The Bling Ring (2011/Lifetime DVD)/Face To
Face (2011/Umbrella Region Zero/0/Free PAL DVD)/Girl Fight (2011/Lifetime DVD)
Picture: C+/C+/C Sound: C+ Extras: D Main Programs: C/C+/C-
PLEASE NOTE: The Face To Face DVD is in the PAL format, is Region Free and can only
be operated on machines capable of playing back PAL (including many U.S.
players, but not all of them) and can be ordered exclusively from our friends
at Umbrella Entertainment at the website addresses provided at the end of the
review.
Bullying has
became a new topic by a media whose mentality since the 1980s has actually
encouraged it, so most programs trying to deal with it (scripted or not) have
their issues and here are three of them.
Not to be
confused in any way with the upcoming Sofia Coppola film, The Bling Ring includes a touch of the bullying culture as sexy
Asian girl (Yin Chang) convinces insecure blonde guy (Austin Butler of Switched At Birth, wasted badly here
too) that they should go out and rob from the rich in Beverly Hills, et al,
including their stores. This makes him
feel wanted, but any connections here are very tenuous and the unconvincing,
but it is the same emptiness pushing him that also accompanies bullying and it
is simply the flipside of the same bad situation. This is very badly acted and Butler might not have been
the best choice for this role because I did not believe he fell for what
happened.
Michael
Rymer’s Face To Face (2011) comes
from Australia and also deals with bullying and brings together several parties
to deal with a situation of that and much violence, but adults are here for the
first part… at least people of adult age.
Based on the play by David Williamson, it starts to deal with the set up
of conflict well, but after the halfway mark, turns around and starts to want
to be the Oscar-winning film Crash. Too bad, because we have a good cast with
some good performances (Matthew Newton reunited with Rymer from 2002’s Queen Of The Damned) and this is also
well edited, but its conclusion does not work and when you think about it, is a
cop out in resolving everything it brings up.
Girl Fight is a bad drama about teen
bullying among an all-female cast with a safe revenge ending (in court) that
never rings true and never deals with the issues like it could. Anne Heche is not bad here, but this is a
mess. Like Bling, part of the problem is that the lazy, laidback,
condescending tone of the Lifetime Network represents the kind of complacency
that has set up the very atmosphere (including being anti-feminist in sneaky
ways) that has led to our bullying culture today, which is constantly bared out
by their release slate, so their direct dealing with the subject is phony all
the way.
The anamorphically
enhanced 1.78 X 1 image in all three cases is soft and all are shot on HD
cameras, but Fight is even softer
than the rest and consistent color saves the others form being worse. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on all
three discs are simple and nothing to write home about, though Face is marginally
more consistent than the other two.
There are no extras on any of these.
As noted
above, you can order the Face To Face
PAL DVD import exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
