So, I was gnawing on a turkey leg when I realized I’d forgotten to do the obligatory “new releases” post. And then I realized that it was even worse than I thought, since the new movies came out yesterday, this being a holiday weekend and all. So I apologize to all three of you out there who were waiting to see what I had to say about Four Christmases. Let’s try to make the most of things anyway.

I didn’t have much to say about any of these films, so I figured I’d just provide you with the blurbs that will probably be on the back of the DVD cases for these in a few months. Here goes:

Australia
From director Baz Luhrmann, the genius who brought you that one version of Romeo + Juliet that probably didn’t suck too bad (we’re not really sure, since none of us remember the 90’s all that well) comes an action-romance-adventure-[insert whatever genre you like here] film you won’t soon forget! Sexy (she’s only forty!) Nicole Kidman stars with the dashing Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing Deception X-men) in an adventure set in the Australian outback! Winner of nine Academy Awards®™©, including “Best Movie Named After a Continent!” David Manning of the Ridgefield Press raves, “It’s a nonstop thrill ride!!!”

Recommended if you liked Moulin Rouge, Romancing the Stone or Pearl Harbor

Four Christmases
Relive the magic…the memories…the proof that Hollywood can occasionally spell out entire titles in a manner consistent with the MLA stylebook! Now the magic of 4Xmas’s can be yours to own forever, and cherish for eternity, and rewatch for…um…a really long time. Featuring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, who have both probably been in other good movies recently (or, at the very least, have been caught in interesting compromising positions in the tabloids), this romantic comedy will make you laugh and warm your heart. Make it a part of your holiday tradition now (we’re sure you can squeeze it in between Surviving Christmas and The Family Man). David Manning of the Ridgefield Press raves, “It’s a nonstop thrill ride!!!!!”

Recommended if you’re one of those suckers who will buy anything with “Christmas” written on it (and believe me, I’ve been there myself)

Transporter 3
In the tradition of action movies with one-word titles that are a vague description of someone’s occupation comes this latest obligatory sequel cash-in, which Don Finkelstien of the New England Really Old Telegraph praised as “A throw-down, knock-up, take-no-prisoners, write-no-thank-you-notes, eat-no-raw-fish thrill ride that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go!!! And even when it does, it bites your ear off, just to make sure you know it means business!!!! And then it spreads some nasty rumors about you on MySpace!!!!!!!” Jason Statham (The Transporter, Transporter 2, Transporter 2½, Transporter: The Reckoning, Transporter: Requiem for a Bunch of Dead Guys, Transporter: Day of Judgment, Transporter: Another Day of Judgment, Transporter: Yet Another Day of Judgment, Transporter: Princess Tea Party, and Transporter: You People are Still Coming to See These Things!!??) stars as…a…guy…and there are a bunch of AWESOME EXPLOSIONS!!! David Manning of the Ridgefield Press raves, “It’s a nonstop thrill ride!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Recommended if, unlike me, you actually saw Transporter 1 and 2 (you don’t have to feel bad — this is French cinema, so you know it’s sophisticated)

I know one thing that I’m thankful for this Thanksgiving: never having to voluntarily sit through any of these again. That’s right - it’s Pointless, Painful, and Pathetic Sequel Edition at Mystery Poster Theater. And because a blackhole opened up and swallowed last week’s MPT, in a scene that was not unlike the destruction of the Empire State Building in Independence Day, I’ve decided to do a double post this week. And since they’re sequels, you have to guess the exact film. No beans if you just guess the franchise.

As Jean Renoir would say, here are the Rules of the Game: easy posters are worth 1 point a piece, hard posters are worth 2. Wrong guesses are not penalized, so guess as often as you wish, but it’s first come first serve. Oh, and we do this every week at 11AM CST (except when curmudgeonly blackholes interfere).

Guess y’er heart out, and Happy Thanksgiving.
P.S. I’m going to be traveling all day, so if I don’t get to your guesses until later in the evening, that’s why.

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There was a time when Disney was on top of American animation. Heck, they were American animation (at least on the big screen) until about 1966, when Walt died. Then they began to lose their way and lost market share to Don Bluth (who left Disney with a bit of a chip on his shoulder), Dreamworks and Jeffrey Katzenberg (who left Disney with an enormous chip on his shoulder) and Pixar (who almost left Disney with big chips on their shoulders). And despite a very brief (and very over-heralded) renaissance in the late 80’s and early 90’s, they’ve found themselves scraping the bottom of the barrel in recent years, churning out the obligatory Talking-CGI-Animals-with-Celebrity-Voices movies that are just as bad as those of their countless imitators.
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Congratulations to Tigao and Haiku Girl, proud owners of Sony Pictures‘ Mirrormask on DVD! As soon as you twos send me your mailing addresses, I will have these off and away.

