Perusing the New Release rack for the week finds a pair of mid-budget action pictures with a splash of romance. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt fight the power in "The Adjustment Bureau" (Universal) a high concept romantic fantasy with a team of supernatural secret agents with great hats and a dash of metaphysical science fiction (reviewed on Videodrone here), while Liam Neeson gets down and dirty when he wakes up from a coma to find his identity stolen and his ice-queen wife (January Jones) in on the theft in "Unknown" (Warner). Reviewed on Videodrone here.

 

Sleeper of the week is "Cedar Rapids" (Fox), a low-key comedy starring Ed Helms in fine form as the good-hearted small town naïf who learns the facts of life—without losing his essential idealism—in a "big city" insurance convention. Director Miguel Arteta ("Youth in Revolt") has an easy way with performers and a smooth hand with ensembles. He makes this oddball group of amiably geeky insurance salespeople (John C. Reilly, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Anne Heche) good company to be in, largely because has fun with them, rather than at their expense. Helms' Tim Lippe may not worldly but he has conviction, compassion and loyalty in abundance and those qualities are rare in the leading men of American comedies. More from MSN film critic Glenn Kenny here.

The DVD offers little comic featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel. The Blu-ray adds bonus interviews with director Arteta and screenwriter Phil Johnson (originally made at cable promos) and members of the cast, plus a BD-Live exclusive featurette with Ed Helms at play and bonus digital copy.

 

Less essential is "The Eagle" (Universal), starring Channing Tatum as a stalwart Roman officer in 2nd Century Britain seeking the secret of the lost Ninth Legion and Jamie Bell as the British slave turned sword-and-sandal buddy-film partner. Based on a young adult novel and inspired by the real-life mystery of the Roman legion that marched into Northern England and disappeared without a trace, it's quite a confused picture, not sure whether the Romans are the good guys or the imperialist dogs, and the friendship between oppressor and slave is unconvincing.

"Given such juicy history and exotic terrain, this ought to be a compelling saga of warring cultures, unlikely friendship and a young man's costly quest for lost honor," agrees MSN film critic Kat Murphy. "But "The Eagle" fails to soar, thanks largely to Kevin Macdonald's unimaginative direction and Channing Tatum's charisma-challenged performance."

 

The DVD features both the theatrical version and an unrated cut of the film, plus director commentary, the featurette "The Eagle: Making of a Roman Epic," deleted scenes and an alternate ending. The Blu-ray adds the usual (and largely gratuitous) BD-Live interactive supplements and a bonus digital copy of the film.

 

For kids and families:

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" (Fox), the second chapter in the saga, "plays out in some time-warp bubble, a boring mishmash of Sunday school sermonizing and '50s sitcom starring a blanded-up Beaver encumbered by parents seriously lacking in IQ points," in the words of MSN film critic Kat Murphy. And a late arrival from last week is another unnecessary sequel: "Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son" (Fox), the third comedy with Martin Lawrence doing the Tyler Perry Madea-thing as an undercover FBI agent. "Clowning around underneath that fat suit must be exhausting," observes Adam Markovitz in Entertainment Weekly. "Almost as much as watching it."

Arthouse and indie:

"happythankyoumoreple​​ase" (Anchor Bay), a comedy from "How I Met Your Mother" star Josh Radner, follows the trajectories of various twentysomethings (Malin Akerman, Kate Mara, Zoe Kazan and Radnor among them) looking for themselves in New York City, while "Elektra Luxx" (Sony) drops its ensemble comedy in the L.A. Porn industry, which writer/director Sebastian Gutierrez manages to populate with an impressive indie cast (Carla Gugino, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Timothy Olyphant, Adrianne Palicki, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Akerman again). "Ceremony" (Magnolia) stars Uma Thurman as the older woman object of Michael Angarano's desire.

 

On the drama side of the equation is "Harvest" (Monterey), with Robert Loggia as the aging patriarch facing his mortality as a family reunion, and "Bedways" (Strand), an erotic drama from Germany. "Bending All The Rules" (Lionsgate) is actually a 2002 romantic drama resurrected from oblivion to cash in on the fame of leading man Bradley Cooper.

