After a long week of wind and rain and the occasional freak hail and/or snow flurries, it’s time for the weekend, which means movies! Let’s take a look at this week’s DVD releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.
After a couple good weeks for new movies on DVD, the pickens are slim for the foreseeable future. The best film by far this week is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Werner Herzog’s pseudo-sequel to Abel Ferrera’s 1992 film, in which Nicolas Cage plays a deliciously bad cop. As always with Cage, he’s fun when he’s flat-out cray-cray, and Herzog gets a totally spazzotran performance out of him that counts as one of the best of his career. And yes, there are iguanas.
This week also brings the release of The Collector, a Saw-style torture flick from last summer that I only have vague memories of. There’s also The Weathered Underground, a choose-your-own-adventure-like interactive film experience you can play over and over again.
For documentaries, there’s Dirt! The Movie, which quite literally looks at the earth around us. I’m No Dummy explores the magical world of ventriloquism, which, yes, means there is some Jeff Dunham. Plunder: The Crime of Our Time focuses on the recent bank and stock market swindle, while Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love is a loving look at the Afropop musician.
On the indie tip, War Eagle, Arkansas is a feel-good drama about the inhabitants of the rural Ozark town. And then there was Beeswax, yet another mumblecore offering from director Andrew Bujalski. This time it’s about getting sued by your former business partner–being a young adult is FUN!
