I’ll give it to you straight: the only new DVD this week you’ve heard of is Hyde Park On Hudson, the movie in which Bill Murray plays Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but that doesn’t mean the other DVDs all suck; it just means you haven’t heard of them yet. Also, they pretty much all suck. But some of them don’t. Maybe. Good or bad, each and every DVD this week stars at least someone you’ve heard of, assuming you watch the right TV shows and/or listen to Christian contemporary music. Besides Bill Murray as history’s greatest cripple (suck it, Stephen Hawking), we’ve got films starring James Gandolfini, Jet Li, Judd Nelson, William Hurt, Michael Madsen, Eric Roberts, Eric Roberts (he’s in two movies this week) and everyone’s favorite Greens, Eva and Seth. (Suck it, Brian Austin.)
The DVDs:
Hyde Park On Hudson
Down The Shore
Womb
Sexy Evil Genius
The Sorcerer And The White Snake
Bad Kids Go To Hell
The Kitchen
Late Bloomers
Luster
Crush
Infected
Shadow Witness
Ring The Bell
The Kill Hole
Paranormal Movie
Worth: The Testimony Of Johnny St. James
Streaming: Check out your choices here.
Think you know what a kill hole is? The only way to be sure is to continue reading. Wondering who the sexy evil genius is? You might find out if you continue reading. Did you just finish streaming Fire With Fire on Netflix Instant and are eager for more suggestions? Just click the link above, but if you do you’ll never know which film will cause you to seriously consider the definition of incest.
Hyde Park On Hudson
Like most people, when I hear Bill Murray’s starring in a new movie, I get excited. Who doesn’t like Bill Murray? Even when that movie is a true-story biopic about the time FDR and that stuttering king from The King’s Speech met and ate some hot dogs, I still get excited because, hey, it’s Bill Murray as FDR. That’s gotta be good for a few laughs. Then the trailer came out, and the movie looked so very boring. Sure there’s more to it than world leaders and hot dogs; there’s FDR’s affair with his cousin –which to be fair, is the real central story of the film, but that didn’t change the fact that it looked like a deleted subplot from the aforementioned –and terrible- The King’s Speech. Oh well. I figured I’ll probably still end up seeing it when Murray got Oscar-nominated. The critics, who can’t wait to praise these types of films, predicted him as an early Best Actor favorite before filming even began, and boring or not, I knew I’d check out any movie with a Bill Murray Oscar-nominated performance in it. But then, as it turns out, he wasn’t nominated, and even more surprising, the critics hated the film, giving it a dismal 38% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So now, I seriously doubt I will ever see this movie, which is a shame because, you know, Bill Murray. In conclusion, I know I must be maturing in my tastes because not even the promise of seeing Bill Murray –as FDR- get a hand-job is enough to entice me, and I say that as a guy who convinced his wife to do a google image search for ‘spicy dildo’ just a few days ago.
As I warned on the previous page, we’re only on the second DVD of the week, and we’re already into the ‘actors you’ve heard of starring in movies you haven’t’ phase of the process. Hopefully we’ll find some gems. As for this film in particular, I just don’t know. It stars James Gandolfini and Famke Janssen and is about three childhood friends whose lives begin to unravel when a secret from their past is revealed. At least that’s what IMDb says. Amazon goes into a little more detail, saying that Gandolfini owns a rundown amusement park and that his life gets turned upside down with the arrival of a Frenchman claiming to be the widower of his dead sister. Normally the trailer would fill in some of these blanks but for some reason YouTube lacks –as far as I can tell- a proper trailer for this film. The film’s distributor, Starz/Anchor Bay, uploaded a trailer (first video below), but all it really is is two minute-long clips from the movie, and it’s worth pointing out that the second clip features a classic Hollywood retard (handsome, wise, and lovable, but with a child’s voice and a penchant for ill-timed harmonica playing), but it doesn’t actually ever go into what the movie’s about. Luckily, I found a real and proper trailer (second video below) but the dialogue is almost completely inaudible. There’s a third video (figure out which one it is, numb-nuts)which just seems to be 3 minutes and 44 seconds of clips featuring the Frenchman, and there’s really no reason to watch it unless you want to skip to 1:25 and watch the Hollywood retard face-plant his perfectly chiseled good looks while playing soccer on the beach. So to recap: What’s it about? I don’t know. Is it any good? I doubt it. The only solid info I could get is that this film is the directorial debut of Harold Guskin, a man whose filmmaking career is almost entirely comprised of jobs serving as Jet Li’s acting/dialogue coach. Again, all we know for sure is that James Gandolfini and a Hollywood retard star in a film from Jet Li’s acting coach. Quality aside, if you’re not sold on seeking this flick out, I don’t know what else there is to say.
