Some weird DVD releases – appropriate, since Friday the 13th falls on a Tuesday this month. So prepare yourselves for some unknowns, some surprising performances, a glimpse into the afterlife and … Her (you know, her) releasing on DVD this Tuesday
Afterlife. We all love Andrew Lincoln – you know, that intense, slow-drawlin’ Southern lawman who’s the leader of the survivors on The Walking Dead. Now you can see Andrew Lincoln in the British TV series he did before TWD, a truly fascinating, low-key, thoughtful and ultimately chilling take on death and ghosts and, even belief itself. Lincoln, as a skeptical University professor still grieving the loss of his son, is very very good and as different from Rick Grimes as he could possibly be, but the real treasure of this show is British actress Lesley Sharp, who plays a middle-class nurse who has an uncontrollable connection to the dead, and who would like nothing better than to be rid of it (you might remember her from In Hell or The Fully Monty, but she’s brand-new here, and terrific). Two seasons, fourteen episodes total, with the first season available now on DVD. And in a quiet summer where you’re looking for quality supernatural fiction, this is it. Besides, who know that Lincoln could do such a good British Accent?
Compound Fracture. This Direct-to-DVD follows some little-known actors in a deadly family reunion, to a home that’s been turned into a maximum-security compound. And, like it says here, “the fractured family will have to come together to fight the ghosts of their pasts and make it out alive!” Best part: one of the major players is Tyler Mane, the ex-wrestler (ever hear of Big Sky? Diesel? That’s him.) who played the growling, wordless Sabretooth in the X-Men movies, not to mention the man behind the hockey mask in a few of the Halloween remakes, as well as the impossibly well-named “Adolph Manson” in a couple episodes of Son of the Beach. Perfect.
I, Frankenstein was kind’a ‘meh’ despite a terrific concept: that not only was Frankenstein’s work in re-animation real, but it went on to change the world. Unfortunately, the follow-through was grim, overwrought and way overcmplicated, and not even the best action-actors Australia had to offer could save it. Ozzies actually infest this movie: you’ll find Yvonne Grahovski of Chuck, Dexter, and 24: Live Another Day (and The Canyon! Check it out!), not to mention Miranda Otto (Eowyn in Lord of the Rings), Bruce Spence (greatest weird-character actor in Australia, all the way back to the Mad Max movies and that weird-ass TV serues Return of the Seeker, and – our personal favorite – Caitlin Stasey, a beautiful young actress who’s already distinguished herself in the very good and completley unnotice Tomorrow, When the War Began, CW-TV’s Reign, and the we-can’t-wait-for-it upcoming All Cheerleaders Die. So maybe the movie ain’t wonderful, but the actors in it? Yow.
And then there’s Her, that weird little … romance? … that might could have been about the near-future paradigm shift that artificial intelligence will trigger, or an exploration of what love really is, or even just a dreamy-melancholy fantasy, but somehow turns out to be a kind’a icky story about a creepy guy who falls in love with his Siri because it sounds like Scarlett Johanssen (The voice is supplied, in a mind-stretching role, by Scarlett Johanssen). Probably safe to skip it.
It’s a busy week all around, with drops of Orange is the New Black, the really remarkably good second season of Longmire – Good God, another Aussie! – the underdone and almost already forgotten Magic City, and the release of a new staging of Richard II, with the Tenth Doctor in the title role (and seriously, if you haven’t seen David Tennant’s work in Hamlet, Much Ado, or Richard II, you’re missing something. This guy’s good.)
A weird week? You betcha!
