CliqueClack

Off-beat movies and classics come to home video April 9

If you’re looking for some big Hollywood releases on home video this week, you will find yourself in short supply. The biggest title new to video April 9th is Hyde Park on Hudson starring Bill Murray as FDR. The bulk of the newer releases are smaller indie films that played only in select cities or direct-to-video offerings. Older films have a better showing with David Cronenberg’s cult classic Naked Lunch getting the Criterion treatment, a re-release of the repackaged Fast & Furious flicks timed to hit shelves to whet your appetite for the newest film in the franchise to hit screens this summer, and some specialty films geared towards drive-in nostalgia. To see all the movies coming to home video this week, have a look at our shopper’s guide, and click on a link to get more information or to make a purchase.

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CliqueClack has free passes for The Angels’ Share in DC

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CliqueClack has partnered with IFC Films and Allied Integrated Marketing to offer our readers in the DC area free passes to the advance screening of Ken Loach’s new film The Angels’ Share. Winner of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, The Angels’ Share is a comic fable about wasted talent and what happens when we are given a chance in life. It would be hard to see Robbie (Paul Brannigan) as a man worthy of redemption. He’s constantly watching out for a gang of thugs looking to settle a family grudge, his girlfriend is giving birth to a baby while her father offers him money to leave Glasgow, and he’s serving 300 hours of community service. But when Robbie meets Harry (John Henshaw), the gruff but benevolent man in charge of his sentence, he finds a hidden talent for Scotch whiskey — and a new chance at life. For distillers, the angels’ share is the whiskey lost to evaporation each year, and that little fact makes a rare cask of whiskey the perfect target for a heist. A hilarious story about second chances, The Angels’ Share is a tender crowd-pleaser from legendary filmmaker Ken Loach (The Wind that Shakes the Barely, Kes) and screenwriter Paul Laverty.

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The Place Beyond the Pines hits you hard but is kind of a mess

It’s often said that history repeats itself. This doesn’t refer to specific events, but the way human nature doesn’t change and the same conflicts seem to keep happening again and again. History (and real life) doesn’t have story arcs or plot structure; it’s just life. Whether or not it has meaning is another matter altogether, and a bit beyond the scope of this review. Even so, there are some predictable ideas. Abuse begets abuse. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. And art reflects reality. Sometimes it’s a bit of a mess. But … I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Place Beyond the Pines is an odd little duck of a nearly two and half hour movie, from director Derek Cianfrance, telling several stories in a row that try to say something about humanity. We start with Luke (Ryan Gosling), an exceptionally talented stunt motorcyclist traveling from town to town in a carnival, who discovers he’s a father but the mother (Eva Mendes) doesn’t want him around. After all, Luke doesn’t really have a way to provide off the road and in the sleepy city of Schenectady (which translates to “the place beyond the pines” in Mohawk). So he turns to crime for the first movie of this movie . This puts Luke on a path to intersect with police officer Avery (Bradley Cooper), who then has an entirely new mini-movie of his own. Filled with corrupt cops (including the typically sinister Ray Liotta) and ambitious dreams, Avery has his own infant son to worry about as well. Parallels! After this second movie of the movie, we cut to fifteen years later, where we check in on these kids as teenagers and examine even more themes.

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Jurassic Park 3D packs a powerful nostalgic punch for movie lovers of all ages

While it’s hard for many of us (myself included) to believe it’s been 20 years since we first entered the massive gates of Jurassic Park, it’s true. And now Universal Pictures is marking the milestone with a special high-definition, state-of-the-art 3D release of one of the biggest blockbusters of all time. But how does it measure up to a movie lover’s high expectations?

While I’m not a fan of the studios revamping all the classics with 3D special effects for their re-releases, I have to say Jurassic Park is decidedly one of the few that I was excited about. In fact, my boyfriend and I have been counting down to its release for quite some time. My first reaction was one of pure delight. Epic dinosaurs on the big screen in 3D? That’s like every nerdy child’s fantasy come true. Continue reading 'Jurassic Park 3D packs a powerful nostalgic punch for movie lovers of all ages' »

The Evil Dead are back and out for (lots of) blood

It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve seen Sam Raimi’s original horror opus, The Evil Dead, and that could be a good thing when going in to the new Evil Dead remake/reboot/reimagining/sequel. Yes, it’s hard to decide where exactly this film fits in the canon of the Evil Dead franchise, because the production team, including Raimi and original star Bruce Campbell, want you to think this is a completely separate beast from the original. It’s certainly got a much slicker look (the demon racing through the woods POV is a little too smooth, for example) and higher production values, but is this a completely separate story or another chapter in the established timeline?

The original Evil Dead had five friends taking a vacation at a cabin in the woods … which would be derided today as just another horror flick that put a bunch of people in a remote location simply to be picked off one by one. The new Evil Dead actually has a clever set-up: two friends of Mia (Jane Levy), her brother David (Shiloh Fernandez) and his girlfriend gather at a family cabin in the woods to help Mia kick her drug habit cold turkey. This is the first time her brother has been in Mia’s life in quite some time, leaving her as a child to care for their dying mother. This also isn’t Mia’s first attempt to kick the habit.