Mirrormask launches on Blu-ray today, so if’n you’re sad to have lost to the random number generator, snatch yourself a copy and enjoy it in hi-def (which, in all honesty, is probably the way to go). Also read The Sandman comics series from Vertigo, which Gaiman (Mirrormask’s writer) wrote and Dave McKean (the film’s director) did every single cover for. It was my introduction to both of them and the series remains some of best comics work of all time.

Jiang Ke Jia's STILL LIFE.

But wait! Have you entered our free DVD giveaway of Mirrormask? It’s easy and painless and requires only 2 ounces of blood and your first born. What a steal! Contest ends tomorrow, so don’t be slow.

Speaking of slow, that’s a good way to describe this week, although those of you clamoring for big busty blockbusters have a bit to chew on.

Hancock -
Such high hopes had I for this one (I know, I know, silly), primarily because director Peter Berg is one of my favorite guilty pleasure directors (another? Tony Scott). He’s the auteur behind such classics as The Rundown, which many of you know I bring up any chance I get. I apologize if you’re sick of it; it will likely continue to happen. So, Will Smith is a down-n-out superheroic bum who fights crime whilst downing Jim Bean. It has enjoyable moments, but the 3rd act veers off into la-la land, hand in hand with Charlize Theron.

Recommended if you liked I, Robot, Mystery Men, or I Am Legend.

| Buy Hancock on Blu-ray

Still Life
If Up the Yangtze was the documentary version of the widespread changes taking place, both personally and sociologically, as the 3 Gorges slowly filled up with water, displacing 2 million people, then Still Life is the fictionalized account. A husband and a wife return to their submerged village and attempt to repair their lives, only to discover that the water has buried more than their home. Seems meditative and emotionally moving, just like Yung Chang’s spellbinding doc was.

Recommended if you liked Up the Yangtze or are at least a tad bit curious about life in China.

Fred Claus
I love how the marketing machines for Christmas flicks are always delayed till the following holiday. When DVD turnaround is anywhere from 2 to 4 months (depending on the crappiness of the movie - the more crappy, the faster it hits DVD), having to wait a full 11 seems like an eternity. Not that I was waiting with baited breath for Fred Claus, the story of Santa (Paul Giamatti) and his good-fer-nothin’ brother Fred (Vince Vaughn) - I just think it’s funny. It felt like this movie came out an eternity ago. Does anyone still care?

Recommended if The Wedding Crashers meets Sideways meets Santa Claus Vs. The Martians is your idea of a good time!

| Buy Fred Claus on Blu-ray

Space Chimps -
Lord, save us from ourselves. Quickly.

Recommended if lemon juice enemas just aren’t masochistic enough for you anymore.

| Buy Space Chimps on Blu-ray

This review was originally written on July 2, 2008.

I love Peter Berg, much much more than I reasonably should. He’s directed some entertaining (if slightly forgettable) movies like Friday Night Lights and The Kingdom, but he holds a special place in my heart for putting one of the greatest action epics of all time onto film. That’s right, you guessed it, The Rundown, starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Seann William Scott (you know, Stifler from American Pie).

You probably think I’m being sarcastic. I’m not. For inexplicable reasons, The Rundown is one of my all-time favorites, sharing a spot in my Top 10 along with Vertigo, Lawrence of Arabia, and Requiem for a Dream (I am nothing if not eclectic). I love this film with a passion that borders on the unhealthy, and my wife becomes intensely irritated with me whenever I want to watch it for the 37th time. It’s a mania that rises to teenage-girl-meets-Titanic levels of obsession, and whenever I meet one of the uninitiated, a rabid glee enters my eyes as I preach on its Looney Tunes-esque action sequences, its Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo, and Christopher Walken uttering my favorite line of dialogue ever, “Wow, that’s a lot of cows.” Professional propriety can shove it–I love this film.

So you can imagine the lightheaded anticipation I’ve felt ever since witnessing that first Hancock trailer back in January. Not only was it riotously funny, Peter “The Rundown” Berg (!) was at the helm, and maybe, just maybe, another guilty pleasure masterpiece would muscle its way into my Top 10.
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This review was originally written July 20, 2008.

