DVD Review: Messengers 2: The Scarecrow (2009)

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(The Original & The Prequel)

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Somehow fooled by the number following the title into thinking that what I was going to be watching was an actual sequel to the 2007 film starring Kristen Stewart, I spent a busy week trying to track down the Pang Brothers original which was a lot harder than it sounded as post-Twilight, essentially everything starring the talented young actress has been either flying off shelves across the country or been picked up by passersby and then ditched on a completely different shelf for another title.

Adding to the confusion was the fact that the film's title sounded a whole lot like another Sony Pictures Home Entertainment new release called Passengers starring Anne Hathaway-- so countless times, I ended up hot on the trail of the wrong movie; having temporarily put my Netflix account on hold since I'm usually so flooded with screeners I have no time to take advantage of it. Yet lo and behold, I did find what seemed to be the sole copy of the original in the entire Phoenix/Scottsdale/Tempe/Chandler/Paradise Valley Arizona area and despite dirt and scratches it played all the way through.

While of course Stewart was great as usual (aside from the poorly written Twilight) and she's been quietly underrated in a significant number of works including the depressing yet well-acted In the Land of Women, the smart Hollywood satire What Just Happened, and this year's overlooked Adventureland-- overall, the film itself was a run-of-the-mill PG-13 supernatural throwback thriller but one that benefited nicely from the lack of in-your-face gore, a surprise villain in an actor you wouldn't normally peg for the part, and another great "I swear this crazy stuff is real and I'm not crazy" premise.

When the faux sequel and instead straight to DVD prequel arrived and I realized that the frantic hunt for the previous film hadn't been necessary, I didn't much mind as it's always great to have something with which to compare a film to and although the '07 version of Messengers is still the superior film since the air of mystery it had going for it helped mask the familiar territory in a better light, the production value of 2009's Messengers 2: The Scarecrow shouldn't be diminished as it's still an engrossing if admittedly flawed feature.

Revisiting that violently doomed family of North Dakota bible-thumping farmers-- the Rollins whom we met in the original-- in Scarecrow, we move right into the tension without all of the becoming acquainted to the area stuff they utilized the first time around when Stewart's family made the move from Chicago.

Instead we find John Rollins (the handsome Boondock Saints actor Norman Reedus) struggling to produce a solid crop of corn on his land but while he's unable to ensure that the ears will grow and turn a profit, he's up to his ears in debt, drowning in bills he's unable to pay with the threat of losing the land he's grown up on, walking out of church during service, finding he no longer can have a "tab" in town for supplies, and becoming so disheartened with his lot in life most of the time he falls asleep amidst stacks of invoices and calculators on the couch downstairs instead of sharing a bed with his wife.

Feeling like he's disappointing his teenage daughter and son as well as the wife whom, he states could have easily married the successful rich boy who'd been in love with her if she wouldn't have gotten pregnant too early and they'd married way too young--John is a farmer full of enough angst to fill the pages of several "Dear Abby" columns but his luck begins to change when he discovers the world's creepiest scarecrow in the barn.

Resemblance-wise the scarecrow seems to bear more in common with a burn victim at the morgue rather than the character from the Wizard of Oz but breaking his promise to his young frightened son who just knows that nothing good can come from the wicked looking thing upon first glance, he sets it up right away at the prompting of a pushy sharecropper neighbor Jude Weatherby (Richard Riehle) whose young wife seems to be a cross of both one of those actresses they feature in the skanky after hours TV shows on Cinemax blended with as Carlos Santana memorably phrased "a black magic woman."

And soon jealousy, paranoia, dead bodies, and more start hitting John's farm as his debts get squared away when the banker hits the ground for good and there's plenty of pent-up rage and resentment John must deal with even if some of it seems undercooked or seemingly comes out of nowhere like an undisclosed subplot involving just why his wife is so fearful that her husband should have a few cans of beer (I'm guessing there's a story there but what is it?) or why he suddenly becomes sexually aggressive after witnessing Mrs. Weatherby enact a Penthouse like fantasy in a way that seemed again a bit too over-the-top.

Of course, there are some good plot points that do pay off later wherein John teaches his son how to drive the tractor against his wife's wishes (again as a sort of power struggle of whether the mother or father is in charge) and we know that will come back in the end but a few of the subplots that are introduced we feel could potentially have been utilized to greater effect like his wife's close friendship with an ex-boyfriend, a teenage daughter who basically seems to have three lines in the entire film, and a few other characters that get lost in the shuffle.

