Jason Bailey's DVD Talk DVD Reviews https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/list/DVD Video DVD Talk DVD Review RSS Feed en-us Graceland Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/55778 Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:39:13 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival

Ron Morales's Graceland is centered on an idea so astonishingly clever, it almost presents a challenge; he risks not living up to the promise of his premise. Here it is: Marlon (Arnold Reyes) is the driver and general clean-up man for a wealthy, corrupt congressman (Menggie Cobarrubias). One afternoon, as he's driving the two girls home, he is carjacked by kidnappers who hope to collect a healthy ransom by taking the congressman's daughter. To show they mean business, they kill Marlon's daughter, right in front of him. Trouble is, they've mix the girls up; they kill the valuable one. When they realize their mistake, Marlon's instructions are clear: to keep his ow...Read the entire review

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Magic Mike (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58624 Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:08:17 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

Someday, someone will write a lengthy, scholarly deconstructionist essay on Steven Soderbergh's use of the late-'70s/early-'80s Saul Bass-designed Warner Brothers logo at the beginning and Foreigner's "Feels Like The First Time" at the end of Magic Mike, but here's a thumbnail sketch: he's earmarking it to the proper era, because he basically made the male Flashdance. It's not just that he spends the entire film slyly subverting traditional on-screen gender roles (more on that later), it's that the whole movie has a distinctively go-go '80s sensibility. It's like one of those Tom Cruise movies where he's the best ____ in the world (bartender, racecar driver, pool player, whatever); here, Channing Tatum is the best male stripper. There was one true '80s Cruise movie in theaters ...Read the entire review

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The Kitchen Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58590 Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:49:36 UTC Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

Yes, now that you mention it, the most interesting stuff at a party usually is going on in the kitchen, and that's the clever premise of Ishai Setton's The Kitchen: though set at the thirtieth birthday of Jennifer (Laura Prepon), we never really see the party itself. Revelers are seen arriving and leaving, stopping in on beer runs--and, most importantly, stepping away from the noise of the party proper to talk. Or cry. Or yell. (There's a good bit of yelling.) The kitchen may not be where the party is, but it's where things are happening.

Screenwriter Jim Beggarly throws a lot of characters at us right off the bat, and leaves us to sort them out. The...Read the entire review

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Paul Williams Still Alive Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58573 Sun, 21 Oct 2012 01:24:19 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

"I always thought he died too young," notes Stephen Kessler mournfully, at the beginning of Paul Williams Still Alive--but it's a fake-out, of course, and not one hidden for long (hell, it's there in the title). Williams, for those not old enough to remember (or who were too high at the time), was one of the most recognizable singer/songwriters of the 1970s. He parlayed his success penning works for Streisand, the Carpenters, David Bowie, and the Muppets into a kind of all-encompassing celebrity, via his appearances in films, on talk shows, and in a seemingly endless series of TV guest shots. And then, in the mid-'80s, his excesses got the better of him. But he di...Read the entire review

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The Story of Luke Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58570 Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:17:28 UTC Rent It

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

Alonso Mayo's The Story of Luke deals with the elephant in the room about a third of the way in, and just in time. Its title character is autistic--modestly well adjusted, but not the kind of high-skill type we think of thanks to a certain 1988 Oscar winner. While trying to get a job, Luke is asked, "Can you multiply big numbers, or memorize entire books?" He can't. But he does tend to remember the exact and often indelicate wording of things people tell him in semi-confidence, and repeat those things at inopportune moments for the tellers. Luke's social skills may be underdeveloped, but the kid's got c...Read the entire review

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Year of the Living Dead Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58572 Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:17:28 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

In 1967, a 27-year-old college dropout and industrial filmmaker named George A. Romero assembled a ramshackle cast and crew of friends, associates, and clients, rented a farmhouse in the sticks, and made Night of the Living Dead--"this tiny little movie in Pittsburgh," notes historian Jason Zinoman, that "changed the world." That sounds like a tall claim for a low-budget horror picture, but in his new documentary Year of the Living Dead, director Rob Kuhns mounts a convincing case.

