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Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Mark Wahlberg fights somebody, Matt Damon sees the dead and Jason Bateman makes a huge mistake.

Pick of the Week

The Fighter

I think The Fighter is an interesting movie for many reasons. One of the take homes for me, though, was the fact that its star, Mark Wahlberg, gets completely overshadowed by the movie’s colorful cast of secondary characters. And he’s, well, The Fighter in The Fighter. When’s the last time you can remember that happening?

Wahlberg’s Golden Globe nod for Best Actor was a bit of a joke. I’d like to think voters threw in their chips for Christian Bale and Melissa Leo and then Amy Adams, and were like: “Oh crap! We forgot about Marky Mark!” Now, he’s good in The Fighter, but it’s such a relaxed performance so as to make his recognition seem like it was for uniformity’s sake. And it was tough, after all that comedy these past few years, to adjust to Wahlberg in a drama. It wasn’t until about a half-hour in when I realized: “Oh, so a goat isn’t going to enter stage right and Marky Mark isn’t going to talk to it.” Shame.

Christian Bale is masterful as Micky’s cracked-out older brother, Dicky Eklund, and has his first Oscar to show for it. As does Melissa Leo, who drew heat during awards season when she took out personal For Your Consideration ads. And it wasn’t based on the fact that they were kinda weird - Melissa Leo, standing idly next to a pool of water in a fur coat - but because she had simply done so. Some actors can get by on just doing the best they can with each performance. You know, paying little to no attention to critics and their peers because they know awards are, by and large, about the campaigning and not necessarily the performance. And then some actors are Melissa Leo.





I guess I focus on the performances here because they were way better than the movie ended up being. I liked The Fighter, but I’d be quicker to argue the merits of other 2010 movies before getting around to The Fighter. It was missing something, kinda like how - totally unrelated - Precious was on the doorstep for me, but failed to come around cleanly. And the final 15 minutes or so has strange pacing, with an ending shot you don’t expect to be the ending shot. And then you’re like: “Oh, so that’s the end?”

Disc includes: Audio commentary, The Warrior’s Code: Filming the Fighter featurette, Keeping the Faith featurette, deleted scenes

Hereafter

Matt Damon carries the dubious “honor” of starring in two of my least favorite movies I’ve seen in awhile. The Adjustment Bureau, in fact, may be the worst movie I’ve ever seen. I know that kind of thing can be hard to hear. “Oh, come on! The worst movie you’ve ever seen?!” But I think it might be true.

I certainly laughed enough. And much of it had to do with plot, which continued down a rabbit hole of confusion and implausibility as new chunks of story got extracted. But don’t mix up “worst movie ever” with being devoid of entertainment. I’d be anxious to crack open some cold ones when that guy makes it to DVD and re-watch the parts that made zero sense. (This accounts for, say, 95% of the movie).

So, I guess, there’s likely a re-watchability to The Adjustment Bureau that should make it slightly “better” than the worsts I’ve seen. (Because those puppies will not get watched again). But for being so unintentionally hilarious - like, SNL would be uber jealous - I’d have to say that, yes, The Adjustment Bureau takes the cake.

Anyway, Hereafter. It, too, is quite awful. But next to The Adjustment Bureau, Hereafter is fantastic. It stars Matt Damon as a factory worker who can communicate with the dead. Soon enough - a lie, it doesn’t happen until way later than it should have - a parallel story intersects with his about a woman who believes she has had a near-death experience.

Disc includes: The Eastwood Factor (extended edition)

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