New Releases for the Week of October 5, 2012

TAKEN 2

(20th Century Fox) Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, Rade Sherbedgia, Luke Grimes, Leland Orser, D.B. Sweeney, Jon Gries. Directed by Olivier Megaton

After a harrowing incident in which a retired CIA agent retrieved his daughter after she was kidnapped by a white slavery ring in Paris, he and his family take a well-earned vacation in Istanbul. However, the father of the dead white slavers has a bone to pick with the former agent and it is no small matter. The daddy dearest of the white slavers tends to get his revenge on the daughter AND the ex-agent’s wife. It seems it will be time for him to use his particular set of skills once again.

See the trailer and featurettes here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, and some sensuality)

English Vinglish

(Eros International) Sridevi Kapoor, Mehdi Nebbou, Adil Hussein, Priya Anand. An Indian housewife living in New York, who suffers ridicule from her family due to her poor grasp of the English language decides to enroll in an English course in order to please her husband and make her family proud. Not only does she learn a new language but a good deal more about herself.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Frankenweenie

(Disney) Charlie Tahan, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder. When a young boy’s beloed dog dies, he is disconsolate. Fortunately, this is no ordinary boy – he concocts a plan to put together bits and pieces of dog to replace the one that is lost – and to his surprise, succeeds. Based on a short film Tim Burton did back in the day; like that film this is stop motion animation.

See the trailer, clips, an interview and a featurette here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Animated Feature

Rating: PG (for thematic elements, scary images and action)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

(Summit) Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Dylan McDermott, Ezra Miller. A trio of outcasts form an unshakeable bond as they try to navigate the treacherous waters of love, relationships, friendship and growing up. I never thought of high school as an epic struggle but I suppose it is/was – based on a bestselling novel, by the way.

See the trailer and a clip here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Coming of Age

Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic material, drug and alcohol use, sexual content including references and a fight – all involving teens)

Samsara

(Oscilloscope Laboratories) A kaleidoscope of images of things both natural and man-made in an effort to help the viewer connect the dots between the human spirit and nature. With neither narration or text graphics to describe what is being seen, the filmmakers want the viewer to interpret the images and sounds through their own filters, coming to their own conclusions.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: PG-13 (for some disturbing and sexual images)

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Quarantine

Jennifer Carpenter is just glad it's not Dexter who's stalking her.

(2008) Found Footage Horror (Screen Gems) Jennifer Carpenter, Jay Hernandez, Columbus Short, Greg Germann, Steve Harris, Dania Ramirez, Rade Sherbedgia, Jonathon Schaech. Directed by John Erick Dowdle

There is a certain horror of being trapped in an enclosed, locked space with flesh-eating lunatics. However, the possibility of becoming one yourself only heightens the terror.

Cub television reporter Angela Vidal (Carpenter) has a relatively soft assignment; to spend a shift with the night crew of a Los Angeles fire station. She flirts with the handsome paramedics Jake (Hernandez) and George (Schaech) and banters with her cameraman Scott (Harris). She goes with them on what appears to be a routine call; an elderly resident of an apartment complex has been injured and is acting erratically.

They go on the call only to find something extraordinary. The elderly resident is far from a helpless old lady; she attacks them with nails and teeth, seriously injuring one of the firefighters and killing a police officer. When they call for help, things get even weirder – the house is locked down by the CDC and anyone who tries to leave is shot, as in dead.

It turns out that there are more infected than just the old lady and soon the residents, including the landlord (Sherbedgia), a vet (White) and a badass (Short), are fighting for their lives and trying to find a way out – if there is one.

This is the remake of a Spanish film called [REC] and is similar to films like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield in that it is filmed with a single hand-held camera and purports to be “found footage,” raw footage of an actual event. The appeal of these to audiences is that they create a certain buzz and people are fascinated with the concept of footage of events that have been kept secret from them; the appeal to studios is that they’re incredibly cheap to produce and can be extremely profitable.

Dowdle, who did a similarly-themed film in The Poughkeepsie Journal, does a great job in making the tension high throughout the film, basically from the time they arrive at the apartment complex. The issue is that if you watch [REC] as I did you will see that the movie is virtually a shot by shot remake in most of the important aspects. Many of the best parts of Quarantine were lifted whole cloth from [REC]. I would have liked to have seen a little more creativity on that score.

Of course, it can be argued that this just shows the good taste of the filmmaker and I can’t argue that. I will also grant you that the changes that Dowdle did make were all improvements, without exception. The main problem with the film is that other than Schaech and Hernandez, the cast is pretty bland. Carpenter, who was excellent as the sister in “Dexter,” is miscast as the reporter. She doesn’t have the vanity or the look of a local television reporter; she is more tomboyish. The role requires her to become terrified to the point of panic and she’s never really convincing in that light. That may be a little bit of “Dexter” holdover; I will willingly cop to that.

Still, this is a nice example of a found footage horror film. It’s a little more slickly made than [REC] but to be honest, I liked the Spanish film better (the cast was far more convincing although the explanation in that film for the events bordered on the ridiculous) and would recommend that above this one; however it’s a given that it’s much more difficult to find so if all you can locate is this one, you won’t be disappointed.

WHY RENT THIS: Tension is nicely executed here. Horrific images are over-the-top and well done.   

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: A nearly shot-for-shot remake of [REC]. Although Schaech and Hernandez make fine firefighters, the rest of the cast is mostly forgettable.

FAMILY VALUES: Extreme violence and gore, along with a good deal of profanity. There’s also an extremely tense and terrifying atmosphere that may be too intense for the impressionable.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: There is no musical score in the movie, highly unusual for a Hollywood film.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $41.3M on a $12M production budget; the movie was a hit.

FINAL RATING: 5/10

TOMORROW: Treeless Mountain