The DVDs, Blu Rays, and TVDs of May 22, 2012

CERTIFIED COPY

***1/2 (out of ****)

Apparently director Abbas Kiarostami does not watch movies. Any movies. Ever. I watch a shitload of movies, and movies have nothing to do with my job. This guy directs movies, and doesn’t watch any movies at any time for any reason. Now, that being said, are you the kind of viewer that that fact makes uncomfortable, or intrigued? Certified Copy, which is finally out on physical disc, even though it’s been on Netflix for months, is not as daunting as it sounds if I were to tell you what it was about. It’s really not daunting at all. But I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. Don’t look it up. The premise will do nothing to convince you to watch this movie, unless there’s spoilers, which would ruin it for you. I know that might sound like a half-ass review (and let’s be honest, it’s closer to no-ass than half-ass), but it’s what you’re getting. If you really need to know more about it, check out the PopFilter Podcast Top Ten Movies of the year, where this made both me and Jason’s top tens, and the only reason it didn’t make Mike’s is because he didn’t watch it because there’s subtitles and he hates foreign people. The thing you most enjoy talking about is art. The thing that you probably will spend the most time talking about throughout your life are relationships. This movie tackles them both in an awesome way – maybe a way that could have only been done by someone who doesn’t watch movies.

THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY

*** (out of ****)

The Secret World of Arrietty is a film for children, or at least an idealized version of children that is probably as fictional as the Borrowers that star in the film. Arrietty is one of those Borrowers who, along with her mom and dad, lives under a house, which is easy to do when you’re an inch or so tall. She gets caught by a sick little boy who lives in the house, and they become friends (with seemingly fewer benefits than the two would like), before the stupid adults, the best badguys  in any kid’s movie, come in and try and bust up their fun. You can see why the films of Studio Ghibli are so important to Pixar, not with the knowledge of how to perfectly pace a story, but also with a very close attention to detail when it comes to world building. Everything in Arrietty’s world is built with shit from our world, so nails become stairs, needles become swords, and nothing is half-assed or forced into something it’s not. This is just one of the tools these guys use to quietly immerse you, and it will immediately remind you of Andy’s bedroom, or Nemo’s ocean floor: everything’s just like our world but not.

The problem, though, is part of what makes Arrietty so great, and it’s what we spent most of the time on the podcast talking about when we reviewed the movie. Arrietty has no pop-culture references and nobody gets kicked in the nuts. Along with all of the world building they do, the movie takes its sweet ass time to develop the main characters, and to show how dangerous the world they live is. It might take a little bit of patience for them to get through it, and they might not give a shit how rewarding it is when it’s done. It’s not their fault, and it’s not a reason for you to beat them. I know you have to pick your battles. But give a movie like this a shot every once in a while. If one of your three kids likes it, then you know which one is the smart one, and which are the two that you should shove.

 

 

ALSO RELEASED:

RED TAILS

THIS MEANS WAR

THE WOMAN IN BLACK

NEW TO BLU RAY

LETHAL WEAPON COLLECTION

**3/4 (out of ****)

 

Most long-running film franchises subscribe to the Law of Diminishing Returns, especially when there’s large gaps between some of the films. Each time out, it gets harder and harder to capture whatever that magic was that made that first movie so good. And the magic of the original Lethal Weapon is a particularly hard magic to capture, because it’s all magic. On the surface, it looked like every other big, dumb action movie from that era. It doesn’t do any one thing perfectly, but it does do all of the little things so well that it almost is a perfect movie. It’s a sharp screenplay (written by Iron Man 3 director and The Last Boy Scout writer Shane Black!) that features quick dialogue and a plot that rises above its elevator pitch, and it has two performances that became iconic, still copied and parodied to this day. It’s just enough to warrant a sequel, and Lethal Weapon 2 is a totally fine film. By the time Lethal Weapon 3 came out, the franchise was running on fumes, relying on Joe Pesci’s motormouthed snitch character Leo Getz to carry the film, and Lethal Weapon 4 was just a chance for a bunch of rich people to cash in and get richer. My God, did that film suck. Each movie took roughly the same step down from the previous one, which is expected, I guess, until you hold the fourth against the first and try to reconcile the fact that they’re both from the same series. The problem with this particular collection is that the first and second films are already on Blu Ray; this collection just introduces the unnecessary third and fourth. If you already own the first two, now you have to buy them again, but if you don’t own any of them, just skip this and go buy the first two. Unless, of course, you’re giant fans of Chris Rock and Jet Li standing around and doing nothing, something the producers of Lethal Weapon 4 decided to add to their movie to prove to everyone forever that it was made in 1998. If only they could have gotten Savage Garden to cameo.