Back in the Saddle

So I've returned to my post at DVD Verdict, offering detailed DVD and Blu-Ray reviews for your reading pleasure.  Posted yesterday was my take on American Gangster, while in the coming weeks you can look forward to reviews of The Perfect Holiday, This Christmas, and the documentary Family Name.  Hope you enjoy.

There's always an escape - Movie Review: Redbelt

David Mamet - he of dialogue in iambic pentameter and double crosses so slick they could lubricate your kneecap - approaches the traditional fight film in a non-traditional way with Redbelt.  Protagonist Mike Terry is a martial arts master for whom honour and respect are paramount, but when he gets mixed up with an aging movie star and a bi-polar lawyer, he finds that the messy state of the world is the ultimate test of that honour.

The brilliance in this film is that it follows all of the traditional tropes of the fight film - specifically the reluctant fighter ultimately choosing to battle the antagonist for the prize  - yet in a completely original manner.  Without giving too much away, Terry has no intention of fighting for anything but self defense, yet he inadvertently gets drawn into training for and executing the battle anyway, winning a prize he didn't even know he was after.

Acting is great across the board, and Robert Elswit's cinematography, as per usual, is sumptuous (see  Michael Clayton and There Will Be Blood, two films he shot last year, for more proof).  This is a thinking man's fight picture, totally engrossing and unencumbered by Hollywood gloss.  

"I was born under unusual circumstances"

Here is the link to the film I am most looking forward to this fall, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, featuring Brad Pitt as a man aging backward from elderly to newborn.

Director David Fincher is a visionary filmmaker, always pushing the boundaries of whatever genre in which he finds himself working, using bleeding-edge technology and perfectionist focus to make cinematic miracles happen.  After being fired by the studio on Alien 3, Fincher made the definitive serial killer film with Se7EN, a movie whose popularity seems to continue to secure him financing for projects that don't seem quite commercial enough to warrant the budgets he manages to get.  The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and last year's masterpiece Zodiac (my favorite film of 2007) were artistic triumphs but didn't quite connect during their theatrical run (although DVD has likely pushed all well into profitability).

Benjamin Button looks to be a turning point for Fincher, a film that's all heart (at least judging by the trailer), still using amazing visual effects but to move forward an unconventional epic love story rather than a comment on the human condition.  The wife finds Fincher's films technically enjoyable but lacking in warmth, so I hope this'll be the one that changes her mind.

If you can, watch the trailer in HD - it's well worth the wait for the download.

Doomed

Writer/director Neil Marshall, who was noticed by genre fans in 2002 with Dog Soldiers, really cemented himself as a talent to watch with the taut, almost unbearably tense horror/suspense film The Descent, easily one of the most frightening and original horror flicks I've seen.

So I was looking forward to his follow-up, and even though the trailers were less than stellar, I expected to wholeheartedly enjoy Doomsday.

Unfortunately, the movie's a bit of a mess.

Doomsday wears its influences on its sleeve: its storyline is not only inspired by John Carpenter's classic Escape From New York, but marshall fashions the rudimentary computer graphics in the prologue and the font in the titles directly after that picture.  Other movies directly cribbed from include The Road Warrior, Aliens, and The Warriors.  Which is fine - one of my favorite flicks of recent years, the brilliant Hot Fuzz, make an art out of recycling elements from popular action movies.  But where Marshall stumbles with Doomsday is tone.  

At first, we think this is going to be a fun ride, with the heroine plucking out her fake eye to peer around corners, and mustache-twirling villains plotting the way they can destroy British and Scottish citizens.  Then a character gets cooked and eaten, and suddenly things aren't so much fun anymore.  

The movie struggles to erase the mean-spiritedness of this sequence with subsequent explosions, gunfire, and chase scenes, not to mention a bizarre trip to a feudal castle with everyone dressed in armor (absolutely the most original turn of events in the film), but despite some good action and copious amounts of in-your-face gore, overall Doomsday makes me wonder if The Descent's greatness was a fluke.  Time will tell, I suppose.

Go big or go home.

Further to my note about the sheer awesomeness of The Dark Knight in IMAX, check out this fascinating interview with editor Lee Smith for the Editors' Guild.  Some is a little/a lot technical for the uninitiated, but it provides lots of great info on how the movie incorporated both IMAX 70mm film, VistaVision footage (VistaVision is a format that runs the film horizontally, like IMAX, but uwith a smaller camera, giving a higher resolution image with less grain than standard anamorphic or Super 35 shooting techniques.  It was used for entire films for a time, including White Christmas and Vertigo, but now is only pulled out every once in a while for special effects shots, as the lack of grain makes up for the multiple generations used to composite effects), and standard 35.

Especially interesting, to me anyway, is Smith's remark that the switching aspect ratios in the IMAX version were jarring on the first test, until they projected it on a big screen, when it became apparent that it would often be noticed only subconsciously as viewers would be looking at the middle of the screen.  That was my experience, and I was actively paying attention to the aspect ratios to see when it changed - a few times I missed the change.

The Blu-Ray version will reportedly contain this aspect-shifting version. 

"The French don't have a word for entrepreneur."

The latest trailer for Oliver Stone's upcoming George W. Bush biopic W. is now available here, both streaming or downloadable for HD goodness.

I am all kinds of excited about this flick - as a big Oliver Stone fan, it's great to see him return to the political arena where he's done his best work (Nixon and JFK are both astonishing pieces of work), and the casting looks pitch perfect.  Instead of an indictment, this looks to be a story of a man over his head, receiving some very poor advice and acting on it, which by some accounts is exactly the situation in which Dubya found himself.  I'm a little disappointed that Stone didn't write the screenplay himself, as his relentless research and labyrinthine plotting are a perfect fit for this type of material (I've got his annotated screenplay for Nixon, and swear it's got to be close to 1000 pages, with copies of watergate documents, transcripts of interviews, and footnotes for every second line of dialogue).  Nonetheless, this is high on a crowded 'must see' list for this fall.

Ruined

Have you seen The Ruins?  Never has foliage been so frightening.  Seriously.