mike | 16 Oct 2012 | 374 Views | 0 Likes | 0 Dislikes

This Week's New Blu Ray Releases | Blu Ray Shed: October 16, 2012

That's My Boy
dir. Sean Anders

How do you follow up the annus horribilus that was Adam Sandler’s Jack & Jill/Just Go With It/Bucky Larson/Zookeeper 2011? By dropping the atomic turd That’s My Boy and trying to take Andy Samberg down with you, apparently.

Sandler and director Sean Anders tried to go the Hangover route by moving into raunchier territory than usual, and the result is the most tone-deaf two hours of pointless non-transgressive offensiveness literally imaginable. Is putting Vanilla Ice in your movie in 2012 funny? No. So why would you not only put him in your movie but actually give him a significant speaking role? Most likely because you think your audience is retarded. And hey—it turns out that even ardent Sandler fans, who could count me among their numbers at one point, have a point where they finally say “dude, enough, please stop calling me retarded, it’s really rude”—That’s My Boy tanked, hard, in one of the few examples of economic/cinematic justice in the past few years. Don’t see it on BluRay!

Moonrise Kingdom
dir. Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson reaches new heretofore unimagined heights of Wes-Andersonness with his familiarly twee and reassuringly symmetrical tale of childhood romance, Moonrise Kingdom.

While the style and subject matter—artisanally hand-made pastel-coloured wistful looks at childhood reveries—are familiar, Moonrise Kingdom makes several worthwhile additions to Anderson’s clique of talent, including Bob Balaban, Bruce Willis, Ed Norton and Frances McDormand. Anderson’s now thankfully reached a point where even if you find his style grating, as some occasionally do, he’s doing tonal work within it that not many other filmmakers can approach. Message: even if you’re scared off by hand-threaded child-drawn maps and wistfulness, Moonrise Kingdom’s worth checking out on video.

Chernobyl Diaries
dir. Bradley Parker

Found-footage-horror impresario and creator of the Paranormal Activity franchise Oren Peli’s always had a knack for wringing suspense and terror out of absolute rock-bottom budgets. And while Chernobyl Diaries, which he produced and wrote, is sure to count as a moderate financial success, it’s less of a treat to actually sit down and watch. It’s got a great premise: a bunch of adventure tourists sneak into the town of Pripyat near Chernobyl and are then victimized by the mutated husks that survive in the Exclusion Zone, the film labours under a heavy blanket of predictable clichéd twists, poor performances and a cast of characters that are all collectively too dumb to imagine them ever even halfway escaping the grim radioactive hell they wandered into.

Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted
dir. Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, Conrad Vernon

The Madagascar franchise is the anti-Shrek: it’s getting significantly better with every sequel. That’s enough to make it worth watching in and of itself, for a franchise to improve over time is bizarre to the point of being incredible. Of course, if you have a kid you’ve probably already seen Madagascar 3 and contributed your $20 to the film’s elephantine $600M+ box office—why not kick in another $25 and buy a copy for your kids to watch over and over and over again? At least in this instance you know you’ll be financially supporting folks who are actually concerned with their craft!

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