Take your pick of genre movies this week as the art house thriller Drive, sci-fi suspense sagas The Thing and In Time all debut along with one of 2011’s biggest misfires and a sample disc that demonstrates just how great Star Trek: The Next Generation is going to look on Blu-ray.

 

 

You can take your pick of genre movies this week.  The critics found the Ryan Gosling-starring Drive (Sony, “R,” $26.99, BD $30.99), a slick, art house neo-noir crime film from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, which was good enough to earn a stellar 93% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.  Strong performances, especially from Gosling who plays a Hollywood stunt driver by day who moonlights as a wheelman for criminal gangs, will reward audiences who like challenging movies, but this is an "art house" thriller, which means that some will find it both boring in the elaborate setting up its character-rich narrative and gratuitously violent (there’s little chance of this film being charged with glamorizing violence—the movie’s violent scenes are disturbing and they are meant to be that way).

 

The science fiction thriller In Time (Fox, “PG-13,” $29.98, BD $39.99), which was beautifully shot by Roger Deakins, has a lot going for it, but tends to pound its message home with a sledgehammer (something that is quite common in the genre, think Soylent Green or Planet of the Apes). Audiences tended to like In Time, which earned nearly $144 million worldwide, much more than the critics, who gave the film just a 37% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

 

The 2011 version of The Thing (Universal, “R,” $29.98, BD $34.98) may be the least of the three big screen adaptations of John W. Campbell’s classic story “Who Goes There?,” but it’s still worth a viewing for anyone who has enjoyed the 1951 Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby film, or John Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing, which hews more closely to the Campbell story than the earlier version.  Actually the 2111 version of The Thing is far more “prequel” than remake. If it doesn’t stand up in a direct comparison with John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film, since it’s not a remake, it really doesn’t matter—it provides another chapter in a saga that most horror and science fiction fans love and treasure.

 

The spy thriller The Double (Image Entertainment, “PG-13,” $27.97, BD $29.97) had a pitiful theatrical release where it earned a mere $137,921. Still this saga, which stars Richard Gere and Topher Grace, has some very interesting twists in its plot, and the film might be worth a rent for those who like espionage thrillers.

 

The DVD prospects for Dream House (Universal, “PG-13,” $28.98, BD $34.98), a film that director Jim Sheridan has disowned and stars Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz have refused to promote, are far more dismal.  Dream House is really more of a psychological thriller than a horror movie, but what ever the genre, its miserable 7% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes and its troubled production history mark this as one to avoid for all but completists.

 

Comedy is the hardest of all the film genres, a point that is brought home again by The Big Year (Fox, “PG,” $29.98, BD $39.99), a soufflé-light comedy drama about rival birders starring the talented trio of Owen Wilson, Steve Martin, and Jack Black.  Some will see this film as slight, bland, and boring, while others will find it delightfully low key, reality-based, and thankfully devoid of over-the-top comedic gestures.

 

 

There are not a lot of releases this week, but one of them is definitely a landmark. Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Next Level (Paramount, 182 min., $21.99) contains three episodes of the second Star Trek series and demonstrates exactly how great the show will look when the complete first season appears on Blu-ray later this year.  Since the Star Trek: The Next Generation series was originally edited on video tape, upgrading to hi-def was no simple process.  Paramount had to go back to the original film, create the hi-def material, and then re-edit to conform to the broadcast episodes.  

This sampler disc includes the pilot plus episodes from the third and fifth seasons of the series.  The question is should fans spring for this sampler?  Well it sort of depends on their patience since the entire series will be available on Blu-ray in a matter of months, but this disc should be fairly heavily discounted so it probably won’t be all that expensive to get a gorgeous preview of what is definitely a major upgrade.  Also, there is a benefit to seeing episodes from 3 different seasons back-to-back.  Viewers will notice how bare the bridge set looked in the pilot episode, and they will also become increasinly aware of how the series, which started out on the shaky side, found its niche in subsequent seasons and ultimately delivered one of the most satisfying of all numerous Star Trek viewing experiences.

 

Also out this week is Pac Man: The Complete First Season (Warner Bros., 312 min., $24.95), which collects the first season of the 1982-1983 Hanna-Barbera animated series that attempted to take advantage of one of the first video game crazes. Unfortunately this disc, which includes 13 episodes, is a DVD-R instead of the more stable and permanent regular DVD format.

 

The other American releases include a collection of TV movies from that favorite of the geriatric set, Diagnosis Murder: Television Movie Collection (Visual Entertainment, 460 min., $29.98), and Leave It to Beaver: Twenty Timeless Classics (Shout Factory, 480 min., $12.99), a very reasonably-priced collection of great episodes from one of the best of the many 1950s sitcoms.

 

The top UK releases are new hi-def transfers of Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 1 (Acorn Media, 519 min., $39.99, BD $49.99) and Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 2 (Acorn Media, 523 min., $39.99, BD $49.99).  By all means get the Blu-ray version since these definitive versions of the adventures of Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth have never looked better than in these new hi-def transfers, which really show off the series’ superb production values. Another bonus is the fact that the episodes are now arranged in the same order in which they were broadcast in the U.K, and subtitles are available on both releases.  Fans of the traditional British murder mystery can’t do much better than these two hi-def collections!

 

Also of great interest to fans of Masterpiece Theater is Poldark: The Complete Collection (Acorn Media, 1,500 min. $79.98), which contains the complete Poldark saga, one of the original classic TV mini-series, which aired in the U.K. during 1975 and 1977, and was based on the novels of Winston Graham.  While the production values of this saga are not quite up to contemporary standards, the narrative, a romantic saga about an English officer who loses his fiancé (while he is fighting against the Americans in the Revolutionary war), makes for absolutely first-rate romantic TV adventure.

 

 

Yamada’s First Time (Funimation, “17+,” 300 min., $59.98, $64.98) is one of those salacious-sounding sagas that turns out to be a lot tamer than its premise (about a high school girl who wants to “devirginize” 100 of her male classmates) would suggest.  Turns out she has to start somewhere, which happens to be with the geekiest boy in her class, and she soon finds that her plans are complicated by her growing feelings for her first “victim.”

 

Another of this week’s releases with an “adult” romantic theme is EF: A Tale of Memories (Sentai Filmworks, “17+,” 300 min. $59.98, BD $69.98), a 12-episode anime series that blends romance and mystery.  Produced by Shaft in 2007, this series is based on the adult visual novel series created in Japan by Minori.

 

Also out this week, and quite possibly the bestseller among new releases, is One Piece Collection 4 Uncut (Funimation, “14+,” 600 min., $34.98), which includes episodes 79 to 103 of the long-running series, which is the most popular anime series of the past decade in Japan.  These episodes have been released before (in two separate, smaller collections), but the price is definitely right for this collection of the rollicking pirate saga that remains Japan’s #1 manga/anime property.

--Tom Flinn

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.