There are many reasons a film might be hard to watch: unbelievable performances, sloppy writing, unskilled direction. Some movies offend with tasteless portrayals of strong sexual content or graphic violence.

Beautiful Boy doesn’t have any of these problems. The film is beautifully acted and well made. Its one sex scene is very thoughtfully done. Beautiful Boy is hard to watch because of the sheer intensity of the subject matter it covers.

Bill and Kate are emotionally distant and muted until they receive the worst news two parents could possibly get. Not only has their only son been killed in a campus shooting, but it turns out he was the shooter.

The couple must deal with their own loss while trying to weather the varied opinions of family, neighbors, and media. This also gives them more time than they wanted to examine how they feel about one another.

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This week’s Monday pick is Manhunter (1986), Michael Mann’s film adaptation of Thomas Harris’s classic novel Red Dragon. The film stars William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Dennis Farina, Stephen Lang, and Tom Noonan.

Manhunter is one of Mann’s best and it was the first film to introduced the world to psychotic killer Dr. Hannibal Lecktor who would go on to great acclaim five years later in the Academy Award winning Best Picture Silence of the Lambs.

William Petersen stars as FBI profiler Will Graham who is pulled out of semi-retirement by his old boss Jack Crawford (Farina) when a series of grizzly murders occur a month apart from one another. Graham is considered one of the best profilers in the Bureau and Crawford is reluctant to ask him to come back after Graham was viciously attacked and almost killed several years earlier when he apprehended Dr. Lecktor.

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This week’s War Movie Monday pick is Universal Picture’s first ever Academy Award winning film for Best Picture and for Best Director (Lewis Milestone), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The film stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Ben Alexander, and Slim Summerville.

All Quiet on the Western Front has been hailed as the greatest anti-war film of all time. Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name, the film follows a group of young men who witness the horrors of World War I after being convinced by their schoolmaster that duty to one’s country and to shed blood in defense of the fatherland is a noble deed.

The small group of young men quickly gets their first dose of military life after they endure basic training at the hands of their drill instructor Himmelstoss (Wray) who is the World War I equivalent of what R. Lee Ermey was for Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. After just only a few short weeks of basic training, the young men are sent off to the front and are plunged head first into combat.

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As technology gets smaller and cheaper, making films is getting easier and easier. But in a market lousy with low-budget indies, it’s not always easy to score well known actors. This wasn’t a problem for Mark Vadik.

The writer/director of Cyrus: Mind of a Serial Killer somehow managed to wrangle several seasoned actors for parts of various size, including Brian Krause (Charmed), Danielle Harris (multiple Halloween films), Doug Jones (Hellboy), and the irreplaceable Lance Henriksen. As you watch the film, the obvious question that comes to mind is, How?

Cyrus is a frame story in which TV journalist Maria Sanchez, looking for fodder for her tabloid news show, interviews a man who claims to know the identity of a local serial killer. He tells her and her cameraman the sad tale of Cyrus, a former soldier who, when his marriage and business fell apart, turned to murder and cannibalism.

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This week’s pick is the adventure-comedy classic The Goonies (1985). Richard Donner (Superman I, II, Lethal Weapon series) and Steven Spielberg craft this cult classic, which has entertained countless fans for over twenty-five years.

The Goonies centers around a group of seven outcast teens from Astoria, Oregon whose homes are about to be demolished due to a real estate venture to expand the ritzy Astoria country club into their neighborhood. Facing their last weekend together, Mike Walsh (Sean Astin) and the rest of his friends rummage around his father’s attic and uncover a map, and a Spanish doubloon.

Mikey begins to tell the story of a Seventeenth Century Pirate known as One-Eyed Willie who stole a large assortment of treasure from the English back in 1632, and it was rumored to have been buried somewhere along their coastline. At first, Mikey’s friends seem reluctant to go on one last Goonie adventure but change their minds when they realize that if they were to find One-Eyed Willie’s treasure, they and their families wouldn’t have to leave Astoria.

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This week’s pick is yet another John Carpenter classic. Kurt Russell stars as the first ever action hero of the 1980s in Escape From New York (1981). After success with Halloween and the horror classic The Fog, Carpenter’s next project would be a unique blend of science fiction, action, noir and a western. The result is one of the finest multi genre classics of its time.

Set in a dystopian future (now the past) the United States’ crime rate rises to an astonishing four hundred percent in 1988. To combat the growing crime rate, the United States becomes a totalitarian police state and the great city of New York is turned into the one prison for the whole country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected around all of Manhattan Island, all the bridges and waterways are mined, and the United States Police Force patrols the wall perimeter to insure no one escapes. Once you go inside the prison, you never come out.

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In case you missed it in theatres (and chances are you did), the sci-fi thriller In Time, starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, comes to Blu-Ray and DVD* today.

The first thing you might notice about In Time is how good-looking it is. Of course, being an Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, Lord of War) joint, the film is stylish and immaculate, but that’s not what I mean. I am referring to the film’s entire cast being comprised of gorgeous young actors. With the exception of two young children, every character in the film is 25 years old.

