Here are the good, the bad and ugly in direct-to-DVD films — released since our last batch. Learn why Mischa Barton will only find A Beautiful Life back on TV, how Rob Schneider makes himself “unrapeable” in prison, and what Tommy Lee Jones finds In the Electric Mist …
10. Killer Movie
Who’s in It? Leighton Meester, Kaley Cuoco, Jason London and Paul Wesley
The Verdict: Jeff Fisher knows reality TV. But concocting outrageous ways for spoiled socialites to experience The Simple Life is an easier task than out-Screaming Scream. You know what to expect from Fisher’s jokey slasher yarn — which pits a serial killer against a reality-TV crew — after a certain Gossip Girl loses her head minutes into this bloodless affair. The maniac’s identity is as obvious as his motive, the murders are executed without flair or originality, and the clueless victims deserve what they get (Cuoco, though, is hysterical as a LiLo-ish young Hollywood diva). Worse, Fisher says nothing about the intrusive, manipulative nature of reality TV that wasn’t already said in Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon or My Little Eye.
DVD Features: digital copy; Behind the Scenes of Killer Movie featurette; photo gallery
Stars: 1 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 9 …[PAGEBREAK]
9. Against the Dark
Who’s in It? Steven Seagal and Keith David
The Verdict: Seagal finally finds himself facing an unfamiliar enemy: The undead. An I Am Legend-like virus has turned a city of millions into vampires, and it’s a sword-swinging Seagal’s task to rescue the uninfected before the military starts dropping bombs. But this dawdling, uninspired 28 Weeks Later rip-off barely requires Seagal to slice and dice many bloodsuckers. In fact, writer Michael Klickstein focuses so much of his attention on the survivors trapped inside a hospital that you suspect he was forced to shoehorn a stoic, swollen Seagal into the proceedings to goose DVD sales. That said, Seagal seems content to expend his energy walking down hospital hallways looking tough rather than trying to convince us he’s the second coming of Blade.
DVD Features: Fighting the Shadows: Behind the Scenes of Against the Dark featurette.
Stars: 1 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 8 …[PAGEBREAK]
8. Walled In
Who’s in It? Mischa Barton, Cameron Bright and Deborah Kara Unger
The Verdict: No wonder Barton’s rushing back to TV. Thanks to Virgin Territory, Closing the Ring (see the next review) and this tame torture porn chiller, Barton’s film career died a quicker death than her O.C. troubled teen. Like Elisha Cuthbert in Captivity, an uncharacteristically gutsy Barton finds herself held against her will in an eerie building — once the site of 16 murders — and punished whenever she disobeys her captor. Director Serge Brussolo takes his sweet time putting in motion the events leading up to Barton’s confinement, which at least allows us to get to know the building’s remaining occupants (including Birth’s Bright, who gets all strange on us again). Still, Brussolo never makes Walled In as intriguing as the bizarre concrete monstrosity that Barton seeks to escape.
DVD Features: The Making of Walled In featurette.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 7 …[PAGEBREAK]
Who’s in It? Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer, Mischa Barton, Neve Campbell and Pete Postlethwaite
The Verdict: Sadly, Richard Attenborough’s first film in a decade is his worst since 1985’s A Chorus Line. Not that the Oscar-winning director’s solely to blame for this decades-hopping tearjerker — about a woman (played, at different ages, by Barton and MacLaine) grieving for the pilot fiancé she lost in a crash over Ireland during World War II — being such a mawkish Notebook clone. The performances are uneven, with a wishy-washy Barton failing to match the terribly affected MacLaine’s willfulness. Screenwriter Peter Woodward doesn’t just have an Irish lad travel to America to give MacLaine a ring belonging to the pilot — no, he also has to be running from the IRA. And the ending’s so indescribably dumb that it could be right out of Date Movie.
DVD Features: Love, Loss & Life: The Making of Closing the Ring featurette.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 6 …[PAGEBREAK]
Who’s in It? Michael Cera, Jamie Kennedy, Matthew Lillard, Frankie Muniz, Ryan Pinkston and Andy Milonakis
The Verdict: “We knew we had to take things beyond where they had been in the past,” Adam Jay Epstein reveals during the “making-of” of this sex-driven sketch comedy he directed with Andrew Jacobson. Good awareness on the directors’ part to realize that their target audience of high schoolers likely began experimenting sexually soon after hitting puberty. Too bad they barely push the boundaries established by Woody Allen’s 1972 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*but were afraid to ask). So cue the tired, one-joke skits featuring porn stars, midgets, sex dolls, and animals. The Weird Science and hidden camera show parodies offer some laughs, but not enough to make Extreme Movie any extremer than an episode of Real Sex.
DVD Features: Commentary with co-directors Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson; The Making of Extreme Movie featurette.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 5 …[PAGEBREAK]
Who’s in It? Carice van Houten and Jenn Murray
The Verdict: What happens in a tiny village on a remote island stays in the village. Valkyrie’s van Houten would have known this had she rented The Wicker Man. Then she might have thought twice about traveling to an Irish island community to conduct a psychological assessment of a girl (Murray) accused of choking a baby. Receiving resistance from skeptical locals obviously turns out to be the least of van Houten’s problems. Does Dorothy have multiple personality disorder? Or is she possessed? Regardless, with her peculiar look and unsettling demeanor, Murray does a superb job of giving you the creeps as Dorothy. Director Agnès Merlet, though, doesn’t offer many genuine scares, but her twist ending should please fans of The Sixth Sense.
