BuzzSugar

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:30:17 -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 my selections below, you can also catch Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD on DVD.

Nothing But the Truth
I didn't get to see this in the theaters, so I'm curious to check out this political thriller starring Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, Vera Farmiga, David Schwimmer, and Alan Alda.

The movie's plot is described as "ripped from the headlines" and centers on a journalist (Beckinsale) who outs an acquaintance of hers as a CIA agent. Things get interesting when the government's prosecutor (Dillon) sends the journalist to jail for contempt. The movie was written and directed by Rod Lurie, the guy behind one of my favorite political movies, The Contender.

Special features include commentary from the director, deleted scenes, and a making-of featurette.

76%

Read about three more movies out this week when you read more.

Bride Wars
Hey, speaking of wedding tips we can learn from movies: Don't . . . destroy a life long friendship over a conflict in wedding scheduling! Which is to say, Bride Wars is out on DVD.

The movie stars Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson as best friends who spend their lives dreaming of weddings together, and part of that dream is getting married at the Plaza Hotel. After both women get engaged, though, things get nasty when the Plaza books both their weddings on the same day. Instead of graciously working it out as two intelligent, grown women might do, the brides-to-be turn against each other, with each trying to sabotage the other's wedding. Needless to say, their friendship suffers.

Special features include three deleted scenes, including an alternate opening, and a featurette titled - wait for it - "The Perfect White Dress."

12%

What Doesn't Kill You
Here's another movie I am excited to bring home to watch. Netflix has a good description of the plot: "Partners in crime Paulie (Ethan Hawke) and Brian (Mark Ruffalo) find themselves at odds after years of pulling dangerous jobs, surviving turf wars and evading a determined detective (Donnie Wahlberg) in this gritty crime drama set in South Boston. The childhood buddies have gone through the wringer together, but when Brian's relationship with his wife (Amanda Peet) begins to fall apart, their loyal friendship is tested."

The New York Times called it a "a no-nonsense, few-frills crime drama about two losers hustling their way into an early grave" that "says a little something about what it means to look at the American dream from the bottom up." Sounds awesome.

Special features include commentary with writer/director Brian Goodman and writer Donnie Wahlberg; deleted and alternate scenes; and "Makes You Stronger: The Making Of What Doesn't Kill You."

68%

The Uninvited
Elizabeth Banks had a good year in '08 and has been popping up in movies left and right well into '09. The Uninvited was one of them, and it looks pretty darn scary.

Netflix's description of this remake of a Korean film is super-creepy: "Committed to a mental hospital after her mother's tragic death, teenager Anna (Emily Browning) discovers upon her release that her father (David Strathairn) plans to marry his deceased wife's former nurse, Rachael (Elizabeth Banks), a woman who may not have the best intentions. Foreboding warnings from her mother's ghost only cement Anna's suspicions." Yikes! I'm such a wimp about scary movies that I will definitely be recruiting people to watch this with me.

Special features include a behind-the-scenes featurette called "Unlocking the Uninvited," deleted scenes, and an alternate ending.

33%

Blindness: To See, a Brutal Gift

BuzzSugar — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:30:08 -0700

I saw Blindness by myself, with nothing to occupy me on the way home but a copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Bad idea. This movie requires a funny friend or mindless magazine afterward to decompress. I don't shy away from depressing films, but Blindness is one of the bleakest things I've ever seen on screen. At times bleaker even than Babel or Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. But cheery isn't really an option when portraying a dystopia plagued by a mysterious epidemic "immune to bureaucracy."

Based on the novel by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago and directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God, The Constant Gardner), this apocalyptic allegory is imperfect but powerful. Reminiscent of Children of Men and old zombie flicks, Blindness begins with a man going blind while driving. His eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) is puzzled by the affliction, in which eyesight is obscured by white rather than cloaked in dark. But soon the doctor is also rendered blind by the contagion, so read more.

