The lingering implication of the post-worldly fate of felines in these two titles notwithstanding, All Dogs Go To Heaven
and its shaggy follow-up stand as estimable entries in the canon of
genial animated animal flicks. A new double-disc DVD presentation,
meanwhile, affords parents the chance to double down and stretch their
entertainment dollar, purchasing or renting both titles in one swoop.
The
first movie, from 1989, actually takes as its premise something a
little twisted and off-center, telling the story of Charlie B. Barkin
(voiced by Burt Reynolds), a mischievous, pre-World War II, New Orleans
“gangster” dog double-crossed by his business partner, Carface Malone
(voiced by Vic Tayback). On his way to heaven, he instead discovers how
to get back to Earth, and so he plots to extract his revenge. Once back
on terra firma, however, Charlie is taken in by a little orphan
girl named Anne-Marie (voiced by Judith Barsi), who, along with his old
pal Itchy (voiced by Dom DeLuise), teaches him about the healing power
of love and affection, something he apparently didn’t pick up from hair
band Nelson’s stirring power ballad. Co-written and directed by Don
Bluth (The Secret of Nimh), the movie is adroitly animated, and helped kick-start the animation renaissance of the late 1980s.
The 1996 straight-to-video sequel, co-helmed by Paul Sabella and
Larry Leker, finds lovable scamp Charlie (this time voiced by Charlie
Sheen, in a bit of spot-on voice casting) discovering that the
afterlife isn’t all he thought it would be. After Gabriel’s Horn is
stolen from heaven, he and Itchy are dispatched to retrieve it, where
they run into Carface (this time voiced by Ernest Borgnine), a demonic
cat named Red (voiced by George Hearn) and, as Charlie’s love interest,
a flip-haired Irish setter named Sasha LaFleur (voiced by Sheena
Easton). The tunes from Grammy winners Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil (An American Tale)
don’t quite match the original work of Charles Strouse and T.J.
Kuenster (there’s not the kitsch value, either, of Burt Reynolds
teaming up with DeLuise and Loni Anderson), but the story here is
actually a bit deeper and more engaging, even if the animation is
somewhat downsized.
Housed in a matching pair of slimline cases in a cardboard slipcase, neither disc comes with any sort of real extras. All Dogs Go To Heaven
includes the original theatrical trailer, but that’s it. Both movies
are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with optional French and Spanish
subtitles. A French language Dolby surround track stands alongside the
English Dolby surround sound mix on the original movie; the sequel
features an English 5.1 Dolby surround mix, as well as French and
Spanish Dolby surround mixes. C+ (Movies) D (Disc)
I reviewed Criterion’s superb DVD release of this film earlier this year elsewhere, but I love it so that I want to touch upon it again here. A delightfully barbed comedy of manners, Whit Stillman’s witty, literate Metropolitan
is an undeniable high point of independent ‘90s cinema, one of those
movies I made a note — both mental and literal — to track down on DVD
when it finally saw release on the format. A pleasure, then, that
Criterion spearheaded the release with such a fine eye and attention to
detail, resulting in a fitting and long overdue celebration of this
1990 Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay.
A talky and
purposefully ostentatious vivisection of the particular ennui of
well-to-do youth, the film is set in New York City during a
Christmastime break of “not too long ago,” a hectic time that for our
young ensemble occasions all sorts of gala soirees at which they must
make appearances. With a “severe escort shortage,” scene newbie Tom
Townsend (Edward Clements) is drafted into action, joining, among
others, sharp-as-a-tack Nick Smith (Christopher Eigeman),
politico-in-training Charlie Black (Taylor Nichols), sensual Cynthia
McLean (Isabel Gillies) and the ostensible Molly Ringwald of the group
— a bit pretty, a bit dowdy — Audrey Rouget (Carolyn Farina). All sorts
of various crushes and cross-crushes exist, but the potentially jejune
is heavily counterbalanced with banter-filled talk of art, politics,
social criticism, activism and literature. Psychological perspicacity,
meanwhile, is achieved through the manner in which almost all the
characters put on small fronts over the course of the movie, and then
betray those in various, telling ways.
