Last week was not a big week in DVDs, but this week there is a little more to choose from. In a conspicuous marketing coincidence, the theatrical release of the disappointing Al Pacino/Robert DeNiro thriller Righteous Kill is accompanied by the DVD release of last year’s disappointing Al Pacino thriller 88 Minutes, both of which were directed by Jon Avnet, who I am starting to think might be well advised to try a different genre. The Wachowski Brothers have adapted an old tv cartoon and Mike Meyers has teamed up again with Mini-Me for another 90-minutes of disappointment. George Clooney heads up this week’s new releases with Leatherheads, along with the Sex and the City movie and another comedy from the star of Shaun of the Dead.

LEATHERHEADS (2008), Comedy/Drama/Romance/Sport, PG-13, 114 mins.

George Clooney is back in the director’s chair for this sports comedy about the football scene of the 1920s, where college teams got all the fame and glory while the pro football players were all but ignored. Clooney stars as a veteran grunt trying to build up pro football into something big, and he recruits Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski), a war hero and college star to help him.

Renee Zellweger stars as a reporter who comes into the picture snooping around for a good story, but ends up becoming the center of the romantic subplot of the movie, which involves a love triangle that complicates the job of earning sports fans.

The movie didn’t find much of an audience when it was released in theaters in April but was not poorly received. Sports/Clooney fans are sure to be pleased.

.

SEX AND THE CITY (2008), Comedy/Drama/Romance, R, 148 mins.

I have a small confession to make - Sex and the City is just not my thing. I don’t think I ever saw a single frame of a single episode of the tv show, and at a whopping two and a half hours, I am pretty sure I’m never going to see a single frame of this prodigious screen adaptation. But for the rest of you, here’s what you need to know -

After moving in together in an impossibly beautiful New York apartment, Carrie Bradshaw and Mr. Big make a rather arbitrary decision to get married. The wedding itself proves to be anything but a hasty affair–the guest list quickly blooms from 75 to 200 guests, and Carrie’s simple, label-less wedding gown gives way to an enormous creation that makes her look like a gigantic cream puff. An upcoming photo spread in Vogue puts the event–which will take place at the New York Public Library–squarely in the public eye. Meanwhile, Carrie’s girlfriends–Samantha, the sexpot; Charlotte, the sweet naïf; and Miranda, the rigid perfectionist–could not be happier. At least, they couldn’t be happier for Carrie. Charlotte still has the unrealized hope of getting pregnant. Samantha is finding a loving, committed relationship more grueling than she could have imagined. Miranda unwittingly lets her own unhappiness–created when Steve admits to cheating on her just once–spoil Carrie’s. After a heated encounter with Steve, she happens to spot Mr. Big and tells him he’s crazy to get married. She’s really only thinking of her own marriage. But her angry remark gets Mr. Big to thinking.

DECEPTION (2008), Drama/Romance/Thriller, R, 90 mins.

Ewan McGregor stars as an accountant enticed into an underground sex club and then later implicated in a heist and a woman’s disappearance. The movie is not hurting for star power, with McGregor starring opposite Hugh Jackman, but unfortunately, it does nothing new for the genre, mostly rehashing the tired themes of the seedy late-night thrillers that my mom used to never let me watch when I was a kid but did anyway. I was fascinated at the time because women were always running around in their underwear, but now it’s clear to me that this is going on so much because there’s not much else to the movie. It’s essentially another one of the type of thriller where smart people are doing unbelievably stupid things, and screwing up their lives in the process. We’re meant to be entertained by how far they go in creating problems for themselves and digging deeper while trying to escape from the holes in which they now find themselves, but no luck. The movie is just as stale and generic as this poster.

.

RUN FATBOY RUN (2007), Comedy/Romance, PG-13, 100 mins.

Simon Pegg, of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz fame, is directed by David Schwimmer in his directing debut in Run Fatboy Run. Pegg palys Dennis Doyle, a slacker who tries to win back the respect of his fiance five years after leaving her standing at the altar pregnant. He discovers that she’s really his one true love when he finds out that she’s dating someone else, someone more responsible and respectable than himself, so he vows to prove to her that he is the one for her.

She doesn’t believe him, because of his tendency to start things and never finish them, so he sets out to prove himself to her, by starting something that he intends to finish. That thing, however, is a Nike River-run in London, in which her obnoxious new man (Hank Azaria), a skilled and practiced runner, is also participating.

