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What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:30:11 -0700

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue. In addition to these three creepy thrillers that join the others on video store shelves today, Wild Hogs also comes out on DVD, as well as David Lynch's Inland Empire.

The Lookout
One of my favorite thrillers of the year so far, The Lookout has Jeff Daniels and Joseph Gordon-Levitt both turning in superb performances as the good-natured blind man Lewis (Daniels) and his mentee Chris (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). Chris suffers a severe head injury from a car accident that cut short his promising athletic future. Now working as a janitor at a bank and living with his blind friend, Chris falls in with the smooth talking Gary Spargo and his posse (including the sweet and sexy Luvlee played by Isla Fisher).

Gary lures Chris into his bank heist, preying on Chris' loneliness and desire to feel powerful again. At the last minute, though, Chris has second thoughts. Chilling and suspenseful throughout, The Lookout is a fantastically worthwhile thriller. For more of my take, check out my review.

For two more thrilling titles, read more

Fracture
Fracture pits the adorable and arresting Ryan Gosling against the ever-shifty Anthony Hopkins in a capable legal thriller. Gosling plays Willy Beachum, the up-and-coming assistant district attorney tasked with linking Ted Crawford (Hopkins) to the murder of Ted's wife. Hopkins shows nothing new with his performance, relying on his old Silence of the Lambs tricks to once again portray a clever yet disturbed criminal while Gosling does his very best to pick up the slack. It's a decent rental for a spooky night, however, especially if you need a Gosling fix.

Vacancy
Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson star in this horror/thriller that takes place at a creepy motel (hence the title). David (Wilson) and Amy Fox (Beckinsale) are forced to stay in the shady Pinewood Motel when their car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. In the cursed Room 4, they turn on the TV and watch some slasher films... until they realize the low-budget movies were all filmed in their very motel room. Vacancy doesn't break any new ground, but it provides a few good scares if you're in the mood.

Disturbia Wins at the Box Office Yet Again

BuzzSugar — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:05:45 -0700

For the third week in a row, Disturbia has prevailed at the box office, though whether this is something to write home about is debatable since the competition wasn't exactly fierce. Overall, box office sales were way down this weekend, with Disturbia drawing in just $9 million - and that's the No. 1 film.

Coming in second place was the latest thriller The Invisible, while Nicolas Cage and his scraggly hair brought in just $7.2 million for the "action-thriller" Next. Following Next was Fracture, Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons and Hot Fuzz, each bringing in unremarkable sales.

Of course, this is just the end of April. Studios should expect to see a huge difference when they break out the summer big guns, which should start this weekend when Spider-Man 3 opens nationwide. Goodbye Shia LaBeouf, hello Spidey and the gang.

Photo courtesy of DreamWorks

Box Office: Disturbia Not Disturbed from Top Spot

BuzzSugar — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:11:07 -0700

The many of you who want to see Disturbia are not alone: The teenage thriller held steady at No. 1 at the box office, raking in $13.5 million. With the plethora of thrillers out now, three out of the top five movies this weekend were of the genre, with Fracture claiming the No. 2 spot and Vacancy coming in fourth.

Will Ferrell's Blades of Glory was at No. 3 while the family flick Meet the Robinsons held its own at fifth place. Hilarious British comedy Hot Fuzz straggled in at sixth. As one might have expected, not even Adam Brody's cute face could save In the Land of Women from its pitiful opening weekend, bringing in a paltry $4.9 million and landing in eighth place after Ice Cube's Are We Done Yet?

Disturbia has a chance of keeping its top slot this weekend since there aren't too many good-looking films coming out, but it should prepare to be slaughtered by a certain web-slinger come the weekend of May 4.

Photo courtesy of Dreamworks

Which Current Thriller Are You Most Interested to See?

BuzzSugar — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 14:35:02 -0700

'Tis the season, apparently, for thrillers to pile into the theaters. This weekend, Fracture joins the cinemas where current thrillers Disturbia, Perfect Stranger and The Lookout (among several others) are already clamoring for thrill-seeking viewers. I know I've asked you to tell me all about your favorite thrillers of old, but what about the newest ones? Which of these heart-pounders are you most interested in seeing?

Fracture: Broken In Too Many Places

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 04:20:31 -0700

In Fracture, Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) is a cocky but likeable prosecutor on the rise. He’s about to go from being an assistant D.A. to joining a goliath corporate law firm - all chrome, glass and prestige. To top things off, his new beautiful boss Nikki Gardner (Rosamund Pike) has demonstrated an interest in taking him under her wing, in more ways than one. What could go wrong?

On the eve of his move, he agrees to take on one more case for the D.A.’s office. Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), who we see spying on his cheating wife and then shooting her in the head, has signed a confession admitting to his crime. It should be an open and shut case, but the hotshot prosecutor with a 97 percent conviction rate soon finds himself mired in a trap set by the sociopathic Crawford.

A courtroom revelation renders Crawford’s confession inadmissible, and Beachum soon discovers that they cannot find the gun used in the crime. “If you look closely enough,” Crawford says, taunting Beachum, “you can find that everything has a weak spot where it can break, sooner or later.” Unfortunately, Fracture suffers from too many weak spots, so

In spite of top-notch stars, Fracture abounds in flaws: The film drags, lacks an original story, and derives its main characters all too obviously from The Silence of the Lambs. In addition, moments that are supposed to be suspenseful - like when Beachum races to the hospital with a court-order to keep Crawford from pulling the plug on his comatose wife - are so badly paced that you forget what’s even going on.

The romance between Beachum and his new, seductive boss seems to come out of nowhere, and it doesn’t make sense that someone in as high a position as Nikki would jeopardize her job just to sleep with a new employee, however handsome. The film also stumbles during moments intended as comic relief, since the movie hasn’t done its job in setting the proper tone these moments were meant to disrupt.

But the biggest disappointment of Fracture involves what could have been a promising rapport between Gosling and Hopkins. Gosling is one of the few actors who can smirk and act cocky and still have you rooting for him; he plays it off as youthful exuberance. His elastic face is as expressive as a silent film star’s, and he has a magnetism that almost makes his boss’s seduction make sense.

Gosling deserves a better sparring partner than Hopkins, who seems to have simply walked from The Silence of the Lambs set without leaving character. Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter shtick is getting old. His arsenal of sociopathic tics - the nostril flaring, the reptilian slow-lidded closing of the eyes - isn’t bordering on self-parody; it fully inhabits it.

Although Fracture had promise, you just feel like you’re wandering around in familiar territory, none of it surprising or compelling.

Movie Preview: Fracture

BuzzSugar — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 12:58:13 -0700

Fracture comes out this Friday April 20 and I'm excited about it for three reasons: Anthony Hopkins, Ryan Gosling, and David Strathairn. Gosling plays an assistant DA with a gentle drawl who thinks he's got it easy when he's assigned to prosecute Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), who has confessed to killing his wife.

But of course, the case isn't as easy as it looks on first glance. As Crawford tells the lawyer: "If you look closely enough, you'll find everything has a big spot where it can break sooner or later." Director Gregory Hoblit proved with Primal Fear that he can churn out a very unpredictable courtroom drama, so maybe this one will be similar. Check out my review this Friday, and to watch the trailer in the meantime, read more

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