new on DVD: ‘Red Road,’ ‘Year of the Dog,’ ‘Heroes,’ ‘Blades of Glory’
See it:
• Red Road [buy it]. From my review:
This prickly sketch of a vengeance born out of loneliness and alienation carries the weight of horror of the everyday -- it’s not a thriller and there’s nothing Hollywood-exaggerated about it, which makes it all the more disturbing, and all the harder to dismiss.
• Year of the Dog [buy it]. This ode to nonconformity is honest, touching, and bittersweetly funny.
• Heroes: Season 1 [buy it]. Save the cheerleader, save the world. Oh, wait: we already did that? Who cares? The second time around is just as fun as the first.
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Skip it:
• Blades of Glory [buy it]. From my review:
Maybe I should take hope in the fact that it took two credited directors and five credited screenwriters to lash together this disjointed flick, which has to grasp at straws to make even a moderately sophisticated audience laugh. (Did I laugh in a few places? Sure, when the film sent up the excesses of figure skating. Not when it assumed I would find homosexuality funny, which is the basis upon which most of the “jokes” work.) Honestly, can it be a good sign that it takes five homophobes to come up with lines like “As if figure skating wasn’t gay enough already...”
