film: the contrast between the lush decor of the upper-crust homes and the pathetic glimmer of downmarket locales speaks louder than words could do. With its emphasis on the transactional dynamics that plague modern society, and the ways we try to buy and sell each other’s attention and affection… hey, it just may be a modern American Christmas movie after all.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests A Muppet Christmas Carol. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is indisputably a classic, but the many, many film versions of the tale rarely rise to the challenge it poses; too often, they are more “chestnut” than “classic,” and usually the more gimmicky they are, the worse they are. A Muppet Christmas Carol manages to to meld together two wildly disparate voices — the light, antic tone of Jim Henson’s Muppets with the crisp, wry tenor of Dickens’ original story. Ably assisted by Michael Caine as the dour old miser himself, The Muppets bring the Victorian flavor of the tale to the screen with verve and spirit.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control (in Documentary). Errol Morris is the greatest documentarian of all time. Yeah, I said it. In most of his films, he’s able to take on a conventional documentary subject and, through filming and interview techniques as unique as they are subtle, transform his films into something riveting and mysteriously moving. Seriously, you should check them all out sometime. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is perhaps his most unusual film, in that its thesis takes its sweet time revealing itself. At the start, and for some time thereafter, its intercut interviews among a seemingly-unrelated quartet of men with decidedly-odd jobs (robot designer, expert on the naked mole rat, topiary gardner, lion tamer), while interesting, seem to have little in common. It’s as the film goes on, and Morris’ masterful editing and use of haunting music and stock footage draws the four middle-aged men’s stories closer together, that his themes are revealed, and, if you’re like me, you’re sitting their in awe. It’s that good.

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests sending in your lists of the best and worst films of the year! Check out page 2 for part 1 of the picks of the Videoport film geek community and then send in your votes to us at denmn@hotmail.com our Facebook page Videoport Jones or our Myspace page www.myspace.com/videoportjones! Oh, and, while you’re on the computer, check out our movie blog at www.videoportjones.wordpress.com!

New Releases this week at Videoport: District 9 (weird, exciting sci fi from South Africa about a race of aliens living in uneasy proximity to humanity; and then the explosions start!), ‘Pale Force’ (animated sries about the imaginary herioc adventures of fellow comics, and melanin-deprived Irish lads Jim Gaffigan and Conan O’Brien), Herb & Dorothy (documentary about a married postal clerk and librarian who managed to amass one of the most important collections of contemporary art in the world), ‘Cake Boss’ (cooking series about a loud fellas who likes to make the cakes), The Dog Who Saved Christmas (it may be about some sort of dog, perhaps one who saves Christmas), (500) Days of Summer (oddly punctuated indie romance starring twinkly indie staples Zoey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt), ‘Family Guy: Something Something Something Dark Side’ (the TV series that everyone loves but I think is the animated devil is back with yet another Star Wars parody), All About Steve (before she bounced back to relevant-town with The Blind Side, Sandra Bullock’s career was pronounced dead with this abrasive dark comedy), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Michael Douglas is back being sleazy as a crooked politician in this thriller), Extract (Mike Judge’s winning streak [Office Space, 'King of the Hill', Idiocracy] comes to an end with this well-cast but disappointing comedy starring Jason Bateman), Blind Date (co-great actors Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci co-star in this drama about an estranged couple who meet for a series of the titular blind dates to try and work things out), It Might Get Loud (Musical documentary follows three generations of guitar gods, Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White as they compare axe theory and then jam).

At Christmas, not about Christmas

Tis the season… to be fed up with tinsel and carols, with bustling crowds and brimming cups of nog. If you’re exhausted from the holiday whirl, relax with these seasonal films that take place at Christmastime but are decidedly un-Christmassy.

The Lion in Winter

Die Hard

Brazil

Holiday

The Shop around the Corner

Toy Story

Doubt

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Better Off Dead

The Apartment

The Proposition

Eyes Wide Shut

Meet John Doe

Twelve Monkeys

Three Days of the Condor

The Conversation

Bell Book and Candle

Gremlins

Diner

The Thin Man

Trading Places

Edward Scissorhands

The Ref

The Ice Harvest

Less Than Zero

The Matador

The Videoport film geeks pick their best and worst films released on DVD in 2009! (Look for more next week when everyone else realizes they forgot!)

Dennis

The Best:

15. Synecdoche, NY

14. Drag Me to Hell

13. I Love You Man

12. Let the Right One In

11. Funny People

10. The Wrestler

9. Pineapple Express

8. World’s Greatest Dad

7. Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog

6. The Limits of Control

5. Observe and Report

4. Inglourious Basterds

3. Away We Go

2. Up

1. Sugar

The Best TV on DVD: Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome America- A Final Night With George W. Bush, ‘Eastbound & Down’, ‘Scrubs’- season 8, ‘The Office’- season 5, Stella: Live in Boston, ‘30 Rock’- season 3, Patton Oswalt: My Weakness Is Strong, and, greatest of all…’The State’- the complete series!!!!!

The Worst (that I actually saw): Babylon AD, My Best Friend’s Girl, My Bloody Valentine, Land of the Lost, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Blood: The Last Vampire, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Anime Ed

Best:

WALTZ WITH BASHIR

UP

‘VENTURE BROS.’ SEASON 3

CHOWDER

SIGURUI

MUSHI-SHI

RANMA 1/2

HELL-GIRL

SITA SINGS THE BLUES*

THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THRU TIME*

Ed the Renter

Best:

OBSERVE & REPORT

‘CAPRICA’

‘BATTLESTAR GALACTICA’ SEASON 4

‘WIRE’ SEASON 5

DR. HORRIBLES SING ALONG BLOG

‘BREAKING BAD’

MAD DETECTIVE

DEATH NOTE 2

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH REMAKE

‘FRINGE’

Notice how this year tv totally kicked the movies butt-take note hollywood!!

*V-port doesn’t have these (yet)-so order them and get a free rental-plug plug!!

April

Top 5:

1. Up

2. Milk

3. Star Trek

4. District 9

5. JCVD

Andy

Top 10 DVDs of 2009:

1. Observe & Report: My pick for the boldest and most surprising movie of the year. And it’s funny, too.

2. Religulous: Larry Charles and Bill Maher have a lot of important and necessary things to say. Good thing they’re funny, too.

3. Star Trek: The most fun I had at a movie all year. And with Simon Pegg in the cast, you know it’s going to be funny, too.

4. Drag Me to Hell: Sam Raimi returns to horror with spectacularly gross and scary results. And it’s funny, too.

5. Anvil! The Story of Anvil: These guys seriously rock, and their plight is the stuff of great drama. And it’s funny, too.

6. Inglourious Basterds: It’s gripping and violent and painfully suspenseful, all while being funny, too.

7. Let the Right One In: A sweet and touching story about the friendship between a 12 year old outcast and the lonely vampire girl who moves in next door. And it’s funny, too.

8. Thirst: The other excellent foreign vampire film that came out this year. And you know what? It’s funny, too.

9. I Love You, Man: Rudd and Segal and the adorable Rashida Jones doing their hilarious improv-y thing. And it’s funny, too!

10. Tyson: Wow. I was surprised and riveted by the fight scenes and Mike’s candid and eloquent comments about his own life. Not funny.

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I on the new releases for 12/15/09!

Conflict comes to town! Knife fights! Nazzys! Also…uh…guinea pigs! In this week’s rundown of new releases on DVD Videoport Jones and I revel in Quentin Tarantino’s latest epic and clash over whether ‘The Hangover’ lives up to “guy comedy” standards. Also, there are animated guinea pigs.