 

And the rest:

The direct-to-DVD sequel "You Got Served: Beat the World" (Sony) takes the hip-hop franchise to the world championship dance-off in Detroit, plus there's the horror film "Playing House" (Maya) and the documentary "To Live and Ride in L.A." (Trafik), which profiles the fixed-gear bicycle culture.

 

For more on DVD this week, visit weekly DVD listings in MSN.

 

Liam Neeson gets down and dirty when he wakes up from a coma to find his identity stolen and his wife (January Jones) in on the theft in "Unknown" (Warner).

 

Though not any kind of sequel to "Taken," the English-language Euro-action film that managed to turn the dignified actor into the kind of action hero where experience and guile trump youth and arrogance, it promises a return to that territory, this time with Neeson as an American intellectual in Berlin for a biotech conference. By the time he pulls himself from a near-fatal detour into the river, he's either the victim of a conspiracy or he's really lost his mind. Diane Kruger is the German cab driver who reluctantly signs on to his tour through the Berlin underworld to find out the truth and Bruno Ganz and Frank Langella take small roles with big footprints.

See an MSN Exclusive clip from the DVD/Blu-ray release below

"Director Jaume Collet-Serra classes up his act after the opportunistic pseudo-thrills of "House of Wax" and "Orphan" and applies his studio-approved technical proficiency to something a little more, erm, substantive, which at least yields some better-than-acceptab​le suspense/action set pieces," writes MSN film critic Glenn Kenny. "And January Jones, as the aforementioned trophy wife, looks fabulous."

 

Still, he warns audiences to approach with measured expectations. "Turn off your "I hope this plot twist is awesome" part of your brain and just enjoy big, gruff, increasingly Frankenstein-monster​-looking Neeson kicking the crap out of everyone who gets in his way, pausing only occasionally to register that existential anxiety that comes with literally not knowing who one is."

Andrew O'Hehir, over at Salon, is even more impressed, proclaiming it "a stylish and muscular thriller with some nifty twists and turns, a wicked sense of humor, several terrific performances and not one or even two but three of the best car chases in recent action-flick history."

 

The DVD features "Unknown: What Is Known?," a promo piece that barely qualifies as a featurette at under five minutes, and the Blu-ray adds another, just-as-brief micro-featurette, "Liam Neeson: Known Action Hero." There's also a Blu-ray+DVD Combo pack with a bonus digital copy of the film for portable media players.

 

Just for fun, check out Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's essay on what he hopes will become it's very own subgenre: the Liam Neeson Euro-Thriller.

 

"Kiss Me Deadly" (Criterion)

Robert Aldrich's 1955 film noir apocalypse "Kiss Me Deadly" is unlike any other noir ever made. From the opening scene, where Cloris Leachman (naked under a trenchcoat) runs barefoot down a coastal highway flagging down cars, to the Pandora's Box scream of destruction unleashed in the finale, it pushes the conventions past the breaking point.  

 

Ostensibly based on Mickey Spillane's hugely successful pulp novel, Aldrich and screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides turned the story inside, transforming it into a white-hot blast of tawdry pulp and film noir cynicism for the atomic age. Aldrich had just come off of "Vera Cruz," a mercenary western that looks forward to the cynical opportunism of the spaghetti westerns, and that tone carries over to "Kiss Me Deadly." Mike Hammer is turned into a blithely amoral opportunist, a corrupt private detective who specializes in divorce cases (a "bedroom dick," in the parlance) and stumbles into a conspiracy that he thinks he can parlay into a payoff, and Ralph Meeker plays him with a perpetual sneer of a smile and an arrogance that is rarely justified. This is a guy who pimps out it secretary/lover Velda (Maxine Cooper) between smooches and makes a play for almost every beauty who crosses his path.

 

"Kiss Me Deadly" delivers a pulp punch while it savagely satirizes the entire hardboiled mythos with its bare-knuckle brutality, flights of purple prose dialogue and the sheer he-man chauvinism of its dogged hero of scar tissue and street smarts, who isn't nearly as smart as he thinks he is. Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to it in "Pulp Fiction" (and, before that, so Alex Cox in "Repo Man"). Mickey Spillane hated it. I love it. Va-va-voom! Pow!