The film is part biography, part behind-the-scenes feature, and part sociological study. We're introduced to Romero, whose Pittsburgh production company made industrials, ...Read the entire review

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Fat Kid Rules the World Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58559 Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:07:12 UTC Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

If Matthew Lillard and his agent didn't sit down a couple of years back and strategically decide to "do an Affleck," I'll eat my hat. First, the one-time Shaggy and eternal Freddie Prinze Jr. second banana started popping up in restrained and effective supporting roles in the likes of The Descendants and Trouble with the Curve; now, here is his charming, low-key feature directorial debut, Fat Kid Rules the World. It's a fairly sly piece of work, narratively speaking, inasmuch as you think it's going to be one kind of movie, and it subtly becomes something else. The film's primary flaw is that both are movies you've seen many times before.

The t...Read the entire review

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Beauty is Embarrassing Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58558 Sat, 20 Oct 2012 12:07:12 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

"My name is Wayne White, and I make pictures." So announces the subject of Neil Berekely's documentary Beauty is Embarrassing , but he's selling himself short; he is also a puppeteer, sculptor, cartoonist, art designer, and a pretty mean banjo player. To the oft-given advice to focus on one thing and do it well, he offers a stern "Fuck that!" And as someone who found success in Hollywood, dropped out, and became an artist, he says, "Fuck you, F. Scott Fitzgerald!"

There are "fuck"s a-plenty in White's vernacular; he cheerfully deploys the word not just in conversation but in many of his "word paintings," which have become his trademark works. In them, he tak...Read the entire review

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Pablo Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58531 Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:43:04 UTC Highly Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

Good documentary films can do a lot of things--educate, inform, immerse us in a scene, tell a story. Richard Goldgewicht's Pablo does those things, and one of my other favorites besides: it wants to tell you all about this amazing guy that you totally should have heard of before now, but probably haven't. Said guy is Pablo Ferro: self-taught animator, comic book artist, advertising creator, and one of the genuine artists of movie title design. If that all sounds too "inside," it's not; this is the story of a creative artist with a unique, idiosyncratic style that changed the game. Who's not fascinated by that?

Ferro, we're told, moved from his native ...Read the entire review

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Citadel Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58529 Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:43:04 UTC Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

Between The Raid: Redemption, Dredd 3D, Attack the Block, and now Ciaran Foy's Citadel, I'm not getting a very good feeling about the safety of apartment block buildings overseas. In the jostling opening sequence of Citadel, a young man named Tommy (Anuerin Bernard) and his pregnant wife are moving out of their decidedly sketchy-looking building, but not quite quick enough; the missus is attacked by a mysterious--but scary--gang of hooded figures, and though doctors manage to save the baby, the mother is not so lucky.

Nine months pass. The harrowing experience has left the newly single father understandably shaken; he now suffers from a serious...Read the entire review

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The Right to Love: An American Family Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58530 Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:43:04 UTC Recommended

Reviewed at the 2012 Tallgrass Film Festival

On the very afternoon that I saw The Right to Love: An American Family, an informative and emotional documentary about marriage equality, yet another key moment in that movement had arrived: the Defense of Marriage Act had been ruled unconstitutional by a New York federal appeals court. That ruling will certainly be appealed; this battle, one that evangelicals insist is for the very soul of America, is one that has been fought in courtrooms as much as in the streets or in voting booths. Gay marriage has been a hot-button topic since George W. Bush used it as a wedge issue back in 2004; in 2008, the elation of the Obama victory was tempered somewhat by California v...Read the entire review

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Safety Not Guaranteed (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57480 Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:54:10 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

Darius Britt, the heroine of the stripped-down time travel comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, can barely remember a time where she was hopeful or optimistic. Nowadays, she says, "I just expect the worst." Darius is played by Aubrey Plaza, and it is not exactly casting against type; Plaza co-stars on Parks and Recreation, where her delightfully bone-dry line readings and biting deadpan never fail to beguile. Safety is her first starring role (she played supporting roles in Funny People and Scott Pilgrim), and it may as well be accompanied by fanfares. She's got a terrific screen ...Read the entire review

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Seven Psychopaths Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58438 Thu, 11 Oct 2012 23:59:18 UTC Highly Recommended

"I don't want it to be one more film about guys with guns in their hands," explains Martin (Colin Farrell) of his new script Seven Psychopaths, which is also the title of the film he explains that in--a film written and directed by Martin McDonagh, so you can see what he's up to here. McDonagh is the fiendishly clever playwright whose last film, 2008's wonderful In Bruges, was very much marketed as one more film about guys with guns in their hands, though it was far more compelling than that; same goes for this follow-up. It doesn't quite match that film's emotional core, but it's an audacious and jazzy bit of motion picture puzzle-making.

