This is an interesting week for DVD/Blu-ray releases. For those with taste, there is the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit, which might be the most genuinely fun movie they’ve ever made. It is certainly not their best film, but it’s a rare example of what the Coens can do when they’re not trying to completely freak out half of the audience. Weird Coen films are often great Coen films, but True Girt allowed them to take their brilliance and apply it to a more mainstream package. Another good film—though not great—is John Wells’ economic collapse drama The Company Men. It’s hard to work up much sympathy for the upper-class characters, but it’s a well-made film that goes down relatively easy. For those without taste, there is Just Go With It, Adam Sandler’s latest attempt to look as apathetic on camera as possible.
But without a doubt, the best thing on DVD this week is the third season of Breaking Bad, AMC’s heart-wrenching drama series about a high school chemistry who turns to making and selling methamphetamines. By the time the third season begins, the protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is no longer in the business just to leave his family a bit of money once he dies from cancer. He’s started to do it all solely for his own personal gain. As if he wasn’t already impossibly far down the rabbit hole, season three shows us a man who has darn near abandoned all sense of morality. In fact, the meth business is no longer just a side project. It has become his way of life, and he is good at it.
The third season is one of the most relentlessly compelling and addictive seasons of television I’ve seen. Walter’s family life is slowly crumbling, life in the drug-dealing world is getting out of hand, and his brother-in-law spends much of season being hunted by a pair of particularly angry twins. It all comes to a head with the final two episodes of the season, entitled “Half Measures” and “Full Measure.” These two episodes rival the end of The West Wing’s second season when it comes to their ability to shake you to your core. (The parallels don’t end there. Both finales focus on protagonists who must make one difficult decision that will shape the rest of their lives. But I digress.) The difference is that Aaron Sorkin’s show turned it into something rousing. When “Full Measure” is over, the viewer begins to feel ill.
The fourth season of Breaking Bad will premiere on July 17. This release date—over a month beforehand—provides you all with a perfect window to gear up. There are few shows that have ever left as large an impact on me as this one. Not everyone will be able to stomach it, but even then they’ll have a hard time walking away once they’re hooked.
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