VideoReport #342

Volume CCCXLII- The Revengening

For the Week of 3/6/12

Videoport gives you a free movie every day. Take a chance on something weird. We like it when you’re weird…

Middle Aisle Monday! Take a free rental from the Science Fiction, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation, or Staff Picks sections with any other paid rental!

>>>Videoport customer Jenna G. suggests The Gift (in Mystery/Thriller.) I picked up this mystery-psych-thriller because Sam Raimi (Evil Dead, Spiderman) directed and Billy Bob Thornton co-wrote. Also, the story is supposedly inspired by Billy Bob’s psychic Mother. What?! Annie Wilson (Cate Blanchett) reads cards in a deep southern town full of crazies and drunk rednecks. Giovanni Ribisi gives the best performance as a tortured mechanic among a cast of pre-Tom Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves and Greg Kinnear. While dialogue and characters border lazy or cliche at times, the plot gets interesting when Annie helps investigate the disappearance of a local girl. Her “gift” is presented in a believable way throughout and the “whodunit” second-half of the movie has some fun twists. Ultimately, this is a dark movie with some good ideas and a solid lead. Sidenote: Raimi directed Billy Bob in a not-to-be-missed film: A Simple Plan.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday! Give yourself a free rental from the Action or Classics section with any other paid rental!

>>>Andy suggests The Asphalt Jungle (in Classics). John Huston’s 1950 thriller couldn’t differ more severely from his first film, The Maltese Falcon (1941). Both are noirs, but that’s all they have in common. In fact, The Asphalt Jungle more closely resembles Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing than Falcon (Sterling Hayden’s presence helps), though Jungle is more realistic and less stylized than either of those films. It’s also more compassionate and forgiving of its flawed characters, instead of judging them from an amused distance. The story is simple: a man masterminds a jewel heist and recruits some criminals to execute his plan. The plan is solid, except that it doesn’t account for the human element. In that way, The Asphalt Jungle is the same as every other film about crime (or any other endeavor). People have a way of gumming up the works. That’s a noir attitude. But if this is a noir, where is the femme fatale? There are two femmes in this film, though there’s very little that’s fatale about them. One is Jean Hagen, who portrays Doll, Sterling Hayden’s devoted ex-fling. She sticks by her man no matter what trouble he gets into, and even cleans his apartment! The other, played by Marilyn Monroe, does nothing but look beautiful and let her hopelessly smitten sugar daddy (Louis Calhern) drive himself to distraction. She doesn’t love him, but she likes him just fine, and he’s sweet to her. Together, these women are the most passive femme fatales in film history. They’re both decent women who let their men make all the mistakes. Noir is typically a man’s world, and The Asphalt Jungle is full of greedy, violent men, but the women in the film provide shades of warmth that make the story more realistic, and ultimately more tragic.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday! You’ve got a free rental coming from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with any other paid rental!

>>>Former Videoporter Stockman suggests D.E.B.S. (in Comedy.) My brother and I first rented this, I’m profusely sorry to say at Blockbuster*. But we learned a fun and valuable lesson at Blockbuster because as sad yet entertaining as this story is, it would never happen at Videoport and that’s a good thing. Let me first say, I knew nothing about this movie other than sexy women in school girl outfits with guns were on the cover and based on the tagline they were spies, because of a secret test hidden in the SAT’s. A SECRET TEST! A TEST HIDDEN INSIDE THE SAT’S TO DETERMINE IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE A SEXY LADY SPY! Done and done! My brother was pretty easy to convince to rent this! At the counter, the young Blockbuster lady was kind enough to allow us to rent this (yes, I just used the word allow, without sarcasm). We were WARNED in harsh undertones, lest someone hear her apparently horrifying, filthy words, that we should be careful because it had *girls…kissing…each other*. Sorry to offend you lady, but done and done! Needless to say, this movie is everything I ever dreamed it would be! It has sexy lady spies! It is ridiculous! It is ridiculously magical! It includes a most entertaining gratuitous lip syncing music montage to Erasure’s A Little Respect! And, girls kissing each other! Thank goodness this fun, silly, romantic, highly entertaining movie was made, the world is a better place for it!

*Of course, as an honored competitor in the field of video rental battle, we mourn the loss of our erstwhile foe. Sure, they were bloated, under-movied, garishly-formica-ed, and their employees knew as much about foreign language films as they did about the large hadron collider, but… Wait, I had something here….

Thrifty Thursday! Rent one, get a free rental from any other section in the store!

Herc. He's an idiot.

Lester Freamon. He's like the Anti-Herc.

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests ‘The Wire’ [in Mystery/Thriller], even if you’ve seen it before… and especially if you’ve seen it twice through. Watching David Simon’s deservedly legendary HBO series “The Wire” for the first time is a bit like learning to swim: you’re thrown into the complicated worlds of Baltimore’s overtaxed Homicide division, a special unit developed to study drug kingpin Avon Barksdale’s syndicate, and the many members of the syndicate itself. It’s a sprawling cast of characters with dozens of interweaving story lines and realistically complicated relationships, spread out through several separate but intersecting subcultures. The closest we get to a traditional first-episode dramatis personae is a police photo board putting names to faces — but only of a handful of the gang’s street-level soldiers. (Rewatching the first episode last night, I suddenly looked at the DVD counter and thought “We’re more than eight minutes in and we’ve learned one person’s name — the corpse lying in the street” — who never comes up again in the entire series.) After the spoon-feeding that most dramas do to keep viewers up to speed, this reserve is a bit jolting, but “The Wire” demands your attention and then utterly, completely rewards you for it. That’s the first time through. The second time through, you know the characters and the story arcs. The second viewing, like the second reading of a great novel, allows you to fully immerse yourself in the characters’ arcs. This time, you know who they are, where they came from, and — devastatingly, in many cases — where they’re going. Now that you’re not struggling to follow the complex stories, the show’s greater theme of institutional decay becomes strikingly clear at every turn, even in the first few episodes. The D.A.’s office with its staggering stacks of paperwork on every desk, lining the walls, and precariously propped on office chairs: that’s not just set-dressing for an overworked office but a symbol of a legal system smothering under its own weight. The parallels between cops and robbers become strikingly clear. When a hand-to-hand drug dealer commands a crowd of waiting junkies “You all know what this is! Up against the wall!,” it’s not hard to imagine why he chose those precise words. When a surveillance van drives off having given up on finding the dealers’ stash, the camera shifts to the van of the rival criminal crew (as yet unnamed, of course) who watched longer and smarter than the cops. Again, like a great novel, the third time through, even greater resonances and symbols emerge. To pick just one example, let’s look at Detective Thomas “Herc” Hauk. At first, Herc seems as dumb and as dangerous as an untrained and neglected dog, but as the series develops, he is the very embodiment of the institutional decay and socio-political resentment that obstructs true and meaningful changes. Lazy, abusive, shiftless, untrustworthy, and almost hopelessly naive, Herc nonetheless believes his initial stagnation in the ranks is the consequence of affirmative action or favoritism, not of his own woefully poor police work. Herc routinely and off-handedly refers to his whiteness as a mark of some obscure authority: with his (black) partner in a pointless argument about which of them is Batman and which is Robin; with a citizen while phonebanking for a (black) mayoral candidate. His simmering racial resentment only fuels his apathy for police work; Herc cuts more and more corners as the show proceeds. But, dumb and destructive as he is, Herc is a constant unwitting catalyst, both for his colleagues and for those outside the police force. [SPOILERS] It’s astounding how many major events in the universe of “The Wire” are precipitated by some fool thing Herc says or does. To list just a few: Prez beating a teenager, the identification of the elusive Avon Barksdale, linking the dock workers to the drug trade, Carver’s life-altering introduction to Major Colvin, the dissolution of Hamsterdam (and the end of Bunny Colvin’s largely productive police career), the release of Marlo Stansfield, and — most heartbreakingly — innocent Randy Wagstaff loosing his stable home and enduring daily beatings as a snitch. Herc is like a force of nature, a tornado, moving heedlessly through the landscape with destruction trailing behind him, blissfully unaware of the miseries he visits upon those in his wake. Perhaps the answer to the riddle of both Herc’s destructive nature and his personal success lies in his utter lack of integrity. Most of the characters on the series, cops and criminals both, struggle to align their personal morality with the strictures of their institutions. As Omar points out so poignantly, “A man’s got to have a code.” All the players recognize that their wins and losses occur within those strictures, that they are, in some greater sense, a consequence of the system. “It’s all in the game, yo,” even though the game is rigged. But Herc has no code, no guiding principle, no sense of a greater system, no passion or ambition other than bettering his own circumstances. Tellingly, we see him switch alliances over and over: from unit to unit, commander to commander, from candidate to candidate, from cops to robbers (by taking a job with Levy, the lawyer representing Barksdale, thus working against his former units’ interests), and finally (though briefly) betraying Levy to his former partner, only to accept Levy’s fraternal embrace at the end. Levy’s no fool; despite his words, he probably knows that Herc is no one’s mishpocha. Herc’s only loyalty is to Herc.