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Womb
Now here’s a movie that everyone will enjoy! Womb stars Eva Green and Doctor Who’s Matt Smith as two childhood friends who meet again as adults and become lovers. Soon after, Smith dies and Green’s character does the only thing she can: she gets his DNA from his parents and clones him. In particular, she carries the cloned fetus herself and subsequently gives birth to and raises the clone of her former lover, with the end goal of grooming this newly created being as her future lover. Think about that –this kid’s very existence, his only reason for being, is to grow up to be Eva Green’s sexual plaything. After squeezing him out of her gaping vagina, breast-feeding him, changing his diapers, and raising him through-out his entire childhood, the whole time she’s looking forward to his dick getting back inside of her. And if you think she waits for him to be an adult, well sir, the trailer strongly indicates otherwise. In fact, it looks like she doesn’t even wait for adolescence and puberty before she starts putting the moves on her boyfriend-son. I mean, sure it’s creepy, but it makes sense. By the time he’s full-grown she’ll be significantly older and therefore unattractive. If she were smart, she’d have cloned and carried a baby version of herself just a few years after her delivery of him, and groomed them to be perfect sexual partners to one another, and I’ve just found a way to personally come off as even creepier than a movie about a woman giving birth to a baby just so she could f*ck it. Oh well. I am what I am, and all that. It’s not as if I didn’t see this day coming.
Michelle Trachtenberg, Katee Sackhoff, Seth Green, Anthony Michael Hall, Harold Perrineau, and William Baldwin star in this film about a sexy evil genius and her four former lovers. More so than caring about anything having to do with the actual movie, I’m just horrified and intrigued by the knowledge that someone out there thinks the best way to sell their straight-to-DVD movie is by putting Seth Green’s face front and center above the words ‘Sexy Evil Genius’.
The Sorcerer And The White Snake
Jet Li (working without famed acting/dialogue coach Harold Guskin) stars in this Chinese martial arts/fantasy film based on an ancient Chinese legend. The legend –according to the movie, which I recently saw- is basically about a young physician falling in love with a woman who he doesn’t realize is actually a snake-demon. The happy couple cross paths with a demon-slaying monk (Jet Li) who can’t abide their relationship because he’s racist against demons or something. People get attacked, herbs are stolen, dudes get possessed, animals talk, and it all leads up to massive destruction as the monk does battle with the giant snake demon and her giant snake demon sister (who is herself falling in love with the monk’s former apprentice, who has turned into a bat-demon. Trust me; it doesn’t make any more sense if you’ve seen the movie). As someone who has seen almost no fantasy Asian cinema beyond Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (if that even counts) I can tell you the whole thing was very weird in a ‘I understand what’s going on, but I don’t understand why’ kind of way. For example, the movie starts out with Li and his apprentice battling some witch. They capture her (spoiler alert) and the movie really makes it seem like she’s going to play back into the plot, but she doesn’t. The film just cuts to the two snake sisters flying through the air, landing on a grassy knoll, sexily nuzzling each other and nobody ever mentions the witch again. I don’t know, maybe that’s how the legend goes and a Chinese person would be just as confused by Paul Bunyan or another American story like that. At any rate, the foreignness of this foreign film really made me feel isolated, like I was out of sync with the world the film had created. Here I go again on my own. Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known, like a drifter I was born to walk alone, and I’ve made up my mind; I ain’t wasting no more time.
Now most days I’m all for a horror-comedy homage to The Breakfast Club. Who wouldn’t be? Plus, they cast Judd Nelson as the principal, and that’s just genius, but when you have him calling a student ‘ret*rded’ in the trailer, that’s just not cool. Resorting to such an ugly, base word for a cheap attempt at shock humor is not just offensive, it’s lazy.
Donna from That ‘70s Show is turning 30, the non-bitch from Don’t Trust The B—- In Apartment 23 is her sister, and this entire film takes place in a kitchen. Ugh, I hate when movies think they have to sell themselves based on a gimmick. They already had our full interest with the ‘Including music by Grammy winning band FUN.’ blurb on the box cover. Let’s not over-do it.
Isabella Rossellini and William Hurt play Mary and Adam, a married couple who are surprised to realize that that they are old (nearing 60 years of age, according to the synopsis). Mary embraces this new chapter of life, while Adam resists, and the difference drives a wedge into their once rock-solid relationship. She does a lot of aqua-aerobics, and he makes a lot of faces that seem to indicate he’s vaguely disgusted by what he’s seeing. At least that’s what I get from the trailer; I’ll probably never watch the movie. It’s obviously targeted at those who can identify with the characters’ experiences, and as a virile and vibrant man of only 31 years, I simply can’t. Turning 60 might as well be 100 years away for me. Not because I feel so young, but because I’m terrible with basic arithmetic.
Kristen Stewart’s dad from the Twilight movies and Chibs from Sons Of Anarchy are the only faces on the box cover, despite neither of them playing the lead character -the titular Thomas Luster- and that should be your first warning sign about this film. They’re barely in the trailer, too. There’s a shot of Twilight dad wielding a shotgun, and you get a quick peek of Chibs brandishing a knife, but that’s about it. The rest of the trailer is devoted to the plot, and it’s amazing: Somebody has been out to ruin Thomas Luster’s life, and that someone is his own alter ego. For real. This movie’s plot is actually and truly one of the top five clichéd, hackneyed plots that are over-used to the point of literally being jokes. The others being of course ‘magical body swap’, ‘mistaken identity rom-com’, ‘the family pet is talking to me’, and ‘holocaust sex-romp’.
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Crush
Speaking of tired, over-used plots, Crush is a film about Scott. He’s so talented, good-looking, and popular -is it any wonder that he has a secret admirer? Of course things turn ugly when the secret admirer’s innocent crush turns into a more deadly obsession with Scott. So, yeah, it’s one of those movies, although to be fair, the synopsis states that the movie is more of a mystery, because three people have crushes on Scott, but only one is the crazy stalker. It’s like I always say: it sure is tough being so hot and popular! The three crushes are played by an all-star cast of hot young talents –assuming you watch and enjoy the shows these three young actors appear in. First there’s Sarah Bolger, who plays Princess Aurora on Once Upon A Time, next is Crystal Reed, of Teen Wolf fame, and lastly there’s the dude who plays Dylan on Modern Family. (Scott , by the way, is played by Lucas Till, who’s biggest role so far is as Havok in X-Men: First Class.) So, who’s the stalker going to be? Well, I’ve watched the trailer, and it’s the girl from Teen Wolf. The trailer’s not even subtle about it. It doesn’t even imply that there is a mystery or that the other two characters even have crushes on Scott. So what’s type of movie is this? Is it a who-done-it (again, the girl from Teen Wolf done it) or is it just a straight up crazy-infatuation stalker movie, and if it is just that, why would the synopsis writer make up some bullsh*t about it being a mystery involving three separate crushes? They can’t both be telling the truth, can they? Well, I did some digging (I really need to examine some of my life choices) and it turns out that both the synopsis and the trailer are full of sh*t : it’s none of the three listed above, it’s a fourth character named Andie, played by the chick who was the main kid’s dead mom in Super 8. I’m sure you’re all glad I’ve cleared that up. Oh, and spoiler alert.
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Infected
This week’s obligatory low-budget zombie flick stars Michael Madsen and the daughter from that Even Stevens show that gave us Shia LaBeouf. Feel free to watch the trailer below. I’m also including a pitch trailer (second video) created by Glenn Ciano, Infected’s writer/director, for a potential film called Under My Skin. It’s about a black guy who was raised to believe he was Italian. Yes, of course it features shameless black-face. What’s really surprising is that the pitch worked, and a real movie was made based on that pitch: Homie Spumoni, starring Donald Faison, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Whoopi Goldberg, Paul Mooney, and of course, Joey Fatone. I didn’t find an embeddable trailer (although you can watch one via the link above), but I did find an embeddable clip from the film (third video). If you woke up today hoping to see Turk from Scrubs jizz in his pants, today is your lucky day. If you didn’t, watch it anyways. A lack of anticipation of Turk-jizz is no reason to not enjoy Turk-jizz, I always say.
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Believe it or not my friends: of the two Kevin Sorbo flicks hitting DVD today, this is the better looking film.
Ring The Bell is this week’s Dove Foudation-approved flick and it’s your standard ‘big city hot shot gets stuck in a small town and learns to love Jesus’ tale. So Cars with Jesus, or Doc Hollywood with Jesus, or any number of other movies with this plot, but you know, with Jesus. Also with Christian contemporary superstar Steven Curtis Chapman as ‘Pastor’ –just to list the obligatory celebrity I promised for each film. What’s truly remarkable is that the Dove review (5 Doves out of 5) offers only the following content warnings: “SEX: None. LANGUAGE: None. VIOLENCE: None. DRUGS: None. NUDITY: None. OTHER: None.” What?!? Far be it from me to accuse one of God’s own chosen Dove reviewers of doing her job lazily, but are we really to believe that this movie has absolutely no objectionable content? Even the MPAA has given it a PG rating for ‘mild thematic elements’. Think about that: it’s not even a G rating, for general audiences, but rather PG, because Parental Guidance is suggested. Surely somebody does something objectionable in this film, like mention hockey, which is just too close to saying ‘H-E-Double Hockey Sticks’. Or maybe the swell of a woman’s breasts are visible under her turtle-neck sweater and sensible blazer. What about the old standby: a child disobeys his parents (but eventually repents)? There’s got to be something we can condemn. I mean, even if we assume the town’s completely devoid of minorities and working women, there’s got to be something.
The guy who plays Jackie Robinson in that new movie, 42, stars in this flick with Billy Zane. It’s about an Iraq War vet who comes back stateside only to find out that while he was gone his girlfriend had so much indiscriminate sex, and as a result, she got so many abortions that even her vagina got a nickname: The Kill Hole. Not really, but that would’ve made for a more interesting movie than this one. Plus it could totally star your mom.
Yes, god f*cking damn it, this is another horror-movie spoof comedy, but this one has got to be the worst of them. Lord almighty, Christ in heaven, I hope this is the worst of them. It isn’t just the obvious attempts at ‘humor’, like having random out-dated pop culture references serve as ‘jokes’ (“It’s okay, it’s just Snooki.”), or the lazy character names (Dr. Luni, Jack Goff, Jew #1), it’s that they are literally stealing the trailer ‘jokes’ from the last film of this ilk, 30 Nights Of Paranormal Activity With The Devil Inside the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Just like the trailer for that ‘film’ this trailer delightfully jests, “From the Director who watched…” etc. IT’S SO FUNNY BECAUSE YOU EXPECT THEM TO SAY ‘FROM THE DIRECTOR WHO MADE’ BUT HE DIDN’T MAKE SH*T, HE JUST WATCHED IT. JUST LIKE THE JOKE FROM THE TRAILER FOR 30 NIGHTS OF PARANORMAL ACTIVITY WITH THE DEVIL INSIDE THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. DURR HURR HURR. Mother f*cker. You don’t even know the worst part yet. That director who watched some other movie? it’s Kevin Farley, who also stars. As in, Chris Farley’s brother. The Jim Belushi to Chris’s John Belushi. It’s not that I think Kevin Farley should be making better films, it’s that it enrages me that he does anything at all. His entire career is based on nostalgia for his dead brother, and let’s be honest, Chris Farley wasn’t that great; he just died young so people give him a pass. Tommy Boy was the only film in which he starred that was any good. If he had lived longer we would’ve had more films like Almost Heroes and Beverly Hills Ninja, and they are terrible, terrible movies. That being said, they are better than this crap. At least people tried with those films. This is a lazy rip-off of a rip-off of a rip-off, of a spoof of a rip-off of a rip-off from a different genre. If you hadn’t guessed, this is the other movie co-starring Kevin Sorbo hitting DVD this week. It also co-stars Eric Roberts as gay Dr. Lipschitz. Fuuuuuuuuuuuu*uuuuuuuuuuck.
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Worth: The Testimony Of Johnny St. James
Speaking of Eric Roberts, he co-stars (with Corey Feldman) in this Dove-approved Christian flick about a former Seminarian who lost his faith when his wife was killed by a drunk driver. 10 years later, he confronts the…f*ck it, we’ve already done our Dove due-diligence this week, let’s talk about the real issue here: Oscar-nominee Eric Roberts. If I had to guess, his name has been typed more often in these DVD features than any other actor’s name. The guy just doesn’t say no to a role. He has 43 acting gigs either completed or in post-production for 2013 alone, and it is only April 9th. That doesn’t even include the movies which -for some reason- haven’t been added to his IMDb yet including this very one, Worth: The Testimony Of Johnny St. James. (By comparison, his sister Julia only has 50 acting credits total.) What is doubly fascinating is that -despite Roberts only having a supporting role- he is front and center on the box cover, because he is the most famous and therefore presumably marketable, actor in the film. Now we’ve seen this plenty of times before (most recently with this week’s Luster), but does it really make sense to do it with Eric Roberts? He does so many movies, and most of them are so jaw-droppingly crappy, can his name or face really sell a film anymore? Who sees his leathery mug on the box and says ‘Ohh, Eric Roberts! I wasn’t interested before, but now I am!”? I mean, besides me, of course.
It’s been a few weeks since I last dredged up the latest and greatest Netflix Instant offerings, so the list is a hefty one. There’s Sushi Girl, Fat Kid Rules The World, Tai Chi Zero, Hold Your Breath, Vampire Dog, Bachelorette, Holy Motors, Citadel, In Our Nature, A Dark Truth, Dinotasia, Bully, Americano, This Must Be The Place, The Awakening, 28 Hotel Rooms, Woman Thou Art Loosed: On The 7th Day, Grassroots, and After Kony: Staging Hope. As for my personal picks, if you’ve noticed the banner image for this page you’ve probably guessed that each of my selections feature Bill Murray. Here are some films featuring a few of his lesser-seen performances:
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Passion Play
Yes, this is the film in which Murray plays a mobster, Mickey Rourke plays a trumpeter, and Megan Fox has wings. It has only a 3% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it’s probably pretty horrible, but in a totally entertaining way. I mean, it has to be, right? It’s a movie starring Mickey Rourke as the sympathetic lead character and Bill Murray as the villain. It really says something about how crazy a movie is when ‘Megan Fox has wings’ is an after-thought.
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The Limits Of Control
Admittedly, Bill Murray’s role in this artsy hitman flick from Jim Jarmusch is pretty small, and admittedly this movie is very slow, but if you’ve got the patience for it (and the willingness to not have much plot spelled out for you) it has its pleasures. Especially if you like really slow movies that have next to no plot but look very nice. So clearly, this movie’s not for everyone, but if you’re intrigued, dive in. Just bring a book or something to do while you watch. Maybe you can track down a copy of very silly but very funny The Man Who Knew Too Little and watch it on your iPad or something while you watch this. As far as Bill Murray movies go, it’s just as little-seen, and a much better film. That’s right: I’m saying the movie from the guy who directed Entrapment and The Core is the better film. Bold words, but ones I stand by, and ones I bet even Bill Murray and Jim Jarmusch would agree with. Seriously, this movie is so slow and pointless I bet they made it just as an excuse to f*ck around Spain for a while. It’s not unheard of; Mel Gibson made The Passion Of The Christ just as an excuse to visit Italy.
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The Lost City
Andy Garcia directed and stars in this film about a Cuban family getting caught up in the violent transition from Batista to Castro as Cuba’s leaders in the late 1950s. I haven’t seen this, and I don’t know how much Bill Murray plays into things, but the box cover says that Ebert & Roeper gave it two thumbs up, and everybody’s still thinking about Roger Ebert since his passing last week, so why not honor him by watching this movie he went on the metaphorical record as saying was essentially ‘good enough’?
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Broken Flowers
Here’s another Jim Jarmusch film, but at least this one actually stars our man Mr. Murray and has a plot you can follow. Bill plays Don Johnston, an aging bachelor who goes on a cross-country road trip to confront a few former girlfriends in the hopes of finding out which one of them sent him a mysterious letter informing him of a grown son he never knew existed and who might be looking for him. To be fair, this movie isn’t nearly as obscure as the other three previously suggested films, but I was running out of obscure Bill Murray options and the one I really wanted to suggest, Quick Change (which Murray also co-directed), isn’t streaming, so just watch Broken Flowers and quite arguing semantics. Either way, find a way to watch Quick Change if you haven’t already seen it –it’s fantastic. It co-stars Randy Quaid and Geena Davis, and it’s from 1990, back when those names actually meant something. Or you know, just watch Broken Flowers because it’s more convenient. You really are a lazy ass.