The internet is truly an amazing thing. Without it this DVD would have never seen the light of day -- a true tribute to the steadfast voice of fans. While some reports claim that Margot Kidder said in an interview in 2004 that enough Richard Donner footage existed in a vault somewhere that he could make his own cut of Superman II, others say that rabid fans had asked Warner Bros. for years to release a cut of Superman II that was more faithful to Donner's vision (a fan film version had been circulating online, utilizing footage from the broadcast TV versions of the movie that had footage not in the theatrical release). Whichever version is true, internet fans seized on the concept and began pestering Warners with emails and online petitions, and it finally paid off. Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut was released today on DVD, and is also a part of Warners massive The Ultimate Superman Collection DVD set.
Why all the hubbub over a film that's 28 years old? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'll do my best to give you a capsulized version of the sordid history of Superman II, but for much a much more in-depth explanation of the entire affair, check out the Wikipedia page for the new version of the film. Basically, Richard Donner shot most of the footage for Superman II while filming the original Superman: The Movie because the two films were supposed to be closely related to each other, two halves of one story. This included huge scenes that featured Marlon Brando which were never seen in the released film, all of Gene Hackman and Ned Beatty's scenes, and much more. After going over budget and over schedule on the original Superman film, the Salkinds (the producers on the Superman films) halted production on the sequel so that everyone could focus on completing Superman: the Movie. With me so far? Okay, let's press on ...
Firewall- Like Rip Van Winkle with a $25 million per picture deal, nap-addled gruff boy Harrison Ford has seen his career hibernate for more than a decade now, scoring hit upon forgettable hit. Ford's latest variation on a theme is, like the bulk of his post-Indiana Jones filmography, predictable formula fare, and therein lies its broad appeal. In what ultimately feels like a diluted remake of Ron Howard's 1996 thriller, Ransom, he plays a bank security expert whose family is held captive in exchange for his aid in electronically liberating $100 million. Bad guy Paul Bettany sneers and jeers so much that we know from the moment he turns up that Ford is going to heroically beat him and his dirty, dirty bastards, and our belief that goodness triumphing over ee-vil will be renewed. Able British stalwart Richard Loncraine, who directed Bettany in Wimbledon, paints this one by-the-numbers, and anyone looking for what might be their last Harrison Ford fix before Indy 4 (and presumed retirement) will get what they paid for, though very little more.
• Date Movie - Nowhere in the formula "Comedy = Tragedy + Time" does "Cruelty" figure in, something that this caca-palooza -- "from 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie" -- sets out to correct from the very first scene. When they introduce us to morbidly obese Julia Jones (Alyson Hannigan), it is with ridicule as they paint her as a hideous beast that makes men vomit and turn gay. Of course, when we remember that 2 of the 6 writers of Scary Movie were Wayans Brothers, whose stock in trade is that kind of cruelty, it makes sense (even if these are another two writers.)
A parody of romantic comedies like Bridget Jones's Diary, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Hitch, this lame spoof goes for the easy laugh almost every time, beating to death with a golf club every gag with the subtlety of, well ... someone who beats someone else to death with a golf club. The "13" in the movie's "PG-13" rating would seem to be either a limit for either I.Q. or emotional age, as the movie's show pieces are either juvenile blue bits or have something to do with either poop, pee, puke or pus (the dreaded "4 P's"). Putting gifted comic actors like Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge in this stinky mess makes them both stinky by association, though as time goes by, the whole lot of them will only be guilty of contributing to a vast background of white noise that we will have learned to filter out when we grow up. Presently #64 on the IMDB's Bottom 100 of all time.