I had high expectations for the movie because Shaun of the Dead was so good, but it’s essentially the exact same character as he was in that movie, a loser struggling to get his girlfriend back, without zombies or Nick Frost, both of which are significant losses. Cute date movie, but not the best work from anyone involved.

88 MINUTES (2008), Action/Crime/Thriller, R, 108 mins (not what you thought, but good guess, though).

Al Pacino plays Jack Gramm, a forensic psychiatrist who receives a threat that he has 88 minutes to live, saddling him with the task of analyzing a murder in advance. Complicating matters is the fact that he is also a college professor (like me!) with disgruntled students, he recently helped put a man on death row whose execution is approaching, he has a jilted lover holding a grudge (after a one night stand), and there is a copycat killer on the loose perpetuating the murderous modus operandi of the man Gramm has put behind bars. Needless to say, he’s gonna have his hands full to find out who it is that’s threatening his life.

I’m reminded of that Johnny Depp movie Nick of Time, remember that one? Depp plays this guy named Gene Watson who is in LA with his daughter to go to his wife’s funeral. His daughter is kidnapped and he is given a person’s itinerary and a note explaining that if he doesn’t kill that person within 75 minutes his daughter is going to be killed. What makes it more interesting is that it’s shot in real time, which could have been a good gimmick for 88 Minutes as well.

THE LOVE GURU (2008), Comedy, PG-13, 87 mins.

An American is raised by gurus in an ashram in India, until he finally returns to his home country to seek fame and fortune in the world of self-help and spirituality. His first task is to settle a marital dispute between a star professional hockey player Darren Roanoke and his estranged wife, who has begun dating L.A. Kings star Jaques Grande (Justin Timberlake). This new relationship creates havoc in Roanoke’s professional life, to the dismay of the team’s owner, Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba) and Roanoke’s coach, Coach Cherkov (Verne “Mini-me” Troyer). Oh, and if you don’t get the joke of the coach’s name, try reading it out loud.

The previews look like there are some laugh out loud moments, but I still can’t shake the feeling that the movie is the product of a lot of disjointed ideas that were swept up and tossed en masse into the same movie, making them fit in whatever way possible. It’s a sad follow-up to his success as Austin Powers…

MADE OF HONOR (2008), Comedy/Romance,

Tom and Hannah have been platonic friends for ten years, Tom dating haphazardly and Hannah always looking for her true love but thus far without success. Eventually Tom begins to see Hannah in a way that he never had before, and just as he begins to think that they would be good together, she gets engaged to someone else.

In a true illustration of how close and genuinely platonic their relationship has been, she asks him to be her maid of honor, and he reluctantly agrees, mostly just so he can try to stop the wedding from the inside and woo her himself.

If the plot sounds vaguely familiar the most likely reason is because you’ve probably seen this exact story a dozen times before. But enjoy! It does make a good date movie, after all. If you’re into this stuff, I recommend The Wedding Planner, My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Bachelor (my favorite), Runaway Bride, 27 Dresses (note: don’t watch 27 Dresses. It sucked. Trust me), Maid in Manhattan, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

SPEED RACER (2008), Action/Family/Sport, PG, 135 mins (!!).

Speed Racer has come along from that strangely animated old television cartoon that I never really got interested in. This live action adaptation is directed by the Wachowski Brothers, directors of the Matrix trilogy (and the underrated 1996 sex thriller Bound), and produced by legendary Hollywood producer Joel Silver, whose list of production credits is far too long to do justice to here. He has been involved in everything from 80s classics like Commando, Weird Science, and Predator to the whole Lethal Weapon series and the Matrix films.

The story seems a bit of a backdrop to the novelty of the film itself, but it’s about a young kid named Speed Racer who grows into the sport and ultimately finds himself in a moral position to save the integrity of the sport itself from becoming a cheap game wheeled by corporate interests who fix rig races for profit. Speed lost his older brother Rex to racing, and along the way he gets support from the rest of his family as he battles the corporate interests eager to get rid of his meddling with their wheeling and dealing as well as his opponents on the track.

YOUNG AT HEART (2007), Musical Documentary, PG, 109 mins.

Young at Heart tells the story of the Young at Heart Chorus, a choir of chaotic senior citizens who must battle various health problems and aging issues in order to prepare for a show that will include performances of songs by groups ranging from James Brown to Coldplay.

