Media | DVD Releases | Blog | Store| Twitter | April 8, 2008: Welcome to this week's highlighted home video releases, focused entirely on the American market. Sorry, rest of the world.

Roundup by VsRobot | Posted April 8, 2008

Pick Of the Week

There Will Be Blood
There Will Be Blood is about stuff. Things happen, the plot moves forward, there's something akin to a resolution. On the same token, There Will Be Blood is about the things that don't happen, and about the quiet moments that lead up to more quiet moments that suddenly explode into bombast and frenzy.

Then it's quiet again.

There Will Be Blood is a somewhat divisive film because it's never easy on the audience. You'll experience long stretches with no dialogue; there's no hand-holding on the part of the film-makers; and the film's central character is repellent and impossible to relate to.

These same things that make some have a very strong reaction against the film are also the things that make it a great film. Daniel Day-Lewis has done a lot of very fine acting in a lot of very fine films. This may be his masterpiece.

Pair It With:

Gangs of New York
I love double features, and I always keep an eye out for a natural companion piece to any movie that piques my interest. After There Will Be Blood, you might not be up to immediately start another film, especially not one as long as Gangs of New York. So I recommend a loose double-feature, over at least two days. Gangs of New York is my pick because their are hints of Day-Lewis' There Will Be Blood character Daniel Plainview in his portrayal of Bill the Butcher, and because it makes for a fine complement to the more recent film.

Shame of the Week!

P2
In an effort not to take the easy way out, I hereby disqualify for "Shame of the Week" all anime films. You can browse the anime new releases yourself if you want to be embarrassed by all the upskirts shots and cameltoes on display on their cover art. Rock of Love, hitting DVD this week, was similarly too much of a sitting duck. Instead, I am awarding this week's Shame to P2, which is just another excuse for gore and a lame second-half "twist" that isn't. As a lifelong horror fan, I guess I'm looking for more in my horror films these days than a woman in peril and some gratuitous violence. Maybe that means I'm not much of a horror fan anymore. Regardless, P2 is so forgettable it almost makes me look forward to the inevitable Saw V. Almost.

Also Out

Leonardo DiCaprio is narrating an environmental documentary in The 11th Hour... Another classic horror movie gets a cheap cash-in remake with the new version of Day of the Dead... Tom Cruise as a Republican presidential hopeful and Meryl Streep as a probing journalist verbally spar in Lions for Lambs... Ron Livingston plays a man who returns from Vietnam disabled and becomes a leading advocate for the disabled in the true story Music Within... Josh Hartnett is the disgraced sports journalist who hopes to use the story of former boxing champ now homeless man Sam Jackson to save his career in Resurrecting The Champ... Joaquin Phoenix is a father haunted by grief and Mark Ruffalo is a father haunted by guilt due to a hit-and-run accident on Reservation Road... John C. Reilly does the Johnny Cash role in the Walk the Line parody Walk Hard... a child finds a magical friend (a baby Loch Ness monster) in The Waterhorse...

Blu Reyes

My Blu-ray pick this week is The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, a surreal fantasy directed by Terry Gilliam, who is known for his surreal fantasies. Of course, The 6th Day will probably handily outsell it. Le sigh.

Expanded Content

If your once weekly dose of my down-to-earth homespun wisdom just isn't hitting the spot, you can read a lot more of my thoughts on the video industry, the film industry, the video games industry, and internet culture (among other geeky topics) on my Gamespite Network blog.

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Housekeeping

Cover art courtesy of Amazon, where you can purchase any of these titles. Rent all of the movies covered in the column online at Netflix. Your reality, sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. You can best contact me by leaving a comment on my geek culture Blog or following me on Twitter. You can also now e-mail me at vsrobot [dot] blog [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for reading!