Enter your search terms Web curledupdvd Submit search form	THE RESIDENT Featuring: Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Christopher Lee, Lee Pace Director: Antii Jokinen Distributor: Image Entertainment DVD release: 29 March 2011 Runtime: 91 min. (1 disc) Format: AC-3, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC, Widescreen, Blu-ray DVD features: 1080p HD, Aspect ratio 2.35:1, Audio tracks (DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio - English; 5.1 DTS - French; Dolby Digital Mono - Spanish), Subtitles (English SDH, Spanish) If you've ever had one of those nights where you just wanted to rent a couple of movies and snuggle under the covers, you've no doubt perused the aisles of your local video store and, along with the recent hits you might have missed, you see something that wasn't in theaters but catches your eye. These direct-to-videotape (then direct to DVD and, in this case, direct to Blu-ray disc) movies either have low budgets with aging stars past their prime but still remembered, or no stars and a shoestring budget. Sometimes what you pick up turns out to be pure dreck. Sometimes you find a nice little piece of entertainment. In the case of The Resident, you get a finely crafted piece of entertainment. The movie has excellent direction by Antii Jokinen and very good cinematography by Guillermo Navarro, complemented by a strong musical score by John Ottman. So the question is: how does a movie with an estimated twenty million dollar budgets, an Academy Award-winner for a lead and all this talent behind it slip through the cracks and not get a theatrical release? <shrugs shoulders> I have no idea. The movie is executively produced and stars Hilary Swank (Insomnia, Million Dollar Baby) as Juliet Devereau, a hard working emergency room physician who dropped everything and followed the love of her life Jack (Lee Pace) to New York City only to be betrayed: he slept with another woman. So Juliet moves out and finds an apartment in Brooklyn that seems too good to be true. The spacious apartment has a surprisingly low rent and an incredible view of the city. The owner of the building, a handsome man named Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), is renovating the apartment when Juliet walks in and gets it on the spot. Max also lives in the building along with his grandfather, August (Christopher Lee). The movie really starts to turn when a weak-willed (she still loves Jack) Juliet rebuffs Max's sexual advances. Any more detail will spoil the fun. So has this voyeuristic, single woman living alone in New York type of story been before? Yes. Does this make it a bad film? No. The mileage will vary on taste, age, and sex: if you're a woman, especially a single woman, you will find this to be an effectively creepy thriller. Considering the fine actors and the abominations that have passed through theaters in last few years, The Resident is -- if nothing else -- highly watchable. Does it have some flaws? Yes. Could they have pushed the envelope a little more? Maybe. Could the script use a little re-working? Possibly. But I have seen far more badly casted/acted/cliché-riddled movies that not only made it to the silver screen but got major advertising behind them as well. Other than the aforementioned weakness, it's a travesty not to consider The Resident at least a good, solid movie. The disc itself is a simple, bare-bones release: just the movie, subtitles, and the trailer. But since it is Blu-Ray, everything you do see is vivid and lively.
		reviewed by Bobby Blades
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