Their tireless musical coach leads the group through a series of charming and hilarious reheasals, showing us a whole new side of making music. They are more watchable than you would expect because they are a highly experienced team of singers, but the documentary focuses on the new challenges of learning new songs, many of which are made for a much, much younger generation.

It’s an inspiring story about life and music and their affects on each other, and culminates in a heartwarming finale that will leave you cheering. See this one.

“FRIDAY THE 13TH” (series, 1987-1990), 60 min/episode.

Related quite literally deliberately to the classic slasher film series, the “Friday the 13th” television series aired for three years from 1987-1990 and had nothing whatsoever to do with with the movies. In fact, Frankie Mancuso deliberately named the series “Friday the 13th” for no other reason than to call attention to it and make it stick out from the rest of the new shows coming out in 1987.

Each episode tells a different story about a young man and woman who have inherited a mysterious antiques dealership from their uncle, who had made a pact with the Devil to sell cursed antiques. The show tells of their adventures in trying to recover the already purchased antiques from customers before they can do any harm.

At first glance this seems like a safe one to avoid, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. The show has tons of fans, so may be worth checking out at least a few episodes. Season 1 is released this week…

Other than the immediate appeal of seeing Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino on screen together for the first time since Heat in 1995, there is very little special or interesting about Righteous Kill. And it’s too bad because there are elements of the movie that are so good and so fitting for each of them (like DeNiro grinning and threatening a child molester on his way out of the courtroom on a technicality) that it’s clear that the movie has a lot of what it takes to be a much better thriller.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives who have been friends and partners for about as long as either of them can remember. Their latest case is lifted right out of The Boondock Saints - a vigilante killer who is systematically killing off violent criminals who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. This is, of course, a highly appealing premise - there are few things quite as satisfying as seeing a murderer or rapist or child molester getting shot at point blank range and then a four-line poem tossed onto their chest rhyming out the justification for their death. Well, it’s satisfying to see in a movie anyway. To be perfectly honest, I’m not all that into seeing anyone get shot in real life, poem or not.

But sadly, the movie falls completely flat in its handling of the mystery of who the real killer is. There is a strong implication early in the movie (from the first frame, as it were) that the killer is one of the two main detectives, and there are two other detectives, played by Donnie Wahlberg and John Leguizamo, who are also working the case and increasingly develop the same suspicions.

But there is a cheap method of maintaining tension and dramatic tension that lower level thrillers and mystery movies use, which is to plainly and deliberately lead the audience in the wrong direction before wildly swinging the plot around like a carnival ride near the end. Righteous Kill gives us clues that seem so obvious that they appear to be storytelling techniques rather than plot points, but it’s no use here to try to figure out the mystery, just try to enjoy the ride. Clever moviegoers will see through the constant misdirection like grandma’s underpants, as Bart Simpson would say, but any predictability is based on seeing through cheap film techniques, not figuring out an intricate story.

Al Pacino tries to calm Robert DeNiro down from the shock of realizing that 50 Cent is this much bigger than him.

And most of the ride is enjoyable. There’s more talk than I like in an action thriller starring two of the biggest badasses in movie history, but the story never drags despite being so thin on substance. Curtis Jackson gives a pretty good performance as basically himself, a recording artist/nightclub owner/designer drug dealer (hopefully that last part is fiction) who becomes the focus of Detectives Turk and Rooster’s (DeNiro and Pacino) latest case.

But there are two conflicting stories going on here - there is the story of the two detectives trying to figure out who this killer is that’s killing off the people that the judicial system is too dumb to catch, and the story of us trying to figure out where the plot is going, because the movie presents itself as though it hands us the answer at the beginning and we have to figure something else out. There is some tension generated by other detectives getting closer to what we think is the truth, but don’t go assuming you know all the answers just because you’re told at the start of the film.

John Leguizamo and Donnie Wahlberg react to the news that they will not receive top billing.

Director John Avnet also directed a recent action thriller starring Al Pacino called 88 Minutes, which was something of a critical disaster, not the least reason for which was because of its highly disappointing ending. Similarly, he doesn’t seem to know how to end Righteous Kill, so he gives us a massive cliche, the good guy and the bad guy in an old abandoned warehouse pointing guns at each other in what I suppose is meant to be a tense standoff, except that there is never for a second the slightest doubt about how it will turn out.

