This Blu-Ray round-up for early July takes a look at the new releases of the rebooting of Evil Dead, the award winning documentary The Gatekeepers, the bizarre Southern fried sleaze of The Paperboy, and a different take on the already much talked about Spring Breakers.
While The Newsroom's first season often mistook ripped from the headline fact for character and simplistic moralizing for profundity, having watched the first four episodes of season two we are happy to report that showrunner Aaron Sorkin seems to have fixed many of the problems that plagued the first season... and in a few cases replaced them with all new problems.
Another of the year's worst, Fondi '91 is an incompetent and reprehensible coming of age story that can't decide if it wants to be a half assed romantic comedy or an icky, sleazy, and serious parable about date rape.
While good points are being raised about the benefits and misunderstanding of nuclear power, there still isn't enough balance to the documentary Pandora's Promise to make that convincing of an argument.
Artful, but deeply hollow, the art film autobiography I Send You This Place tries to understand mental illness, but cares about nothing more than its own pretty images.
Despite a cliche, overly melodramatic story and grating comedic relief characters, Pacific Rim is still a more than worthy summer blockbuster.
Grown Ups 2 sucks, but even by that bold statement it still manages to improve on its rock bottom predecessor.
The bar might not be set particularly very high, but Byzantium is easily one of the high points of the recent vampire pop culture onslaught. It might be a little too stately, dreary, and thoughtful to become a new genre classic, but at least the film proves there’s still room for invention in one of the oldest monster myths.
Farce is hard, but thankfully despite a couple of flat jokes and a low budget, Syrup is a fast paced, engaging, and amusing send up of corporate advertising.
Daniele Vicari’s Diaz - Don’t Clean Up This Blood is a chilling, effective, and unpredictable reminder of the shameful events surrounding the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy.
Likeable and unforced, No Heart Feelings is a Canadian mumblecore effort that provides rich characters and uniquely identifiable situations.
This week, The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema brings you a decent, but heavily anecdotal documentary about backup singers in Twenty Feet From Stardom and a look at the life and influences of magician and actor Ricky Jay.
The WWII survivalist drama Into the Wild doesn't bring much of anything new to the table, but tight pacing and great performances make it worth the time of genre fans.
While it starts off as a standard rock documentary, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me gives way to a more intimate and fascinating look at the personalities that shaped one of the most under-appreciated rock acts of all time.
Deeply funny and as uncomfortable as a forced vacation with the worst members of your family, The Way, Way Back is a summertime classic in the waiting.
