Buy Me, Rent Me, Forget Me: 'Haywire' Breaks Bones, 'Joyful Noise' Surprises, and a Ton of Triple Feature Blu-rays Drop

Buy Me, Rent Me, Forget Me: 'Haywire' Breaks Bones, 'Joyful Noise' Surprises, and a Ton of Triple Feature Blu-rays Drop

High-Profile New Releases

Haywire (Lionsgate)
Release Date: Jan 20, 2012
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Gina Carano, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender,Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton. Full cast + crew

Verdict: Rent Me
Available On: Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD
Special Features: Gina Carano in Training (16 minutes), The Men of Haywire (5 minutes)
Additional Thoughts: Haywire is an interesting experiment in action filmmaking, one that combines big stars and globe-trotting locations with a lowkey approach to the violence. The result makes for some thrilling scenes, and really showcases star Gina Carano as an actress with a very, very promising future in the genre, but as much as its style is a breath of fresh air, its story isn't. While hardly terrible by any stretch, it's a fairly generic 'assassin targeted by their ow n' story that's, on paper, no different than any number of similar films. It's certainly worth renting, but unless you're a huge Carano fan (and no one would fault you if you were), it's not worth owning outright.

 

Joyful Noise (Warner Bros.)
Release Date: Jan 13, 2012
Director: Todd Graff
Cast: Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton, Keke Palmer, Dexter Darden, Courtney B. Vance. Full cast + crew

Verdict: Rent Me
Available On: Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD
Special Features: Spotlight on Dolly Partons "From Here to the Moon," Inspiration of Joyful Noise, Make Some Noise, Leading Ladies, Extended Songs
Additional Thoughts: I'll confess my prejudice right up front: I fully expected Joyful Noise to be a painful, overly preach film about religion and family values in an age that doesn't care about either. And while both of those elements feature heavily, it's not the dry, Sunday School lesson you might think it to be. There are moments of genuine humor, and when it's not genuinely funny, its cultural curiosities do make it oddly entertaining. It is way too long for its own good (just shy of two hours), but if you thought it looked up your alley, it certainly is, and if you were dubious, well, you might be surprised at how unexpectedly weird Joyful Noise is.

 

New Year's Eve (Warner Bros.)
Release Date: Dec 09, 2011
Director: Garry Marshall
Cast: Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Jon Bon Jovi, Abigail Breslin,Robert De Niro. Full cast + crew

Verdict: Forget Me
Available On: Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD
Special Features: Commentary, Magic of Times Square (6 minutes), Secrets of the Stars (6minutes), Jon Bon Jobi & Lea Michelle Rock New York (5 min), Gag Reel (11 min)
Additional Thoughts: Unlike Joyful Noise, if you're afraid you know exactly what kind of movie New Year's Eve is, well, you know exactly what kind of movie New Year's Eve is. Its thin, every-slife-of-life script is fleshed out to the max with every B-list celebrity under the sun. And that's great if you've got active subscriptions to US Weekly or People, but if you're the kind of person who only pours over the pores of the pretty faces of these magazine regulars when you're waiting for a haircut, the latest from Garry Marshall has nothing for you.

 

Other New Releases

High-Profile Catalog Releases

The Mimic Trilogy (Lionsgate)

Verdict: Buy Me
Available On: Blu-ray
Special Features: Audio commentaries for 1 and 3, the director's cut of Mimic, about 30+ minutes of assorted bonus materials for Mimic, 25 for Mimic 2, 20 for Mimic 3.
Additional Thoughts: As you can see below, a ton of triple feature discs were released this week. Most of them are just loosely grouped together trios that have nothing to do with one another save for they're being released by the same company and roughly the same genre. The one united trilogy disc of the week is the Mimic set. It's only $ 21, which is about $ 7 per movie, and is cer tainly worth it. Guillermo del Toro's original Mimic is the obvious crowd pleaser of the three (and the copy here is the same high-profile Director's Cut released a few months ago), but each are worthwhile entries in the science-gone-wrong subgenre (in this case, it's a lab-created insect that grows out of control and starts to imitate man and feed in the sewers). In particular, the third film, which is confined to mostly one apartment building, is a very strong straight-to-video sequel. So if you like your sci-fi stylish and grimy, this is a nice little package.

 

Everything Else

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