The Big Bang
Theory—The Complete Fifth Season
(Warners)
For the fifth season, the
hopeless computer geeks and nerds find themselves dealing with one
subject they can never get a handle on: women, mainly in the form of
next door neighbor Penny (sexy Kelly Cuoco). Despite a limit to the
amount of “clueless genius” sex jokes one can hear in one's life,
the show remains funny thanks to its terrifical batch of performers,
led by Cuoco—one of our best and most underrated comediennes—Johnny
Galecki and Jim Parsons. The hi-def image is crystal clear; extras
include featurettes and a gag reel.
(Warners)
The creators of Fringe
have, in their series' fourth season, gone for broke: characters move
between two separate universes, plots are becoming ever more twisty,
and the characters are threatening to become swallowed up the sci-fi
miasma. But whenever they reach the edge, they pull back and allow
the relationships to overpower the gadgetry, always a good thing. The
Blu-ray image is stellar, of course, while the extras include
interviews, featurettes and a gag reel.
(MPI)
What I assumed would be a
merely dry recreation of the powerful Heineken magnate's kidnapping
in Amsterdam is, in director Maarten Treurneit's hands, a
tautly-scripted, screws-tightened thriller with the twists and turns
of a typical actioner—but far more exciting because it's true.
Rutger Hauer is astonishingly impressive as Heineken, a man whose
harrowing experience might or might not change him permanently. The
hi-def image is excellent; extras include a making-of featurette.
(Acorn)
Monty Python going up
against the Church and its political allies over the 1979 biblical
parody Life of Brian is dramatized in this fitfully funny but
too-clever film by writer Tony Roche and director Owen Harris. The
actors are game, but Python allusions (e.g., men playing women) are
too in-jokey, obscuring the story of what happened and why. Strongly
satiric scenes between the boys and the clueless clowns who wanted
Brian banned alternate with overdone, Rutles-type stuff that
elucidates little. The Blu-ray image is strong; extras are deleted
scenes and outtakes.
(Fox)
The latest indie darling,
Greta Gerwig, stars in this familiar tale of a young woman trying to
make it—both personally and professionally—in the oh-so-difficult
city of New York. Despite humorous visual and verbal touches,
writer-director Daryl Wein and co-writer Zoe Lister-Jones too often
fall into the “cutesy” trap in both dialogue and relationships,
and the result is that their nominal star—Gerwig, who seems a less
interesting Chloe Sevigny—is swallowed up by excessive cleverness.
It's too bad, for Gerwig is a decent actress, if not the goddess
she's been painted as. The Blu-ray image is quite good; extras
include commentary, deleted scenes, gag reel, and featurettes.
(Anchor Bay/Troma)
This seminal low-budget
1980 horror film is some sort of litmus test for the genre's fans,
who may or may not respond to its skin-crawling, slightly despicable
lunacy. Still, there is something bizarrely watchable about the whole
thing, like viewing a snuff film or an especially horrific car
accident. The restored image is grainy, often sharp but occasionally
soft; extras are several featurettes and director Charles Kaufman's
enjoyable commentary.
Yellowstone and the Great Smoky Mountains
(Mill Creek)
These discs give
excellent overviews of two of our country's national parks:
Yellowstone, which became the first national park in 1872, and Great
Smoky Mountains, which joined the club in 1934. Stunning vistas, vast
amounts of wildlife, flora and fauna and natural wonders like Old
Faithful are shown in all their spectacular beauty in
high-definition; both programs also gives brief histories of each
park. Best about these discs is their low price point: less than
$10, pretty much a steal these days.
(Universal)
An ungodly hybrid of
several strands of fairy tales (for gals, I guess) and action
adventures (for their guys, I guess), Huntsman ends up in
cinematic no-man's land. The antics of the paranoid queen (an icy
Charlize Theron) bleed into the other subplots so dominantly that
they make Snow White herself (a rather pale Kristen Stewart) a
subordinate charcater in her own movie. Director Rupert Sanders'
balancing act, doesn't serve up much much narrative or dramatic
interest. The Blu-ray image is very impressive but it's the extensive
make-up and special effects that come off better than the performers;
extras include several making-of featurettes and an audio commentary.
