Category: Reviews

REVIEW: Shrek Anniversary Edition

REVIEW: Shrek Anniversary Edition

Shrek 25thHard to believe it was just fifteen years ago that DreamWorks introduced us to Shrek. In an attempt to further distance itself from Disney’s fairy tale-driven output, they came up with a contemporary satire that used the very same fairy tales and nursery rhymes but turned them all on their heads with equal doses of charm and cheek.

The first film earned an astonishing $484.4 million worldwide and have us three more films and numerous spinoffs. It helped make gross cool and gave us a delightful soundtrack album with memorable renditions of pop tunes, notably “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.

20th Century Home Entertainment is celebrating with the release of Shrek Anniversary Edition, a single Blu-ray disc containing the film and a bunch of bonus features. There is also the four-film box set with even more green-skinned grossness.

But it all comes down to this first feature, which earned the premiere Academy Award given in the new Best Animated Feature category. All Shrek the ogre (Mike Myers) wants is to be left alone and seems content with his life, until he finds himself dragged into a musical adventure to retain his home, seized by Lord Farquaad (John Lithgow). Along the way he is adopted by Donkey (Eddie Murphy) and falls in love with Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz).

The film, of course, holds up delightfully with clever asides and sight gags, puns, and twists on expected plot turns. The 93 minutes zips right by and you still smile from beginning to end. The high definition transfer is the same as the last Blu-ray release and holds up just fine, as does the Dolby Digital sound.

This set comes with Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD code. The Blu-ray offers up many of the previously released features such as the commentary track with co-directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jensen and producer Aron Warner, deleted scenes, Shrek’s Interactive Journey, Animators Corner, Karaoke Dance Party, Secrets of Shrek, Spotlight on Donkey, and The Best of Shrek Shorts.

It’s a shame there is no anniversary feature looking back but that’s the only black mark on the release.

With Comcast Universal buying DreamWorks, one of their top goals is to revive Shrek, who has quickly faded from sight, and restore him to pop culture’s pantheon of wonderful family fare.

 

Tweeks Review Lucky Penny from Oni Press

If Penny Brighton didn’t have bad luck, she’d have no luck at all…well, Maddy & Anya have the BEST LUCK EVER because Oni Press sent us this amazing book.  It’s about a girl named Penny who gets fired because of her tattoo, loses her apartment, and gets hired working for a 12-year old.  But then she meets a guy at the Community Center where she uses the bathroom and….well if you want to know if Penny starts to adult-up, then get the book!  You won’t regret it. This is the kind of graphic novel with the kind of characters (and a cute a cat) that make you want to read and re-read it and tell everyone you know about it.  We won’t gush too much, but just watch the review and then go buy this for every one you know who needs some good luck or loves rom coms or is a quirky girl. We recommend this for ages 10 & up!

Box Office Democracy: The Conjuring 2

There’s a lot of charm in The Conjuring 2, maybe more than it should considering it takes place in a grey house, on a grey street, in a part of London that seemingly thunderstorms every night. For some reason this family felt more natural, more caring than the families one typically sees in these horror movies— everyone is believed, everyone tries their best to maximize each other’s safety. There’s a sing-along number and a dance and that might just be about maximizing the value of paying for an Elvis song but it’s very sweet in a genre that sometimes feels as if it is just trying to maximize the unpleasantness it can dish out. I’m still far too easily scared by horror movies to consider myself a real fan but this was a nice movie, a movie I don’t regret sitting through.

The Conjuring 2 is based on a true story. They very much want you to know that. They tell you before the movie, they tell you again after and then they spend the first section of the credits showing pictures of the real life people and events next to pictures from the movie. The real life incident is widely considered to be a hoax and learning that really diminished the movie for me. (That feels a little strange to say. I know that nothing in most movies has really happened. Crimson Peak is complete hogwash.) Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers bear no real resemblance to any actual people. The realities of fiction never impede on my enjoyment there, but I think there’s something about being sold very hard on the idea that this is a true story, that this ghost is real that to find out that it’s fairly documented as not real kind of leaves me with a sense of “what did we do all that for then?” that’s pervasive and inescapable.

Between Saw, Insidious, and now The Conjuring, James Wan is responsible for three of the biggest horror franchises of the 21st century, and he’s an undoubted master of his craft. The main demon is a fantastic piece of design work, but what stands out is this stunning sequence early in the film where the demon is a shadow and then manifests through a painting of itself and it sounds kind of basic in text but it’s a series of arresting visuals, the true work of a master. The flip side of this is I am so familiar with Wan’s work at this point that his less ambitious sequences are starting to feel a little paint-by-number. I know that the fire truck is coming back out of the tent. I know that the zoetrope is going to be used to set up a larger scare. I know the ways Wan likes to be scary and when he plays with it it’s amazing, but when he falls back on it it’s starting to feel tired.

