The DVD/Blu Ray Shed: February 21st

Puss in Boots
Dir. Chris Miller

Director Chris Miller improves on the work he did in Shrek the Third by dropping the Shrek part of the Shrek series and instead spinning off the Antonio-Banderas-voiced Puss in Boots. It’s way better than it as a spin-off prequel to a series that already overstayed its welcome should be, full of humour and bits of visual panache and a distinct lack of, you know, Shrek.

Anatomy of a Murder: Criterion Edition
Dir. Otto Preminger

Beneath the iconic and, frankly, stunning Saul-Bass-designed poster and title sequence lies Otto Preminger’s actual film, a solid courtroom drama that pushed boundaries as much by dealing with adult material—graphic discussion of sex and rape—as it did by featuring a jazz-heavy score by Duke Ellington.

The courtroom drama is a genre that’s almost completely dead (killed off perhaps by an abundance of Law and Order: Descriptor spin-offs), but this is one of the best, and one of the best examples of exactly how a tightly-written and controlled courtroom script can be as dramatic as any shoot-out heavy modern thriller. Plus the whole Saul Bass being a genius thing, too, you know… that helps.

Tower Heist
Dir. Brett Ratner

Somehow this ended up being pretty good. I don’t understand it and I never will, I hate myself for saying it and I always will, I swore I never liked a Brett Ratner movie and I never would, but Tower Heist manages to be… kind of OK. I guess. Whatever

Dir. Sean Durkin

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me this year at TIFF was how much I enjoyed junior non-twin Olson sister Elizabeth in Martha Marcy May Marlene, Sean Durkin’s slow-boil psychological thriller. While the last act will bug some people (and they probably won’t be wrong to be bugged), it and Meek’s Cutoff marked 2011 as the year of the smart, tense original micro-thrillers led by really talented young actresses. That’s not a catchy name for a year really but it sounds cool in my head.