I sat through all 81 minutes of Space Chimps, but all I could think about the whole time was WALL-E. It had never occurred to me before that hour and a half (which I’ll never get back, by the way), but Pixar managed to make an entire movie set in space, without ever once resorting to extraterrestrials as a plot point. This may not seem remarkable, until you consider how infrequently that sort of storyline actually makes it into production. It’s not hard to imagine the studio board meeting that birthed this film…
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Music is a fickle thing, and every time a band innovates, someone is there to invent a new word for their “genre.” This is especially true with genres that people like to describe with the word “hardcore,” a word which lends itself well to portmanteaus. Hardcore punk that incorporates metal and industrial influences becomes “grindcore”; emotional hardcore punk is “emocore” (or emo, for those who are truly phonetically lazy); hardcore rap with slasher-film-inspired lyrics is “horrorcore”; and bizarrely, the fusion of hardcore rap and heavy metal is somehow “rapcore.”

Well, say hello to yet another.
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You have never seen a film like Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, I can promise you that. You may have thought about a film this before in terms of “what if” or “if only”, but you have never seen something like this completely realized. For this reason, you should stay away from much information about the film because it is so filled with utterly heart-wrenching twists and turns that to read even the most menial summary before sitting down to watch it would be an injustice to the experience.

See this movie. It may not always be pleasant, but you will not regret it.
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Hey all. It’s yet another slow week. Then again, if you’re really sitting there, waiting to see what movies are coming out this weekend, you need to get a hobby. I mean, have you really already seen everything else that’s showing? Geez…go outside. Get some fresh air. Movies aren’t that important.

Um, anyway…

Twilight
Um…does anyone not know what this is? It’s only the biggest tween publishing craze ever to not have a boy wizard named Harry in it. If I remember right, I think the plot goes something like this: First, all the vampires that are walking through the valley most west down Ventura Blvd. Then, all the bad boys are standing in the shadows, and all the good girls are at home with broken hearts. AND NOW I’M FREEEEEEEEEE — ! FREE FALLLLLIN’!!!! …um, yeah.

Recommended if you always wished Buffy would get together with Angel. Or Spike. Or any other vampire that she may or may not have had a thing with.

Bolt -
Dog that doesn’t have superpowers but thinks he does saves the day. This is the first animated Disney movie to be made since Pixar took over their board of directors. So expectations aren’t necessarily high…but I think people are hoping it won’t entirely suck. The trailer that played before WALL-E was kinda funny. Expect to see me in line, unless I have something better to do.

Recommended if you liked Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons or Home on the Range

Wait, you want more free stuff? Geez, you guys are so greedy. Might want to look into that, you know, on a personal character level.

Sony Pictures has put up 2 copies of Mirrormask on DVD for your enjoyment. Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman’s trippy Alice-in-Wonderland-esque fairy tale was one of my favorite films of 2006. It hits today on Blu-ray for the first time (check it out on Amazon, if thou doth desire), but the giveaway is for the standard DVD version.

If you haven’t seen this film, now’s your chance. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post using a valid email address and you’re off to the races. The contest will end a week from today when, using the power of random number generation, I will select two individuals to be blessed with free booty. Oh goody goody goody!

Watch the trailer in HD or see it in fuzzy vision below.

Congratu-frikkin-lations to Rick Olson of Coosa Creek Mambo and Christopher, the two winners of our free Blu-ray giveaway of Southland Tales. Which, by the way, hits shelves today.

Thanks again to Sony Pictures for sponsoring the giveaway, and if you’re mopey about not winning, feel free to visit Amazon for all your Blu-ray Southland Tales needs.

Gonzo feels like a pit stop for documentarian Alex Gibney. After socio-relevant films like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (corporate corruption) and Taxi to the Dark Side (torture and the war on terror) and before tackling Freakonomics (overflowing with hot-button issues like abortion and drug dealing, currently in production), Gibney directed Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson (entirely self-explanatory). You can’t shake the feeling, however, that this one was phoned in. Moments of fascinating relevance shine like blips on a radar screen before fading into generic biodoc filmmaking. It’s a portrait of a unique individual that, sadly, was painted by number far too often.
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Videogames are a lot like real life. They have characters that try to complete goals in various settings; they take effort to get through; they’re interactive.

The only difference is that videogames usually make sense.
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WALL-E Concept art, courtesty Walt Disney Entertainment and Pixar Animation Studios.

Before we get into the goodies, be sure to check out our FREE Blu-ray giveaway of Southland Tales, which ends tomorrow at noon. There are 2 copies of up for grabs, and all you have to do is leave a comment on the post. Get crackin’!

A big week for releases, both of the blockbuster and independent varieties. Needless to say, I’ve got a certain little robot on the brain (as does my daughter). Viva la Pixar!

WALL•E -
The Pixar masters have done it again. This is, arguably, their most beautiful, heartfelt work, and with an oeuvre like theirs, that’s saying something. The story of a little trash compacter who falls in love with a sleek recon robot named EVE, the most impressive thing about WALL•E is the emotional mileage Pixar generates out of beeps, clicks, and gestures. This is glorious filmmaking, a masterpiece in every sense of the word, and if you haven’t seen it yet, make it your top priority.

