ANIMAL KINGDOM (2010). Crime flicks are so commonplace, so been-there-done-that, that one trick isn't in avoiding the clichés and stereotypes but rather in mixing them up so that viewers are never sure which characters will exhibit the expected behavior. The Australian drama Animal Kingdom follows suit: It knows that boys will be boys and boys with guns will be dangerous, but its pleasures rest in tripping up our preconceived notions of its players. Newcomer James Frecheville stars as J, who moves in with his Grandma Smurf (Jacki Weaver) and his uncles after his mom ODs. All — even the matriarch — are involved in illegal activities, and J soon starts to follow down their path. But an honest cop (Guy Pearce) thinks that J can be turned, so he begins to mentally work on him. Pearce is such a fine actor that he keeps the script's dullest role interesting; luckily, nobody else has to contend with such a challenge. A seemingly wimpy character turns out to be the most dangerous of all; a major player primed to be around for the long haul gets blown away in the early going; a hair-trigger psycho doesn't fulfill his obligations as an evil antagonist; and so on. In Animal Kingdom, it isn't necessarily the strongest who survive, an example of writer-director David Michod's continuous efforts to goose the genre.
DVD extras include audio commentary by Michod; a 16-minute making-of piece; and a 34-minute Q&A session with Michod, Frecheville and Weaver.
Movie: ***
Extras: **1/2
THE A-TEAM (2010). "Overkill is underrated," opines group leader "Hannibal" Smith (Liam Neeson) at one point during the course of The A-Team. Clearly, the man isn't talking about Hollywood action flicks, wherein the whole point of many of these heavily hyped efforts is to render everything louder, larger and more expensive. Still, as far as costly packages go, this is one of the better ones in recent memory. The film is of course based on the TV series that aired during the middle stretch of the 1980s. The series was crapola, a cheesy crash'n'smash rally that often played like The Dukes of Hazzard stripped of the hick accents. This film is occasionally cheesy in its own way, but it's also far smarter than the series ever was. As B.A., Quinton "Rampage" Jackson isn't nearly as memorable as Mr. T — the latter always looked like he could beat you to a pulp just by staring — but in the case of the other three actors (Neeson, Bradley Cooper and Sharlto Copley), they're improvements over their small-screen counterparts. They provide the human hook that draws us into the action, much of it more imaginative than what we usually encounter in CGI-heavy efforts: The cheerfully ridiculous sequence involving the "flying tank" rates a half-star all by itself. The A-Team is basically a B-movie writ large, and in that respect, it gets the job done.
The Blu-ray includes both the theatrical version as well an extended cut (15 minutes longer). Extras include audio commentary by writer-director Joe Carnahan, with optional interactive features; a 29-minute making-of piece; six deleted scenes; an 8-minute gag reel; and a 23-minute look at the central characters.
Movie: ***
Extras: ***
BURIED (2010). Buried's solitary honor during this award season has been an unexpected Best Original Screenplay citation from the National Board of Review, which is a crock when it's really the film's direction that deserves to be singled out. Chris Sparling's high-concept script admittedly has a crafty hook: A man wakes up in a coffin and spends the next 95 minutes of screen time trying to get out of it. The poor sap in question is Paul Conroy, a truck-driving contractor who just happened to be in the wrong place (Iraq) at the wrong time (an ambush on a convoy of trucks). Buried by Middle Eastern heavies demanding a ransom for his unearthing and safe return, Paul lays in the ground with only a cell phone, a lighter and a couple of other items at his disposal. The entire film takes place inside that box, and it's a testament to director Rodrigo Cortes' skill that he's able to keep the camera — and therefore the action — moving at all times. But his work is somewhat compromised by Sparling's extremely cynical plot points, most relating to the string of phone calls which Paul makes to people who either turn out to be unfeeling, imbecillic or incoherent (even a call to his mom ends badly). Sparling trowels on the misfortunes with a heavy hand, and his treatment of his central character as little more than a pawn doesn't jibe with Reynolds' heartfelt performance in the role. Buried is never less than interesting, but its full potential always remains just beneath the surface.
Blu-ray extras include an 18-minute making-of piece and theatrical trailers.
Movie: **1/2
Extras: **
CYRUS (2010). The laughs don't always come easy — but, oh, they do come — in Cyrus, a dark comedy that repeatedly dances so close to uncomfortable territory that viewers figure it's only a matter of time before it topples right over into the taboo. John C. Reilly plays John, a lonely guy who hits it off with the sweet Molly (Marisa Tomei). But John soon comes to discover that Molly lives with her 21-year-old son Cyrus (Jonah Hill), and the dynamics between mother and son — these two seem really close — makes John uneasy. But neither he nor Molly want to mess up a good thing, so they work on building a lasting union — one that the dependent and jealous Cyrus will do anything to sabotage. The vicious feud between John and Cyrus provides the movie with much of its black-hearted humor, and the suspense over the depths of the parent-child bond supplies the unease. Yet for all its edginess, this isn't a cruel comedy by any means. Instead, it's as much a sympathetic study of lonely souls striving to make (or keep) connections, and Tomei, Reilly and even the limited Hill (who's perfectly cast here) all deliver raw performances that help us understand their behavior. The biggest surprise regarding Cyrus, then, is that it's ultimately as sweet as it is sour.
