Watchlist
Notable DVD releases for September 3, 2013
By Max Braden
September 12, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Here's my watchlist of DVD and cloud releases for the week of:
September 3rd (click the movie title to see the trailer)
Arthur Newman
Who: Colin Firth, Emily Blunt, Anne Heche, Lucas Hedges, Nicole LaLiberte
What: Firth stars in this comedy/drama/romance as a former golf pro named Wallace Avery, who is so disappointed in his own life that he fakes his dead and creates a new life for himself under the name Arthur Newman. Leaving Florida for Indiana, he meets a kindred spirit played by Blunt, and together they start breaking into houses and pretending to live other people's lives. Eventually they will have to commit to an identity and a life.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Recently this summer we had the silly-level comedy Identity Thief. The comedy in Arthur Newman seems far more grounded in drama. Plotwise it reminds me of Ashton Kutcher's grifter film Spread (which coincidentally also featured Heche), in that you have two criminals who come together for the fun of the crime, but then when things get intimate, things get complicated. Pairing Firth and Blunt looks like a good opposites-attract approach, where Firth is the kind of guy who uses an alternate identity to fill a hole or hide from something, where Blunt seems the type to take on different identities just for the fun and the thrill of it.
Empire State
Who: Dwayne Johnson, Liam Hemsworth, Michael Angarano, Emma Roberts, Nikki Reed
What: In this crime thriller, Hemsworth stars as a security guard who sees an opportunity to rob his armored truck company. He and a friend manage to grab millions of dollars in cash, but then have to find a way to hide in plain sight. He's put under pressure by an NYPD detective, played by Johnson, who gets closer and closer to nabbing the thieves. Based on the 1982 robbery of the Sentry Armored Car Courier Company.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Hemsworth recently costarred with Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman in Paranoia, and Johnson has had a big year with Fast & Furious 6 and GI Joe 2, yet here they are in a straight-to-video movie. This looks like it's more Hemsworth's movie, and he seems to be in the same type or role he had in Paranoia (which I don't think he's particularly strong enough to hold as a lead yet). But the movie looks decent, and I'm always up for a heist. The trailer for this movie reminds me of Jason Statham's British heist movie The Bank Job.
The English Teacher
Who: Julianne Moore, Michael Angarano, Greg Kinnear, Lily Collins, Nathan Lane, Fiona Shaw
What: In this comedy drama Moore plays a teacher who runs into a former student (Angarano) and decides to produce his play in her school. Working together on the production puts her at odds with school officials as well as the student's father, played by Kinnear.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Moore certainly has her history of award attention, but sometimes she does serious roles and sometimes she plays loopy, naive characters. This seems like the latter, which will still appeal to fans of hers who enjoy safe and silly light comedy.
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie
Who: Morton Downey Jr., Gloria Allred, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Herman Cain, Chris Elliott, Sally Jessy Raphael, Al Sharpton, Alan Dershowitz, Victoria Jackson
What: A documentary about the loudmouthed, chain-smoking 1980s tv talk show host who was deliberately antagonistic toward his guests and helped influence later talk show style.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: I'd almost forgotten about Morton Downey Jr., but considering he was such a fixture in New York and paved the way for shock-jock shows, watching this would serve as a good reminder of that history.
From Up on Poppy Hill
Who: Masami Nagasawa, Sarah Bolger, Junichi Okada, Anton Yelchin, Keiko Takeshita, Gillian Anderson, Yuriko Ishida, Christina Hendricks, Rumi Hiiragi, Aubrey Plaza, Jun Fubuki, Alex Wolff, Takashi Naitô, Beau Bridges
What: A Japanese animated drama from director Goro Miyazaki
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Goro Miyazaki is the son of Hayao Miyazaki, the director of Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Ponyo. Hayao also wrote the screenplay for From Up on Poppy Hill, so if you're a fan of those animated films, this is likely one you'll be interested in as well.
The Iceman
Who: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, James Franco, David Schwimmer, Robert Davi, Stephen Dorff
What: This crime thriller stars Michael Shannon as a mafia hitman during the 1970s. Based on the true story of Richard Kuklinski, who claimed to have killed over 100 people from the 1950s to his arrest in 1986, all while his wife (portrayed here by Ryder) and children never had a clue. Ray Liotta plays his mob boss.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Michael Shannon appeared as the villain in this year's Superman reboot, but there was something a little too introverted about his performance to serve that film well. But that quality seems perfect for a hitman who needs to blend in among family life while being a killer away from home. Reading about the movie led me to watch the HBO documentary interviews with Kuklinski. He got the moniker "The Iceman" because he froze a corpse to hide its time of death, but what's notable about Kuklinski is that he just didn't care about death, and that icy mentality was what made him so prolific while hiding in plain sight.
The Lords of Salem
Who: Sheri Moon Zombie, Bruce Davison, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Judy Geeson, Meg Foster, Patricia Quinn, Ken Foree, Dee Wallace, Maria Conchita Alonso, director Rob Zombie
What: A horror film set in modern Salem, Massachusetts, starring Sheri Moon Zombie as a DJ who comes across a record by a band that brings back a witch's coven from the 1690s.
