KALIFORNIA (Blu-ray)

Written by Senora Bicho

The 1993 thriller directed by Dominic Sena touts Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis as the stars; however, David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes do all of the shining.

Brian (Duchovny) is a journalist who obtains an advance to write a book about serial killers. His girlfriend, Carrie (Forbes), is an avant-garde photographer frustrated with rejections and dreams of moving to California. Brian finds a solution that will satisfy them both: a cross-country drive visiting historic murder sites. To save on gas money they advertise for road companions. Early Grayce (Pitt) is a violent, unemployed parolee looking to start a new life with his childlike girlfriend Adele (Lewis), and the road trip out west seems to be the answer he is looking for.

Carrie has apprehensions about the couple from the start, but Brian convinces her that there is nothing to worry about. The stark contrast between the couples is evident from their first meal together, and Carrie is concerned they won't pay their fair share. Brian is fascinated by Early and thinks she is being too judgmental. When it comes time for Early to pay for gas, he kills a man with ease in the service-station restroom. Things continue to intensify until it all comes to head with Brian and Carrie fearful that they will survive the journey.

Pitt is convincing as the psychopathic killer who creates the majority of the tension just watching him unravel while the trip progresses. Lewis is well cast as the doe-eyed girl that accepts and loves Early despite the abuse he inflicts on her. However, she starts to get annoying as the film progresses and is a bit one dimensional. We get a taste of the horrific background that put the character in the situation she is, although more facets and depth could have been added to the role in the hands of a different actress. I have been a fan of Forbes from her days on the television series Homicide and she is excellent as the struggling artist desperate to separate from evil when she spots it in Early. Duchovny also delivers a strong, believable performance with his naivety to what is right in front of him. In addition to the strong acting, the research of the famous serial killers creates a terrifying foundation that builds as the current killings reach their climax.

The new release includes a Blu-Ray disc featuring an unrated version of the film and a DVD flipper disc with the unrated version and the theatrical version. There are no additional bonus features. The Blu-ray video is presented with a 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the audio is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Solid, warm colors are on display, and other than occasional softness issues the picture is satisfying to watch. The dialogue is clear and well balanced in the mix. Unfortunately, the surrounds don't offer much in the way of immersive ambiance.

Although a tad lacking in high definition, Kalifornia doesn't suffer because the picture and audio aren't the focal points; it is a successful psychological thriller due to character building and strong acting while slowly building the tension. If that type of film appeals to you, it is worth watching.

Article first published as Blu-ray Review: Kalifornia on Blogcritics.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Written by Hombre Divertido

Quentin Tarantino once again displays his penchant for writing dialog. Unfortunately he also displays his inability to make edits.

In the generally slow-paced 153 minutes of Inglourious Basterds we are introduced, all too briefly, to Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who has put together a crack squad of Jewish American soldiers known as “the Basterds,” whose mission it is to terrorize the Third Reich in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. The Basterds are extremely efficient at what they do, though we only experience their skills in a few gore-filled scenes. Pitt’s character yields appreciative laughs in virtually every scene he is in, but we get little insight into the characteristics and personalities of the Basterds.

Instead of focusing on the truly intriguing Basterds, the film tends to bog down in the story of Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a young Jewish girl who escapes the capture of Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and ends up running a theatre in France. Due to the affections of German war hero Fredrick Zoller for Dreyfus, said theatre is scheduled for the screening of a film about Zoller attended by every major Nazi officer. Dreyfus plans her revenge for the death of her family at the hands of the Nazis, while the Basterds also plan an assault on the theatre.

For the most part Tarantino’s dialog is entertaining, but the subtitles in many scenes slow down conversations already losing steam. The efforts to pull stories together as done in past outings seems extremely forced here, and there is simply too much focus on the story taking place at the theatre, which only leaves the audience longing for Raine and his Basterds.

Though Pitt’s character is entertaining, the best performance in the film is that of Christof Waltz as Landa, the German security officer who manages to create tension and comedy from one scene to the next as his character runs the gambit of levels. Performances by such comedic talents as Mike Myers and B. J. Novak tend to be wasted due to lack of use.

The project does manage to look and sound great as Tarantino creates a film that displays an authentic sense of the era, while adding music that energizes.

Recommendation: The unnecessary gore will turn many off as will the extremely long, subtitled, dialog-driven scenes. A simple action film focused on the Basterds a la The Dirty Dozen would have made for better summer fare.

12 MONKEYS (Blu-ray)

Written by Pirata Hermosa

It’s the year 2035 and humanity has been reduced to living underground because of a virus that ravaged the planet and killed off most of the world’s population. The future is bleak and the inhabitants of the underworld are looking for a way to return to the surface. The only way to battle the disease is for them to send “Volunteers” out into the world and into the past to collect specimens.

James Cole (Bruce Willis) is the latest prison inmate to get volunteered into the program. He does such a good job, that he is chosen to go after the source of the virus. The scientists aren’t sure what the source is, but they do know that it first appears in Philadelphia and that a group called the Army of the Twelve Monkeys may be involved somehow.

On his first mission into the past, James is sent to the wrong time. It seems that time travel isn’t an exact science. Instead of 1996, James finds himself in 1990 disoriented and wearing nothing but see-through plastic. He is mistakenly picked up by the police and is taken to a mental institute.

While in the hospital, James meets Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe), who is the psychiatrist assigned to his case. He also befriends Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), a total psychopath that actually belongs in the loony bin.