(Anchor Bay)
In this unoriginal
mish-mash of Rudy, Hoosiers, Heaven Can Wait and Back
to the Future, a middle-aged loser living in the small town he
grew up in has a second chance when he fails to commit suicide: he's
returned to high school, where he gets to replay the big game as star
QB: will he hurt himself again and ruin the rest of his life? It's
much inspirational ado about not much, with a script filled with
cardboard characterizations. The acting is a mixed bag: Kurt Russell
is fine as the coach, Melanie Lynskey is wonderful as the hero's
wife, but Brian Presley is too stiff as the time traveler. The hi-def
image is fine; extras include a commentary and making-of featurette.
(Warners)
In the third season of
this mash-up of True Blood, Twilight, Interview with a Vampire
and probably some other movie/TV show/novel I'm missing, the area
around Mystic Falls, Virginia runs red with blood and becomes ground
zero for a vampire hunter extravaganza as the charismatic creatures
go up against their mortal—or immortal—adversaries. Although it's
as risible as it sounds, but the performers are so darned cute—led
by Paul Wesley, Joseph Morgan and Jennifer Love Hewitt lookalike Nina
Dobrev—that its target audience of teens will keep watching to see
these pretty people sucking blood, among other things. The Blu-ray
image is excellent; extras include featurettes, deleted scenes and a
gag reel.
(Sony)
Writer-director-star
Nadine Labaki's disarming, sometime musical fantasy about women in a
Lebanese town who try to end a disagreement between local Christian
and Muslim men that threatens to explode into something deadly.
Daringly, triple threat Labaki takes a sensitive subject and distills
it to its simple, even charming essence: if the movie doesn't break
down religious barriers—what could?—it shows that common ground
might eliminate antagonism in this volatile region. The Blu-ray image
is very good; extras include commentary by and interview with Labaki
and her composer, and featurettes.
Hospitalite
(Film Movement)
What begins as a low-key
family drama morphs into an absurdist comedy as a friendly business
owner allows a man associated with his mentor to live with his
family: soon, the interloper brings his Brazilian wife and her
“family” of dozens. Director Koji Fukada actually makes everyone
plausibly human, so when the odd behaviors start escalating, it's
believable and slyly funny. The sequences of “relatives” helping
out in the shop are priceless. The lone extra is Will McCord's short
Miyuki.
(PBS)
Although John Leguizamo
has starred in dozen of movies, he's most at home onstage performing
hilarious one-man shows about his life and career, most recently
Broadway's Ghetto Klown. This hour-long documentary shows
Leguizamo preparing that show, and includes interviews with its
director, Fisher Stevens, friends like Rosie Perez, his wife and, of
course, the man himself, who is as witty and cutting offstage as he
is on. Extras include additional scenes.
(Hear Music)
Paul Simon's 90-minute
concert at Manhattan's Webster Hall on June 6, 2011 (why does it take
so long to release live recordings?) is preserved on this DVD/CD set
that showcases the 70-year-old singer-songwriter's top-notch band
playing 20 tunes from all phases of his career, from Simon and
Garfunkel (“The Sound of Silence,” “The Only Living Boy in New
York”) to solo hits like “Mother and Child Reunion” and “Late
in the Evening.” True fans will appreciate exemplary versions of
deep cuts like “The Obvious Child” and “Hearts and Bones,”
and, of course, Graceland is represented more than the other
records, save the new one.
(Eagle Vision)
This is a re-release of
the DVD sets that came out several years ago: 33 videos, from
“Killer Queen” to “The Miracle,” spanning 15 years of the
most original, creative and hilarious work done by any musicians
before, during and after the MTV era. Although restoring the videos
to widescreen is problematic—surely most were not shot in 16:9—the
superb 5.1 surround sound mix and guitarist Brian May and drummer
Roger Taylor's informative commentaries compensate. The only quibble:
where are the Innuendo and Made in Heaven videos? They
should be on this reissue.
(Warners)
A sitcom created by
tart-tongued Whitney Cummings and Sex and the City alum
Michael Patrick King would obviously be smart-ass and a little
smutty: exactly what Two Broke Girls is. A bimbo blonde and
witty brunette move in together in Brooklyn to make ends meet while
waitressing at a local dive, and the double entrendres, innuendos
and words not often heard at 8 PM on network TV (“vagina”) fly
fast and furiously. The silliness is worth watching for Cummings'
sharp banter and how Beth Behrs and Kat Dannings make it sound
utterly natural. Extras include interviews, deleted scenes and a gag
reel.
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