This week on home video, we’ve got a poorly reviewed horror spoof sequel, Disneynature’s latest adventure, and a powerful one-man drama to head things off. Then, we’ve got a James McAvoy-powered Irvine Welsh adaptation and a number of smaller releases, as well as a couple of notable choices on TV. Read on for details:
If you thought the Wayans family would be satisfied skewering horror movie conventions with their Scary Movie franchise, you were dead wrong. Marlon Wayans, the star of that franchise’s first two installments, decided to co-produce, co-write, and star in A Haunted House, another horror spoof lampooning the genre’s influx of Paranormal Activity-styled found footage films. Made on a budget of $2.5 million, the film grossed over $60 million worldwide despite dismal reviews, so this year we got a sequel, whether we wanted it or not. Filled with the usual gags and pop culture references, A Haunted House 2 was even less impressive, netting an 8 percent Tomatometer score and a paltry $24 million in box office receipts. For those of you willing to brave it, special features are limited to just a commentary track and some deleted and extended scenes.
BBC nature producer Alastair Fothergill and his team of supremely talented photographers have proven to be a rather great match for Disneynature, as the latter has consistently turned the former’s stunning work into successful feature films. Their latest joint effort is Bears, which opened back in April. In lieu of Dick Butkus, John C. Reilly was hired to narrate the tale of an Alaskan grizzly bear and her two cubs as they overcome obstacles and learn to survive over the course of a year. Certified Fresh at 91 percent, Bears earned the best reviews of any Disneynature film to date, with critics applauding its typically outstanding cinematography and its sweet-but-not-too-sweet story. The Blu-ray includes four featurettes covering how the film was made and a music video by Olivia Holt.
If you’re going to make a movie that largely (or entirely) rests on the charisma of its lead, it’s best to get someone with the chops to pull it off properly. Cast Away had Tom Hanks, All Is Lost had Robert Redford, and even Ryan Reynolds surprised some folks with his work in Buried. Likewise, Steven Knight’s single-location drama features Tom Hardy driving in his car and talking on his cell phone for the entirety of its 85-minute runtime, and it worked like gangbusters, according to critics. Ivan Locke (Hardy) is a construction foreman who, on the night before an important job, discovers the co-worker he had a one-night stand with is about to give birth; racing to be with her, Ivan phones his family, his mistress, and a colleague, juggling his responsibilities the best he can. Hardy offered up a powerhouse performance in Locke and critics took notice, rewarding his efforts with a Certified Fresh 88 percent on the Tomatometer. The only features available on the home video release are an audio commentary with Knight and a making-of featurette.
Irvine Welsh adaptations haven’t seen much success since Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting first brought his work to the big screen — 1998’s The Acid House was disjointed at best, and 2012’s Ecstasy was essentially a poor rehash of Trainspotting (even its poster mimicked the earlier film). Released last year in the UK and earlier this year in the US, Filth hoped to fare better, employing a cast that included Jamie Bell, Jim Broadbent, Eddie Marsan, Imogen Poots, and as the manipulative, drug-addled, alcoholic, abusive Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, James “Young Professor X” McAvoy. The film follows Robertson’s exploits as he investigates the murder of a Japanese student, slowly descending into insanity amid severe hallucinations. It’s a dark, twisted comedy, and most critics went along with it, particularly for McAvoy’s performance, even if many found the film lived up to its title a bit too accurately. Another fairly barebones release, Filth comes with just a behind the scenes featurette and its theatrical trailer.
Plenty of animated films can entertain the kiddies for two hours without leaving much of an impression. Critics say Rio 2 is visually sharp and action-packed, but it’s also overly busy and short on big laughs. Married macaws Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway) have settled down with their chicks in the big city, but when an ornithologist discovers a flock of endangered blue macaws, the family travels to the Amazon rainforest, where they find a group of birds who can’t relate to Blu’s city-slicker ways. The pundits say that althoughRio 2 is colorful and energetic, its lack of storytelling discipline and overabundance of musical numbers makes for a thinner experience than its predecessor. (Check out our video interview with the stars of Rio 2 here.)
Moneyball proved that front-office action could be as riveting as anything on the playing field. Unfortunately, critics say that while Draft Day is slick and well acted, it suffers from predictable plotting and a shortage of insight. Costner stars as Cleveland Browns general manager Sonny Weaver, who’s tasked with rebuilding the team after another losing season. But Sonny’s not just worried about the Browns’ roster — he’s got a host of family issues to deal with as well. The pundits say Costner is rock-solid in the lead role, but the other characters aren’t as well fleshed out, and the film often fumbles the football details. (Watch our interview with the stars of Draft Day, and browse our gallery of memorable football movies.)