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Game of Thrones Readalong: Dark Wings, Dark Words

So your favorite show and mine, Game of Thrones, returned this week to some killer ratings. Things in Westeros were — for the most part — how we left them: Jon is still devolving into a whiny Luke-Skywalker-in-A-New-Hope-esque character. Tyrion is still a BAMF. Sansa is still in deep poo. Arya and Bran are … well, we’ll get to that next week. And Joffery is still in need of a good slap to the face.

While the rest of the world is basking in the show’s superb return, I’m already turning my head to the next episode. Each week, CliqueClack provides folks that are trying to read George R. R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels along with the HBO series a little help. For as long as HBO provides us with screeners, we’ll help provide the point in the novels that you should have read through to keep ahead of each episode. As I mentioned last week, with all of the show’s (wonderful) deviations from the books, it can be a difficult task. But we’ve got you covered.

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Like polar bears? Pay a visit To The Arctic

Nature documentaries are a hit and miss thing. Some of them can have a great story to build some amazing visuals upon, and some can simply have stunning visuals with no real substance behind them. Granted, it has to be difficult for a filmmaker to come up with an outline for a production and then have it all go out the door when it comes to filming. It’s not like the animals being filmed can read the script or take direction. The director is basically at the mercy of the elements, and can only hope that they have something, anything, to create a gripping story around the footage that has been shot.

And such is the case with the latest IMAX nature film, To The Arctic, a film which sets out to chronicle the plight of the Arctic polar bears (and other Arctic denizens) as their ice-covered habitat melts away. The 40-minute film follows a mama polar bear and her two cubs as they search for food and avoid a hungry male polar bear among the dwindling Arctic ice. As the region becomes warmer, the bears are running out of places to live and evade predators while their natural food source, sea lions, are becoming more scarce. The film alternately thrills the viewer as we get to watch the playful cubs romp around while the mother goes on the hunt for food, and makes us anxious as she stands her guard against a predator even while trying to catch a few winks.

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She & Him’s Volume 3 has lots to love, but nothing new

She & Him, the joint music project of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, is set to release their third studio album, Volume 3. If you’ve heard the single “Never Wanted Your Love,” you’ve heard the album, and that’s a good and a bad thing. If you like She & Him’s brand of adorable, vintage-inspired songs that sound like bottled sunshine, the good news is that Volume 3 is more of the same. But if you’re looking for variety or mold-breaking, Volume 3 is not the album you’d go to to find it.

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Starbuck is a light dark comedy that transcends the language barrier

Parenthood is one of those universal themes. You may not be a parent, but you probably had one. And there’s the Platonic ideal of the perfect parent, that so many try for and so many fail to get even close. But when a lot of parents don’t even bother … the ones that try are amazing in comparison. Even when you accidentally end up with over 500 kids.

Starbuck is a small film from Quebec that was mainly shown in film festivals and is now out on DVD and in select theaters. But it’s getting distributed now because an American remake is due in October of this year, starring Vince Vaughn and directed by Ken Scott (who also directed the original version), called Delivery Man. But we won’t know how that one is for a while. Starbuck tells the story of 40-something David (Patrick Huard) who’s essentially a layabout loser, working minimally and coasting through life. But when his longtime girlfriend Valerie informs David she’s pregnant — and she doesn’t want his help — David decides to turn his life around. So far, pretty typical story, right? Then we have the insane twist. It turns out that when David donated sperm anonymously in his 20’s under the nom de plume “Starbuck,” it was all used — which means he now has 533 kids. And 142 of them are suing him to uncover his anonymity.

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NBC’s Hannibal pulls no punches on the gore, but what else did you expect?

For most people, the name Hannibal Lecter is first associated with the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs and the Academy Award winning performance by Sir Anthony Hopkins, or its source material. The character actually debuted in the 1981 novel, Red Dragon, which was also later adapted into two films. The character continued on in prequel and sequel novels and films: respectively, Hannibal Rising and Hannibal. As related to the most famous The Silence of the Lambs, NBC’s Hannibal is a prequel story, though it remains to be fully seen how faithful it will remain to the source material, and whether we’ll ever see that moment where Lecter is taken into custody.

One interesting point about the show is how Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) is so far (after the five episodes I screened) not the central character here. That honor goes to Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a criminal profiler with the FBI who has a unique gift when it comes to getting into the mind of a killer. Graham can sort of step into the role of the killer, so to speak, by putting himself smack in the middle of the crime scene and — in his mind — replaying the events as they unfolded, from the killer’s perspective. From that description, it surely doesn’t sound completely original, but the visual effect on-screen is interesting and impressive. It’s an aspect that’s also not overdone or overused, which makes it all cooler when it does happen. Graham — in case you didn’t know — is a character from the novels as well, and has similar abilities. Similarly, in both, Graham isn’t exactly proud of these abilities and appears to detest them. He and others know their usefulness, though, when it comes to nailing down a killer.

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