Stillman has described the script as “finishing started arguments that I lost,” and that truth lends Metropolitan
the weighted plausibility of to-scale conflict. The audience feels
invested in the silly problems of its subjects because Stillman
captures the particular fashion in which adolescents and
twentysomethings invest considerable psychological energy in group
mores and rules, and the highly punishable cost of breaking them. The
result is a highbrow film of, still, exceeding pleasure; you
literally bask in the all the glories and inanities of its oratorical
circle-eights, with Eigeman and Will Kempe — as the smarmy Rick Von
Sloneker, a young baron — in particular stealing the show. If the latter day films of director Wes Anderson
mean anything to you, check out their roots in Metropolitan, a gem of contemplation trumping limited means.
Filmic
adaptations of the highly successful, Christian-theology-infused
franchise of end-time novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins — which
offer up a fundamentalist interpretation of the Book of Revelations,
covering the Rapture, Tribulation and subsequent battle with the
Antichrist — The Left Behind Collection faces a unique cinematic challenge.
Like
a political-party hardliner faced with the sudden need to run to the
center, the films — which have bucked traditional Hollywood
distribution channels and seen to-scale sell-through success on a
grass-roots level later somewhat mimicked and honed by Tyler Perry for
his Madea movies — here seek to win more mainstream
action-suspense converts in collected form. While at times preachy and
certainly overly earnest, there’s a level of surprising polish above
and beyond their rather limited production means that generally help
these films score as relatively solid pieces of conspiratorial
entertainment, even for those not in their demographic wheelhouse.
The plot of the first film takes the Rapture as its leaping-off point. On an overseas flight, airline pilot Rayford Steele (Always stud-in-waiting and former Marlboro Man Brad Johnson) and reporter Buck Williams (Kirk Cameron, free from Growing Pains,
but still possessing a sitcom star’s instant likeability) cross paths.
Williams is a successful and well-regarded (if suspiciously green)
international correspondent on a CNN-like cable network, while Steele,
a cranky father of two, is a bit put off by his wife’s devotion to the
church. Soon the two, linked by flight attendant and fellow survivor
Hattie Durham (Cameron’s real life wife, Chelsea Noble), find
themselves caught in the middle of an incredible event. Without
warning, dozens of passengers simply vanish into the thin air. But it
doesn’t stop there. It soon becomes apparent that millions of people
are missing. As chaos and anarchy engulf the world and various white
men in suits begin jockeying for power, both men set out on a search
for answers — Williams the pragmatist and Steele the man of burgeoning
faith.
Pleasing the books’ Christian constituency factors largely into the
film’s mission, but it’s still undeniably accessible; it feels,
rightly, like the folksy opening chapter of a much grander story. The
thriller and mystery aspects of the narrative are less successfully
handled — if one presumes that included amongst those left behind would
be not only folks like our protagonists (secular but basically decent),
then it stands to reason there would also be a good number of both
people of different, but no less devout, faiths as well as some
downright malevolent criminals and lowlifes. All breezy theologizing
and non-specific menace, the film fails to address either of these
issues. That said, the character arcs are at least interestingly
written. It’s hard to strictly impose any social agenda on a piece of
entertainment, but Left Behind genially, almost charmingly
refuses to cater to a metropolitan worldview, and thus manages to walk
a decent line between proselytizing and entertainment, even if its
narrative inevitabilities are familiar.
The story continues with 2002’s Left Behind II: Tribulation Force and last year’s Left Behind: World at War,
which collectively center on the rise of darkly charismatic
international business leader Nicolae Carpathia (Gordon Currie), whose
uniting of the world in peace has distinctly sinister and self-serving
undertones. Despite increasing warnings and admonitions from both
Williams and his underground Tribulation Force, American President
Gerald Fitzhugh (Louis Gossett, Jr.) aligns himself with Carpathia and
his vision of a sustainable international concord. When a failed
assassination attempt opens his eyes to a wide-ranging conspiracy,
however, Fitzhugh must come to terms with the agonizing truth that
Carpathia has been secretly orchestrating a global war of biblical
proportions.