Blu-ray extras include two deleted scenes; an 8-minute Q&A with writer-directors Jay and Mark Duplass; a 4-minute music mash-up with Reilly and Hill; and interviews with Reilly and Hill.
Movie: ***
Extras: **
THE LAST EXORCISM (2010). The prospect of journeying to Hell and back seems less daunting than sitting through another horror yarn made in the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project, but this one proves to be a pleasant surprise. Director Daniel Stamm uses a faux cinema verite style to milk a lot of tension out of this feature in which the disillusioned Reverend Cotton Marcus (Patrick Fabian) takes along a documentary crew to perform an exorcism in some remote Louisiana hellhole, to prove that exorcisms are bogus and merely prey upon the superstitions of rubes. Cotton thinks he's found a perfect showcase as devout farmer Louis Sweetzer (Louis Herthum) insists that his sweet teenage daughter Nell (Ashley Bell) is demonically possessed. After some initial scoffing, Cotton realizes that there is indeed something wrong with the girl, but is it merely psychological trauma or is Satan really hanging around? Propelled by unexceptionally fine performances from Fabian and Bell, this creepy yarn builds to a powerhouse ending that would be even stronger were it not so choppy and truncated. In fact, too many unanswered questions prevent this movie from soaring to even greater heights. Still, as a deftly executed piece of unsettling cinema, it's only fair to give Daniel Stamm — and the devil — their due.
Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Daniel Stamm and actors Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell and Louis Herthum; separate audio commentary by producers Eli Roth, Eric Newman and Thomas A. Bliss; another audio commentary with an alleged haunting victim, a deliverance minister and a clinical psychologist; the text of the protection prayer; and the 2009 Cannes Film Festival teaser trailer.
Movie: ***
Extras: ***
MACHETE (2010). More fun than a barrel of Sylvester Stallone DVDs, Machete is gleeful trash that delivers on the promise it held when it was just a twinkle in creator Robert Rodriguez's eye, as one of the mock trailers shown in 2007's Grindhouse. Everything about Machete is so over the top that it's impossible to feel as if one's morals are being compromised: When a movie quickly moves from a sequence in which the title bad-ass (played by Danny Trejo) decapitates several men with one swift 360-degree turn to a scene in which a naked woman retrieves a hidden cell phone from her vajayjay, it's clear that nothing is to be taken seriously. As expected, the Mexicans are the heroes, demanding to be treated like people and eager to have a crack at the American Dream. On the other side are the rich Texas fat cats determined to keep them down, including a right-wing Senator (Robert De Niro) who guns down illegal border crossers when he's not busy hitting the campaign trail. Machete is coerced into taking out this slimy politico, but he quickly realizes he's been double-crossed, and he has to rely on two women (Michelle Rodriguez and Jessica Alba) to help him out. Whether it's a beefy Steven Seagal or a topless Lindsay Lohan, viewers never quite know who or what Machete will throw at them next.
Blu-ray extras include 10 deleted scenes; an audience reaction track; and the red band theatrical trailer.
Movie: ***
Extras: **
SECRETARIAT (2010). Until the Sports Illustrated subscription runs out at the Walt Disney Studios offices, I expect audiences will continue to be privy to cookie-cutter yarns centered around notable achievements in the sports world. Secretariat is the latest from the studio stable, and it relates the truly remarkable story of the magnificent racehorse that set records while winning the Triple Crown in 1973 (and simultaneously appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated while doing so). The races are exciting, but to get to these sequences, we're forced to wade through a lot of vanilla material about the difficulties faced by Secretariat's determined owner Penny Chenery (typically reliable Diane Lane) and flamboyant trainer Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich, taking neither his role nor the movie seriously). Despite these tepidly staged interludes, the overall picture isn't quite as bland as, say, The Rookie or Miracle. Still, the staidness made me long for the studio's earlier sports flick Alive — at least that one had rugby players munching down on each other.
Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Randall Wallace; seven deleted scenes; a discussion with the real Penny Chenery; a multi-angle simulation of Secretariat's 1973 Preakness run; and the music video for AJ Michalka's "It's Who You Are."
Movie: **1/2
Extras: ***
STONE (2010). Has Robert De Niro been replaced by a pod person straight out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Once a national treasure, he hasn't delivered a truly noteworthy performance since Clinton was in the Oval Office. There's an obvious difference between elegant underplaying and merely going through the motions, and while, say, Michael Caine still excels at the former, De Niro has sadly become a master of the latter. Here, he plays Jack Mabry, a parole officer assigned to a tough guy nicknamed Stone (Edward Norton). After eight years in prison, Stone wants out, and he involves his sultry wife (Milla Jovovich) in his dealings with Jack; that of course translates into her carrying on an affair with the unhappily married lawman. Both Jack and Stone are seeking some form of spiritual salvation, and it's this added layer of complexity that paradoxically elevates the movie even as it's dooming it. Scripter Angus MacLachlan clearly has a lot on his mind — in addition to the characters' soul-searching, he also hopes to show how the respectable parole officer is as morally bankrupt as the incarcerated criminal — but everything about the film remains doggedly murky and unconvincing. A failed attempt at something meaningful, Stone sinks under the weight of its own poorly realized ambitions.
DVD extras include a 6-minute making-of piece and theatrical trailers.
Movie: *1/2
Extras: *1/2