Criterion gives the film, previously available on an indifferent DVD from MGM, the special edition treatment on the beautifully remastered DVD and Blu-ray releases.

 

It features detailed, in-depth commentary by film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, a video tribute by director Alex Cox, excerpts from documentaries on screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides and author Mickey Spillane, a video tour of the film's locations then and now, the altered ending that was seen for years before the 1998 restoration and a booklet with a new essay by J. Hoberman and an archival article written by Robert Aldrich for the New York Herald-Tribune, defending the film during the controversy over its violence. (You can read J. Hoberman's essay from the booklet at Criterion Current here.)

And if that's not enough reason, the inspired art direction, recalling not just a lurid "True Detective" cover but the entire pulp magazine through the pages of the booklet, is icing on the radioactive cake.

Gary Toozes gives his approval to the Blu-ray at DVD Beaver here.

 

"Louie: The Complete First Season" (Fox)

New York comedian Louis C.K. designed his first (short-lived) sitcom (which he made for HBO) around the life of a thirtysomething guy with a wife and young family. Now he's a divorced father of two and his life is once again the inspiration for his amazing FX series "Louie," a sitcom by strict definition but not like any you've ever seen. Playing essentially a version of himself, he's a working comedian, a devoted (if sometimes overwhelmed and confused) dad and a fumbling forty two-year-old single man in a dating scene he doesn't feel comfortable in and shows work through these and other situations (a visit to the doctor, taking on a heckler) without the usual sitcom structure.

 

Like "Seinfeld," the shows are framed by his stand-up act but the resemblance ends there. Drawing from everyday events of his own life, "Louis" finds the absurdity in the mundane and pushes the envelope of offensiveness and discomfort as it explores the very concept of what is offensive and why. And sometimes Louis C.K., who also writes and directs every episode of the first season, creates sublime moments of humanity captured under the lens. "Bully" (episode 9) is like nothing else I've seen on TV, at once uncomfortable, frustrated, scared, angry, curious and, finally, open to the fact that life is complicated beyond our ability to encompass and the best that we can do is share our limited understanding with one another.

 

But don't get scared off by that. The show is also funny, consistently surprising and daring. It defies the conventions of sitcom structures with stories that have the shape of an extended comedy skit by way of a John Cassavetes improvisation. Except that it's funny. Check out this New York Magazine profile of Louis C.K. and his creative approach to the show:

But perhaps the most unusual aspect of the show is that Louis C.K. gets no notes from the network during filming, no script approval—an ­unheard-of “Louis C.K. deal” that has made him the envy of comics and TV writers alike. It’s a situation Louis is not taking for granted.

"Louie: The Complete First Season" features all 13 half-hour episodes in a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo set (the Blu-ray on one side of the disc, the DVD on the other), plus commentary by Louis C.K. on 11 of the 13 episodes, a little over 30 minutes of deleted and extended scenes with introductions by Louie C.K. and a short promotional featurette. The second season begins

I meant to include a clip from the show but, so help me, I couldn't find a one that would be safe for all audiences.

 

Videodrone's thumbnail view of the biggest, coolest and cultist releases of the week.

 

New Releases:

Perusing the New Release rack for the week finds a pair of mid-budget action pictures with a splash of romance. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt fight the power in "The Adjustment Bureau" (Universal) a high concept romantic fantasy with a team of supernatural secret agents with great hats and a dash of metaphysical science fiction (reviewed on Videodrone here), while Liam Neeson gets down and dirty when he wakes up from a coma to find his identity stolen and his ice-queen wife (January Jones) in on the theft in "Unknown" (Warner). Reviewed on Videodrone here.

 

Less essential is "The Eagle" (Universal), starring Channing Tatum as a stalwart Roman officer in 2nd Century Britain seeking the secret of the lost Ninth Legion. Sleeper of the week is "Cedar Rapids" (Fox), a low-key comedy starring Ed Helms in fine form as the good-hearted small town naïf who learns the facts of life—without losing his essential idealism—in a "big city" insurance convention.