The DVDs here, each presented in a separate Amray case in a
cardboard slipcover, all feature a nice array of bonus material,
including making-of featurettes, blooper reels, cast and crew
biographies and deleted and extended scenes. On the first film, Noble,
Cameron and others also speak to their deep level of attachment to the
material. While, frustratingly, only the last movie is available in
anamorphic widescreen, The Left Behind Collection still marks the fine treatment of a carefully orchestrated apocalyptic trilogy. C+ (Movies) B+ (Discs)
Reviewing Hostel on DVD recently had me thinking further about cinema of hostility, actually, and not just within the horror genre. No, my mind later wandered to all things underworld (though this time, not of Kate Beckinsale in leather). For all the refashioned pop flair of Guy Ritchie and Matthew Vaughn’s recent films, no one captured underclass British antagonism, resentment and its criminal acting out better than Alan Clarke.
In his day, working with the late Clarke was a sort of rite of passage for intense, up-and-coming British actors. A singular talent, the filmmaker delved into psychological torture and bellicose narratives long before they were in vogue, and his raw, unsettling visions often felt like found screeds from under a dirty, upturned rock. Clarke’s television work for the anthology series Play for Today included Psy-Warriors and Beloved Enemy, but his three best known works all delved into the psyche of violent young males.
In the late 1970s, Clarke was hired by the BBC to make a television drama about life inside a juvenile detention center. Its evocative, one-word title: Scum. A grim and graphic indictment of the British borstal system, the program was so relentlessly brutal that the horrified BBC banned its broadcast indefinitely. In defiance, Clark and his producer, Clive Parsons, refashioned the film as a feature, and loosed it upon an unsuspecting public in 1979. In it, a young Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, The Proposition) stars as Carlin, a juvenile thug rising to the top of an inhuman prison hierarchy amidst violence and sexual assault.
The ferocious Made in Britain, released in 1982, serves as an English forerunner to both Romper Stomper and American History X. For those who think Russell Crowe and Edward Norton have the market cornered on charismatic racists, Tim Roth debuts here as Trevor, an eloquent teenage skinhead whose random acts of sadism send him on a snarling spiral through the English justice system. Scripted by David Leland, the film is an unsparing portrait of youth fueled by hate and rage, and ruled by a swallowed depression and despair.
1988’s The Firm, meanwhile, serves as a showcase for Gary Oldman, who gives a blistering performance as Bex Bissell, a middle-class family man who also leads a violent gang of soccer hooligans. While the real roots of Oldman’s nihilistic rage run deep to 1986’s Sid and Nancy, it was this telepic that first and best harnessed his quiet temper, and served as the underpinning for future brash turns in The Professional, The Fifth Element and even Air Force One.
Though Clarke was taken too soon, dying of cancer at 55 in 1990, his stirring work lives on, and is well worth a look for anyone who fancies uncompromising portraits of youth run amok — rampaging id hardwired to nervy ambivalence. All the above titles are available separately on DVD or via a great eponymous collection from Blue Underground released earlier this year, with still galleries and cast interviews from The Firm, both versions of the incendiary Scum and another bonus — the streamlined, 39-minute Elephant, part of the inspiration for Gus Van Sant’s film of the same name. In the latter, Clarke and producer Danny Boyle (28 Days Later) explore the political violence of Northern Ireland via the stark depiction of 18 separatist murders; Boyle also sits for an audio commentary. All the films are distinctly British, but still universal in their basic enmity.
Playwright David Hare
came to the attention of many in the film world with the success of director
Stephen Daldry’s adaptation of The Hours,
for which he wrote the much lauded screenplay. But Hare has actually had a long
and notable career in and outside of film as both a writer and a director,
helming Strapless and Wallace Shawn’s The Designated Mourner. His first big
screen effort, however, was 1985’s Wetherby,
starring Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave and a young (or youngish, at least) Ian
Holm (The Lord of the Rings’ Bilbo
Baggins).
The film’s story
centers around a teacher, mannered Yorkshire
instructor Jean Travers (Redgrave), whose life is thrown into turmoil when an
uninvited dinner party guest shoots himself in her living room for no apparent
reason. As her friends struggle to help her make sense of the situation, Jean
finds herself drawn into a sticky, complex morass of old memories and
deceptions.
