Film Freak Central

Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008) - Blu-ray Disc

*/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B
animated; screenplay by Shotaro Suga
directed by Makoto Kamiya

by Bryant Frazer One of the more obnoxious trends in current filmmaking and distribution is the move towards cheapjack fansploitation movies. Masquerading as original, feature-film content, these low-budget theatrical and home-video releases are little more than expansive knock-offs of an existing, lucrative property that function as extended promos for yet another upcoming instalment of said franchise. In other words, they're commercials, bought and paid for by the very fanbase to which they're marketed. Not so long ago, we saw the theatrical bow of a decidedly sub-par feature animation, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, whose only reason for existence was its function as a come-on for the already-in-production Cartoon Network series. Then there's Resident Evil: Degeneration (henceforth Degeneration), an extended videogame cut-scene created to flog the upcoming release of AAA console title "Resident Evil 5". Taking place in the Capcom videogame's universe and filling in the narrative gap between "Resident Evil"s 4 and 5, it has nothing to do with the popular live-action film series starring Milla Jovovich.

Red Riding (2009) [Special Edition] - Blu-ray Disc

RED RIDING
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras C

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1974
**½/****
starring Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean, Warren Clarke, Rebecca Hall
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Seventy-Four David Peace
directed by Julian Jarrold

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1980
***/****
starring Paddy Considine, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke, Sean Harris
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Eighty David Peace
directed by James Marsh

THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1983
**/****
starring Mark Addy, David Morrissey, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke
screenplay by Tony Grisoni, based on the novel Red Riding: Nineteen Eighty-Three David Peace
directed by Anand Tucker

by Bryant Frazer Red Riding, adapted by screenwriter Tony Grisoni into three movies from four novels by David Peace, is an awfully downbeat thing that's difficult to classify. It's not really a mystery, because the central crimes are barely the point (at least in the first two films), and the question isn't whodunit, but who among all those involved is not yet corrupt. It's not a police procedural, because the only effective police work we see is of the thuggish, back-room variety. In its specificity of time and place--nine years in Yorkshire, a county in northern England--it recalls James Ellroy's novels about Los Angeles cops in the 1940s and '50s. But Ellroy's stories were bracing because their point of view came from inside a department dominated by bigotry and machismo and tormented by its own failings. Each of the Red Riding stories comes at the situation mostly from an outsider's perspective, elevating a principled crusader to the high ground, then having the corrupt institution take potshots at him, decimating his footing.

P.S. I Love You (2007) - Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Hilary Swank, Gerard Butler, Lisa Kudrow, Kathy Bates
screenplay by Richard LaGravanese and Steven Rogers, based on the novel by Cecelia Ahern
directed by Richard LaGravanese

by Bryant Frazer In P.S. I Love You, Hilary Swank gets to play a part that's typically the province of male actors: the lovesick bachelor. The gender-specific word for what she is here is widow: Her husband has succumbed to brain cancer, leaving her alone in a Chinatown apartment. But the stereotype is so familiar as a guy thing--Swank's place is littered with pizza crusts, Chinese take-out containers, and take-out coffee cups, and she herself parades around in boxers--that its presence is a touch of wit in a movie that has lots of grace notes. That's a testimony to the skills of writer-director Richard LaGravenese, a sort of go-to guy for contemporary melodrama. He's made a career out of investing commercial romantic comedy with soul, humour, and a little bit of weirdness. Alas, that LaGravenese touch is not enough to balance out the manipulative tone of the whole wish-fulfillment enterprise he's working at here. P.S. I Love You is easy to watch and occasionally rewarding, but it's so transparently inspirational that its feel-good contortions might end up making you feel worse for the wear.

The Proposal (2009) - Blu-ray Disc

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Malin Akerman, Betty White
screenplay by Peter Chiarelli
directed by Anne Fletcher

by Bryant Frazer Reviewing a romantic comedy can feel a bit like criticizing a kitten. So what if the feline puked in your slippers? What cat lovers generally want is something that will curl up in their lap, purr like nobody's business, and maybe give off a little heat on a cold winter's night. Complaining that the hungry little fuzzball won't fetch your slippers, can't guard your house, and bears no singular distinguishing marks or characteristics comes across as a tad churlish.

Postal (2008) - Blu-ray Disc

*½/**** Image B Sound B Extras C+
starring Zack Ward, Dave Foley, Chris Coppola, Seymour Cassel
screenplay by Uwe Boll and Bryan C. Knight
directed by Uwe Boll

by Bryant Frazer Uwe Boll may not be the world's worst filmmaker, but when he made his name internationally by turning beloved videogame titles into movies (the zombie shooter House of the Dead, the survival-horror adventure Alone in the Dark) that played like cheap, cynical cash grabs, he earned that sobriquet along with the undying enmity of a certain branch of the movie-nerd contingent. Go ahead and run a Google search on "worst filmmaker alive" and see how many times Boll's name comes up on the first page alone.

