One thing you can say about movies from the sixties–they were wildly different from the stuff we see today. And a perfect example of this is Contempt (Le Mepris), a copy of which the folks at Lions Gate sent out for review. And after seeing it, I have deep doubts as to whether this would actually get made today. Not because the content is particular objectionable, but because the content is so spectacularly dull.

Contempt joins us with Camille and Paul, a screenwriter and his wife, who loses affection for her husband while he’s in the midst of doing rewrites on The Odyssey, directed by Fritz Lang (actually played by Fritz Lang, interestingly) and produced by American producer Jonathan Prokosch. So now, we get to watch Camille and Paul’s marriage fall apart while he does rewrites, and witness the juxtaposition of a disastrous marriage and the screenwriter’s place in the movie industry.

Or as I like to think of it, we get to watch Paul do rewrites for the most incomprehensible movie I’ve seen since my last go-round with David Lynch while his marriage falls apart. In other words, ninety minutes of EXCRUCIATING BOREDOM as a couple incessantly bickers in French for no clear reason, followed intermittently by long-winded pronouncements from Prokosch. Oh, and if Prokosch isn’t reading from Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, I’d be absolutely astonished.

And then there are the strange scenes–for instance, when Paul, Camille, Fritz Lang and Prokosch go to a stage show, the singing will regularly cut out and be replaced by the characters’ dialogue, but sometimes, we’ll get the singing over the dialogue, and I’m at a loss at whether or not this is intentional or some kind of horrible accident.

Contempt is, plain and simple, a disaster. An incredibly boring disaster, not to put too fine a point on it. I’ve seen some really interesting stuff come out of Lions Gate’s Studio Canal affiliation, but this one is such a massive snoozefest that it’s scarcely worth seeing. Unless you find French bickering and large doses of nonsense engaging, you’re probably going to get a lot of rest watching this hour and forty minute sleeping pill.

The Screenhead Ten Scale understands the title of Contempt well, and even shares it for this slow, plodding, pretentious nightmare, handing the contemptible Contempt a three out of ten for its incredible lack of focus and aggressive dullness.

On behalf of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, I am pleased to announce the winner of the giveaway for Game of Death, which is available on DVD AND BLU-RAY.

Girlon Shop is the winner, congratulations! This is what Girlon Shop has to say about Wesley Snipes: “I’ve always been a fan o Wesley mainly because of Blade Series.”

Action superstar Wesley Snipes is back and badder than ever as CIA Agent Marcus Jones, a professional hit man caught in a double-cross between his partners in the agency, a ruthless arms dealer and a powerful Wall Street broker worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Framed for a murder he didn’t commit and chased by expert assassins, Jones must clear his name before it’s too late. Directed by Giorgio Serafini, the movie includes Robert Davi (Die Hard), Gary Daniels (The Expendables) and Zoë Bell (Grindhouse).

You can check out Steve Anderson’s review of Game of Death and learn more about the movie.

Screenhead is starting the weekend off right by hosting an online giveaway to promote the Sony Pictures Home Entertainment film, Faster. The Dwayne Johnson movie is available wherever DVDs are sold, but you might win a copy by entering our giveaway. I love the storyline because it suits Dwayne Johnson so well. The character reminds me of his wrestling days as “The Rock.”

After 10 years in prison, Driver (Johnson) has focused on one thing – hunting down the people responsible for brutally murdering his brother.

Now a free man with a terrifying purpose, he sets out to find and kill all those on his list. But on his heels are two men who will do anything to stop him – a veteran cop (Billy Bob Thornton) and a hit man (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). The Driver may have found his match as we watch the movie and figure out who is the hunter and who is the hunted.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winner March 18, 2011.

Here is the movie trailer, which is intense!

Screenhead is hosting a fun giveaway for the whole family. On behalf of Lionsgate Home Entertainment, we are pleased to present Timmy Time: Timmy Steals the Show first-ever DVD from the all-new Preschool series on Playhouse Disney from the Oscar-winning creators of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep! We are giving away the Timmy Time DVD and Plush Toy!

Fans of the brilliant, Oscar-winning Aardman studios hit children’s series Shaun the Sheep will recognize Timmy as the baby lamb on the farm who is frequently drawn into all kinds of chaotic adventures by the mischievous older sheep. Used to having his way by being “the only lamb in the flock,” Timmy is now heading to preschool with a lot to learn about playing nicely with others, namely his fellow classmates of the furry, feathered and spiky types.

Preschoolers will find both familiarity and fun in Timmy and his friends’ hilarious everyday antics; spilled paint, dealing with beloved blankies and accidentally breaking a window while playing catch (OOPS!). The non-dialogue approach to storytelling and Aardman’s unique and endearing claymation-style animation is perfect for young viewers.