Redgrave is fantastic
as Travers; she deftly and delicately balances a fearful but withdrawn
curiosity with a dawning sense of horror. An interesting thing, meanwhile, has
happened to Holm. It may be the types of roles in which he is cast in American
productions (From Hell, The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Day After Tomorrow) and the disparity
between these and his other roles (contrast the aforementioned with Joe Gould’s Secret, eXistenZ and The Sweet
Hereafter), but the less he has to do, paradoxically, the more interesting
he is. Redgrave’s real-life daughter, Joely Richardson (Nip/Tuck), plays the character of Jean in her younger years, and
Dame Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson also appear. That so many of the faces on
display in Wetherby are by now
amongst the most esteemed character actors working in film today (The Chronicles of Riddick
notwithstanding) is no accident. The bravest and often most interesting actors —
particularly of the stage-trained variety — gravitate toward fine writing, and the script for the dark, intriguing Wetherby
is layered and involving in the manner one would except of a playwright making
the transition from stage to screen. Wetherby
is at times too caught up in its own interior head games to make you forget the
staginess of its roots (the filmmaking isn’t going to technically wow you), but
if taut and literary psychological dramas are your game, this is a fine entry
that you’ve likely missed. You’d be smart to rectify that situation
immediately.
Extras on Home
Vision’s DVD debut release are virtually nonexistent, including only selected
actor biographies and filmographies on the single disc. Owing to its roots,
however, there is a written introduction by Hare and an astute liner note essay
by critic and The Encyclopedia of British
Film author Brian McFarlane. Still, the play’s the thing, and Wetherby delivers — chiefly and easily —
on this count. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Director
Henri-Georges Clouzot (Wages of Fear, Diabolique) was a master of the
double-plotted thriller, a filmmaker who was able to get into the hearts and
minds of his characters even when they were dark and not particularly
comfortable places. Criterion honors the director and his humble if still
astute beginnings with their sterling new release of his 1943 debut film, Le Corbeau. The movie is a veritable
masterwork of communal paranoia, self-loathing and general discontent, the
framework from which Stephen King worked for Needful Things and a hundred other writers and artists for their
own tales of citizens who turns on each other for no other reason than that
they can and it is in their nature.
The film centers on
the inhabitants of a small, provincial French town as they grapple with and try
to out the mysterious writer — known only as “le corbeau,” or the raven — of a
series of poison pen letters. Deftly playing one person off another with
exposed secrets, gossip and half-truths, the letters and their perpetrator
reveal the suspicion and rancor seething just beneath the community’s calm
surface, leading to deadly consequences for more than one townsperson. While
not quite on a par with Wages of Fear
and Diabolique — each of which showcase
a more accomplished, technically polished sense of overall filmmaking — Le Corbeau shouldn’t be discounted for
both its narrative precision and its historical significance. The film was made
and released in Nazi-occupied France, and has been the subject of some malign and
speculation because of that. (Some read it as parable, others as complicit propaganda;
regardless, it was widely assailed at the time of its original release and
banned after the liberation.) Viewed decades later, its subtext is still open
to multiple interpretations, though Clouzot obviously doesn’t identify with the
titular informant. The portrait that ultimately emerges is one of a birds-eye
view of a 20th century Salem, where no secret is safe and no pettiness too
small to dramatically undue someone’s fate.
