It’s that time once again! Dork Shelf and our friends over at Entertainment One want to send you and a guest to see A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO ENDINGS in TORONTO on Monday, May 28th or in VANCOUVER on Thursday, May 31st!

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Beginner’s Guide to Endings is a spectacular ride through the lives of an equally spectacular family and interweaves three stories of miraculous redemption. Duke White (Harvey Keitel), a hard living gambling man who has doomed his three boys to a horrible fate, and when his sons find out that they don’t have much time left to live, they decide to make up for a lifetime of misdeeds in one day. But making up for past mistakes and doing all the things in life that they should’ve isn’’t nearly that simple for the White boys – but then again, the White boys never did take the simple path. Starring Scott Caan, Jason Jones, Paulo Costanzo, Tricia Helfer, J.K. Simmons and the amazing Harvey Keitel.  It will hit theatres in select cities June 1^st.

For your chance to win simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with BEGINNER’S GUIDE and YOUR CITY in the subject line. Please include a mailing address in case you win. (Your name will not be added to any mailing lists.) Please only one entry per household. For additional chances to win, simply like the contest announcement from our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Thursday, May 24th for Toronto and 11:59pm on Sunday May 27th for Vancouver.

Good luck! And as always, stay tuned to Dork Shelf for the latest news, reviews, and more killer contests in the future!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, here comes Dork Shelf and Alliance Films with another great advance screening contest for you guys! We want to send 15 lucky winners and a guest of their choosing to see an advance screening of PIRANHA 3DD in TORONTO, OTTAWA, and WINNIPEG on Thursday May 31st OR in HALIFAX on Wednesday, May 30th.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After the terror unleashed on Lake Victoria in Piranha 3D, the pre-historic school of blood thirsty piranhas are back. This time, no one is safe from the flesh eating fish as they sink their razor sharp teeth into the visitors of summer’s best attraction, The Big Wet Water Park. Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future) reprises his role as the eccentric piranha expert with survivor Paul Scheer (The League) and a partially devoured Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) back for more fish frenzy. David Hasselhoff trades in the sandy beaches of “Baywatch” to be a celebrity lifeguard at the racy water park. Prepare for double the terror, double the action and double the D’s in this sequel also starring Gary Busey , Katrina Bowden, Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, Chris Zylka, and David Koechner.

Piranha 3DD opens in theatres across Canada on Friday, June 1st, but for your chance to see it early, simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with PIRANHA 3DD and YOUR CITY in the subject line. Please only one entry per household. For additional chances to win simply like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Monday, May 28th.
Good luck, as always, and don’t forget to stay tuned to Dork Shelf for the latest movie, game, comic, and local music news as well as more wonderful contests and giveaways.

The Secret World of Arrietty (2010, Hiromasa Yonebayashi) – Although it’s really just another retelling of Mary Norton’s famous children’s story The Borrowers, The Secret World of Arrietty showcases the trademark stunning visuals one comes to expect from Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. Working from a screenplay by master animator Miyazaki, the film stays true to the story’s original roots despite stumbling slightly late in the film by adding tension and the appearance of a villain somewhat awkwardly.

Young Shawn (voiced by David Henrie) has recently moved to the country to live with his Aunt Jessica and her housekeeper Hara (Carol Burnett). Shawn is there to kill time away from his work obsessed mother before a serious heart operation that he might not live through. In the walls of Jessica’s house live the Clock’s, a family of little people known as “borrowers” who sneak into people’s kitchens at night and take only what they need to survive and keep house. The daughter of the clan, Arrietty (Bridgit Mendler), has just turned 14, meaning she’s old enough to start borrowing on her own. But when she’s spotted by Shawn on her first mission with her father (Will Arnett), it begins a series of events that put the small family in great danger. Shawn, desperate for a friend, looks to Arrietty for someone to talk to, much to the chagrin of Arrietty’s parents.

No dubbing of a Ghibli film will ever be equal to subtitled version of the same film (Amy Poehler seems pretty out of place as Arrietty’s histrionic mother), but here the script holds some of the film’s wonkier elements. While Miyazaki and co-writer Keiko Niwa (and translator/English dialog writer Karey Kirkpatrick) do a great job setting up both the world of Shawn and the background of the Clocks, the film’s pacing seems a bit off. While most adaptations of Norton’s original work make it known that the housekeeper character will turn out to be somewhat villainous, here the story turns almost on a dime and simply turns Hara into someone acting crazy just for the sake of having conflict. It creates a sense of disconnect in the film’s second half that’s a little hard to get past, but forgivable in the light of the film’s other strengths.

The Blu-ray looks phenomenal, bringing out every colour perfectly, and the film offers the viewer to watch the film subtitled with the original DTS-HD Japanese Master Audio, which sounds even crisper than the English language dub. There’s also another version of the film in the special features made entirely from storyboards as the English dub plays along that’s pretty neat for completists to follow along with. There’s also a couple of music videos and the original Japanese trailers, teasers, and TV spots included here. (Andrew Parker)

CONTEST: Enter to win a copy of The Secret World of Arrietty on Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack from Dork Shelf and Walt Disney Home Entertainment! (Ends Wednesday 5/23)

The Grey (2012, Joe Carnahan) - If you had told me ten years ago that Liam Neeson would reinvent himself as a late-career action hero, I would have slapped you in the face and called you Mr. Sillypants (or perhaps a slightly more insulting name). Yet, somehow the actor has pulled it off, stepping into Harrison Ford’s shoes as Hollywood’s go-to grumpy aging action star in over his head. The Grey reunites him with writer/director Joe Carnahan after the duo collaborated on a feature film version of The A-Team that was far better than it had any right to be. This time they are stripped of any ties to a campy 80s TV show and create a rough n tumble survivalist thriller. Despite some occasionally misplaced art film aspirations, The Grey is a thrilling R-rated mid-budget genre flick, the kind of movie that isn’t supposed to be made anymore.

Neeson stars as a damaged man (obviously) who works for an isolated Alaskan oil team. His job is to sit with a sniper rifle and kill any carnivorous wild life that threaten the other workers (in other words, he’s a professional bad ass). The whole gang piles onto an airplane to visit their families and it crashes, leaving them stranded in the artic in the middle of a wolf den, who slowly hunt them down one by one. It’s a classic guy movie survivalist set up executed by filmmakers who clearly love the genre. Neeson and his team of miscreants are all fantastic as they get worn down by the elements and bicker over alpha male status.

For Carnahan, it’s yet another rock solid B-movie following up the likes of Narc and Smokin’ Aces. He directs his team of dude’s dudes well and ratchets up suspense expertly, crafting a number of genuine shocks and thrills (including a spectacular POV plane crash and some surprisingly effective CGI wolves). Unfortunately, as the film wears on he becomes a little too enamored with the existential themes of the story, trying to awkwardly transform a solid genre flick into a thinkpiece with mixed results. Still, all of Carnahan’s efforts have been flawed in some way and The Grey is easily one of his most consistent outings. The guy has it in him to create a fantastic John Carpenter-esque B-movie with a brain and has shown enough signs of improvement over his career to suggest that will happen sooner rather than later. Carnahan is definitely a genre filmmaker to watch and hopefully this isn’t the last time he puts Liam Neeson through the ringer.

The Grey’s Blu-ray is unfortunately a mixed bag. The technical specs are fantastic and there’s no better way to see the movie. However, the special features are a little lacking. The featurettes are clearly promotional viral videos barely clocking in at 3-minutes a piece, while the cast and crew interviews are comprised of awkwardly edited B-roll from those viral clips with embarrassing sound-drops. Considering that those slapped together featurettes suggest someone had a collection of interviews and on set footage from the punishing artic shoot, it’s a mystery why a proper making-of documentary wasn’t cut together. The commentary with Carnahan and his editors is also a disappointment, too often turning into a self-congratulatory back slapping-session that takes the film way to seriously (at one point they call The Grey “a thinly veiled art film” and compare it to The King’s Speech) without offering much in the way of production details. Still, even if the special features disappoint, the film doesn’t. If you miss 80s/90s era of R-rated genre movies aimed at teens and regressed adolescents in age brackets that classify them as “adults,” The Grey is a must see. (Phil Brown)

The Woman in Black (2012, James Watkins) – While in no way a reinvention of the haunted house film, The Woman in Black offers genre fans a tightly crafted and loving throwback to Hammer horror films and sly nods to the works of genre veterans Sam Raimi and Wes Craven. Director Watkins and star Daniel Radcliffe work together to make this slight, but atmospheric chiller into something gripping and exciting.