When: September 4th - DVD and online on demand
Why: Rob Zombie previously directed House of 1000 Corpses and its sequel, and the 2007 remake of Halloween and its sequel.
Oblivion
Who: Tom Cruise, Andrea Riseborough, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Melissa Leo, Zoe Bell
What: Set six decades in the future, after a nuclear war to stop an alien invasion, this sci-fi thriller stars Cruise as basically the last man on Earth. He and his partner, played by Riseborough, live in a house suspended in air over the devastated remains of Earth, working by day to maintain giant fusion reactors above the ocean and fighting off what seem to be scattered rebel aliens who attack the reactors.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: This is one of my favorite films of the year so far. For one, the cinematography, both the clarity and color, but also the wide scale shots of the landscape, are excellent. The tone of the movie reminded me of a sci-fi movie in the 1980s (like Patrick Swayze's Steel Dawn). I thought the automated sentries were more intimidating than RoboCop.
The Place Beyond the Pines
Who: Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Ben Mendelsohn, Rose Byrne, Mahershala Ali, Bruce Greenwood
What: A crime drama starring Gosling as a motorcycle stuntman who starts performing robberies in order to have money to care for a child he fathered with an ex played by Mendes. Cooper plays a detective who takes down Gosling but finds he has a closer connection to him than just the crimes.
When: September 4th - DVD and online on demand
Why: It's a little bit hard to tell from the trailer for this movie what the "why" is for the characters, and from the movie's description apparently it jumps forward a significant amount of time. That makes me wonder if the filmmakers successfully pulled off what they were trying to do. Reviews at least seem to be pretty strong. Similar to Michael Shannon, Gosling has a good ability to show a smoldering danger beneath a calm exterior. His performance in this movie reminds me of Drive, which I liked a lot.
Stories We Tell
Who: Sarah Polley
What: A documentary by actress Sarah Polley, who recalled childhood jokes that she was the child of an affair, and then found out that it was true.
When: September 3rd - DVD and online on demand
Why: Polley's been in a bunch of movies, and probably has her fans, but what interests me about this documentary was that it came out of an instinct about the truth. And I have an interest in genealogy, so anything that involves family secrets is fascinating to me.
What I'm watching this week:
Although I generally look to bypass blockbusters and tend to want to focus on overlooked independent movies, but this week the blockbuster is almost overlooked and is also one of my favorites of the year. Despite some heavy promotion and starring Tom Cruise, still one of the biggest name actors in the world, Oblivion failed to even reach the $100 million box office status of a summer blockbuster. I suppose you could point out that Oblivion performed similarly to Jack Reacher and Knight & Day, but Oblivion's apocalyptic/alien sci-fi setting seems less "Cruise"-ish than usual, which may be part of the reason it fizzled after an okay opening weekend. That's too bad, because if you didn't see this in theaters you missed out on some fantastic landscape cinematography. That alone is a reason you should still rent this movie, but it also appealed to me because the tone of it felt like a late-1980s sci-fi action adventure.
I haven't seen the other movies this week, and there are two I really want to see. The Place Beyond The Pines appeals to me largely because it's in Ryan Gosling's quiet intensity wheelhouse. The movie's gotten strong reviews, though I'm a little hesitant about what I read about the time-elapsed story structure. The Place Beyond the Pines is Bradley Cooper's next movie following the critical success of Silver Linings Playbook. The other movie I'm most interested in is The Iceman which is also something that fits the lead actor (Shannon) well. I'm equally interested because the source character comes from my neck of New Jersey, and I'm always interested in hitmen movies. There are a few other strong candidates for good movies this week: Arthur Newman stars the always good Colin Firth, and pairs him with the lively Emily Blunt. From Up on Poppy Hill isn't the type of animation that appeals to me, but it's the type that appeals to Oscar voters, so heads up to award watchers.
The documentary Stories We Tell may seem on the service to be a little self-indulgent or overly navel-gazing, but the power of truth being stranger than fiction is compelling, and this movie has gotten very strong reviews. After that set of movies, I'd consider watching Empire State because I like Dwayne Johnson and heist movies, even though he's a supporting actor in this and I don't expect it to be much more interesting than Snitch, and I don't yet have a lot of faith in Hemsworth as a lead. The English Teacher looks like a nice light comedy for fans of Julianne Moore, but it just looks a little soft to me. The Lords of Salem will also probably appeal to core fans of Rob Zombie, but it doesn't look much different to me than standard horror genre, and reviews aren't great. Finally, the documentary Evocateur would be an interesting trip down memory lane about cultural history in New York in the late 1980s, but if Morton Downey Jr. was intolerable for more than a few minutes back then, I'm not sure I'd want to watch a full length movie about him now.
Coming next week:
The Black Waters of Echo Pond, Love is All You Need, Star Trek Into Darkness, Tyler Perry Presents Peeples, Wish You Were Here