It’s an apt image because much of the film turns on how the onetime boxer is brutally muscling his way into the top spot of the very fluid Mafia operations in L.A.īut the powerful punch of that opening moment is fleeting. “Gangster Squad” has a promising start: a grainy shot of a punching bag being sorely abused, including one great slow-mo jab that showcases muscle - specially the beefed-up biceps of Penn as Brooklyn-born-tough-turned-Mafia-wiseguy Mickey Cohen. Fleischer didn’t have these sorts of identity issues in the hyper-violent fun of 2009’s “Zombieland,” whose apocalyptic road trip to evade the easy-to-spot undead put the director on the map. It’s a grim, gritty, graphic chronicle of disaster.In Fleischer’s hands, the high-stakes shootouts are as stylish as a GQ spread, but it’s nearly impossible to figure out who’s zoomin’ who. PICK OF THE WEEK: Oscar-nominated Naomi Watts stars in “The Impossible,” the harrowing, true story of a British family spending their Christmas holiday on Khao Lak in Thailand when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami hits, sweeping them in different directions the viscerally vigorous depiction of the tidal wave devastation is staggering. “K-11” is a riveting jail drama about the plight of a man (Goran Visnjic) who winds up in the Los Angeles County Jail’s transgender unit filmmaker Jules Stewart is the mother of “Twilight” star Kristen. In “Thale,” two crime-scene cleaners discover a mythical, tailed female creature in a concealed cellar never uttering a word, she’s been held captive for decades for reasons that eventually surface. Werner Herzog’s “Happy People: A Year in the Taiga” is an unforgettable journey to the edge of civilization, where a remote culture thrives in Siberia in some of the harshest conditions on Earth. Out of circulation for years, Aviva Kempner’s Peabody Award-winning “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg” is a humorous, nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon the DVD is brimming with two hours of extras about fielding and hitting in the Golden Age of Baseball. It should be noted, however, that part of this film’s funding came from Image Nation Abu Dhabi, implying, perhaps, that the United Arab Emirates, the world’s third largest oil exporter, may have a vested interest in suppressing U.S. ![]() ![]() He’s joined by Frances McDormand and John Krasinksi and opposed by Hal Holbrook, a high-school science teacher who challenges the benefits of fracking. Gus Van Sant’s “The Promised Land” stars Matt Damon as a farm boy-turned-corporate salesman dispatched to rural Pennsylvania to acquire natural gas drilling rights. Sean Penn plays notorious Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen in “Gangster Squad” as a team of cops, led by Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling, are determined to bring him down – by any means necessary extras include deleted scenes, gangland files, stylish tough guys and director Ruben Fleischer’s commentary.Ĭorruption is pervasive, particularly when it comes to energy concerns. Susan Granger’s DVD Update for week of Fri., April 26:
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