Welcome back! Well, to some of you, anyway. To the rest of you, glad you decided to stop by and I hope that this humble column helps you navigate the stacks of new releases each week. My goal is to point you toward titles of interest and warn you away from those films that seek to do nothing but leech away your time and give you nothing in return.
This week brings with it a selection that includes good titles, bad titles, and everything in between. Rest assured that there will be something that you will want added to your queue; whether it be Oscar winners or those that are as far from Oscar material as you can get, there will be something. There was even a race for the top spot. Two releases made a charge for that honor, and I, obviously, chose the more prestigious of the two (as if it needs any more help).
There Will Be Blood. Winner of multiple Academy Awards, including Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis, this film is destined to be a classic. It is a fascinating character study that is as engrossing as anything you're likely to see, and it does this while remaining emotionally distant. At no point did I feel truly emotionally involved. Still, this is a film made by a creative team that is on their A game. Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Upton Sinclair's novel in an unexpected direction, and thus has given us something to watch multiple times to discover all of the nuance, all of the details and motivations within. In short, this is a movie that is not to be missed. The film is being released in a two-disk special edition as well as a single-disk release.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Going completely to the other end of the spectrum is this Judd Apatow-scripted, Jake Kasdan-directed spoof. It is one of the better spoofs to arrive in some time, and it deserved better than what it did at the box office. It sets its sights on the biopic genre, specifically Walk the Line. It successfully skewers the clichés while still making a compelling film. This is in no small part due to John C. Reilly's performance — he nails the title role. The movie is being released in a single-disk edition as well as a two-disk unrated set, which is 30 minutes longer than the theatrical version contained on the single-disk release.
Article comments
1 - Jeffrey
What a week of crap on DVD this week.
There Will Be Blood was thin fodder for the pseudo-intelligentsia, and by year's end won't be remembered at all.
Walk Hard was about as funny as "Walk The Line", and as exciting as dirt.
Lions For Lambs - couldn't say it any better.
The 11th Hour is a dumbed down retread of An Inconvenient Truth.
Munchausen is Gilliam's worst film.
It's almost enough to voluntarily make me choose to watch P2. Or a test pattern, with some random engineers commentary track.