Free Kids Friday! One free rental from the Kids section, no other rental necessary!

>>>Former Videoporter Stockman suggests ‘Phineas & Ferb’, ‘Fairly Oddparents’ and ‘Avatar The Last Airbender’, A.K.A Kids TV Shows that don’t Suck! If anyone is wondering how to turn me into a raging ranting infuriated hulk monster, which I’m sure you were, I can give you a tip.  Just say something like this “Yeah, that movie totally sucked, but…it’s a kids movie, it was made for kids.” NO! NO NO NO NO NO! WRONG! There are no strings attached to quality. Movies aren’t awesome because they were made for adults, they’re awesome because they were made well. (The worst offender, Star Wars: Episode I. It’s not bad because it was made as a kids movie. It’s bad because it was made awful in every way humanly possible.) This sentence is even worse in these days of Pixar, for the most part Pixar makes a damn fine movie and it reaches out to all ages. Why? Because it’s just a damn fine movie with quality filmmaking and a quality story. It used to be Jim Henson was my only relatively main stream go to example of this! But now, I have all of Pixar, even some non-Pixar Disney (The Emperor’s New Groove, Lilo & Stitch), and Dreamworks (Madagascar, MegaMind, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon). These are all solid films. Truly solid, for any age, you can’t discount them just because they’re kids movies. Well made is well made, why does the main intended audience matter? Wow. You’re probably wondering what the hell I’m actually recommending? Well aside from every one of these completely bitchin’ movies, I thought maybe you’d also be interested in some great kid’s TV shows of merit! They’re hilarious and entertaining for kids and adults alike! Kids will watch most anything. I should know, it’s how I spent pretty much the first 18 years of my life. So keep your kid watching stuff you’ll like too! Because it’s quality! Quality is good! So rent some Fairly Oddparents or some Phineas & Ferb! These shows regularly make me laugh out loud! I’m completely taken by surprise by the humor! I mean, if it’s Friday, they’re free so why the f*** not?! Or for the love of Bob take home Avatar the Last Airbender! Crappy movie aside (crappy because it’s crappy not because it’s for kids. Because this show is for kids and it’s fanflippintastic), this is one of the best dang TV shows!

Having a Wild Weekend! Rent two movies, and get a third one for free from any section!

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests you re-read Ms. S. Customer’s Thursday review of ‘The Wire.’ It’s brilliant, and so is the show. It’ll make your life better.

>>>For Sunday, Emily S. Customer suggests Rabbit-Proof Fence (in Feature Drama.) From 1915 to 1940, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), known among his subjects as “Devil,” held the title of Chief Protector of the Aborigines for all of Australia. Rabbit-Proof Fence shows how a dedicated protector can be far more dangerous than the most vindictive enemy, if only because a protector can control or persecute with a clear conscience, believing with all his heart that it’s for your own good. Aboriginal adults were made wards of the state, barred from acting on their own behalf in even the smallest of matters (as the film so effectively shows us in Branagh’s first scene when he blandly denies a subject’s formal request to buy a new pair of shoes, since she bought a pair just last year), while their children were taken from them in the name of child protection and the desire to “civilize” the next generation. (And, not incidentally, these children are trained for a life of servitude to Australia’s white population.) Among the countless children taken over a hundred years were young Molly Craig and Daisy Kadibil, daughters of wise and wise-cracking Maude, and their cousin Gracie. But the supposed benefactors in the church-run internment camp and the bureaucrats overseeing them were unprepared for Molly’s mettle. Refusing to be separated from her mother, she proposes an audaciously simple plan: the three of them can return to Maude — and to freedom — by walking the 1,500 miles to her, using the continent-wide rabbit-proof fence as a guideline. This true story (based on the book by Molly’s daughter Doris Pilkington) is dramatic, to be sure, and director Phillip Noyce (The Quiet American, Salt, Dead Calm) is maybe a touch heavy-handed with the emotional imagery, but I’ll be darned if it doesn’t work. When Maude puts her hands on the fence’s top wire and, a thousand miles away, the girls sway it back and forth in a wordless greeting, I get teary-eyed despite myself. But it’s not the sentimental sweetness that makes this film so watchable; it’s the unflappable certainty that Molly (Everlyn Sampi) shows at every turn and the quiet intelligence that she projects throughout the film. When her tiny sister can walk no farther, young Molly calmly says “I’ll carry you only once” as she scoops up Daisy in her slim arms. (And then everyone watching starts crying. Okay, just me.) Molly’s eyes are always thoughtful, always reckoning: gauging the best route to take, calculating the right moment to move, eking out their resources and deftly extracting helpful information from anyone they come across without disclosing too much of their now-celebrated escape. Everlyn Sampi projects a curious, affecting mix of calm certainty and occasional alarm — with flashes of glee that remind us how young she is to be carrying such responsibility on her shoulders. This is a girl who could walk across a continent.

We are all shiny and mad!!

New Releases this week at Videoport: Immortals (directed by the one-named Tarsem…KNEEL BEFORE TARSEM!!!!…comes this typically-visually-stunning, 300-style sword-’n'-sandals mythological action flick), The Song of Lunch(Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman

Hello. You know you want to watch this. Just look at us. Look...

are in this; that should be enough to get you to watch this British drama), ‘Game of Thrones’- season 1 (HBO delivers another blockbuster series, this one, a Lord of the Rings-type deal about seven noble families fighting for power; costarring the ever-delightful Peter Dinklage [The Station Agent]), Footloose (the world needed a remake of the 1980s dance flick? If you say so…), The Skin I Live In (it’s the new Pedro Almodovar movie; again- that should be all most of us need to know…[if you need more details, Antonio Banderas plays a haunted plastic surgeon inventing a new type of synthetic skin and turning a young woman into an echo of his lost love]), Senna (everybody’s excited about this documentary about a legendary race car driver), Jack and Jill (Adam Sandler plays two Adam Sandlers! One’s a girl Adam Sandler! It won the Razzie for worst movie ever made, or something! Enjoy!), Like Crazy (immigration policy spells trouble for a young couple [Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones] when she’s deported for overstaying her visa; but don’t they know she’s adorable!?!), Columbus Circle (a young shut-in woman is forced to deal with the outside world when her neighbor is murdered in this thriller starring Jason Lee, Selma Blair and Giovanni Ribisi), London River (two disparate parents come to London to discover the fates of their respective children in the wake of the 2005 terrorist bombings and learn more about their children than they expected), High Road (for fans of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade or, you know, just funny people doing funny things, here comes an improvised film directed by the UCB’s Matt Walsh and starring the likes of Joe LoTruglio, Lizzy Kaplan, Rob Riggle, and more), Killing Bono (comedy about two high school friends whose dreams of rock superstardom are overshadowed because they go to the same school as U2), Treasure Buddies (puppies! They do puppy things!), Retreat (Cillian Murphy and Thandie Newton are taking a vacation on an isolated island when a crazed young man [Jamie Bell] shows up, claiming that a devastating plague has wiped out the rest of the world; sound like a great set-up for a thriller, no?)