I’ve never seen a modern demonic possession movie that I thought had a stand out performance and this is no exception. Madison Wolfe does a good job playing a creepy possessed child, but I’ve seen that so many times that I’m starting to suspect it might be easy. Isn’t every child in the world a little creepy? And the effects seem to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting (heavy levitating?) these days anyway. James Wan horror movies seem to be Patrick Wilson’s entire career at this point, and he’s gotten good at blustery confidence followed by sheer terror in the third act but there’s nothing new in this performance. There’s nothing cringe-y or terrible— it’s just kind of there. The actors feel like they’re just part of the set, the real star is the camera work, the editing, and the sound design.

I’m often unhappy seeing horror movies for work but I didn’t get that this time. We’re probably reaching the end of this phase of James Wan’s career, he wasn’t permanently lured away from horror with Furious 7 but Aquaman is calling… and I have to imagine at some point the prestige of more “mainstream” films will pull him away forever. The Conjuring 2 feels a lot like what I imagine seeing The Rolling Stones is like; they play the hits and while there are probably moments of unexpected delight, what you’re mostly there for is a sense of comfort and familiarity. I feel that nostalgia for Wan’s horror movies at this point and while I didn’t particularly like them, I respect the level of craft and the place in the horror canon. I lost this particular war but I don’t particularly mind the peace.

REVIEW: Vinyl: The Complete First Season

REVIEW: Vinyl: The Complete First Season

Vinyl SD Slipcase 3DMy uncle works in the music business and his heyday was back in the 1970s, so when he recognized the music industry portrayed in HBO’s Vinyl, I took that as an endorsement. Back then, I was buying a new album almost every week (or so it seemed) and was expanding my tastes thanks to the discovery of FM radio. At the time, I never really thought about the business side of music but that came later.

Viewers today can watch people struggle for a career thanks to American Idol and more recently Fox’s Empire. Vinyl, though, takes a look back when sex, drugs, and rock & roll was a lifestyle, not a catchphrase. This was an era that saw popular music splinter every few years so rock begat heavy metal, California rock, and god help us, disco. All of which got rejected simultaneously with the rise of punk and independent artists that redefined the era at decade’s end. There were stars in the making while others were one-hit wonders or aging performers as American Graffiti reintroduced fans to the early days of rock, giving new life to Chuck Berry and others.

Arguably a star in the 1960s and superstar of the 1970s was Mick Jagger so having him co-produce this means it feels right while co-producer Martin Scorsese makes sure it looks right. Our visual memories of the 1970s were brilliantly captured by Scorsese for decades so it’s nice having him give us a weekly dose here. Adding to the gravity such a show needs is the presence of Bobby Canavale, here playing Richie Finestra, founder of American Century Records. His glory days behind him, he’s struggling to keep up with the changing fads and is distracted by his cocaine habit.

We’re in 1973, as Elton John and Alice Cooper begin climbing the charts and diverse talents as Mott the Hopple and Journey formed. Finding the next big thing fuels part of the plot and he claims he’s closing to signing Led Zeppelin, who released Houses of the Holy that year. Yes, some of the threads sound like Empire but that’s the music business and some of these issues are eternal in the field. But Cannavale is the latest in a line of compellingly flawed leads, dating back to James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano.

He’s supported by a nice cast including Jagger’s son James and more familiar faces in Max Casella, Ray Romano, Juno Temple, and Olivia Wilde (being an HBO series, we see plenty of the latter two).

The scripts from Terence Winter and George Mastras, the show is a finely serialized peek at an interesting time in popular music. A little too much time may be devoted to the soap opera aspects and Richie is a little too much of a loser at times, but overall, this is a satisfying production.

Vinyl: The Complete First Season offers up all ten episodes on three discus and the high definition transfer with an AVC encoded 1080p in 1.78:1 looks great. You get the grunge and the shadows of the recording booth. The rundown feel of the 1970s is nicely replicated here and is matched with the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1.

The special features are far too perfunctory with the previously aired Inside the Episodes. There is some interesting Audio Commentary on “Yesterday Once More” with Canavale, Romano, Winter and Allen Coulter, “Whispered Secrets” with Casella, Temple, Winter, Jack Quaid, and Mark Romanek; “E.A.B.” with  Cannavale, Wilde, Winter, Randall Poster, and Meghan Currier.

