Burn After Reading
Blu-ray Edition
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich
Universal Home Entertainment
Release date: December 21, 2008

Burn After Reading opens with a view that seems to be from outer space, pinpointing the east coast of America — the land of opportunity. As it slowly descends closer, eventually delving into Virginia’s CIA Headquarters, we realize that this view might be from a bomb; a Coen brothers bomb that extracts moral values from its characters, twisting and turning them before they’re all led blindly to a state of misanthropy. Humans have no regard for other’s emotions. What means the most to one person means absolutely nothing to the next. An evil world indeed, but it is a Coen world where the real world pales in comparison as far as evil goes.

What Joel and Ethan Coen have done throughout their career are pit casual people against odds that are much more lethal and powerful than any human being could possibly be. This is their formula, and although they’ve been constantly changing venues, the ramifications that follow have always stayed true to their original formula. But there’s something new in Burn After Reading that one can’t quite put their finger on. The brothers make a movie containing 96 minutes of pure comedic delight and, strangely, the same amount of dread that no other film so far this year can touch. It’s something rare, something that can’t possibly be missed.

Postal
Blu-ray – Unrated Edition
Directed by Uwe Boll
Starring Zack Ward, Dave Foley, J.K. Simmons, Verne Troyer, Erick Avari, Seymour Cassel
Vivendi Entertainment
Release date: August 26, 2008

Making movies based on video games is definitely a slippery slope in the movie industry. Other than Resident Evil, which did well enough in the box office to spawn two sequels, seeing a successful movie based on a video game is about as rare as a watchable Uwe Boll movie. I was hoping that after watching Postal on Blu-ray, a movie not only directed by Boll but also based on a video game, I could kill two birds with one stone.

The movie follows a young man, named “Postal Dude,” who feels the world is against him. He blows his job interview, his obese wife is cheating on him, and to make matters worse, he is living in a trailer park. Fed up with life, he joins his Uncle Dave, a leader of a cult filled to the brim with scantily clad babes and accompany him in his quest to spread his message. What follows is lots of gunfire, lewd humor, Osama Bin Laden, and Verne Troyer.

Burn After Reading
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Starring George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton
Rated R
Release date: September 12, 2008

Burn After Reading opens with a view that seems to be from outer space that pinpoints the east coast of America (the land of opportunity). As it slowly descends and creeps closer, eventually delving into a Virginia CIA headquarters, we realize that this view might be from a bomb; a Coen bomb that has the tendency to extract moral values from its characters, twisting and turning them before they’re all led blindly to a state of misanthropy. Humans have no regard for each other’s emotions; what means the most to one person means absolutely nothing to the next. An evil world indeed, but it is a Coen world where the outside world pales in comparison as far as evil goes.

What the Coen Brothers have done throughout their career is pit casual people against odds and ends that are much more lethal and powerful than they could possibly be. This is their formula, though they’ve been constantly changing venues, the ramifications that follow have always stayed true to their original formula. But there’s something of an awe with this new venue that is found in Burn After Reading. I can’t quite put my finger on it. The brothers turn in a movie that contains 96 minutes of pure comedic delight and, strangely, the same amount of dread that I can’t recollect seeing anywhere else in recent cinema; it’s something rare, something that can’t possibly be missed.

Postal
Unrated Edition
Directed by Uwe Boll
Starring Zack Ward, Dave Foley, J.K. Simmons, Verne Troyer, Erick Avari, Seymour Cassel
Vivendi Entertainment
Release date: August 26, 2008

Of all the filmmakers that have had cults spring up around them, from M. Night Shyamalan apologists to people who think Michael Bay is the savior we’ve been waiting for, none have deserved it any less that Uwe Boll. He found out one day that he had talent in the negative integers, and tried turning THAT into a marketing ploy. But even at this level of self-awareness, he gets all bent out of shape and starts fights (both verbal and physical) with people who don’t automatically agree with the sub-amateur shit he opts to pump out. At the drop of a hat, he turns into a kind of Teutonic Yosemite Sam.

So, sure enough, a bunch of quasi-retarded, uber-ironic film geeks have surrounded him, calling him “honest” and “a rogue.” In the Cult of Boll, the actual movies he makes become secondary. Wow”¦ I guess you can’t underestimate the power of stupid people in medium-sized groups, either.

So now we have Postal, which is Boll’s first (intentional) comedy. Needless to say, Postal is not funny in the slightest, as Boll fails at everything he sets out to do. He’s quite splendid at being rancid and boring the living shit out of me, but I don’t think that was the plan.