At first, it might be a little surprising to see just how much Radcliffe has grown up in the role of Arthur Kipps. Radcliffe not only plays an adult here, but a young, widowed father of a young boy. Arthur is an early 1900s legal aide forced by his boss into getting back to work by sending him from London to the coastal countryside to go over the paperwork of an estate currently up for sale. Upon his arrival in the village where he intends to stay, the locals do everything in his power to send Arthur away before he even makes it to the secluded former estate of Alice Drablow. Driven by the desire to provide for his son and to keep his currently tenuous job, Arthur presses on and learns the hard way the tragedy that befell the residents of Marsh House.

Watkins uses his eye for detail to cleverly misdirect the audience at every turn, and Radcliffe makes the most of what’s essentially a one man show, including a wonderful extended sequence where there’s no dialogue and he’s the only person in the house. Things do get a bit amped up for the conclusion (which borrows a bit too much from Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell) as it turns into a pretty standard film, but there’s surely a lot to like here.

The Blu-ray has great sound, amplifying the creaks and groans of Marsh House splendidly, but the picture quality doesn’t really bring out the darker tones of the film as nicely as they looked on screen. There’s a couple of small featurettes that don’t do much, and a commentary track from Watkins and screenwriter Jane Goldman, which is pretty mechanical when talking about filmmaking details, but oddly entertaining and candid to listen to. (Andrew Parker)

INTERVIEW: Check out our interview with star Daniel Radcliffe!

This Means War (2012, McG) – Great news everyone (and by great I mean terrible)! One of the most insufferable films thus far in 2012 is now available in an even longer version for added “value.” The woefully botched and amateurish Spy Vs. Spy styled romantic action caper This Means War isn’t helped by any sort of added content despite a stacked Blu-ray. It’s just as terribly acted and pointless as it was back in February.

The asininely named Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine) are two best friend CIA operatives and wetworkers who fall for the same woman, a perky-but-not-exactly-quirky consumer rights advocate named Lauren (Reese Witherspoon) who has been forced into the world of online dating by her married, alcoholic, quirky best friend (Chelsea Handler). Tuck meets Lauren through the dating site and is immediately smitten with her, while FDR meets her by chance in a video store (which I will get back to in a minute) and they have their own “meet cute” flirting session. Lauren doesn’t know that the two men are so close they’re practically brothers/lovers, so she dates the two men concurrently while the animosity between the besties grows to heights that find the men using company resources illegally to spy on and sabotage each other’s dates. Oh, and this all happens while a crazed criminal genius (Til Schweiger) looks for revenge on Tuck for accidentally killing his brother in the film’s opening sequence.

An absolute nadir in the career of the already much derided McG, this film is ugly, incoherent, illogical, and worst of all, lazy to the point where no one on screen seems to care about what’s going on. Witherspoon looks like she just got up from a nap. Hardy seems to be constantly looking around for direction, but at least makes the only effort from the cast. Pine suffers the worst with a performance so bad it nearly erases any good will he’s earned in recent years. Also, please don’t get me started on Chelsea “I only know one joke that I’m going to run into the ground until the day I die” Handler as Lauren’s married friend.

Every sequence is shot like a Honda commercial, with very little inventiveness outside of the occasional production design achievement. The action sequences are edited into incoherence, are relatively bloodless, and hold absolutely no dramatic tension. They are also marred by some of the worst and least convincing CGI outside of an Asylum release, especially in the first of the film’s three(!) endings, which thanks to the wonder of Blu-ray drags out even longer to an unconscionable 107 minutes. (Also in the special features there are 2 MORE alternate endings, serving as further proof that no one here had any clue what they were doing.)

The Blu-ray looks and sound fine, and McG delivers commentary on both the theatrical and extended cuts of the film (with little difference), some deleted scenes and a previz look at an alternate opening. There’s a halfway amusing gag reel that’s funnier than the actual movie, but it’s in no way worth buying just for that. (Andrew Parker)

Red Tails (2012, Anthony Hemmingway) – Corny as an Iowa field and oddly put together, Red Tails feels pretty slapdash despite being one of producer George Lucas’ passion projects. This tale of the formation of the famed all African American fighter pilot squad, The Tuskegee Airmen,  never takes off thanks to some surprisingly cut rate production values, scenery chewing performances (especially from squadron higher-ups played by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrance Howard), and a script that’s way too overstuffed with needless subplots.

The film starts in 1944 Italy where American pilots are vastly being outclassed and outmanoeuvred by German pilots with better technology and a better idea of their surroundings. In search of a new tactic that could help win the air war, the US government reluctantly begins using the underutilized squad of all African-American fighter pilots in the 332nd fighter squad. The film follows the exploits of a handful of the soldiers into battle after previously only being used for taking out trains and other forms of transportation.

Aside from the stunning dogfights and the massive attention to period detail (except for an insert wide shot of the Pentagon that was clearly shot in modern day), Red Tails has no structure or discipline whatsoever. This film feels unfinished and almost in unreleasable condition. No scenes actually transition between each other with some bleeding over or fading into the next one without rhyme or reason.

The Blu-ray can’t save all of the film’s problems, but it does come together in a nice package. The picture and sound have improved since the theatrical release, but there’s still quite a bit missing on screen. There is, however a pretty great hour long documentary (narrated by Gooding) that chronicles the history of the squad, as well as some great featurettes that show the effects guys at ILM working their tails off. There’s also talks with Hemmingway, Lucas, composer Terrance Blanchard, and the individual cast members. (Andrew Parker)

For those of you relaxing in Toronto this fine Victoria Day Weekend we’ve got passes to see your two favourite InnerSPACE hosts at Comedy Bar’s Sunday Night Live this Sunday, May 20th at 9pm. You’ve seen Teddy Wilson and Ajay Fry hosting on the SPACE network, now see them join the Sketchersons to host one of the longest-running sketch comedy shows in Toronto.

Currently in it’s eighth year, Sunday Night Live is the flagship show of Toronto’s Comedy Bar. Modelled after NBC’s SNL, each week The Sketchersons write and perform an all-new show featuring live comedy, a house band, musical guests, and a special guest host. Past Sunday Night Live hosts have included the WWF’s Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Chris Jericho, Kevin Sorbo, Kids In The Hall’s Kevin MacDonald and Scott Thompson, and Whose Line Is It Anyway’s Greg Proops and Colin Mochrie – as well as some of the best comedy talent Toront has to offer. You can catch Sunday Night Live every Sunday night at Comedy Bar (9pm, $10, 945 Bloor St. W, Toronto)

Ajay Fry and Teddy Wilson are the esteemed hosts of SPACE’s flagship show, InnerSPACE – a daily entertainment talk show that covers film, television, video games, technology, comic books, gadgets, and all things genre. InnerSPACE takes its audience behind the velvet rope by giving them VIP access to the people, places, and things inside genre that they’ve grown to love, and airs Monday – Friday at 6E/3P.

For your chance to win, simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with SUNDAY NIGHT LIVE in the subject line. Please only one entry per person/household. For additional chances to win, like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Saturday, May 19th.

Running from May 17th to the 27th the Toronto LGBT Film Festival will feature screenings, filmmaker Q&As, panels, installations at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox. With more than 200 films being screened at this year’s fest, Inside Out is literally the biggest and most important event of its kind in Canada.

Among this year’s highlights are Cloudburst (which we reviewed in our Canadian Film Fest piece), Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee Bullhead, and Hot Docs prize winner Call Me Kuchu. As for the rest of the fest, Dork Shelf film writers Phil Brown, and Brandon Bastaldo have taken a look at some of this year’s other Inside Out offerings. Read their reviews below.

Margarita

Directors: Dominique Cardona, Laurie Colbert

Directed by Dominique Cardona and Laurie Colbert, and written by Colbert and Margaret Webb- it’s fair to say that that Margarita certainly has a ladies touch. We’re introduced to Margarita (Nicola Correia Damude), who is a live in house keeper (and so much more) for an upper middle class family.

Margarita is pretty much the super nanny you would die for: she cooks, she cleans, she even repairs the roof and Damude is well cast as this strong and honourable hard working woman. Although Margarita is light fun, the film often finds itself pushing boundaries. An unofficial Canadian citizen, Margartia is threatened by deportation which as a result raises issues about Margarita’s ability to practice her sexual orientation and because of this Margarita is deals with the tough realities this house keeper/ immigrant/ lesbian extraordinaire unique situation affords.

When the financially affluent, but emotionally devoid, couple who used to employ Margarita are forced to take up house hold duties themselves, they come to find that the biggest chore they have neglected is their teen aged daughter Mali (Maya Ritter), who has relied upon Margarita as role model. Shot in Toronto, Margarita is an easy going, yet conscious expose of a queer immigrant’s perspective. (Brandon Bastaldo)

Screens

Saturday, May 19, 7:15pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

Kiss Me (Kyss Mig)

Director: Alexandra-Therese Keining

More than anything else, Kiss Me proves that even the simplest idea can work when executed with conviction by a group of talented collaborators. The story is deliberately threadbare, Mia (Ruth Vega Fernandez) visits her father—who she hasn’t seen in years—for his engagement party and announces her own engagement to her 7-year boyfriend/business partner. Then, when Mia is unexpectedly left alone on the island estate with her stepmother to-be and future stepsister Frida (Liv Mjones), a sudden and instant attraction develops between the semi-siblings despite the fact that Mia has never openly expressed that side of her sexuality. Rather quickly, the pair fall in love and Mia realizes that she might have to abandon everything she has built and knows in her life for a new relationship.