To prevent an epidemic, the blind are quarantined - first by the handful then by the hundreds - in an abandoned sanitarium. Apart from the viewers, the only person who can see what filth results when a bunch of newly blind people are essentially abandoned by their government is the doctor's wife (Julianne Moore), who retains her sight but keeps it a secret. As food rations become scarce and the conditions more squalid, the ward devolves into a sinister, Lord of the Flies-like atmosphere ruled by an opportunistic villain (Gael Garcia Bernal).

Painted in a washed-out palette, the horror is heightened by the fact that as viewers, we're prevented from getting our bearings. Some of the techniques are predictable but effective - interludes of white between scenes, an overall jumbled tone - while others are downright arresting. We never learn the characters' names, and the nameless setting - shot in Sao Paolo, Tokyo, and Toronto - is beautiful and disorienting.

But Meirelles also draws attention to our sightedness by making us witness some sickeningly ugly truths - actions that you can imagine unfolding in such a dystopia but that are very difficult to watch nonetheless. (The people next to me walked out during a particularly disturbing scene.) The horrors are not without a message - to me, how hunger and suffering can drive people to immoral ends - but I certainly didn't leave the theater feeling good. Though I haven't read Saramago's novel, I'd imagine that message of Blindness is better made through literary allegory than a hyperrealistic film. But depending on your movie tolerance, Blindness is worth seeing for both its beauty and its brutality.

Photos courtesy of Miramax

Buzz News Roundup, 8/6

BuzzSugar — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:30:49 -0700

Mark Ruffalo will make his directorial debut on the film Sympathy for Delicious, which will also star James Franco, writes ComingSoon.
The novel The Dogs of Babel will be adapted for the big screen, Variety reports.
A new Parents Television Council study has found that TV portrays sex between married people as boring, TV Week reports.
AMC is developing a new political thriller TV series about a "secret society that controls the world's political stage," TV Guide reports.
According to E! Online, Kevin Smith has won his appeal to get an R rating (rather than NC-17) for his raunchy comedy Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Hollywood Reporter has the news that the spoof book Drink, Play, F@#K will be made into a movie.
Variety writes that DreamWorks has taken down the Tropic Thunder promotional website simplejackmovie.com for being offensive to the mentally challenged.
Eli Roth, director of the Hostel movies, will star in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards, reports Zap2It.

Source

Movie Preview: The Brothers Bloom

BuzzSugar — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:30:47 -0700

Had you ever heard of this movie before right now? Me neither! But it looks weird and funny and stars an odd-but-promising assortment of people, like Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, Rachel Weisz and Babel's Rinko Kikuchi. The plot follows a quirky group of people who plan a heist, but of course, things go haywire. I never would have thought to put Ruffalo and Brody together in a comedic film, but it really seems to work. Also, this same director, Rian Johnson, directed the strange little teen noir film Brick, which I liked.

Check out the trailer and tell me if I'm just a little tired and easily amused right now, or if you might also seek out The Brothers Bloom when it opens October 24. You can watch the trailer if you read more.

Photo courtesy of Summit Entertainment

Teaser Trailer for Blindness With Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo

BuzzSugar — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 11:31:17 -0700

Don't be fooled by the chipper, easy-breezy morning routine at the beginning of this teaser trailer for Blindness - it gets scary. Really scary. Based on the novel by Portuguese Nobel prize winner Jose Saramago, Blindness is an apocalyptic thriller in which an entire town - save one doctor's wife - succumbs to a blindness epidemic.

The cast is fantastic: Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Gael Garcia Bernal and Sandra Oh, among others. Just watching this teaser trailer gave me chills, so I'm a little afraid of the final full-length movie. Then again, I have until October 3 to build up some courage. Have you read this book? You can check out the teaser trailer if you read more.

Reservation Road: So Much Potential, Yet Boring

Molly — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:35:33 -0700

Note: Another one from me. I'm on a roll today.

Ever since I read the book Reservation Road a few years back, I thought it would make an excellent movie. I could hardly contain my excitement when I saw the cast - Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo, Mira Sorvino, Jennifer Connelly (and personal favorite, Elle Fanning). Unfortunately, I walked out of the theater disappointed. Not because it didn't live up to the book (really, what does?), but because it just wasn't particularly great.