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: Steppenwolf (Max Von Sydow starred in this 1970′s adaptation of the Herman Hesse classic).

New Arrivals on Blu Ray this week at Videoport: ‘Game of Thrones’- season 1, The Skin I Live In, Immortals.

VideoReport #341

Volume CCCXLI- The Vengeance-izer

For the Week of 2/28/12

Videoport welcomes back former customers of the recently-defunct Blockbuster Video. And we would like to reassure those customers that, yes, there are more than 100 movies in the world, and Videoport has ‘em all. It’s okay, we’ll ease you back in…

Middle Aisle Monday! Take a free rental from the Science Fiction, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation, or Staff Picks sections with any other paid rental!

The titular character and his titular object.

>>>Andy suggests Hobo With A Shotgun (in Incredibly Strange). More authentically sleazy and satisfying than Robert Rodriguez’s Machete, Hobo With A Shotgun is as reminiscent of a ‘80s Troma release as a ‘70s grindhouse* picture. The violence and dialogue are over the top to a cartoonish level. “When life gives you razor blades, you make a baseball bat covered with razor blades,” says one villain. The movie begins with spaghetti western music over images of a train arriving in a run down, graffiti-painted town and depositing The Hobo (Rutger Hauer). The Hobo wanders, Yojimbo-like, through the violent streets, initially minding his own business. But soon he becomes friends with a benevolent prostitute, and finds powerful enemies in the gang of psychotic killers that rule the town. Terrorized by the gang, The Hobo is pushed too far and turns vigilante. Oh, and he gets a shotgun. You know how this goes. It’s an old formula, but somehow I never get tired of seeing it done well. All it takes is some villains that are so despicable that you want to see them get their comeuppance, a commanding actor as our righteous hero, and a little filmmaking flair. Hobo With A Shotgun meets all those requirements, and throws in a few extra buckets of blood, just to be safe.

*HWAS is referred to as a Grindhouse movie, like Planet Terror, Death Proof, and the spinoff movie Machete, even though there was no trailer for it in the original feature and Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s names don’t appear anywhere in connection with this movie.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday! Give yourself a free rental from the Action or Classics section with any other paid rental!

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Owning Mahowny(in Feature Drama.) This is one of the best movies you’ve never heard of. What’s more, it’s more-or-less factual; the names have been changed, but the facts and figures are roughly accurate. Powerhouse actor Philip Seymour Hoffman (known ’round these partly simply as “The Hoff”) plays mild-mannered Dan Mahowny. His colleagues at the bank know him as quiet, dependable, maybe a little dull. They don’t know that he has a crippling gambling addiction… and his

Why, yes, I AM feeling sweaty and desperate! Thank you for asking!

recent promotion has given him access to more and more money to feed that compulsion. And it turns out that the casino bigwigs (including an urbanely sinister John Hurt) are only too happy to help him feed it, no matter where they suspect the money is coming from. This could have played out as a flashy potboiler or a slick heist flick, but in the able hands of director Richard Kwietniowski (who also directed John Hurt in the excellent Love and Death on Long Island), it’s a powerful portrait of obsession. For the first time in his life, Mahowny has the means to gamble virtually without limit, and that is what the film is about: a man single-mindedly immersing himself in the mixed pleasure and misery of an all-consuming passion, pursuing it wherever it leads him. He keeps gambling, knowing it will likely cost him his job, his reputation, his home, his fiancee, his freedom. The Hoff’s performance is more than masterful; it’s the very portrait of intensity, of self-containment, of completely internalized mania. It’s riveting.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday! You’ve got a free rental coming from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with any other paid rental!

>>>Emily S. Customer suggests Harold & Maude (in Comedy.) Harold Mason (Bud Cort), the sheltered son of a wealthy family, is obsessed with death and all its cultural trappings. He drives a hearse, avidly attends funerals, and engages in elaborate death-play, much to his distant, controlling mother’s chagrin. His life is changed when he meets Maude, a spry almost-octogenarian who urges him to “try something new each day.” If this sounds saccharine or moralizing, I promise you it is not. Not only is it a touching romance, but it’s deliciously, darkly, irreverently hilarious. In fact, The American Film Institute (who, after all, should know) ranked Harold and Maude right smack in the middle of AFI’s 100 Funniest Films.

Funniest guy in France? Probably.

>>>Dennis suggests OSS 117: Cairo-Nest of Spies and OSS 117: Lost in Rio (in the Foreign Language section.) Now that the delightfully-goofy Jean Dujardin has won the Best Actor award for The Artist and everyone loves him and stuff, I get to play smarty-pants know-it-all (like, what else is new) and tell everyone (as I have been for years!!!) about these James Bond spoofs Dujardin and The Artist director Michel Hazanavicious made. In them, the peerlessly-silly Dujardin stars as the super-suave(-ish) titular French secret agent, a Bond stand-in whose every move serves to point out the buried sexism, racism, fascism, and every other kind of ism inherent in the 007 character. Tracking Nazis and other assorted baddies, shooting indiscriminately, bedding smarmily, and generally behaving like a smug, strutting douche, Dujardin is an absolute hoot; his strapping, impeccably-dressed agent recalls Dr. No-era Bond to a ‘t’, but Dujardin tweaks everything just enough to make OSS 117 subtly (or, in some cases, not so subtly) ridiculous, and hilarious. Dujardin’s a world-class physical comedian [think Clouseau], and his toothy smile, when deployed in its full, smarmy glory, is enough to make me burst out in a giggle-fit. Now that the star and director are poised for some mega-stardom stateside, check out these earlier comic gems. You know, if you like to laugh and stuff…

Thrifty Thursday! Rent one, get a free rental from any other section in the store!

>>>Emily S. Customer suggests ‘Millennium’ (in Sci Fi/Fantasy.) Following the success of “The X-Files,”creator Chris Carter’s next show delves even deeper into the dark. Lance Henriksen stars as Frank Black, a one-time FBI profiler with a unique ability to glimpse the into killers’ minds. This odd talent shattered Frank’s sense of well-being, forcing him into early retirement. But the story is darker still:

That's about as warm as the show gets, right there...

Frank now works for The Millennium Group, a criminal-consulting agency that helps out law enforcement on the hush-hush… and also investigates a larger,more sinister case only hinted at in the first few episodes. “Millennium” is unusually in its almost unrelieved darkness, both literally and figuratively; except for scenes in Frank’s bright (and presumably doomed) happy home, the show is dripping with darkness in every set, in every corner. More sobering still, it eschews the endearing goofiness of Mulder and Scully and embraces the utterly devastating emotional depths of a man burdened with visions of petty evil he’s never committed and burdened with the duty to defeat a greater evil.

Free Kids Friday! One free rental from the Kids section, no other rental necessary!

>>>We’re just gonna say this one more time- no touching the shiny side of one of our DVDs. (We’re going to go ahead and pretend only innocent children crap up our DVDs here; but we all know that some of you guys behave like unsupervised babies with taffy-hands around our precious movies. Seriously, people…)

Having a Wild Weekend! Rent two movies, and get a third one for free from any section!

>>>For Saturday, Regan suggests ‘Southland’ (in Feature Drama.) After high praises from Videoport customer Chelsea, I finally took home ‘Southland,’a Los Angeles-based cop/detective drama. And I blew

Do what Regan says.

through the first episodes like I blow through a bag of Uncle Ray’s kosher dill chips. Right Quick! If and y’all have enjoyed the show ‘Boomtown,’ which sadly only lasted one and a half seasons, then ‘Southland’ is kind of in the same spirit. A look at Los Angeles crime from all angles, rich and poor, and how the cops deal with a non-stop shatpile of hot go-go. And it doesn’t wear out its welcome like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ with that ensemble cast of monkey-turds and desperate houseives? Who cares! Put down that trite sh*t and spend a measly eight house with ‘Southland!’

