Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

From Warner Bros. Animation comes another beautiful looking HD release. The most memorable element is the vibrant colors. Darkly lit sets often find their way to bright locations whether it be the glow orange ooze bubbling in vats or train stations. Flashbacks to happier times utilize a wider color palette, helped by the presence of Robin’s costume. I say this with every one of these DC Direct titles, but animation looks so good in 1080p and Warner Direct serves it up well. The picture is so crystal clear that it makes for increased engagement. The stormy title sequence looks amazing. Just seeing the episodes of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES on the disc one can see the difference high definition makes in picture quality. Now this isn’t a perfect release. There is some banding in backgrounds, but I never noticed artifacts, aliasing, pixelation or noise like I read in other reviews. But the problems are minor in the larger scope of the release.

Based on Jack Ketchum’s book, which is based on the real life murder of Sylvia Likens, this realistic horror flick suffers more depending on what you take into it. The more you know about the real life story the film’s exaggerations seem gratuitous. If you’ve seen the film AN AMERICAN CRIME, which is based more directly on the real story, you’ll find the acting in this film lacking. But the biggest problem with the film is Gregory Wilson’s voyeuristic direction, which makes the audience uncomfortable in all the wrong ways.

Following the death of their parents, Meg (Blythe Auffarth, KEEPING THE FAITH) and Susan Loughlin (Madeline Taylor, JOHN ADAMS) go to live with their Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker, SIXTEEN CANDLES), who has too many kids of her own to handle. She rules over Meg like a warden, severely punishing her for any presumed offense. Meg does everything she can to deflect the abuse away from her sickly little sister. Eventually Ruth chains Meg up in the basement subjecting her to continuous torture, including branding and rape. She encourages her own children and the neighbor kids to join in.

This comedy actually does something that raunchy comedies rarely do – develop a full cast of compelling and original characters. Raunchy comedies often have man-boys acting like idiots, but this comedy has unique and realistic immature men at its center. They’re not role models, but that might be exactly what the kids they mentor need.

Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd, I LOVE YOU, MAN) is very unhappy with the way his life has turned out. But instead of changing anything, he just complains… a lot. His girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO), an up-and-coming lawyer, is getting tired of his cocky, pessimistic attitude. He works with his best friend Anson Wheeler (Seann William Scott, AMERICAN PIE) as a spokesperson for an energy drink, travelling from middle school to middle school giving out free samples. On one particularly pissy day, he ends up driving the work vehicle into a statue while it’s still attached to a tow truck. As part of their punishment, they are ordered to volunteer as mentors to children.

This weak attempt at college humor takes all the juvenile escapades of ANIMAL HOUSE and blows them out into cartoonish proportions. All the sense of nostalgia and youthful rebellion that was in the National Lampoon classic has been replaced with pointless man-boy raunchiness. ANIMAL HOUSE relied on characterization, while OLD SCHOOL barely reaches caricature.

Mitch Martin (Luke Wilson, BOTTLE ROCKET) comes home from a business trip to find his girlfriend Heidi (Juliette Lewis, NATURAL BORN KILLERS) engaged in an orgy in their bedroom. Distraught, Mitch gets plastered at the wedding of his friend Frank Ricard (Will Ferrell, ANCHORMAN) and tries to suck spilled coffee off the dress of his high school sweetheart Nicole (Ellen Pompeo, MIDNIGHT MILE). Set up at a house close to the campus of their alma mater, Harrison University, Mitch’s best friend Bernard (Vince Vaughn, WEDDING CRASHERS), a married stereo store owner, throws an elaborate bash to lift Mitch’s spirits. The party makes Mitch a legend, but the bash draws the attention of Dead Gordon Pritchard (Jeremy Piven, TV’s ENTOURAGE), who was the butt of jokes from Mitch and friends during high school. Dean Pritchard wants to get them kicked out of the house, so the man-boys devise a plan to turn the house into a frat.

Based on J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning novel, this story, on the simplest level, is about it's title. A white man is disgraced. His black student is disgraced. His daughter is disgraced. A black family is disgraced. Taking place in post-apartheid South Africa, a nation is disgraced. But who and why are not as they seem in this enigmatic tale of regaining some kind of grace.