Pretty basic torn-lovers stuff with a lesbian twist; however, writer/director Alexandra-Therese Keining takes her time to develop the love story between her two leads naturally and sensually. It’s unabashedly romantic and works thanks to two painfully honest performances as well as Keining’s knack for shooting steamy love scenes without ever slipping into softcore. Sure, Mia’s boyfriend has little to do other than devolve into jealous rage, but in a movie landscape where most token female love interests are irritatingly one-note, it’s at least a change of pace. Keining’s script playfully toys with romance clichés and when the chemistry between the leads of this sort of movie is this strong, it’s hard to go wrong. Given the modest ambitions of the project, Kiss Me also can’t be described as anything less than a success. (Phil Brown)

Screens

Friday, May 25, 9:30pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

Jobriath A.D.

Director: Kieran Turner

There’s something unexplainable about Kieran Turner’s Jobraith A.D., a docu-bio dedicated to the unsung and tragic praise for Jobriath Salisbury’s glittering genius. Sitting in aged dressing rooms and fore grounded by vanity mirrors, Jobraith A.D. collects the opinions of Los Angeles and New York’s oldest stage performers, family, and friends to tell this peculiar story of a man whose reputation as the gay messiah of the music industry follows 30 years after his death.

Turner delivers a curious surplus of testimony and praise for Jobriath, the first openly gay musician signed to a major record label. But as Jobriath’s sleazy and often incompressible manager Jerry Brandt makes grand claims (saying that Jobriath got more attention than any other artist in the history of the business) the astounding praise for the first true performance artist is at time wacky and Zoolander-esque.

Still, confronted with images and sounds of Salisbury’s raw talent, we cannot deny the flare of this trendsetter whose career stayed in the shadow of glam rock king David Bowie, and suffered because of the sad fact that audiences were not ready to submit to an openly gay man’s charms. Part of Inside Out’s Icon documentary series, Jobriath A.D. is a bedazzled account and celebration of a man whose grand talent and musical genius will leave you haunted. (Brandon Bastaldo)

Screens

Saturday, May 26^th, 4:30pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

It’s that time again! We’ve another great contest for our readers in Toronto. Dork Shelf wants to send five lucky winners and their guests to see a screening of the Canadian indie thriller The Corridor in Toronto on Friday, May 18th at 9:00 PM at the Projection Booth Cinema (1035 Gerrard St East)

Here’s the official synposis of The Corridor: They’ve been the best of buddies for more than a decade, but now they’re changing – getting married, getting promoted, going bald, going insane. During a male-bonding weekend, they will discover a spectral corridor through the woods – an impossible hallway where none should be. It will lead these five men into fear, into betrayal, and into the biggest change of them all: by weekend’s finish… they’ll be dead.

Be sure to read our full review of this Fantasia Film Fest Audience Award winner here.

The Corridor opens in Toronto at the Projection Booth Cinema on Friday, May 18th and we’d like to give you a chance at winning one of five pairs of double passes to the Friday screening. Simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with THE CORRIDOR in the subject line. Only one entry per person, please. For additional chances to win, like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Wednesday, May 16th.

Good luck, and as always, stay tuned to Dork Shelf for more great contests and giveaways!

Hey there, boys and girls of all ages. What kind of bird are you? Take your time thinking up the answer to that question because the answer plays heavily into our next great contest! Dork Shelf and the wonderful people over at Entertainment One want to send fifteen lucky winners and their guests to see the latest film from Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums director Wes Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom, in Toronto on Thursday, May 24th at 7:00pm.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the summer of 1965, Moonrise Kingdom tells the story of two twelve-year-olds who fall in love, make a secret pact, and run away together into the wilderness. As various authorities try to hunt them down, a violent storm is brewing off-shore — and the peaceful island community is turned upside down in more ways than anyone can handle. Bruce Willis plays the local sheriff. Edward Norton is a Khaki Scout troop leader. Bill Murray and Frances McDormand portray the young girl’s parents. The cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, and Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as the boy and girl.

For your chance to win, simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with MOONRISE KINGDOM in the subject line. Answer the question “What kind of bird are you?” in the email, and please provide us with a mailing address in case you win. (Your name will not be added to any mailing lists.) Please only one entry per person/household. For additional chances to win, like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Sunday, May 20th.

Moonrise Kingdom opens in Toronto on Friday, June 1st, but here’s a couple of clips to whet your appetite. And as always, stay tuned to Dork Shelf for more great contests and giveaways!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Chronicle (2012, Josh Trank) – Quite possibly the most fully realized and surprising first person shot “found footage” film of all time, the superhero(ish) drama Chronicle tells a dark and bold story that feels painfully real and heartbreaking despite its genre trappings. While it’s undeniably excellent, the home viewing experience actually increases the intimacy of the film’s dramatic elements.

The film opens as unflinchingly as possible. Shy and emotionally damaged Seattle teenager Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan) has recently bought a video camera to document attacks by his abusive, drunken father and the final days of his mother, who’s in the final stages of terminal cancer. Andrew brings the camera everywhere he goes almost as if it’s a security blanket for him to inoculate himself from the outside world. His only real “friend” is his pseudo-intellectual cousin Matt (Alex Russell), who seemingly thinks everything “cool” is beneath him. One night outside a rave where Andrew nearly gets the crap beaten out of him for accidentally filming some drunken bro’s girlfriend, Matt and the coolest kid in school/future shoe-in for class president Steve (Friday Night Lights’ Michael B. Jordan), force a worried Andrew into using his camera to document a mysterious cavern deep in the woods that houses a giant glowing crystal. After coming in contact with the crystal, the boys begin to develop telekinetic powers allowing them to move and manipulate matter. At first, they strengthen their powers with an escalating series of silly dares and childish pranks (as teenagers are naturally wont to do even without superpowers), but when the more mature Andrew begins to question his friends commitment to doing something with these powers, fissures in their close friendship quickly begin to develop leaving Steve and Matt to question Andrew’s very sanity.

First time director Josh Trank and screenwriter Max Landis (son of Blues Brothers director John) create a wonderful “slow burn” with their storytelling abilities, crafting a story that unfolds naturally, growing more unsettling as it goes on. It’s hard not to talk about the joys of the plotting and pacing without spoiling it, but it’s not hard to say that this film looks phenomenal, utilizing the fact that everyone has a camera nowadays making for an “as it happens” sense of immediacy to a story that could’ve very easily failed in lesser hands.

The Blu-ray/DVD/Digital combo pack includes the Director’s Cut of the film, that’s not necessarily darker in tone, but adds a couple of nice character notes missing from the theatrical release. There’s also a deleted scene that doesn’t change very much and some interesting pre-production camera tests and storyboards. (Andrew Parker)

Albert Nobbs (2011, Rodrigo Garcia) – Featuring some great performances and a mostly inspired story, Albert Nobbs still manages to be a bit of a letdown thanks to some wonky plotting and awkward pacing. Still, this awards season notable from last year featuring Glenn Close playing a closeted woman moonlighting as a 19^th century male butler works better on the small screen than it did in theatres thanks to its Masterpiece Theatre styled compression.

Squirreling away all of her earnings under the floorboards of her room in the Irish hotel she’s been working at under an assumed identity for years, Nobbs finds her life thrown into flux by the arrival of a painter (Janet McTeer) harbouring the same secrets she does. After learning that she might be able to be happy by being herself, Nobbs finds herself emotionally pushed and pulled after being undercover for so long that she’s possibly forgotten how to be a woman.

Close gives a commanding performance in a role that she played on stage back in the early 80s, but she’s a bit too old for the part as its written. McTeer is the real live wire here, and positively revelatory as a woman completely comfortable with her lot in life, but wary of those around her. Unfortunately, as Nobbs starts opening up, the story collapses inward on itself, glossing over some pretty major plot points in passing including the introduction of a villainous subplot that comes across as being too half baked to make a real impact. But at home, it’s also easier to appreciate some nice supporting performances from Mia Wasikowska (as the maid Albert secretly pines for) and Brendan Gleeson as the kindly in house doctor.