Additionally, there is Making Vinyl: Recreating the ’70s (18:32) but nothing about the context of the times which would have been far more interesting.

REVIEW: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut

ST_WOK_BD-ORNG_3DHome Video fans have a lot to look forward to as Paramount Home Entertainment releases a variety of Star Trek material this year. First up and arriving Tuesday, just days after its 34th anniversary is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Director’s Cut. This is the first time director Nicholas Meyer’s version of the now-classic film is available on Blu-ray.

There’s little left to say about just how good the film is and looking back, we can easily see the affection both cast and crew put into the production. There was a gamble in bringing in Harve Bennett to produce and Meyer to direct only because neither had been a part of Trek previously and Paramount needed the film to be a major success to salvage the franchise.

Thankfully, Bennett understand the genre and Meyer was a gifted novelist and filmmaker so got down to the core elements. He let the characters age and made that a theme of the film along with the story of revenge using Ricardo Montalban’s driven Khan Noonien Singh. Additionally, Meyer moved away from the bright, sterile Enterprise that Robert Wise envisioned in the first feature. It was darker with, as he put it, “more winkie blinkies”, the lights that made the bridge feel purposeful.

We warmed immediately to the film in part because from the outset the ensemble was present, active, and demonstrating the camaraderie we came to love about the original series. James Horner’s nearly pitch perfect score added an emotional depth coupled with ILM’s cutting edge computer effects.

The Director’s Cut restored three minutes of bits of business and reframed some scenes but didn’t include everything and I still miss the exchange between Spock and Saavik that revealed her to be a Romulan-Vulcan hybrid. The pacing and tension remains intact and the film still rivets you to the seat and brings a lump to your throat as you watch Kirk and Spock say goodbye.

The high definition transfer is solid, working from the original negatives. If anything it’s a little dark and you’re conscious of the film stock’s grain but these are minor quibbles for an older film.  The 7.1 Dolby True HD audio track is a fine complement.

Star Trek The Wrath of KhanAll the original extras from the DVD edition are intact including Meyer’s Audio Commentary on the Theatrical and Director’s Cut, Meyer and Manny Coto’s commentary on the Theatrical version, and Michael & Denise Okluda’s text commentary on the Director’s Cut. Additionally, you get Captain’s Log (27:00) comprised of Designing Khan, Original Interview with DeForest Kelley, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Montalban; Where no man has Gone Before, The Visual Effects of Star Trek II, and James Horner: Composing Genesis.

The Star Trek Universe portion contains looks at Collecting Star Trek’s Movie Relics; A Novel Approach as buddies Greg Cox and Julia Ecklar discuss the Pocket Books program; and Starfleet Academy: The Mystery Behind Ceti Alpha V. You also get Farewell, Meyer’s tribute to Montalban who died in 2009; Storyboards, and the Theatrical trailer.

New to the disc is a 30 minute featurette, The Genesis Effect: Engineering the Wrath of Khan. Here, Meyer, producer Robert Sallin, producer Ralph Winter, and journalists Mark Altman and Larry Nemecek walk you through a condensed version of how the second film in the series was made. Sadly, this was produced after both Bennett and Nimoy passed away last year although Adam Nimoy briefly fills in for his father and Sallin gives Bennett his due. A handful of others, including The Big Bang Theory’s Bill Prady, discuss repeatedly sitting in the theater and reacting to the film, notably Spock’s death. It’s a nice tribute to a wonderful film.

Is it worth owning for the high definition version and 30 minutes of talking heads? That’s purely your choice but for me, I was transported and delighted, sucked in all over again.

Box Office Democracy: X-Men: Apocalypse

The X-Men movies have a fairly high average quality for a franchise going in to its sixth entry. In fact, with the exception of a Brett Ratner directed monstrosity of bloat and pettiness, there isn’t a truly bad film to be found in the bunch. For a stretch of my college career I would have told you X2 was the best superhero movie ever made. I would have been wrong— Unbreakable was a lot better and Spider-Man 2 has held up better over the years if we’re talking strictly licensed fare. But this is a franchise that means something to me so it’s a shame to see them start to slip a little bit. Not that X-Men: Apocalypse is a bad movie or anything, but it’s a frustrating one in many respects and one that could be pointed to some years down the road as the beginning of the end of X-Men as a quality, bankable, brand.