The DVD is anchored
by a superb new digital transfer with restored image and sound. It also
benefits from a new and improved English subtitle translation (above). Its extras
include a video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier; pertinent excerpts
with Clouzot from a great 1975 documentary, The
Story of French Cinema By Those Who Made It; the movie’s theatrical
trailer; and a 16-page booklet that features lithographs of two articles from a
1947 French newspaper as well as a new essay by author and French film scholar
Alan Williams. While there could have been debate ad nauseum on the
post-release controversy of the film and its detractors and champions, these
incisive written inclusions distill Le
Corbeau nicely, making it a palatable pick-up for foreign cinema
aficionados and French film neophytes alike. For more about author Judith Mayne’s same-titled book on the film, click here. B (Movie) A- (Disc)
Time to stuff the archives here at Shared Darkness? You bet. Ergo this DVD review of the second season of 3rd Rock From the Sun, originally penned last fall for IGN:
Hatched by Bonnie and Terry Turner, a husband-and-wife team who wrote first for Saturday Night Live and then penned the Wayne’s World movies alongside Mike Myers, 3rd Rock From the Sun
was birthed in 1996 as a midseason replacement series for NBC. Told
from the skewed and frequently quite confused point-of-view of an alien
clan posing as Earthlings, the series was always sort of the redheaded
stepchild of its comedy-dominated parent network, laboring in the
collective shadow of higher-rated fare like Friends and more erudite, critically beloved shows like Frasier. Nonetheless, its mix of broad slapstick and self-analytical, joke-based
humor proved a winning, diversionary combination with audiences, and
propelled the series to a number of surprising Emmy nominations and
victories — most notably for its remade star, John Lithgow.
Known mostly as a heavy in film (who can forget his stern “thou shalt not dance” admonitions in Footloose?),
Lithgow is gloriously silly as mission commander and family patriarch
Dick Solomon, who takes his family’s name when it’s glimpsed on a
passing truck after the group’s arrival in small-town Ohio. (Yes,
there’s plenty of expense had at said name, and most episodes in fact
work it into the title, e.g. “Dick Jokes,” “Much Ado About Dick,” “Dick
and the Single Girl.”) Broadway belle Kristen Johnston is “eldest
daughter” Sally Solomon, and if she seems like a tomboy it’s because
“she” is really an otherworldly he. This twist gives the series plenty
of creative license with gender issues, sexual identity and body switch
comedy, particularly as Sally strings along enamored local policeman
Don (Seinfeld‘s Wayne Knight), at first obliviously and then more consciously, whenever she needs or wants something.
Rounding out the main quartet are the squinty-eyed French Stewart as
the clueless, doddering Harry Solomon; and teenager Tommy (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, who’s gone on to good things with Mysterious Skin),
who is actually the oldest in alien years, as the group’s information
officer. His worldly but still confused grappling with human
adolescence also provides strong opportunities for comedy of opposites.
After a debut season rich in the comedic mania of quotidian scenarios, 3rd Rock From the Sun‘s
sophomore run delves a bit further into character, both via those that
are a part of the Solomons’ life on a consistent basis and through a
motley assortment of one-off guest stars. Dick assumes the role of a
college psychics professor (though not a very good one), and strikes up
an on-again-off-again relationship with exasperated anthropology
professor Dr. Mary Albright (Jane Curtin). The latter roster includes
Jay Leno, Dennis Rodman, the recently outed George Takei, Al Franken,
Jan Hooks, Mark Hamill, Christine Baranski and more.
It’s here that I, personally, would have preferred a little more
open-format adventurousness, applying the skewed alien perspective to a
broader canvas. Yet 3rd Rock From the Sun
was always at its core a very conventional familial sitcom about
exasperation with circumstance and the frailty of communication — those
universal, intergalactic bugaboos. While I would never characterize 3rd Rock From the Sun as particularly cerebral, it did have a fairly strong joke ratio and informed sensibility if you bought into the concept. The strength of the show really exists in its pitch-perfect casting and
the ability of the series’ writers to play to the strong suit of its
players, as in episodes like “I Brake For Dick” (having hit a chipmunk
in his car, Dick grapples with the arbitrary manner in which humans
treat animals), “Same Old Song and Dick” (Dick frets over the
disappearance of spontaneity from his relationship with Mary) and
“Proud Dick” (after Harry loses his memory, horror ensues when he
continually rediscovers that he lives with aliens).