The DVD contains no special features, but it looks and sounds nice. (Andrew Parker)

Rampart (2011, Oren Moverman) – Despite being the mind behind the brilliant L.A. Confidential, writer James Ellroy’s work rarely transitions well to the big screen. Much like graphic novelist Frank Miller, Ellroy needs a director who can temper his sometimes unnecessarily over the top and formulaic material into a watchable package. With Ellroy’s latest outing Rampart, director Oren Moverman show’s that he’s simply not up to the challenge leading to film that feels wholly indistinguishable from the author’s past big screen outings about dirty Los Angeles cops.

The year is 1999 and Woody Harrelson stars as police detective David Brown, a man feared by outsiders and police administrators and respected greatly by a lot of his fellow officers. Naturally, like most main characters in an Ellroy film, Brown is a bigoted, boozy, womanizing mess of a man with an innate sense of personal justice who deplores violence against women despite constantly using them as objects. Working out of the already disgraced Rampart division of the LAPD, Brown becomes a scapegoat for greater corruption following his disturbing beating of a man trying to flee the scene of a car accident. At the end of his rope and down on his luck, an increasingly desperate Brown finds himself tangentially involved in the robbery of an underground poker game that he intended to hit himself to pay for his legal defences.

Despite a big name cast of heavy hitters in leading and supporting roles where all of them except for Ned Beatty (as a Great Gazoo-like cop turned informant that just pops up when needed by the story) give good performances, there’s nothing very new going on here. A maddeningly muddled final third and a bizarrely abrupt left field ending also doesn’t do the material any favours. If you’ve seen previous Ellroy adaptations like Dark Blue, Street Kings, or Cop, you know the entire story already.

The Blu-ray has a somewhat muddied picture quality during the film’s numerous bleached-out sequences, but the sound mix is clear. Special features include a commentary from Moverman that does explain some of the film’s shortcomings quite well, and a behind the scenes featurette. (Andrew Parker)

Hell on Wheels, Season One (2011-12, Joe & Tony Gayton, creators) – Using the backdrop of the U.S. Westward Expansion just after the ending of the Civil War, Joe and Tony Gayton’s tale of personal revenge and rampant greed has become one of television’s most addictive new series. Airing on AMC and shot in Calgary, the scope and vision of this series is stunning, and the scripts for individual episodes of the first season pull very few punches with gutsy performances to match.

Former rebel soldier Cullen Bohannan (Anson Mount) joins up with the building of the real transcontinental railroad with the express purpose of using it to track down the Union soldiers that murdered his wife and child. His journey will bring him into contact with the real life, ruthless railroad tycoon Thomas Durant (Colm Meaney), local Indian tribes who see the railroad ending life as they know it, various hustlers, freed slaves working on the cheap) (including rapper Common playing a mixed race worker who slowly starts to understand Cullen), and an assortment of hustlers and thieves aboard the titular project where people die or get murdered on a daily basis.

The Gayton’s attention to period detail raise the series to something on par with the beloved Deadwood in terms of demystifying American History. As Cullen, Mount crafts one of the most endearing anti-heroes in recent memory, and Meaney stands as one of the greatest villains. Sharp writing and impressive production design (which really can’t be cheap) elevates the show to a level of artistic integrity that few shows today outside of Mad Men can match.

The 3-disc DVD includes all ten episodes of the first season and almost two hours of special features, including character bios, a look at the show’s history, a three minute look at an intense train crash from episode nine and how they pulled it off on a meagre budget, and about 30 minutes of raw behind the scenes footage. (Andrew Parker)

Hard Core Logo 2 (2011, Bruce McDonald) – Hard Core Logo 2 may feature a title that promises franchise continuity, but that’s pretty well where the similarities between this sequel and the original end. Both are rock-mock-docs with McDonald playing a fictionalized version of himself, but while the original movie was a seriocomic slice of the punk lifestyle, the sequel is more of a meta comedy about documentary ethics. Though fans of the original needn’t worry about this sequel topping what came before, taken on its own terms Hard Core Logo 2 is still an interesting little movie. It’s never destined to become another Canuck cult classic, but it is one of the better projects that McDonald has cranked out over the last few years.

The sequel opens with McDonald recalling the death of Joe Dick, the hardcore punk front man who shot himself in the head in the closing moments of the first film (sorry for the spoiler, but it’s kind of crucial to discuss this movie). This fictionalized version of McDonald always felt somewhat guilty that the movie ended with a friend’s death, but he’s been more than compensated by the film industry success that came along with it. He’s now living in Los Angeles making a fortune directing a biblical Western series Pilgrim that’s often referred to as “the Christian Kung Fu.” Unfortunately, his success suddenly disappears when the star of the show is caught with an underage prostitute in Thailand and the religious financers pull the plug. Around the same time, Die Mannequin’s Care Failure (playing herself) contacts Bruce claming to be possessed by Joe Dick and the director with nothing else on his plate heads out to film her recording a new album with a Wiccan cinematographer. Once he gets there, he doesn’t buy the whole possession thing, but he is surprised to see Logo 1 side character Bucky Haight (Julian Richlings) producing the album. Bruce decides to force a documentary out of the situation regardless, abusing his subjects while going a we bit crazy.

The story’s about as far away from Hard Core Logo as possible. None of the main characters from the first film actually make an appearance outside of archival footage from the first movie. Only McDonald and Richlings directly connect the film and it’s a bit odd that they chose to go with the numerical title given how thin the connective tissue really is. Yes, there are musical montages and scenes of characters getting shitfaced on whatever substance they can find, but gone is the awkward comradely and broken family relationships between bandmates that defined the first movie. Instead we’ve got a collection of bitter characters who all seem to hate each other (particularly Bruce) bumping heads and screaming at the director for fostering negativity for the sake his movie, much like he did to kill Joe Dick.

If you can get past how different Hard Core Logo 2 is from its predecessor, there’s actually quite a bit to enjoy. McDonald is pretty strong and entertaining as an asshole version of himself in the lead role, playing a selfish filmmaker with glee. Failure does more vamping for the camera more than acting, but that works well enough for her limited role and Richings is always a compelling screen presence, especially as this vindictive, creepy punk god. Though filled with way too much voiceover from the director that becomes very irritating very quickly, McDonald has an interesting little comedy yarn to spin about a documentary filmmaker spiraling out of control. What seems to be the plot in the movie (the Joe Dick possession thing) quickly vanishes into the background and the subject becomes McDonald alienating his collaborators while creating an intrusive, abusive documentary. Like a Charlie Kaufman flick, the movie is about its own making and it can be quite funny to watch this cracked version of McDonald burning his few remaining bridges. There was an abusive filmmaker/subject relationship in the original film that this sequel brings to the forefront and ties them together, it’s just too bad that this sequel came first rather than something about the actual bandmates (apparently that was supposed to be Trigger before scheduinge conflicts lead to cross-gender recasting).

Now, there is a pretty big problem in Hard Core Logo 2 that almost derails it. McDonald perhaps has a little too much fun delving into self-conscious filmmaking and disappears up his own ass just a little bit just before the credits role. The self-conscious filmmaking games become more and more excessive as the movie goes on and the comedy also starts to drain away. By the time the movie reaches a ludicrous afterlife finale, McDonald has completely gone off the rails. This sequel was never destined to be a classic, but with that ending it’s am interestingly flawed work at best. That’s real a shame because the director had plenty of clever ideas, scenes, and characters in play before the movie got away from him. Still, it’s at least an intriguing and entertaining effort from one of Canada’s most productive filmmakers. Compared to the tossed off The Movie Is Broken, it’s quite a strong Bruce McDonald joint, if not nearly as satisfying as Trigger. If you enjoy the director and the original film, it’s something definitely worth seeing with lowered expectations. Despite what the title suggests, this ain’t no Hard Core Logo, but it’s at least an interesting little flick with its own flawed oddball approach to the mock-rock-doc subgenre.  (Phil Brown)

Wrestlemania XXVIII (2012) – Look guys, I just spent the past month pretty much looking at documentaries non-stop, and I needed something to blow off steam. Having missed it when it actually aired and being a not so closeted wrestling fan, I finally caught up to the latest edition of WWE’s Wrestlemania on Blu-ray. I watched this while eating a shitload of tacos I made at home to unlearn pretty much everything I had beaten into my brain for a month straight. I regret nothing, both in terms of watching most of those documentaries or watching this Pay-Per-View in HD over a full month after it happened. Also, as one of the best Wrestlemanias of the past decade or so, it’s pretty much rekindled my love of “sports entertainment.”

Headlined by the return of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to the squared circle to face the equally beloved and hated John Cena in a surprisingly great match considering Cena’s limited in-ring presence and Rock’s time away, the card is stolen away, however, by a heavily hyped “Hell in a Cell” match between Triple H and The Undertaker (with Shawn Michaels as guest referee) and a WWE title match between CM Punk and Chris Jericho, seemingly for the right to call themselves the best in the world at what they do.