The premise of the story is simple: Ethan and Grace Learner (Joaquin and Jennifer) are driving home on a windy local road on a mid-October evening with their two children. They stop for gas and when their son jumps out to release his caught fireflies, he is killed in a hit and run. Driving the car is Dwight Arno (Mark) who is rushing his young son back to his mother after a Red Sox game. After he hits the boy, which wakes up his sleeping son, he pauses. He makes eye contact for a second with Ethan, and then makes the split second decision to drive away and tell his son they just hit a log. It's an intense opening for the movie - and it's well done. The emotions are all there for the first 20 minutes. Ethan's sadness contrasted with Dwight's huge moral and ethical dilemma. Sadly, the movie cannot sustain the level of intensity they reach in the beginning. Not even close. To read the rest of my review just read more

From there, the movie sets up a series of coincidences that bring these two men together. Ethan's daughter Emma (Elle) takes piano lessons from Dwight's ex-wife (Sorvino). Ethan hires Dwight as the lawyer dealing with the case of his son's death. All of this seems to be leading up to some huge dramatic climax, or realization, or showdown, but the film lags too much for the viewer to even care all that much about what is coming next.

Joaquin, who always seems to be wrestling his own demons, plays the broken grieving father well, right down to the unhealthy obsession with finding his son's killer. I could have done without the internet chat room aspect, but I guess that was part of what was added as they adapted the movie to take place in 2004. Speaking of that recentering, here's a slightly off-topic but good example as to how this movie missed the boat regarding emotion: The movie takes place as the Red Sox were making their historic World Series run, and Dwight and his son are supposed to be avid fans. Yet, at no point are they at all excited. In fact, it seems so thrilling it might just put them to sleep. It's a bit nitpicky, I know, but it's indicative of the larger problem with the movie. There's just not enough feeling.

Jennifer Connelly is convincing as the mourning mother, but then again we all know that she can play sad like the best of 'em. In fact, that's pretty much her calling card these days. It breaks my heart a little bit to say, but the weak link in the cast was Mark Ruffalo. As endearing as he is, I'm not sure that he has the chops (or maybe this just isn't the right role) to play a character so amazingly burdened by his own guilt that he has a hard time functioning.

None of this is to say that it's a bad movie. It's a perfectly adequate movie, but with the stellar cast and interesting story, it could have been so much more.

First Look: Reservation Road

BuzzSugar — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 11:18:19 -0700

After outlining the differences between Reservation Road and Revolutionary Road yesterday, you should be all set and ready to watch this trailer for the one of the road-themed movies coming out this fall: Reservation Road. Starring Mark Ruffalo, Joaquin Phoenix, Mira Sorvino and Jennifer Connolly, Reservation Road is a quiet thriller set in suburban Connecticut.

After his son is killed by a hit-and-run accident, Ethan (Phoenix) goes on a manhunt to find the person who was behind the wheel. Little does he know that the person he's sniffing out lives in the same town and has a young son himself. Trying to come to terms with the incident, Dwight (Ruffalo) falls down a spiral of guilt while Ethan gets closer and closer to sniffing out his son's killer.

The book reads like a creepy, heart-wrenching film, so it should be fairly simple to adapt for screen, though the trailer leaves much to be desired. The movie opens October 19, so to watch the preview, read more

Source

Link Time! 6/5

BuzzSugar — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:01:50 -0700

According to Cinematical, Mark Ruffalo is replacing Daniel Craig in the movie Blindness (which I told you about back when Craig was first cast and I was giddy over the news).
Stereogum recounts the bizarre saga of the dude who thinks Arcade Fire stole his basketball when the band played at UC Berkeley. Arcade Fire denies the charges.
According to PopCandy, BJ Novack (Ryan on "The Office") was a prankster in high school, recording fake audio tours for the Boston Museum of the Fine Arts.
The Movie Blog thinks casting a magician to play a magician is a good idea, referring specifically to Criss "Mindfreak" Angel who has been cast in Mandrake the Magician, based on a Depression-era comic strip. Well, he's certainly comical.
I Guess I'm Floating finds Wilco's explanation for selling its songs to a VW campaign.
CHUD (Cinematic Happenings Under Development) has a source who heard something about a remake of Meatballs.
TV With MeeVee reviews the "Heroes" 360 Experience.
Earvolution says the Strokes' Albert Hammond Jr. is writing a play.

