Tag Archives: DVD picks

For Your Queue

Familiar Faces, Fresh Filmmaking Voices for Your Queue

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Lake Bell makes her feature directing debut with a clever and insightful look at the world of voiceover talent, In a World… , which is available today on DVD. Also writing and starring, she plays Carol, quirky vocal coach and daughter to a buttery-voiced industry legend who doesn’t believe women belong in his business. Boasting finely drawn characters as well as wit and charm to spare, Bell’s unique debut will leave you smiling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZHBjLFu5is

 

Pair it with Joseph Gordon Levitt‘s debut behind the camera and pen, Don Jon. Both newbie filmmakers show surprising confidence and genuine aptitude. JGL plays a Jersey player who has either found the girl of his dreams or is facing a harsh reality about his intimacy problems. A witty and honest and insightful observation of our times.

 

 

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: First Time Filmmakers Demanding to be Seen

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Available today is new filmmaker Ryan Coogler’s impressive debut Fruitvale Station, telling the tragic story of Oscar Grant with the help of an award-worthy lead turn from Michael B. Jordan. Coogler’s evenhanded telling and his cast’s spontaneity and authenticity give the tale a fitting naturalism, but the film will be remembered as a look at two phenomenal young talents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crMTGCCui5c

Likewise, Dee Rees’s 2011 drama Pariah introduced an incisive and compelling new filmmaker with the story of an urban youth just trying to find a way to thrive. Also like Fruitvale, the film owes its power to a revelatory central performance. Adepero Oduye rings not a single false note as a 17-year-old coming out and finding her stride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlc0SZYnoMc

For Your Queue

For Your Queue: What’s With All the Ado?

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Let’s class up the queue this week with a double dose of the Bard. One of the very best films of 2013, Much Ado About Nothing, drops today. 

Writer/director Joss Whedon (The Avengers, Toy Story, The Cabin in the Woods) again shows his storytelling instincts are dead on, regardless of the genre. Shakespeare’s classic comedy about love and deception is given a present-day makeover, employing a game cast of Whedon favorites to create a playful, satisfying romp.
The wordplay is frenetic, some of the most clever Shakespeare produced, but there are also very funny stretches that rely heavily on physical comedy. The cast delivers with a gleeful enthusiasm, and Whedon adds amusing touches such as having one pivotal scene set amid snorkeling, giving it a new, Wes Anderson-esque hilarity.
Artfully filming in black and white, Whedon doesn’t shrink from the play’s dark corners, while giving the wonderfully comedic aspects a new, updated energy.

Pair that with the 2011 tribute/mystery/historical fiction Anonymous. The film takes the eons-old theory that Bill Shakespeare did not pen all those plays and turns it into a political thriller that entertains at every turn. The fact that this layered, historically savvy costume drama was directed by bombast master Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, 2012, White House Down) may have you believing in another anonymous helmsman.

For Your Queue

Go Boldly into this week’s Queue

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2013’s highest caliber, most fun blockbuster releases to all frontiers today. Star Trek Into Darkness –  JJ Abrams’s exceptional sequel to his surprisingly awesome Star Trek reboot – brings all  the humor, spectacle, nerdiness and octane of its predecessor. In fact, it may top it, thanks in part to the director’s genuine affection for the source material, his genius for casting, and his ability to tell a story that’s as pleasantly familiar as it is excitingly surprising.

 

Speaking of source material, why not get set for the legendary William Shatner’s visit to Columbus next weekend and revisit 1982’s Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan? Beyond Ricardo Montalban’s heaving chest plate and the wolverine napping on Shatner’s head lies a solid trek less dependent on special effects than basic storytelling. You’ll find various elements from Into Darkness began with STII, and though too many trekkies got their phasers stunned by the liberties Abrams put to use, the two films can co-exist just fine.