If you think you’ve seen every permutation on the haunted house horror flick template, think again. Critics say Oculus is a very effective frightfest, one that features interesting characters and an encompassing sense of dread. After the bizarre death of their parents, a pair of siblings return to their childhood home in order to confront the murderous party responsible: a haunted antique mirror that has the power to distort reality. The pundits say Oculus is sharply crafted, well acted, and often very scary.
Paul Hogan may have looked tougher in an Akubra hat, but he wasn’t the only Aussie export making waves in Hollywood during the 1980s — the land Down Under also gave us Nicole Kidman, who parlayed her attention-getting turn in Dead Calm into a critically acclaimed and commercially successful career that’s seen her move from blockbusters to indies and back again while hauling in a mantel full of awards that includes Golden Globes, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and an Oscar. This weekend, Kidman stars opposite Colin Firth in The Railway Man, and we’re celebrating with a fond look back at her best-reviewed releases. It’s time for Total Recall!
Matt Atchity breaks down this week’s list.
70%
Inspired by his belief that “evil can arise anywhere, as long as the situation is right,” writer-director Lars von Trier kicked off his “Land of Opportunities” trilogy with the harrowing Dogville, starring Kidman as a mysterious woman who, while fleeing from mobsters for unknown reasons, ends up being taken in by the residents of a small Colorado town. Of course, this being a von Trier film, her refuge comes with strings attached, and before long, her situation in Dogville is even worse than the one she escaped. Although its dour outlook and bare-bones staging annoyed some critics (the New Yorker’s David Denby dismissed it as “avant-gardism for idiots”), for its fans, even the movie’s flaws were worth watching. “Dogville is in no way a standard film and likely won’t appeal to many,” admitted the Detroit News’ Tom Long. “But Von Trier is so inventive, so outlandish and so filled with energy he has to at least be admired.”
70%
A lengthy period drama with war in the background, romance in the air, an incredible cast on the screen, and a bestselling novel as its inspiration, Cold Mountain is one of those prestige pictures that practically dares critics not to anoint it with Oscar frontrunner status during the holiday season — and indeed, it did go on to net seven Academy Award nominations, with Renee Zellweger taking home Best Supporting Actress. For anyone not in the mood for a two-and-a-half-hour weepie about a wounded Confederate soldier (Jude Law) struggling to make his way back to his lady fair (Kidman), Mountain proves as steep going as its title would indicate, but it isn’t without its charm; as A.O. Scott wrote for the New York Times, “As they might have said in the old days, this sweeping historical romance is one heck of a classy picture — which is both its great virtue and its limitation.”
76%
Few directors besides Baz Luhrmann would have the audacity to attempt an anachronism-addled period musical in 2001 — and perhaps only Luhrmann could have delivered something as garish, uneven, and ultimately compelling as Moulin Rouge!, starring Kidman and Ewan McGregor as the singin’, dancin’, star-crossed 19th century lovers whose affair unfolds on and off the stage (and to the strains of a soundtrack that includes songs by Nirvana, Madonna, the Beatles, and Queen). Kidman picked up her second Best Actress nomination for her work here, and the film itself went on to gross nearly $180 million worldwide, offering appreciative audiences what Total Film’s Andrew Lowry called “An honest, heartfelt paean to good old-fashioned love that’s audacious in its wide-eyed passion, innocent love of fun and sheer showmanship.”
76%
A kinky, sexually explicit drama starring what was then one of Hollywood’s most prominent married couples, Eyes Wide Shut would have been overshadowed by its behind-the-scenes story even under the best of circumstances. When director Stanley Kubrick passed away shortly after finishing the film, Shut was doomed to be a curiosity for cinematic rubberneckers, and in the short term, its critical and commercial reception didn’t really live up to the years of hype that preceded its release. Still, this dark tale of emotional estrangement and sexual compulsion has its defenders, and seen in the right light, it offers what Variety’s Todd McCarthy called “A riveting, thematically probing, richly atmospheric and just occasionally troublesome work, a deeply inquisitive consideration of the extent of trust and mutual knowledge possible between a man and a woman.”