The rest of the card has some mixed results with a five on five tag match to determine the control of the company and the opening World Heavyweight Title match (between the usually reliable Daniel Bryan and Sheamus) getting the shortest ends of the stick, but those three are so classic that it elevates the entire package.

The Blu-ray includes looks back at the development of the Triple H/Undertaker, Cena/Rock, and Punk/Jericho rivalries for people like myself who had absolutely no free time the past several months. There’s also a second disc featuring the annual WWE Hall of Fame ceremony where Ron Simmons, Mil Mascaras, The Four Horsemen (including Ric Flair for a second time), Mike Tyson, and Edge get inducted. It’s cool to see here, because this is the unedited 3 hour version of the ceremony instead of what aired on television, and the stories and speeches are more satisfying for fans than what makes it to air. Except in the case of Mike Tyson, but his batshit crazy speech almost justifies the purchase of the Blu-ray entirely. (Andrew Parker)

Great Expectations (2011, TV, Brian Kirk) – If high culture is more your style and you can’t get enough Dickens adaptations, this 3 hour miniseries from the BBC and PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre will hold literary fans over until later this year when Mike Newell drops his retelling of the same story.

Compressed mainly to focus on the love story aspect of the orphaned Pip’s relationship to the more well to do orphan Estella and how her caretaker Miss Havisham isn’t having any of it, this production more closely resembles the modernized Ethan Hawke starring effort from 1997, but it’s helped along by some great lead performances from Douglas Booth (as Pip), Gillian Anderson (as Miss Havisham), and Ray Winstone (as the escaped convict Abel). It’s not the best telling of the story and it never really justifies existing since everything is so truncated, but it’s still a game effort on the production side of things.

The Blu-ray contains no special features. (Andrew Parker)

The Devil Inside (2012, William Brent Bell) - KILL IT WITH FUCKING FIRE. (Andrew Parker)

Also out this week: One for the Money

Starhawk (PlayStation 3)

At the Sony Spring Showcase preview, the latest swath of games you’ll see on the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita took centre stage on top-of-the-line high-definition televisions, while developers, PR managers and invited journalists lounged in comfy leather couches. Catering by The Food Dudes offered mini sliders with cucumber and flatbread squares topped with wild mushroom, arugula and a white balsamic glaze.

In short, it’s nothing like the typical gaming environment for someone between the ages of 13 to 45 years old, where Cheetos and a dusty living room couch are just as likely companions to you and your controller. Yet it still served its purpose, which was to make the previews of Sony’s latest upcoming games as palatable (if contrarian) as possible.

Sony showed off its best wares for the upcoming summer season, including its front-line exclusive games leading up to next month’s E3. They also showed off some of the best Canadian game talent, including titles by some of Toronto’s talented indie developers such as Dyad and Sound Shapes.

First, however, we’re taking a look at three of Sony’s marquee titles for the next quarter of 2012.

Starhawk (PlayStation 3)

You might have seen the reviews for Starhawk already, a game by Lightbox Interactive and Sony Santa Monica that has more or less flown under the radar up to its release. The sequel to 2007’s Warhawk, the multiplayer-only third person shooter with a heavy emphasis on in-flight dog-fighting action, takes a turn for the Firefly and adds a single player storyline campaign.

We tried out a few slices of action from the campaign, putting on the hard workin’ bots of Emmett Graves. Graves is one of the Rifters on Planet Dust, space miners who cultivate a fuel source known as Rift Energy. Thing is, they’re constantly attacked by Outcasts – humans who have OD’d on Rift and turned into monsters not unlike the Husks from Mass Effect.

Throughout the game, you’ll be running and gunning on foot, armoured vehicles, and in the game’s titular Hawk aircraft. New to Starhawk is the ability to reconfigure your Hawk into a Bayformer-like monstrosity that can massacre ground forces with ease, and stomp on the ground causing even more havoc.

On the standard flight controls settings, maneuvering with the Hawk was quite simple and satisfying. A flick of the right analog stick throws your ship into a barrel roll, or a loop-de-loop to avoid enemy fire. While wailing away on the machine guns felt cathartic, the lock-on rockets proved far more effective in dispatching enemies.

On the surface of Dust, we took a look at one of Starhawk’s new features that one doesn’t usually expect in a fast-paced third-person shooter: base-building mechanics. The Build & Battle system, or B&B, is fuelled by Rift energy globes you collect from fallen enemies.

Within seconds of choosing where on the battlefield your impromptu terrain should appear, a couple hundred tonnes of cargo drops onto the ground with a shuddering crash, much like the crude delivery systems in the Dawn of War strategy games.

The B&B system worked fairly well, and in the case of missions where you have to defend your Rift Extractor base, absolutely essential to the mission. In the frantic pace of a battle, however, if can be difficult to figure out just where to position your new defenses while as enemies rush to your territory.

Combat on foot, like the Hawks themselves, is fast and fluid especially compared to other third-person shooters. You can destroy canisters of Rift energy in case there aren’t any enemies around, which seems counter-intuitive to a miner protecting the stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Some concerns we have for the full version are whether the B&B gameplay will become an asset or a hindrance for sprawling 32-player games, and whether the single player campaign will offer anything of real substance. Will we learn enough to really care about Emmett Graves and the rest of the Rifters? - Jonathan Ore

Starhawk is available on the PlayStation 3 now.

Sorcery (PlayStation 3, Move)

Sorcery (PlayStation 3, Move)

If you are one of the gamers who purchased a PlayStation Move with dreams of having HD games with advanced motion controls that translate one’s waggles into responsive and engaging/fast-paced action… then you are probably rather disappointed by now, as the Move has yet to live up to expectations.

Thankfully, at this week’s PlayStation Spring Showcase, we had the opportunity to try out Sorcery, a Move exclusive. In Sorcery the player controls a sorcerer’s apprentice tasked with protecting his homeland from invading enemies. The plot is rather basic but the gameplay is surprisingly fun.

Sorcery’s gameplay features short, quick, and responsive movements as opposed to relying on over-exaggerated flailing meant to represent physical empowerment. Simply put: you flick the Move’s wand in the enemy’s direction and a spell emerges to wreak havoc (something akin to how wands are portrayed in the Harry Potter films).

Even switching between differing spells is satisfyingly quick and responsive. Each spell has a corresponding gesture that, at least in our demo, requires the player to move the Wand in quick half-circle motions. Again, each of these half-circle gestures is easily performed with a quick flick of the wrist as opposed to over-emphasized arm waving.

The player can also combine spells – one example had us using the fire spell to create a wall of fire, and then firing off our basic attack spell through the fire to create a fireball. The fire spell also has two attacks: the aforementioned wall of fire, which is cast by moving the wand either left or right, and a close-ranged explosive attack cast by flicking the wand towards the screen.

We also saw a very rudimentary puzzle that was a little disappointing in regards to motion gameplay, but hopefully these puzzles will become increasingly complex as one progresses through the game. Sorcery looks primed to give Move owners an intelligently designed and satisfying title that is less focused on waggling/flailing and more focused on giving players fun and responsive controls. - James Farrington

Sorcery will unravel its magic for the PlayStation 3 Move on May 22.

Resistance: Burning Skies (PS Vita)

Resistance: Burning Skies (PS Vita)

Of Sony’s major first-person shooter franchises, Resistance tends to take the backseat to Killzone, what with the latter sporting whatever new technology the company wants to promote. It’s a shame, since the early 20-century setting and mostly-likeable protagonists of the Resistance series provide something fresh compared to the general milieu of super-soldiers and one-dimensional bad-asses we see in the genre.

Burning Skies takes place in the mid-1940s, in the alternate timeline where the Chimera alien forces have just begun to invade the earth. The new protagonist, Tom Riley, is a firefighter from Staten Island, New York when the Chimera begin their assault on the city. While he’s as physically capable as his career demands, the married father of one is certainly “a fish out of water” when facing the Chimeran invasion, according to Sony’s marketing director for PlayStation Canada, Matt Levitan.

The first thing you’ll notice about Resistance: Burning Skies are the visuals, which impress even compared to its bigger brothers on the PS3. The areas are noticeably smaller and more linear than the more open environments from Resistance 3, however.

The controls are also nothing to sneeze at, either. The introduction of dual analog sticks makes all the difference in the first true first-person shooter on the Vita. Aiming, shooting and strafing are just as easy and natural as it comes on a full-sized controller.

Burning Skies inherits the series’ insane arsenals infuse the touch screen functions into many of their secondary firing modes. The Bullseye rifle, for example, now requires you to touch the enemy on the screen to tag it, allowing you to fire at it from around the corner. It’s a little odd at first, but we got used to it after a few tries. We’re not sure if our fingers will be able to handle the more intense firefights in the later levels of the single player campaign or on the fast-paced multiplayer modes, however.

