Shared Darkness

So self-serious, so very indie and so very dreadful, The Quiet
is
marked by a bracing solemnity, except that it doesn’t fancy itself a
satirical goof on that tone. An exposé of idyllic suburbia that offers
forth
the surface appearance of evocative contrasts with none of the
corresponding psychological depth, the movie is an undeservedly
self-satisfied drama, and a bore to boot.

Leading the parade of
wafer-thin characterizations is high-school cheerleader Nina (Elisha Cuthbert, above left), whose sneering, unsubstantiatedly vicious
demeanor is egged on by an equally catty and bitchy friend, Michelle
(Katy Mixon). Nina has an outwardly perfect life, which naturally means
that she’s masking a dark secret. The most immediately apparent source
of Nina’s irritation is Dot (When a Stranger Calls’ Camilla
Belle), a silent, presumably deaf girl, whom Nina’s parents, architect
Paul (Martin Donovan) and interior decorator Olivia (Edie Falco), have
taken in after the death of her father. Dot is the very definition of
unassuming, but nonetheless becomes a whipping post for Nina’s pent-up
anger — even more so when letterman Connor (Shawn Ashmore), Michelle’s
crush of the moment, expresses an interest in her. All manner of
guarded secrets then come tumbling forth, both in confession and
through deduction, with life-altering consequences for nearly all those
involved.

The Quiet is actually director Jamie Babbit’s second feature film (she’s also helmed episodes of Popular, Gilmore Girls and Nip/Tuck), but it exhibits none of the colorful eccentricity of her first — the zonked-out high school lesbian comedy But I’m a Cheerleader,
which I found kind of awful, but at least flamboyant and original, bad in an
interesting fashion. Penned by Abdi Nazmian and Micah Schraft, The Quiet
merely substitutes tranquility for perspicacity, and is driven by the
twin engines of illogicality and whimsicality. Characters are defined
frequently only through others’ descriptions of them; Olivia is a pill-popping, emotionally
inattentive zombie, though we see no evidence of that in our first (and
longest) encounter with her. Connor, meanwhile, is a “hunk” (and
desired by Michelle) merely because he’s the only
young male in the movie. The movie is shot, furthermore, in what is possibly the most dimly lit
house ever.

Then there’s the niggling matter of Dot’s deafness and muteness.
Throughout the film, it’s advanced that she can read lips if people are
facing her. Yet The Quiet, a movie presumably predicated upon
carefully modulated mood and a few key revelations, is remarkably slack
about enforcing this scene to scene, so twists that in theory should
surprise characters within the movie will have you howling, “Idiot!” at
the screen. By the time The Quiet’s utterly preposterous ending
unravels — complete with a bizarre, out-of-left-field false confession
that both makes no sense within the actual narrative and offers no
sense of authentic catharsis, release or reprieve for the character(s)
it lets off the hook — you’ll be struck dumb in your own way.

The movie is presented in 2.35 anamorphic widescreen, which preserves the aspect ration of its initial theatrical presentation; it also comes with Dolby digital 5.1 surround and Dolby digital 2.0 surround sound English language audio tracks (French and Spanish on the latter as well), and a healthy clutch of subtitles in five different languages. DVD special features include a five-minute dissection of a high school classroom dissection scene within the movie (can we say random?) and a nice seven-minute on-location featurette which examines the movie’s Austin-based shoot. There are also three more brief featurettes on the film’s use of digital photography, its casting, and script development. All of these clock in between five and just under 10 minutes, and while passably interesting, they do raise a flag of potential irritation in that they mention (and show, via on-set footage) various extra scenes and story strands… that we then don’t get to see in unexpurgated form. That’s the definition of a tease, something which The Quiet‘s suggestively tawdy box cover would have you believe is much more a part of the main attraction. D (Movie) B (Disc)

  a routine
Spanish Fly-smuggling trip back from Mexico, two friends stumble upon an
out-of-the-way gentlemen’s club with no cover charge and plenty of sexy,
friendly ladies,” you know that your
life just got better — which is to say, irrespective of the quality of the movie
that follows, you will forevermore have, in your life, the memory of the
phrase, “During a routine Spanish Fly-smuggling trip back from Mexico…”