Prof. David Lurie (John Malkovich, BURN AFTER READING) has a dominating sexual appetite. He is drawn to black women, frequenting a black prostitute. He teaches a class on the romantic poets and develops an infatuation with a black student named Melanie (Antoinette Engel). He uses his position of power to seduce her and when they make love for the first time it's not technically rape, but technicalities don't change they way people feel. Lurie aggressively pursues Melanie until the affair is publicly exposed. Instead of trying to defend himself, Lurie arrogantly pleads guilty and flaunts his disgust with the  whole school inquiry against him.

This is a jam-packed week. We have a Blu-ray and DVD Pick of Week. Some great classics coming from Criterion. There's also a long list of films I'm curious to hear from readers about, some got trashed by other critics and some our critical darlings.

Blu-ray Pick of the Week
The Red Shoes
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's THE RED SHOES is considered by many to be one of the best films ever made. Martin Scorsese has said it is his favorite film. The story takes an honest behind-the-scenes look at the rise of a young ballerina. Boris Lermontov, played by Anton Walbrook, is the impresario of the ballet. He takes promising dancer Victoria Page (Moira Shearer) under his wing and begins to control every aspect of her life much to the chagrin of her boyfriend, young composer Julian Craster (Marius Goring). Lermontov is more than a controlling lover type — he wants to be Victoria. The character is one of the most complex ever put on screen. And the standards of 1940s cinema make him all the more fascinating because Powell and Pressburger needed to dance around many tawdry interpretations. The closing ballet number is one of the best dance sequences ever put on film for its artistry of movement and its metaphoric comment on the plot. I can only imagine how his richly filmed early color film looks on Blu-ray. This is an essential for any real movie fan.

An idea can change the world. In Christopher Nolan's mind-bending thriller, big ideas are vulnerable to be stolen within a person's dreams. Powerful businessmen spend millions on setting up projections in their minds to protect them from extractors who are hired by competitors to steal secrets. But what's infinitely more difficult is to put an idea they did not think of in their mind. This is inception.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, BLOOD DIAMOND) is a skilled extractor who has been hired to steal company secrets from billionaire Saito (Ken Wantanabe, THE LAST SAMURAI). While Cobb ultimately fails, Saito is impressed with his skills and hires him to attempt an inception on the son of his rival. The mission seems impossible, but Saito promises to use his connections to allow Cobb to return to the U.S. where there is a warrant out for his arrest.

This week I've selected a Blu-ray and DVD Pick of the Week. One is a little seen Robert Altman film starring HAROLD & MAUDE star Bud Cort and an underrated gem of a dark comedy actioner for a few years back. There is also a quad of releases that I'm interested in checking out and hope to hear more about from fellow fans who have seen them.

Blu-ray Pick of the Week
In Bruges
Martin McDonagh followed up his Oscar-winning short film, SIX SHOOTER, with this action-packed dark comedy. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play hitmen who have been sent by their boss, played by Ralph Fiennes, to Bruges, Belgium after Farrell's Ray botches a job. Gleeson is happy to take in the tourist spots of the medieval city, while Farrell fears he will lose his mind from boredom. Even though they are there to keep a low profile, the duo gets wrapped up with local drug dealers, a movie production and a dwarf. At times this pitch-black satire is gruesome, but it all serves the story and complex characters well. Don't miss it.

This Sundance favorite is an interesting take on the modern family. A lesbian couple used the same sperm donor to each conceive one of their two children. When the children turn 18 they can request information about the donor. Their son is so eager to find out about the male side of his genetics he convinces his college-bound older sister to contact him. This is the set-up for this character-based dramedy about long-term relationships and raising kids.

Nic (Annette Bening, AMERICAN BEAUTY) and Jules (Julianne Moore, BOOGIE NIGHTS) have been together since Jules was an undergraduate and she went to the hospital where Nic was doing her residency. First they had Joni (Mia Wasikowska, ALICE IN WONDERLAND), followed by Laser (Josh Hutcherson, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA). Together, without the moms' knowledge, they go to meet Paul (Mark Ruffalo, YOU CAN COUNT ON ME), an easy-going restaurant owner who donated sperm when he was a struggling college student. Of course Nic and Jules find out and want to meet him as well, which begins the changing their family dynamic.