Despite coming at the very end of the summer, this is one of the more anticipated late-summer releases, especially among action fans eager to see the two film legends finally on screen together again. Unfortunately, there is more effort put into overcoming all of what must be the massive complications involved in getting two guys like DeNiro and Pacino into a movie together than there is into making it a good movie beyond their presence. They inhabit their roles, as is to be expected, but the rest of the movie feels like it is hanging off of them like a wet paper bag. It’s more fun than a swift kick in the ass, but to say that we should expect better than this from them would be something of an understatement.

Most people I know hate missing the previews but also tend to be not so great at getting out of the house on time. Luckily I spend a lot of time at the movies, so if you have bad luck with the red lights on the way to the theater, here are some of the previews you’re missing…

BABYLON A.D. (2008), Action/Adventure/Sci-fi/Thriller, PG-13, 90 mins.

Well, judging by the preview, the movie looks cool as hell, even though Vin Diesel plays a guy named Toorop. He’s a veteran-turned-mercenary whose peaceful and quiet life is disrupted when he accepts a job escorting a Russian woman to America. What he doesn’t know is that her body hosts a mysterious organism that allows you to turn into a shapeshifter or manipulate your DNA somehow. Something like that. Anyway a lot of shady characters are after her with shady plans for her powers. The details are pretty fuzzy thus far, but what we do know is that throughout most of Europe a 160 minute version will be released into theaters, so we’re going to see about half of the movie here in the states. That hardly seems fair.

I’ve heard that this is a sign that we are sure to lose a lot of Director Mathieu Kassovitz’s trademark violence, but I think the loss of his faith is a far larger concern.

In a highly unusual move for the director of a major movie, Kassovitz has been loudly badmouthing the film, which will not be screened for critics prior to its release, for some time now.

“It’s pure violence and stupidity…All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Not a good sign, especially since Kassovitz had been working on the thing for five years. But then again, this could be a learning experience for us in the audience. Last week, The House Bunny was released, with possibly the most inappropriate PG-13/content combination ever. Kassovitz claimed that he suffered massive interference from the studio, who were willing to make any sacrifice for that PG-13 rating, so it should be interesting to see what kind of film that gives us.

Sounds to me like a case of a director who saw a great script and signed on to the movie only to watch it butchered to death in front of his eyes by money-hungry producers.

“I like the energy of it and I got some scenes I’m happy with. But I know what I had - I had something much better in my hands but I just wasn’t allowed to work.”

Babylon A.D. will be released August 29th.

BANGKOK DANGEROUS (2008), Action/Crime/Thriller, R, 100 mins.

So the IMDb lists a synopsis of the plot of Bangkok Dangerous which does not inspire confidence. “A hitman who’s in Bangkok to pull off a series of jobs falls for a local woman and bonds with his errand boy.”

What?

The story is about a ruthless American assassin who is in Thailand to assassinate four enemies of a brutal crime boss. Being a tourist in Thailand, he hires a local boy to run errands and cover his tracks for him. His intention is to get rid of him after he finishes his assignments, but he ends up forming a mentoring relationship with him, teaching the boy his murderous craft at the same time as he begins to develop a romantic relationship with a local deaf-mute girl.

These budding relationships cause him to question his extreme loner lifestyle, and he begins to let down his guard at all the wrong times.

I don’t know yet whether this will be any good, but either way I recommend a similar Nicholas Cage movie, Matchstick Men.

Bangkok Dangerous will be released September 5th.

RIGHTEOUS KILL (2008), Crime/Drama, R, 100 mins.

I am of the opinion that you can’t make a bad movie with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in it, especially when DeNiro is saying things like “There’s nothing wrong with a little shooting, as long as the right people get shot.”

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran New York City police officers who sense a connection between a recent murder and a case that they believed they had solved years before. Now their questions is whether there is a copycat serial killer on the loose or they put the wrong man in prison in the old case.

The movie raises interesting moral and political questions when it turns out that the killer is targeting violent criminals who managed to squeeze through the legal cracks in the judicial system, basically doing the job that the criminal justice system couldn’t do because the cops’ hands were tied with red tape, or some technicality put a criminal back on the streets.

Righteous Kill will be released September 12th.

MY BEST FRIEND’S GIRL (2008), Comedy, R, 101 mins.