Multiplayer matches have been reduced to 2-on-2 or 4-on-4 modes, which Levitan helps facilitiate the shorter playtimes on a handheld system. “You can set timers to be longer or shorter, but we wanted to make it so you could play two-to-five minute games that you could play in between meetings or class,” he explained.

Resistance: Burning Skies looks to translate the first-person shooter to a portable format better than most of its predecessors, with some crazy guns and contraptions to boot. It launches on the PS Vita on May 29. - Jonathan Ore

Hey-ho y’all. Let’s send send this week off with a bang and another contest from your friends at Dork Shelf and Alliance Films. We don’t want to send you on a weekend with some guy named Bernie, but we want to send ten lucky winners and a guest of their choosing to an advance screening of Richard Linklater’s new dark comedy BERNIE at an advanced screening in Toronto on Tuesday, May 15th at 7:00pm.

From the director of Slacker, Dazed and Confused, and School of Rock, Bernie (which is based in part on a true story) tells the tale of the titular well respected funeral director from Carthage, Texas (played by Jack Black) who befriends a wealthy older widower with a sour demeanor (Shirley MacLaine), that very quietly disappears from her noted profile in the town, leading many to suspect that the normally unassuming Bernie has killed her. Featuring a supporting performance from Matthew McConaughey as the local district attorney bent on bringing Bernie to justice, the film looks like another interesting feather in director Linklater’s already full cap.

Bernie opens in Toronto on Friday, May 18th, but for your chance at winning a pair of passes to the advance screening, simply email contest@dorkshelf.com with BERNIE in the subject line. Only one entry per person, please. For additional chances to win, like the contest announcement on our Facebook page and/or re-Tweet the announcement from our Twitter! Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on Sunday, May 13th.

Good luck, and as always, stay tuned to Dork Shelf for more great contests and giveaways!

La Haine (1995, Mathieu Kassovitz) – Last year, when space invaders-come-to-the-ghetto comedy Attack the Block was released it was a delightful surprise to finally see a sci-fi take on the hood film.  Attack the Block achieved such a good balance of so many genres because director/ writer Joe Cornish showed that it’s somehow kind of funny  when adrenaline courses through your body because you have a knife held up to your gut. Whether watching the constantly hoodied Moses (John Boyega) and his crew of adolescent goof ball cronies roam through the high browed streets of Kennington, looking for a helpless girl to mug, stomping out aliens like they were rival gang members, or being chased down by drug lords- Attack the Block is the entertaining genre concoction that it is because its chief concern is the portrayal of youth culture. Still, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen young punks wander streets where they don’t belong. Showing at TIFF’s Next Wave Festival, Mathieu Kassovitz’ La Haine is the best example of the where this well crafted medley of hood politics, social issues, and beauty got its start, and is a must see.

In Attack the Block, Moses and his boys navigate maze-like apartment complexes, smoke weed with dopey drug dealers (Nick Frost was perfect here), and talk about FIFA and girls. Partially carried on the back of its young actors’ excellent performances, Attack the Block’s innovative representation of the hood is only replicating a mould that was etched in stone 15 years earlier with the release La Haine. Opening with eerie, grainy black and white footage we hear a young man scream at a line of stiff riot officers: “Murderers, easy for you to gun us down, all we got is rocks!”. Directed by, and briefly starring, Mathieu Kassovitz, La Haine tells the story of 3 young men:  Vinz (Vincent Cassel) the Jewish b-boy wannabe fuelled by an intense hatred for the police, Hubert (Hubert Kounde) the Afro-French aspiring boxer and occasional drug dealer, and the Meghrebin tuff guy- clown Said Tagmaoui. After a riot breaks out in their housing project, Kassovitz does his best to show the tense conditions between the police and the youths living in impoverished housing. But when Vinz gets his hands on a riot officer’s lost pistol, Vinz, Hubert, and Said each find themselves struggling to figure out where to draw the line between right and wrong in the angry and chaotic world that surrounds them.

Kassovitz gives us a raw portrayal of the essence of the street: kids gathered on roof tops cooking hot dogs and smoking joints, break dancing in project hall ways, we even see Hubert playfully bounce a syringe between his shoes. However, the ethereal and candid nature of hood life that Kassovitz’ gives us access to is ephemeral, as Said and his friends are harassed by the police more times than I can count- and all before 5:00 (a sharp detail that is a result of Kassovitz’ brilliant ‘real time’ aspect to the film). When DJ Cut Killer turns his enormous speakers to face the project court yard and warms up his turn tables, Kassovizt’s also gets ready to broadcast his message loud and clear. Here we see the Chimera like essence of the hood: the beat and rhythm of the street literally being sweetly broadcasted over the entire neighbourhood, while all of the project’s inhabitants carry out their actions- for better or for worse. As Cut Killer’s “Nique La Police” (Fuck the Police) blares over the entire hood, La Haine  situates itself a formidable symphony of the street, effortlessly blending issues of police brutality, the futile nature of hate, and the beauty that strives in even the dirtiest and uncared for corners of our societies.

As a scrawny custy stands in wait for the elevator on his way the weed grow op in Attack the Block, hearing KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police” (sample material for Cut Killer’s mix in La Haine) blare over his headphones, we’re reminded that the problems youths faced nearly 15 years ago still team the streets of rich upper class neighbourhoods today, whether we’d like to acknowledge the existence of these packs of bandanna clad teens or not. It has been films and stories like La Haine (based on real events from Kassovitz’ life) that are so integral to the expression of youth culture.

The film makes its way to Criterion Collection Blu-ray this week with a vastly improved sound mix and sharp picture quality, but the special features here are carried over from the original two disc set from several years ago, but that doesn’t make it any less of an invaluable addition to any collection. To see it on the big screen as part of the TIFF Next Wave Film Festival this weekend, head on down to the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto on Saturday, May 12^th at 12:30pm. (Brandon Bastaldo)

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Joe Dante, 1990) – Gremlins 2 is what happens when you give Joe Dante complete creative control over a movie. It’s like a Zucker Brothers parody of the original film (which makes sense given that Dante worked with them on Police Squad) crossed with the gentle anarchistic insanity of a Chuck Jones Warner Brothers cartoon (who resurrected Bugs n’ Daffy to introduce the movie and goof on the closing credits).  That tongue-in-cheek, self-mocking tone can be found in all of the director’s genre outings from the 70s through the 90s like Piranha, The Howling, Gremlins, and the deeply underrated The ‘burbs, but those were all gigs that Dante took for hire and flavored around the edges. Gremlins 2 was the only time Dante was in charge of a film from start to finish, filling the screen with enough pop culture references and self-conscious gags to make the Simpsons writing room jealous. The wacky results may have killed off the franchise, but over time the film has earned a cult following amongst Dante fanatics who prefer the hellzapoppin sequel to the iconic original (itself a sly mockery of Spielberg suburban fantasy).

The film moves the little bastard monsters from small town Americana to New York City where Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates now work in a massive skyscraper that serves as a TV studio/mall/science laboratory for an eccentric billionaire. Rather quickly, Gizmo shows up and sheds some Mogwai brethren who then transform into (wait for it) gremlins. It’s all very silly and willfully nonsensical. Dante’s longtime B-movie muse Dick Miller returns after clearly dying the first go round simply because he’s too funny to cut, while Christopher Lee pops up as a mad scientist (obviously) whose special potions allow Gremlins to fly, speak, turn into electricity, grow spider legs, adopt ladyparts, etc. Basically, if Dante came up with an amusing scene, he was able cast it with a cult actor, assign Rick Baker make to an incredible puppet, and throw it at the screen without any studio interference. The result is a truly bizarre comedy mocking everything from Leonard Maltin to late night monster movie shows, yuppie capitalism, the idea of sequels, 80s action movies, and the original Gremlins. It’s got to be one of the most subversive blockbusters ever financed by a major studio and it’s a miracle Dante was able to pull it off even if his unfiltered creative juices catered to a smaller crowd than Warner Brothers hoped for. I mean, how could not love a movie that deliberately stops so that it can appear that the gremlins have taken over the projection booth? That’s not cookie cutter franchise stuff, that’s the result of an eccentric filmmaker getting Hollywood to flip the bill for whatever the hell he wanted.

