By Jason Haskins, Paco McCullough, and Terry Cleveland
This week's new DVD/Blu-ray releases contain some good (Crazy Stupid Love), mostly bad (Trespass) movies--overall a week full of movies that aren't worth the purchase. Let's get started shall we?
Cars 2
Pixar finally makes a misstep with Cars 2, the sequel to 2006's Doc Hollywood rip-off. Why they made a sequel to a film that wasn't one of their bigger hits may be explained by the fact that it plays into their new expansion, Cars Land, into their Disneyland Theme Park (Not to mention the success of Cars-related toy sales). This tells the story of Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson once again) going overseas to race in a competition with his best friend Mater tagging along (...Larry the Cable Guy), who coincidentally gets caught up in spy games...The story is very shallow and predictable, but does contain some laughs admittedly. It's definitely geared towards younger audiences and almost feels direct-to-video in a lot of ways in terms of the direction of the story. It's no nevermind that this was the lowest grossing Pixar movie--audiences couldn't be fooled by a cheap cash-in on a mediocre franchise despite some good attempts at humor.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Water for Elephants
Francis Lawrence's follow-up to I Am Legend is an adaptation of another novel: Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, a critically acclaimed piece of contemporary literature. . . .starring Twilight's Robert Pattinson and Greasy Reesy Witherspoon. I wasn't too hot about the choice of actors, though I had heard the novel was great, and sadly enough the movie did have its finer moments. Water for Elephants is about a young man that leaves vet school to join a circus, simultaneously falling in love with one of the biggest stars. What follows is a romantic drama that captures some of the allure of the era. While the film does have its interesting moments--all of which are visual--some of the acting is a bit hokey, especially on the end of Pattinson, who can't seem to find a pulse outside of his whole vampiric bullshit. He's more distracting than anything else, and looks and acts awkward throughout the entire movie, which hurt the experience. Overall, not as bad as I thought--and what matters is that it made me want to read the novel.
3 out of 5 stars
Crazy Stupid Love
Crazy Stupid Love follows the romantic foibles of three generations- a middle aged couple coping with the difficulty of keeping marriage together (Steve Carell and Julianne Moore), twenty somethings realizing that love may be more important than sex (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), and a couple of youngsters dealing with impossible crushes (Analeigh Tipton and Jonah Bobo). The film falls into a lot of the normal failures of the genre: it's very predictable and conventional. Everything in this film has been done somewhere else. However, rarely has it been done so well. Crazy Stupid Love funnier than any romantic comedy that I can remember seeing, barring Woody Allen's better films. The characters are all surprisingly nuanced and human, and every single performance felt just right. While the film is disgustingly sweet too frequently, I imagine that all but the most rabid romantic-comedy haters (Not in post- aka me) can find something to enjoy.
4 out of 5 stars
Trespass
Trespass is another one of those home invasion family ransom movies. What makes this one different? It stars Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage. Which actually doesn’t mean anything, since both of them play the predictably “on the rocks” couple who finds that they really do love each other in a crisis. There was at least three points in the film during tense moments that I started to think that Nicolas Cage was going to screw over his family for diamonds, but unfortunately any resemblance to something original was overshadowed by a wave of clichés. Bottom line, skip it.
1 out of 5
This week's new DVD/Blu-ray releases contain some good (Crazy Stupid Love), mostly bad (Trespass) movies--overall a week full of movies that aren't worth the purchase. Let's get started shall we?
Cars 2
Pixar finally makes a misstep with Cars 2, the sequel to 2006's Doc Hollywood rip-off. Why they made a sequel to a film that wasn't one of their bigger hits may be explained by the fact that it plays into their new expansion, Cars Land, into their Disneyland Theme Park (Not to mention the success of Cars-related toy sales). This tells the story of Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson once again) going overseas to race in a competition with his best friend Mater tagging along (...Larry the Cable Guy), who coincidentally gets caught up in spy games...The story is very shallow and predictable, but does contain some laughs admittedly. It's definitely geared towards younger audiences and almost feels direct-to-video in a lot of ways in terms of the direction of the story. It's no nevermind that this was the lowest grossing Pixar movie--audiences couldn't be fooled by a cheap cash-in on a mediocre franchise despite some good attempts at humor.
2.5 out of 5 stars
Water for Elephants
Francis Lawrence's follow-up to I Am Legend is an adaptation of another novel: Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants, a critically acclaimed piece of contemporary literature. . . .starring Twilight's Robert Pattinson and Greasy Reesy Witherspoon. I wasn't too hot about the choice of actors, though I had heard the novel was great, and sadly enough the movie did have its finer moments. Water for Elephants is about a young man that leaves vet school to join a circus, simultaneously falling in love with one of the biggest stars. What follows is a romantic drama that captures some of the allure of the era. While the film does have its interesting moments--all of which are visual--some of the acting is a bit hokey, especially on the end of Pattinson, who can't seem to find a pulse outside of his whole vampiric bullshit. He's more distracting than anything else, and looks and acts awkward throughout the entire movie, which hurt the experience. Overall, not as bad as I thought--and what matters is that it made me want to read the novel.
3 out of 5 stars
Crazy Stupid Love
Crazy Stupid Love follows the romantic foibles of three generations- a middle aged couple coping with the difficulty of keeping marriage together (Steve Carell and Julianne Moore), twenty somethings realizing that love may be more important than sex (Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone), and a couple of youngsters dealing with impossible crushes (Analeigh Tipton and Jonah Bobo). The film falls into a lot of the normal failures of the genre: it's very predictable and conventional. Everything in this film has been done somewhere else. However, rarely has it been done so well. Crazy Stupid Love funnier than any romantic comedy that I can remember seeing, barring Woody Allen's better films. The characters are all surprisingly nuanced and human, and every single performance felt just right. While the film is disgustingly sweet too frequently, I imagine that all but the most rabid romantic-comedy haters (Not in post- aka me) can find something to enjoy.
4 out of 5 stars
Trespass
Trespass is another one of those home invasion family ransom movies. What makes this one different? It stars Nicole Kidman and Nicholas Cage. Which actually doesn’t mean anything, since both of them play the predictably “on the rocks” couple who finds that they really do love each other in a crisis. There was at least three points in the film during tense moments that I started to think that Nicolas Cage was going to screw over his family for diamonds, but unfortunately any resemblance to something original was overshadowed by a wave of clichés. Bottom line, skip it.
1 out of 5
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