DVD new releases today, April 29th 2008.
The Golden Compass (5/10): Based on the His Dark Materials series of books for kids, this movie is kind of a mess, kind of boring, and seems disturbingly unoriginal. But it makes wing-nut hardcore Catholics angry, so it can’t be all bad.
27 Dresses: Katherine Heigl, who is very gorgeous and recently starred in Knocked Up, now plays…a bridesmaid who never gets to be a bride…and ruins all the guy-cred she had with Knocked Up by making us rightfully cringe at the mention of this movie.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (9/10): Absolutely magnificent. The true story of a man who dictated his memoirs simply by blinking his eyelid after suffering a stroke that left him paralyzed. Far more exciting than it sounds.
Hero Wanted (2/10): Ray Liotta, who will appear in ANY movie ever, teams up with Cuba Gooding Jr, who should not EVER appear in any more movies. Revenge and bank robberies. Possibly also crap. OK, quite likely.
Cheers, Season Nine (8/10): One of the all-time greatest TV shows with one of it’s best seasons. The introduction of the owner of Melville’s Restaurant upstairs is a beautiful touch.
How She Move: When her older sister dies from a drug overdose, a teen-ager must leave private school and go to a gang-dominated high school. She then finds solace in…step dancing! Wait, haven’t I seen, and hated, this exact movie many many times before?
The Big Gay Sketch Show, Season 2 (4/10): Just being gay is not in itself funny. Liza Minelli jokes somehow seem kind of old in the world of gay humour by now, no?
This Thing of Ours: Could be cool. Many of the actors most associated with gangster movies in history appear together - James Caan, Frank Vincent, Vincent Pastore - to pull off the “biggest heist in mafia history”. OK, it’ll be cheesy. But cool actors.
Young Indiana Jones Volume 3: The Years of Change (6/10): Ten discs. Each disc is two TV-episodes crammed together into a two-hour “movie”, which feels like…two one-hour episodes. But the special features will be fantastic for kids, and teach an awful lot about history. So if you ever wanted your kids to get into Edith Wharton…
The Wire: The Complete Fourth Season: This will have Doc captured by the TV for the next week. Looks like I’ll have to wait until next week to golf with him.
CSI: The Complete Seventh Season (5/10): They’ve kinda quit trying to be cool, and gone for gimmicks. Sean Patrick Flannery (of Young Indiana Jones) appears, as do Danny Bonaduce and the always luminous Kevin Federline.
Dead Man’s Bounty: A mysterious stranger rides into a dusty border town with a dead body, trying to collect the reward on the man, but then loses that money, AND the body, in a poker game with the drunken local sherriff. Polish movie done in English.
Also out:
Beyond the Golden Compass
Moondance Alexander