Recent DVD Releases

Lakeview Terrace

An angry and disgruntled widowed LAPD officer (Samuel L. Jackson) doesn’t approve when a mixed-race couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) moves in next door. He proceeds to legally terrorize and harass them using his badge and connections to protect him. It’s even less mature and less insightful about race relations than Crash. Wilson is bland and Jackson is a caricature of his former self. The movie is hopelessly predictable and infuriatingly devoid of any ideas. Except getting pregnant can fix any troubled relationship. Nice. The “+” is for the wildfire visuals. D+

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The Visitor
I’m not sure how Richard Jenkins scored a Best Actor Oscar Nomination. I guess his white liberal guilt poster boy struck a chord with enough members of the white liberal Academy. A Connecticut college professor (Jenkins) goes to New York for a conference and enters his apartment which he has been legally renting for many years. He finds two illegal immigrants who are in NYC illegally and are renting his apartment through illegal means. The male (from Syria) plays the bongos illegally and gets detained when the police realize that yes, in fact, he is in the country illegally. They detain him and deport him, making things tough on his illegal girlfriend, his mom, as well as the legal professor. The legal director thinks he's clever by blurring the focus on the American flag (better than hanging it upside down, I guess – up yours, Paul Haggis), and the legal professor realizes he’s wasted his life teaching young legal American citizens when he could have played the bongos and wasted money on immigration attorneys who have no shot of winning the cases you’ve hired them for. Nice job throwing in Hurricane Katrina just in case the guilty feelings weren’t primed enough. I'll admit it was nice watching the liberal deal with big government bureacracy (don't you vote for more of that every year, ya douche?) Lawyer liked it better. C-


The Promotion
Sean William Scott and John C. Reilly compete for the manager position at a new supermarket. It’s frustrating, predictable, boring, and worst of all, unfunny. Avoid this, unless you want to see Jenna Fischer drop a couple of F-bombs. D

I basically agree with the following reviews (including the grade):
W. - B
Traitor - B
Hellboy II: The Golden Army - B
Pride and Glory - B-