This is something I’ve been meaning to get to once in a while, so here goes: I’ve got piles of DVDs sitting around here haunting me, waiting patiently for me to review them. I hear them whispering plaintively to me: “Watch me, watch me….” It’s very sad. They’re screeners of foreign and indie movies in small theatrical release, they’re advance copies of commerical DVDs, they’re teeny-tiny indies hoping for some attention. Some are sent to me unsolicited; some I request from publicists and filmmakers, and those, of course, are the ones that really weigh on my conscience. I’m gonna run down what’s in the pile every once in a while, and maybe this will be the little kick in the butt I need to finally do them justice. Here’s what’s waiting:
• Clean, Olivier (Demonlover) Assayas’s drama starring Maggie Cheung and Nick Nolte, already playing in limited release (official site)
• Coastlines, starring Timothy Olyphant, Sarah Wynter, and Josh Brolin, from director Victor (Ulee’s Gold) Nunez, also in limited release (official site)
• Green Street Hooligans, starring Elijah Wood, which I missed in theatrical release last year — it’s coming to DVD this month (buy at Amazon)
• Syriana, Stephen Gaghan’s oil drama starring George Clooney and Matt Damon, also coming to DVD this month — I caught this last fall but never reviewed it, which I’d like to do now (buy at Amazon)
• Pulse (Kairo) (buy at Amazon), the J-horror flick that’s getting an American remake next month
• The War Within (buy at Amazon), a fictional narrative about terrorism
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the 1997 TV miniseries starring Michael Caine and Patrick Dempsey, which just landed on DVD this past April (buy at Amazon)
• a handful of flicks from Wolfe, the video company that focuses on gay/lesbian-themed movies: Unveiled, about an Iranian lesbian in Germany (Amazon); Robin’s Hood (Amazon), a hip-hop lesbian Robin Hood tale; and Show Me (Amazon), a psychological thriller, all recently arrived on DVD
• a handful of super tiny indies: The Altruist, Waterbourne, They Shoot Movies, Don’t They?, Illusion, The Call of Cthulhu, and 50 Ways of of Saying Fabulous
• the first two episodes of the new season The Closer, which starts Monday on TNT (official site); the first season was so great, I can’t wait to see the followup
And that’s not even counting the pile of discs from Netflix… *sigh*
