Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

This film is a germaphobe's worst nightmare. You'll finish watching this movie and want to wash your hands. There have been other disease outbreak films before, but none have been this realistic, which of course makes it more frightening.

Beth Emoff (Gwyneth Paltrow, SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) comes back from a business trip in China and she's sick. At first she thinks it's just the flu, but before she knows it she's having convulsions and her husband Mitch (Matt Damon, GOOD WILL HUNTING) is taking her to the hospital. The disease spreads fast and within a month Mitch and his daughter Jory (Anna Jacoby-Heron) are virtual prisoners in their home as Minnesota becomes like a scene out of a zombie flick.

Kevin Smith's horror thriller has more to admire about it than to like. The end result of his first venture into the genre highlights his weaknesses and his strengths. Thematically the film is written wonderfully with solid dialogue. But when it comes to pacing, which is so crucial to the genre he is working in, he gets murdered.

In the long tradition of horror films, three horny high school boys venture out to have sex. They've found Sara (Melissa Leo, FROZEN RIVER) on the Internet and she is willing to have sex with them all. This however is just a trap. She is a member of the church run by radical preacher Abin Cooper (Michael Parks, KILL BILL), who believes it is his calling from God to kill all sinners.

Director Wolfgang Petersen takes a similar approach to this film as he did in his classic DAS BOOT. We watch people doing their jobs. When dealing with one of the most dangerous jobs in the world the drama can be high. This is a grand "man vs. nature" action flick that pits humans against what the title suggests. Nature doesn't care that George Clooney is the captain here.

Clooney plays Billy Tyne, the captain of a fishing boat that has been having a rough year. He is determined to make up for it with one risky late season run to a location further out then he's ever gone before. His boat is populated with classic blue-collar movie types. Bobby Shatford (Mark Wahlberg, THE FIGHTER) is Tyne's first mate and he has a beautiful girlfriend named Christina (Diane Lane, SECRETARIAT) back on shore who doesn't like his job. Murph (John C. Reilly, CHICAGO) is a fishing vet, who lost his wife over his job. He has a beef with Sully (William Fichtner, DATE NIGHT), a last minute replacement crewmember, over his ex-wife. Bugsy (John Hawkes, WINTER'S BONE) is an awkward fellow who tries to get a date right before they head out to sea. Alfred Pierre (Allen Payne, TV's HOUSE OF PAYNE) is the youngest member and adds diversity to the white crew.

I'll defend JERSEY GIRL. I even find MALLRATS entertaining. But I can't defend this. The best thing I can say about Kevin Smith's buddy cop comedy is that it's not all his fault. The project is his first as a hired director. He didn't write this one; Robb and Mark Cullen did. So part of the blame is on them. It's like a nine year old was hired to remake 48 HOURS and all the nine-year-old has ever read his entire life is the backs of Garbage Pail Kids cards.

Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis, DIE HARD) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan, TV's 30 ROCK) are longtime partners. After a botched stakeout, they are suspended without pay. This causes a dilemma for Jimmy because he has to pay for his daughter's wedding and now he's broke. His plan is to sell his top baseball card in order to finance the event, so he doesn't have to swallow his ego and let his ex-wife's new husband Roy (Jason Lee, MALLRATS) pay for it. Guess what? The baseball card get stolen.

Before director John Madden went on to direct the Oscar-winning SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, he directed mysteries for British TV. One of those series was PRIME SUSPECT, which starred Helen Mirren. Now the director and actress reunite to remake the Cold War-set Israeli thriller HA-HOV.

The story cuts between 1966 and 1997. In the 1960s, Rachel Singer (Jessica Chastain, THE TREE OF LIFE), Stephan Gold (Marton Csokas, LORD OF THE RINGS) and David Peretz (Sam Worthington, AVATAR) are Mossad agents assigned the task of entering East Germany, kidnapping the Nazi war criminal Dr. Dieter "Butcher of Birkenau" Vogel (Jesper Christensen, QUANTUM OF SOLACE) and smuggling him to Israel in order for him to stand trial. The mission doesn't go as planned and it has ramifications that last the rest of the agents' lives. In 1997, Rachel (Mirren) has a daughter who has written a book about their exploits and she might get called back into duty for something she thought was over. Stephan (Tom Wilkinson, MICHAEL CLAYTON) is a high-ranking government official who can't let secrets leak out. David (Ciaran Hinds, MUNICH) is a shell of his former self, obsessed with what happened in East Germany.