79%
Streep! Kidman! Julianne Moore! The Hours arrived on screens loaded for bear with heaps of acting talent, including a supporting cast that boasted Ed Harris, Toni Collette, and Claire Danes. Toss in a script inspired by the Pulitzer-winning source novel from Michael Cunningham, and you’ve got a movie ready-made for awards season — one that lived up to its pedigree, too, with nine Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and a Best Actress win for Kidman. A thoughtful, era-jumping drama about women whose lives are linked by Virgina Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, it made for an exceedingly unlikely $100 million hit, but as Entertainment Weekly’s Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, “A viewer can forget about Woolf, not care a fig about Cunningham, and just bathe — soak, more like — in the voluptuous sadnesses of Mss. Woolf, Brown, and Vaughan, delineated with such refinement by Nicole Kidman, Julianne Moore, and Meryl Streep.”
83%
Fresh off winning an Australian Film Institute Best Actress Award for her work in 1988’s Emerald City, Kidman landed her breakout role in director Phillip Noyce’s Dead Calm. Starring Kidman and Sam Neill as a married couple coping with the death of their young daughter by setting sail on an ocean voyage in their yacht, and Billy Zane as the mysterious stranger whose call for help bears deadly consequences, Calm used the 1963 Charles Williams novel of the same name as inspiration for a tightly constructed — and painfully tense — thriller marked by stellar performances from its talented cast. The end result was what Time Out’s Nigel Floyd deemed “A classic piece of pared-down genre film-making … lent extra depth by an emotional subtext stressing Kidman’s transition from dependent wife to resourceful individual.”
83%
Twist endings were very much in vogue in the years following The Sixth Sense‘s smash success, and The Others has a doozy — but rather than a Shyamalan-inspired creepfest, this period chiller is simply a well-constructed ghost story in its own right. Starring Kidman (who won a Golden Globe for her performance) as a woman living with her two children in the British countryside after World War II, The Others works patiently, raising its dramatic stakes with icy precision while throwing in enough jolts to draw the viewer in — and keep the audience thoroughly on edge. It’s all driven by Kidman’s committed performance, which Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times lauded by writing, “Kidman has thrown herself into her role as if it were Lady Macbeth on the London stage, with formidable results.”
87%
There may not be many occasions when you’re in the mood to watch a husband and wife struggling to deal with the life-unraveling pain of a horrible tragedy, but on those occasions, you could do a lot worse than John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole. Starring Kidman and Eckhart as the aforementioned couple, and bolstered by supporting turns from Dianne Wiest, Sandra Oh, and a young Miles Teller, Hole can be an uncomfortable watch, but all those tears are wrung out for a purpose; as Tom Long wrote for the Detroit News, “As heavy, stressful, relentlessly sad dramas go, this one goes quite well.”
88%
Kidman won a Golden Globe for her gleefully nasty portrayal of a lethally fame-hungry femme fatale in To Die For, which highlighted a darker side of her screen persona while rescuing director Gus Van Sant from falling into career purgatory after Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Kidman stars here as Suzanne Stone, a New Hampshire woman whose dreams of TV stardom are thwarted by the fact that, in her mind, she’s been trapped far from the bright lights and big city by her dullard of a husband (Matt Dillon). Things start to change after she crosses paths with a trio of equally stardom-obsessed kids (Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, and Alison Folland), inspiring her to solve her spousal problems once and for all. “If you’ve hitherto failed to respond to the laid-back oddball appeal of Van Sant’s movies, fear not,” decreed Geoff Andrew for Time Out. “This is a sharp, consistently funny blend of black comedy and satire on the deleterious effects of television.”
96%
After enjoying the international spotlight with Dead Calm and Days of Thunder, Kidman returned to Australia for Flirting, writer-director John Duigan’s follow-up to his acclaimed The Year My Voice Broke. An Australian Film Institute Best Film Award winner, Flirting found Kidman working among an ensemble cast packed with future stars, including Thandie Newton, Naomi Watts, and Noah Taylor. Although its storyline follows the same rough contours as many other coming-of-age dramas, those performances — and the skill with which Duigan told his characters’ tale — left many critics reeling. “Flirting is one of those rare movies with characters I cared about intensely,” enthused Roger Ebert. “I didn’t simply observe them on the screen, I got involved in their decisions and hoped they made the right ones.”
In case you were wondering, here are Kidman’s top 10 movies according RT users’ scores:
1. Moulin Rouge! — 90%
2. Dogville — 90%
3. The Hours — 85%
4. The Others — 77%
5. Cold Mountain — 77%
6. Flirting — 76%
7. My Life — 75%
8. Practical Magic — 73%
9. Eyes Wide Shut — 73%
10. Rabbit Hole — 72%
Take a look through Kidman’s complete filmography, as well as the rest of our Total Recall archives. And don’t forget to check out the reviews for The Railway Man.
Finally, here’s Kidman putting in a plug for the Nintendo DS:
