DVD Spotlight

By Joe Galm

Stop-Loss

It is hard to deny the nationwide presence of Iraq war protesters and their message of “No blood for oil!” Yet box office numbers indicate that filmgoers have come up with their own slogan: “No money for Iraq movies!”

Stop-Loss marks director Kimberly Peirce’s follow-up picture to the fairly acclaimed Boys Don’t Cry and based on its mediocre $10.9 million domestic gross it can be added to the growing list of recent anti-war films that were box office duds. With names such as Ryan Phillipe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached, one might assume that this gritty look into post-war trauma could succeed, especially after the recent increase of highly-vocalized young people within the political climate. However, this was far from the case and the divisiveness of the issues presented in this film failed to motivate people into theaters. They didn’t miss much.

As a whole, the film is shamefully bad and it's only slightly redeemed by its performances. In Stop-Loss, we are presented with the story of soldiers returning home to Texas and the new social consequences they face due to what they endured overseas. This is a very real and pertinent contemporary issue which is only made worse when soldiers are sent back to battle after their discharge. Yet while such unscrupulous treatment of war veterans is an issue worth tackling, Stop-Loss concerns itself far too much with “the chase” rather than aptly exploring the weight of such military actions.

The narrative and emotional arcs are totally off and it makes the progression of the main characters almost laughable, which is a travesty considering the subject matter. The material the film covers in terms of the soldiers’ newfound war at home is layered on heavily over a time period that spans mere days; a longer time line would have felt much more appropriate and believable. The ending is also overtly ambiguous and it feels almost as if it was slapped on to balance the heavy-handed leftist views that came before it.

Apparently there were no less than 65 drafts of the script. For my money, they picked the wrong one entirely and our troops deserve better.

Distributor: Paramount
Cast: Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rob Brown, Timothy Olyphant and Abbie Cornish
Director: Kimberly Peirce
Screenwriters: Kimberly Peirce & Mark Richard
Producer: Gregory Goodman, Kimberly Peirce, Mark Roybal and Scott Rudin
Genre: War Drama
Rating: R for graphic violence and pervasive language
Running time: 113 min.

Batman: Gotham Knight

This release makes sense. Despite not making its way to theaters, Gotham Knight could not have picked a better time to enter the picture. Christopher Nolan has more than rebooted the Batman series and its popularity with Batman Begins and the momentously anticipated The Dark Knight. Fans of the series will be relieved that Gotham Knight is not an exploitative flick designed for a quick buck. It's the real deal.

After pooling international talent in the fields of animation and writing, this collaborations plays out via six individual shorts, independent of each other, which build up the Batman mythology. There are some consistencies between a few of the stories but as a whole each piece of this micro-anthology serves to show the public’s perception of the Caped Crusader in juxtaposition to what he truly is. Problems do arise though as the length of each short leaves little room for development and surprises; you know Batman will have things tidied up by the end. However, few chapters such as “Field Test” and “Working Through Pain” attempt to add insight to who the man behind the mask truly is and they are commendable even if they represent only modest attempts.

Distributor: Warner Bros.
Cast: Kevin Conroy, Gary Dourden, David McCallum
Directors: Yasuhiro Aoki, Futoshi Higashide, Toshiyuki Kubooka, Hiroshi Morioka, Shoujrou Nisihimi
Screenwriters: Brian Azzarello, Alan Burnett, Jordan Goldberg, David S. Goyer, Josh Olson, Greg Rucka
Producers: Toshi Hiruma, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, Masao Maruyama, Eiko Tanaka
Genre: Animation/Animated
Rating: PG-13 for stylized violence, including some bloody images.
Running time: 77 min.

The Ruins

Formulaic, lazy, and empty, The Ruins somehow manages to overstay its welcome despite its modest 93 minute running time while to cram every horror genre cliché into its hollowed format. While watching the film, one can clearly see an awkward mess of recycled scares, plot movements, and deaths. If anything, this particular cut, the unrated one, does deliver in the sense of visual gore but the film itself hardly holds a candle to some of its recent “torture porn” counterparts. It’s much closer to being plain old torturous, though horror fans may find solace in something so familiar if they discover the film on DVD.

Distributor: Paramount
Cast: Jena Malone, Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsay, Shawn Ashmore and Joe Anderson
Director: Carter Smith
Screenwriter: Scott B. Smith
Producers: Chris Bender, Stuart Cornfield and Ben Stiller
Genre: Horror
Rating: Unrated; Theatrical Version: R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity
Running time: 93 min.