P.S.- Stockman, if you’re reading this, customer Scott really likes your reviews and he just rented that movie your brother made and he thinks Ben McKenzie is a crap actor. See you next month! Get ready to rock your butthole off!

Editor’s note: Apparently, the VideoReport, in addition to being the place where Videoport staff and customers can share their thoughts about movies and tv shows and the like, can also be used to send messages to Stockman! Anyone interested in writing reviews for the VideoReport, or writing to former Videoporter Stockman, should send them to us at denmn@hotmail.com.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests The Square (in Mystery/Thriller.) Different people mean different things when they describe a film as “Hitchcockian” or “noir-y.” Some are describing a particular aesthetic; some might mean a preoccupation with icy blonds. “Noir-y” might mean a grim dark city setting or a grim dark moral vacuum. Whether I’m thinking “Hitchcockian” or “noir-y,” I’m really thinking about two things: characters and tension. Noir is all about the average person led into temptation, and about how a simple plan goes horribly, tragically wrong. Hitchcock loved to put everyday characters into untenable situations. He also loved to show you what could go wrong, then let you squirm while you wait for it to happen — or not to happen. That sums up Australian thriller “The Square” pretty well: everyday people who get themselves into a terrible situation, leaving them and us squirming with uncertainty as a simple plan turns murderous. An adulterous couple daydream about collecting a nest egg and running away from everything: from their spouses, from their homes, from their jobs. When one of them stumbles across a sack of cash in her own home, it seems like their ticket to freedom. But you’ve seen enough noirs to know that a sack of cash is just the beginning of a long, bad road — a road that “The Square” wanders down with excruciating deliberateness.

New Releases this week at Videoport: Hugo (Martin Scorcese directs this Oscar-winning [lots of technical awards] fantasy about the early days of filmmaking, where an orphan hiding out in a Paris train station discovers a robot, a key, a cranky old man with a cute daughter, and a mystery involving his long-lost father; by all accounts, this is pretty damned delightful…), Johnny English Reborn (Rowan Atkinson [Blackadder, Mr. Bean] brings back his hapless British secret agent in this comedy wherein he, presumably, creates comic chaos as per usual), ‘Todd and the Book of Pure Evil’- season 1 (Canadian teen horror comedy series about a high school loser who finds his life seriously complicated when he comes into possession of the Canadian version of the Necronomicon; costarring Kevin Smith stoner stalwart Jason Mewes, if that’s a selling point…), The Myth of the American Sleepover (acclaimed indie sleeper about four teens in suburban Detroit having those indie coming-of-age adventures on the last day of summer), The Catechism Cataclysm (Steve Little [from Eastbound and Down] stars in this exceedingly-odd comedy about a mild-mannered priest who embarks upon a canoe trip with an old high school pal, only to have things go completely bonkers in what one hopes are interesting and hilarious ways), Justice League: DOOM (DC Comics animated movie about League enemy Vandal Savage’s plan to, what else, destroy the Justice League; only this time, he may actually succeed since he’s stolen the secret files that the ever-prepared [and suspicious] Batman had prepared on each of the members of the JL; NERD ALERT: adapted from Mark Waid’s excellent ‘Tower of Babel’ storyline), Rabies (billed as the first Israeli slasher film, this one, about a brother and sister running away and running afoul of a madman in a nature preserve, is actually getting some decent, if unpleasant, reviews), I Melt With You(an interesting cast

This one's for the ladies...

[Rob Lowe, Jeremy Piven, Tom Jane, Christian McKay] star as a quartet of middle-aged friends whose yearly reunion at an isolated beach house is disrupted by their various personal problems, and a long-buried pact from their college days…), ‘Beavis and Butthead’- season 4 (after laying low for a decade or so, the sub-moronic MTV animated duo are back, headbanging to music videos and alarming parents everywhere.)

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: The Invisible Boy (1957 sci fi adventure about a kid teaming up with Forbidden Planet‘s Robby the Robot to prevent a supercomputer from controlling the earth from a satellite; somehow, I’m guessing the Ruskies are involved…), Someone to Watch Over Me (director Ridley Scott [Alien, Blade Runner] brought his trademark visual style to this 1987 thriller about a married detective [Tom Berenger] hired to protect a sultry witness [Mimi Rogers] and, shocker, falling for her; man, just typing those names screams 1987…), Blood on the Sun (James Cagney starring in this, in retrospect, pretty darned racist 1945 thriller about a hard-drivin’ reporter in pre-WWII Japan who uncovers the Japanese government’s evil Japanese plans for world domination…from Japan!; featuring a cast of guys named Marvin, John, Robert, Leonard, and Frank as the evil Japanese! From Japan!!)

New Arrivals on Blu Ray this week at Videoport: Dances with Wolves, Forbidden Planet, Last of the Mohicans (Daniel Day Lewis version), Johnny English Reborn, Puss in Boots, The Crow, Good Will Hunting, Rounders, Tower Heist, J. Edgar, Dead Man, Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Get free money at Videoport!

Pay ahead $20 on your Videoport account and we’ll give you $25 worth of rental credit. Pay $30 and we’ll give you a whopping $40 worth. Free money? Yup.

Park for free at Videoport!

Of course, the parking lot behind the building is open for free parking after 5pm on weekdays and all day on weekends, but we’ll also get you a free hour of parking at any downtown parking garage. Just ask for one of our magic stickers!

Get free rentals at Videoport!

Any time you buy a movie from Videoport (and remember-we can special order anything you need), we’ll give you a free rental on your Videoport account. Think of it as $3.50 off the purchase price, think of it as a nice little reward for yourself when you buy someone else a gift, think of it as a way to support local business instead of some soulless corporation- any way you think of it, you’re getting yourself something for free…

VideoReport #340

Volume CCCXL- Martha Mothra May Marlene

For the Week of 2/21/12

Videoport has all the movies you could reasonably want, and we give you a free one every day. Oh, and since we have all the movies, you’ll never run out.

Middle Aisle Monday! Take a free rental from the Science Fiction, Horror, Incredibly Strange, Mystery/Thriller, Animation, or Staff Picks sections with any other paid rental!

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (in Mystery/Thriller.) The last film of acclaimed director Sidney Lumet (who helmed such varied and great works as 12 Angry Men, Serpico, Equus, and Network) was a bit overlooked upon its 2007 release. Some short-sighted critics, apparently still reeling from the kick Pulp Fiction had given them over a decade past, were unable to view a gritty heist story with a non-linear narrative as anything but Tarantino-lite. Roger Ebert’s review gets to the essence of Lumet’s last film; he calls Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead “such a superb crime melodrama that I almost want to leave it at that. To just stop writing right now and advise you to go out and see it as soon as you can.” And that’s what it is: not a winking post-modern pastiche but an old-fashioned crime melodrama updated with whip-fast editing and world-class acting, a twisting tale of greed, pride, secrets, and — above all — remorse. Instead of mimicking Tarantino’s patented spree of glamourized violence, wry humor, and slick pop culture pastiche, Lumet’s film shows us how tempting a quick score must seem to the desperate, and how tragically wrong that quick score can go. The actors (including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Marisa Tomei, and Albert Finney) make the film tick; they make tiny moments and gestures as shattering as a gunshot.

Tough and Triassic Tuesday! Give yourself a free rental from the Action or Classics section with any other paid rental!