Inglourious Bastards

Videoport Jones: “Videoport’s owner Bill has decided to file Quentin Tarantino’s new WWII film in our Incredibly Strange section. Sure, maybe he’s just doing so to piss people off (I think he does that sometimes, just for his own amusement), but, watching it, I really think it’s found its proper home. Part of the reason is how different the actual film is from its advertising, which promised a raucous, hyper-violent wartime romp, with Brad Pitt’s all-Jewish squad shooting, stabbing, and scalping their way through an explosion-a-minute action-revenge flick, although a typically-Quentin-y one. And the other part is, well, (and here there be SPOILERS- I DON’T WANNA HEAR ANY COMPLAINTS!!) they kill Hitler! Yup, to me, ‘Inglourious Basterds’ seems like Quentin is reliving his childhood dreams, playing with his army men in the sandbox and imagining how he’d like the war to go. Along the way, the film consists of a series of largely-static virtuoso dialogue scenes where QT reveals himself, again, to be the most self-assured, prankishly-masterful American filmmaker alive; the opening interrogation scene, the standoff in the basement – Tarantino here toys with his characters and the audience like Hitchock on his best day. (And he once again provides his – this time largely international – cast with pages and pages of dialogue which just vibrates up there on the screen; Brad Pitt is hilariously hammy, Christoph Waltz is going to be a big star due to his slyly evil Nazi Jew hunter turn here, I want to see everything French actress Melanie Laurent ever does, and even Mike Myers is used effectively.) The film, with its sequences separated by evocative title cards, builds like a book of interconnected short stories to its gloriously, ridiculously bananas climax. Quentin is clearly having a ball, wrapping the whole enterprise in his own obsessions (the film is as much about the love of film as it is about killin’ Nazzys). Even the last line of the film is a giddily self-referential in joke boast about QT’s regard for his new film. While I think Basterds is, obviously, one of the best films of 2009, I can’t agree that this is his ‘masterpiece’ for a couple of reasons. One, I thought the film became a little less assured as it marched on to its conclusion; never remotely bad, but narratively the film seems to lose some steam even as the action element heated up. Tarantino pal, and ‘Hostel’ director, Eli Roth has neither the physical nor vocal presence to play such a large role (although he does have the crazy eyes). And one big set piece, set incongruously to Bowie, is audacious all right, but it just doesn’t work. As to the whole ‘revisionist wish fulfillment’ aspect of things, well, like I said – the Incredibly Strange section awaits.”

Justin: “I went back and forth for the longest time over seeing this one in the theater. Like most men, I feel like I have a strange relationship with Quentin Tarantino. While I love his devotion to a big-time 70s action-genre schtick, sometimes his coolness gets in the way of, well, his coolness. We get it Quentin, you are a gifted movie maker. I recently caught both ‘Kill Bill Vol. 1′ and ‘Deathproof’ on cable and genuinely had a blast seeing them again (though I am finding I laugh at inappropriate times in his flicks. Is it wrong I was having a hyena outbreak every time a fountain of blood came out of some recently slashed character?) ANYWAY, ‘Inglorious Bastards’ had the whiff of ‘watch as I do something really cool’ from Tarantino, and it flagged me off. And you know what, I regretted that once ‘Inglorious’ disappeared from theaters. I mean look at what he’s working with here: A big gun like Pitt just chewing up the screen and turns from familiar faces like BJ Novak, Samm Levine and Meyers, and  oh yeah, a breakout from Waltz. (Is there anyway he doesn’t steal a role in a summer tent pole movie in the next few years?). Throw in the fact that it can technically be classified as a ‘war movie,’ (which I am pretty sure I can’t resist thanks to dude hard-wiring) and I had no business missing this one. (Heck I may even overlook the fact that Eli Roth shows up.) That’s the thing about Tarantino movies. Even when he spends time winking and smirking at the camera, it’s still gonna be a heck of an enjoyable time. Whether or not this is his masterpiece remains to be seen, that’ll likely take multiple viewings, which I got no problem with. Still, I’d submit ‘Jackie Brown’ for masterpiece status, but it has no Nazis.”

The Hangover

VPJ: “This should come as no shock whatsoever to anyone who’s ever read this column, but a well-done juvenile comedy is just my cup o’ off-brand beer. The ‘40 Year Old Virgin,’ ‘Knocked Up,’ ‘I Love You Man,’ ‘Funny People,’ ‘Anchorman,’ ‘Talladega Nights’ – I own ‘em all, I watch them frequently, and even the much-smarter Mrs. Videoport Jones concedes their charms, for the most part. So, with all the hoopla over ‘The Hangover’ as the sure-fire hilarious ‘guy movie’ of this past summer, have I added it to my dumb-fun DVD shelf? No freaking way. (Mrs. VJ sighs in relief). From director Todd Phillips (whose ‘Old School’ will probably make its way to the shelf at some point), this is easily the most overrated comedy of the year. I had high hopes (even though, apart from ‘Old School,’ Phillips has churned out ‘Road Trip,’ ‘Starsky & Hutch,’ and ‘School for Scoundrels’…ugh). The cast held some promise: cult comic Zach Galifianakis is a hilarious weirdo, Ed Helms (aka Andy Bernard from ‘The Office’) is always money, and I’ve always liked Bradley Cooper’s unsettling combination of handsomeness and crazy-eyes comic intensity. But ‘The Hangover’ pulls off the neat trick of being both manically-busy and incredibly lazy, a combination that equals desperation. The setup’s not bad – bachelor party in Vegas, wake up in the destroyed hotel suite with no memory of the night before, no groom, and follow the clues to put the previous night’s debauch together. But the scenes are shamefully unshaped, the plot is both ramshackle and slapdash (’slapshackle’?), the roles are badly underwritten (only Helms’ henpecked dentist comes through with any resonance), the dialogue lacks any snap at all, and the film just flails away up there on the screen like Jerry Lewis. I genuinely can’t recall being more let down by a film all year. This is the sort of by-the-numbers, aim-low crude comedy that gives the ‘guy comedy’ genre the bad name that it usually deserves. Adam McKay, Judd Apatow- save us!”

JE: “I’m…I’m speechless. To say nothing of deeply wounded. I thought I knew you Jonesy. I thought we would be high-fiving each other and passing the High Lifes over this one. This…I think this movie gets a special place on the guy movie shelf, a place reserved for the likes of ‘Anchorman,’ ‘40 Year Old Virgin,’  and ‘Caddyshack’ among others. Is this a great movie? No. Is it an expertly-made comedy? No. Will its star loose a little shine after multiple viewings? Absolutely. But there is no way this movie doesn’t leave me a ball of crying laughter in the end. ‘Bachelor party gone awry’ is far from original thought anymore, nor is the concept as Vegas as the big-bad. Yes, none of this should work and yet…it makes for a damn entertaining time. This is one of the times where I am going to say that the sum of the parts makes the whole work, even when on first glance the whole seems like a mess. Do we need to have more of a sense of the characters here? I don’t recall needing one of the Channel 4 newsteam in ‘Anchorman?’ And it was more than fine. The unlikely trio of  Galifianakis, Helms and Cooper (seriously, you have to commend the studio for not throwing a Paul Rudd, Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell or Wilson brother in there) is what carries this one along with the sort-of backwards storytelling. Sure it may be akin to ‘Dude, Where’s My Car,’ in some ways, but the rapid-fire laughs, dash of slapstick and fun cameos (heck yes Ken Jeong, Rob Riggle and Mike Tyson) make it entertaining. I took the NXT Gal and we were a wreck after seeing this one in the theater. We’ll have to give a split decision on this one old chum. Hope this doesn’t mean ‘guy comedy’ night is off?”

Taking Woodstock

VPJ: “An amiable-enough little doodle from director Ang Lee, this period piece about a mild-mannered closeted gay guy (cult comic Demetri Martin) who, in trying to save his immigrant parents’ rundown motel, finds himself right in the middle of the negotiations to bring the legendary rock festival to town, is better appreciated in its supporting roles. It’s pleasant and amusing enough, but Lee is hampered here by the scripts ordinariness and his choice of leading man. Martin’s standup persona, sort of a stoned, hipster naif, is moderately amusing, and he doesn’t do badly here as the dutiful son who finds himself in over his head. But he comes off like a less charismatic Jason Schwartzman for the most part and the movie lacks a center. There are, as I said, some rewards to be found on the fringes, with Liev Schrieber (uniquely alive as a cross-dressing Korean war vet), Jonathan Groff (slyly elusive as the seemingly-blissed-out concert organizer) and good ol’ Eugene Levy (as Max Yasgur, the local farmer who leased the Woodstock land, Levy created a folksy but shrewd portrait of Yankee ingenuity), but the film itself fades in your memory as soon as the film fades from your TV.”

JE: “I think this film really underwhelmed people from the start. Trying to capitalize on this summer’s Woodstock anniversary, Lee and the studio were both looking for a new or unique look at this event that has been analyzed almost as much as the moon landing, Watergate and the JFK assassination. This is Problem 1. Problem 2 is that in trying to capitalize on the anniversary they were also competing with a flood of other features, documentaries, specials, books, etc, on Woodstock. And as much as I like Martin, Levy and Schriber, they’re not enough of a draw to get me interested in something I’d probably otherwise skip. (Though I do have the feeling the three of them would be good together in something.) Sure it’s not the worst idea for wrapping a fictional tale around a non-fictional event, but really, I just can’t think of anything compelling about this. I don’t even think people in the ‘Woodstock Generation’ would be moved to see this one. Ang Lee’s field goal/attempts rate remains shaky.”