Read my review of IN A BETTER WORLD

This Blu-ray looks amazing. Sony's AVC encoded 1080p transfer is as flawless as you can get. The colors are vibrant and evocative. Toward the end of the film the picture takes on a warm glow, which is fitting in context. There isn't a single digital anomaly due to compression anywhere to be seen. Details are crisp. Even dust kicked up by trucks in the African sequences have nuance. Beautiful is the most fitting way to describe the picture quality. Cinematographer Morten Søborg should be enthralled with the way his film looks.

The DTS High Definition Master Audio soundtrack creates a great ambiance for every scene. The packed African clinic. The roar of the warlord's trucks entering the camp. A car explosion booms the LFE track. Directionality is used well across all the speakers. Dialogue is clear and the subtitles are easy to read. The soundtrack really matches the first rate picture quality.

The original Danish title is directly translated as "The Revenge." I feel the American title is more fitting in that it encapsulates the humanistic ideals the film portrays. However, the original title reflects the real world that we live in. Director Susanne Bier puts her main character's ideals up against the harsh realities that he is forced to deal with.

Anton (Mikael Persbrandt, EVERLASTING MOMENTS) is a Swedish doctor who works in a war torn African country. He is confronted with the horrors of Big Man (Odiege Matthew), a warlord who on bets cuts open pregnant women just to see what the sex of their babies are. Back in Denmark where he lives, his son Elias (Markus Rygaard) is being constantly picked on by a bully and his followers. Then Christian (William Johnk Nielsen) moves to his area. His mother has recently died and he is an angry boy who doesn't think the world is fair. He savagely beats the bully. When his well-meaning, but lost, father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen, BROTHERS) asks him why he'd do such a thing, he says, "No one will ever dare touch me now."

Sometimes when life is out of control desperate people do things to try and gain back control that just make things worse. Director/writer Tom McCarthy, who made the fabulous THE STATION AGENT and THE VISITOR, presents us with two characters whose lives are spinning out of control. One makes the wrong decision and the other the right decision. It's surprising that a tattooed 16-year-old is in the right.

Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti, AMERICAN SPLENDOR) is a lawyer who represents the estates of the elderly. His practice is struggling. He's keeping the financial problems from his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan, GONE BABY GONE). One of his clients, Leo Poplar (Burt Young, ROCKY), is suffering from dementia and has been ruled incapacitated by the court. Mike knows Leo wants to stay in his house so he petitions the judge to allow him to become the old man's guardian and make sure he can stay there. Mike isn't just a nice guy. He gets $1,500 per month for being the guardian and he moves Leo into a home because it's easier on him to watch over him.

A bad boss can be a life sucking experience. They hold your livelihood in their hands and they can use that against you in so many evil ways. And in bad financial times they even have more freedom to be sick individuals because they know they have you by the throat. Let’s be honest homicidal thoughts are not too far fetched in regards to coping with these types of people.

Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman, HANCOCK) kisses butt and eats crap in hopes of it all paying off one day in a big promotion. But he works for Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey, AMERICAN BEAUTY), a man who prides himself on paying mind games on his employees. Nick’s friend Dale Arbus (Charlie Day, GOING THE DISTANCE) is engaged to be married and loves his fiancée dearly. But his boss Dr. Julia Harris is a dentist with an uncontrollable ache for sex. She doesn’t simply harass him, but sexually blackmails him. Nick and Dale’s other friend Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis, TV’s SNL) actually has a great boss named Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland, KLUTE), who is grooming him to take over the business. Kurt’s problem is with the boss’s son Bobby (Colin Farrell, IN BRUGES), a balding, cokehead, karate-obsessed douchebag.

Brad Furman's crime thriller can comfortably be described as a yarn. While this is at feature length, this is the kind of detective story that fans of LAW & ORDER will like. What makes this a bit more theatrical and less procedural is the central character, played smarmy and charmingly in equal doses by Matthew McConaughey.

When he's not a soon to be tamed womanizing romantic lead, McConaughey is in a suit playing a lawyer. Here he is Mick Haller, a defender of all sorts of lowlifes. The counselor works out of his classic Lincoln and since getting a DUI has Earl (Laurence Mason, THE CROW) chauffeuring him around. Bondsman Val Valenzuela (John Leguizamo, MOULIN ROUGE!) usually forwards him the scum he represents, but he has a choice client for him this time. Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe, CRASH) comes from money and they have a family lawyer. So why would he want Haller to get him out of a battery charge for which he insistently claims he is innocent of?