Yes, Devil’s Den is
that movie. And yes, it’s every bit as ridiculous as you might suspect given
even that one line. What’s that? Oh, right, right… I’ve neglected to mention
the specifics of the rest of the narrative arc. A sort of low-grade rip-off of From Dusk ’Til Dawn, Devil’s Den unfolds at the same-named
strip club, which is actually a recruiting station and portal for an army of flesh-eating
undead. Backed into a corner, drug-running film geek Quinn (Devon Sawa, aka
that kid from Final Destination, and currently
a poor man’s Shane West), trigger-happy assassin Caitlin (Kelly Hu, a loooong
way from the comforts of X-Men
franchise and even The Scorpion King),
samurai demon hunter Leonard (horror icon Ken Foree, of the original Dawn of the Dead, plus Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects), and airhead
cocktail waitress Candy (Karen Maxwell) must band together and do battle with ferocious
hordes of possessed, gut-ripping strippers.

There’s actually some halfway funny B-movie dialogue here (“Can’t
we just enjoy the spoils of that particular victory?” queries Quinn plaintively,
in making a case for not going deeper into the lair and searching out the “queen”
undead/vampire stripper). There’s also, believe it or not, a full-blown Zatoichi
fantasy sequence (!), for which I give the filmmakers mad props. Still, the
fact remains that limited means and shoddy execution absolutely murder any sort of
relative, to-scale chance this movie has; dialogue is mangled, and all action
is shot in a dirty, over-the-shoulder style that screams unplanned, seat-of-the-pants direction.
Helmer Jeff Burr is a stunt veteran who’s racked up a bunch of genre credits
(including Stepfather II), but he
brings nothing to the table here as far as skillful evocation of goosing mood.
This movie is a decent showcase for one of the most unfortunately maligned
guilds in Hollywood — the Buxom
Stunt Ladies of America
— but nothing more.

Presented in an Amray case with an embossed foil O-card slipcover,
Devil’s Den comes with a 1.78:1 widescreen
transfer, enhanced for 16×9 TVs. The disc does, though, actually include a good bit of supplemental material — an audio commentary track with
Burr, a brief making-of featurette with good-natured interviews with most of
the cast (big shocker: Sawa was inked the night before shooting began) and a blooper
reel that reveals Hu to be just a little bit petulant (concerned about her lighting
and angles, but still flubbing plenty of lines). There’s also a photo gallery and a copy of
the screenplay on DVD-ROM. Too bad the product itself weren’t more worthy of the celebration. Oh well, at least we’ll always have that routine Spanish Fly-smuggling trip… D (Movie) B+ (Disc)

No one really knows if Chinese
Democracy, the fabled Guns N’ Roses follow-up album, will ever really see
the light of day. In fact, democracy might break out in the real mainland China
before that happens. But one thing is for certain: no matter the extraordinary
degree of their ill-fated reunion at the MTV
Movie Awards a few years back (and make no mistake, that was awful, and not just because Slash
was subbed out for a guy named Buckethead), in their heyday in the 1980s Guns N’
Roses plain kicked ass. “Big time,” as Dick Cheney would say.

Fronted by slithery, enigmatic singer Axl Rose, they were
the epitome of all that hairspray metal bands aspired to, and then some. The
biggest group on the planet for a few short years, they sold 50 million albums
and created a hard rock sound all their own before imploding in the all-too-predictable
haze of drugs, alcohol, in-feuding and recrimination. The Guns N’ Roses DVD Collector’s Box is a two-DVD set that features
an unauthorized biography and culls together extant interview footage with band
members, close friends and industry colleagues, family members and the like, along
with a good bit of performance footage. With unpublished photographs, location
shoot footage and more, it all rounds together for a nice gift for the super-hardcore
fan that has everything… except the new material that Axl Rose won’t release.
Casual fans, though, can rest easy, waiting for the onslaught of officially sanctioned,
slightly more polished memorabilia that would no doubt accompany any official
reunion tour or project.

The first title herein is Axl Rose: The Prettiest Star, which may be the silliest, most fey
name for any sort of accompanying piece of celebratory biography I’ve ever
heard. With interviews from former manager Vicky Hamilton, guitarist Chris
Weber, Robert John and the like, this is a look back at Axl in the glam-rock
days of the ’80s, charting the deprivation and isolation of his youth, his
arrival in Los Angeles from Lafayette,
Indiana as basically a runaway and his early
escape into the drug-and-party-fueled music scene. More directly titled is Sex N’ Drugs N’ Rock N’ Roll (duh!),
which churns up some good dirt on the decidedly well-earned bad-boy reputation
of the group (Duff McKagan seems to have had a thing for public urination).
There’s not much really new here, but it’s a nice, rowdy trip down memory lane,
and a look back at a time when rock stars could be counted on to be less
eloquent and more self-destructive and devastatingly entertaining than the
leader of the free world. Ahh, those were the days…

