It’s that time of the week once again where we are here to simplify your cluttered minds and point you in the direction of the most noteworthy new home video releases for the taking:
Ballast (Kino International) — As 2009 winds to a close, one of independent cinema’s breakout voices of 2008, Lance Hammer, is finally bringing his Sundance award-winner (for Best Director and Best Cinematography) to home video. Superficially, Ballast is a distinctly American work, but Hammer infuses it with a European sensibility that separates it from the rest of the pack. Read my review of the film, then buy it on DVD
Lake Tahoe (Film Movement) — Mexican director Fernando Eimbcke’s debut feature, Duck Season, was a delightful lazy-day-in-the-life comedy about adolescents killing time. At first glance, his follow-up, Lake Tahoe, seems to drift in a similar breezy key, confirming Eimbcke’s status as the preeminent modern chronicler of lazy days and long afternoons. But as the daylight fades and we discover what has been causing the film’s young protagonist to act so remote and stiff, drama arrives in the form of mourning. Read the rest of my review, then buy it on DVD
Must Read After My Death (Gigantic Releasing) — Must Read After My Death is based on the audio diaries and home movies of [Morgan] Dews’ grandmother, Allis, which the director discovered after her passing in 2001. More than just family mementos, the audiotapes documented the emotional and psychological near-collapse of Allis’ family in the 1960s. And Allis tells the story not from some safe distance into the future, but right in the midst of the crisis. Read the rest of Cullen Gallagher’s review, then buy it on DVD
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Passion River Films) — It sounds like an all too common story to us privileged outsiders: a destitute faraway nation where gun-toting child soldiers have been raping, pillaging, and brutalizing innocent families and children for decades in a lawless civil war. Out of fear, many have fled to an impromptu refugee camp, where water is scarce and food is scarcer. The corrupt leadership has done nothing to quell this deadly turmoil. In a world on the brink of economic collapse, who wants to watch a documentary about that? Thankfully, not director Gini Reticker. With Pray the Devil Back to Hell, Reticker shows us how a group of heroic women used their hearts and minds as weapons for positive, peaceful change, turning a horrific negative into a life-saving positive. Read the rest of my review, then buy it on DVD
Rethink Afghanistan (Disinformation) — Robert Greenwald delivers a difficult-to-refute argument for our immediate withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan. History has shown that Afghanistan is virtually impossible to “defeat,” yet at the moment it doesn’t appear that our administration is taking past lessons into account. This release is jam-packed with extras that support Greenwald’s case more emphatically. Buy it on DVD
MoveOn: The Movie (Disinformation) — Scott Stevenson rides a narrow line between historical account and back-patting with this years-in-the-making chronicle of the grassroots organization MoveOn. But if one is able to shake off the back-patting, MoveOn: The Movie does reflect the spirit that turned a little-website-that-could into a major political player. Buy it on DVD
Up (Pixar) — Allow me to shame myself by confessing that I still haven’t seen this movie. Yet. Thankfully, that’s about to change. Many options for the taking: Blu-ray Combo Pack
NEW TO BLU-RAY:
— Michael Tully