Obviously I wasn't expecting all that much from a direct-to-disc release despite Sony's impressive recent entry into The Grudge franchise with the third (and in my view, the best) film in the over-praised series and while Messengers 2 also suffers because it uses its R rating to go for more gore, nudity, and sexuality to try and attack its core audience with the visuals-- despite its less-than-stellar predecessor The Pang Brothers handled it better when they opted for a subtle and therefore creepier, codependent approach which required your imaginative input.

Still, because we're dealing with the 30 Days of Night creators--Ghost House Pictures-- and Danish thriller director Martin Barnewitz (Room 205) as well as screenwriter Todd Farmer who jump-started the My Bloody Valentine franchise by reworking the original for the recent 3D update, rest assured that those responsible who also take part in a commentary track on the DVD definitely know how to scare you and despite some holes and clunks, Scarecrow manages to do just that.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
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DVD Review: Cadillac Records (2008)

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Although pop culture would tell you otherwise, rock 'n roll did not begin with Elvis Presley at Memphis, Tennessee’s Sun Records. Instead, rock had its origins in the blues and later rhythm and blues. And while arguably the first bona fide rock 'n roll star was none other than Chuck Berry—Berry’s story along with the other pioneers of rhythm and blues that led to rock 'n roll as we now know it today has basically been left in the dust.

While interviews with artists like Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and other musicians along with musical scholars will cite there early blues influences and a few years ago an entire PBS documentary was dedicated to the subject-- writer-director Darnell Martin said to change all that in a minor way with her stunning, underrated ensemble piece Cadillac Records.

Although admittedly, some of the facts have been blended together and some of the personalities have been left by the wayside to squeeze in what Martin explains was “the absolute truth” of the stories she wanted to tell “about how the blues became popular music, how it affected civil rights,” by whittling down her 150 page first draft to a feature-length movie running just 109 minutes, she achieves a wonderful success that works on two levels.

Firstly, she's made it one hell of a great film about the blues (which in reality is surely about the history of the American people) by calling attention to artists that have been long forgotten and secondly, like a cool walking musical encyclopedia, Martin earns in n honorary title as professor in making us want to not only seek out the recordings by these amazing artists but also learn more about them as human beings.

Purporting to tell the history, inception, and impact of Chicago's own Chess Records initially created by first-generation Polish immigrants Leonard and Phil Chess (although Phil is mostly absent from the film aside from a few scenes in which we infer he’s the “other white guy” next to Adrien Brody), Martin simultaneously weaves in the story of the artists who would join the label including Leonard Chess’s first great star, Muddy Waters (Jeffrey Wright).

In yet another phenomenal, chameleon-like performance by the great Jeffrey Wright -- the type of which we’re beginning to take for granted on—he tackles Muddy first as a sharecropper in Mississippi whose life was forever changed by a happy accident when his voice was recorded by two men from Fisk University who had initially set out see record the fault music of the late Robert Johnson. After they learned that Johnson had passed away, they were directed to Muddy’s porch and following an impromptu recording that gave the future “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Mannish Boy” the first opportunity to hear the way he sounded on vinyl, he memorably noted he felt as though, “I’m meeting myself for the first time.”

It was with those determined and confident words that Muddy packed his guitar and headed north without looking over his shoulder to Chicago where he formed two important relationships. The first was with Geneva (Gabrielle Union) who would become his longtime love and the second was none other than Leonard Chess, with whom Muddy began making records, taking part in payola schemes, getting him as well as the rest of the Chess lineup of artists unprecedented air-play and treating them to shiny new Cadillacs sometimes without informing them that it was being taken out of their royalties.

Admittedly in the 1950s, both the friendship and relationship -- especially when money was involved -- between both white and black individuals was charged with complexity over whether or not the musician was being exploited and the idea that a white man may have been needed to be the front for the organization in order to lead to the era of Motown but Martin never makes any concrete judgments about her characters.

