Double Dippin' - Starship Troopers

First released way back in 1997, Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers has only gotten better over time. This Blu-ray edition was released in conjunction with the second direct-to-video garbage sequel, Marauder, which along with the previous sequel, Hero of the Federation, only serves to highlight what an awesome movie the original was.

Starship Troopers is, at its core, a hilariously violent satire of big-budget sci-fi movies. It is gloriously cheesy and over-the-top; the sort of movie so obsessed with blood, guts, guns, tits and explosions that you almost feel like you’re 10 years old, nose pressed against the screen late at night, watching the VHS tape your friend lent you. The fact that it’s all irony makes it even better; Paul Verhoven, director of such classics as Total Recall and Showgirls, does not have the word ‘subtlety’ in his vocabulary, so when he does satire, he punches you in the face with it. That anyone ever thought this film was attempting sincerity is laughable, and yet, when it was originally released, people mocked it for all the same reasons it’s mocking itself. It is just as much fun to watch in 2008 as it was 11 years ago, which is a testament to Verhoven’s schlocky appeal. It’s hard not to pity the folks that just didn’t get it.

It’s almost a waste of time to talk about the performances; Casper Van Dien was basically born to play the square-jawed, vacant jarhead Johnny Rico, and then-newcomer Denise Richards plays equally vacant, constantly-smiling Carmen Ibanez just fine, considering both of them are supposed to be empty-headed cardboard archetypes (the “let’s get the two whitest people in the history of white people to play characters with Hispanic names” strategy is confusing, although it might be just another layer of satire given Hollywood’s penchant for getting race wrong). The now-awesome Neil Patrick Harris shows up and there’s a glimmer of the charming and hilarious actor he’s become in the years since Doogie Howser, although he doesn’t have much screen time. That everyone has so much makeup on that they look like action figures just adds to the hilarity.

It still looks great, too; the effects were always a brilliant example of how to properly blend CG in with live-action elements, and even at 1080p resolution, they still look pretty great. The model work is impressive, too; while on early DVD transfers the compositing used in the model sequences looked a little weak, this pristine transfer makes it look great. This is a prime example of an ambitious effects film that has really held up over the years.

There are a surprising number of exclusive Blu-ray special features; in addition to the mountain of extras that came in the original 2-disc special edition DVD that’s been out of print for a while, there are interactive games, and BD-Live functionality for downloading trailers and “putting yourself in the movie” a’la the feature on the Terminator 2 Ultimate Edition that allowed you to insert your photo into a program that let you blow chunks off of your own face to reveal the cybernetic skeleton beneath. Most impressive is “FedNet Mode”, which is a graphics-in-picture track that has a bunch of the original cast and crew members discussing the film’s satirical elements, and even has a few discussions about the book the film is (very) loosely based on; it runs while the film is playing. Overall, it’s a very solid package and a nice effort from Sony.

SO IS IT WORTH IT?

Absolutely! Great movie, excellent picture quality, uncompressed sound, a mountain of new special features and Denise Richards’ pre-reality show plastic face in 1080p. What more could any red-blooded nerd ask for? It’s available for around $20 on Amazon; most big box stores will have it for $24.99, with Fry’s Electronics letting it go for $23.

Yep, pretty dark all right

Everyone and their brother will be weighing in on this movie this weekend because everyone and their brother will have seen it by this evening, but I'll talk about The Dark Knight anyway.

The hyperbolic raving is all true. It's a masterpiece, as everyone has said. It's not a superhero movie - this is a "graphic novel", sequential art for adults brought to life. It's a crime epic, a character study, all of those things. It doesn't feel like a sequel to Batman Begins; rather an entirely new sort of thing. The only origin story here belongs to Harvey Dent, and it's woven into the film's plot so expertly you hardly notice you're watching an origin story.

All that frothing and Oscar-talking about Heath Ledger is true. The Joker is less a character and more a hurricane of chaos and anarchy that descends on an already-crumbling Gotham and basically kicks Batman's ass for 2 and a half hours. Not one character makes it through this movie without being horrifically threatened, scarred or terrified. There is no backstory for the Joker, which is a brilliant touch. He is effectively "summoned" in a sense by Batman's mere existence, who inadvertently created a world in which the Joker could exist. It's a lot to chew on thematically but it works. The chorus of critics claiming that Ledger has created an instantly iconic, classic and unforgettable screen villain are right.

It is relentlessly brutal. Aside from a handful of tiny little moments of humor, this thing is just one big harrowing downer until the end, and it's magnificent. There's a little sliver of grey light in the film's final moments, but that's all you get. I can't help but feel this film would've benefited from an R rating, but it's already so intense that I'm not sure a little extra blood and swearing would've really mattered.

You'll be seeing this regardless of what anyone says, though. It's that good, that pervasive. A moment in pop culture history.