• Bloodrayne - Teutonic terror Uwe Boll directs movies no more than gravity directs objects to Earth. His grasp of pithy things like story and character development is nearly non-existent, and his penchant for adapting video games has earned him a reputation as a sort of idiot savant (only without the savant part), kind of like if the kid on the porch in Deliverance only knew how to play the riff that Vanilla Ice nicked from Queen's "Under Pressure". His latest, a shameless Blade ripoff about a half-human, half-vampire avenger (Kristianna Loken), is miscast, barely written and staged with the skill of a spastic with cataracts. Currently residing on the IMDB's Bottom 100 (at #34), it and Boll's rotting body of work have elevated the oeuvre of Ed Wood, whose non-charting Plan 9 From Outer Space was once considered the worst film ever made, to common hack status. At least the inclusion of the free PC version of the Bloodrayne 2 video game will help soothe buyer remorse.
• Doogal - A saccharine, cheap-looking CGI import from Britain about a lazy, cowardly, sugar-addicted pooch (with a mullet cut) who must find a way to save the world from an icy death is not the follow-up to Hoodwinked that Disney escapees Bob and Harvey Weinstein hoped for...or we asked for. At least they've got the swell Over The Hedge in theaters this week. Formerly titled The Magic Roundabout and re-dubbed (Doogal, that is. Not Over The Hedge.)
• Duma - With most arthouse films rated "R", it is always a pleasure when one comes along that culture mavens can take their kids to, and The Black Stallion director Carroll Ballard's latest nature trek -- a visually lovely adventure -- certainly does fit that bill. It is about a 12-year-old South African boy (Alexander Michaletos) who must return his pet cheetah to the wild, encountering and overcoming a number of obstacles along the way, the biggest one being our initial reluctance to accept its premise.
• Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch. • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.
The
Call Of Cthulhu - The H.P. Lovecraft Preservation Society, a group
of dauntless fans that created the brilliant, Cthulhu-themed musical,
A Shoggoth On The Roof,
have created the ultimate fan film, an incredible tribute to the writer whose work seeded modern horror favorites like
Re-Animator and From Beyond. Shot like a 1920's
era silent film, the 47-minute feature is technically amazing, shot (in black-and-white), lit and performed like an
authentic film of the period would have been (although it would have horrified people of the time right into Arkham
Sanitarium.) Considered Lovecraft's most famous story, the
story of a man who inherits a collection of documents detailing the ghastly Cthulhu Cult, it is very faithfully
adapted, not to mention super-efficient. The title cards are in the viewer's choice of an astonishing 24 different
languages, and the lush, symphonic score can be played in hi-fi and the kitschy-fun, lo-fi "Mythoscope". A
skillful build and an extremely satisfying payoff (think creature design King Kong '33 style) add up to one
of the smartest horror films of recent memory.
Æon Flux - This empty sci-fi flick's listing on IMDB.com is loaded with glowing user endorsements,
leading everyone else who has seen it to believe that either drugs were involved in forming these opinions, the Pod
People took these users over or an army of undercover PR lackeys is spinning overtime. This cinematic equivalent of a
bronzed cow pie, an unimaginative Logan's
Run pretender set 400 years in the future after a global plague, stars Charlize Theron as a rebel trying to take down the corrupt government of
Bregna, the only city on Earth. From the way-lazy back story title cards and opening narration to the silly costumes to
the cartoonish action sequences to the awful deadpan performances, this should be called Peed-On, Sux. Maybe Theron's mother needed an operation or something, but this is a very bad and
brainless example of sci-fi, a puffed-up issue movie that ultimately offers nothing but regret. Instead, check out
creator Peter Chung's original, pre-anime craze animated MTV series, which was released on DVD late last year.
Breakfast On Pluto - The Crying Game writer-director Neil Jordan never really does get into why Patrick “Kitten”
Braden becomes a transvestite, but he does manage to save his film from being a rote and self-indulgent celebration of
uniqueness when he bobs and then weaves a political cry (for Irish independence) into it. The criminally attractive Cillian Murphy plays Kitten a little too much like Mrs. Doubtfire, though he
does sustain the character, and an incredible glam-packed soundtrack helps create an energetic sense of time and place.