I’m not certain when it became the decree from on high that every X-Men film had to be a period piece but with three in a row and a fourth on the way that definitely seems to be the way things are going. It felt revolutionary with First Class, these characters are timeless in their way and putting them in some historical context is a great way to show off the multi-faceted nature of the material (it’s also a great way to not have to pay some of your more expensive actors but that’s neither here nor there). Days of Future Past was also fun; the time-travelling Wolverine made it all feel a bit more earned, plus it was a great excuse to retcon away some of the worst bits of X-Men: The Last Stand that no one cared for. Now it’s starting to feel a bit unnecessary with another movie another decade later. I’m no longer feeling like these are timeless characters and instead they’re starting to feel dated; like the X-Men are nothing but a nostalgia act. The best X-Men comics I’ve ever read have felt cutting edge, like they were happening six months from now not thirty years in the past. I get that all storytelling eventually feels dated, but at this point I would much prefer them working and reworking things so that older stories felt new instead of constantly telling me how old and quaint the X-Men are.

I understand that if we accept the premise that every X-Men movie has to be a period piece, that recastings will have to be a constant part of the franchise (although all the people from First Class sure don’t look 20 years older but whatever) and I generally like the new blood. Sophie Turner is a great young Jean Grey, although it’s certainly possible the casting is trading on some good will borrowed from Game of Thrones. My only critique of Tye Sheridan as Cyclops is he’s a bit of an emo stick-in-the-mud, but that’s also my critique of Cyclops the comic book character so maybe he’s actually perfect. My only real beef is with casting Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse. You have one of the most charismatic actors in Hollywood riding a hell of a run and you put him in a big suit under a ton of makeup and have him just recite dialogue that would have felt cliché in comics 15 years ago. It’s a staggering waste of an incredible talent. Even my fiancée, a dyed-in-the-wool Isaac fangirl, didn’t even recognize him in the movie until I pointed him out.

It’s not the kind of thing I like to complain about, but I was quite struck with how much the final battle looked like it was taking place in a studio lot. I know that they can’t actually film in a destroyed Cairo or anything but a bunch of people in costumes with no bystanders and some generic looking rubble looks a bit too much like a SyFy channel original movie for my taste. I don’t even know how to fix it and I’m sure I’ve seen a dozen action sequences shot in lots this year alone, but something about this one had me thinking the tour tram could drive by the background at any moment.

I know I’ve crapped on this movie a bit here but I want to emphasize that the stuff the works works so well. Michael Fassbender is amazing as Magneto, displaying a tortured depth to the character that honestly surpasses Ian McKellen’s wonderful but more scenery-chewing effort. Jennifer Lawrence has made Mystique into a character more interesting than her comic book counterpart, and while I’m not entirely sure it lines up narratively with all her other appearances she carries the film through all its bumpy stretches. All of the stuff that’s been working since the reboot still works… it’s just the connective tissue is getting worse and the formula feels a bit more tired. This series needs a kick in the ass, and not in the way a film set ten more years in the future is going to do. Maybe the next Wolverine will be great though.

Tweets Super*Teen*Topia Review

In Super*Teen*Topia we learn that being a teenager and having super human abilities isn’t really how the other  comic books makes it out to believe. It’s more a DIY kind of thing, indestructible costumes & high-tech gadgets aren’t easy to come by and sometimes you don’t even get to pick your own super hero name.  These four teen super-heroes can only fight crime if they can find a ride and they don’t have to be at school.

 

REVIEW: Game of Thrones Seasons 3 and 4 Steelbook Edition

GameOfThrones_SteelbookCollectorSets_S3Game of Thrones has certainly become a cottage industry, spewing forth all manner of collectible and universe expansion, all attempting to profit while filling the void as everyone awaits the sixth volume from writer George R.R. Martin. The next such offerings come from HBO Home Entertainment as they release the steelbook editions of seasons three and four on June 7.

Like the first two seasons, already available, these offer up a few bonuses for collectors or audiophiles. First, the Blu-ray sets are entirely the same as the already available sets with the one difference being that they have all been remastered to offer up Dolby Atmos, the immersive sound system. While PR surrounding the release says you need specific Atmos-enabled AV receivers, other models do access the new soundtracks to full effect (or so the experts tells me).

All ten episodes per season are present along with all the extras. If you don’t care about the Atmos soundtrack, then consider the steelbook packaging, complete with collectible plastic magnets. Consider this, the standard Blu-ray combo pack comes with the DVD and Digital HD copies listing for $50.99 while the steelbook version, without the DVD version, retails for $79.98. Now, yes, they will be heavily discounted but consider what you want as part of your video library.