Presented in 4:3 format on region-free discs, these titles
come packaged in their own Amray slipcases, which are in turn stored in a nice,
sealable, cardboard slipcover. Extra features are just so-so, with a trivia
section, a lengthy band quiz and an interactive discography. More framing
critical discourse would have been welcome, but hey — this ain’t academia, I
guess. You’re in the jungle, baby… C (Movies) C+ (Discs)

Hellboy prior to the 2004 film adaptation by Guillermo Del Toro, but I was handily won over by that movie’s spry, smart
blend of band-of-brothers superhero action, wry humor and supernatural
mysticism (the latter a Del Toro staple, dating back to Chronos, and a morsel that would additionally be put to good use in
Pan’s Labyrinth). Hellboy: Sword
of Storms, then, expands upon that movie’s laid track by taking the titular
character — a baby demon originally summoned from hell by the Nazis in order to
help them try to take over the world, but captured by Allied forces and turned over
to a secret underground organization created to help defend the world from
paranormal attacks — into the animated realm, and it does so in engaging fashion.

In Sword of Storms, a professor specializing in the occult
opens up a forbidden Japanese scroll, and is possessed by the restless spirits
of Thunder and Lightning. Springing to action, Hellboy and the rest of the Bureau
for Paranormal Research and Defense (or B.P.R.D.) — a group that includes Liz
Sherman, the amphibious Abe Sapien and Professor Kate Corrigan — investigate
the happenings surrounding the professor’s disappearance and work to set things
right. This means plenty of chances for Hellboy to break out his arsenal of tailor-made
weapons, including that giant club of a right hand. He also stumbles across an old,
important samurai sword, however — a rapier which whisks him away to dangerous
world full of giant spiders and sea creatures, fiery floating heads and hordes
of the undead.

Characterized by deep, lush backgrounds and stark angles, Sword of Storms conforms to the stylized look and
feel of the series that Mignola established with the comic book, but it also —
quite wisely, in my opinion — uses the voice talents of the cast of Del Toro’s
film. Ron Perlman’s Hellboy is forceful and engaging, and Selma Blair as Liz
and Doug Jones as Abe gives the project a nice, corollary feel to the
live-action feature.

Presented in a very nice 1.78:1 widescreen transfer, Sword of Storms looks great — with no
blurring of overlapping dark colors, and no interlacing problems — and comes with
three audio tracks: English language Dolby digital 5.1 and Dolby digital 2.0
mixes, and a Spanish language Dolby digital 2.0 mix. All of these tracks are
clean and strong in the dialogue department, but the 5.1 mix cranks up the
subwoofers and ambient sound to create a truly immersive experience that never overwhelms.

Hearteningly, this release is also chock full of featurettes
that enhance both its casual viewing and collectibility. Probably the best amongst
all of these is A New Breed, a documentary feature that gives newbies an
edifying overview of the Hellboy universe, from the beginning of the comic all
the way up to this film. Mignola and others talk about the evolution of the
character and the series, and conceptual art, animatics and the like are all
nicely showcased. Next up is an audio commentary track from Mignola and the
makers of the movie; full of some good anecdotes, this delves deeper into the underpinnings
of Japanese folklore that provide the movie with its plot. There’s also a Comic-Con
panel discussion on the project and a few other colorful promotional tidbits,
with trailers for a Hellboy videogame
and other forthcoming projects rounding things out. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Factotum is a rambling, episodic, mock-biography of barfly and author Charles Bukowski, anchored by a fine,
square-jawed lead performance from Matt Dillon, who between this and
Crash has located a better use of his talent in playing louts and
fringe-dwellers. Watching the film — which is actually quite funny at times, despite its darkness
— you get a palpable sense of how Dillon’s character’s acting out (and thus Bukowski’s as well) stems from his racing, perpetually dissatisfied inner monologue, and how his
general disagreeableness is hardwired
to an irreconcilable urgency to locate in both life and his art the same sort of
forward-leaning insistence he feels in his soul. A 28-minute look at the making of the movie and filmmaker Bent Hamer’s other works anchors the supplemental slate. For the full DVD review, from IGN, click here.