This is especially evident as other artists join the roster and Martin manages to interlace some double-standards and new thoughts coming from all involved—mostly in the form of Muddy’s greatest harmonica player and the seventeen year old hot-headed prodigy Little Walter (Columbus Short) and the fiery and proud Howlin’ Wolf (Eamonn Walker) who has extremely firm ideas about what we sense he felt was an evolved version of “slave” and “master.” Rounding out Martin’s ensemble piece, we’re also introduced to the terrific writer and current owner of Chess Records who has turned it into a museum, Mr. Willie Dixon (Cedric the Entertainer), and two of the most legendary acts—Chuck Berry (Mos Def) and Etta James (Beyonce Knowles).

Although it was Muddy that paved the way, eventually it was Berry’s blend of country and rockabilly helped destroy racial barriers playing sold out gigs to white and black listeners alike along with appearing on television. Yet, unfortunately while his song “Sweet Little Sixteen” was blatantly stolen by The Beach Boys for the background of “Surfin’ USA,” and his career was cut short when he was imprisoned for driving a white female minor across state lines (making his dalliances with young women not that much different than Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley), soon a savior managed to enter the recording studio at precisely the right moment in the form of the exquisite yet contradictorily volcanic Ms. Etta James (Knowles).

Despite her deceptively sweet appearance, James was a woman who as Leonard described “lived the blues” instead of just singing about them. With a horrific addiction to heroin and countless family problems including a failure to get her rumored father Minnesota Fats to acknowledge his paternity, James as played by Knowles is walking heartbreak. Anyone who thought that the singer’s vast improvement as an actress in Dreamgirls was a fluke will be immediately taken aback by her dynamic portrayal in this film.

In the part written exclusively for the musician by Ms. Martin and amazingly shooting all of her scenes in just six days, Knowles is able to effortlessly capture James’ tough-talking demeanor, her more vulnerable side opposite Oscar winner Adrien Brody (in a few scenes that really send sparks flying), and most importantly bring the house down in recording session performances that will send shivers down your spine as she sings not just “At Last,” but also “Once in a Lifetime,” and “I’d Rather Go Blind.”

While indeed there is some accurate criticisms about liberty being taken with the facts, Martin surpasses expectations by avoiding the trappings of strict biopic and moving into a far more daunting challenge of bringing to life several figures at the same time. To tell you just the Leonard Chess story, or just the Muddy Waters story, or just the Chuck Berry story, or just the Etta James story wouldn't have captured the real story namely that of the blues which is what provided the soundtrack of the American experience.

Over the past few years, we've been inundated with biopics and while some of them have been exceptional such as James Mangold’s Walk the Line-- the decision to move away from that tried and true paradigm and instead embrace the idea of presenting us with an authentic sense of time and place is what sets Cadillac Records apart.

In the incredibly worthwhile roughly twenty-seven minute making-of-featurette “Playing Chess,” the filmmaker accurately describes the approach in the work of the cast as “everybody’s playing a different instrument.” Effectively managing to make the most of their limited budget by ensuring the production and costumer designers always knew what was going to be seen by the camera at any given moment to avoid unnecessary expenses, the largely female production team discuss the methods they used in augmenting the story from using both color and texture to truly “sell the period.”

Employing a large amount of blues, greens, purples and browns near the opening—Martin reveals in the design featurette “Once Upon a Blues,” that she was extremely careful about avoiding the color red until the moment Chuck Berry and rock ‘n roll are officially introduced. In addition to providing deleted scenes, the filmmaker also takes part in a feature-length commentary track that would be of extreme interest to music buffs as Martin’s knowledge of the characters, Chess records, music, and the time period is extraordinarily detailed, which is evident from the start as she helps clear the air on factual items that didn’t make it into the movie.

Unfortunately overlooked in a crowded December filled with a large amount of Oscar bait pictures making their way daily into theatres across the states, luckily Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s underrated gem is now available in both DVD and Blu-ray high definition where the sound on even the DVD alone manage to heighten the sound of James’ “At Last” or Waters’ “Mannish Boy” to concert level quality despite your sound system setup.

Download the Standard or Deluxe
Soundtrack From iTunes
(Click the Icons Below)

Download "The Best of Chess"
(The Original Recordings of the Songs
Heard in the Film Via the iTunes Album Icon Below)

Blu-ray Review: The Boondock Saints (2000)

In the Name of the Father:
Troy Duffy's Cult Crime Favorite
Applies for Blu-ray Sainthood

Previously Available & Ready for Confession

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A few years ago, I was chatting about '60s and '70s cinematic antiheroes with one of my favorite film professors. And while we both shared a love of the ambiguity and ironic endings of what could very well be the two most influential decades of filmmaking around the globe-- we also noted the way some of the most prominent characters, plot-lines, and sub-genres have been recycled again and again over the decades.