Source

Zodiac: Spooky and Solid

BuzzSugar — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 00:01:56 -0800

Going into Zodiac, I was preemptively annoyed that it was such a long film, running 2 hours and 40 minutes. Director David Fincher even made the bold claim that he "couldn't find a way" to make it shorter, which made me roll my eyes. But when I went blinking back into the real world, I felt I actually could have watched even more. For one thing, it was a great movie and I really enjoyed it. For another, though, the case piqued my interest, and I still have questions.

The film primarily follows Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s and 1970s as he becomes gradually obsessed with the case of the Bay Area serial killer, The Zodiac. The killer sent letters and cryptograms to the Chronicle in which he claimed to have committed several murders and threatened many more if the newspaper did not run his letters. Thus, he became a media sensation. The Zodiac's elusiveness became infuriating and embarrassing for multiple police departments, and eventually, the letters stopped arriving. Long after the case faded from public interest, however, a few journalists and investigators were still obsessed with the Zodiac - Graysmith in particular - so

Gyllenhaal's Graysmith is the only real bleak spot in the cast of extremely capable actors. He comes across as a wide-eyed goody-goody with no identifiable reason why he gives up his life to pursue a case that is all but forgotten. Ruffalo far outshines him as investigator Dave Toschi, creating a character you immediately trust and want to succeed and playing nicely off his partner William Armstrong ("ER"'s Anthony Edwards). Robert Downey Jr. does his normal thing as the seasoned crime journalist Paul Avery, delivering his cynical lines in the usual deadpan, slightly effeminate manner.

One of the most fascinating things about the story is how the Zodiac used the media in a period of technological history that is drastically different from today's. It was a time when a call trace could take 15 minutes, few police departments even had a fax machine, and people didn't have cell phones, not to mention cameras in their cell phones. The way this one person could create such a public frenzy and elude the grasp of so many is baffling to modern audiences and was certainly of interest to the filmmakers.

With comparatively little gore, it’s a far cry from Fincher’s Seven or Fight Club, coming off more like a documentary in its meticulous attention to every piece of evidence. By two-thirds of the way into it, we are as worn down by the investigation as the characters are, and while that is true, the movies’ timeline sweeps along too swiftly to elicit much frustration. The way Fincher builds suspense is admirable, and the way he sustains this suspense and unravels each discovery even more so. The subject matter could have lent itself to more bloodshed and unrestrained, Hollywood-y deviation from the facts, but Fincher didn't fall into those traps. The storytelling is steady and controlled, creating - despite no actual resolution to the case - a fully satisfying movie.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Pattinson and Jackman and Weisz? Oh, My

BuzzSugar — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:30:04 -0700

Robert Pattinson, Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz starring together in a movie? That's hot.

The period drama is titled Unbound Captives and follows a woman (to be played by Weisz) "whose husband is killed and her two children kidnapped by a Comanche war party in 1859. She is rescued by a frontiersman, to be played by Jackman. Pattinson will play the son." First-time director Madeleine Stowe will be working with her own screenplay which she wrote, under the pseudonym O.C. Humphrey, with her husband. She'd originally planned on starring in the lead role herself, but ultimately decided to direct. She says she saw three actresses and just knew that Weisz would be good for the role. Interestingly, Robert Pattinson agreed to be in the film last Fall, "before everything broke with Twilight."

There's no question that Pattinson and Jackman are hot actors - in that they're attractive (Pattinson even has his own sexy faceoff game over on Pop) and rather popular right now. And I've always thought that Rachel Weisz is one of the most beautiful actresses of our time (just my humble opinion), so, just like I'm going to see The Brothers Bloom in which she stars with other cuties (Mark Ruffalo and Adrien Brody), I'll probably see this movie no matter what.

Source