Martin is an alcoholic writer who can't get his script going. ...Read the entire review

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A Cat in Paris (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57390 Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:07:53 UTC Recommended

THE MOVIE:

The cat is Zoe's best friend. He is her companion, her nuzzler and buddy, and she needs one--her father, a police officer, was recently killed, and her mother, a police supervisor, is so wrapped up in the case to find his killer that she can barely bothered to pay attention to her daughter, who hasn't uttered a word in the months since. So, as you can see, she really needs that cat. And the cat is loyal and faithful until Zoe drifts off to slumberland, at which time the cat leaps out the window and goes to its other owner, Nico, a cat burglar (coincidentally enough). Nico leaps across the rooftops of Paris and steals jewels, and you get no prize for guessing that the cat's two very separate lives are going to intersect.

A Cat in Paris is a delightful little animated caper from France (where it was originally titled Une vie de chat), and a movie that wouldn...Read the entire review

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How I Met Your Mother: The Complete Seventh Season DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58411 Tue, 09 Oct 2012 04:07:53 UTC Recommended

THE SERIES:

You'll forgive me for getting too personal with How I Met Your Mother--but we have some history, this program and I. Its third season DVD set was among my first reviews for this very site, and it provided an excuse to finally catch up with the show; to prepare for that review, my wife and I marathoned the first two seasons, for the first time, over the course of two previous weekends. So that review was written in the flush of early fandom, but I don't think that had anything to do with my enthusiasm for the show--I compared it favorably to Seinfeld, and meant it. I remained a fan, but by the time I was reviewi...Read the entire review

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The Invisible War DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57676 Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:06:23 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

The first on-screen text in Kirby Dick's The Invisible War informs us that all of the film's statistics come from government sources. They are, to put it mildly, shocking. Over 20% of female vets have been sexually assaulted while serving our country. 200,000 assaults and rapes had been reported by 1991--and that was twenty years ago, and that only counts how many were reported. Fifteen percent of incoming Navy recruits entered the service with a previous history of sexual assault or rape; that's twice the rate as among civilian population. It is an environment, Dick contends, that can attract a sexual predator--and that is set up to not only excuse the perpetrator, but to punish the victim. Most of the latter are discharged; most of the former are not. The Department of Defense knows it is a problem, and makes bold statements about "zero tolerance" policies. Bu...Read the entire review

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Moonrise Kingdom (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57651 Sun, 07 Oct 2012 15:12:19 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

There may not be an active filmmaker whose work is so immediately recognizable as Wes Anderson's. You can walk into a room or switch over in the middle of one of his films and place it within seconds: the intricate production design, the symmetrical compositions, and the elegant tracking shots, lovingly panning from room and room and tableaux to tableaux. Some complain about the hyper-controlled aesthetic, the contained style, and say that his films are designed rather than directed, or that he's playing in the same dollhouses over and over again. Some of those people saw his new film Moonrise Kingdom and made that complaint again. You must not listen to them. They are bad people, and they want to keep this movie away from your soul, where it will take residence for ninety minutes and make you flutter.

It is the filmmaker's first period piece, though his picture...Read the entire review

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My Trip to Al-Qaeda DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58201 Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:12:31 UTC Highly Recommended

THE MOVIE:

In 1998, Lawrence Wright co-wrote The Siege, an action-heavy Denzel Washington/Bruce Willis drama that asked a simple question: what would Americans do if terrorists attacked our shores? How would we turn on our own citizens? How negotiable would our personal liberties become? These were all hyptotheticals, of course, and the attention the film received was mostly from Arab groups, who objected to its portrayal of radical Islamic terrorists. That was then; come September 2001, the film Wright co-wrote suddenly seemed eerily prescient. Wright ended up writing the essential book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11; Alex Gibney's terrific documentary My Trip to Al-Qaeda is loosely centered on Wright's subsequent off-Broadway one-man show, which he did to purge himself ...Read the entire review

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58135 Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:08:41 UTC Recommended

The trouble with critiquing the film adaptation of a beloved novel is that, invariably, some wisenheimer has to pipe up and tell you that whatever issue you've taken with the film--a plot point, a characterization, what have you--was present in the book, and was thus absolutely necessary, which you'd know if you've read the book you unread ignoramus, etc. etc. (For whatever it's worth, if I took the time to read the source material before seeing every film adapted from a book, I'd never see any movies.) But a film is not, and should not be, a companion dramatization, performed for the benefit of the reader; it must exist as its own entity, and whatever doesn't translate must go.