Distributor Anchor Bay’s treatment of the series is more than hospitable. The picture on these full-frame presentations is fairly solid, with no
problems with grain or compression. There is perhaps a bit of attrition
in color — some episodes of this color-bright series don’t seem as
crisp and eye-popping as I recall them — but nothing that mortally
wounds your enjoyment of the show. The show’s set design is, again, so colorfully cluttered that,
particularly on episodes like “Big Angry Virgin From Outer Space” and
“Will Work For Dick,” you get a pleasant sense of depth of frame
missing in many modern day sitcoms. Especially effective and
impressive, too, are the presentations of two 3-D episodes, whose
filmic quality shines through. A Dolby digital stereo track is the only audio offering on this set,
and while it’s a competent one, committed audiophiles will perhaps be
left wanting something more robust. Problem is, while there isn’t much
dynamism, there’s not much to affect — 3rd Rock From the Sun
is a dialogue-driven series, with large amounts of visual cue humor but
a paucity of non-verbal cues. It does have the capacity to sound a bit
tinny at times (particularly in its few forays outside of studio
setting), but should only bother true aural sticklers.
Alongside all 26 second season episodes, bonus features on this
attractively packaged, four-disc set include a pair of 3-D glasses for
the aforementioned special episodes (in which Dick and his alien brood
experience the discombobulation of human dreams for the first time) and
a nice, 14-page insert booklet that includes substantial episodic
recaps and funny interstitial gleanings from the aliens’ points-of-view
(“Five Rules on Fitting in Among the Humans,” “How to Select Your
Morning Breakfast Cereal,” “Sally’s Guide to Earth Hair,” etc.). Heck,
the set even talks: press a noted if slightly finicky button on the
front and you’ll hear Dick Solomon exclaim, “You’re a winner!”
As far as the disc supplemental material is concerned, seasonal
highlights are a bit redundant, but a blooper reel and
behind-the-scenes footage are nice inclusions. Additionally, each
episode includes a separately selectable preview (typically the end
bumper, vacuumed free of credits, from the previous show), which is a
nice touch. The highlight to the set, though, is probably a new interview with
Lithgow, in which the gracious, humble star recounts his experience
with the show, from its ambush, breakfast meeting pitch (“I consciously
remember the thought, ‘What’s the best possible way for me to politely
tell them no?'” he recalls) to his cast mates to specifics having to do
with the second season, and in particular those 3-D episodes. While
writer-producer audio commentaries are missing, it’s hard to otherwise
imagine a more complete set in terms of qualitative extras. For the original review from IGN, with a lot more clutter and still absolutely no pictures, click here. B+ (Show) B+ (Disc)
It should come as no surprise that Tony Marsiglia, the
enigmatic director of Sin Sisters, The Witches of Sappho Salon and Dr. Jekyll and Mistress Hyde, counts filmmaker David Lynch as one of his many inspirations and influences. After
all, he too is drawn to the darker side of human nature, with its quirks and
harsh, angular collisions between sex and violence. And with three more films
poised to see release in the coming year, Marsiglia has established himself as
EI Independent Cinema’s top in-house director of arthouse sex-ploitation
entertainment. Yes, you read that right. The product is undeniably lowbrow —
trick amalgamations and variations on tried-and-true formula. Yet, other than
budget and star power, what makes these types of movies any less vital or
worthy than something that, say, Quentin Tarantino puts his imprimatur upon?
Lust For Dracula is Marsiglia’s latest movie, and it puts a
sapphic spin on the classic Bram Stoker story, weaving a tale of madness,
murder, obsession and plenty of gratuitous nudity. Mina Harker (the leonine Misty Mundae) isn’t the happiest of Hollywood Hills wives, even though she’s
married to a wealthy pharmaceuticals magnate, Jonathan (played, in a twist, by
the decidedly non-masculine Julian Wells). Depressed and desperate for
Jonathan’s love and the perceived pleasure that a child would bring them, Mina
finds herself a more than willing succubus when Darian Cane’s Countess Dracula
shows up and offers her a chance at happiness. Mina’s covetous sister, however,
Abigail Van Helsing (Shelly Jones), has something else in mind. She seeks to
both destroy Dracula and in the process make her own play for Jonathan. As all
parties move closer toward their destinies, blood is spilled, blouses ripped
and souls destroyed. Marsiglia doesn’t have much of a budget to work with, and
the movie isn’t really scary by any stretch of the imagination, but he does a
job of still coming up with imaginative and effective imagery, making a nice
rental for adventurous fans of pure genre pulp.