Season Three, The Twins, comes with the sigil of House of Frey which is appropriate since this was the season of the memorable Red Wedding, drawn from the first half of A Storm of Swords.

GameOfThrones_SteelbookCollectorSets_S4The Wall, the Fourth Season, focuses on the Night’s Watch and the magnet here features a crow and Jon Snow’s sword, Longclaw. This season drew its material from the second half of A Storm of Swords, along with elements of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons.

For the record, seasons one and two came out in November and offer the sigils of House Stark and House Lannister. All four magnets and the steelbook covers are all derived from the immensely watchable opening credits as designed by the Emmy Award-winning firm Elastic. Inspired by the maps that were found in each book of the series, designed by Jonathan Roberts, each episode spotlights different portions of the world that are featured in that episode. There are rules for their usage as outlined by the producers and a complete list of which countries appear on which episodes can be found at the Game of Thrones wiki.

The series certainly bears rewatching to enjoy the performances and relive thrilling moments. The story is rich enough that you can enjoy the foreshadowing and clues laying the ground work for what follows.

Tweets: Check, Please! Review

Hi Everyone! This week it’s just me, Maddy! And because it’s just me, I’m going to share with y’all my favorite web comic, Check Please by Ngozi Ukazu.

Eric Bittle is a pie-baking Georgia boy on an ice hockey scholarship at Samwell University in Massachusetts. That’s all you need to know….go read it! Actually, watch the video first, then go read it!

Oh, but wait….for our younger Tweeks fans or those who can’t abide “strong language” — this is about college hockey players, so there’s some questionable vocabulary in the comic and in the video.

Box Office Democracy: Money Monster

If your internet life is anything like mine you probably saw one too many articles this week on Money Monster and what it meant for the election, or what it meant that George Clooney made this movie and is a Hillary supporter, or why this movie exists when The Big Short already came out. I found it completely exhausting and it wasn’t representative of what this movie actually is. Money Monster isn’t a real piece of analysis about any kind of systemic flaws in our financial system; it’s John Q but with algorithmic trading instead of health care bureaucracy and George Clooney instead of Denzel Washington. It’s a fantasy and an understandable one, but one that feel light on substance and, ultimately, a little garbled.

The big problem Money Monster has is with its casting. George Clooney is a proven commodity as the slick huckster with a heart of gold, and throwing in some Jim Cramer caricature makes it so much better. Julia Roberts is the quintessential put-upon hard-working career woman and she’s firing on all cylinders reunited with Clooney to do a slightly less sexually charged version of their shtick from Ocean’s Eleven. Clooney and Roberts are fantastic but they pull focus from the character the movie should be about, the guy who is so angry with the injustice of the financial system he needs to take hostages, Kyle Bludwell. Kyle is played by English actor Jack O’Connell, who you might know from his turn on the British drama Skins or his medium-sized part in 300: Rise of an Empire, but who you probably don’t remember from anything. He does a good job and is honestly acting his ass off at certain points in this film, but even in those big moments it’s hard not be transfixed by the bigger stars on the screen. It makes Kyle’s rage about the injustices of our system and the lack of accountability seem like the less important problems than the dining habits of a TV host, and that seems antithetical to the movie’s message.

If we ignore the central political issue, and it sort of feels like the film wants us to, there’s perfectly good filmmaking in here. The studio hostage scenes are tense and it especially does a good job focusing on the fear and menace that the gun represents. The mystery elements feel sufficiently twisty and surprising, although my fiancée pointed out in the car home that it all really gets solved by one person asking one question to the right regulatory body and maybe it all would have come out without the events of the film but I can let that go. There are even some good moments of levity, which can be hard to balance with a film that wants to be on the edge of overwrought all the time. It’s nice to see Jodie Foster back directing features and she gets good work out of her actors, it’s just a shame to see the parts add up to less than a coherent whole.

There’s no way anyone in Hollywood sat in their office and said, “we’re going to make a movie about the financial crisis and we’re going to cast George Clooney and Julia Roberts and it’ll get middling reviews and open in third place in mid-May.” That’s just not how anything works. The previews we saw before this movie were prestige films with festival accolades and pre-made awards pitches, and it was like seeing the potential Money Monster was going to fail to live up to. This could have been a powerful statement on any number of topics, but instead was okay with being a good thriller and an offbeat character piece. Money Monster wants to be a big and important movie but it doesn’t get there, it doesn’t have a strong enough point of view or clarity of vision.

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