This is a very long way of getting around to saying that, for much of its running time, Stepehn C...Read the entire review

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Trouble with the Curve Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58137 Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:08:41 UTC Rent It

Ah, Clint, it's good to have you back. The opening scene of Trouble with the Curve finds the 82-year-old grumbling his way thought a particularly troublesome morning piss, and say what you will about him playing his first scene opposite his uncooperative penis, it's an improvement over an empty chair. Trouble marks Eastwood's first acting appearance since Gran Torino four years ago, and it unsurprisingly finds him in full-on old coot mode. That's a little limiting, but let's face it: nobody does it better, from the glowering to the growling to the looking through narrowed eyes at all the whipper-snappers who don't know a damned thing about a damned thing.

In this case, the primary object of Clint's derision is Phillip Sanderson (Matthew Lillard), who is ...Read the entire review

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How to Survive a Plague Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58136 Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:08:41 UTC Highly Recommended

The opening titles of David France's powerful new documentary How to Survive a Plague set the scene as follows: "Year six of the AIDS epidemic. Greenwich Village, New York. The epicenter." That's just a few words, but they're carefully chosen--they convey information, yes, but also the urgency of the moment. People were dying, by the hundreds, and were being ignored by a government that would not speak the disease's name, much less make a priority of finding a cure. In New York City, a group of activists decided that they weren't having it, and that's how ACT UP was born.

How to Survive a Plague is an effective and evocative hybrid of history and experience, aiming both to parachute the viewer into the middle of the action and to place it in a context. The grou...Read the entire review

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Radio Unnameable Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58127 Wed, 19 Sep 2012 02:54:43 UTC Recommended

Bob Fass speaks to the night people, "the unsung heroes of New York City." His voice is smooth but occasionally halting, stopping to search for words, deciding where he wants to go next. His show is not scripted, or even planned--he's one of the creators of "free-form radio," a stream-of-consciousness broadcasting style that rolls with the punches and lets the listeners take much of the responsibility. He broadcasts to an "invisible community"--he calls them a "cabal"--and has done so on NYC's WBAI radio since 1963. Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson's documentary about Foss takes the name of his show, and applies it to his entire career, and his life (which are basically one and the same): Radio Unnameable.

Fass, a sometimes actor and full-time observer, was a full-th...Read the entire review

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10 Years Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58080 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:26:27 UTC Recommended

As the opening credits roll for Jamie Linden's 10 Years, the cast list unfurled is a little mindboggling: Channing Tatum, Rosario Dawson, Chris Pratt, Justin Long, Ari Graynor, Kate Mara, Anthony Mackie, Max Minghella, Aubrey Plaza, Ron Livingston, Oscar Isaac, Brian Geraghty, on and on. It's a big cast, full of outsized personalities and pre-existing personas, and one that first-time director Linden could lose control of fairly easily. To his credit, he doesn't; 10 Years isn't exactly a groundbreaking piece of work, but it moves crisply, garners light laughs, and juggles its likable characters well.

A kind of Altman in miniature, Linden's screenplay concerns a ten-year high school reunion at which old wounds are reopened, old secrets are told, relationships ar...Read the entire review

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Finding Nemo 3D Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/58081 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:26:27 UTC Highly Recommended

The new 3D conversion that's prompted the re-release of Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo isn't exactly earth-shaking. It nicely immerses the viewer in its undersea world, yes, and spotlights a couple of already eye-catching foreground/background compositions (Dory reading the scuba mask while Marlin is chased behind her; the pair bickering as a whale approaches behind them), but that's about it. All told, there's not much of a reason to see Finding Nemo in 3D. But then again, there's not much of a reason to see any movie in 3D, a technology that mostly serves to throw a couple of more bucks in the pockets of penny-pinching studios while providing moviegoers a gratuitous level of "engagement" whose primary function (for this viewer, anyway) appears to be the expediti...Read the entire review

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Citizen Gangster DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56615 Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:25:59 UTC Recommended

THE MOVIE:

The tale of the good man driven by desperate circumstances into a life of crime is one that's been told almost as often as that of the colorful bank robber who becomes a national folk hero, so a more jaded filmgoer might conclude that you're getting two overdone movies for the price of one with Nathan Morlando's Citizen Gangster. But to dismiss the film based on its logline would be a mistake--Morlando may be telling you a story you've heard, but he tells it as though he doesn't know that. Set under the perpetually overcast skies of post-war Canada, Citizen Gangster is less about the crimes than it is about the criminal, less interested in the thrill of theft than about what's going through the head of the man holding the gun. Morlando may not break any new ground here, but he spins the familiar yarn into something fresh and urgent.