EI has, from its humble beginnings as a mere distributor,
always done a good job of both branding itself and going to the necessary
lengths to provide potential customers with a wealth of supplemental material
on its releases that will satisfy their voyeuristic curiosity and have them
coming back for future iterations. Lust
For Dracula is no different. The unrated director’s cut disc includes audio
commentary by Marsiglia and producer Michael Raso, a (typically wandering)
behind-the-scenes documentary, an on-set interview with the taciturn Mundae,
Tim Friend’s short film Insex — an odd
bonus inclusion — and a vast trailer vault of other numerous EI releases. If you’re searching for nouveau grindhouse
titillation, Lust For Dracula is a
good time. For more information, visit SeductionCinema.com. B (Movie) B+
(Disc)
The spy thriller The Bourne Identity drew a large part of
its pop and verve from the attached-at-the-hip nature of its conceit and action
— as Matt Damon’s overwhelmed, government-trained, amnesiac assassin Jason
Bourne experienced the action, so too did the film’s audience. Its narrative
twists and turns were born (pun embraced, if not intended) of the
don’t-sit-still reality of the situation its main character was in. The result
was the best spy thriller in years. Those thinking the franchise might be a
one-trick pony, however, might be surprised at the fact that The Bourne Supremacy cedes almost none
of its predecessor’s energy. The trick? Something called characters.
With The Bourne Supremacy, Damon and director
Paul Greengrass (stepping in for Doug Liman) took their franchise on the road
to even more international backdrops, but wisely chose non-played-out locales
like Berlin, Moscow and Goa, India. While the story is more grounded and less
freewheeling this time around, the movie, stirringly, doesn’t discard the
narrative of the first film for convenience’s sake. Rather it uses it as a
springboard, launching Joan Allen’s upper-level CIA agent into a new
investigation of Bourne after he’s erroneously implicated in a botched
operation that leaves her team dead. As the loosest of loose ends, someone is
still looking to tie Bourne off.
The supplemental
material doesn’t overwhelm you to the point of numbness (in a world where,
increasingly, mediocre theatrical fare still receives two-disc DVD releases,
this one is still only one disc), but rather seems about right. Extras include
seven minutes of mostly interstitial deleted scenes, but one crackling showdown
with Allen and Brian Cox that more explicitly sets up the latter’s desperate
end game actions. Most notable among the extras, though, are a slew of
production featurettesthat serve as a dipped toe into almost every aspect of
the filmmaking. One section looks at the movie’s bridge chase sequence, one
looks at the casting and one looks at the hand-to-hand combat training, while
two examine the movie’s car chase — both from the stunt coordinators’
perspective and that of their groovy new toy, the “Go Mobile.” All include
generous interviews with Damon and the rest of the cast, Greengrass (who
resembles a slightly better groomed Peter Jackson), producer Frank Marshall and
more. It’s here that Damon astutely praises the latitude in Greengrass’
direction and his lack of reliance on staged movements as allowing for a
greater emotional investment (and thus return, for the audience). It’s also
where Marshall and others jokingly score Damon’s stunt jump from a Berlin bridge. Their high marks, save Marshall’s impression of East German judge, could well
be for The Bourne Supremacy as a
whole. A- (Movie) A- (Disc)
In the early 1950s,
his battle with a mysterious throat ailment had some folks considering Frank
Sinatra washed up, but before Madonna introduced dramatic and serial
reinvention as a career tonic, Ol’ Blue Eyes merely had don’t-count-me-out
moxie and the persuasiveness of his personality. Of course, it didn’t hurt that
the voice returned intact. And there was another boom too. The ’50s weren’t
known as the golden age of television for nothing; the big name stars of the
day popped up all the time on the small screen, aided by an explosion in
variety shows and specials.
The Frank Sinatra Show was a semi-regular series of live specials
starting in 1957, sponsored by Timex and broadcast on ABC. And if you think
about it, the match made perfect sense. Along with many of his colleagues,
Sinatra had honed his skills in small clubs starting out; playing in an
intimate setting while still being mindful of the camera was an easy feat. This
80-minute segment, with Ella Fitzgerald, showcases two of the past century’s
most popular and enduring performers, singing an impressive list of tracks.
