In 1934, two young adults — Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker — were ambushed and killed by law enforcement in North Louisiana, immortalized after a murderous two-year crime spree that had captivated the nation.  The tale of the two elicited such a frenzied response not because of the crimes themselves, which were mostly petty or forgettable during a time that included such infamous figures as John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd, but because of Bonnie.  She wasn’t a captive during Clyde’s raids, she participated and occasionally led them.  Pictures found of the two from a hideout showed a cigar-smoking, gun-toting female, linked up with a man she was involved with, but not married to.  The tabloid nature of the duo’s misdeeds still carries some resonance today, which the new miniseries Bonnie and Clyde focuses on.  Hit the jump for more. 

Since the beginning of Breaking Bad, there was always the question of if and when Walter White (Bryan Cranston) would be caught.  His brother in law Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) was a DEA agent, so there were so many ways for his work as a meth cooker/drug kingpin to go south.  And as the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad began, Hank had finally caught on to his brother in law.  It was the start of the end, and it couldn’t end well, at least for the characters.  For the audience, it ended spectacularly.  My review of Breaking Bad The Final Season on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

[This is a re-post of my review from the 2013 New York Film Festival.  Inside Llewyn Davis opens today in limited release.]

It’s a terrible thing to feel like you’re not the protagonist of your own story—to simply exist with nowhere to go. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a man who doesn’t fit into his own life, and in the Coen Brothers’ most melancholy film to date, Inside Llewyn Davis, we’re taken on the moving journey of a folk singer trying to succeed in the right place at the wrong time. He can’t create a future from the songs of the past, and he lives ambivalently in the present. Toning down the stylized hyperrealism of their previous movies, Joel and Ethan Coen have created a work that still bears their signature, yet takes them and us to a restrained, yet tonally and emotionally frustrating place. Anchored by a subtle, touching performance from Isaac, as well as beautiful renditions of folk songs, Inside Llewyn Davis is a somber look at a wandering musician.

The world is crazy, and it can make you feel weak, but Charles de Lauzirika‘s Crave takes fear and frustration and turns it into a meandering bore.  De Lauzirika is very aware of his film’s influences, and there’s no pretention about carving out new territory, but he doesn’t show us anything we haven’t really seen before.  Just as his protagonist looks to find love and strength, Crave stumbles around trying to find a novel idea worth exploring.  Further burdened by miscasting and an ill-fitting visual style, the film slogs around, occasionally bumping into a worthwhile performance or relationship, but is ultimately sucked into a void where the harder it tries to find meaning, the less it means anything.

I’m far from being the biggest Shakespeare scholar on the block, so having me review The Hollow Crown might not seem like the best idea at first blush.  However, the beauty of this mini-series is how accessible it is to even those of us whose last brush with the playwright came during high school English.  It helps that the cast is composed of up-and-coming faces of this generation of actors, alongside veterans of stage and screen who define the word gravitas and could probably do Shakespeare in their sleep.   Much like the long-standing works of the English author himself, The Hollow Crown is equally enjoyable for neophytes making their introduction to Shakespeare or scholars looking for a new interpretation.  Hit the jump for my review.

It’s amazing to consider how prolific Clint Eastwood has been as a director.  When actors direct, they tend to focus on just a few projects.  Kevin Costner, for instance, has just three directing credits to his name.  Mel Gibson has four.  And yet it took Eastwood almost twenty films before he received the same accolades that they did for his skills. (He currently stands at 35-plus movies.)  It took him that long to be properly acknowledged.  Luckily, because he has so many, we can genuinely chart his growth and progress as a creative force in ways we can’t with those other filmmaker/stars.  High Plains Drifter, which has arrived in freshly minted Blu-ray form, was the first Western he directed, and remains one of his most challenging (and disturbing) efforts behind the camera.  Hit the jump for my full review.

Since Frank Darabont‘s much-discussed break-up with AMC over The Walking Dead, fans have continued to keep a close eye to where the producer and showrunner would land next.  It didn’t take long for him to strike a deal with TNT to create and develop a series for them based on John Buntin’s book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City, now called Mob City (formerly L.A. Noir and Lost Angels), which chronicles the true story of the ongoing battle between the police and the mob in the 1940s. Hit the jump for more on the series, and why it might succeed where other mob shows have failed.

As we witnessed last week, the 50^th anniversary of John F.  Kennedy’s death, America has never fully recovered from the loss of the beloved young president.  His public and violent assassination left an indelible imprint on the American psyche, shattering an age of optimism and halting his promise of progress.  Having never received a satisfactory answer for the whos, whats and whys of the crime conspiracy theorists have argued their versions of the truth for decades.  With JFK, Oliver Stone’s most controversial and arguably best film, Stone presents a massive catalogue of those theories with a masterful hand.  In honor of the 50^th anniversary of the president’s death, Stone and Warner Brothers put together an impressive commemorative edition of the film.  Hit the jump to find out how JFK holds up and what the new edition has to offer fans of the film.