DVD Features: The Making of Dorothy Mills featurette.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 4 …[PAGEBREAK]
4. Big Stan
Who’s in It? Rob Schneider, Jennifer Morrison and David Carradine
The Verdict: Deuce Bigalow, prison bitch? To prove that rape can be a source of amusement, Schneider casts himself in his directorial debut as a newly convicted felon whose sphincter tightens at the prospect of being sexually violated during his incarceration. So he hires Carradine to man him up. Before Schneider finds himself behind bars, Big Stan scores big laughs from Carradine spoofing his tough-guy image and House’s adorable Morrison giving trophy wives a good name. Unfortunately, Schneider wimps out once locked away. He strips prison life of its brutality and turns it into the ultimate male-bonding experience. Schneider thankfully doesn’t peddle in homophobia, but he’s still guilty of failing to ensure Big Stan lives up to its potentially outrageous premise.
DVD Features: commentary with Rob Schneider, Buddy Lewis and Salvator Xuereb; Comedy Is Pain featurette; outtakes.
Stars: 2 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 3 …[PAGEBREAK]
3. Alien Raiders/Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back
Who’s in It? Alien Raiders: Carlos Bernard and Rockmond Dunbar; Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back: Jessie Ward, Richard Tillman, Graham Norris and Joey Mendicino
The Verdict: Who needs Jack Bauer when you have Tony Almeida? Raw Feed’s latest horror sci-fi shocker Alien Raiders unites 24’s Bernard and Prison Break’s Dunbar against a nasty parasitic E.T. trapped inside a small-town supermarket. Ignore the cheesy title: The surprisingly suspenseful Alien Raiders barely allows you to catch your breath as it rips off The Thing and The Mist with gleeful abandon and great imagination. Unfortunately, you don’t need to be a “spotter” — a human alien detector of sorts — to see the twist ending that opens the door for a sequel. But at least it means Don’t Look Back doesn’t solely rely on the torture-porn antics of Rest Stop to freak us out.
DVD Features: Alien Raiders: Hidden Terror: The Making of Alien Raiders; Blood, Sweat and Fears: The Special Effects of Alien Raiders; Tape #9: Sterling Explains Alien — Alien Parasite Physiology and Meeting Ritter; Tape #12: Spookie’s Job — The Alien Buster Explains His Talent; and Whitney Cam: Blog Posts After the Buck Lake Incident featurettes. Rest Stop: Don’t Look Back: commentary by writer/producer John Shiban and director Shawn Papazian; Doomed to Repeat: The Mythology of Rest Stop feature; alternate ending; deleted scenes.
KEEP READING: Get No. 2 …[PAGEBREAK]
Who’s in It? Tommy Lee Jones, John Goodman, Peter Sarsgaard, Mary Steenburgen and Kelly MacDonald
The Verdict: Where’s the love for Dave Robicheaux? The world-weary, law-bending hero of James Lee Burke’s Louisiana-set mystery novels receives his second shot at big-screen immortality. But no one seems to care. Too bad, as In the Electric Mist erases the sour taste left by Alec Baldwin’s Heaven’s Prisoners. The suitably laconic Jones is more comfortable than Baldwin was in the sweltering Louisiana heat, battling the private investigator/recovering alcoholic’s demons. Guided by director Bertrand Tavernier’s assured hand, Robicheaux’s investigation into murders, which occurred 40 years apart, features enough twists and turns to keep armchair detectives mystified. By the time Robicheaux gets his man, you’ll be begging for him to accept another case. Unfortunately, Hollywood’s unlikely to take a third chance on Robicheaux.
DVD Features: none.
Stars: 4 out of 5
KEEP READING: Get No. 1 …[PAGEBREAK]
1. Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter
Who’s in It? Gerald Butler and Jared Harris (voices)
The Verdict: Funny how Watchmen took a beating for being too faithful to Alan Moore and Dave Gibson’s seminal graphic novel. Director Zack Snyder would have been better off splitting the film into two parts. That way we may have experienced this chilling traditionally animated rendering of the comic within the graphic novel — about a shipwrecked captain crossing treacherous waters to save his family from his ghostly pirate attackers — in the theaters rather than wait for Snyder to weave it into the DVD version of the film. Narrated with growing hysteria by Butler, Tales of the Black Freighter proves to be a dark and disturbing morality play about fighting our the real and imagined demons in our lives. Once integrated into Watchmen, it should serve as a powerful allegory to Ozymandias’ efforts to save mankind from itself. While Tales of the Black Freighter stands on its own merits, Under the Hood is an invaluable primer to the Watchmen world. Told in riveting 60 Minutes-like fashion, this faux news piece ingeniously details the rise and fall of the Minutemen, the crime-fighting group that predated the Watchmen.
DVD Features: Under the Hood and Story Within a Story featurettes; Watchman Motion Comics: Chapter 1.
Stars: 5 out of 5
MORE: Get last month’s Direct-to-DVD reviews!
