Join in! Listen to our Weekly Podcast Episodes

Click Here To View Our Podcast Channel

  • Joey’s DVD Picks of the Week (6/5/2012)

    Your weekly guide to choosing the best Blu-Ray and DVD titles

    June 5, 2012

    This week, a good half dozen titles of note are hitting stores on Blu-Ray and DVD, but oddly enough they’re all of a similar ilk and only one is any good to me. I wouldn’t call this is a terrible slate of titles, but they seem to mostly be catering to similar audiences and would have benefited from coming out separately. I have no control over that though, so I can only judge what they give me, and today I’m only looking at one flick that I gave a recommendation to. That film will be my PICK OF THE WEEK pretty much by default, but the other titles aren’t trash or anything. What film got my top honor though this week? Well, it’s a failure in most people’s eyes, but I looked beyond the budget and enjoyed what I saw. The movie in question? It’s:

    John Carter

    The massively bloated budget for this film marks it as an historic failure, but I maintain that this was an enjoyable science fiction adventure that works well enough as escapist entertainment (along with showing where everything from ‘Avatar’ to ‘Dune’ to ‘Star Wars’ got its inspiration from). There’s little to rave about, but I have a feeling that in a few years people will re-approach this flick and wonder why it received so little attention currently. Anyone who enjoyed it the first time around will easily do so again, and now that it’s available for home viewing, everyone else should give it a shot as well. I think a good chunk of you will be pleasantly surprised by it!


    -Taking the #2 spot on reputation alone is a film that I’ve yet to see but my friend and colleague here at the site Mike Ward is very high on. It’s the French drama Declaration of War, and you all should do as I’m doing and make some time to check it out and see why Mike’s a fan. Feel free to report your findings on the film when you do…

    -Also out this week, we have the disappointing drama Machine Gun Preacher, the mediocre suspense flick/Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds star vehicle Safe House, the overly jingoistic action film Act of Valor, and the adventure Journey 2: The Mysterious Island, which I have not seen. None of these are worth your time in my book, but if you see things differently, by all means give one or more a look and see what you end up thinking of them.

    -My Vintage pick easily could have been one of the Alien films this week (for obvious reasons), but instead I’m going to try to turn you all on to something a bit different. In honor of this week’s release of Lola Versus, I’m going with the prior film from Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister Jones. It’s the romantic dramedy Breaking Upwards, and it’s a surprisingly touching flick about a couple that decide to literally plot out their breakup step by step. Of course, things don’t go as planned, but they don’t go as you expect them to either. I was especially moved by Lister Jones’ acting and the script that she and director/co-star Wein came up with. No one saw this when it came out a few years back, but now you really should give it a shot. I highly recommend it and hope you give it a look!

    -What will you be watching on DVD/Blu-Ray this week? Discuss on the Forum!

    About Joey Magidson


    When he’s not obsessing over new Oscar predictions on a weekly basis, Joey is seeing between 200 and 300 movies a year. He views the best in order to properly analyze the awards race/season each year, but he also watches the worst for reasons he mostly sums up as "so you all don't have to". In his spare time, you can usually find him complaining about the Jets or the Mets. Still, he lives and dies by film. Joey's a voting member of the Internet Film Critics Association as well. Today the IFCA, tomorrow the world!

    Related Stories:

    3 Comments

    1. There are some gems coming to dvd in the following weeks, so keep at it with us…you won’t be disappointed!

        (Quote)  (Reply)

      share

       

    2. I guess I’m finally going to have to see John Carter…

        (Quote)  (Reply)

      share

       

      • In my review I called it as if the Star Wars prequels were directed by J.J. Abrams, so make of that what you will…

          (Quote)  (Reply)

        share

         


    Comments RSS

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


    8 + one =

    You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>



    © Copyright 2008-2012 AwardsCircuit.com - All rights reserved.


    Disclaimer: AwardsCircuit.com is a private, independently owned site which is intended only as entertainment. The views expressed on this website may or may not reflect those of its owner.