Home Theater: What to watch from your bunker.

It's your bi-weekly blend of tasty new releases on DVD/Blu-Ray and the ever shifting entrees from streaming services. I'm totally depressed about the state of the world today as we head to another round of catastrophic primaries tomorrow but let's jump right in.

NEWISH ON DVD/BLURAY

• Alvin & Chipmunks 4 - a sure sign of the apocalypse
• The Big Short - about the financial apocalypse
• Brooklyn - wonderful escape from awfulness of everything
• Carol - masterpiece. hope it survives the fires
• Grease: Live! -nobody will be doing the handjive in hell
• In the Heart of the Sea - we are all Chris Hemsworth, deluding ourselves
• Macbeth -that damn spot will never come out, lady!
• The Peanuts Movie - tfw you're Charlie Brown
• Sisters - the sinkhole is a metaphor
• Victor Frankenstein - again?
• Game of Thrones S5 - everyone dies
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt S1 - that bunker is looking smart right about now.

NEW TO STREAMING
• Netflix: Zac Efron in Charlie St Cloud, Tom Hanks in Larry Crowne and Daredevil S2 all on March 18th
• Amazon Prime: The Internet's Boyfriend and also Garrett Hedlund in Mojave (March 22nd) and the visceral gripping '71 (March 27th) about The Troubles starring Jack O'Connell. You should see that. 

LAST CHANCE TO STREAM
You know how we do. We've freeze framed each movie somewhere random after the jump...

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Link Wars Episode IV: A New Blog

MNPP on Keep the Lights On in 250 words or less. Good insights here - love the ending - though JA likes the film more than I do.
Deadline Upcoming 3D conversions of all Star Wars movies cancelled. Thank god. Every day I pray to the movie gods to take the plague of 3D and its conversions away from us!
Two Dollar Cinema heads to The Last Stand on account of a childhood spent with Arnold Schwarzenegger movies
The Film Doctor 10 questions about Silver Linings Playbook

 

Stale Popcorn takes in Xavier Dolan's Lawrence Anyways. I love Dolan but I'm scared of this one - three hour dramas are hard to pull off. 
Vulture interviews Steven Soderbergh who apparently really is retiring now.
Movie|Line is the upcoming Brad Bird/George Clooney feature Tomorrowland (previously title 1952) about early space travel?
In Contention will Argo be a Driving Miss Daisy or an Apollo 13? 
The Carpetbagger Mistakes were made on the marketing of Django and The Master 

And did you see Matt Damon talking to Nicole Kidman a few nights back on Jimmy Kimmel Live Jimmy Kimmel Sucks?

Hilarious. Nicole Kidman can steal my utensils any time she'd like. 

Lump of Coal, Anyone? Cinematic Shame (Pt 1)

YEAR IN REVIEW

I plan to get all joyously positive from Christmas Eve through January 9th as I share my take on the Best of the Film Year That Was. But I make no promise about my mood come January 10th...  That's the fateful morning when 6,000 Academy voters play puppet master and yank my fragile psyche about with abandon. But until then... And before the Year End Best of hits, we purge.

MOST "OVERRATED" ANYTHING

I know that people quibble with this word and wish it dead and buried. But that's only because they take it far too seriously. It's a silly adjective but silly is fun. One should always take things for what they're worth. No matter who is using the word "overrated" it only ever means:

Other people are under the mistaken impression that this thing I think is merely okay is really great! They are quite wrong."

Unsatisfying performances, miscasting, bad moves in good films and more after the jump...

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"Silver Linings" & "Moonrise" Lead Spirit Nominations

Continuing with the trend of star-laden "indies" of reasonable means dominating the once far more independent Spirit Awards, expectant future Best Picture nominee Silver Linings Playbook and Wes Anderson's adorable Oscar longshot Moonrise Kingdom led the pack of nominees with five citations each. In the shoe-stringier side of the equation films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Middle of Nowhere, and Keep the Lights On also made strong showings. Since three mainstream / big studio efforts are expected to dominate the Oscars (that's Les Miz, Argo, & Lincoln if you've been sleeping for a month) this year, no film need worry about the Spirit curse ...wherein you score big here the day before the Oscars only to collapse at the big Hollywood event that you had hopes of also ruling.

Can "Beasts" win the Spirit Award?

Full list of nominees and commentary on each category after the jump

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12 Word Reviews: Hope Springs, Timothy Green, Premium Rush

 When you get too far behind on film reviewing, you have to condense. It's brief capsule time. Let's catch up on movies we left behind as summer waned. Did you see any of them?

HOPE SPRINGS
A senior citizen couple seeks marital counselling.
12 WR: Fine performances take intimacy seriously. Near gem but pacing problems, atrocious music.  B
Oscar: Streep always has a shot in Best Actress and she's the film's best hope (sorry) beyond a screenplay longshot but I'm doubtful that this quiet surprisingly nuanced take on marriage and intimacy will survive the louder grabbier Oscar films. Plus when Oscar ignores Meryl, which is admittedly not often, it's almost always when she's playing contemporary and relatively ordinary women (here's proof.)

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON
The story of a troubled 10 year gay relationship beset by sex and drug addictions
12 WR: Intermittently searing. Bruisingly repetitive. Cathartic for filmmaker (undoubtedly) but unshaped; needs dramaturg. C+
Oscar?: Not that kind of movie. 

THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN
A childless couple (Jennifer Garner & Joel Edgerton) inadvertently create the perfect child over a teary conversation. A naked boy with leaves on his legs emerges from their garden. Life lessons ensue.
12 WR: Adoption plea framing device = unmitigated disaster. Played with realism it's entirely oogie. D-
Oscar?: As likely as children crawling out of the earth that aren't zombies. 

COSMOPOLIS
A money man is chauffered around Manhattan in a limo (read: coffin) seeking a haircut as his fortunes vanish and the world falls into chaos.
12 WR: Forgets to adapt heady prose but actress cameos pop. Pattinson finally vampiric! B
Oscar?: The Academy is deathly allergic to Cronenberg but damn that Howard Shore score is good. 

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL...
Roommates (Ari Graynor and Lauren Miller) run a phone sex business which complicates their friendship
12 WR: Weirdly chaste, claustrophobic, over/under art-directed (?!?) but actors obviously enjoying themselves! C+
Oscar?: lolz 

PREMIUM RUSH
A bike messenger (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) delivering a package worth a lot of money is hunted by a dirty cop (Michael Shannon) down the crowded streets of Manhattan.
12 WR: Only works as found object: Lost 80s Film. Disposable (even to itself!) D
Oscar?: If they had a stuntman category...