mike | 1 Nov 2011 | 351 Views | 4 Likes | 0 Dislikes

The DVD/Blu Ray Shed: November 1st

What better way to beat the post-Hallowe'en blues and fight back the dreaded Candy Bloat than settling into Autumnal slumber whilst enjoying the spinning of some quaintly old-fashioned physical media. Please, choose from our assemblage of disques something that tickles your fancy:

Cars 2
Dirs. John Lasseter, Brad Lewis

Cars was probably Pixar's most financially successful film and inarguably its worst. The sequel, Cars 2, takes Owen-Wilson-voiced Lightning McQueen and his stupid, ugly redneck idiot friend Scooter or Skeeter (Mater, voiced by "Larry the Cable Guy" - Ed.) on a super sequel-cliché jaunt to an exotic, far off land. In this case it's Japan, and some stuff happens. Other than the off-putting, totally kludged anthropomorphism of car-people gesturing with tire-arms or the hyuck-hyuck idiocy of said Cable Guy polluting the whole thing or the sheer dim-witted lowest-common-denominatorism of the whole thing I'm not exactly sure what it is about this franchise that irks me so much. It might be that Lightning McQueen's face has been pasted on every single thing, everywhere, always, at all times, every spoon, toilet seat, colostomy bag polishing cloth that can be branded and sold... that could be it.

Crazy Stupid Love
Dirs. Glenn Ficarra, John Requa

About as romantic and comedic as you could reasonably hope for in 2011, Crazy Stupid Love is one of a handful of big-ensemble-of-pretty-people having multiple entwined romances while being attractive movies to come out in the past couple of years. They're getting to be kind of a thing (see Garry Marshall's execrable Valentines Day or the inexplicable follow-up, the upcoming New Year's Eve) (don't see them though seriously). Crazy Stupid Love is better than most, given solely to the fact that it has talented actors in it instead of Ashton Kutcher.

Quigley Down Under
Dir. Simon Wincer

Kick off Movember with the mo-master's masterpiece and catch Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under. To be fair, I haven't seen this movie since 1990, but I remember two things: Selleck had a super cool super accurate rifle that he did cool stuff with, and second, he was handsome as hell. Selleck had a weird movie career (the "Three Men" films, something with Paulina Porizkova (Her Alibi - Ed.) and this pretty cool Western. He should have worked more.

Trespass
Dir. Joel Schumacher

Terrible. Just... awful. Awful awful.

Bunraku
Dir. Guy Moshe

Bunraku is the first and only future-primitive take on hyper-stylized kung-fu NeoNipponoir that manages to be visually dazzling, full of kineticism and is also really boring a lot of the time. We caught it at Midnight Madness a couple of years ago, and were transfixed by the ghostly, aetherial presence of Japanese hyperstar Gackt, whose name we mispronounced in a video review to the displeasure of literally hundreds of incredibly rude youtube commenter girls. Sorry about that Gackt, and ladies.

Water for Elephants
Dir. Francis Lawrence

The big-screen adaptation of the same-name book that I kept seeing in my wife's bathroom over the past year is a moving, tragic and entertaining love triangle story starring Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz and Robert Pattinson, who holds his own with the two pros. It's a bit maudlin, but for the most part the film makes good use of its big-top background and mines the day-to-day runnings of a circus for neat period and character detail. Which is to say if you don't like the romance part or the kissing, there's a lot of cool animals and weirdos on a train.

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