Here are the DVD and Blu-Ray releases for Tuesday March 9th, 2010. Notable releases for this week are Old Dogs, Planet 51, Up in the Air and Precious, all of which I have not seen so I can’t make recommendations. However, I have seen Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day and while it doesn’t stand up to the original at all, it’s still entertaining. I don’t know if I can recommend it as a ‘buy’ for those of you that aren’t hardcore fans of the movie, but definitely check it out.
DVD Releases
Here are the DVD and Blu-Ray releases for today, March 2nd, 2010. Looks like the big release of the day is 2012, which was pretty terrible so I wouldn’t recommend picking it up. Other smaller releases include the original Clash of the Titans and Bitch Slap.
DVD Releases
I just got back from seeing the remake of The Crazies and as I was with the original, I’m a little disappointed. I watched the original George Romero version of the film a few months ago and found that it doesn’t really hold up to time. Romero went a different route with The Crazies than he did with Night of The Living Dead and while it may have worked at the time, I don’t feel that it’s as good today. I know I’ll probably get some flack for that since I know there are a lot of fans of the original out there, but I found myself pretty bored after awhile and to be honest, I felt the same way with the remake.
The basic story is that a town becomes infected by some sort of virus that is turning the people in the town, crazy. They begin to lose all self control and develop “zombie-like” symptoms and attributes, but are far from zombies. They still seem to have a sense of what’s going on, but can’t seem to control it… they just go crazy. In the midst of all this, the government/military steps in to quarantine to the town to keep the virus from spreading. The sheriff and his wife, amongst a few others, manage to escape the military and make their way towards the edge of town… and that’s the gist of it.
While the original version followed the sheriff and his wife, the deputy and another woman, it also dealt a lot with the military response and what was going on with the commanders of the operation, etc. This new version seems to drop all aspects of that and focuses on the escapees alone. There’s still a large military presence as the virus begins to attack the towns people, but we don’t get any incite into what is going on with the chain of command within the military. So that was one aspect that I didn’t like about the film, the other thing was that the trailers are very misleading. I kind of knew what to expect based on seeing the original, but the trailers that I’ve been seeing on TV make this movie out to be something like 28 Days Later, with fast moving infected/zombie-like people ravaging people and ripping them to shreds, but that’s not what you get at all. There are a lot of slow moments and no real big payoff at the end so I would definitely be a little cautious if you’re expecting some sort of intense fast moving zombie-like action, cause you’re not going to get it.
I didn’t hate the film, but I can’t say that I really enjoyed it. I was actually quite bored at times and couldn’t wait for it to be over, but my buddy seemed to enjoy it for the most part. So I guess just know what you’re going into and take it for what it’s worth. Personally, I would recommend waiting and giving this one a rent if you need to see it.
A new trailer for the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street was just released and I must say that as much as I dislike remakes/re-imaginings, I’m looking forward to this one. I think Jackie Earle Haley is going to make an excellent Freddy Krueger and I’m also happy that it seems like they’ve made Freddy more of a crazy killer like the original as opposed to the witty comedian that he became towards the end of the series. Not that I don’t enjoy the “Nightmare” movies, I just felt like Freddy became too comical towards the end of the original series of movies.
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For some reason Nazi Zombies seem to be all the rage these days. Whether it’s video games like Call of Duty: World at War or movies like Dead Snow, Nazi Zombies are definitely hot right now, and for good reason. Who wouldn’t want to see two of the most evil, most terrifying things brought together in movie form. I first made mention of this movie late last year when I made my post about 2009 Halloween Movie Recommendations and even though I hadn’t seen it yet I immediately knew I had to. And now after finally being released on Blu-Ray and DVD this week, I got my chance and was definitely not disappointed.
Sure the plot of the movie is very cliche, group of kids go out into the remote wilderness to a friends cabin to spend the weekend and before they can even get settled things go terribly wrong. There are Nazi Zombies buried in the snow all over the mountain and they want their treasure back… It’s a little confusing as to why they didn’t just rise up and go get it while the mountain was empty considering it was just sitting in a box under a floorboard in the cabin. It wasn’t even like it was hidden, the kids were using the open floor as a cooler for their beer and food. So of course the kids find the box and open it which alerts the Nazi Zombies to it’s whereabouts and thus begins our gore filled intestine-fest. Yeah, for some reason the filmmakers seem to be obsessed with intestines, which is never a bad thing and they find some ridiculous ways to incorporate them into the flick.
Outside of the normal blood and guts that I was expecting from a zombie movie there were some funny parts as well. Nothing laugh out loud funny, as I don’t think that’s what the filmmakers were going for, but more of a “we know this is a ridiculous concept so we’re not going to take ourselves too seriously” kind of way. The movie knows what it is and doesn’t try to be something else. There’s no big revelation at the end and no real message, it’s just an hour and a half of good old horror movie fun. It reminds me a lot of Evil Dead and it’s pretty obvious that the filmmakers are big fans of that movie, they pay homage to it more than once. And I can’t recall a time, other than my first viewing of Evil Dead, that I had so much fun watching a horror movie. The only slight issue I had was that it took a while for us to finally see the Nazi Zombies, but it wasn’t a huge deal as I actually liked the interaction between the kids at the cabin and there are some other things going on to build the suspense.
Sure the movie had it’s over-the-top ridiculous moments that maybe could have been done a little differently, but overall I thought the movie was highly entertaining and I may actually watch it again before sending it back to netflix which is something I’ve never done. So if you’re looking for a good all around popcorn flick horror movie, that will keep you entertained for an hour and a half, then check out Dead Snow.
