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12 Oct ' 01:26
Updated October 12, 2010 I Am LoveMagnolia, 120 min., in Italian w/English subtitles, R, DVD: $26.98, Blu-ray: $29.98, Oct. 12 
The luxurious, carefully ordered lives of the Recchis, a distinguished upper-class Milanese family, are disrupted when its stylish Russian-immigrant matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton, speaking Russian-accented Italian) plunges into a scandalous and passionate affair with a friend of her grown son Edo (Flavio Parenti). Emma is the seemingly devoted wife of Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), who is heir to a textiles fortune. But when Edo befriends a talented chef named Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini) and makes plans to open a restaurant, Emma’s interest is piqued—in no small part because of Antonio’s way with prawns (Swinton lustily enjoys same in a scene she later referred to as “prawnography”). Emma’s world is further rocked by the discovery that her daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher), a student in London, is a lesbian. By the time Emma finally visits Antonio, this genteel, repressed woman is particularly vulnerable to the emotions that quickly overwhelm her, leading to a torrid coupling. A sumptuous cinematic feast, comparable to Ang Lee’s EatDrink Man Woman, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love is anchored by a star turn from Swinton and a sensual, throbbing score by contemporary composer John Adams. While it may seem like a tawdry melodramatic throwback to the Douglas Sirk weepies from the 1950s, it plays on an operatic scale. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Luca Guadagnino and costar Tilda Swinton, cast and crew interviews (71 min.), a “Moments on the Set” behind-the-scenes featurette (15 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release is the BD-Live function. Bottom line: a solid extras package for an engaging film.] (AgoraLionsgate, 126 min., R, DVD: $27.99, Oct. 19 
Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora is a throwback to Hollywood’s old Greco-Roman epics, but with a major difference: here the Christians are the persecutors, not the victims. In its depiction of the blind dogmatism of early believers, the film reminds us of modern religious intolerance, especially with its focus on the oppression of women. The setting is 4th-century Alexandria, Egypt, where brilliant real-life astronomer (and atheist) Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) teaches at the city’s great library, run by her father Theon (Michael Lonsdale). Among her adoring pupils are the shy Synesius (Rupert Evans), the more forthcoming Orestes (Oscar Isaac), and Hypatia’s slave, Davus (Max Minghella). Synesius eventually becomes a bishop who encourages his followers to attack the pagans and Jews and compel them to accept baptism. Now a Roman prefect, Orestes leads the ineffectual resistance, but Hypatia emerges as Synesius’s real rival, representing the power of reason and scientific inquiry in the fight against fanaticism. Despite the scattering of violent scenes and romantic subplots, Agora ultimately comes across as both talky and oddly stilted, dragged down by Amenábar’s pedantic, arty approach. Optional. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Alejandro Amenabar, a “Journey to Alexandria” making-of documentary (63 min.), deleted scenes (11 min.), a brief intro by Amenabar, production and costume design storyboards, and a photo gallery. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a disappointing film.] (
The Good, The Bad, The WeirdMPI, 130 min., in Korean w/English subtitles, R, DVD: $24.98, Blu-ray: $29.98 
While the title of South Korean director Kim Ji-woon’s film may recall a certain celebrated 1966 Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, the sprawling The Good, The Bad, The Weird is light-years removed from its inspiration. Set during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the 1930s, the movie follows a trio of rival Korean bandits (Kang-ho Song, Byung-hun Lee, and Woo-sung Jung) who are racing against each other in the search for a mysterious treasure map. While offering some of the hallmarks of the Western genre—horseback chases, train robbing, lethal gunplay, and morally ambiguous characters in fashionably tailored cowboy clothing—the film is closer to slapstick comedy with its dismissively silly, numbingly over-the-top action. All of this adds up to a pan-Asian smackdown as the Korean antiheroes face a number of Chinese bandits along with the full force of the Japanese Army. Unfortunately, the plot is so twisted that it’s easy to lose track of the various broken alliances and betrayals in this noisy romp of a film that is full of borrowed style but lacks a substantive foundation to hold it all together. Not recommended. (
Jonah Hex 
Warner, 120 min., PG-13, DVD: $28.98, Blu-ray: $35.99, Oct. 12
Based on an antihero from a DC Comic series created in the early 1970s, this savage action-adventure Western centers on Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), a Civil War veteran whose family is deliberately incinerated by Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), a former Confederate colonel who blames Jonah for the death of his soldier son. Not only is Jonah forced to listen to his own wife and child scream in agony, but Turnbull and his sadistic henchman, Burke (Michael Fassbender), also hideously disfigure his face. After this near-death experience, Jonah is “revived” by friendly Native Americans, becoming almost invincible, with a supernatural ability to “talk” with the dead. Propelled by a thirst for vengeance, Jonah becomes a bounty hunter, toting assorted weapons that include a tomahawk, a couple of revolvers, twin Gatling guns attached to his horse, and a crossbow rigged to shoot dynamite sticks. Megan Fox costars as Jonah’s only friend, Lilah, a prostitute working in New Orleans. When it becomes clear that the crazed Turnbull is planning to overthrow the U.S. government during America’s centennial, Jonah is recruited to track him down by President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn). Director Jimmy Hayward is unable to turn this stylish claptrap into a cohesive narrative, instead opting for glitzy editing while blasting Mastodon’s heavy metal score. Both loud and tedious, this is not recommended. (
PredatorsFox, 105 min., R, DVD: $29.99, Blu-ray: $39.99, Oct. 19 
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, John McTiernan, who helmed the original Predator back in 1987 (starring future governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura), should feel complimented, because director Nimród Antal displays little originality in this sci-fi sequel, aside from the opening scene in which an unconscious man freefalls from a great height, then awakens mid-air, screaming, and grabs for the ripcord on his parachute. Special Forces operative-turned-mercenary Royce (Adrien Brody) is the leader of a motley band of professional killers who have landed on what appears to be a terraformed world where they can breathe the air, drink the water, and move about normally; but the sun always stays in the same place, and several huge moons hover above. Royce’s companions include an Israeli sniper (Alice Braga), an African warrior/warlord (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali), the FBI’s most wanted mass murderer (Walton Goggins), a Russian soldier (Oleg Taktarov), a Japanese hit man (Louis Ozawa Changchien), a Colombian drug cartel enforcer (Danny Trejo), and a mild-mannered doctor (Topher Grace). It doesn’t take long for the motley crew to realize that they’re the game (along with an earlier survivor played by Laurence Fishburne) on a gigantic preserve for alien predator hunters. Who will die (and in what order) and who will survive are the sole questions raised by this film in which the titular vicious warthog-like beasts look too much like cheesy 1950s B-movie monsters to be really scary. Optional, at best.S. Granger
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