This Week on DVD & Blu-ray (07-09-13)

It may be summer, but you can finally get your hands on Spring Break! That is, in the form of “Spring Breakers”, the new film by director Harmony Korine (“Gummo” and “Julien Donkey-Boy”), which stars Renaissance Man James Franco and a trio of  Disney Channel/ABC Family darlings, behaving like, well, nothing like darlings. It’s marketed as a thriller, but it’s supposedly so much more. This week also sees the release of the English debut of Swedish director Niels Arden Oplev (the original “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”), a thriller starring Noomi Rapace and Colin Ferrell that was released earlier this Spring. I’m looking forward to catching up with it, as it feels like an homage to the film noir of the 40s and 50s. The big release though is the recent Oscar-nominee “The Gatekeepers”, a controversial film made by Israeli director Droh Moreh, which focuses on the story of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) from the point of view of six former leaders, called Gatekeepers.

Two recent movies that didn’t do so well earlier this year are also now out. One is “Admission”, a rom-com directed by Paul Weitz (“Being Flynn”) starring Paul Rudd and Tina Fey. Despite the likability of the two leads, the movie was poorly received and continues the Rudd’s dry run. That being said, I’ll check it out eventually. Then there’s “The Host”, a critically-panned adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel that didn’t do so well with moviegoers. Not too surprised there, but that’s unfortunate considering I generally like Andrew Niccol. This was one of the last films reviewed by Roger Ebert. 

As a sucker for coming-of-age films, I’m interested in “Boy” a 2010 film from New Zealand that saw a limited run earlier this year.   The film is set in 1984 on the east coast of New Zealand and follows Boy, an 11-year-old kid and devout Michael Jackson fan gets a chance to know his father, who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years ago. Looking forward to it, especially the soundtrack by The Phoenix Foundation.

As usual, there’s a handful of Blu-ray releases this week, but many of them have been released before. Two notable titles, “Cohen & Tate” an American thriller from 1989 that has Roy Scheider and Adam Baldwin playing two assassins hired to kidnap a 7 year-old boy who witnessed a mob execution. It starts out as a comedy and then turns into a bloody thriller. Never saw it and do like these two – I’m down.

On that note, that’s it for this week. Enjoy the Rundown….