G-Force

VPJ: “Let’s be positive about this movie, shall we? Umm…the fact that Zach Galafianakis has two major releases hitting DVD on the same day bodes well for his film career; sure, I didn’t like either of his films, but he’s still a funny guy. Oh whoops – forgot about the whole positive thing. Um, Sam Rockwell and Tracy Morgan are both hilarious guys, and, therefore, hearing them voice CGI guinea pigs isn’t…altogether disagreeable. The same goes for co-stars Niecy Nash, Steve Buscemi, Bill Nighy, Will Arnett, and Jon Favreau – I have long liked their work, and wish them well in all their future endeavors. Oh, and my dad, an otherwise sober and sensible man, has always liked guinea pigs, has one as a pet right now, and occasionally speaks to it in a funny voice. I may purchase him this movie for Christmas. There. Positivity.”

JE: “Yeoman work as always Jonesy. Yes, let’s keep the positivity flowing, shall we? These cutely rendered guinea pigs are secret agents, who alternate fighting bad guys and warding off unruly children. And who among us hasn’t wondered ‘what would it be like if guinea pigs were SECRET AGENTS?!’ Unlike, say James Bond or Jason Bourne, full-grown actual people who can drive cars, shoot weapons and kick people in the face and not come off as comical. And yes, who wouldn’t like a movie where Zach Galafianakis and Tracy Morgan play their manic energies off each other? And we all know how much I love the woefully underrated Sam Rockwell, who was in a little-known movie called ‘Moon’ that did not feature talking CGI rodents. And Nick Cage! It’s got NICK CAGE! And it was produced by…oh wait…am I reading this right? Can we check this? OK, I’ll wait…Really? Jerry Bruckheimer? Jerry ‘BOOM-SPLODEY’ BRUCKHEIMER? Seriously? Positivity’s OVER. NEXT.”

The Other Man

VPJ: “Liam Neeson thinks his wife, Laura Linney, is cheating on him with Antonio Banderas. That’s exactly who I’d suspect, too. But seriously. This is a great cast. Neeson playing hurt is like watching a mountain in pain – there are depths inside that man. Linney’s always solid and sexy, in a plainly-brainy way. And, hey, I think Banderas has gotten a bum deal, critically speaking. Check him out in the early Almodovar films and tell me he’s just a ‘vapid Latin prettyboy’ (not my words). Plus, he was born to play Zorro. All in all, an intriguing combination of actors; please don’t read anything into the fact that that combination has not enticed me to watch it yet.”

JE: “But does Liam go all ‘Taken’ on Banderas? Do they face-off against each other and destroy five city blocks in the process? A winner-take-all fight to the death for Laura Linney’s love (and brainy sexiness, naturally.) Cause I would be first in line at Videoport to rent that flick. As it is this one is not coming up on my radar. But while we’re on the subject, why HAS Banderas fallen off the map? You’re darn right he was born to play Zorro (a movie I enjoyed immensely), and he was similarly good in ‘Desperado.’ I would think he has the goods to make a long career going back and forth between action flicks for the guys and movies where he takes his shirt off for the ladies. Who knows. Interesting fact: This movie is based on a story by Bernhard Schlink, who also wrote ‘The Reader,’ which was turned into a flick you may remember that got Kate Winslet an Oscar. So, you know, there’s that. Use that information as you will.”

Lightening Round! Also this week at Videoport: “Robot Chicken” – Season 4 (Seth Green opens his toybox again), “The Tudors” – Season 3 (The last season of the series, cancelled right before Henry VIII started to pork out), and two new, spazzy Adult Swim shows for the short-attention-spanned among us “The Drinky Crow Show” and “Lucy: The Daughter of the Devil.”

Parting Shots:

- Did Inglorious Bastards hold up? Could it be Tarantino’s “Masterpiece?”
- Where do you come down on ‘The Hangover?” Team Justin or Team Jonesy?
- Did “Taking Woodstock” suffer from a nostalgia hangover?

VideoReport #226

Volume CCXXVI- Holiday Massacre

For the Week of 12/15/09

Videoport reminds you that you’ve still got…whoa…only ten days left until Christmas. Umm…don’t panic- Videoport’s got new and previously-viewed DVDs for sale, and gift certificates galore to take care of all those greedy, grasping little loved ones left on your shopping list.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Andy suggests Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (in Sci Fi/Fantasy). What a good time to watch this movie again, or for the first time. The popular new 2009 Star Trek flick makes reference to the “no-win scenario” that Kirk is always on about in Khan, so that’s cool. But, of course, the movie stands on its own as one of the all-time great space action adventures. The exciting scenes of Kirk and Khan engaging in battle are like watching the coolest-ever game of chess…with spaceships! The cast of the original series returns: William Shatner gives perhaps his greatest performance (seriously- I’m not being flippant or condescending- he’s great), Leonard Nimoy, Deforest Kelley- both wonderful. Ricardo Montalban and his amazing chest return from the ‘Space Seed’ episode of the series to play Khan, on of the great scene villains (can you tell I love this movie?) Even Walter Koenig returns as Chekov, which is funny because he recognizes Khan when they meet, even though Koenig was not a ‘Star Trek’ castmember when ‘Space Seed’ aired. Look at me, I’m a nerd!*

*Editor’s note: It’s true.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Desk Set (in Classics). Bunny Watson (Katherine Hepburn), the brisk and busy head of the research library at a prominent television network, finds her bustling office thrown out of whack when the executives bring in EMERAC, a wall-sized computer, accompanied by its gruff and unpretentious inventor Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy). Fearing Sumner’s invention will replace her staff researchers, Bunny stands up to Sumner’s questions with withering civility and sharp wit, delivered as only Hepburn can do it. Tracy takes it with blank good humor, and gives us a gruffly charming performance as a preoccupied genius with little interest in social graces, in stark contrast to Bunny’s slick and ingratiating junior-executive gentleman friend. The film is a trifle, but a delightful one, and it rapidly leads up to Christmas festivity that verges on the frantic, with an office party blow-out to top all blow-outs.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests Welcome to the Sticks (in Foreign Language). Sometimes a customer will ask for a good foreign language comedy and I go blank for a second. Comedy is such a verbal thing, and translation (no matter how good the subtitles) almost invariably flattens it out. (Think about it- the most popular cross-cultural comedies are usually either nonverbal [Jaques Tati] or hyper-physical and broad [Roberto Begnini, Jerry Lewis].) The closest I can usually get is something wry, whimsical, and more properly called a drama (something like Il Postino maybe), so it was a relief to discover this unassuming little French comedy, a refreshingly-ordinary little story that, no doubt, some Hollywood company has already optioned as a vehicle for some second-tier star. Tim Allen maybe, or Kevin James. It’s the story of a mild-mannered post office manager who, in response to his wife’s nagging him to obtain a transfer to a cushier post on the Riviera, makes a wildly ill-conceived bid, only to see himself transferred to a tiny town on the Belgian border. What you get from there is pretty standard stuff, as the city guy, comically misinformed about the dreaded ‘north’ starts out all stuffy and disdainful of his new coworkers’ accents (some deft subtitle jokes here) and funny ways, but then gets to like and understand them, etc, etc. Like I said, pretty standard stuff, but pleasant and actually funny in a way that most (like me) monoligual Americans will easily recognize and largely appreciate. (Oh, and check out OSS 117, another recent French comedy [a James Bond spoof] that is so inspired and goofy that language again is not an obstacle.)

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests The Lion in Winter (in Classics). James Goldman’s stage play of royal family drama is brought to gleefully, grubby life on the screen in The Lion in Winter. It’s Christmas at the castle. The Queen is imprisoned in the tower, and each of Henry II’s prospective heirs has his eye on the throne. How jolly! If you think your family dynamics are a little overwrought, The Lion in Winter will one-up you on every front. The wrangling, slanging marriage between Henry Plantagenet (Peter O’Toole) and Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) will make your parents look like lovebirds, and the self-serving treachery of their sons (including an impossibly young Anthony Hopkins in his film debut) makes your bullying, bickering siblings seem positively cheerful. For all its scathing, railing dialogue, the film has a certain buoyant spirit; the whole family is vicious and manipulative, but they certainly are exuberant about it! It’s rather cheering, really… and whatever your family tensions, at least you’re not bickering over a throne. There’s always that.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests not letting children touch our DVDs. Or drunks. Or domesticated monkeys. Or the inconsiderate. Those groups have trouble remembering that you don’t touch the shiny side of a DVD, ever.

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Brazil (in Feature Drama/the Criterion Collection). If holiday shopping has soured your mood, you’re ripe for Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. In this dystopian consumer-driven future, the streets are full of overloaded shoppers; characters exchange dreadfully pointless pieces of overpriced, over-manufactured junk; a little girl demands that Santa bring her a credit card of her very own. The children of the Buttle household, where there is no chimney but only the ever-present vents, worry that Saint Nick will not visit them on Christmas Eve. How right they are. Whatever holiday you celebrate, take a well-deserved break and enjoy the perverse pleasures of Brazil.