Recommended if you like things called ‘movies.’

| Buy WALL•E on Blu-ray

Up the Yangtze -
This is a thematically rich, visually gorgeous documentary about the damming up of China’s great Yangtze river and the subsequent flooding of the 3 Gorges, displacing nearly 2 million Chinese citizens. It deals with issues of culture, national identity, coming of age, and the conflict between communism and capitalism that is raging across China’s landscape. Thought provoking and heartrending. Highly recommended.

Recommended if you liked Still Life, Please Vote For Me, or State of Mind.

Tropic Thunder
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this film. 1 part comedy, 1 part satire, 1 part action, it’s a mixed bag at times but an entertaining one nonetheless. If you’re not easily offended (this one is as crass as Hollywood comedies come, these days, although you are thankfully spared any ‘money shots’ of Jack Black’s junk), Robert Downey Jr.’s performance alone is worth the price of admission. Alexander Coleman breaks it down, professor style.

Recommended if Platoon-meets-Stand By Me-meets-The Player-meets-Zoolander sounds like the mostest awesomest movie evars.

| Buy Tropic Thunder on Blu-ray

Priceless -
A surprising little gem of a film that plays like a mix between Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Audrey Tatou stars as a gold digger on the French Riviera, and Gad Elmaleh as the hapless bartender who falls for her and, just to be close to her, ends up gold digging himself. The greatest shock is that Elmaleh outshines the uber-adorable Tatou (of Amelie fame) in nearly every scene. Cute and sweet, although a bit nasty is you start to think about it for too long.

Recommended if you like cute French films about persons of dubious moral fortitude (seriously - for Breakfast at Tiffany’s fans).

| Buy Priceless on Blu-ray
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This review was originally published June 27, 2008.

In 1983, a former monk named Godfrey Reggio made a film called Koyaanisqatsi. The title comes from a word in the Hopi language meaning “crazy life” or even better, “life out of balance.” Considered a classic in some circles, the film isn’t a traditional narrative but a tone poem about how modern man has become extremely distanced from the very thing that gives him life and breath. Some would interpret this as the transcendental idea of nature, others would say God. The film was a not-so-subtle call to replace our current state with another way of living; to focus on the simple and the natural instead of complicated consumerism and life-absorbing technological advances. I was reminded of Koyaanisqatsi more than once during WALL•E and did a double-take: was this really coming out of Disney studios — purveyor of all things luxurious and commercial?
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This review was originally published September 28th, 2008.

The Three Gorges Dam spanning China’s Yangtze River is the largest hydroelectric project in the world. Upon being finished it will provide mammoth amounts of hydroelectric power to the country and its people, but it will cause the waters of the Yangtze to rise, obliterating many homes. Thousands will have to relocate to the highland and start anew. Yung Chang’s new documentary Up the Yangtze explores the different worlds created by the dam and illuminates a darkened corner of the world that may soon disappear under the waters of the Yangtze.
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This review was originally published on September 6, 2008.

Werner Herzog doesn’t make “normal” movies, and while that is a gross generalization, it’s also completely true in his case. The German auteur’s filmmography reads like an issue of Bizarre magazine (yes, it exists): violently manic actors, set pieces that almost killed large swaths of crewmembers, short films where he boils and eats his own footwear, and Bruno S., a mentally unbalanced street musician that Herzog discovered and cast as the lead in two of his films. In The Grand, Herzog starred as “The German,” a poker player who needed to kill at least one fuzzy animal per day. You have to wonder if his performance was based on personal experience.
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This review was originally published June 20, 2008.

I have a love-hate relationship with romantic comedies that resembles more of a hate-hate relationship most of the time. As genres go, it isn’t sitting at the bottom of my barrel (musical bio-pic, I’m looking at you), but it’s close. Tack on the word ‘French’ to the beginning and things become even more problematic. From the heights of absolute adoration (Amelie) to the depths pure hatred (Love Me If You Dare, perhaps one of the worst films I have ever seen), the French take on the romantic comedy consistently elicits extreme reactions from me. They are experimental with their rom-coms as often as we are generic with ours, but the results are not always palatable, or even coherent for that matter. So it was with trepidation that I popped my screener of Priceless into the DVD player, hoping for the best but bracing myself to be emotionally assaulted with the worst. Surprisingly, the latest Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) vehicle doesn’t register at either extreme, but sits comfortably somewhere in the middle.
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Subtlety is overrated. Now hear me out. I’m not saying that we should burn every Bergman or obliterate every Ozu. I do believe, however, that oftentimes something worth doing is worth overdoing. What better time do overdo something than when it’s going to be projected on a thirty foot high screen?
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