User blog:Ceauntay/DVD reviews: Teen Titans: The Movie, Battleship, Headhunters

Teen Titans: The Movie

The remarkable return of one of comic book's most beloved superheroes - Robin, Cyborg, Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy - and bring them to the big screen for the first time. Based on the late TV show entitled Teen Titans, the five young superheroes are facing a tough battle against their new nemesis, Tron, who is too strong to be defeated.
 * 1/2 (out of four)

Extra includes making-of featurette, deleted scenes and some scenes that were never seen in theaters.

Battleship


 * 1/2 (out of four)

The reliable Liam Neeson elevates every film he puts his name to, including pay cheque gigs like Clash of the Titans. But even he couldn’t keep Battleship from tanking.

Based in name only on the old Hasbro board game (and even older paper-and-pencil game), the Peter Berg-directed film awkwardly yokes a romantic redemption tale with a sci-fi potboiler about space aliens invading Earth.

Neeson gives good stare in Battleship, as the admiral in charge of the U.S. Navy Pacific Fleet. That’s about all he gives, but you can’t blame him. The characters are little more than game pieces in this exercise in CGI overkill.

Taylor Kitsch is the putative star, playing screw-up Alex Hopper, who fails at the high ideals set by his Navy-straight older brother Stone (Alexander Skarsgård). When Alex mans the deck himself, determined to prove his worth to his girlfriend Sam Shane (Brooklyn Decker), he has to deal with both Sam’s disapproving pappy (yep, the admiral) and those menacing E.T.s in their flying machines.

A father’s frown and the fate of the world hang in the balance, but Battleship gives little reason to care about either.

Extras include “all access” with director Berg, making-of featurettes and an alternate ending.

Headhunters



Headhunters begins as a caper flick — we even get an opening how-to in the art of art theft — before transforming into a chase thriller, with both sections of director Morten Tyldum’s film equally engrossing.

Aksel Hennie is Roger Brown, a corporate talent scout who takes his occupation so seriously, he may as well be collecting scalps. Despite his impeccably tailored suits and outwardly genteel manners, Roger has a furtive look, resembling a Scandinavian Steve Buscemi.

Roger is really a boor and conman. What he does collect, or rather steal, are expensive paintings he then fences to pay for his unsustainable lifestyle, which includes the jewelry he showers upon his beautiful blond wife Diana. Roger’s profligacy has nearly bankrupted him, but he has his eye on a priceless Rubens painting that could cap his criminal career and solve all his money woes.

The craftiest trick of this well-written Norwegian film, though, is the way it shifts our sympathies from despising Roger at the outset to somewhere close to cheering for him at the end.

Extras include a making-of featurette.

Peter Howell

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