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Movie DVD Reviews

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Staff Pick

Batman Begins

"Batman Begins" is a visual rollercoaster that begins and ends with its production design. If you were a fan of Burton’s gothic environment, or Joel Schumacher’s vibrant neon world, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the simple, yet incredibly detailed Gotham City. Complementing the film’s harsh atmosphere is a fantastic A-list cast born for their respective roles. (Staff Picks Archive)

DVD QuickTakes

QuickTakes Archive / QuickTakes Archive (pre-May 2008)

The Last Winter

Much like M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Happening,” “The Last Winter” is an eco-thriller that tries so hard to deliver its Big Message that it forgets all about being scary. Set in Northern Alaska where oil pumps beneath the ground like blood in veins, the film stars Ron Perlman as Ed Pollack, the leader of a small team of oil scouts who have just discovered that not all is right with the frozen tundra. The group’s resident scientist (James Le Gros) warns Pollack that the permafrost is melting (thus making it impossible for the oil rigs to be delivered by truck), but before he can do anything about it, his fellow team members are slowly driven crazy and then killed by some unseen evil. Ridiculous on so many levels, “The Last Winter” is indeed terrifying, but not like you might think. The performances are wooden, while the long stretches of silence (supposedly meant to add to the suspense) just make it that much easier to fall asleep. Of course, when the audience is finally shown the evil that’s causing all of this, you simply won’t believe your eyes. I’m not one for spoilers, but the nature spirit that’s punishing these people for simply doing their jobs looks like Harry Potter’s Patronus. No joke. It’s literally a blue, CGI spirit in the shape of a moose, and while I applaud writer/director Larry Fesseden for attempting to comment on the world’s ecological troubles by way of a horror film, he’s better off just leaving that sort of stuff to people like Al Gore.

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Jason Zingale
7/22/2008
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Meet Bill

When you see as many movies as I do, it’s easy to understand why some films are released in theaters, while others are relegated to DVD, but I must admit that “Meet Bill” – which left the film festival circuit without a major studio’s backing – threw me for a loop. The movie has everything that makes an independent film marketable these days, and more importantly, it’s actually good. Aaron Eckhart stars as Bill, a successful businessman who hates his job has a wife (Elizabeth Banks) who is cheating on him with the local news anchor (Timothy Olyphant). When he’s forced into participating in a mentorship program with his former preparatory school, Bill is matched up with a smug teenager (Logan Lerman) who ends up mentoring him on how to turn around his life. Though the story goes south midway through the film, the performances help to keep it afloat – namely Eckhart, whose nuanced portrayal of the title character is alone worth seeing the film. Additionally, Jessica Alba’s role as a sexy lingerie saleswoman may seem completely pointless (in fact, her introduction marks the beginning of the story’s downfall), but it’s some of the actresses best work to date. Supporting turns by Kristen Wiig and Craig Bierko are also enjoyable, as is the dark comedy peppered throughout the script. “Meet Bill” may have been considered a failure by some, but one could only hope that all direct-to-DVD releases were as good as this.

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Jason Zingale
7/20/2008
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Icons of Adventure

Starting in the late fifties and on through the seventies, England’s low budget Hammer film studios became known for a series of profitable reboots of classic gothic horror franchises, but the busy film studio actually produced all kinds of movies. This two-disc set gives us a mixed-bag of thrillers bringing the mean, lean, and graphic (by early sixties standards) Hammer touch to pulpy adventure yarns as well as featuring the considerable acting skills of go-to bad guy/monster man Christopher Lee as the chief villain of three of the four pictures.

The set gets off to an unfortunate start with “The Pirates of Blood River” — an insufferable bore thanks to some plodding pacing and an insipid performance by leading man Kerwin Matthews — Lee’s bad guy pirate, no Jack Sparrow, can only do so much. Fortunately, there’s more of Lee, actual ships, swordfights, and all-around piratical fun in “The Devil Ship Pirates.” The second disc brings us a pair of politically and ethnically suspect flicks set in English colonies. “The Terror of the Tongs” is a casting nightmare from the point of view of ethnic sensitivity, with innumerable Hong Kong Chinese characters played by English, French and, in one shocking instance, an actual Chinese actor. (Burt Kwouk – Kato from the original “Pink Panther” films — who, naturally, is killed five minutes into the movie). Still, it’s a surprisingly nasty and perversely entertaining film with some amazing low-budget production values and another strong bad guy performance from Christopher Lee (no relation to Bruce), speaking perfect English in a sort of practice run for his later performances as super-unPC villain Fu Manchu.

If “Terror” is the set’s Harold, “The Stranglers of Bombay” is it’s Anglocentric Kumar. It’s an fitfully entertaining, occasionally creepy tale of a stalwart British officer (Guy Rolfe) fighting Indian thuggees – those fanatical, kill-crazy bad guys who tried to overrun British India in “Gunga Din,” tried to off Harrison Ford and friends in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and who, led by Leo “Rumpole of the Bailey” McKern (!), viciously tried to take Ringo’s as well as his ring finger in “Help!”

With four commentaries – three of them featuring Hammer standby screenwriter Jimmy Sangster — this is a must for those obsessed with the famed studio’s history, but definitely optional for others. (Only one commentary, “Terror of the Tongs” is all that engaging, even by film geek standards.) Still, there are worse ways to while away a series of weekend afternoon. For all their flaws, these movies are far more noble time-wasters than most of today’s multiplex potboilers.

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Bob Westal
7/18/2008
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