Deep Blue - While not as
stunning as the likes of Winged Migration or March Of The Penguins, this BBC-produced nature film sure is pretty to
look at. With a calming, minimalist narration by Pierce Brosnan
(supplanting Michael Gambon's from the UK release) and a dreamy score by George Fenton, the underwater photography is stunning. The beast-on-beast
violence is a bit intense, with one hapless sea lion meeting his end when two orcas play hacky-sack with his mangled
corpse (in slow-motion, no less).
• Bee
Season - Richard Gere as a rough-boy sailor in An Officer and a Gentleman? OK.
Richard Gere as a singing and dancing attorney in Chicago? Convincing enough. Richard Gere as a Jewish husband (of Juliette Binoche) and father exploring the mysteries of God through the
flawless spelling of his daughter? Oy. Many parts of this existential drama about the ways in which a brilliant
11-year-old (Flora Cross) affects her family are sketchy, as no one of
the characters is well-drawn enough for us to care about them too much. Genius was captured far better in films like Little Man Tate and Searching For Bobby Fischer.
Another Public
Enemy - Korean action director Woo-Suk Kang essentially
remakes his 2002 hit Public
Enemy, and it is a very mixed bag. While his tale of corruption and vigilantism is well acted, it is way too
long (nearly 2 1/2 hours) and loaded with unnecessary and criminally boring bureaucratic hoo-hah, not to mention the
silly dialogue. Instead, check out the original or Kang's 2003 smash, Silmido (if you can find it).
Get Rich Or Die Tryin' - It may follow the Eminem8 Mile formula - pedigreed
director (Oscar bridesmaid Jim Sheridan) rap phenomenon (Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson) - but it does not add up to a movie
that is going to change any minds about the nigh-invincible rap star. This brooding enigma is an expressionless
marble-mouth, and it is difficult to root for him in this violent rags-to-riches gangster yarn, despite its respectable
duds. Even the similar Hustle &
Flow, starring Mr. "Fiddy" Cent's co-star, Terrence
Howard, topped this murky, self-aggrandizing run-on sentence, which this impatient survivor has re-titled Get Sleep Or Try Dyin'.
Bukowski: Born in to
This - There is a morbidly fascinating fly-on-the-wall vibe that pervades John Dullaghan's profile of the late Beat writer Charles
Bukowski, a base familiarity that parallels the Ham On Rye author's own
inimitable hard-lived life and style. Epic in scope (and length), first-time director Dullaghan compiles dozens of
meticulously screened hours of archival footage, coupling the best of it with new interviews with Bukowski survivors to
present a terrifically real character study of a little-studied real character. The watchable Chuck-alike Happy Hour, starring Anthony LaPaglia as a booze-addled writer, is also just out.
Capote - Truman Capote spent five
years researching In Cold
Blood - the book that would be his last - and sophomore director Bennett
Miller's film is a telling and rather literate fly-on-the-wall dramatization of that time. The biggest appeal is Philip Seymour Hoffman's bravura Oscar-winning performance as the eccentric
author, which he takes beyond mere affectation and into full-on obsession as Capote's research into the 1959 murders of
a Kansas family consumes him in every way. It is nice to see professional seether Catherine Keener in another nice-gal role, here as Capote friend and
soon-to-be To Kill A Mockingbird scribe (Nell) Harper Lee. Miller and writer Dan Futterman (adapting Gerald
Clarke's book) do not quite commit to a direction for the story, and humanizing killer Perry Smith (a dependable Clifton Collins Jr.) is time unwisely spent, though Hoffman, who also
produced, sees that we remember the film for other reasons.
Breaking
News - Hong Kong action director Johnny To delivers this
watchable Woo-alike about a police force that loses the support of the public when a robbery goes bad and is covered by
a local news program. The set pieces are pretty tight, even if the drama and the statement To tries to make about the
power and responsibility of the media doesn't fully come through.