Timmy Time: Timmy Steals the Show is available on DVD. To enter our giveaway to win the DVD and Timmy Time plush toy, post your name and we will pick the winner March 17, 2011.

Just ahead of its release on DVD, the folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a copy of The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season for us to review, and I have been looking forward to this since I first read that it was happening.

The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season joins police officer Rick Grimes, who’s just emerged from a coma. He discovers that the world he’s in now is much, much different from the one he left, in that this one is jammed full of the titular walking dead. And with a handful of other survivors, he sets out, looking for a safe place to call home as the hordes of zombies descend on anything they can find even vaguely resembling food. The problem? We vaguely resemble food. More than vaguely, in fact–we are food for zombies. But it’s not just the zombies that make life dangerous in this new world…it’s the other survivors, in an unsettlingly large number of cases.

Readers of the comic book will likely be unnerved by the sheer number of differences between the original comic and the dramatization–this is actually standard fare as far as this sort of thing goes–but the end result will still be full of zombies, and it will still be full of gunplay, and many of the high points of the original–especially the characters–will still come to pass.

The first parts offer this great “just getting caught up” sort of feel that’s actually plenty creepy in its own right. Yes, the concept isn’t exactly new–28 Days Later did it first–but it was as creepy then as it is creepy now.

Sometimes it’s a bit overwrought, and sometimes it works the drama button just a little too hard for its own good, but still, this first season is laying the groundwork for a thoroughly impressive dynasty that will, eventually, be a wildly impressive piece of work.

I’m personally dying to see how they handle the Governor, myself.

We’ve got a great start here, and if the next season–starting this fall–proves anywhere near as good as this one did, well, we’re in for a treat, make no mistake there.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season a nine out of ten, a reward for promise begun, and the hope for even better in the future. Man, am I ever looking forward to the second season of this!

That’s right, folks, we’ve got another installment in the growing lineup that is Ghost House Underground titles. And while we’ve seen some great ones come out of this, we’ve also seen some pretty low end stuff come out of it too. And thanks to the folks at Lions Gate, who sent a copy over, we get to see where Psych 9 falls in.

Psych 9 follows a young lady who’s taken a new job as security at a recently closed hospital. She’s working nights, enjoying the peace and quiet…at least until strange things start happening. And as our heroine discovers what’s going on in the hospital, the more threatening it looks. Can she find out the truth behind what happened before the hospital closed, or will it put paid to her first?

I’ll hand it to the first half of this movie–it’s got a couple of those good old fashioned Sam Raimi-style jump scares, which is just awesome, and the hospital itself is this dingy, run-down wreckage that can only be described as creepy, so when you put ominous setting together with freaky jump-scares, you’ve got at least part of a nice bit of horror flick.

It does start to fall apart through the middle, however, but a goodish chunk of that can be chalked up to the nature of the movie itself. This is freaky stuff. We’re dealing with a woman who may or may not have a grip on reality, and things will only get creepier.

It gets badly muddled, but by the time we close in on the end, we get a better look at what all is going on. And though we’ll like precious little of it, the ending is going to be pretty scary by the end.

Psych 9 doesn’t exactly qualify as one of the good Ghost House titles, on par with The Children or The Substitute. But Psych 9 doesn’t qualify as a bad one either, no Dark Floors or No Man’s Land: Rise of the Reeker here. This is a solidly middle of the road title that will do have its job exceedingly well and the other half only marginally so.

Thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale gives Psych 9 a six out of ten for doing its job well, though not as well as it might. Horror buffs, you’ll want to try this one out yourself, and possibly inflict it on a few neophytes for added entertainment value.

It’s been a long strange journey with widow Nancy Botwin and her sons Shane and Silas. And, thanks to the folks out at Lions Gate, who sent out a copy of Weeds Season Six, the Showtime series comes our way once more, and it will keep you laughing..

It’s hard to sum up the plot without giving you the story so far, so I’ll do my best to compress it down. Essentially, Nancy Botwin’s husband unexpectedly dies, leaving her with two sons to care for. Thus, she turns to selling weed in her little planned community to raise the cash necessary to raise two sons. This launches off a whole new life for the Botwins, which brings us to the current season in which Nancy Botwin and family are now in Mexico, following their involvement with a Mexican drug kingpin. But they’ve escaped, and are now serving as scab labor at a hotel. But once Nancy finds out the local drug dealer’s gone on strike, she sees an opportunity to step in and fill the void. But will this be a smart move for Nancy and company? Or will this be yet another in a long, long, long series of missteps?

First off, sad news for those of you fond of the original theme song Little Boxes (I was–there was nothing freakier than original Malvina Reynolds’ Little Boxes. They might as well have called it Pod People: The Song.) it won’t be back for some while here.

