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What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:30:01 -0800

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 add Soul Men, the creepy thriller Blindness, and the first volume of the fifth season of Melrose Place to your queue.

Frozen River
Frozen River won the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition at Sundance last year, and now the movie's star Melissa Leo is up for an Academy Award. I've been curious to check out this performance that landed Leo in a category alongside Meryl Streep and Angelina Jolie.

The movie is set near a border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York state and Quebec, and follows a single mother (Leo) who smuggles people across the border via the frozen St. Lawrence River.

Special features include commentary with writer and director Courtney Hunt and producer Heather Rae.

Two more up next so read more.

Miracle at St. Anna
The latest Spike Lee film to come to DVD begins in 1983 with a deadly shooting. A young reporter (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) interviews the shooter in his jail and learns about his experience as one of four black American soldiers trapped in a Tuscan village behind enemy lines in World War II.

In addition to Gordon-Levitt, the movie also stars Laz Alonso, Derek Luke, John Turturro, Omar Benson Miller and Michael Ealy and is based on a novel by James McBride.

W.
Josh Brolin is one actor who can do no wrong lately (er, acting-wise, anyway) and it's his considerable talent that I think saves the day in this odd, somewhat satirical look at our previous president. It's strange, it's controversial, it has daddy issues all over it - what else would you expect from Oliver Stone? You can check out my full review here.

Special features include audio commentary with Stone and a featurette titled "Dangerous Dynasty: The Bush Presidency."

Eagle Eye Soars at Box Office

BuzzSugar — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:30:36 -0700

Shia LaBeouf proves he's box office gold once again with the No. 1 movie this weekend, Eagle Eye, also starring Michelle Monaghan and directed by D.J. Caruso. The action-thriller performed well with an estimated $29.2 million, making it the fourth-best September debut ever. In second place with an estimated $13. 6 million came the Nicholas Sparks tearjerker Nights in Rodanthe.

Lakeview Terrace came in third place, and to my great surprise Fireproof, starring Kirk Cameron (yes, you read that right), came in at No. 4. The Christian-themed flick narrowly beat Burn After Reading, which came in fifth. Who would have ever guessed that Mr. Cameron would join Mr. LaBeouf as two of the big stars of the weekend?

Spike Lee's World War II epic Miracle at St. Anna suffered from disappointing reviews (including my own) and paid for it at the box office, coming in at No. 9.

Photos courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Miracle at St. Anna: Epically Disappointing

BuzzSugar — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:30:10 -0700

The conflicted and heroic history of World War II's Buffalo Soldiers deserves to be told in a dramatic and thoughtful movie. Unfortunately, Miracle at St. Anna is neither of those things. After seeing the subtle trailer, I was curious how Spike Lee's style would translate into a war epic, but I never imagined this. The overdone melodrama is so weighed down with trivial details that it loses the potentially powerful impact of its subject matter.

With Miracle at St. Anna, Lee sets out to correct that fact that black soldiers have been largely absent from WWII cinema and memory. To that end, the story follows four members of the 92nd Infantry Division, comprised of 15,000 African-American troops. After a devastating battle on the Italian frontlines, the surviving foursome - Stamps (Derek Luke), Bishop (Michael Ealy), Hector (Laz Alonso), and Train (Omar Benson Miller) - are left to fend for themselves with a broken radio and an injured Italian kid they've picked up along the way. For what goes wrong, read more.

Lee capably conveys the neglect the soldiers suffer at the hands of their white commanders, and you feel the ache of these heroes fighting for a country so dismissive of them. Especially powerful is a battlefield scene in which the Buffalo Soldiers are forced to listen to the bewitching voice of "Axis Sally" (Germany's version of Tokyo Rose) promising racial equality, good food, and beautiful women if they surrender. Unfortunately, most of the movie is sorely lacking the emotional weight it deserves.

As ambitious as Miracle is in concept, it's amateurish in execution and often insulting to moviegoers' intelligence. The war story is bookended by a modern-day mystery: One of our vets is accused of murder, and cops find an ancient Italian artifact in his closet. The story isn't revisited until the final scene of the unnecessarily long 160-minute movie, at which point the "mystery" is solved in a way that viewers will see coming from miles away. (But just in case we don't, the characters spell it all out in laughably explanatory dialogue.)

Throughout the movie, the dramatic tension is deflated by a melodramatic musical score and heavy-handed script by James McBride, who wrote the novel on which the film is based. Frequently, the characters deliver lines that clumsily explain plot points or, even worse, elaborate on the cultural commentary that should be intrinsic. Miracle at St. Anna is also plagued by several scenes that just defy logic. For instance, if the Italian boy understands the word "no" and knows that nodding means "yes," why must he and Train communicate through a system of taps, where one tap means "yes" and two taps mean "no"? Because it figures into the plot later, of course!

When the mystery borders on farce, overexaggerated performances by Ealy and Miller don't do it any favors. But I was impressed by Luke as the level-headed Stamps and Alonso in the multilayered role of Hector; both manage to convey gravitas in a movie that's lacking it. But frankly, I expected more from Spike Lee.

Photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures

Movie Preview: Miracle at St. Anna

BuzzSugar — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:00:42 -0700

When Spike Lee isn't making waves with his speech, he's making movies that also provoke. The latest addition to his canon, Miracle at St. Anna, will be out this Fall, and this week brought us the first glimpse of its trailer. The film is an adaptation of a novel by the same title and follows the harrowing story of four African-American soldiers trapped in an Italian village during World War II.

This is the first feature-length film Lee has released since his terrific 2006 "joint" Inside Man, and based on the trailer, it looks like he may have found a way to examine history, tell a great story, and entertain all in one film. In fact, this looks like the kind of moving, sweeping tale that the folks who give out Oscars tend to enjoy. I wonder if we are seeing a preview of a potential 2008 nominee? Time will tell!

Miracle at St. Anna opens Sept. 26. To watch the trailer for yourself, read more.

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