No matter how many years they have behind them, everyone from grandmothers to mob heavies are played by actors in their mid-twenties to early-thirties. Combine that with Hollywood’s natural trend towards beauty, and the effect creates what can only be described as a “model” future.

You see, in In Time‘s vision of the future, genetics have been altered to give everyone’s life a predetermined length. At 25 years old, bodies stop aging but start counting down. Everyone gets a year, but time can be earned, traded, gambled, or stolen. It is, in fact, the only currency humanity has left.

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This week’s pick is the John Carpenter exploitation classic Assault on Precinct 13 that stars Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, and Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers. Before Carpenter hit it big two years later in 1978 with the critically acclaimed financial blockbuster Halloween, his first commercial attempt came with Assault on Precinct 13.

Carpenter was a graduate of USC film school and had recently shot the now cult classic Dark Star which failed to give the young idealistic filmmaker the big break he was hoping for. Carpenter went looking for financial backers and found the CKK Corporation of Philadelphia, PA who gave Carpenter carte blanche to make whatever kind of film he wanted.

Carpenter hoped to make a Howard Hawks inspired western much like El Dorado or Rio Lobo. Due to funds in the range of only one hundred thousand dollars, Carpenter changed his mind and decided to make an action exploitation film instead.

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This week’s pick is the final chapter of the Mad Max Trilogy, or at least it is until George Miller gets Fury Road out of the film can and into theaters after almost thirty years since the franchise dried up. Mel Gibson stars for the last time as the post apocalyptic do-gooder in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).

Thunderdome is my least favorite of the films for several reasons, mostly because of how soft Max has gotten in his old age. The film opens where it’s obvious that it has been several years (namely by Mel’s long 80s metal do) since Max helped the outpost settlers of the wasteland battle the Humungus and his barbarians.

As Max is trucking across the desert, he is knocked clear off his camel driven monster truck by a plane piloted by Jedediah (played by Bruce Spence from The Road Warrior). Jedediah steals Max’s rig and leaves him marooned in the desert with nothing. Following the tracks, Max arrives at what is known as Bartertown, a desert outpost where survivors of the nuclear holocaust come to trade precious materials.

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Catch .44 is the embodiment of style over substance.

The film looks great. Writer/director Aaron Harvey clearly has a good eye. If the budget is as low as he implies in the audio commentary, Harvey needs to marry his production designer and his cinematographer. A lot of the visual effects are a little clunky (think the fight sequences in Deadliest Warrior), but good for the budget (which bodes well for the future of indie film).

The acting is also very strong, which is not unexpected given a cast that includes veterans Bruce Willis, Brad Dourif, and Oscar winner Forest Whitaker. Most of the fun that can be squeezed from watching Catch .44 is seeing the actors play.

But the twisty crime thriller genre is all about story, and there just isn’t one here. Unlike The Usual Suspects and Reservoir Dogs, to which the marketing compares the film, Catch.44 doesn’t have any surprises, any secrets, or any tension. It’s mostly just people saying they are going to shoot each other and then, in fact, shooting each other.

The characters are poorly drawn and, with the possible exception of Whitaker’s confused psycho, unmemorable. Most have no arcs to speak of. The script doesn’t even keep you entertained with clever banter or intimidating tough-guy talk, another staple of the genre. The dialogue in Catch .44 is clumsy and lacking originality.

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This week’s Monday Pick is the 1979 action thriller Mad Max, a film that lunched one of the most lucrative franchises in film history. The Mad Max trilogy has spawned many imitations over the last thirty plus years, but they fail to add up to George Miller’s fantastic vision of the ultimate dystopian future.

Mel Gibson (who was virtually unknown at the time) stars as police pursuit man Max Rockatansky. He patrols the highways of the not too distant future Australia that is on the verge of complete anarchy and lawlessness. In the first installment of the series, Miller shows the audience that in this future, resources like food, water, and gasoline are becoming scarce and society is beginning to break down. The Main Force Patrol (MFP) is the uniformed highway safety enforcement whose main purpose is to stop marauding gangs who pose a threat to the society they are desperately trying to preserve.

The first ten minutes of Mad Max are filled with some of the most impressive and dangerous stunts ever performed in any film before or since. The MFP is in pursuit of an escaped convict who calls himself the Night Rider. Along with his girlfriend, the two take off in one of the force’s fastest V-8 pursuit vehicles and are successful in evading several pursuit units.

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2011 might go down as the year Hollywood finally figured out how to make a great prequel. Between the “X-cellent” X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes we have seen two high profile franchises recieve a much needed quality boost back into the lime light.

The most impressive part of this movie is the performance of Andy Serkis as Caesar the ape. Millions of words have been written on the subject of his brilliant digital performance, and every single one of them speaks the truth. We are seeing the line between animation and performance blends so much that it is almost impossible to tell the difference.

This Blu-Ray presents the film, and a whole bunch of features that help you understand what exactly went into the astonishing effects work on the film. Of all the films that have come out in the last few years, this is one of the most worthy of a great set of features.

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