Warner Brother’s Gremlins 2 Blu-ray features a nice transfer that’s a little inconsistent in outdoor scenes, but shines where it counts. Every studio-bound gremlin sequence pops off the screen with Dante’s bright color schemes and Baker’s incredible puppet designs never looking better. It’s a slick movie well worth the HD upgrade, which is a good thing because there’s a big fat donut of new special features on the disc. An amusing audio commentary, a stack of deleted scenes (including the VHS-specific Gremlins take over), and a vintage making-of doc are carried over from the DVD and all are great features, it’s just a bummer that nothing new was produced. Ah well, at least we finally got Gremlins 2 on Blu-ray and didn’t have to suffer through a crappy CGI Gremlins reboot to justify the release. (Phil Brown)

Men in Black (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997) – Back when Men in Black first came in out in 1997, the world was a very different place. Will Smith was still the Fresh Prince, Tommy Lee Jones was considered as humorless onscreen as he is offscreen, and Barry Sonnenfeld was still known as the Coen Brothers’ former cinematographer who had shown some comedy directing promise in Get Shorty and The Adams Family movies. Oh how times have changed. Now that Sonnenfeld has soiled his name as a Wild Wild West trash merchant and Smith considers himself a serious actor determined to make his kids celebrities, it’s all too easy to forget what a pleasant surprise Men In Black was (Tommy Lee’s still the same, constantly battling it out with Harrison Ford for the title of Hollywood’s favorite grumpy old man). Very few movies have managed to pull off the balance between special effects, action, and comedy so well. It’s goofy blockbuster bliss that still holds despite the terrible sequel(s?).

The main reason for Men In Black’s success is the ingenious combination of vintage Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Smith is far better at cracking one-liners and recording tie-in music videos than attempting stoic Oscar bait. Pair him up with a never crankier Tommy Lee Jones and you’ve got a classic buddy cop comedy duo (kind of like 48 Hrs. only with racism replaced by a shit ton of aliens). Sonnefeld directs with a gently surreal comedy touch that he used to be able to execute with ease, gleefully mixing eccentric performances from the likes of Rip Torn, David Cross, and Vincent D’Onofrio (in one of the most physically uncomfortable performances of all time as a giant cockroach crammed into a rotting mansuit) with some of the finest special effects $100 million could by in the 90s, via ILM and Rick Baker. It also doesn’t hurt that Ed Solomon’s script used special effects to serve the narrative and not the other way around. This brand of goofy entertainment seems easy when executed so well, but is actually incredibly difficult to get right. You need only look at MIB II to see how easily things can go wrong.

This shiny new Blu-ray offers fresh packaging to put on shelves in time for the threequel and nothing more. The disc is identical to the one Sony put out in 2008 and the special features date all the way back to 2000, including the camp-tacular music video that only gets more hilarious with age. Fortunately, the transfer is about as good as it gets (Sony did invent the Blu-ray after all) and the special features are all strong, if dated. HD might show off the limits of 90s CGI, but Sonnefeld’s cartoon exaggeration of everything onscreen helps and Baker’s rubber aliens haven’t aged a day. The film remains solid goofball entertainment and a quick spin of the disc will make you a fan again. It’s almost enough to make me excited for the written-in-production MIB III that’s on the way. “Almost” is the key word though, that thing needs to be approached with caution. Still, as far as effects-driven comedy/adventures go, Men in Black belongs on a shortlist with Ghostbusters as genre classic.  I don’t say that lightly, well aware of the message board hate that may come my way. (Phil Brown)

About a Boy (2002 Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz) – About a Boy really shouldn’t work. Quite apart from the gag-inducing potential of the premise, it’s an adaptation of a subtle comedy by the distinctly British Nick Hornby executed by the American writing/directing duo Chris and Paul Weisz, the guys who made Jason Biggs fuck a pie. The movie has disaster written all over it and yet, miraculously, it’s an incredibly charming comedy with just enough emotional weight to avoid being frivolous. Even a decade after its release, the movie holds up as a far more mature version of the manchild comedy subgenre that’s gotten increasingly popular in recent years. The Weisz brothers have never been this good again (only High Fidelity does Hornby better) and the movie actually makes a case for Hugh Grant being a decent actor rather than merely a befuddlement specialist.

Grant stars as Will, a perpetually unemployed bachelor living off the royalties for a Christmas song his father wrote decades ago and faking having a 2-year-old to date single mothers who are easily emotionally manipulated. A date with his latest prospect introduces him to the introverted eccentric 12-year-old Marcus (Nicholas Hoult aka Beast from X-men: First Class) and while dropping him off, Will inadvertently stumbles on the boy’s hippy depressive mother (the always excellent Toni Collette) trying to commit suicide. The bored Marcus starts following Will, discovers he doesn’t have a kid, and blackmails him into a friendship. You can probably guess where things go from there: the child and manchild come of age together.

It all sounds sickly sweet, but works because the presentation isn’t that way at all. Grant is an unapologetic asshole throughout. His heart may grow, but not enough overcome his narcissism and he’s bearable only through Grant’s natural charm. Marcus is an equally unsentimental troubled kid, world-weary, bright, and thankfully never Culkin cute. The Weisz brothers structure the story with duo narrations from the two boys that retain Hornby’s uncensored inner voice and shot their movie in crisply framed, roving scope compositions. The slick, lightly mischievous, and clever film was enough to get the siblings out of the mainstream Hollywood comedy ghetto, but sadly none of the dramatic projects they’ve directed separately since like A Better Life or Being Flynn have been nearly as resonant. Hopefully they’ll stop taking themselves so seriously and embrace this brand of character comedy again, because they’ve clearly got a knack for it even if they are determined to avoid it.

Universal’s Blu-ray is certainly a technical upgrade over the aging DVD, however character based comedies aren’t exactly the best way to test out the limits of your home theater. The special features are ported over entirely from the DVD, offering a quite amusing self-depreciated commentary from the Weisz brothers, a useless EPK doc, a music video, and an English slang dictionary just in case you can’t figure out what “tosser” means on your own (hint: it’s not a compliment). (Phil Brown)

Les Boys II (1998, Louis Saia) – Before Canada reignited their passion for big screen hockey with this year’s smash hit Goon, Quebecois audiences were flocking to a series of films from the late 90s to the early ‘naughts about a rag tag group of everymen from small towns banding together as a hockey club. Low key and more of a character study than the more plot driven first entry (which earned a then unheard of $6 million in North America) and more satisfying than the two films that follow it (and the multi-year television series), this ensemble comedy follows the titular team as they head to France for a tournament following the death of one of their own and the lessons they learn to bring back home with them.

While the filmmaking suggests an early 1980s television movie and the two hour running time doesn’t do the film any huge favours in the padding department, the interplay between these characters feel real and unforced, helped by great performances from a much younger looking Patrick Huard and series stalwart Remy Girard. It’s a decent enough way to kill a Saturday or Sunday afternoon if you’re feeling nostalgic or you want to throw back a couple of brew while watching some hosers play hockey.

The Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack preserves the old time colours and updates the sound mix to 5.1. The special features are pretty scant save for a look at a 1999 promotional tour, a look at the team, and the theatrical trailer, but none of them are subtitled in English, so unless you speak French, you’re pretty much out of luck. (Andrew Parker)

Prometheus (June 8^th) – In 2004, when Alien vs. Predator was the next instalment of anything remotely related to the Alien franchise, I became one of the many Alien fans who thought that they would die before ever seeing another truly Ridley Scott/H.R. Giger influenced Alien film. But when talk and teasers of the decade long ‘in the works’ Alien prequel Prometheus began to hit the web about a year ago, I was absolutely astounded.

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Prometheus is about a research team that travels to the farthest corner of the universe to uncover the dark secrets of our origins. That is really all I can say for certain is happening in the film, as the other snippets of alien spacecrafts (a simultaneously dazzling and haunting nod to Alien and Aliens) and sweaty men and women screaming are all part of the fascinating enigma that is Prometheus. With an all star cast that boasts names like Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, and Idris Elba, it seems like Scott isn’t taking any chances with a cast of unknowns.

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To really grasp the awesomeness that Prometheus promises, let’s go back to 1979 when Scott directed Alien which would become one the most integral and innovative space travel films since Stanley Kubrick’s symphonic sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The mould Kubrick set in place envisioned a bright and polished future where space travel happens on neat commercial spacecrafts with super intelligent sentient A.I. Scott’s Alien ripped this crystalline vision in two as Ellen Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) commercial mining spacecraft the Nostromo is depicted as a grey, industrial monstrosity where every command is painstakingly manually inputted into clunky and beaten up computers. Scott created the first remarkably unique hybridized film that has sci-fi proclivities but operates with all of a slasher’s intentions.

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In what some diehard fans are calling a gutsy move, Scott has said that although Prometheus’ events precede Alien, Prometheus will not be directly connected to any original characters; there will be no alien creature, and no Weaver cameo. Instead, Prometheus’s mysterious nature suggests long awaited answers to the questions burning in the minds of fans since 1979: what are the origins of this mysterious Xenomorph species, where did they come from, and what does their existence have to tell us about ourselves? (Brandon Bastaldo)

Moonrise Kingdom (June 1^st, limited) – Ahh, summer camp. The time where little boys and girls become young adults, fall in love, and get into wacky misadventures. Granted, I was never a scout like the youngsters in Moonrise Kingdom, but I did go on enough camping trips to know what the woods are like. I’ve also seen enough films about summer camp to know just how wacky and whimsical the whole thing could be.