Double Dippin' - Natural Born Killers

In his long and storied career, Oliver Stone hasn’t really made very many good movies. In fact, he’s responsible for what is probably the worst historical action “epic” ever made, Alexander. In the 90’s, though, he had a decent run, with The Doors, the oft-mocked JFK, and Nixon, none of which were particularly great but didn’t quite reach the levels of bad he’d catapult himself through later in his career.

During that whole “not totally suck-ass” period he made Natural Born Killers, which is still a good movie – maybe Stone’s best - and although it’s hamfisted bullshit from beginning to end, it’s an exciting and entertaining movie with some great performances and a really riveting climax. If you ignore the fact that Oliver Stone is smashing you over the head with a wooden plank that’s been plastered with the very tired and dated message “SERIAL KILLERS AND THE MEDIA ARE ALL TO BLAME FOR SENSELESS VIOLENCE” writ large in mile-high spraypaint, it’s a pretty solid movie, even if it’s lost a lot of its edge over the years. When it came out, the chief complaint was that it looked too much like a music video, had too many rapid edits and had too nutty a visual style. Looking at it now, it’s tamer than any recent Michael Bay movie in that regard, and is almost quaint.

The picture quality is great, and maintains the film’s choppy style; this thing was shot on nearly every existing recording technology known to man at the time and they’ve preserved that here without making it look like shit. The disturbing sitcom-style “I Love Mallory” sequences with Rodney Dangerfield intimidating and molesting Juliette Lewis maintain their blurry cheap-TV look, as do the zillion other film techniques this movie employs. It looks best when they’re using an oversaturated ceiling light, but this isn’t a movie where you want to dick around with the visuals too much. It isn’t supposed to look crystal clear, but the transfer is very nice.

This is one of Warner’s “prestige” Bluray releases, meaning it comes in this children’s book-style hardcover packaging that has a glossy booklet attached. They did the same thing for Bonnie & Clyde and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and it works out OK. There aren’t any exclusive special features, just the usual bored-sounding Oliver Stone droning on about the film, describing it as it happens. There are some deleted scenes but there isn’t anything new here.

SO IS IT WORTH IT?

If you can find it cheap, yes. I picked it up on sale for $19 at Target, which apparently stocked 5 copies and couldn’t sell them all after a week so they marked it down and made more room for The Day After Tomorrow. Amazon has it now for $23. Pick it up in a BOGO sale or buy it used and you won’t be disappointed.

Double Dippin' - Batman Begins Limited Edition

Warner’s Batman Begins Limited Edition Bluray release is chock full of superfluous Dark Knight promotional tchotchkies that any movie-collecting junkie will go apeshit over shortly before stuffing them all back into the box and promptly forgetting they exist. There are Dark Knight comics, a script booklet, and a Movie Money certificate that’ll knock $7.50 off of your Dark Knight ticket price. Oh, and there’s also a fantastic movie called Batman Begins that’s included.

Batman Begins looks great but it’s the same transfer as was on the film’s original HD-DVD release, so if you decided to buy into that rotting technology when it came out (like I did) you’re not really seeing anything new in terms of picture quality. There aren’t really any problems, per se, but it isn’t a new transfer so don’t expect any surprises if you’ve seen Batman Begins in hi-definition before.

Of course, the film is a masterpiece of its genre. The talented Chris Nolan, who delighted film students and critics alike with his much-ballyhooed ass-backwards thriller Memento back in 2000, brings his A-game to the world of Batman. Christian Bale is perfect, the action sequences are great and even though the Batmobile is re-imagined to look like a big clunky tank, this is a fantastic movie and probably one of the best comic book movies ever made. At least until The Dark Knight comes out. Did I mention The Dark Knight is coming out on July 18^th? If you forgot, this Limited Edition release is basically designed to remind you!

The big exclusive to-do included on the disc is the first 6 minutes of The Dark Knight, which was shot in IMAX and looks mind-blowingly fantastic, ensuring us that the inevitable Dark Knight Bluray release will trigger countless nerd orgasms when it’s released later this year. Oddly enough, all of the extra crap included in the box that’s related to The Dark Knight is based on these six minutes of footage – for some reason they saw fit to include a booklet that has the original script for this sequence, along with storyboards and production stills, and if that isn’t enough for you, they’ve also included a comic book adaptation of it. It’s all totally unnecessary, but for Batman geeks it’s cool enough.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of special features and odds ‘n ends related to Batman Begins. The lenticular art included is the same card used on the Best Buy exclusive DVD release that came out years ago, and there are also a set of promotional postcards with alternate movie poster styles from the film’s theatrical release. Other than the Dark Knight footage, the extra features included on the disc are identical to the HD-DVD release, using the spankin’ new BD Live technology to replicate the previously HD-DVD exclusive feature where Chris Nolan and friends “reveal the movie’s backstory” while you watch. It’s neat enough.