Edwin Boyd (a mustachio...Read the entire review

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For Ellen Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57974 Wed, 05 Sep 2012 01:43:17 UTC Recommended

All right, Paul Dano, I'm coming around on you. If I may be so pretentious as to quote myself, this is an actor who whom I once wrote, "he's doing another of his sensitive, whiny mopes, a schtick that is growing more tiresome with every passing picture." And that's a criticism I stand by, while also acknowledging that he showed himself--in films like Little Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood--to be an actor not without talent. But he's been doing interesting work lately, shedding the repetitive persona and going some new and interesting places in films like Meek's Cutoff, Being Flynn, and Ruby Sparks. Which brings us to So Yong Kim's For Ellen, in which there is no shortage of M...Read the entire review

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Up All Night: Season One DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56930 Sat, 01 Sep 2012 04:04:38 UTC Highly Recommended

THE SERIES:

Early in the run of Up All Night, as my wife and I found ourselves looking ahead with greater anticipation to its new episodes, I was shocked to discover, during a bit of review and blog perusal, that a great many people found its leading characters to be "unlikable." The word kept popping up, in critique after critique, and I finally had to close out the browser windows and take a deep breath. It wasn't that my attachment to the show was so intense that I couldn't digest a bit of criticism. It was that, simply, one of the reasons we liked the show so much was that its protagonists seemed like us--funnier, of course, their retorts and witticisms (and on-camera appearances) given a bit of show-biz sheen, but, y'know, sort of idealized versions of ourselves. And it seemed that all of these people didn't like our spiffed-up, Hollywood avatars. You win some,...Read the entire review

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Boardwalk Empire: The Complete Second Season (Blu-ray) Blu-ray https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56737 Fri, 31 Aug 2012 20:50:20 UTC Recommended

THE SERIES:

Boardwalk Empire's premiere in fall of 2010 was met with a mixture of excitement and impossible expectations: here was a show being squarely positioned by HBO as the heir apparent to The Sopranos--created by Terence Winter, one of that show's writers, who brought along frequent directors Timothy Van Patten and Allen Coulter, and even co-star Dominic Chianese--with the extra coup of having that show's uninvolved but oft-acknowledged inspiring force, Martin Scorsese, on board as an executive producer. With that kind of pedigree, it would seem impossible for the show to live up to its hype--and, after the electrifying, Scorsese-directed pilot, it mostly didn't. But few shows on this earth (including, in some of its middle seasons, The Sopranos itself) could satisfy that kind of feverish anticipation. Season two of Boardwalk Empire finds the show stil...Read the entire review

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30 Rock: Season Six DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57082 Fri, 31 Aug 2012 12:11:24 UTC Highly Recommended

THE SERIES:

In its sixth season, 30 Rock did not seek to break the mold--indeed, it was a season marked less by innovation than returns to previous innovations. Two of the fifth-season highlights were the show's live episode and its reality TV send-up Queen of Jordan; the sixth season gives us, um, another live episode and another episode of Queen of Jordan. It would be easy to make the argument, and many have, that Tina Fey's absurdist sitcom was running on creative fumes in year six, coasting on its established characters and audience goodwill. To which I respond, "Yes. And?"

There are worse things in this world than creating a comic universe, filling it with distinctive characters, and letting them go through their paces. A show like Friends may have, as Chuck Klosterman wrote, "completely transgressed into a...Read the entire review

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Parks and Recreation: Season Four DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56764 Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:47:10 UTC Highly Recommended

THE SERIES:

When Parks and Recreation was originally in development, in the fall of 2008 for its midseason premiere in 2009, it wasn't just dubbed an Office clone because of similarities in style and tone: creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur were explicitly drafted by then-NBC president Ben Silverman to create a spin-off of the network's top comedy. They did not, but because of that expectation, Parks was initially compared unfavorably to its Thursday night companion show, and struggled somewhat in early episodes to find its own comedic voice and identity.