Canadian singer-songwriter Jann Arden has sold more than two
million records, but I confess that until I plunked this DVD down in my player,
I don’t believe I’d heard of her. I say I don’t believe that I had because the name sounds vaguely familiar, and
the face seems recognizable as well, as Arden herself self-effacingly jokes in
talking about living life seemingly on the perpetual precipice of something
bigger. Set against a backdrop of her music, Jann Arden: A Work in Progress is apparently part of a
north-of-the-border arts-biography series, and it delivers a charming, revelatory
portrait of a pop singer who steadfastly refuses to be stereotyped in an
industry that thrives on image and radio-ready singles.

Running 50 minutes and anchored by a Dolby digital 5.1 surround
sound mix, A Work in Progress mixes
together interview footage with performance material, to solid effect. First
things first: a complete track listing consists of “I Would Die For You,” “Good
Mother,” “Ode to a Friend,” “Wonderdrug,” “The Sound Of,” “Time for Mercy,” “Hangin’
by a Thread,” “Holy Moses,” “In Your Keeping,” “I Just Don’t Love You Anymore,”
“Could I Be Your Girl,” “Insensitive,” “Wishing That,” “Another Human Being,” “Piece
of It All,” “Sleepless” and “Will You Remember Me.”

It’s Arden’s disarming
candor and skill with a quip, however, that makes this title such breezy fun. Whether
talking about her weight (“I got a boob caught in the blender and thought it
was heartburn…”) and love of cooking, her dating and romantic history, the
occasional acting stint (she’s done a couple tours of The Vagina Monologues) or her musical inspirations, Arden comes off
as refreshingly at ease with who she is, and that in turn translates to the
appeal of her music, which is of the light and evocative singer-songwriter
mode, but with much more thoughtful lyrics. (Think along the lines of a female Luka
Bloom, for point of reference.) There are unfortunately no additional
supplemental extras herein, but this is overall a well-produced disc, and
certainly worthy of your time if interested in getting to know Arden
and her work. For more information, visit her eponymous web site. B (Concert) C+ (Disc)

Half Nelson — for which young star Ryan
Gosling has been deservingly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar — is every bit an
achingly perfect indie film, from its subject matter to the manner it defaults
to jittery close-ups when it doesn’t really know what else to do with its
framing and mise en scène. When
combined with its tragic subject matter, this steadfast adherence to overt
impressionism sometimes comes off as a bit manipulative and calculated. Still,
for the most part, the artistry herein wins one over, because you at least have
complicated characters rubbed raw up against one another — a sight far too rare
in mainstream Hollywood product.

By day, idealistic, easygoing Dan Dunne (Gosling) struggles
to reach the underprivileged, predominantly African-American students in his Brooklyn
high school classroom, where he coaches the girls’ basketball team and inspires
his pupils to examine everything from the civil rights movement to the Civil
War with a methodology that leans more on ramshackle, open-ended debate than strict
lecture. By night, though, Dan struggles with alcoholism and an addiction to
crack cocaine, as well as the accumulated weight of all of his disappointments
and disillusionment. Juggling hangovers and homework, Dan keeps his
precariously compartmentalized lives for the most part separated until one of
his students, Drey (Shareeka Epps), catches him, broken down and in the act of
getting high in the locker room after a basketball game. From there, the pair forms
an unlikely and unexpectedly deep friendship — each wordlessly goading the
other into some form of change or self-betterment — that could have potentially
life-altering consequences for each of them.

Co-screenwriters Ryan Fleck (who also directed the movie)
and Anna Boden developed the script several years ago at the Sundance
Screenwriters Lab and, with little money or resources available to produce a
feature, refashioned the story into short form and shot Gowanus, Brooklyn (so named for its setting) on digital video with
friends and local kids as their cast and crew. Once that won the Grand Jury
Prize for shorts at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, the duo then went ahead
with efforts to mount a full-fledged feature, finding a successful, equally
devoted collaborator in Gosling.

As previously noted, director Fleck trades heartily in
instinctive, verité filmmaking technique, though it frequently seems as much by
nature of budgeted necessity as intellectual approach. Half Nelson is pitiless and full of muddied absolutes, but for the
most part free of calluses — perhaps too much so. The absolute brilliance of
some self-contained scenes — Dan angrily confronting nearby drug peddler Frank (Anthony
Mackie) about Drey, only to have his antagonism melt away in a fit of silently
acknowledged hypocrisy and the casually floated proposition of a free score —
leaves one wanting for a slightly more formalized structure and style. The
floating frames of cinematographer Andrij Parekh’s handheld close-ups sometimes
wear out their welcome, and there is too little sense of logical progression
from scene to scene, too little mooring in the movie’s plump, listless second
act.