SO IS IT WORTH IT?

Batman Begins is a triple-dip for me; I owned the first special edition, then the HD-DVD version, and now this overstuffed box set. The film looks great, the box is attractive, and as unnecessary as they are all the little promotional items are, they’re pretty cool. Unless you’re a huge Batman nerd, you may want to skip this limited edition and go for the disc-only release, but for fans and collectors, it’s worth it. You can snag it for 34 bucks on Amazon, which is very reasonable considering the amount of crap that comes with it; retail outlets will probably knock you for $45-$50. Go with the Amazon price and you won’t regret it.

Double Dippin' - Men In Black

Before we get started, here at the Arbitrary Movie Blog, we do generally four kinds of reviews: new theatrical releases, new Bluray releases, new Bluray catalog releases, and new DVD releases in the event that there’s no hi-def option available. This one is a new Bluray catalog release, so we’re judgin’ it based on whether or not it’s worth dropping cash to replace the DVD you probably already own, in addition to taking a second look at the flick.

Men In Black was released on Bluray as part of Sony’s neverending Hancock promotion; the handsome, glossy slipcover it comes with (please, every company that releases Bluray discs, start putting slipcovers on everything to satiate those among us with a horrifying addiction to collecting media) announces that if you drop $25 on this Will Smith comedy-action-adventure movie, they’ll give you $7.50 to see the new Will Smith comedy-action-adventure movie. Oh, and you have to redeem it online.

The film itself looks fantastic and was treated to a pretty great transfer. It’s not exactly showboat material – you’ll still be pulling out Ratatouille to show off your Bluray system to your slack-jawed relatives – but it looks damn good and the effects have held up pretty well. The film still feels really slight and kind of forgettable, and while it might’ve seemed edgy or hip in 1997, now it feels like a really standard summer action comedy blockbuster. Will Smith is in full “aww hell nah” mode, and it does seem like 50 of the film’s 98 minutes are spent watching a deformed Vincent D’Onofrio wander around being gross. Entertaining, but that’s about it. At least it isn’t Men in Black II.

There are some exclusive special features to the Bluray release, which is nice because it means they put a little extra effort into this release, something that is currently uncommon among studios releasing older movies on Bluray. Unfortunately they’re all pretty pointless; there’s a multi-player trivia game that asks extremely easy questions, and a repulsive “Ask Frank the Pug” feature where you select a category like “career” or “love life” and a really cheaply-animated Frank the Pug responds with generic ‘funny’ advice. Frank the Pug is pretty much the unfunniest thing about Men in Black so unless you just couldn’t get enough of his Brooklyn-accented antics in the film itself, there’s even more of him here! Other than that there’s a host of old special features from the film’s other 4 or 5 DVD releases and that’s about it.

SO IS IT WORTH IT?

Overall, it’s a very solid treatment of a fun little movie and it looks great. Right now it can be had at Amazon for under $20, and most brick ‘n mortar stores will hover around $24.99. If you can pick it up in a BOGO sale, go for it.

Not Quite Golden

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a whole lotta movie. Maybe too much movie for one movie. Guillermo Del Toro is a certified genius, but I can't help but think this movie would've benefited if someone had reigned him in a little.

Don't get me wrong - there's a lot to love here. The creature designs and the sheer number of cool monsters and great concepts on display are breathtaking and at times overwhelming. The battle with the "Forest God" is really incredible, and the whole film is just bursting at the seams with unfettered creativity and an obvious, manifest love of the world of fantasy.

The problem is that Del Toro never lets up at all; it's one amazing fantasy creature after another, and the plot suffers as a result. The emotional themes ring a little hollow, especially Abe Sapien's storyline, which is basically a setup for a plot twist that the film doesn't come to honestly. Often the tone and the dialogue feel forced, like they're all just trying a little too hard.

I really do think I would've LOVED this movie had it come out when I was in college, playing a lot of roleplaying games. The villain, who may as well have stepped out of a hacky White Wolf sourcebook, strikes me as juvenile and silly now but man, 20-year old me would've died for it. I wouldn't have found the plot to be a little too roleplaying campaign-y either. In fact, that's probably the best way to describe this film. A roleplaying campaign your friend put together that has a lot of great ideas but ultimately crams too much in and lets ambition get the best of it rather than tempering that creativity with storytelling restraint.

This sounds like a slam but I did enjoy the film. It is a flawed but entertaining fantasy action movie and I do hope they let him make a third one just to see if he has any ideas left after cramming what feels like 20 years' worth of fantasy concepts into this one.

What's it Worth?: Check it out if you've already seen Wall-E a few times and need to kill time until The Dark Knight comes out. Otherwise, rent the Bluray.