>>>For Sunday, the Anonymous Videoport Drop Box Reviewer suggests Incubus (in Foreign Language). Hey guys, I don’t know if you have noticed this actor that I have been seeing all over the place. He’s been in movies as diverse as Fanboys and Free Enterprise, as well as several television commercials. I’m not sure what his name is but he always plays a character named ‘William Shatner’. He seems totally committed to his character and is very convincing- really fantastic stuff. So I mentioned this guy to a friend of mine, and she told me that he’s been acting for a very long time, especially on television shows like ‘The Twilight Zone’ and ‘T.J. Hooker’, but he’s most famous for a science fiction show called ‘Star Search’. In that show he played Colonel Klink, and would pal around the universe with his buddies Dr. Spock and Dr. ‘Boner’ McCoy (a urologist?), fighting the evil Crampons and the insidious Raglians. But my favorite thing that the actor who plays ‘William Shatner’ has been in is a movie called Incubus. Incubus was made in 1965 and, although shot in the US, will most likely be found in the foreign section*. The reason for this is it’s the only film to date to be shot in Esperanto. Esperanto is an artificial language invented by a Russian philologist (look it up) in the 19th century to be a kind of universal language, so, naturally, no one speaks it. It’s basically the story of a female demon who falls in love with a man of high moral character and tries to corrupt him. When he tries to do the right thing and make an honest woman out of her, the demon feels rejected and violated. To get revenge, she and her other demon cohorts summon the Incubus to kill the character played by the actor who also plays ‘William Shatner’. I really like the look of this movie, starkly shot in black and white. It has plenty of religious and even satanic iconography. Although my absolute favorite thing in this movie is a fight scene involving the female lead and a goat. Seriously, how often do you see a woman fight a goat? That’s gotta be the coolest thing ever. Anyhoo, in closing, although the whole ‘William Shatner’ thing is fun and good for a laugh, I’d like to see this very talented actor stretch a little and play some more varied roles like he used to.

*Editor’s note: Yup.

Fine, Fine, We Give Up… (or Videoport Now Carries Blu-Ray…Hooray!!!!)

Well, blu-ray has been around for a good, long while now, and the very, very slight interest in it has grown to a very slight interest, so we’ve brought in the first batch of blu-ray discs to the store. Why the wait? Well: 1. It’s pretty superfluous; it’s more expensive than DVD, and requires very expensive TV and sound systems to show any upgrade at all (and that cost doesn’t include the cost of a whole blu-ray player). 2. Videoport’s Jordan (the most fanatical audio/visual tech geek in the history of the world) estimates that, on his space-age equipment, there’s about a 25% improvement in picture over DVD and absolutely no upgrade in sound quality. 3. It seems like a marginally-improved technology which has been massively hyped in order to make people buy the movies and TV shows they already have all over again. Anyhoo, if you’ve already joined the blu-ray revolution, please peruse the following list of Videoport’s inaugural blu-ray trial balloon and rent the heck out of ‘em (if you want us to expand the collection), enjoy your major equipment purchases, and remember- since they’re all new, we’ll be able to know exactly who’s mistreating them, so DON’T TOUCH THE SHINY SIDE!!!:

American History X

American Psycho

Batman Begins

Being There

Blow

Boondock Saints

Braveheart

Bullitt

Casino

Casino Royale

Coraline

Corpse Bride

Dark City

The Dark Knight

Dogma

Donnie Darko

Fargo

Fast & Furious

Fight Club

Full Metal Jacket

The Getaway (Steve McQueen version, of course)

Ghost In the Shell 2.0

Gladiator

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Goodfellas

The Graduate

Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I Am Legend

Ice Age: The Dawn of the Dinosaurs

In the Realm of the Senses

‘John Adams’

A Knight’s Tale

The Last Samurai

Last Year at Marienbad

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Live Free or Die Hard

‘Mad Men’- season 1

‘Mad Men’- season 2

The Matrix

The Mist

Patton

The Perfect Storm

Playtime

‘Planet Earth’- the Complete Series

Quantum of Solace

Raging Bull

Repulsion

Requiem for a Dream

Reservoir Dogs

Risky Business

Robocop

Ronin

Silence of the Lambs

Speed

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

State of Play

Sweeney Todd

The Terminator

Terminator Salvation- Director’s Cut

There Will Be Blood

Tropic Thunder

2001: A Space Odyssey

Underworld

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans

Unforgiven

The Usual Suspects

V for Vendetta

The Wages of Fear

Watchmen- The Director’s Cut

Wedding Crashers

The Wedding Singer

The Wild Bunch

X Men Origins: Wolverine

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

New Releases this week at Videoport: Inglourious Basterds (the new Quentin Tarantino movies here! And it’s a completely bananas and completely awesome WWII action/drama/revisionist history and you can find it in Videoport’s Incredibly Strange section; yeah, we put it there, and there’s nothing you can do about it…), The Hangover (some drinking buddies lose their friend/the groom after a blackout bachelor party night in Vegas in this comedy starring Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galafianakis; some of you may have heard of it), G Force (the week’s release that Zach Galafianakis is perhaps less happy about, in this one he’s the human pal of a litter of wisecracking, CGI guinea pigs voiced by the likes of such other overqualified and justifiably-sheepish stars as Sam Rockwell, Penelope Cruz, and Tracy Morgan), The Other Man (Liam Neeson thinks wife Laura Linney is cheating on him with Antonio Banderas; that’s whom I’d suspect too…), ‘Robot Chicken’- season 4 (Seth Green continues to get laughs and mileage out of his childhood toybox with this stop-motion animated show), ‘The Tudors’- season 3 (they decided to shut this series down right before Henry VIII stopped being so hot), Taking Woodstock (Ang Lee directs this whimsical period piece about a shy young guy [comedian Demetri Martin] who finds himself instrumental in bringing the legendary music festival to his parents’ sleepy little town), ‘The Drinky Crow Show’- season 1 (new spazzed-out, 11 minute episodes of hilarity from the Adult Swim people; this one features alums of ‘Mr. Show’, ‘The Simpsons’, and Dave Herman, from Office Space), ‘Lucy: The Daughter of the Devil’- season 1 (created by alums of ‘Home Movies’, this one boasts the voice of Coach McGuirk himself Jon Benjamin as Satan!), Hollywood, Je T’aime (a depressed gay Frenchman comes to Hollywood to try and be a movie star), Summer Hours (Juliette Binoche stars in this bittersweet French comedy about a trio of adult siblings coping with the disposition of their mother’s estate after she dies),

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Chai Lai Angels (it’s a Thai version/ripoff of Charlie’s Angels! I have literally no idea how to respond to this!), The Girl From Monaco (French dramedy about a high-powered defense attorney, the Russian mob, his bodyguard, and a dizzy weathergirl on the make), Collision (British miniseries about the investigation into the lives of the people involved in a deadly car crash…or collision, if you will), Place of the Execution (another British psychological thriller, this time about a filmmaker looking into a famous, forty-year old murder case; starring Truly, Madly, Deeply’s Juliet Stevenson), ‘Mondovino’- the complete series (wine, wine, and more wine in this documentary series…about wine!).

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) & I on the week’s new releases (12/8/09)

Since we’re getting into the throes of heavy snow season (and parking ban season), what better time to rent a DVD? Videoport Jones and I take a look at what’s new on DVD this week, including a surprising performance from Robin Williams, the return of the world’s favorite boy wizard and Michael Mann (who some may have called a boy wizard at one point.) Also this week, a special guest appearance from Mrs. Videoport Jones!

World’s Greatest Dad

Videoport Jones: “I think the greatest compliment I can pay this new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (which, as you’ll see, I liked very much) is that I never once had to fight the urge to seek out Robin Williams’ home address, secure a reasonable airfare to that location, and then, upon Williams answering the door, punch him very hard in the face. Don’t get me wrong – I love Robin Williams. There was a time when I saw Mr. Williams as the funniest man in the world. Sure, I was pretty young, and I hadn’t seen Richard Pryor yet, but still. And then his quicksilver comic inventiveness curdled into self-satisfied mugging and self-indulgence. While he can be a solid dramatic actor when well-directed, he also has a soppy, self-indulgent thing which can, again with the face punching. ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ shows Williams at his most restrained and affecting in the story of a likeable-but-timid high school teacher and would-be writer who is burdened with the worst teenage son in the history of the world. Mean, dumb, willfully offensive, and obsessed with internet porn, this kid (played by that little dude from the ‘Spy Kids’ movies!) is a truly repulsive little creep, resisting every effort by his loving but exasperated dad to reach him. So, when the lad accidentally pulls a Michel Hutchence (or possibly David Carradine), Williams, trying to give the kid some post-mortem dignity, stages it like a suicide, along with a false, but eloquent suicide note, which causes the heretofore indifferent-to-him students and faculty of his school to view him with respect, and the heretofore-understandably-hostile-to-his-son world to pretend that they liked him all along. From there, the film becomes a mordantly-funny, slyly satirical, and unexpectedly moving exploration of America’s tendency to mythologize the recently dead, especially when, seeing the seeming good his fake note is causing, Williams produces his son’s (fictitious) journal, which draws national attention. Sure it’s a little choppy in parts, but Goldthwait (as he did in his ‘Sleeping Dogs Lie’) is revealing himself as a rudely humanistic social satirist, able to wring laughs and tears out of seemingly-offensive premises. And he was able to bring out the best in Robin Williams, which is most appreciated. One of the best films of the year.”

Justin: “Oh, so THAT’s what they mean by ‘Dark Comedy.’ Yikes. I always wonder what it’s like in the pitch meeting for movies like this. ‘So it all centers around when the awful, misanthropic son accidentally kills himself in a sex game gone wrong. AND THEN it gets hilarious!’ What do movie executives go from there? Do they automatically say ‘can we get Robin Williams for the role of the father? BRILLIANT!’ Who knows. While I like the premise of this movie, part of me can’t get around the fact that it hinges on the death of a teenager, even an awful one. Since the kid was a jerk are we suppose to be OK with it? But moving past that you get into some weird universal truths, which can lead to genuine comedy. You are right my friend, we do have a strange obsession with placing the recently dead up on a pedestal. With the exception of the universally reviled, we seem to give a pass and even a small halo to those who may have been less than likable while alive. It may seem like a strange thing to say about a movie with Robin Williams, but there could be something to learn from this flick. Maybe it’s about the human condition…or that Robin Williams can be serviceable given the right conditions. You decide.”

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

VPJ: “Have you heard about this movie? Some sort of boy wizard. Weird. But I kid the monster money vacuum film franchise. I dunno, I may have to cede this one to you, Justin; I saw the first one, which I roundly despised, have heard that it got better (when they hired real directors like Alfonso Cuaron), and has now settled back into a nice, lucrative mediocrity. I suppose, were one inclined to find reasons to watch, there have been some great actors along the way (Gary Oldman, Michael Gambon, Ian Hart, Alan Rickman, Kenneth Branagh, Maggie Smith, Ralph Fiennes, David Thewlis), but, oddly those reasons haven’t done the trick for me. Clearly I’m in the minority, so you guys have fun…”

JE: “We are indeed in the minority here. Though geeks we may be, this is one fantasy realm that doesn’t make sense to us. But, and this may come as a surprise, I’m going to go ahead and defend the boy wizard. I was at a gathering a few months back that included a group of kids plopped down in front of one of the Potter movies. It was captivating to them and I recognized the look in their faces. I think it had to mirror the way I looked when I watched the Star Wars movies as a kid. As for the actual content of the movie? Meh. Tons of flashy special effects, teenage (wizardy) angst and more than a little non-kid friendly themes. So what happens in this installment in the series? I’m gonna say evil is afoot, Harry grows a little bit older (leading to many a Bobby Brady-esque puberty hijicks) and it falls to the gang at Hogwarts to save the magic and non-magic world. Look, I’ve always said I have no ill-will towards the Potter franchise because I’m a fan of anything that gets kids to read, and if it gets them into movies, that’s fine too. Now the ‘Twilight’ franchise, that’s another story…”

Public Enemies

VPJ: “Have you heard about this John Depp fellow? He seems to be some sort of actor? Weird. But I kid the world’s most popular entertainer. This gangster pic about the dogged pursuit of John Dillinger by G-Man Melvin Purvis and his fedora-topped pals comes to us courtesy of style monster Michael Mann. I like Mann’s fierce dedication to surfaces which, in films like ‘Manhunter,’ ‘The Insider,’ and ‘Heat’ can produce a glossy excitement. In others, like ‘Miami Vice’ and, well, this, the style takes over, sapping the substance and leaving the whole enterprise just inert up there on the screen. Which is a neat trick here, since ‘Public Enemies’ is populated by some truly compelling screen subjects; apart from the Depp, Mann’s camera bleeds the life from the likes of Christian Bale, Billy Crudup (as a sly J. Edgar Hoover), Marion Cotillard, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff, Rory Cochrane, and James Russo. He does know how to shoot an action sequence (and his use of a more rough-and-tumble handheld approach livens things up a bit), but ‘Public Enemies’ never gets inside, underneath, or, really, anywhere near its characters and the film just…is. Hope that Depp kid comes out okay…”

JE: “Sometimes when you keep scratching to get below the surface you just wind up finding more surface. This is Michael Mann. And if Mann had filmed this exchange between us there would have been lots of close and mid-range shots of us looking pensive, soaking up the surroundings while offering minmal dialogue. And then probably a gun fight. So, you know, that’s cool. I’m putting ‘Public Enemies’ on my ‘movies to watch’ list, but maybe not high on that list. I’m a fan of the cast (even with Stephen Dorff) and I’m curious about how Mann’s style, specifically towards action, would translate into a kind of period movie. If he’s using the same techniques from ‘Heat’ and ‘Miami Vice,’ then those Tommy Gun shootouts are going to be seriously intense. Mann’s style is very distinctive, it’s a kind of detached and deliberate voyeurism that brings viewers into the action but often doesn’t give a sense of characters. Sometimes this is OK, other times not so much. I’ll be the first to admit that while I thought ‘Miami Vice’ was a bad movie, I’ve rewatched it on occasion because frankly it’s nice to look at. Maybe that’s not so bad. And of course I’m sure there are armies of women who would agree that Mr. Depp is nice to look at too.”

Lost – Season 5

VPJ: “Have you heard about this show? Some sort of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ thing, but with polar bears? Huh. Weird. But I kid the formerly-unstoppable ratings machine currently in decline. I liked the first season of ‘Lost.’ A couple of decent character actors (especially Terry O’Quinn), some nice spooky WTF? moments, and twist after twist. After twist. When the twists kept coming halfway through the second season, and the show seemed utterly uninterested in resolving 75% of the previous ones, and when the weekly character flashback structure started to play itself out, well, I tuned out. Like ‘Twin Peaks,’ it seemed like ‘Lost’ was eventually just going to keep throwing whacked-out ideas at the wall (my attention span) and seeing what stuck without much rhyme or reason, so I bailed like D.B. Cooper. I know I’m a quitter and all, but there’re only so many hours I can devote to trying to unravel a mystery whose authors seem to have less of an idea of what’s going on than I do. Justin – you’re a Lost-ie, right? Help a partner out.”

JE: “Hahahahaha! Oh poor Jonesy. The road get to twisty and turny for you? All those puzzles and mind games make your head hurt? Oh you poor man. OK, jokes aside, I have not touched ‘Lost’ and frankly will probably stay far away from it until it wraps up next year. Why? If I’m gonna invest in one big mind frak then I’d like to consume it all at once, thank you. I am a big fan of J.J. Abrams. I dug ‘Alias,’ I liked his take in ‘MI:3,’ I’m watching ‘Fringe’ and as all of you know I was over the moon for ‘Star Trek.’ But ‘Lost’ is where me and the JJ-man parted ways. Granted, it’s not like I’m a guy who steers away from complex TV since I stayed with ‘Battlestar Gallactica’ till the end and recently watched ‘The Prisoner’ remake. But something about ‘Lost’ threw me off from the beginning, and since it’s a show based on long story arcs that made it easy to stay away. Like I said, I’ll take it all in once it’s over. Until then ‘Lost’ heads can enjoy their island, their polar bears, their Dharma Initiatives and whatnot. You know who you are.”

Julie & Julia

Mrs. Videoport Jones (substitution!): “Nora Ephron’s ‘Julie and Julia’ melds together two disparate tales: Julia Child’s posthumously published memoir of her culinary education, and Julie Powell’s blog-to-book account of a year cooking her way through Child’s encyclopaedic ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’ V. I & II. It should surprise no one that Meryl Streep was the choice to bring the larger-than-life Julia Child to the screen. Of all actors working today, only Streep could hone her voice and mannerisms to echo the unique rolling giggle, the highs and lows, the familiar and beloved songbird voice of Julia Child. What is surprising? How marvelously Streep captures Child’s essence: The vim, the brio, the joie de vivre and jolly bravado that Julia Child brought to all her public enterprises… and how beautifully the film peeks into the vigor that she brought to private life, as well. Streep’s Julia Child embraces life with a cheeky, boisterous air and a sexy sauciness that extends beyond the kitchen. Rarely has the screen seen a couple as frankly and believably in love as Julia and Paul (Stanley Tucci), her dapper diplomat husband. Indeed, the whole film is filled with canny casting choices. Watching Jane Lynch and Meryl Streep crowing and groaning and giggling together, you can easily believe them as sisters. Chris Messina plays Julie Powell’s loving but ill-treated husband, and he transforms the thankless doormat role into something both earnest and playful. Then there’s the biggest casting trick of all: Amy Adams as Julie Powell. Adams brings twinkle and cuteness to a part that is, frankly, pretty unsympathetic: Julie Powell’s writing voice is blankly self-involved, entitled, and whiny, simultaneously resentful of the task she had set herself and and ignorant of its depths. Amy Adams takes all those attributes and wraps them up into an almost lovable package of spunky determination and colorful failures, bringing a taste of sweetness and a bit of backbone to a shrill, unlikeable character.”