>>>Dennis suggests loading up your Videoport account with free cash! (Note: since no one sent us a Tuesday review this week, we’re using this space for shameless, yet undeniably useful, advertising. Send in your movie/tv reviews or assorted film frippery to denmn@hotmail.com to avoid this…unpleasantness…in the future.) Yup, if you pre-pay $20 on your Videoport account, we load that same account up with $25 worth of rental credit. And $30 up front buys you a whopping $40 worth of rental credit. That’s five or ten free bucks, that’s 20 or 25% off of Videoport’s already quite reasonable rental rates- that’s a good deal, is what I’m getting at here…

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday! You’ve got a free rental coming from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with any other paid rental!

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests Date Night (in Comedy.) Far too many romantic comedies seem deeply antagonistic to their characters, presenting women as scheming man-traps and men as witless horndogs. Me, I like to watch movies about people, not plot devices. I especially like watching romantic comedies in which people treat each other like people, not adversaries or archetypes. I’m not gonna blow smoke, here: Date Night isn’t a blockbuster-fantastic-great movie. It isn’t a stunning thriller or a breathtaking romance or even a side-splitting comedy. (I did find it lived up to two other cliched comedy benchmarks: I found it to be both “knee-slapping” and “laugh-a-minute.” I mean, face it: a minute is a pretty long time. If your comedy isn’t averaging at most a mild laugh every minute or so, maybe it’s not so much a COMEDY, y’all.) Okay, so… It’s not blockbuster-fantastic-great? No. But it is pretty darned delightful, and I’ll tell you why: under the clutter and bustle of their daily life and the terrifying adventure that overtakes them in the course of the film, Phil and Claire Foster (Steve Carell and Tiny Fey) not only love each other; they genuinely like each other. Fey and Carell deliver the comedy goods in every scene, but even better, they have an easy rapport as if they really have been married for years. These characters really feel like a couple: they work together, they remind each other of their strengths and virtues, and they just plain make each other laugh. That doesn’t seem like much to ask of a romantic comedy, but a staggering number of romantic comedies pair up pretty people without remembering the simple fact: if you don’t like your partner, you probably aren’t going to love them for long, either.

Thrifty Thursday! Rent one, get a free rental from any other section in the store!

>>>Dennis suggests Swamp Thing (in the Incredibly Strange section!) Now that DC Comics is shoveling hot buckets of cash into the major, tentpole comic book movie superhero franchise machine on a summer-ly basis, it’s kind of quaint to look back at a time (1982 in this case) when the comic book conglomerate was content to slap a bulky rubber suit on a stuntman and call it a day. Swamp Thing, (at least before comics shaman Alan Moore [Watchmen] later got his hands on him) was a minor, appropriately-murky DC superhero at the time, the reanimated corpse of benevolent scientist Alec Holland who rises from the brackish bayou waters he died in to fight the good fight against poachers, assorted creeps, and the criminal mastermind (the conveniently-named Anton Arcane) who had him killed in the first place. In the film, Holland’s played initially by all-around genre cool guy Ray Wise (Twin Peaks, Reaper), before being replaced by burly stunty Dick Durock in that rubber suit we were talking about, trudging through the mangroves on a mission of justice, and romancing the height-of-her bosomy sexiness Adrienne Barbeau (whose near-naked swamp swim had cable-addicted teenaged boys [like no one I know] wishing for a pause button on the DVR that hadn’t been invented yet.) It’s all relatively low-rent and silly, I suppose, but, in keeping with the comic’s sensibilities, Swampy is an endearingly noble and empathetic creature whose incongruously high-minded speeches lend him a certain improbable gravitas. Directed by Wes Craven of all people (who brought along his favorite Last House on the Left screen rapist David Hess as, surprise!, a creepy rapist- but at least he gets his head crushed like a grape), Swamp Thing endures as a slightly-campy, but genuinely-fun throwback to the days before CGI superheroics.

Free Kids Friday! One free rental from the Kids section, no other rental necessary!

>>>You can just come in and get a free movie from the kids’ section every Friday, no questions asked. Nope, we’re not yankin’ your chain…

Having a Wild Weekend! Rent two movies, and get a third one for free from any section!

>>>For Saturday, Dennis suggests ‘In Treatment’ (in Feature Drama.) Man, listening in on other people’s therapy is fun! At least that seems to be the premise of this quite addictive HBO series starring Gabriel Byrne and a weekly rotor of guest patients. I’ve always been a fan of Byrne’s clenched, brogue-y manliness, and it’s interesting to see him take on the role of sensitive therapist listener guy for a change; as he squares off against his patients, and wrestles with his own feelings and ethical dilemmas, he brings a strong, immediate center to a show that could, with a less-formidable lead, have quickly devolved into a drippy sniffle-fest. Which isn’t to say you won’t get the sniffles- it’s just that the show maintains a certain dramatic integrity, not usually resorting to cheap sentiment for its dramatic weight. The show’s three seasons take the form of a week’s worth of therapy sessions per disc (2 week’s worth in the third season), with Byrne’s Paul visiting his own shrink in each week’s last episode. It’s a neat set-up, although, at least at first, you might find yourself wanting to hit the skip button on a patient here and there. Don’t. Even the most off-putting-seeming patient gradually reveals worthwhile depth as you stick with him/her/them, and they all have a satisfying, if not completely-resolved, payoff. Of course, this whole setup is really just an actor’s sandbox where they get to strut their stuff up against the ever-stalwart Byrne, and almost everyone comes through ably. I’m especially impressed with Alice in Wonderland’s Mia Wasikowska (season 1), a confrontational, tortured teenaged gymnast, old pro Blair Underwood (season 1) as a tortured, outwardly-cocky military man, Sports Night‘s Josh Charles and Embeth

Paul and Oliver.

Davidtz (season 1) as a seemingly-mismatched married couple (they might try your patience at first, but will grow on you), Frasier’s John Mahoney (season 2) as an arrogant and (surprise!) tortured CEO facing panic attacks and a professional crisis, Bollywood vet Irrfan Khan (season 3) as a grieving Indian immigrant unhappily adjusting to life in America, Debra Winger (YAY!)(season 3) as an aging actress with memory troubles, and a remarkable little guy, Aaron Grady Shaw (season 2) as Oliver, a deeply-unhappy child trying desperately to cope with his parents divorce. In addition, Diane Wiest practically glows as Paul’s longtime colleague-turned-therapist Gina who takes Paul on as a client as his life falls apart during the first two seasons; their evenly-matched sparring sessions fairly crackle with intelligence and some serious acting chops. (There’s also one impossibly-wrenching episode with character vet Glynn Turman as a grieving father in season 1 that deservedly won Turman an Emmy, and completely wiped me out emotionally.) In season 3, Gina gives way to the ever-exquisite Amy Ryan (‘The Wire’, ‘The Office’) who brings her own particular brand of empathetic smarts to the role of Paul’s new therapist. And believe me, Paul needs therapy. For anyone who ever wondered if their shrink was as screwed up as they were, Byrne’s Paul should provide confirmation; arrogant, blind to his own faults, fully capable of rewriting facts to suit his interpretation of events, and consumed by his job, Paul gives his two attempted caregivers all they can handle as he copes with ethical dilemmas, family crises, and his own laundry list of personal demons. For all that, they, and we, stick on the guy’s side because, as he eventually shows with almost all of his deeply-wounded patients, he is a good therapist. You know, when he’s not being the worst therapist in the world. It’s that kind of show…

>>>For Sunday, Dennis suggests Stake Land(in Horror.) Man, is it a great day when I find a horror film I don’t think is completely a waste of time. I love horror movies, but most of them, perhaps even a higher percentage of them than other types of movies, suck beyond the telling of it. Which makes it hard to

Horror fans. This is your new thing.

