This Week’s DVD Releases / The Pajiba Staff
DVD Releases | May 27, 2008 | Comments (51)
Another crappy week for DVD releases, with only three (decent films) to choose from:
Cassandra’s Dream: Of Woody’s Allen’s latest semi-annual offering, John had this to say: “Like Neil Young and Philip Roth in other fields, Allen seems admirably determined to remain prolific until the reaper knocks. He’s likely done making classics, but Cassandra’s Dream is his best in a decade.”
Grace is Gone: While one John Cusack anti-war film is hitting theaters, another, much better Cusack anti-war film is arriving in DVD stores. Of Grace, Dustin wrote: “Grace is Gone is a quiet, beautiful, moving piece of work, a simple film that doesn’t ask, plead, or cajole; it just puts it out there and lets you allow it come, to wash over you, to sink into its heartbreak. To say that it’s a film that elicits tears or that it’s a “tearjerker” seems almost dishonest; the tears aren’t jerked or drawn out, they just fall like warm drops of rain dribbling down a window, drops you can’t bring yourself to wipe away because — for a few brief seconds as the credits roll, and before the heavy-breathing guy in front of you knocks over his soda while pulling his fat ass out of his seat — it’s those tears that somehow connect you to the characters onscreen, the people whose gut-wrenching loss, by movie’s end, you feel almost as intensely as they do.”
Rambo: Ranylt expressed a ton of enthusiasm for Rambo, writing: “The latest Rambo is a bloody awesome entry into the gore-sploitation and war-sploitation sub-genres. It’s a meaty combination of jungle action, gore-kills and unintentional camp — there were moments, in fact, that reminded me of butcher-cinema standards like Cannibal Holocaust, with its third-world slaughter arena and mindless imperialism. It’s that irresponsible and that bloodthirsty a movie, with just the sort of ballsy, bad dialogue that salts the meal perfectly. I can’t help but admire Rambo’s hell-bent course to extremes, and despite the fact that my tolerance for severe exploitation violence has lowered over the years (the girl who used to write retrospectives for Salo, I Spit on Your Grave, and Last House on the Left can’t bring herself to see the new rout of torture porn), I was in this movie’s thrall from start to finish.”
Comments
Posted by: Sarina at May 27, 2008 1:40 PM
I don't believe in Woody Allen. I have the other two on my queue, though.