Free Enterprise: Special
Edition - A self-effacing turn akin to Marlon Brando's in The
Freshman and Pauly Shore's in Pauly Shore Is Dead is William Shatner, sending up the cult of personality that has followed him
since the original Star Trek series ended its five year mission two years
early in 1969. When fanboys Rafer Wiegel and Eric McCormack meet their boyhood idol, he is far from the super-cool man
for all seasons they have long worshiped. He's bent on staging a one-man musical version of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, a great running joke that culminates in the brilliant payoff that is
the Shatner/The Rated R rap duet, "No Tears For Caesar". Writer-director Robert Meyer Burnett has created a love letter, not just to Trek, but to anyone who has ever loved anything with fanatical passion, and this
long-overdue 2-disc treatment gives it the respect it was not afforded when it was first released in 1999. Check out
the Pop-Up Video style trivia track, which annotates the geekery, new special effects, the making-of feature Where No Man Has Gone Before, and
the unaired TV pilot, Café Fantastique, which features the real fans
who inspired this smart, hardy-har-har trek. A sequel, My Big Fat Geek Wedding, has been listed on the IMDB for nearly 3 years now, and
Mindfire Entertainment's website features a
rudimentary mention of it, though no firm details are available as yet.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Special Edition - Death, and the gloomy heft
that comes with it, visits Hogwarts in the fourth and most satisfying installment in the ongoing series so far. When an
evil thought vanquished literally rears its ugly head again, Harry (Daniel
Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermoine (Emma Watson) team up to expose it. Like the overwhelmingly dark Revenge Of The Sith, this is the first to bear the PG-13 rating (for "sequences
of fantasy violence and frightening images"), though its decidedly down ending makes it feel more like The Empire Strikes Back. It is not unreasonable to expect studio Warner Brothers to
keep their three leads on through Harry Potter and the As-Yet-Unwritten-and-Untitled
Year 7 Story. This, of course, is despite the fact that they will be in their early 20's by then, but let us not
forget that at least one of the 90210 kids was practically eligible for Social Security by the end of that run. Even at
157 minutes, the book has still been truncated, but it is doubly encouraging to know that kids will know what is
missing and will sit still for that long in order to be able to go on smartly about it. The second disc is
chock-full-o' extra goodies, and is available in full- and widescreen editions. A single disc version is also
available.
The Ice Harvest - Five of Hollywood's best comic actors - John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton,
Mike Starr, Randy Quaid and Oliver Platt - help veteran comedy director Harold Ramis make a quick and efficient go of his smart little noir picture.
Cusack plays a Wichita mob lawyer who, with partner Thornton, relieve boss Quaid of some $2 million on Christmas Eve,
but realize their perfect plan is not-so-perfect when people start dying. Ramis does something really impressive with
Cusack's sad sack counselor by defining him through his relationships with others, giving us all we need to know with
something as simple as a "Merry Christmas" uttered with a respectful familiarity. Cusack slow-burns nicely,
and Platt is a manic delight as his perpetually drunk friend and stepfather to his kids. While not quite the
anti-Christmas classic that Thornton's Bad Santa has so quickly become, it is
certainly a satisfying and refreshingly grown-up night on the couch.
KatieBird:
Certifiable Crazy Person - When folks like the horror mavens over at BloodyDisgusting.com say your film is, "the single best
story about the birth of a serial killer ever told on film", fans of the genre can take it as more than just a
casual recommendation. Former Corman drone Justin Paul Ritter directs this
'70's throwback that has been compared to Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer and
Malevolence (only with a hot chick instead of a cumbersome freak).
Lady and the
Tramp - Disney's 1955 classic, which features the evergreen "Bella Notte" and is presented in 4:3
and its 2.55:1 theatrical ratio, is given the 2-disc special edition treatment, with a new digital restoration, a look
at the original 1943 storyboards and some never-before-seen deleted sequences.
