1.85:1 Widescreen

Sometimes, movies are just inexplicably bad, and as a DVD reviewer, I get to see a lot of them. These are films that are so horrible that I sometimes don’t know where to begin. It is often times hard to place blame in one are or another, when the whole production is flawed.

In the case of Lost and Delirious, however, the blame is easy to place. This film is not half bad… the premise is decent, the film looks and sounds better than expected, and the acting, while not fantastic, is respectable. The pro...lem here is the script. The horrible, awful, appalling, embarrassing script. The dialog in this film makes the whole piece feel not… quite… right. It is riddled with so many nonsensical non sequiturs that makes the viewer wonder if the author has been around teenagers at all in the past forty years. Do people really think that teens speak this way?

Seriously… was a director’s cut of this film really needed? Extended versions of The Lord of the Rings films are welcome, but come on now, The New Guy? This disc includes a mere 4 extra minutes of footage, all of which adds to the back-story; so for those of you hoping of a little bit of added ranch… sorry. You have probably read it before, but here is the premise…

Video

Well, this movie was a let down, and the DVD release is nothing special. Not one of Fox’s better efforts.

The Plot: The Order, disappointingly, turned out to be not much more than a Heath Ledger vehicle, apparently targeted at Goth teenage girls with vaguely Euro pretensions. Without letting out any spoilers, trust me when I say that you’ll be disappointed if you expect anything like what the trailer portrays. The trailer says implies that the Vatican is “..using a killer with supernatural powers to ...ake absolute control of an empire” and paints the movie as a fast-paced action/thriller church conspiracy film – which it isn’t. What is it? Part drama, part horror, very “moody,” totally boring.

Generally speaking, I am not a fan of trendy relationship films. Cameron Crowe's Singles aside, they are just not my kind of thing. They typically embody too much neurosis and whining from the female characters, and either overly sensitive or overly dense men. Plot elements are rarely believable (the two main characters often bump into each other at some all-too-fortuitous locale), and I frequently leave the theater feeling as if I have been manipulated into believing the story would actually be possible if it...happened in real life.

I also tend to not enjoy independent films that put too much power in the hands on one individual. Again, there are exceptions to this rule, such as Jon Favreau's Swingers, but as a whole, I find that it is always better to have input from others when crafting a film. Especially when the others in question have actually made a film before. This is almost always the case when it comes to first-time directors and/or writers. When they try to do it all themselves, I feel that it forces them to bite off more than they can chew, so to speak, and the quality of the work suffers as a result.

Show

It would be a boldfaced lie to say that Alias is the best show of its kind on television. The truth is that it is the ONLY show of its kind on television. Alias certainly contains writing that rivals even the award-gobbling Sopranos. The photography is film quality. The character chemistry, which I rank as the most important element in any show, is wonderful. The characters are compelling. You really start to care about these guys; even the villainous Sloan demands sympathy at times.