recommend a decent horror movie to my fellow horror fan brethren an sistren when they ask, and makes me feel like a complete failure as a movie geek. So, when I find a recent horror flick that I can unreservedly recommend, well, it’s like a little present to me. Which brings us to Stake Land, a grim ‘n’ gritty little vampire movie which, as the box proclaims accurately for once, is “like The Road crossed with, I dunno, something with vampires!” (I’m paraphrasing.) Like The Road, there’s been a worldwide apocalypse and, through the bleak wasteland a taciturn father figure (the formidable Nick Damici) shepherds a young guy (Connor Paolo), teaching him the tools necessary for survival, and the dangers inherent in any apocalypse. Sure, in this one, the apocalypse is explicitly spelled out (hint: it involves vampires), but the dangers remain largely the same, especially when it comes to human beings left to fend for themselves, and extra-especially when it comes to human beings turning to religion to justify their actions. As the duo makes their bedraggled way across a blasted, vamp-y America towards the vague promise of a Canadian promised land, they pick up a few like-minded stragglers along the way (including Halloween series heroine Danielle Harris, onetime child actor Sean Nelson [American Buffalo, Fresh], and an impressive and unrecognizable Kelly McGillis as a badass nun) and cope with vamp attacks and, increasingly-more-dangerous religious zealots whose fanatical Christianity generously encompasses sex slavery and the violent murder of infidels. It’s all pretty impressive, with judiciously-skillful use of an obviously-meager budget, no one doing anything egregiously stupid (always a rarity in horror films), and nary a bad performance in the bunch. Stake Land‘s crisply-paced, as grisly as it has to be (but not to a gratuitous or showy extent), and nicely-resonant. Like I said, it’s always a treat to find an undiscovered horror gem; I look forward to recommending it. Often.

I would like eddie to be back. I am not entirely certain that he is...

New Releases this week at Videoport: Tower Heist (Eddie Murphy, Matthew Broderick, Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, Gabourey Sidibe, and many more funny people put their faith in professional hack Brett Ratner’s hands for this comedy caper comedy with the blandly-obvious name; did it pay off? Umm…), Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas gets his own Shrek-y spinoff as a he titular swashbuckling animated kitty-cat; you know, if that’s your thing..), ‘Weeds’- season 7 (the conspicuously-talented Mary Louise Parker returns as the loveliest pot dealer in TV history), The Way (Emilio Estevez directs his dad Martin Sheen in this drama about a father determined to finish his dead son’s trek along the legendary El Camino de Santiago trail), J. Edgar (Leonardo DiCaprio straps on a prosthetic schnozz [and maybe some sensible pumps] in Clint Eastwood’s biopic about the titular former FBI head), The Mighty Macs (one of those ‘based on a true story’ inspirational sports deals, this time about real life 1970s women’s college basketball coach Cathy Rush), ‘Nurse Jackie’- season 3 (Edie Falco is back as everyone’s favorite pill-popping, hard-talking health care semi-professional in this cable dramedy), War of the Arrows (anyone up for a lavish Korean period war epic? Yeah!!!), Martha Marcy May Marlene (probably the most acclaimed vie of the week, this thriller’s about a young woman escaped from a cult [headed by the ever-interesting John Hawkes] who flees to live with her sister’s family; I’m sure the cult fellows will be fine with that…), London Boulevard (great Bristish cast [Colin Farrell, Ray Winstone, David Thdewlis, Keira Knightley, Anna Friel, Eddie Marsan] all star in this Brit crime thriller about an ex-con hired to take care of a famous actress), ‘Borgia’- season 1 (one sure sign that your papacy was super-awesome is if, a half century later, there are two competing saucy cable series about your decadent family’s debauched machinations; and, just to head off any questions, no, this is completely-unrelated to the current Jeremy Irons series which we also have; also, we at Videoport refer to both series as “Sex Pope”; see you in hell…), The Son of No One (Channing Tatum’s abs and the usual suspects [Al Pacino, Ray Liotta] star in this cop drama about a young, well, cop sent to serve in the working class neighborhood he grew up in), ‘The Fades’- season 1 (spooky BBC series about a guy who keeps having apocalyptic dreams, and seeing the spirits of the dead all around him), Last, Fast Ride: The Life, Love and Death of a Punk Goddess (rockumentary about legendary bay area punk rocker Marian Anderson.)

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: World on a Wire (legendary German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote and directed this presciently-Matrix-y sci fi miniseries about a computer simulation that pulls people into its alternate reality; from the good people at the Criterion Collection.)

New Arrivals on Blu Ray this week at Videoport: Tower Heist.

VideoReport #338

Volume CCCXXXVIII- The Fast and the Bi-Curious

(porn companies, please feel free to use that one…)

For the Week of 2/7/12

Videoport gives you a free movie every day. And, unlike that last Blockbuster in the area, we, you know, exist and stuff…

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 the later films of David Lynch (all in the Middle Aisle.) While your editor was out of town enporn joying a well-deserved evening watching the Footballdome*, I indulged in a one-woman David Lynch festival: Mulholland Dr., Inland Empire, and Lost Highway**. Lynch is a controversial director, beloved of some and reviled by others, and both factions cite his trademark non-linear, non-rational narrative flow, the confusingly fluid threads of story and character that weave up the uncanny fabric of his films. Me, I love it: watching one of these films feels like nothing so much as tapping into the unconscious. It’s like watching a dream — someone else’s dream! — play out on the screen before me. And like any dream, these are loaded with images and events, some meaningful, some nonsensical, some seemingly nonsensical but deeply meaningful. You can painstakingly tease out the meaning from the nonsense (um, mostly… maybe), but it isn’t necessary to become a discerning student of film to enjoy these films, any more than it’s necessary to study non-representational art to enjoy a Rothko. Just sit before it, soak in it — and fall into that world.

*That’s what it’s called, right? I grew up in Texas; evvvverything’s a something-dome.

**And if you’ve seen Lost Highway, you’re asking yourself what I asked myself: is it advisable to

Good bedtime viewing?

watch the impossibly creepy few minutes of The Mystery Man (Robert Blake in an indelible performance) when you know you’re going to be alone all night… in the dark… in the deep deep dark? Yeeeeah, probably not as it turns out.

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

>>> Dennis suggests Another Woman (in Classics.) Former Videoporter David M., who is currently wrapping up a chronological survey of all of Woody Allen films (as he’s done recently with Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa- how cool is Dave, by the way) expressed something close to outrage when informed that this mid-career Allen drama had been placed in the Classics section. “It’s from 1988!”, he cried, and not without reason. For one thing- that’s not very long ago. And for another, it’s a pretty well forgotten (some might say forgettable) piece of Woody-nation; a minor movement in the autumnal, increasingly-dour dramas the Woodman was turning to at the time (see: September, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Alice.) Well, sometimes I think Videoport’s owner and mastermind Bill will shift something that’s simply not renting into a new section of the store, no matter how tenuously it fits there, in order to try and rescue it from rental obscurity, so Classics it is.

A symphony in beige...

And, watching the film, there’s some “classic” about it after all; in fact, I’d call it one of Allen’s most heartfelt, and certainly best acted, of the films he makes when he wakes up and decides that comedy is not an appropriate pursuit anymore. The plot’s a simple one (which cribs liberally from Bergman’s Wild Strawberries): Gena Rowlands plays a late middle-aged scholar who takes an apartment in order to work on her latest book free of distractions. While there, she realizes that the air vents in the old building allow her to hear, with convenient clarity, the sessions of a therapist downstairs. She listens, against her better judgement, to various patients, becoming enthralled by the tearful confessions of a suicidal, pregnant younger woman (Mia Farrow), whose recollections of her life and problems mirror Rowlands’, sending Rowlands mind back over her own history. It’s a creaky, hoary old structure, what with the too-convenient air vent device, some very literal dreams, and Woody’s ever-deepening penchant for the somewhat arch dialogue of wealthy New Yorkers over-explaining themselves, but Another Woman really works best as an actor’s playground, with Rowlands, Gene Hackman, Martha Plimpton, Betty Buckley, Harris Yulin, and David Ogden Stiers and John Houseman (both playing Rowlands’ father at different times) turning in precisely-observed and affecting performances. Rowlands (saddled with much of the aforementioned archness) is typically-fine; as a woman who has closed herself off from life in favor of a dry intellectualism, her journey might have given the late-career Woody some pointers to avoid, and there’s a heartbreaker of a dream scene between her and former almost-lover Hackman that has stuck with me for years. (Her line, “I think of you more than once in a while” is what does it…) Hackman, one of the few people in the film who seems to be visiting beige Woody-land from the outside world, is as alive and energetic onscreen as he’s ever been. (Buckley’s one scene,too, almost breaks the movie open, her naked emotion, suitably for the scene, jars everyone into dull silence.) As for Farrow, playing younger, she gets to really go for it, too- the fragile waif thing she’s done many times, of course, but, in her tearful, anguished therapy sessions, she gets to display an unaccustomed fire. Overall, Another Woman is mid-minor Allen- certainly better than the insufferably-insular dramas of the last decade or so (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger made me want to throw things; Melinda and Melinda just made me sad and tired), with a handful of exceptional performances. Oh, and it uses that one Erik Satie piano piece like a scalpel- possibly one of the most melancholy pieces of music ever.