Not to be outdone by Babylon A.D. director Matthieu Kassovitz, My Best Friend’s Girl director Dane Cook has been badmouthing his own movie prior to its release. But not so much the movie, just the poster. The movie, he says, “is the best/funniest film I’ve done to date. It’s got a terrific cast. Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin, Jason Biggs, and myself really kicked the funny around. This movie showcases our talents as it expands on them. It’s a fun R-rated flick. An edgy comedy with a dash of romance”

Sounds good, but wow, you should hear him rail on this poster. I invite you to take a quick look at his MySpace page, where he has posted a vast list of the Photoshop crimes committed behind his back on this poster, including the fact that the angle of his neck makes him look like he was raised in an abandoned barn by a family of owls, and that his left side “looks like Brittany Spears’ vagina.”

Personally I think he’s being a little too hard on the poster which, in my opinion, does nothing worse than make the movie look no different from every other by-the-numbers romantic comedy to come along in the last six or eight years.

I’m hoping that Cook is right about the comedy in the movie being good, because the story has nothing going for it. He plays Tank, a cocky anti-hero whose best friend (Jason Biggs) hires him to take his ex-girlfriend on a terrible date so that she’ll realize she made a mistake breaking up with him.
I’m curious about what kind of disasters they might come up with to make Jason Biggs look good to someone like Kate Hudson. This has to be the most unlikely and incongruous pair of the year, to say the least!

My Best Friend’s Girl will be released September 19th.

BLINDNESS (2008), Drama/Mystery/Romance/Thriller, R, 118 mins.

A mysterious epidemic of “white blindness” ravages a city, and the affected are quarantined in an abandoned mental hospital, forming an unstable society of the newly blind, in which the physically powerful prey upon the weak, rationing food and committing violent and atrocious acts.

The only eyewitness to the outbreak is a woman whose sight is somehow unaffected, and who follows her husband into quarantine. She keeps her sight a secret and uses her advantage to help guide her husband and a small group of strangers to safety. Their dangerous journey takes them through the ravages streets of the city, where all manner of civilization has broken down completely.

Blindness stars Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, and Sandra Oh and will be released September 26th.

NICK & NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST (2008), Drama/Comedy, PG-13, I’m guessing 100 mins or so.

Michael Cera stars as a young musician without the female magnetism that should come along with such a thing. Devastated that his girlfriend has recently left him, she shows up soon after the breakup at one of his gigs with a new guy.

Desperate to show that he has moved on as well, he accepts an offer from a strange girl in a bar to be her boyfriend for five minutes, beginning an epic night of song writing, exotic foods, stripping nuns, singing in the rain, and psychotic ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.

I guess I’ll just come out and say that by now it’s getting a little old that Michael Cera is still playing exactly the same character he played in the brilliant TV sitcom “Arrested Development.” I’m hoping he branches out soon, because he’s clearly a talented actor. Still, the movie looks pretty good so far…

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist will be released October 3rd.

QUARANTINE (2008), Horror/Mystery/Thriller.

Jennifer Carpenter, of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, plays a television reporter assigned to spend the night with a Los Angeles Fire crew. A routine 911 call brings them to an apartment building where police are already on the scene in response to mysterious screams coming from inside.

It turns out that the screams are coming from a woman who has been infected with an unknown but extremely infectious virus, and Carpenter and her news crew find themselves quarantined inside the building with the few remaining residents. All phones, cell phone service, and internet are cut off, and the people inside the building are not given any news as far as what is going on. After the event is over, the only evidence that anything unusual took place is their news footage shot inside the building.

Quarantine will be released October 10th.

.

MAX PAYNE (2008), Action/Crime/Drama/Thriller, probably R and 110 mins or so.

Mark Wahlberg plays the perectly named Max Payne, a New York City DEA agent investigating a series of murders in the city. Payne has a personal vendetta to satisfy, it seems that his family was killed as part of a conspiracy, and in his investigation he is teamed up with an assassin named Mona Sax, who is out to avenge her sister’s death.

Complicating matters is that the pair are taking the law into their own hands, and find themselves hunted not only the police, but also the mob and a ruthless corporation.

Mark Wahlberg is great at roles like this (see his hardened character in The Departed), but he seems to have made the mistake of claiming that he could kick Batman’s ass.

“Take off the suit and if you want to go one-on-one, two-on-one, and put a couple of you guys together - they all like to put the comic book characters together - come at me.”

Isn’t that kind of like saying you’re bigger than Jesus? At any rate, the movie looks cool, and will be released October 17th.