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Speaking of wacky and whimsical, this latest charmer from Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums director Wes Anderson looks to fall nicely in line with his previous canon of films about misfits and outcasts searching for their place in the world. The blurb for this film pretty much writes itself. An all-star cast – including Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Tilda Swinton, and Anderson staple Bill Murray, just to name a few – stars in this tale of two twelve year olds in a coastal New England town who fall deeply in puppy love with each other and decide to run away together while the adults begin the frantic and comedic search for them before a big storm hits.

Anderson might be a “love him or hate him” name amongst filmgoers, since his portraits of affluence and whimsy might rub people the wrong way, but with a summer release date and some new blood in his cast of usual actors, Moonrise Kingdom might be the first film to garner Anderson some widespread box office acclaim. Then again, I thought the same thing about the delightfully underrated Fantastic Mr. Fox, but at least Anderson has something this year to appeal to the art house crowd looking to have their heartstrings tugged at with a few laughs along the way. (Andrew Parker)

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (June 22^nd) – There hasn’t been a more surprising trailer this season than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Its mix of early American gothic mixes perfectly with a vampire tone, young Lincoln spins a silver-edged axe like a badass ninja, and the whole thing avoids any irony whatsoever. This is unexpected if you, like me, haven’t read the book and assumed the title indicated that this was a pretty funny joke. It’s not. Time to man up.

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Hunter tells the secret story of America’s 16^th President. The plot follows Lincoln’s real life moments, like his struggle to become president and the Emancipation Proclamation (which freed the slaves), but the twist here is that Lincoln spent his early years hunting vampires and only became involved in politics to stave off a massive vampire rebellion.

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In the role of Lincoln is Benjamin Walker who, amazingly, already has some experience playing reinvented cross-genre presidents. Walker received accolades for the off-Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson where he plays the emo-rock President Jackson struggling to form the Democratic Party. Director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) obviously saw value in a man who understood such a challenge. But this is no musical, Bekmambetov is aiming his movie directly at hardcore action fans. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the popcorn movie of the year. (Brian Crosby)

Brave (June 22^nd) – As long as the word “cars” isn’t in the title, the release of any Pixar movie is cause for celebration. With the freedom only a string of over $600 million hits can provide, they are a studio driven entirely by creative impulses. Granted, they still have to cater to a family friendly demographic, but they seem driven to tell the best possible story within those G-rated parameters while hitting on universal themes and jokes that will connect just as well with an ADD-addled toddler as an elderly malcontent or a stoned college freshman. This year Pixar will dip their toes into the fairytale pool for the first time in what looks to be a gorgeous eyeball-tickling spectacle.

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Initially announced in 2008 as The Bear and the Bow, the film will be something of a Scottish fable. It’s about a defiant princess and skilled archer who is determined to find her own path in life. After showing up all the guys competing for her hand in marriage in an archery competition, she somehow unleashes chaos and fury and has to use all her skills to save the kingdom. Or something like that. Pixar is pretty good about playing their cards close to the chest, so we won’t really know the full extent of the story until it’s released. In a world where countless websites reveal as much information as possible about every film before trailers are even premiered, that’s a good thing. It’s also nice to know that Pixar have earnestly embraced their fairytale format and this won’t be yet another one of those pop-culture fueled “fractured fairytales” that have packed theaters with children and disinterested parents since Shrek.

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As a displaced Scot in love with the motherland, I also can’t pretend I’m not excited about a voice cast packed with the likes of Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Kevin McKidd, and Robbie Coltrane unleashing their accents at full force. With it being a Pixar joint, we can guarantee they’ll all have characters worthy of their talents as well. On a technical level, everything that has been seen from the movie looks set to stunningly fill a big screen, both true to the Pixar house style and featuring a painterly attention to the details of the lush landscapes. With the studio’s multi-Oscar-winning stalwarts Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton having left the fold to pursue live action endeavors, this will also be the debut of one of the first projects from the new generation of Pixar directors allowed to play in their digital playground, so it should be interesting to see how that works out. All-in-all, there’s plenty about Brave to get your inner-child all riled up. Oh and did I mention that Larry The Cable Guy will absolutely not be involved? That’s important, too. (Phil Brown)

Piranha 3DD (June 1^st) – The first promise of Piranha 3DD is that it has more boob in it. Seriously, the extra dimension is not for Smell-O-Vision (probably best for a fish movie) but for bust size; the way you read the title is ‘Piranha 3 Double-D’. But if you’re already a fan of the Spring Break horror send-up Piranha 3D, then simply ‘more boob’ is a hard sell.

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In the last movie, the monstrous paleo-piranhas were released from their aquatic ‘Land Before Time’ by an earthquake. They ravaged a lake-side town during party week and were clearly not destroyed as believed. This time, the piranhas have returned in force and are winding their way through the town’s plumbing and into the bathtubs of beautiful naked women.

One of the great draws of this series is the cast. The first movie starred Richard Dreyfuss, Ving Rhames and Christopher Lloyd who was basically playing Doc Brown. This time Rhames and Lloyd are back along with waterpark owner David Koechner and David Hasselhoff playing an asshole version of himself (so, himself).

If you’re still on the fence about this, worried that Piranha 3DD is a lame, tame Spring Break monster movie, there is one shot in the trailer that will probably decide it for you. The trailer implies that that beautiful bathtub woman doesn’t get eaten by the piranha but instead it enters her vagina without her knowledge (or consent) and later the fish bites off a man’s penis during coitus.

Now, call me disturbed, but that’s a movie I want to see. (Brian Crosby)

Snow White and the Huntsman (June 1^st) – To get a good idea of how very epic Snow White and the Huntsman will be you need only compare its promotional poster to Mirror Mirror, a recent film of the same source material,. Clutching a ruby red apple with a quaint smile, Julia Roberts’ rendition of the Evil Queen (one of the most sinister and enduring villains from well known fairy tale Snow White) was a sugar coated version of the witch to top all witches.

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I mean seriously, before the Wizard of Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West, the Evil Queen played host to the worst nightmares of kids across the globe, and this is why first time director Rupert Sanders’ Snow White and the Huntsman looks so damn good. Starring the glamorously pale Kristen Stuart as Snow White, Aussie hulk-hunk Chris Hemsworth as the Huntsman, and the beautifully ardent Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen Ravenna, it’s quite clear that Snow White and the Huntsman has a bedazzled roster. Putting a twist on this classic tale, we see the Evil Queen conquer several kingdoms only to find out that Snow White, prophesied as being the future ruler and ‘fairest of them all’, is the only obstacle standing between Ravenna and complete domination. The Evil Queen sends the Huntsman into the woods to kill Snow White, but he soon finds out that Snow White is the key to the salvation of the oppressed masses now living under Queen Ravenna’s tyrannical reign.

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Sander’s envisioning of the Dark Ages looks like a mash up of Middle Earth and scenery from any Harry Potter film, and I really couldn’t be happier about this. Finally, someone has decided to hack away the thick layers of candy gloss that the 1937 Walt Disney adaption of this generally bizarre and macabre source material has been coated in for the last 70 years. I mean, the Brothers Grimm have the Evil Queen wanting to eat Snow White’s heart and after seeing Theron’s authentic transformation into serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, I think that we’re in for one hell of a ride. (Brandon Bastaldo)

Rock of Ages (June 15^th) – Adapted for the screen, Rock Of Ages is a jukebox musical that uses 80s hair metal to piece a story together. You’ll find the plot familiar: the mayor introduces his town to clean living after deciding there is too much sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. The free-living teens have a different opinion which they express in several reprises of ‘We’re Not Going To Take It’.

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The film version has a lot going for it. It was written by Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) and directed by Adam Shankman. Shankman is a choreographer turned director who started with Rom-coms like The Wedding Planner. He has hit his mark recently with projects like Hairspray, Prop 8: The Musical, and episodes of Glee.

The cast is outstanding. Bryan Cranston plays the rock-n-roll hating mayor, Alec Baldwin plays the forever young club owner, and Tom Cruise does that funny/asshole thing he does as Stacie Jaxx, the biggest rock star on the planet (Can he save Rock-N-Roll?!?!).  Ages also includes Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julianne Hough, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, and Will Forte. Christ! It shouldn’t even matter what this movie is about. If all those names don’t make you want to see it, you hate fun. (Brian Crosby)

Also out in June in limited release (meaning possibly not in all or any Canadian markets right away):

Battlefield America (June 1^st)

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Lola Versus (June 8^th)

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To Rome with Love (June 22^nd)

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Madea’s Witness Protection (June 29^th)

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Beasts of the Southern Wild (June 29^th)

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People Like Us (June 29^th)

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Take This Waltz (June 29^th)

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