Very bad things trailer We don

Very bad things trailer

We don t want you spending your hard-earned money on a product that will eventually turn out to be a lemon. Our feature products today are Blu-ray Disc BD players. Let s face it: Although DVD players provided us with great quality video and audio, BD players surpass the DVD standards Whether you want to have a backup of your favorite DVD because it gets scratched pretty easily add more movies to your personal collection, or watch a flick on your iPod without having to spend a fortune, a DVD ripping tool helps you accomplish your goals. You have already probably heard of the clich With the American remake of The Ring such a surprise hit, the rights to Hideo Nakatas follow-up horror thriller Dark Water didnt linger unbought for very long. To be honest, while Nakatas 2002 original had a few interesting ideas about emotional abandonment and alienation, it largely played as a stale retread of the Ring films, complete with a scary dark-haired ghost girl rising from her watery grave. That particular image has become such a cliché that it represents everything tired and derivative about recent Asian horror cinema. When the inevitable Americanized version very bad things trailer announced, its prospects didnt exactly spark my interest despite the participation of director Walter Salles The Motorcycle Diaries, screenwriter Rafael Yglesias Fearless the 1993 Jeff Bridges drama, not the recent Jet Li martial arts epic, or star Jennifer Connelly. I missed the movie when it played theatrically, and judging by its box office returns so did very bad things trailer everyone else. Thats too bad, because looking at it now the movie has a surprising amount of merit and actually improves upon the Japanese original. Connelly stars as Dahlia, a recently divorced mother forced by economic necessity to move with her young daughter into a dreary, run-down apartment building just outside of New York City. The place is quite clearly a miserable hell hole, a fact the obnoxious building owner John C. Reilly tries to downplay by cheerfully announcing that it was designed in the Brutalist Style and claiming that the living room is actually a second bedroom. Daughter Ceci hates their new home instantly, but has a sudden turnaround after wandering up to the roof and finding a Hello Kitty backpack mysteriously waiting for her. Resigned that she can do no better, Dahlia tries to make the best of a bad situation and doesnt question her daughters strange behavior, which includes talking to a new imaginary friend named Natasha. As if the apartment werent already unpleasant enough, tromping footsteps from upstairs keep Dahlia awake in the middle of the night, and a water stain on the ceiling starts dripping icky black liquid onto her bed, a problem for which the rude building superintendent Pete Postlethwaite doesnt offer much help. As the stain grows larger and larger, it seems to take on supernatural overtones when Dahlia learns the true story of the apartment above and the little girl named Natasha who used to live there. Salles and Yglesias stick fairly closely to Nakatas basic plotting while effectively transplanting the Japanese setting to urban America. The movie is a ghost story, but the remake downplays the supernatural aspects in favor of nuanced character drama, leaving it ambiguous whether most of the spooky events actually occur only in the emotionally-fragile heroines head. Abandoned as a child by her own alcoholic mother, Dahlia may just be projecting her fears and insecurities onto her new environment. Connelly delivers a restrained performance free of the histrionics expected in this type of movie, and shes supported by equally good turns from Reilly, Postlethwaite, and especially Tim Roth as her concerned divorce attorney. Each of these roles seems pretty straightforward but are given unexpected complexities. The movie is plenty atmospheric and creepy, but not at all the type of gory shocker the studio promoted it as, which probably accounts for its poor reception. If not exactly a genre masterpiece, the new Dark Water genuinely surprised me with its intelligence and depth of characterization. Its a better movie than it needed to be, and even a better movie than the source its based on. Dark Water debuts on the Blu-ray format courtesy of Touchtone Home Entertainment a division of Buena Vista Home Entertainment. The disc contains only the movies original theatrical cut, not the slightly rejiggered Unrated Cut available on standard DVD. That alternate version adds one scene but removes two others found here and actually clocks in a minute shorter. Like Buena Vistas other Blu-rays, the disc has no main menu screen, just Blu-ray pop-up menus accessible while the movie plays. This becomes an issue during the initial set-up if you wish to change your audio or subtitle options. Since the pop-up menus dont work while the movie is paused, you have no choice but to navigate through all the menus while the beginning of the movie plays beneath them, and then skip back to the start of the chapter when youre done. The interface is far from user friendly. Blu-ray discs are only playable in a compatible Blu-ray player.