The latest DVDs and Blu-rays are given the once-over by our writers. Read first before reaching for your credit card.
LA, 1949, and ruthless crime boss Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is feeding business rivals to the coyotes on the Hollywood hills. With all kinds of corrupt officials in his pockets, the City of Angels has become his private fiefdom. However, Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) has other ideas, and he tasks Sergeant O'Mara (Josh Brolin) with forming an off-the-books outfit to wreck Cohen's empire.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, one of the most famous horror movies of all-time and an originator of the "slasher" genre, has spawned numerous prequels, sequels and remakes, but nothing has really come close to the original. We are reminded of this during the opening sequence, in which we experience a quick recap of the first movie, including meat hooks, dismembered bodies and of course, a chainsaw. Unfortunately, this is where the movie starts to go downhill.
Tomorrow You’re Gone (2013) is the new film from Director David Jacobson. Like his previous efforts Dahmer (2002) and Down in The Valley (2005), Jacobson is very much focused on atmosphere and aesthetic with the influence of Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973) hanging like a cloud over his work. Here he brings together Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan as the central Bonnie and Clyde figures.
This is the first of three DVD releases from writer/director Hal Hartley. An important part of the American independent film movement, the auteur is famed for his use of eccentric characters and deadpan comedy. Amateur is Hartley’s fifth feature (out of twelve) in a career spanning from the 1980s to the present day.
Everything about this war-set detective thriller delights, confounds and disturbs; even its ludicrous title (perhaps some poeticism was lost in translation) somehow gels with the melodrama.