Browse the complete New Release Rack here.

 

TV on DVD:

Catch up with "Louie: The Complete First Season" (Fox), Louis C.K.'s quasi-autobiographic​al sitcom about a recently divorced comedian with two young daughters and an awkward reintroduction to the dating scene, on DVD and Blu-ray before the new season begins. In an age where cable keeps trying to push the envelope of acceptable material, "Louie" tosses it out there and then confronts it head on: racism, homophobia, politics, sex, all of it, done smartly and with a sense of humor. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

 

"Medium: The Seventh and Final Season" (Paramount) wraps one of the most underrated shows on TV, a family drama wrapped in a supernatural mystery, and "The Closer: The Complete Sixth Season" (Warner) brings back the most well-oiled detective squad on TV as the new season begins. Animation fans will appreciate the debut of the Nickelodeon original "Rocko's Modern Life: Season One" (Shout! Factory).

Flip through the TV on DVD Channel Guide here

 

Cool, Classic and Cult:

Criterion gives the special edition treatment to "Kiss Me Deadly" (Criterion), Robert Aldrich's atomic age reworking of Mickey Spillane. Some have called it the greatest film noir of all time; it is certainly the most apocalyptic and one of the most brutal, and it delivers a pulp punch while it savagely satirizes the entire hardboiled mythos. Mickey Spillane hated it. I love it. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

 

The rediscovery this week comes via "Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas: Eclipse Series 27" (Criterion/Eclipse),​ four overheated Italian melodramas from the late forties/early fifties, where Catholic morality meets the emotional storms of tormented lover and villainous schemers in wickedly twisted plots. And the feature debut of Todd Haynes gets a new edition in "Poison: 20th Anniversary Edition" (Zeitgeist).

 

On the cult front comes the notorious 1974 TV movie "Born Innocent" (Hen's Tooth), starring Linda Blair as a girl chewed up in the juvenile justice system, and the new SyFy original "Mega Python vs. Gatoroid" (Image) starring Debbie Gibson, Tiffany and giant swamp creatures on steroids and on the rampage. Plus "The Women in Cages Collection: The Big Bird Cage / The Big Doll House / Women in Cages" (Shout! Factory), a trio of women in prison films introducing Pam Grier. Reviewed on Videodrone here.

 

Build Your Library Essential of the Week:

"Kiss Me Deadly" (Criterion) – Beautifully remastered for DVD and Blu-ray, the new edition features commentary by film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, a video tribute by director Alex Cox, excerpts from documentaries on screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides and author Mickey Spillane, a video tour of the film's locations then and now, the altered ending that was seen for years before the 1998 restoration and a booklet with new and archival pieces.

The complete calendar of releases this week is after the jump:

 

"The Adjustment Bureau" (Universal)

Who would have guessed that men with hats are responsible for the fate of the world? Seriously, according to this film a bunch of guys who dress like the cast of "Mad Men" (and for that matter includes a co-star of "Mad Men" with his wardrobe intact) are rewriting the narrative of our lives: changing bad decisions, repairing mistakes and erasing the evidence of their intrusion. Kind of like moving the furniture around while we're not looking and then convincing us it was never otherwise, and all for our own good.

 

It's a fun premise and one of the more playful bits of Big Brother paranoia in the canon of Philip K. Dick, whose ideas are as endlessly borrowed by Hollywood as they are misunderstood. Or ignored. By the time writer/director George Nolfi is done with his adaptation of the PDK short story "Adjustment Team," all that's left is a premise for a romantic adventure about how the power of love overcomes the near-magical interference of God's secret service detail.

 

Given that, Matt Damon is a likable hero as the underdog political hopeful undone by his past mistakes and Emily Blunt is appealing as a modern dancer with her own impulse issues. They meet cute (in the men's room, where it turns out they are both hiding out), she inspires him, and the adjustment bureau goes into action to unravel the "damage" of a love affair that blossoms when they fail to intercept another chance meeting. It's kind of cool as they leap all over New York City through doors that, for them, open up to shortcuts across town (it's all in the hats, I tell ya), and it makes for a lively climactic chase and a whirlwind tour through the Big Apple, which is photographed to striking effect by cinematographer John Toll. Too bad the film doesn't have anything else to offer besides the chemistry between the photogenic leads, the handsome location shooting and the usual bromides of risking all for true love.

 

"It's a hyper-adrenalized date movie, one that owes far more to Nicholas Sparks than Philip K. Dick," observes MSN film critic James Rocchi. "The sentiment of "The Adjustment Bureau" isn't necessarily what sinks it, but the overexplained softened edges of the story turn what could have been an exceptional brain-bender into a good, but fairly standard-issue, heart-warmer."

 

The DVD and Blu-ray releases feature practical but dull commentary by director/screenwrite​r George Nolfi, who dutifully walks us through his choices and creative paths without offering anything resembling artistic inspiration or excited engagement with the film. "Leaping Through New York" is an eight-minute tour of the significant locations of the film and a quick explanation of how the startlingly simple effects were accomplished but the rest of the featurettes (the promo-piece "Destined to Be" and the Emily Blunt profile "Becoming Elise") are pretty uninformative. The six deleted/extended scenes are notable mostly for revealing a deleted character who was wisely removed from the film; his personality would have completely ruined upset the tone that Nolfi set.

 

Exclusive to the Blu-ray is "The Labyrinth of Doors," an interactive map of New York that invites the viewer to follow the paths of the doors and offers various behind-the-scenes clips. Unlike a lot of the gimmicky interactive supplements tossed onto Blu-ray discs, this one is both fun and revealing.

 

Here's what's new and notable on DVD and Blu-ray this week as featured on Videodrone

New Releases:

"Battle: Los Angeles" – The aliens have landed? Call the Marines!

"Red Riding Hood" is Not So Little in This Version

"Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen" with Donnie Yen

New Release Round-Up: Owen Wilson and Jason Sudekis get a "Hall Pass," plus "Monogamy," "Kill the Irishman" and "36th Precinct"

 

TV on DVD:

"Haven: Season One" – Welcome to Stephen King's World

"The Glades: Season One" – The Cable Cop Show Formula Goes to Florida

Cult Watch/TV on Blu-ray: The Road Show Ride of "Supernatural"

TV on DVD Round-Up: Sherlock's Inspiration and Early "Doctor Who"

 

The Cool and the Collectible:

The Ultimate "Harry Potter," Years Five and Six

Claude Chabrol: The Good, the Bad and The Ugly on DVD

"The Makioka Sisters" and "Insignificance" from Criterion, plus Radley Metzger, Claude Sautet and more "Jackass"

 

Blu-ray Debuts:

Cult Watch/TV on Blu-ray: The Road Show Ride of "Supernatural"

Blu-ray Round-up: Martin Scorsese's "New York, New York," plus "The Boondock Saints" "Vera Cruz," "The Long Riders" and more

Coming next week:

"The Adjustment Bureau" (Universal)

"Unknown" (Warner)

"The Eagle" (Universal)

"Cedar Rapids" (Fox)

"Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules" (Fox)

"happythankyoumoreple​​​ase" (Anchor Bay)

"Kiss Me Deadly" (Criterion)

"Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas: Eclipse Series 27" (Criterion/Eclipse)

"Poison: 20th Anniversary Edition" (Zeitgeist)
"Louie: The Complete First Season" (Fox)

"Rocko's Modern Life: Season One" (Shout! Factory)

"The Closer: The Complete Sixth Season" (Warner)

"Medium: The Seventh and Final Season" (Paramount)

"The Island" (Blu-ray) (Paramount)

Click here for more Coming Soon on DVD/Blu-ray

 

It may not be the big Blu-ray news this week, but I got caught up in the new Blu-ray release of the season of the cult CW series "Supernatural." I don't believe in guilty pleasures so make what you will of my guilt-free pleasure here.