But this will be soundly overwhelmed by the sheer hilarity that this series packs. It’s so seldom that I actually get to laugh at a television series, but Weeds will bring so much laughter that sometimes I wonder if the discs were pressed with laughing gas, and their exposure to the heat and rotation in my DVD player has released it.

It helps that the cast is brilliant, in its way, and there’s an intermingling of comedy and drama that makes each sharper for their mixing. It’s almost like having red wine with beef–the two work together.

It’s not every day that television is actually, you know, good, but Weeds from Showtime and Lions Gate will manage to succeed where so many before it have failed.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives a full ten out of ten to Weeds Season Six, a clever mix of comedy and drama that succeeds on both sides by virtue of its mixing. Spark this one up and prepare for a good long weekend of laughs and excitement.

I was looking forward to this one for some time, as I’d meant to tackle this one in theaters but something else cropped up instead. And now, the folks at Lions Gate have stepped in to fill the gap and sent a copy of The Next Three Days for me to review for you. And I’m very, very glad they did.

The Next Three Days follows a normal, happy family that will stay neither normal nor happy for long. The mother has just been arrested for murder, and the father has decided that the thing to do is not go through the legal system and clear her name proper–though he tries that, for three years, too–but rather, to show the legal system who REALLY runs things and break her out of jail. Now, the family is on the run in a desperate bid to both survive and stay together.

Part of the great fun of The Next Three Days comes from watching our hero plan the escape of his wife and family. As it turns out, breaking someone out of jail is a phenomenally difficult prospect. Time frames are measured in minutes. The operation is so incredibly complex that watching it get figured is like watching a sculpture in progress.

But it only gets better from there; see, the first half of the movie is all about the preparation that’s involved in breaking a woman out of prison. The second half is all about what you do when you’re out. Like one of the characters–a sorely underused Liam Neeson–says: getting out is the easy part. It’s staying free that’s hard.

And when the plan doesn’t go according to Hoyle, watching the resulting improvisations is well worth the price of admission.

This is a taut thriller that does spectacularly well. Even the things that might be described as plot holes–like how so many things go just right for our fugitives–can be explained away as the result of sheer careful planning. There’s even a nifty twist at the end that will be just piles of fun all at once.

So basically, we’re dealing with a movie that packs both suspense and thrills in almost equal measure, a constant skein of delights, and even caps it all off with a twist. This cannot be described as anything but a good movie.

The Screenhead Ten Scale reacts accordingly, giving The Next Three Days, a surprisingly sweet title, an eight out of ten–it’s got lots to love and will prove terribly exciting for those of you who like your movies with plenty of action and suspense all at the same time.

Way, way back in the depths of the 1980s–so far back that even I only half-remember it–there was a TV show on NBC (I think it was NBC, anyway) called Highway To Heaven. And in this show, Michael Landon got to once again play the upright sort who went around helping people. And the folks out at A&E got the whole first season together on a huge seven-disc array and sent me out a copy for me to review, and that’s just what we’re doing right now.

Highway to Heaven follows Jonathan Smith, an angel sent down from heaven to do some good things for folks who were in need, and also help improve some of the folks whose souls could stand a bit of shoring up. Smith would go all around, performing these various deeds, and often accompanied by a bitter former police officer. And sometimes, when the situation called for it, Smith has just a little extra angel power in line to get the job done.

Highway to Heaven has a tendency to get a bit schmaltzy at times…okay, maybe a LOT schmaltzy at times…but it’s got an endearing quality, a little bit of an inspirational quality, the kind of uplifting theme that you hardly ever see in television shows today, and the kind of thing that you actually could get from television shows way back in the eighties.

The individual episodes were geared to run an hour each–rather, an hour with commercials, so about forty five minutes–so they do have a tendency to feel a bit over long, wearing out their welcome after a bit. But still, you’ll get that uplifting, feel-good quality out of them, so it’s probably best to take these in small bits, a little at a time, and probably just before bed because these might make you a bit tired, what with wading through all that sentimentality and all. But still, this is some solid work here, and watching it will often make you feel good, which is something that doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should when you watch television.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Highway to Heaven Season One a thoroughly angelic seven out of ten. It’s got its drawbacks–pacing is a big one, and the occasionally over the top nature of the plot is a second–but it will often make you feel good, and this dose of retro joy is, as a result, quite worth it.

Screenhead is hosting a giveaway for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s release of SWAT: Firefight by offering (1) copy of the DVD.

The story is about an expert in anti-terrorism tactics is ordered to Detroit to train its S.W.A.T. team. But everything changes when a government assassin is determined to kill the entire S.W.A.T. team. SWAT: Firefight hit the streets today. The movie belongs in your DVD library.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winner March 15, 2011.