Wacky and Worldly Wednesday. (Get one free rental from the Comedy or Foreign Language sections with your paid rental. OR, get four non-new releases for a week for seven bucks!)

Sophie.

>>>Elsa S. Customer suggests ‘In Treatment’ (in Feature Drama.)* Whew. This HBO drama (adapted, sometimes word-for-word, from Israeli series “Be Tupil”) centers around therapist Dr. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) and a few of his talk-therapy clients, with heavy emphasis on “talk.” Most dramas elide events and compress time so we cover days or weeks in a single hour; “In Treatment” instead plays out almost in real time — well, really half-time: each episode covers a 50-minute therapy session, compressing it into ~25 minutes. This creates an intense atmosphere: just two or three characters sitting in a room, facing their deepest anxieties and greatest hopes face-on. It’s an actor’s playhouse, packed with drama and humor and a trove of perfectly relatable, gut-wrenching little moments where we recognize ourselves and our own histories in these vastly different people. For me, the weekly highlight of Season 1 has been Paul’s mid-week sessions with Sophie (Mia Wasikowska, Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre), a teenaged gymnast who arrives at her first session with casts on both arms after colliding with a car on her bike. She’s a perfectly crafted (and perfectly acted) character, so vivid and real, sometimes infuriating, sometimes heartbreaking, always loveable.

*Editor’s note: And, since the first season of ‘In Treatment’ is a full 9(!) discs long, this Wednesday deal (4 movies for a week for 7 bucks) is the perfect way to rent it. I’m just sayin’…

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

>>> Former Videoporter Stockman suggests PORN!(In the Porn Section.) It’s soon to be Valentine’s Day which means love is in the air. I can smell those delicious pheromones from here! So take a chance on some porn! That’s right, in case you didn’t know Videoport has a porn section, discreetly hidden behind the movies for sale up front across from the cube of registers. It’s okay, don’t be afraid! Videoporters have seen and heard it all, there’s no shame in renting some porn!  And check it, you know every time you’ve been annoyed that we wouldn’t let your husband/wife/cousin/friend/cat/helper monkey/lamp rent on your account? Well, happy day, the same rule makes it so that we’re legally unable to tell ANYONE but you what you just rented! Videoporters will follow your lead, you want to make it a funny experience to diffuse your embarrassment? You want to make it a silent

Seriously.

serious subtle endeavor we never speak of again? You went to deflect with small talk about the other movie you’re renting to cover it up? Done and done! Maybe this is all too much for you, but you’ve always been intrigued, just take a gander for funsies! Just step in to say you did it! Or rent some of the more absurd options so that you have an anecdote to tell! Nothing makes a story better than referencing the myriad of Big Ass She-Male Adventures (yep, that’s real) or Girlverts (also real) in existence. There’s also the joys of a porn parody, truly the production value on Bitantic is impressive! Maybe that’ll help give you the courage to really explore the magic and wonder that is the Videoport porn alcove. I leave you with this, the greatest porn title to ever be: Every Nerds Big Boob Boat Butt Ride (I don’t think I could make that up, that puppy is as real as it gets).

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

>>>You can just come in and get a free kids movie on Fridays, no other rental necessary. We think that is nice. You know- for kids!

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

>>>For Saturday, Former Videoporter Stockman suggests Blast From the Past(in Comedy.) This is one of the most tragic movies to recommend. It’s so depressing, because this movie is saddled with two leads that people tend to feel violently towards. Inevitably recommending this movie ends up

They're good in this! No, don't run away!!

failing because of an intense hatred someone has for Brendan Fraser or Alicia Silverstone. Far too often, both! And I don’t blame you, for either. While I personally harbor them no ill will, I do understand completely where everyone is coming from in both cases. I won’t attack them, but I certainly won’t go out of my way to defend them. I’ll defend them mildly if I’m feelin’ it, but I’m not going to pull a rant muscle trying. Well, maybe Brendan Fraser a little, I just IMDB’d him and I forgot how many worthwhile ventures he’s been a part of (School Ties, Gods and Monsters, his guest spot on Scrubs, a bit role in Brain Candy, and I’m a personal fan of the under-appreciated Airheads. I’ve actually never seen Encino Man.) Anyway, the point being, if I could somehow be given a free pass for these type of stars, one movie where I could say I’m playing my “No, seriously” card and a person would have to try it. This would be my gem! It has so much going for it that’s good! Christopher Walken! Sissy Spacek! Dave Foley! The most endearing ridiculous plot! Of all the ridiculous, pointless, whole filled, implausibly impossible plots this one really is the number one most endearing. Basically Brendan Frasier is raised in a fallout shelter when his Dad Walken thinks there’s an atomic apocalypse. He emerges in the late nineties an ultra gentlemanly innocent with a barrage of talents honed 30 years. Those zany nineties never saw such a crazy sight! The magic is in the screenplay, so many golden re-watchable nuggets of zip and zing. I just IMDB’d the writer and guess what else he did, Enchanted! Everyone loves that damn movie. Maybe that’s my new ace in the hole to get you to watch it.

>>>For Sunday, Elsa S. Customer suggests Gods & Monsters (in Feature Drama.) I’ll second Stockman’s enthusiastic rec of Blast from the Past, a delightful little rom-com that is exactly what it’s trying to be and about three times better than I expected, and I’ll second her defense of Brendan Fraser with three little words: Gods and Monsters. Ostensibly a bio-pic of director James Whale

See- here he is hanging out with Sir Ian McKellen! That's gotta be worth something, right?

(master of high-class gothic horror including Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Invisible Man, and The Old Dark House), Gods and Monsters actually draws its story from a novel about Whale’s last years. Long retired from film-making and from the giddy Hollywood whirl, Whale (Sir Ian McKellan) finds himself drawn to his quiet, pleasant gardener, Boone (Brendan Fraser), and finds ways to draw the handsome young man into his world. McKellen was deservedly Oscar-nominated for his role as the dreamy, brooding James Whale, as was Lynn Redgrave* for her turn as Hanna, Whale’s housekeeper who dotes on and disapproves of him in equal measure. Some reviewers found Fraser mis-cast, but I think he’s a perfect choice: he presents as such a solid, stolid presence, suggesting that Whale’s growing infatuation and fantasies spring from his own imagination — and that solid, stolid calm leaves us all the more disquieted when it breaks. Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Chicago, Kinsey) knows what picture he’s presenting here; Fraser’s Boone, like Frankenstein’s monster, begins as a passive, plodding, harmless creature until he’s jolted through with the master’s electricity.

*who, as far as I can discern, is an OBE but not a Dame. Go figure.

This is gonna cause a riot...