After the blockbuster success of Bridesmaids, actress Kristen Wiig announced she’d be skipping the requisite sequel to try her hand at a more darkly comic role in a black comedy then-titled Imogene. Its basic storyline – a failed playwright (Wiig) moves in with her gambling addict mother (Annette Bening) after faking her own suicide – sounded teasingly reminiscent of beloved ‘90s seriocomedy Postcards from the Edge. But any hopes I had that Wiig and Bening might recapture that classic Streep/MacLaine chemistry quickly went out the window as the finished film – blandly re-titled Girl Most Likely ­- unspooled. Less a mother/daughter story than a young woman/weird world yarn, Girl Most Likely is a meandering film that fails as black comedy (it’s not black enough) or plain comedy (it’s not funny enough). Instead, it plays as 104 minutes of quirk, with Wiig stuck in the mediocre middle playing against her strengths.  Hit the jump for my Blu-ray review.

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block of programming has always pushed the envelop when it comes to comedic content.  Bizarre and abstract don’t even begin to explain series like Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Aqua Teen Hunger Force or Squidbillies.  But what all of these shows have in common is both newness (either a new take on an old cartoon, like Harvey, or an entirely new concept, like Aqua Teen) and charm.  Squidbillies is full of vulgar and violent humor, but it’s grounded by the singularity of a character like Early, with his horrible homespun wisdom, as well as the show’s biting satire.  All this to say that when it comes to the new half hour comedy Rick and Morty, well … hit the jump for more.

2 Guns partners Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington in a buddy cop-esque action comedy.  Considering the talent involved, it goes more for the action that jokes, but with a strong supporting cast and enough twists and turns to keep things interesting, it proves to be one of the most entertaining (albeit fairly dumb) summer action movies of the year.  My review of 2 Guns follows after the jump.

Horror movies are the ultimate test of directorial skill.  It’s not the words that make it scary, it’s the camera, the performance, and how things are revealed.  And watching The Conjuring it’s obvious that James Wan is a remarkable talent, and it’s great that he’s moved into the big time as his next project is Fast and Furious 7.  He’s got it.  The Conjuring follows two families.  The Warrens (Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson) are ghost hunters who uncover real and fake hauntings, while the Perrons (headed by Lili Taylor and Ron Livingston) are an ordinary family whose new house is haunted.  The two cross paths in this supposed true story.  My review of The Conjuring on Blu-ray follows after the jump.

This year saw two films attempt to take down the White House, with the most recent being disaster master Roland Emmerich’s White House Down.  Although he famously destroyed the entire Presidential residence in one blow in 1996′s Independence Day, Emmerich treats the title structure with much more reverence and care this time around.  (Don’t worry, he still beats the hell out of it.)  Equally bloodied and bruised are White House Down‘s heroic duo, played by Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx, who must take down the threat inside the Oval Office while rescuing the hostages trapped inside.  It’s one of Emmerich’s most entertaining films to date, and now that it’s available on Blu-ray, you can check it out for yourself in your very own home.  Hit the jump for my review.

Quite possibly the most unlikely trilogy of all time, director Richard Linklater’s Before series is also one of the best.  Audiences fell for Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s young lovers in 1995’s Before Sunrise and were delighted to catch up with the duo again in 2004’s Before Sunset.  Given the rather cliffhanger-like ending to the second film, anticipation was high for a possible third feature but Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy played coy about the prospect of another film for nearly nine years.  That is, until they wrote and shot this year’s Before Midnight almost in secret, only confirming its existence after production had wrapped in Greece.  The result is an emotional and sometimes tough look at life in love, and it’s also one of the best films of the year.  Read my review of Before Midnight on Blu-ray after the jump.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Disney Animation Studios had a marvelous revival and created some of their best films with (in chronological order) The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.  Since then, the luster has faded but there have been bright spots like Mulan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Lilo & Stitch, Tangled, and Winnie the Pooh.  They even had terrific one with The Princess and the Frog, but as 2D animation dies and the 3D becomes default, the 2009 picture looked like the end of an era.  But with Frozen, directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee have conjured up a film that is among the best in the studio’s history.  The movie gracefully glides around conventions, and combines magnificent music and lovable characters with an artistry and style rarely seen in 3D animated family films.  It is a picture that recalls Disney’s classic films, but also strides boldly into the 21st century.