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John Allman

If you’ve ever wandered the aisles at the video store or surfed the DVR pay-per-view options and seen a bunch of movies that you’ve never heard of, chances are John has watched them. Why? He loves movies. All kinds of movies. Good, bad, so-bad-they’re good, even the truly unwatchable ones. He mostly loves horror and science-fiction and drive-in exploitation movies that most upstanding model citizens wouldn’t dare watch. Then he writes up his thoughts so you can decide - watch, don’t watch or avoid at all costs. Sometimes he even gets to talk to the cool folks who make some of your favorite films.

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John Allman

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New Releases for Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Posted Jul 16, 2010 by John Allman

Updated Jul 16, 2010 at 06:56 AM

What’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

Chloe
Genre: Thriller/Erotica
Directed by: Atom Egoyan
Run time: 96 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: There are moments of highly-charged eroticism in Atom Egoyan’s latest meditation on sex, dysfunction and the failings of the human condition, and they all come courtesy of Amanda Seyfried.

Seyfried is that rare actress who seems capable of walking the high wire between sexual starlet and serious star, unafraid to dirty up for a role or show some skin, performance permitting.

With her odd, almost alienesque beauty, ample curves and Lolita-like saucer eyes, Seyfried can convey equal parts innocence and raw passion with a simple glance or shake of her luminous blonde hair.

As Chloe, the title character, a wise but wanting escort in Toronto at an upscale gentleman’s club, she knows how to use her intelligence to manipulate any client into believing he (or she, as the movie shows) has found their waking dream.

Partnered with Julianne Moore, who is herself a fearless actress able to nimbly straddle that line between a dirty, raw sexual creature and a full-bodied real woman with conflicted emotions and motives, Egoyan has perhaps the perfect pairing to carry his film about a successful doctor who suspects her professor husband is having an affair and decides to hire a call girl to entice him so she will know for sure.

You are slowly, thoroughly drawn in to the erotic chess match that takes places between the two women, and by the point where they give in to their desires, you feel the heat, the uncertainty, the throw caution aside and let go release that culminates with an incredibly arousing, full-on sex scene that ranks up there with the greatest (and hottest) ever shown in a mainstream film.

If only the rest of the movie could match their slow burn intensity, and if only Egoyan had found a way to end his film that didn’t feel pat and contrived.

As it is, “Chloe” has to wade through a main plot that never fully captivates – the did he or didn’t he mystery of whether professor hubby Liam Neeson cheated on Moore, which builds to a twist that I saw coming 40 minutes earlier – and a subplot that seems to be trying so desperately not to mimic traditional genre thrillers where the femme fatale vixen ultimately goes whacko and makes life miserable for the nice couple who showed her compassion.

Seyfried dances around the expected, anticipated crazy outburst like a shy, awkward girl at the homecoming dance anxiously waiting for the high school stud to notice her standing by the punchbowl.

And Egoyan almost – almost – succeeds in surprising his audience by delivering something just left-field enough to tweak that clichéd plot contrivance.

But then he doesn’t quite hit the mark, and that leaves you wanting…something more, especially from a director who has been so good at challenging his fans in the past.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – The incredibly hot tandem of Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore.
Nudity – Gratuitious.
Gore – No.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Desire.
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – Audio commentary with Amanda Seyfried, Atom Egoyan and more; deleted scenes; featurette, “Introducing Chloe.”

The Bounty Hunter (Sony, 110 minutes, PG-13, Blu-Ray): Less offensive than you might think, and not nearly as bad as the 8 percent Tomatometer might lead you to believe over at Rotten Tomatoes.com, “The Bounty Hunter” is not really a good movie.

It has two genuine chuckle moments, to be exact.

That’s half of the total assets that this low-brow romantic comedy has going for it. The other two belong to Jennifer Anniston, who has actually never looked hotter than she does here in a tight top and short skirt.

Anniston should look exhausted. She practically has to carry the entire movie on her shoulders because Gerard Butler simply looks bored.

For a guy who captivated the screen so completely in “300,” Butler has simply been unable to find a follow-up role that matches the intensity he somehow called upon as King Leonidas.

Butler is in desperate need of a career intervention or else he risks being a one-hit wonder. But Anniston shows that she can still shine through even when stuck in the worst dreck imaginable, even if she too is still waiting for that one big hit to propel her to A-list status.

“The Bounty Hunter” is essentially “Midnight Run” without the wonderfully dark and pervasive humor. It’s “Beverly Hills Cop” without Axel Foley. It’s “Knight and Day” without the star wattage of Cruise and Diaz, or its big-budget action scenes.

What it is, unfortunately, is a very predictable, albeit still enjoyable as background noise, rom-com with mediocre action, very little sizzle and jokes that feel as tired as Butler looks.

Greenburg (Universal, 108 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): Ben Stiller continues to follow his ingenious path to world domination, consistently following big-budget family fare like the latest “Meert the Parents” or “Night at the Museum” franchise entries with edgier, low-key roles in subversive dramedies. Here he plays a character who should be completely unlikable, yet Stiller somehow makes Roger Greenberg feel like a real person with genuine flaws and very human traits that audiences can identify with. Working with Noah Baumbach, the idiosyncratic auteur with a keen eye for documenting human weakness in a way that is immensely entertaining.

Caught in the Crossfire (Lionsgate, 85 minutes, R, Blu-Ray): Chris Klein, the stone-faced, wooden-bodied teen actor from the first two “American Pie” films, probably wishes his recent media attention was due to this direct-to-DVD police thriller co-starring Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and that guy from “CSI: Miami.” Sadly, it’s not. He’s only in the news because of his second DUI arrest, not for making a low-grade crime flick that can barely muster more than a sentence description on the back of the Blu-Ray box.

White Collar: The Complete First Season (Fox, 683 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): The USA Network continues to give FX and TBS a run for their money in the original series department. “White Collar,” an inventive, fast-moving serial about a con man (Matt Bomer, as solid here as in his recurring role on “Chuck” as super spy Bryce Larkin) who gets a second chance by helping the FBI bust other con men (yeah, yeah, try to suspend belief, it’s TV after all) is actually really good. Between this, “Burn Notice” and “Royal Pains,” the cable network may not have the edgiest fare, but it’s definitely improving. This three-disc collection includes all 14 episodes from the first season, but seriously scrimps by on the bonus features.