New Releases this week at Videoport: ‘Downtown Abbey’- season 2 (ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!! I mean, for all you fans of this genteel British period drama, the new season comes out today, so…ATTACK!!!), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn- Part 1 (I think it’s about vampires of some sort? Maybe a mummy? I’m sure you guys know what you want…;[coming out on SATURDAY, 2/11!]), Anonymous(did you know that some people think that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays and that some nobleman wrote them instead, since no one who wasn’t a rich

No, no he wasn't.

aristocrat could possibly have written things so sublime? And did you know that the guy who directed such brilliant, Shakespearean works as Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, and Independence Day is one of them? And that I’d sincerely like to find where that guy lives and give him a stern talking to about classism and all-out dumbass gullibility?), The Sunset Limited (Written by Cormac MCarthy [No Country for Old Men], this is basically a two-man play with Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee ones arguing about the existence of God, the nature of good and evil, and all that stuff; directed by Jones, written by McCarthy and with two certified cinematic badasses doing the acting- I’m in…), Outrage (director/star Beat Takeshi/Takeshi Kitano returns to his insanely-violent, undeniably-mesmerizing yakuza roots in this tale of old school Japanese gangsters teaching the new generation a few things about honor, loyalty, and being shot in the face), The Mill & the Cross (old pros Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling, and Michael York star in this biopic about painter Pieter Bruegel’s creation of the titular painting), Restless (director Gus Van Sant [My Own Private Idaho, Mala Noche, Good Will Hunting] helms this quirky romance about a manic pixie dream girl and a funeral-loving guy who meet up to smooch, and discuss their meetings with a kamikaze ghost pilot; now that’s quirky…), The Elephant in the Living Room (does your neighbor have a dangerous wild animal for a pet? According to this gripping documentary, it’s way more common than you think…[see an interview Videoport's Dennis did with the filmmaker HERE!]), Knuckle (you remember that Brad Pitt character in Snatch? Well this documentary follows real-life Irish Traveler bare-knuckle boxers, presumably with more-intelligible accents), Project Nim (amazing, heartbreaking documentary about a 1970s experiment to raise a baby chimpanzee as a human child), Rebound (comedy about Catherine Zeta-Jones romancing her younger neighbor, played by the dull guy from the Hangover movies), Steve Coogan Live (check the British Comedy section for this presumably-cringeworthy and hilarious live show from Coogan [Saxondale, The Trip, I'm Alan Partridge]), 3 (from Tom Tykwer [Run Lola Run, Winter Sleepers, Heaven] comes this saucy romance about a middle-aged couple who don’t [initially] realize that they’ve decided to spice up their lives by having an affair with the same hunky young dude), Janie Jones (Alessandro Nivola stars as a spoiled rock star on the fade who finds himself saddled with a teenage daughter [Abigail Breslin] he never knew he had; yeah, it does sound a lot like Somewhere, now that you mention it…)

New Arrivals this week at Videoport: A Rumor of War (from the acclaimed Vietnam book by Phil Caputo, this 1980 telefilm starring Brad Davis and Keith Carradine comes to you via Videoport owner Bill’s devious way with hard-to-find imports.)

New Arrivals on Blu-Ray this week at Videoport: Restless, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Bad-Part 1.

Let’s all rent at Videoport, shall we?

Okay, we all know that there are lots of ways to rent movies out there.  Well, not really anymore, since one enormous, soulless, conglomerate-y way effectively drove most other ways to rent movies out of business, but you get the general idea.   Anyway, we here at Videoport realize that we’re only one of the ways you can get your entertainment, albeit the best, most complete, and integrity-filled one.  And while that one (horrible, oft-sued) other option has recently raised its prices (due to poor business planning and a rampant disregard for its customers’ well-being) to an unconscionable degree, maybe some of you out there could use a nudge out of that (buggy, delay-filled) nest.  So strap yourselves in, and then, you know, drive yourself to Videoport (you were strapping yourself in to your car there…):

1.  Prices.  (Sorry, but I’m gonna whip some math on you here.)  All rentals at Videoport are $3.50 (except for kids movies which are just a buck because we love kids and are so nice.)  Not too shabby.  But, you say, “Aren’t those prices more than that crappy selection of damaged DVDs I can get from a vending machine at the supermarket like gumballs?”, and yeah, that’s right (and we forgive you.)  But, and here comes the math, Videoport has a free rental special every day which cut the price, a lot.  On Monday-Thursday, there’s a 2-for-1 special which’ll get you (not to get too complicated this soon) two movies for the price of one, which cuts the price of each rental to $1.75.  And, on the weekends, you rent two movies and get 1 free, which makes each rental $2.33. (On Friday, you just get a free kids movie, again, because of us loving kids and stuff.)   Again, shabby, not too.  But, (and here comes more math, apologies), when you take advantage of the Videoport Savings Plans, the prices

One of our staff, days before succumbing to malnutrition.

spin downward into the “clerk starvation” zone.  See, if you put $20 on your rental account, we give you $25 in rental credit (a 20% discount), and if you put down $30, you get $40 in credit (a 25% discount.)  Yow.  So, breaking out the calculator, that makes a single $3.50 rental either $2.80 (with the 20% discount) or $2.63 (with the 25%-er).  But why rent only one movie when you can get at least one free movie every day?  So, on a 2-for-1 day, that makes each rental $1.40 or $1.31 each, and, on a rent 2, get 1 free day, either $1.86 or $1.74 each.  And there’s even a better deal…but I think we all need a break from the math for a second, so here’s a picture of Bruce Campbell as Elvis to restore your state of cool…

 

 

 

Stay cool, babies...

2. Even more prices.   Okay, more math.  But it saves you money, so we’re okay.  Say you want to take advantage of the super, insanely-economical new Wednesday special, which gets you four movies for seven days for seven bucks.  That makes you smart.  And makes us even less money.  That’s $1.83 per movie to get them for a week.  Or, if you want to make us seem even more generous, you can look at it like 26 cents per movie per day.  Don’t worry, I checked it with a calculator just to determine how awesome a deal that was.  It came out “pretty awesome.”

3. Even more even more prices.  You can buy movies from Videoport.  “But,” you might say (and, again, we forgive you,) “I could order that movie from some huge internet corporation which will get it for me cheaper.  Plus, I enjoy undermining local businesses!”  Well, we can’t help you with that last part, but Videoport, while unable to provide the kind of retail discounts on movies due to the fact that we are not a huge, mega-conglomerate dedicated to driving local businesses under, offsets that with the fact that, for every movie you buy from us, we give you a free rental.  One might (and probably should) look at that as $3.50 off of the price of the movie you’re buying.  Plus, we don’t charge any shipping (or that mythical ‘handling’ nonsense.)

4. We make it easy to come back.  Maybe you lost a movie that one time.  Or your shiftless roommate did.  Or a dog ate it.  Whichever it was, you probably think that you owe Videoport a jillion dollars and that we’re gonna yell at you, make fun of you, and make you feel all bad and stuff.  Well, neither of those things is true, of course.  For one thing, the most we’re ever going to charge you for any movie is twenty bucks; we stop the meter there as, essentially, that’s what it’s gonna cost us to replace it.  And, as for the idea that we’re gonna mock and belittle you- well, that’s just bananas.  We want you to rent with us at Videoport.  We’re gonna welcome you back, give you a new Videoport card, and turn you loose back here in the store, amongst our unparalleled selection of the best, damned movies of the world.  Remember: we want you to rent here.

5. Videoport is the best movie store in the world.  I didn’t want to have to come right out and say it, but it’s true.  For 25 years now, Videoport’s been dedicated to collecting the best movies the world has ever seen, to hiring only knowledgeable movie geeks (who are also expertly trained, helpful, and pretty funny), and to maintaining its integrity in the face of all challengers.  Now Movie Gallery is dead, Hollywood Video is dead, Blockbuster is on its last, tottering, formica-clad legs, and we’re still here, and still doing things the way we always have, the right way.  Sure, there are challenges (in the form of an unethical internet company and some crappy vending machines), but there have always been challenges.  And Videoport is still here.  With your help, we always will be.