"New York, New York" (MGM)

Start spreading the news. Martin Scorsese's take on the American musical is as characteristically volatile and idiosyncratic one would expect from the still-young auteur. Robert De Niro is a jazz saxophone player with dreams of fronting his own band and Liza Minnelli is an aspiring vocalist he meets in the celebrations of V-J Day. They may make beautiful music together, but their artistic impulses are at odds and their romance is all sparks and clashes. While not Scorsese's best film—it's all ambition and no discipline—his love of the classic musicals and the Hollywood studio style is all over the film, while his own instincts for improvisation and dramatic collision plays counterpoint to the gloss. Dan Callahan offers an insightful essay on the film at Altscreen here: "A downbeat homage to bright-lights showbiz dramas, an epic orchestration that indulges in stubbornly obsessive riffs, Martin Scorsese’s "New York, New York" (1977) seems to value awkwardness and indecision above all else."

Features the supplements of the previous DVD special edition: commentary by director Martin Scorsese and film critic Carrie Rickey, select scene commentary by cinematographer Lazlo Kovacs, the two-part, 52-minutes documentary "The New York, New York Stories" (with interviews with Scorsese, producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, and cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs), the interview featurette "Liza on New York, New York," an introduction by Martin Scorsese, 25 minutes of alternate takes and deleted scenes, a still gallery, the original trailer. And it sports great Al Hirschfeld cover art.

"The Boondock Saints: Truth and Justice Edition" (Fox) - Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus are Irish brothers who believe vengeance is theirs when the Russian mob muscles into their South Boston neighborhood, and Willem Dafoe is the FBI agent torn between duty and secret support as he tracks them down through the trail of corpses they leave behind. Troy Duffy's 1999 American indie created a bidding war as script, flopped upon release and all but destroyed the career of its arrogant writer/director (as chronicled in the scathing documentary "Overnight"). On video, however, it turned into a minor cult hit and a Blu-ray release was just a matter of time.

 

Just in time for the 10th Anniversary comes the Blu-ray debut, a two-disc collection with both the theatrical version and unrated director's cut of the film and the new featurette "The Boondock Saints: The Film and the Phenomenon." Carried over from the previous DVD special edition are two commentary tracks (one by writer/director Troy Duffy, the other by actor Billy Connolly), deleted scenes and outtakes.

"Vera Cruz" (MGM) – Robert Aldrich’s cynical South of the Border adventure is an undeniable inspiration for the Italian spaghetti westerns of the 1960s. Southern gentleman turned hard-bitten adventurer Gary Cooper teams up with mercenary Burt Lancaster, a perpetually grinning bandit king in black, to steal a fortune in gold in the chaos of the Mexican revolution. The shifting alliances, double crosses, and fluid sense of friend and foe keeps a wicked tension on the ruthless tale and Aldrich is a master at turning cynical opportunists into deviously riveting characters. Only the creeping sentimental attachment to the peasant revolutionaries betrays this otherwise ruthless western. No supplements.

"The Long Riders" (MGM) – Walter Hill teamed with executive producers the Keach brothers for this extended brother act recreation (joining them are the Carradines, the Quaids, and the Guests) of the original all-in-the-family James-Younger Gang story. It’s a rich film, confidently balanced between a classical remembrance of western conventions and mythology and an unsentimental evocation of the hard times and brutal lifestyle that followed the Civil War in the Deep South. The slow-motion violence (notably in the fateful final robbery) recalls Peckinpah, with a sadder, wiser inflection, less savage and powerful than bloody Sam perhaps, but truer to the frontier portrait he’s painting. A lovely score by Ry Cooder completes the picture. No supplements.

"Hair" (MGM) – Milos Forman directs the screen incarnation of the legendary stage musical, a free-form, audience-interactive​ production tamed with a linear narrative. John Savage, Treat Williams and Beverly D'Angelo star and Twyla Tharp provides the choreography.

"Johnny Mnemonic" (Image) – Keanu Reeves stars in the 1995 adaptation of the William Gibson short story, which manages to bend his cyberpunk imaginings into Hollywood cliché. Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Dolph Lundgren and Takeshi Kitano co-star, and Udo Kier gets sliced and diced in the niftiest bit of cyber-murder the movies offered up to that time.

For another survey of Blu-ray releases for the month, check out my MSN colleague Glenn Kenny's blog "Some Came Running" for his Blu-ray Consumer Guide for June.