After a failed escape attempt, James is returned to 2035 where he has to explain why his mission failed. Giving him another chance, the scientists try to send him to the year 1996. Once again they fail to deliver him to the correct time and he ends up in the middle of World War I.

Eventually, they get him to the right time and place and James is surprised to find that his crazy friend Jeffrey has a connection with the Army of the 12 Monkeys. His father is the director of a biological laboratory.

In order to find out the truth, James kidnaps Kathryn to help him on his journey. At first she is reluctant, but as things begin to unravel and James’ stories start coming true she slowly becomes a believer. While Kathryn starts to believe, James becomes more and more confused. The stress of the constant time traveling mixed with the strange dreams from his past and his desire to live a normal life causes him to think that he really is crazy.

I won’t give away the ending, because there are a few plot twists, but it’s really difficult to review a film that was originally released 14 years ago. In 1995 the film was new and fresh and had a gritty appeal to it. In 2009 it’s a film with a very familiar storyline and outdated special effects. It’s really difficult to make a film stand the test of time because in this era whenever there’s a good movie idea, everyone tries to capitalize on it and ends up beating it into the ground. And the theory of time travel has been worked to death in the last few years.

Even so, it’s a film worth watching if you haven’t seen it before. It was directed by Terry Gilliam, who always gives a unique and interesting perspective to all of his films, and both Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt give excellent performances.

The film is presented in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen format with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Normally, while watching a film I don't really even notice the quality. I just take it for granted because there's no real comparison, but this time I threw in my Collector's Edition DVD and compared the two. I was actually surprised at the difference. The Blu-Ray is a much crisper version and everything on the screen seems to really pop out at you. The same can be said for the Blu-Ray audio which uses a DTS-HD Master Audio 5. The sounds are much richer and deeper than the regular DVD.

There are three special features on the Blu-Ray disc:

Commentary with Director Terry Gilliam and Producer Charles Rowen

The Hamster Factor & Other Tales of 12 Monkeys- a 90-minute documentary on the making of the film. It’s actually quite interesting as it takes you behind the scenes and deals with some of the issues such as budget matters, getting funding for a film, set creation, amd Gilliam’s dislike for the Hollywood process. It’s not just your typical actors just goofing around behind the camera.

12 Monkeys Archives- Consists of concept art and drawings for the film.

All of these features are the same as what has already been released on DVD. The latter two are done in 480 i/p Standard Definition and are more the quality of something you would get off television and not from a feature film. I already had the Special Edition on DVD and it’s exactly the same, so if you already own the DVD I don’t think it would be necessary to purchase the Blu-Ray as well.

BABEL (Two-Disc Special Collector's Edition)

Written by El Conquistadorko

One of the best movies to hit screens in the past several years, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 2006 film weaves together three stories—a pair of Moroccan brothers who fatefully make contact with an American tourist and later become hunted as terrorists, a deaf Japanese girl whose distant father is surprisingly tied to the incident, and the tourists' two kids who are brought to Tijuana by their maid and run into problems at the border. The movie is the third installment of Mexican director Inarritu's so-called “death trilogy,” following on the heels of the well-crafted Amores Perros and slightly less-than-satisfying 21 Grams.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that the gun you see in Act One does get fired, but that the tragic results are not as predictable as you'd think. The movie is a beautiful work of cinematography and masterful storytelling, and although it relies on the same technique of interwoven plot lines that marked Inarritu's first two films, it doesn't use the same anti-chronological device that Inarritu used so well in his debut feature Amores Perros (that whole movie is wrapped around a car crash) but which proved so irksome in 21 Grams. Instead, the movie follows a single trajectory as the camera shifts from one character's perspective to another, following the arc of a single bullet and the investigation that follows from its tragic destruction.

Babel features superb acting performances from Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, Boubker Ait El Caid and Said Tarchini (two non-actors who play the Moroccan brothers), and especially Rinko Kikuchi, who gives a convincing and heartbreaking turn as Chieko Wataya, the deaf, sexually frustrated Japanese teenager. It also contains one of the most intensely surreal sequences put on screen in recent memory: a scene where Cheiko and her deaf friends drop acid and stumble grinning, arms interlocked, through Tokyo until they wind up in a public fountain, soaking wet.

The new DVD of the film contains two discs, the second of which includes a feature-length bonus feature—a making-of documentary called “Under Construction.” The documentary kicks off with two American school kids asking Inarritu why he called his movie Babel, at which point he tells them the Biblical story of how God punished mankind for its architectural hubris by forcing them to speak different languages, a more powerful way to divide people than religion, politics or race.

The film traces the movie's production from Morocco to Japan, Mexico and the United States, and is mercifully devoid of the typical mind-numbing celebrity interviews that mar most DVD bonus featurettes, which are about as entertaining as your average daytime TV commercial, although it does include some funny footage of Gael Garcia Bernal clowning around with an American accent, pretending to be a border guard. Instead, the documentary shows Inarritu at work with his actors, most of whom aren't: like the eight teams of deaf-mute Japanese girl volleyball teams he assembled for one scene or the several hundred Mexican actors he used in Tecate to enact a wedding reception scene.

“Under Construction” stands well as its own movie, much in the same fashion as making-of documentaries like Hearts of Darkness about the filming of Apocalypse Now and Les Blank's 1982 film Burden of Dreams, about the making of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

Even if you already have the original DVD release of Babel, you might want to consider selling it. The new special edition is worth buying for Disc Two alone.