DVD/Blu-Ray Releases: March 29, 2011
This week Natalie Portman puts on her dancing shoes, Wes Craven reinvents the slasher film, and Charlton Heston finds out what Soylent Green is made of…
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Synopsis: At the very moment hard-working ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman) lands the plum role of the White Swan, her company director (Vincent Cassel) informs her that she’ll also play the Black Swan–and while Nina’s precise, almost virginal technique will serve her well in the former role, the latter will require a looser, lustier attack. The strain of reaching within herself for these feelings, along with nattering comments from her mother (Barbara Hershey) and the perceived rivalry from a new dancer (Mila Kunis), are enough to make anybody crack… and tracing out the fault lines of Nina’s breakdown is right in Aronofsky’s wheelhouse.
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Bottom Line: You will either find this movie to be brilliant or agonizingly frustrating. I fall in the former, but I pretty much worship the ground that Darren Aronofsky walks on. He is one of the few filmmakers that always pushes himself and his films into uncharted territory and in a world filled with sequels and remakes, it’s a much needed breath of fresh air.
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Synopsis: When a serial killer starts hacking up their fellow teens, the media-savvy youngsters of Scream realize that the smartest way of sticking around for the sequel is to avoid the terminal behaviors that inevitably doom supporting players in the movies. They’ve seen all the movies, and the rules of the genre are like second nature to them.
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Bottom Line: Wes Craven has been more than inconsistent during his career as a filmmaker but Scream was truly groundbreaking in that it was a meta-slasher film which had never been done. Many other films have tried to replicate it, but none have gotten it just right like the original 1996 film now on Blu-ray for the first time.
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Synopsis: A strange detective film (based on Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!) set in 2022 and starring Heston as a Manhattan cop trying to solve a murder in the overpopulated, overheated city. His roommate (a necessity in the overcrowded metropolis), played by Edward G. Robinson, tries telling him about a better time on Earth before there were no more resources or room left; but Heston doesn’t care.
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Bottom Line: There is a lot of bad in this movie, predominantly Heston’s consistent overacting, but the premise is actually pretty fascinating as it’s basically a futuristic film noir. This is not one to take too seriously, and frankly, if you want to watch a far superior futuristic noir film, get your hands on Bladerunner.
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Other DVD/Blu-Ray Releases:
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