GREAT DVD RELEASES

“JUST LIKE HEAVEN”

Okay, Into the Blue looked really bad and wasn’t about to go see Serenity, so I checked out a movie that has been out for a couple weeks. “Just Like Heaven” is a romantic comedy about a guy who moves into a vacant (yet furnished) apartment, to find the spirit of a woman, who believes she lives there. The film stars Mark Ruffalo, Reese Witherspoon, and Napoleon Dynamite’s John Heder.

The film had the feel of Romantic comedies such as “13 Going on 30” (which also starred Ruffalo), but this film wasn’t just targeted towards girls. The films humor would make anyone in the audience laugh, and John Heder (though he was typecast) was responsible for a few great laughs. The ending dragged on a little, but overall the film exceeded my expectations and I recommend you check it out.

Special Features Include: Subtitles: English SDH; "Making Of 'Just Like Heaven'" featurette; "Meet The Cast", Deleted Scenes, Gag Reel, Dual Layer, Single Sided

Nick Park has done it again. In 2000 I was amazed by the highly entertaining chicken run. Now, the British Television show I've been watching since I was six, has become a full length motion film. This film completely lived up to the original show, and absolutely blew me away with terrific characters, witty jokes, and amazing detail and craftsmanship. This is my pick for best animated film of 2005.

Subtitles: English SDH; "How Wallace & Gromit Went To Hollywood," Behind The Scenes of "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit," "A Day In The Life At Aardman," "How To Build A Bunny," "Stage Fright & Commentary," "Production A", Behind The Scenes Featurette, Director Commentary, Featurette

AND BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD ONES

Elizabethtown

Cameron Crowe's new film Elizabethtown is about a young suicidal man (Orlando Bloom) who is about to kill himself when he gets a call saying that his father had died. He decides that he will return home for the funeral and will afterwards kill himself. However "his plan" is interrupted by a stewardess named Claire (Kirsten Dunst) who becomes intrusive in his life.

I am not going to continue summarizing this film because it will cause me to give away the ending. The film is as confusing as it is emotionless. The entire film was about how he felt bad that he never spent time with his father. I never once related to any of the characters.

The acting on Orlando Bloom's part was alright, but it didn't give the film what it needed to be great. Kirsten Dunst also didn't do a fantastic job. I could understand her emotions better than I could understand Bloom's, however she kept changing her accent. It started off sounding southern, then it changed to Northeastern, then it changed back to Southern, and by the end she had no accent at all. In fact the best actor in the film, Alec Baldwin, had a character that appeared for about ten minutes of this two hour film. The characters were not well developed. There were many characters that had no significance in the film, but they kept coming back. Again, a poor choice on Crowe's part.

The writing itself was all over the place. It seemed as though Cameron Crowe took eight separate ideas for eight different movies and he stuck them all together. The film was light hearted, but he would often try to slip in a comedic scene. These scenes were funny, but they were very random and seemed cartoonish compared to the rest of the film. The films ending also needed work. Again, it seemed like Crowe had multiple ideas for an ending and then he decided to put them all together.

In short, the plot was overdeveloped and the characters were underdeveloped. The film itself was sloppily made and was utterly confusing. This film may be entertaining for a little while, but the entire story line gets old fast. It's a messy movie from beginning to end.

Doom: A Mess of Confusion and Apocalyptic Mayhem

The trailer for Doom portrayed the film as a film shot primarily in first person, while having many cut away scenes shot like a regular film, to keep a sense that you were actually in the film. The commercials and movie posters were misleading.

The films plot is simple. A virus has spread turning everyone into giant monsters and flesh hungry zombies. Now it is up to The Rock to save all of man kind. That is all it is. It's just another special effects driven, badly acted, time wasting pile of Hollywood garbage. It leaves nothing to the imagination , and doesn't thrill you with anything you haven't seen before.

The first person effects in the film were, needless to say, awesome, but there was one problem with them. They took up two minutes out of this two hour long movie! The trailer for the movie showed most of these scenes anyway. It was a disappointing failure of a great idea.

This film is totally not worth seeing. Though I myself am not a personal fan of the video game (I am praying for a well-made 'Quake' film) I attended the movie with a few 'Doom' fans and all agreed that they were less than impressed.

ALSO AVAILABLE: BAMBI II (One of my friends LOVES the original and is not so happy that this sequel was made)

E-mail this entry to a friend