DVD Roundup (Quick Hits)

It has been forever since I have done an installment of DVD Roundup, and because of this I have plenty of movies to get to. I'll keep um short and sweet.


Be Cool

I remember seeing, and liking Get Shorty. That's pretty much all I remember about it though. So I came in to Be Cool just hoping for something entertaining. Thanks to Vince Vaughn as a white wannabe pimp and The Rock as a flamingly gay bodyguard/entertainer, this movie has entertaining down in spades. Be Cool is what it is, a fun and entertaining movie with an A-List cast. It may not be as good as Get Shorty, but it is good.


Coach Carter

This is a real anti-sports, sports movie. Coach Carter is less about basketball, and more about the problems in today's society where student athletes are too often just asked to be athletes. Samuel Jackson plays a convincing hardass and the young actors hold their own. Ashanti's debut performance shows she may have an acting career in front of her. If your looking for a strictly sports movie you may be disappointed, but if your looking for Dead Poets Society meets basketball, this ones for you. Good solid flick, just not really a sports flick.


Constantine

Keanu Reeves plays a demon fighter that looks like an accountant. If you can look past that, and the fact that Reeves acting is on par with your average accountant, then you will find a pretty good little movie here. The special FX are great and the premise is very cool, even if it failed to deliver on it's cool premise. Basically Reeves plays John Constantine, a man who after a near death experience can see angels and demons that walk among us. They are here on earth because God and the Devil have a bet over whether man will ultimately go good or bad. When things start to go awry, Constantine must save a female police detective with strange gifts (Rachel Weitz). Peter Stormare and Tilda Swinton steal the show.


Cursed

I was expecting Cursed to be super cheesy, and the trailer did nothing to sway me from that opinion. As a horror fan though, a Craven/Williamson reteaming was just too much to pass up, and I sure am glad I didn't. This is much less cheesy, and more serious horror flick than I expected it to be. It pretty much does for the werewolf genre what Scream did for teen slasher movies, just not as well. The movie doesn't work nearly on the level of smarts or scary that Scream did, but compared to most watered down PG-13 horror crap, this is a step in the right direction.


Hitch

So far, this seems to be a list of very likeable, good movie. Not a one of them great movies, but good solid studio fare. Hitch is another movie like I just described, a fun look at dating and the interaction between men and women. This movie is really a romantic comedy made for men, or at least made with men's hatred of romantic comedies in mind. Will Smith plays Alex Hitchens, a smooth ladies man who coaches men and helps them get the women they love. Obviously this wasn't a big stretch for Smith, playing smooth, and he does it with easy. Thestoryline with Hitch coaching Kevin James' bumbling idiot character works far better than the one with Hitch dating an anal retentice gossip writer.


Hostage

This is a good movie, but it was a much better book. Since you don't come here to read book reviews, I'll try to stay on point. Hostage is a Bruce Willis action flick with all his usual ingredients. Willis plays hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, who is another in the long line of Willis' reluctant hero's. Talley must try to save 2 kids being held in their fathers large mansion which hides many things the police are not supposed to be seeing. Talley is pulled in many different directions trying to save the kids, while saving his family that is being held hostage in the process. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's a solid action movie.


The Jacket

I seem to have the same opinion on every single movie reviewed here, which is good but not great. The Jacket is right along those lines as well. This is a mind screw of a movie where you are never sure what is real and what isn't until the end. Adrian Brody is good in the lead, playing someone who may or may not be crazy. The rest of the cast is pretty average and the movie fails to deliver an ending worthy of the buildup, giving us a good movie that could have been a very good one.


Pit Fighter

This movie had a DVD case that screamed straight to video junk, but after hearing it was good from a few trusted film people, I decided to give it a whirl. For a straight to video film, this is good stuff. The acting and cinematography were beyond the usual level and the story was really good until about the last 25 minutes or so. The movie goes from character study of a man who fights to survive, which was solid, and becomes a cheap El Mariachi ripoff at the end, when the guns come out, the movie spirals downward. Worth a rent if your the kind of person who would rent a movie called Pit Fighter.


Prozac Nation

It is sad Miramax buried this movie, because it was very good. The old, relevant Miramax never would have done that, but the watered down Disney owned Miramax didn't see any money in this beautifully acted film about a girl spiraling out of control. I hope now that the Weinstein's are free of the shackles of the mouse, they will go back to their old ways releasing quality films, no matter what their commercial appeal is. Christina Ricci gives the performance of her career here, sadly, no one got to see it. She never seems to be the same person twice, which adds a level of realism and scariness to the film. This is a movie that should have been seen by a much larger audience, and you should hunt it down.


Seed Of Chucky

I am a self professed Chucky fan. I was a fan of the underrated Childs Play and it's subsequent sequels, and really liked Bride Of Chucky (which even surprised me), which reinvented the series and took it in a more comedic direction. So imagine my disappointment when Seed Of Chucky just didn't stack up. It isn't awful, but it just lacks the solid writing of BOC, and also wasn't nearly as funny or scary. It isn;t awful, just a disappointing chapter in an underrated series.


The Upside Of Anger

Is there anything Joan Allen can't do? She is truly one of the great actresses of her generation. She turns in an oscar caliber performance as a wife, who's husband up and leaves her and their 4 kids and moves away. She then becomes a bitter drunk taking out her pain on her 4 daughters and their neighbor, who likes to hang around their house and drink. Kevin Costner plays the neighbor, who is a former pro baseball player who now sits around doing nothing. Costner turns in one of his best performances here, he and Allen have great chemistry together and they develop a relationship more out of boredom than love. This is a good film in the Terms Of Endearment mold.


A Very Long Engagement

Jean-Pierre Junet is a genius in my book and can do no wrong. The man who made Amelie and City Of Lost Children returns with this quirky love story/war movie/investigation film. Junet weaves these different ideas flawlessly and Audrey Tautou is very good in the lead. The movie just works, and works very well, not much to say except see this movie. Junet is one of the best filmmakers working today.


Zero Day

While you are out hunting down Prozac Nation, find this small release as well. Zero Day tells the story of 2 kids planning on shooting up their school. The film is shot first person by the kids themselves as a sort of video journal of how everything went down. This gives the movie a much scarier, more intimate feel and really takes you inside the mind of madness. Zero Day is the best movie on the subject of school shooting I have seen, and is vastly superior to the slow and overrated Elephant. If you come across this one, scoop it up, it deserves to be seen.