That history is fun to revisit now, as Parks enters its fifth season, because it has so handily surpassed its predecessor in terms of quality and quantity of laughs; as The Office floundered in its first fully Carrel-less season, Parks and Rec had its best year to date, continuing to...Read the entire review

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Lawless Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57848 Tue, 28 Aug 2012 19:41:37 UTC Highly Recommended

Musician-turned-screenwriter Nick Cave and director John Hillcoat last teamed for The Proposition, a brutally effective bit of business set in the Australian outback in the 1880s. That picture had the feel of myths being simultaneously made and undercut, and their latest collaboration, Lawless, has much of the same aim: set in Franklin County, Virginia ("the wettest county in the world") during the Prohibition, it is ripe with gangster-picture iconography. But it melds those images and themes with leftover artifacts of the Western (domestic and Spaghetti) to create a bubbling stew of badassery and violence. It's one of the more entertaining films of the summer.

Cave's script tells the true story of the Bondurant family, three moonshining brothers trying to make...Read the entire review

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Samsara Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57780 Thu, 23 Aug 2012 23:58:31 UTC Highly Recommended

In the opening sequence of Ron Fricke's Samsara, we watch a performance by three young dancers. At the end of their dance, Fricke closes in on one of their faces, and holds the shot, and holds it longer, in a tight close-up. It's a fascinating little moment, a conscious effort to make us, as audience members, hyper-aware of the act of really looking at something. You'll be doing a lot of that at Samsara, which is Fricke and producer Mark Magidson's long-awaited follow-up to their gorgeous 1992 film Baraka. Like its predecessor (and Koyaanisqatsi, for which he was cinematographer), Samsara is not a standard documentary: there are no talking heads, no voice-overs, and no explicitly stated themes. Fricke tells his stories in breathtaking imag...Read the entire review

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Hit and Run Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57755 Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:24:48 UTC Rent It

Dax Shepard and David Palmer's Hit and Run is not a great movie, not by a long shot, but boy is it a hard movie to hate. Tonally, it's a bit of a mess, an uneasy hybrid of '80s action/comedy homage, Tarantino-esque two-handers, and heartfelt relationship stuff--something like a True Romance remake directed by Hal Needham. So it's too busy and too scattered, but honesty must prevail: I laughed often, sometimes heartily. And the film almost solves the increasingly perplexing dilemma of what to do with Kristen Bell.

Last part first, because that's what's most interesting: Bell is an unreasonably bewitching and unquestionably charismatic performer who cannot get into a good movie to save her life. Her three-season performance in the title role of Veronica...Read the entire review

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Kathy Griffin: Pants Off / Tired Hooker DVD Video https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/56000 Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:57:55 UTC Recommended

THE SPECIALS:

At the beginning of her 2011 special Pants Off, Kathy Griffin is introduced by her mother, Maggie, a 91-year-old sparkplug who has become known to her daughter's fans via her box-wine-swilling appearances on Kathy's reality show My Life on the D-List. "Sometimes she gets a little raucous," Maggie warns, with a grin. "Just take it for what it is. It's just Kathy." Those three words--"It's just Kathy"--seem about as succinct an accurate a review as one could formulate for Kathy Griffin: Pants Off/Tired Hooker, which collects two of her Bravo specials from last year on one disc; Griffin has cultivated a specific and defined comedic persona, and it is one that you either enjoy or you don't. There are no surprises here. It's just Kathy.

Much is made of Louis CK's unique stand-up work ethic, by which he turns out a new hour of material (for either his ...Read the entire review

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Robot & Frank Theatrical https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/57669 Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:45:10 UTC Highly Recommended

Frank (Frank Langella) lives in Cold Springs, New York, in "the near future." He lives alone; there is a wife who left some time ago, and two adult children. Madison (Liv Tyler) is a world traveler, always video-calling from some exotic location (a nice touch: even in "the near future," the signal is still choppy and lousy), while Hunter (James Marsden) lives several hours away, but close enough to pop in on the weekends, since his father... well, he doesn't need to be in home or anything, not yet. But he's maybe a little senile, occasionally forgetting things. However, he has not forgotten how to steal--that's what landed him in prison years ago. He shoplifts, but that's more to break up the boredom, which also seems to be the cause of his daily flirtations with the town libraria...Read the entire review

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