JE: “Uh…wow. I don’t really think I can top that. Mrs. J has actually made me consider watching a movie I had no interest in seeing. Not because of the topic (I dig cooking and we’ve got many cookbooks – including Child’s – at the NXT Estate), but because of the melding of the two stories. For anyone who doesn’t know, a movie on Julia Child’s life would be an outstanding feature (world class cook, quirky character, TV pioneer, and oh, yeah, SPY.). A story on Julie Powell’s book would be, well, a disappointment and an exercise in narcissism. Read the books. Mrs. J you are welcome to sub in for your hubby any time. Maybe we should have Mrs. J and the NXT Gal pinch hit around here sometime…”

SPEED ROUND: Also this week at Videoport: “Beautiful Losers” (A documentary about the skatepunk artistic rebels of the 90s, including Spike Jonze [yay!] and Harmony Korine [you suck!]), “The Lion’s Den” (Argentinian drama about an incarcerated mom trying to raise her kid), “Somers Town” (another gripping tale of unlikely friendships in the British underclass from director Shane Meadows ["This Is England"]), “The Boy With the Sun In His Eyes” (The latest gay-themed drama from Bangor, Maine’s own auteur Todd Verow), “Into the Storm” (Brendan Gleeson as Winston Churchill), and four, count ‘em four newly-released episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Corpse Vanishes, Warrior of the Lost World, Santa Claus, and the classic Night of the Blood Beast!

Parting shots:

- What’s the formula for a good Robin Williams movie?
- Lost fans, how would you convince a newcomer to watch your show?
- Would you watch a movie on the life of Julia Child?

VideoReport #225

Volume CCXXV- Jo Jo Gamera, Your Life Is Calling

For the Week of 12/8/09

Videoport reminds you that the Holiday Season is barreling down upon us like a brakeless freight train. In an unrelated announcement, Videoport would like to further remind you that we have a great selection of gift certificates, new and previously-viewed movies for sale, and can order anything you need in time for the big day.

Middle Aisle Monday. (Get one free rental from the Sci-Fi, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation or Staff Picks sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Night of the Living Dead (in Horror). In a recent conversation with a friend, I came to the jolting realization that for some people, the title Night of the Living Dead does not bring to mind Romero’s 1968 classic of creeping, low-level, low-budget anxiety, but instead conjures up memories of the pallid, sloppy full-color 1990 remake. Warning, warning [and spoiler alert]: guys, it’s not even the same movie. NotLD 1990 is a loving homage, sure, but even the fates of the characters are different, which makes the film as a whole a different narrative and much less susceptible to intelligent cultural dissection. (To be fair, remake- director Tom Savini has little interest in cultural dissection, being almost exclusively interested in actual dissection… or whatever passes for it on film. A special-effects and makeup artist from the splashy school, Savini has an unabashed love for big gooey explosions of fake innards. He’s the guy who brought you the goopy gore and over-the-top makeup of Romero’s intentionally goofy sequel Dawn of the Dead. ) No, Romero’s original is taut, eerie, and filled with social statement, intentionally or otherwise. Unlike the sequels and remakes, it rarely invites guffaws or giggles; Night of the Living Dead brings on uncomfortable fits of tittering, nervous laughter mixed with groans and silent dread. Like all great stories, it’s not about the event (the dead are rising from their graves!) but about how people respond to the event, and to each other; it’s about social dynamics in terrifying and emotional circumstances.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday. (Get one free rental from the Action or Classics sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Dennis suggests The Emerald Forest (in Action). This 80’s era jungle adventure has a lot going for it: the ever-manly Powers Boothe, some spectacularly-filmed locations, hallucinogenic drug trips, action, some hot native girls who don’t go in for shirtwear. It’s also completely bonkers, which is refreshing. Supposedly based on a true story (one assumes, up to a point fairly early on), the film follows American engineer Boothe on his ten year quest to find his son who was seemingly abducted by Brazilian tribesmen. When he does eventually track down the lad, the boy’s a strapping blonde native warrior with a really hot girlfriend and a fast track towards toe chieftain-ship, so he’s not exactly psyched to leave with his middle-management dad and learn the right fork to use with the salad course. So dad hangs out with the natives, talks with the elderly chief (who’s allowed a sly sense of humor), smokes some blue stuff that unlocks his spirit animal (or something), and gradually begins to see his son’s point of view. But, when goons under the employ of Boothe’s own land-raping company (dum-dum-DUMMMM) invade the village and start killing and enslaving everybody, well, then it’s time for some good-old father/son bonding-through-killing. Sure it’s silly, but The Emerald Forest has a nice, propulsive style, it’s never dull, and there’s enough sex, violence, and drugs, that it’s message of the unspoiled purity of those who live close to the jungle goes down painlessly. Plus, it’s pretty mindblowing to anyone who’s seen “Long Way ‘Round’, ‘Long Way Down’, or ‘Race to Dakar’ (recently acquired by Videoport!), to see young Charley Boorman (son of the film’s director John) at 18; unlike the puffy-faced, leather-clad pal o’ Ewan McGregor you see there, he’s a lithe,Tarzan-bodied hunk here, although still with those bug eyes and beady little teeth.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests Trading Places (in Comedy).  With the recent snowfall, I’m starting to get in the holiday spirit. Today, I’m celebrating a little early with Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd. There’s nothing like betrayal, penury, and revenge on the Wall Street bigwigs to give life that Christmas twinkle! Louis Winthorpe III (Aykroyd) is a privileged and successful executive in a ritzy brokerage house, but his even-more-privileged bosses (Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) wonder if his success is due to his own efforts or to his upbringing and surroundings. With the callous insouciance of the mindbogglingly wealthy, they use Winthorpe’s life and livelihood as a the basis for a brotherly bet: toss him out of his envied position, ruin his reputation, and see if he sinks or swims. In his place, they groom street grifter Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), a smart cookie with little formal education and a mismatched set of social skills, but loads of charisma and life experience. The plotline is silly and in other hands could easily be stilted and predictable, or become a dismissive and superficial buddy comedy, but Murphy and Aykroyd make the whole thing hum along like a beautiful machine. And a machine it is; the film’s structure owes a good deal to the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, and particularly to the social-class comedies like The Lady Eve or My Man Godfrey. It’s also a buddy movie, and it’s marvelous to watch Aykroyd and Murphy let their incompatible types find the nices and nooks of compatibility between them. They inhabit their characters so fully, imbue them with real depth and intelligence and humor, never letting them feel like caricatures or plot vehicles. The story does deal with a great many racial and social stereotypes, and imperfectly acknowledges them as stereotypes, but the central parts are so marvelously cast, so intensely alive and real, that I can forgive it its failings. Also, it’s freakin’ funny, so there’s that.

Thrifty Thursday. (Get one free movie from any section with your paid rental.)

>>> Elsa S. Customer suggests A Clockwork Orange (in Feature Drama). I’m endlessly fascinated by Kubrick’s films, yet I can rarely put my finger on what exactly makes them tick along like a … well, the title reference is a little too obvious here, so I’ll skip that. Anyhow… It took years of watching and rewatching Kubrick’s three most ambitious and idiosyncratic films ( A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, 2001: A Space Odyssey) to notice: the effect is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. These films are lavishly detailed, intently staged, beautifully shot, and — beneath the smooth polish of design and style — almost always emotionally empty. A Clockwork Orange is a perfect example of this: the tale of Alex, the viciously anti-social droog tapped for psycho-medical rehabilitation seems impossible to bring to the screen. How can you portray the torture, the dreadful force, the chilling depth of Alex’s disdain for humankind? How do you show his acts of outrage without violating his key characteristic of affectless insouciance? Kubrick does it with towering, vicious majesty; the film is a horrific masterpiece of unfeeling brutality. Even the camera silently shows us Alex’s distorted worldview: over and over, Alex (Malcolm McDowell, in an utterly nauseating but weirdly charm-filled performance) appears in the middle of an overwide shot, the camera’s perspective causing the peripheral characters to recede into the distance, their forms bending and swaying while he stays strong, straight, and centered. Once again, Kubrick has eviscerated an emotionally charged story, leaving only its towering trappings. Like so many of his films, A Clockwork Orange is like a drum: it resonates so loudly because it is empty.