Our conversation ran the gamut and included first Quentin Tarantino's cinematic mix-tape movies like Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction which made a wild cocktail consisting of elements of French New Wave, American revenge thrillers, and '70s blaxploitation movies by also impressively weaving in some elements of vintage film noir (of the '40s and '50s). Then we moved onto other works that borrowed heavily from the forefathers of the Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, De Palma, Bogdanovich, and Friedkin era.

Sure enough, some of these films broke the mold and became instant '90s classics as -- (in addition to the aforementioned Tarantino works)-- we were faced with Luc Besson's The Professional, Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects, and Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Filled with impressive camera trickery, antiheroes, a little of the old Kubrickian ultra-violence and an over-usage of the "f-bomb," these films were repeated again and again and by the time we reached Ritchie's Lock, Stock-- the fingerprints of Tarantino and those who'd come before him were evident from the start.

Blending all of these elements together into a wicked formula-- you can essentially break down The Boondock Saints into recipe form as follows:

1) A seasoning of Tarantino for trying to hang with the cool kids.

2) Two parts Coppola for the mixture of Catholicism and violence.

3) One part Scorsese: Imagine if Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle had gone to the seminary instead of the adult movie theatre.

4) A generous helping of Besson, since Gary Oldman's character from The Professional as well as the "no women, no kids" line of dialogue is basically implanted directly into the script.

5) One part Ritchie as visually it's like four video games being played simultaneously by a hyper kid on Ritalin.

Nonetheless, Troy Duffy gets points for ambition. Furthermore, there's two exceedingly inventive scenes that were so cinematically audacious that they found my breath catch (more on that later). Yet ultimately we're faced with yet another stylish and hyper aware work of gunplay and revenge that would've made Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry and Charles Bronson in Death Wish call out for merciful asylum.

Earning the type of Donnie Darko-like cult status which my former professor noted found at least one student bringing in Duffy's film to show portions of in a Contemporary Cinema presentation each and every semester-- the making of The Boondock Saints is actually so fascinating in its own right that it garnered a documentary on the topic.

To give you the Cliffs Notes version, the volatile Duffy blew a generous deal with Miramax and then went through independent channels to ensure ultimate control (even so much that his band would be included in the film). The result was that eventually it crept into a minimal theatrical run following the horror of the Columbine Massacre before-- as Duffy has argued-- Blockbuster saved his film from the waste pile by making it one of their "Exclusive" titles and a phenomenon was born.

Reuniting every cast member except for Willem Dafoe-- who is being replaced by Julie Benz-- for a forthcoming 2010 theatrical sequel by 20th Century Fox, The Boondock Saints which has been served up in a multitude of DVD formats is finally being given the Blu-ray treatment no doubt to help increase momentum for the sequel.



Set in South Boston and opening on St. Patrick's Day, the film centers on two twin brothers who begin to question their life working at a scuzzy meatpacking plant after they engage in a bar fight that leads into the death of Russian mobsters in self-defense.



However, instead of being thrown in jail, Connor and Murphy MacManus (Sean Patrick Flannery and Norman Reedus) are dubbed saints by the local press. The crime and the young men catch the interest of the organized crime expert and FBI agent Paul Smecker played by Willem Dafoe in an overly hammy performance as a flamboyantly gay investigator who-- much like Gary Oldman in The Professional-- appreciates classical music with opera replacing Beethoven.

Believing their first foray into crime was a sign that God's law is higher than that of man, the two launch into a career as full time vigilantes, describing themselves as operating much like 7-11 in that even when they're not doing business, they're always open or in this case, looking for more sinners to kill. After going shopping for the deadliest of supplies in a way that takes a fetishistic look at weaponry the way that Sex and the City did for Carrie Bradshaw's beloved shoe addiction, the brothers decide to take on murderers, mobsters, and Boston's most notorious villains.