What easily redeems Half
Nelson, though, are its characters and superb acting. In Frank and Dan,
Drey is caught between two poles — neither a traditional or proper role model,
yet each attempting in their own way to help shepherd her through adolescence.
Epps’ beautifully low-key performance perfectly captures her commingled
affection for and disappointment in Dan; it’s not a tawdry loss of her own
innocence so much as a slow slide through bystander’s observation, and this is
more emblematic, I feel, of adolescence’s surrender to pessimism.

Presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the
aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition, Half Nelson comes with English language Dolby digital 5.1 and
stereo audio tracks, as well as optional English and Spanish subtitles. The DVD
comes with a low-key feature-length audio commentary track from Fleck and
Boden; praise runs wide and deep for both Gosling and Epps, and they comment on
the film’s roots in the aforementioned short and paring process en route to the
big screen. Three deleted scenes run a combined three-and-a-half minutes, while
four extended scenes clock in at the same amount. There are no wild new
discoveries here, but a bit more of an establishment of Drey as an adolescent
in a scene that showcases a reliance on manipulation. Seven minutes of outtakes
and a music video (Rhymefest’s “Wanted”) otherwise complement the release; the
only thing missing — and it’s a big hole — is face time with Gosling, a
reluctant star who won’t be forever able to avoid the spotlight if he keeps
delivering the type of fiercely mesmerizing performance he does in Half Nelson. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Office Space, but his pitch-perfect,
average-guy pliability in that cult classic sealed the deal for me. Now,
courtesy of the new-to-DVD Relative
Strangers, comes the secret of his success. Says Livingston
on one of the disc’s extras, sitting next to his father, “I just usually try to
imagine how my dad would say something, and say it like that.” Brilliant!

Livingston plays Dr. Richard Clayton, an upward-trajectory
kind of guy for whom everything is coming up aces; he’s got a loving fiancée,
Ellen (Neve Campbell), two wonderful and supportive parents (Edward Hermann and
Christine Baranski), and a successful career as a psychiatrist, not to mention a
self-help book on anger management climbing the best-seller list. Everything in
his life is perfect, right on course — all until, that is, his jealous brother
(Bob Odenkirk) tells Richard in a moment of piqued anger that he was adopted.

Naturally, this stimulates Richard’s curiosity, and he hires
a private investigator to locate his birth parents, who turn out to be Frank
and Agnes Manure (Danny De Vito and Kathy Bates), a pair of perpetually jubilant
but crude and offensive carnies. The crude pair proceeds to make Richard’s life
miserable, from wrecking his relationships with friends and family to
sabotaging his career during a live television taping promoting his new book to
threatening to upend his approaching nuptials.

Directed by Greg Glienna, from a script co-written with Peter
Stass, Relative Strangers leans
heavily on its Meet the Parents roots
(Glienna having written, directed and starred in the 1992 version on which the 2000
Ben Stiller/Robert De Niro remake was based, and received story credit on that
film and its sequel). That means comedy rooted in the collision of the staid
and mannered with the willfully broad. So does Relative Strangers shock you with its transgressiveness or
originality of structure? No, not really. What it does have, though, is a bunch
of comedic heavy hitters doing some fine, fun character work. (Alongside the
aforementioned cast, Martin Mull and Beverly D’Angelo also appear.) De Vito has
an absolute blast as Frank; it’s good to see him back in mischievous top
form. Livingston, meanwhile, is a good, anchored guide through all of this mayhem.

DVD supplemental features consist of a nicely stitched
together, 13-minute on-set featurette, which includes plenty of cast and crew
interviews, plus Livingston jokingly talk about his joy at finally getting to
experience a “nut take” on film, in which his groin is the recipient of a giant
rubber-band ball. (In a zonked-out bit Mr.
Show fans will certainly appreciate, Odenkirk also speaks reverentially
about his first on-set sandwich.) In addition, there’s a five-minute segment
which highlights cast members’ recollections of their own parents, and it’s
here that Livingston palls around with his father. The
film clips within these segments are (rather strangely) rendered in horrible
quality, but the rest of the material is fine. Optional Spanish subtitles stand
alongside a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. B- (Movie) B (Disc)