Free Kids Friday. (Get one free rental from the Children’s or Family sections, no other rental necessary).

>>> Dennis suggests that, and I don’t want to offend anyone here, that CHILDREN (AND IRRESPONSIBLE, CARELESS PEOPLE) SHOULD NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HANDLE OUR DVDS. We don’t touch the shiny side kids, and we don’t smear jelly on it, and we don’t leave it out on the floor ’cause it’s so shiny and pretty. That is all…

Having a Wild Weekend. (Rent two, get your third movie for free from any section on Saturday and Sunday.)

>>>For Saturday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Miller’s Crossing (in Feature Drama). It’s Chicago, during Prohibition, and Tom is causing trouble. Again. The leaders of two rival gangs, Leo O’Bannon and Johnny Caspar (Albert Finney and Jon Polito) clash over a small business matter: should a small-time bookie (John Turturro) be killed, or protected? This seemingly simple proposition gets indescribably complicated, as the ties between the characters get unearthed. The whole story revolves around the efforts of Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), O’Bannon’s right-hand man, to ease tensions the only way he knows how: persuading Leo to let him kill that guy, already. But nothing is ever that simple, not in noir and not in a Coen Brothers’ film. The twisty-turning plot feels a little bit like two noirs woven together… and I intend that as a compliment. As always with Coen Brothers’ period pieces, the background is spectacular, in that unspectacular noir-y way: richly designed and fully believable houses, offices, flophouses, and cars; period costumes that look lived-in instead of costume-y; the snappy patter that flows off everyone’s tongue; and always — in the office, in the hallway, in the alley — the shadows, looming. But there’s more here than you’ll find in the average noir: a depth, a sorrow, a richness of metaphor that makes Miller’s Crossing a stand-out, even in the Coens’ oeuvre.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Ratatouille (in Comedy). If you’re taking home this week’s hot new culinary tale for adults, Julie and Julia, why not give the kids a culinary treat as well: Ratatouille, Pixar’s delightful story about a winsome rat (voiced by the hilarious Patton Oswalt) with an unusually refined palate… a gutter rat who aspires to become a world-class chef. The echoes of Julia Child’s own story are amusing and touching, and Remy will charm you right out of your chef’s toque.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (have you guys heard about this Harry Potter deal? It’s like he’s some sort of wizard boy…huh, weird…), Julie & Julia (Meryl Streep is a hoot playing the legendary gourmand Julia Child; Amy Adams fights hard to make the ‘Julie’ of the title [a whiny blogger who cooked her way through Child's most famous recipes] even remotely likeable), Public Enemies (some guy named Depp plays famous gangster John Dillinger; luckily for that poor sucker, he’s surrounded by a stellar supporting cast including Christian Bale, Billy Crudup, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff, Christian Bale, Rory Cochrane, and Marion Cotillard), Jar City (who’s up for an Icelandic serial killer thriller?!), Kevin Nealon: Now Hear Me Out (former SNL-er and current ‘Weeds’ cult favorite Nealon brings his serviceable comedy styling to this new standup special), ‘Lost’- season 5 (so there are these people stuck on some sort of island? With, like a polar bear or something? Huh, weird…), ‘Rescue Me’- season 5, part 2 (Denis Leary continues to bring disgrace upon the heads of us Dennises everywhere as his drunken fireman fights with women, alcoholism, seemingly everyone in the world, and the occasional fire), World’s Greatest Dad (Bobcat Goldthwait directs pal Robin Williams to shocking glory in this dark comedy about teen suicide, fame, and auto-erotic asphyxiation; seriously, it’s one of the best movies of the year), Beautiful Losers (from the IMdB: “In the early 1990’s, while most of the country was still reeling from the Reagan era, a loose-knit group of American artists develop a cultural movement influenced by the D.I.Y attitude and underground youth cultures of skateboarding, graffiti and punk rock.”- a couple of the subjects include Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine), Humble Pie (comedy about a hefty young dude who wants to be an actor), Lion’s Den (Argentina’s entry for this year’s Foreign Language Oscar is this drama about a young woman trying to raise her child while she’s in prison), Somers Town (two unlikely friends in London deal with homelessness, family prejudice, and loving the same girl), The Boy With the Sun in His Eyes (from Bangor, Maine’s own indie auteur Todd Verow comes his latest gay-themed thriller), Into the Storm (Brendan Gleeson takes over the role of Winston Churchill from Albert Finney in this continuing BBC biopic about the legendary statesman).

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Evangelion 1.01 (new Anime! There may be robots!), Merry Madagascar/Party With the Penguins (it’s a Christmas-related animated spinoff from the moderately-successful children’s series! Originality!), Runaway (indie thriller about a pair of young brothers trying to start over in a new town, until their past catches up with them), Shank (secretly-gay British skinhead tries to hide his sexuality from his droogs, which becomes more difficult when he falls in love with the French guy they were beating the crap out of; I’m sure the guys’ll be understanding…), Valley of the Heart’s Delight (Pete Postlethwaite stars in this 1930s-set thriller about a kidnapping, a reporter, and a lynch mob), and Videoport brings in four more episodes of the legendary comedy series MST3k (that’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the uninitiated): Warrior of the Lost World, Santa Claus, The Corpse Vanishes, and the all-time classic Night of the Blood Beast!

Park for free at Videoport! Yup, just pull into any downtown parking garage and then ask for a Park & Shop sticker from your friendly neighborhood Videoporter and we’ll get you a free hour of parking therein. (And remember: parking meters are off after 6pm, Monday-Saturday and all day on Sunday, and the parking lot behind the building is open for free one hour parking after 5pm Monday-Friday and all day on the weekends).

Justin Ellis (Portland Press Herald) and I on the new releases for 12/1/09

Around these parts we burn franchises to the ground and punch kittens. Sounds like we should get a TV/film development deal, right? OK, all will be explained later. For now just know that when new DVDs are released, Videoport Jones and I do the dirty work so you don’t have to.

Terminator: Salvation

Videoport Jones: “This seems like an overly-dismissive review of this week’s tentpole release, but…nope, not interested. I mean, who was interested in Terminator 3? Calculate that, and then subtract another 25% of my interest for this one. Look, the original ‘Terminator’ is great, at least partially by virtue of its low-budget grubbiness (seriously, look at the effects there – they are, especially in the end, endearingly dopey), and the second skates by on spectacle (it was the first film to surpass a $100,000,000 budget, so James Cameron had lots of toys to play with). But the third – I mean, who actually cared? And now the fourth, apart from the YouTube-aided dimwit scandal that only ridiculous no-life-having people cared about, hits the DVD, and, it’s just not on my radar. Following the trend of, oh, every movie series ever, the Terminator franchise is less and less rewarding as it goes on. As for star Christian Bale, well, I’m gonna go off on a small tangent. I like Bale, and admire his willingness to transform himself for a role, but I find my inability to picture a Bale performance in my head for any sustained period as indicative less of Bale’s chameleon-like abilities than his slight deficiency of charisma. It’s not crippling – he’s the best screen Batman (although, like all screen Batmen, he’s second banana to his villains), but part of the reason why he’s so effective in ‘American Psycho’ is that the joke that he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the 80’s Wall Street prettyboys hinges on that very fact. As for this movie itself – eh.”

Justin: “You know it’s a bad sign when a movie franchise is literally put up for sale. When even the most money-hungry and creativity-starved studio throws up their hands and says ‘We got NOTHING, sell it!’ And yet that is what’s happened with The Terminator. I’ll fess up: The ’splosion, robot, car-chase loving dude in me liked these films (though never saw 3, so your hypothesis holds up for now.). The first two were solid enough in a ‘keep the chase moving and don’t stop to think’ sort of way. And of course the awesomeness was upped in ‘Judgment Day’ by a butt-kicking Linda Hamilton and the creepy liquid Terminator (will Robert Patrick ever be anything other than the T-1000?). But this time around, with Terminator: Salvation they were looking to do too many things at the same time. Reboot (and revitalize) the franchise, give the story a new significance and weight and graft some star-power onto the whole affair with Mr. Bale. Unlike the others, this one takes place in John Connor’s future, introduces a bunch of characters we’re suppose to care about and while not using time-travel, nods to it as part of the plot. And oh, they brought in McG to run the ship. OK, there is nothing wrong with McG (well, his name is silly) in moderate, controlled doses, but it looks like they just cut him loose here. There’s NO SALVATION for this Terminator! Ha. OK, but seriously, this one does too much work for what should just be bang-splodey ridiculous. More Batman please Mr. Bale.”

A Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian

VPJ: “In lieu of reviewing this movie (a loud, dumb, moderately-amusing-in-small-patches sequel to its identically-mediocre forebear), I’d just like to say a few words in defense of its writers. Tom Lennon and Ben Garant have written these two movies, the Lindsay Lohan Herbie movie, ‘The Pacifier’ (or Vin Diesel’s own ‘Kindergarten Cop’), ‘Taxi’ (the Jimmy Fallon one), and ‘Balls of Fury’ (which had a few laughs in it). Obviously, that’s not the defense part; these movies are obviously indefensible. No, what I’d point out, and what will make me go to bat for these guys until the end of time (although if The Pacifier 2: Mr. Stinkypants ever comes out, I may have to reevaluate) is their other resume. Let’s talk founding members of the sketch comedy troupe ‘The State,’ founding members and stars of the improv-y greatness that was ‘Reno: 911,’ and the hit-or-miss loony weirdness that was ‘Viva Variety’. These are – clearly – hilarious, inventive, original comic thinkers (and brilliant comic performers) who have to pay the plumber. And don’t we all have to pay the plumber? So please, when you think of Tom and Ben, remember ‘The State’ and ‘Reno:911,’ and remember the plumber. Thank you. (Ben Stiller is also in this film, I believe).”

JE: “Wow. I don’t know if you were trying to convince the public this was OK, or yourself. It sounds like some serious over-justification there my friend. And that’s OK, whatever helps you sleep at night. As it stands those guys can’t seem to catch a break as their other projects seem to get submarined as soon as they’re green-lit (though Reno did last for 6 seasons of goodness.). The dirty little secret is that Lennon and Garant are not alone in their writing work on less-than-stellar movies. This is what comedy writers – all screenwriters really – have to do to get by. While I’m sure you can try and get by punching out what you consider your ‘best work,’ the reality is a pay day is always a nice thing. So if that means writing ‘The Pacifier,’ then go ahead. As for this sequel to ‘A Night at the Museum,’ we pick up (presumably) where we left off with Mr. Stiller, now at, as the title suggests, The Smithsonian. Wacky hijincks! Cameos! Icons of American history and pop culture! I’m sure there are worse things to watch with the family, but this one does have Bill Hader and Hank Azaria, so that’s a few pluses in my book. It gets a stay of execution…just don’t expect me to watch it.”

The Cove

VPJ: “I swear I’m not trying to turn this lighthearted, hip, edgy, cool guy movie column into an environmentalist, left-wing kook-fest, but it’s just that, well, people keep on raping the world and its creatures and other, nicer people keep making searing, outraged documentaries about said rape. This time, it’s our finny friends the dolphins who’re getting rogered but good, annually in a remote Japanese villiage’s dedicated dolphin slaughtering festival. The filmmakers, having to circumvent the security and secrecy, employed some seriously-manly, secret agent-type methods, risking life, limb, and a boatload of expensive equipment. It’s a really gripping hybrid of real-life adventure film and furious, do-gooder polemic, and therefore more exciting than the average documentary. Sure, there is – as ever – more complexity to the issues than perhaps the filmmakers are willing to admit. But, well, it’s tough to argue with the actual facts presented here.”

JE: “Dammit Jonesy what did I tell you about your left-wing propaganda! Another crack pot documentary like this and YOU’RE OFF THE CASE! OK, but jokes aside, I don’t know if I can watch this one if it skates too close to dolphin torture porn for the sake of making a point. In terms of cute Animals humans love,a movie about brutality towards dolphins might fare as well be as a documentary on punching kittens in the face. (BTW, I’ll be taking ‘Kitten Punchers’ to Sundance next year.) As horrifying as this film sounds at first glance there is a very touching story in it about Ric O’Barry, a one-time dolphin trainer who makes a 180 degree change of heart on the plight of the squeakers. If I have one quibble with documentaries like this (and I’ve said this many times before) it’s when filmmakers insert themselves too much into a story. There can be a tendancy to glamorize the director or their process, and I’m not interested in that. Unless a doc is about the filmmaker I don’t necessarily want their presence in front of the camera. But in this case the act of telling the story, the big how, is integral to the film. Seeing the depths of the subterfuge, misdirection and cunning it takes to just show the world this awful event makes the story that much more powerful.”

Paper Heart

VPJ: “Charlyne Yi is an indie hipster cutie pie. You might remember her, being an indie hipster cutie pie, in a small role in ‘Knocked Up.’ Well, here, she’s teaming up with perhaps the only person more of an indie hipster cutie pie than she, Michael Cera, in a deliberately-unclassifiable sort of romantic comedy/documentary/metatextual audience put on. ‘Paper Heart’ starts off as a documentary, with Yi being extra adorable, giggling her way through awkward cupie-doll-on-the-street interviews with people about the nature of love. As the film goes on, Yi finds herself at a party with ‘Arrested Development’s’ Cera, and they have one of the most painfully-adorable courting scenes ever. Sure, it sounds sort of predictable, but wait-and-see. In addition to being an indie scene-stealer, Yi’s also a standup comic and performance artist, and she and Cera were already together when they made the film. Or were they? See, when they started doing publicity for the movie, it was revealed that Cera had broken up with Yi. Or had he? Oh, and the on screen director of the film is named after a real-life friend and partner of Yi’s, but he’s played by someone else, while that real-life friend plays another character. It’s all a bit hazy, but it seems like there’s some sort of public-satirizing going on here, along with some Andy Kaufman-esque gamesmanship, and some actual, if adorable, exploration of what it means to be in love. And Yi and Cera do make a cute couple, their blush-y reticence ever bordering on twee, but staying on the right side. A weird little doodle that I enjoyed quite a bit.”

JE: “I may have to just push away from the table on this one. While it has all the hallmarks of a surprising little wonder (and who among us hasn’t described Michael Cera that way?), I think it would make my brain hurt just a little bit. The premise (on its face) is cute: what is love? I heard an interview with Yi where she talked about making the movie and how it sprung from her own thoughts and feelings on relationships and romantic love. This sounds interesting, no? Movies about personal questions and self discovery can be fun (or painful. or painfully fun.). But the more I heard about this, from the maybe/maybe not real relationship with Cera and the real character/fake character/real character thing, it just seemed too confusion. It’s not that I don’t mind a little meta-mind games from my movies. If I wanted that I’d hire Charlie Kaufman to make a documentary on cake-making.  But I don’t appreciate mind games if they feel sloppily put together. Maybe watching it will change my mind (most likely because it’s hard not to be won over by Cera’s hoodie-wearing charm).”

A Christmas Tale

VPJ: “Oh great, another holiday movie. Except, this time, it’s French (from director Arnaud Desplechin, maker of ‘My Sex Life, Or How I Got Into an Argument’), so instead of wacky in-laws and cute pets doing tricks, we get family dysfunction, dead children, long-buried resentment, and, oh yeah, cancer! Yup, it’s a French cinematic Christmas, with the legendary (and still stunning Catherine Deneuve) and ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’s’ Mathieu Amalric among others, a generous helping of familial misery, and an ‘Amelie’-style side dish of magical whimsy. Sounds like Christmas to me, and it’s pretty darned moving, and less of a downer (slightly) than the description makes it sound. A rare current release presented by the Criterion Collection, who invariably know what they’re talking about.”

JE: “Could it be? Is this? A Christmas movie that doesn’t make us violently angry or depressed? OK, well the family drama may get us depressed, but the filmmaking may not! Now, before I go on to say rent this, I feel like I should say that this is not for everyone. In fact it may not be for most people. The common denominator between and good and bad holiday movies is family dysfunction, which is tolerable in a funny movie and unbearable in a bad one. This on the other hand is a good one, but may cut a little too close to the bone. We’re talking deep-seeded conflict and anger that doesn’t get easily resolved through a zany scheme or comical misunderstanding. This is what you are getting with ‘A Christmas Tale.’ ‘National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation’ it ain’t. And that is not a bad thing. See, sometimes what you get for all that emotional trauma is a more satisfying ending. It’s like a well-deserved payoff, or, since this is the season, a gift. And let me second my esteemed colleague here: Do NOT mess with the Criterion Collection.”

Lightning Round! Also this week: Five Minutes of Heaven (The ever-dependable Liam Neeson in a drama about an IRA murderer confronted by the brother of a victime some decades after the fact), Better Off Ted – Season 1 (“Arrested Development’s” Portia de Rossi stars in this satirical workplace comedy), I Sell the Dead (“Lost’s” favorite hobbit Dominic Monaghan stars in this dark comedy horror film about a condemned grave robber looking back on the grisly details of his life), Seraphine (A biopic about the life of French painter Seraphine de Senlis).

Parting shots:

- Where did the Terminator franchise go off the rails? Is it salvageable?
- Are we over-justifying (and condoning) bad movies because we like the writers?
- Is Michael Cera’s “hoodie-wearing charm” enough for you to see “Paper Heart?”