The Phantom Carriage (1921) [The Criterion Collection] - Blu-ray Disc

***/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström, Astrid Holm, Tore Svennberg
screenplay by Victor Sjöström, based on a novel by Selma Lagerlöf
directed by Victor Sjöström

by Bryant Frazer The Phantom Carriage, a seminal achievement in silent filmmaking from that other great Swedish auteur, Victor Sjöström, is a stern, supernatural moral drama that rails against social problems of the day by enlisting an emissary from the Great Beyond to lecture the feckless, abusive protagonist on what a rotten shit he is. Sjöström remains best known internationally for his later Hollywood films, made with the likes of Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo, but The Phantom Carriage already testified to genius behind the camera as well as in front of it. When the movie finished playing, I picked up the disc's keepcase and squinted at it, in all my ignorance, to determine who so expertly essayed the central character of the alcoholic David Holm. When I read the answer (Sjöström himself), I wanted to fling the box across the room. Show-off.

Passengers (2008) - Blu-ray Disc

*/**** Image B Sound B Extras B-
starring Anne Hathaway, Patrick Wilson, David Morse, Dianne Wiest
screenplay by Ronnie Christensen
directed by Rodrigo Garcia

by Bryant Frazer Even if you haven't read the jacket promo copy, you'll suspect Passengers is up to some kind of supernatural wish-fulfillment from its first few minutes, as a slumbering Anne Hathaway is awakened on a rainy night by a phone call from a colleague who tells her something terrible has happened requiring her presence at a nearby hospital. It's not just that Hathaway plays Dr. Claire Summers, a therapist charged with helping a group of plane-crash survivors cope with their near-death experiences and the accompanying trauma--it's that the chilly, insistently otherworldly production design strongly implies something strange (but comforting, very comforting) is going on, too. Early hints that Claire's flirty, devil-may-care patient, Eric Clark (Patrick Wilson), has gained psychic powers, or that the other survivors are being eliminated, one by one, by a nefarious airline bent on protecting shareholder value, turn out to be red herrings as Passengers works its way to a hoary final-reel revelation that would have felt tired a decade ago.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2008) - Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
starring Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Kristin Scott Thomas
screenplay by Peter Morgan, based on the novel by Philippa Gregory
directed by Justin Chadwick

by Bryant Frazer Pop culture works in mysterious ways. I suppose the Tudor dynasty never really goes out of style, but it's interesting to see two completely different takes on the tale of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, reach audiences more or less simultaneously. The second season of Showtime's lavish series "The Tudors" just concluded with the (spoiler?!) beheading of Boleyn, followed by a close-up of a beautiful little girl who would become Queen Elizabeth I. The Other Boleyn Girl, produced in part by BBC Films, ends much the same way, with that same act of reprisal followed by a beaming young face representing that same incipient monarch.

Obsessed (2009) - Blu-ray Disc

*/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras C
starring Idris Elba, Beyoncé Knowles, Ali Larter, Christine Lahti
screenplay by David Loughery
directed by Steve Shill

by Bryant Frazer When Hollywood types assimilate exploitation tropes and tactics, they start concocting films like Obsessed, in which Skinny White Bitch Ali Larter runs seriously afoul of Virtuous Black Woman Beyoncé Knowles by throwing herself at Good Husband Idris Elba. In fact, Obsessed is less a movie than it is a marketing plan, calculated to snare audiences entranced by its whiff of sex, celebrity, and dysfunctional race relations. Sure, those are movie-ready elements, but when they're mixed up by filmmakers as staidly unimaginative as the audience they're targeting, the recipe has a distinctly unsavoury flavour combination--gutless as well as tasteless.

The New York Ripper (1982) - Blu-ray Disc

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B-
starring Jack Hedley, Almanta Keller, Howard Ross, Paolo Malco
screenplay by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Lucio Fulci, Dardano Sacchetti
directed by Lucio Fulci

by Bryant Frazer The box art for this Lucio Fulci sleazefest describes it as "The Most Controversial Horror Film Ever Made," which is a stretch. "Notorious" would be a better word. The New York Ripper's main claim to fame is its reputation as a sadistic, gory, and generally misogynist giallo--the Italian term referring to a combination of the crime and horror genres (basically a whodunit with slasher elements) that became popular in the 1960s and endured through the 1970s. Released in 1982 and styled after the psychologically ambitious thrillers of Hitchcock, it bears roughly the same relationship to the gialli film cycle that, say, Touch of Evil does to film noir. If the Fulci film isn't exactly as self-aware as the Welles one, it still functions as a capper, a fitting culmination of a particular form.