Uniting with a lower level Italian mobster David Della Rocco a.k.a "The Funnyman," they become a trio of gun-blazing Charles Bronsons in a series of escalating crimes so filled with bullets and blood that soon mobsters realize they must bust the ruthless hitman "Il Duce" (Billy Connolly) out of prison to take on the Boondock Saints.



Heavy on the gore and somehow managing to persuade Willem Dafoe to don drag for an excruciatingly embarrassing finale for the Oscar nominee-- the film tries to dress up its thrill kill nature with biblical overtones. To this end, Boondock Saints is infused with endless prayers and Catholic dogma throughout as the boys find themselves tattooed with "Aequitas" (justice) and "Veritas" (truth) in exacting brutal revenge since they believe that-- much like their monsignor, the worst crime is apathy as referenced in an opening monologue citing the notorious case of Kitty Genovese who was murdered in plain sight in front of countless witnesses.

Yet, no matter how much Duffy wants to recall the same mixture of blood and religion and the dual nature of good and evil that Coppola used throughout The Godfather trilogy, in the end, it's all just an excuse to see some action and on that front Boondock Saints delivers, especially with the full force of Blu-ray sound behind it as we can hear every bullet fired and casing hit the ground.

To its benefit, the film features some extraordinary camerawork by cinematographer Adam Kane who also filmed the first episode of Heroes; Chapter One: Genesis before the show jumped the shark. And in the running time, the film separates itself from the pack of Tarantino and Ritchie rip-offs in two over-the-top but remarkable sequences worthy of study for those interested in the art of filmmaking.

The first finds Duffy adhering to Hitchcock's oft-discussed belief of holding off on showing something for as long as one possibly can to increase suspense. This occurs when the brothers turn themselves in for their initial crime in self-defense and in explaining the circumstances to Dafoe, we're shown a bravura work of incredible action choreography as Flannery finds himself handcuffed to a toilet, only to break free and figure out how to save his brother from death at the hands of mobsters. While definitely his jump from the fifth floor of a building seems a bit too Crouching Tiger to be believed-- the craftsmanship is first rate with all departments firing on all cylinders.

In the earlier scene, it's the editing and camerawork that jumps out at you in yet later on, it's the bravery of Duffy to mess with traditional narration that transforms yet another routine orgy of violence hit by the MacManus brothers into a work of art. Avoiding the need to show something twice or do so traditionally, we watch in awe as the crime scene master Dafoe is able to walk the rest of the Boston officers through an entire complicated crime scene to direct the action that is shown.



However, instead of simply intercutting his narration with back and forth edits, Duffy goes for something original to perhaps illustrate the way our FBI man is beginning to side with the crooks by having him explain the entire incident as it happens, walking with the trio of vigilantes, pretending to shoot, dropping down to the ground, identifying how things went down in a way that makes the entire scene fresh. Admittedly, this technique of calling attention to itself as a film is far from original as it was used when Ray Liotta's Henry Hill climbed off the witness stand in a courtroom at the end of Goodfellas to speak directly to the camera and lead us into the epilogue. Yet, when Duffy dares to try something different instead of borrowing so pointedly from other films that we're able to call them out as we watch as if it was an interactive game for movie buffs, that's when Boondock Saints truly seems worthy of its loyal and rabid fanbase.

With a bullet filled menu as each selection rings out in the sound of a gunshot-- you're able to choose from the original theatrical cut (which was trimmed due to sensitivity regarding the Columbine attacks) and Duffy's extended cut along with commentary on the theatrical cut from either Duffy or actor Billy Connolly. Also sharing outtakes and deleted scenes-- two of the cooler features for Boondock fans and action junkies is Fox's D-Box Motion Control option to get you right into the action as well as an opportunity to explore Duffy's screenplay.

Following some previews for similar Fox titles like Babylon A.D. and Max Payne-- viewers are able to jump directly into the menu for the version they wish to watch (original or extended). However, I did find there was a bit of a hiccup with the disc as it didn't offer the ability to bookmark and the menus took extraordinarily long to load even on a new Sony Blu-ray player so much so that I had to restart the film a few times just to reach the main menu. My advice to avoid the wasted time and repetition is to recommend you either watch it straight through, ensure your firmware is up-to-date (as I did right away and learned it was), and go in aware that it could take a few minutes to find the menu ready to explode before your eyes in a mixture of veritas and violence.