Shot on Dec. 10, 1959 on location on a rare rainy day in Palm Springs (hence
the somewhat slapdash sets and cast ribbing Sinatra about his grand idea of
filming in “good old sunny Palm Springs”), this DVD is re-mastered from the
archive tape of that program, and features the original show in its entirety,
including promotional segments.
While the quality
isn’t the crystalline-clear quality we’ve come to expect from mint digital
print new films, it’s more than adequate given the real appeal of this disc is
its focus on the musical summit itself. There are no extra features, but the
track list includes “You’re Invited to Spend the Afternoon,” a superlative
rendition of “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Lazy Afternoon,” “There’s Lull
in My Life,” “It’s Alright With Me,” “Too Damn Hot” (previously planned for the
Palm Springs setting, one presumes), “Too Marvelous For Words,” “Just You, Just
Me,” “I’ll Never Smile Again,” “Can’t We Be Friends,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,”
“Love Walked Right In,” “Love Is Sweeping the Country” and “Love Is Here to Stay,”
among others. Sinatra and Fitzgerald trade off on numbers (the Chairman of the
Board is also joined at times, to sometimes painful effect, by Juliet Prowse,
his co-star in Can-Can and girlfriend
at the time) before coming together on “Can’t We Be Friends.” The answer for
old-school music lovers is a no-brainer: Of course we can! To purchase the title, via Amazon, click here. B (Movie) C— (Disc)
German filmmaker Fritz Lang remains best known on these
shores for his hugely influential 1927 silent film Metropolis, which mixed bold and at times strange allegorical
elements with a cautionary tale of science run amok. Its style and production
design would remain highly influential upon European and American directors
alike for generations to come, trace elements finding their way into sci-fi
masterpieces like Blade Runner as
well as a slew of futuristic tales leery of big government. Lang’s first
release with sound, however, came four years later with the penultimate psychological thriller M. And
courtesy of a beautiful, newly restored digital transfer from Criterion
presented in its original aspect ration of 1.19:1, along with a wealth of extra
features that plumb and codify its importance, this landmark achievement stands
ready to finally inherit the reputation it so richly deserves.
Brooding and richly atmospheric, M has at its core all the salaciousness of
ripped-from-the-headlines entertainment. Loosely based on a series of grisly real-life
German murders, Lang and then-wife Thea von Harbou fashioned a story that on
the surface must have seemed to capture uncannily the zeitgeist and mood of the
modern day — the Jack the Ripper tale of its time. Tone is everything, however,
and Lang’s artful construction of M
is meticulous, exacting and of a piece with Metropolis,
with many allegorical elements that render the film a grander humanistic parable. M
tells the story of a child murderer, Hans Beckert (Peter Lorre), who wanders
the streets of Berlin, luring
young girls with promises of candy and balloons. Lorre (Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon) turns in a
mesmerizing and wholly memorable performance. Part of it is steeped in overt
theatricality, yes, but his marriage of confusion and rage goes a long way
toward capturing the duality of a diseased criminal mind.
On Beckert’s trail is Inspector Karl Lohmann (Otto
Wernicke). Lang doesn’t show the murders, of course, but instead merely indicates
them with spare master shots of empty streets. The ensuing panic plays as an
extra character; fear hangs over the proceedings like a low, enveloping fog as Lang
showcases paranoia and a mob mentality gripping an increasingly fearful public
rather than tell his story strictly through a small, set number of characters. The sound design alone is enough to at times give you goose bumps.
As with almost all of their titles, Criterion’s supplemental features are
like answers to prayers you didn’t even know you made, contextualizing the film
and its importance while also not failing to humanize it. First up is a
very interesting if understandably academic-leaning commentary track by German
film scholar Eric Rentschler, author of The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi
Cinema and Its Afterlife, and Anton Kaes, author of the BFI
Film Classics volume on M. The duo are obviously extremely
knowledgeable about not only the movie and Lang’s career, but German film in
general, and thusly elucidate the movie’s themes as well as the state of the
German union at the time of its making.
The second disc holds an
abundance of unique features, including a 50-minute interview with Lang, filmed
in 1974 and conducted by fellow filmmaker William Friedkin (The French Connection); Claude Chabrol’s M:
le Maudit, a short film based on Lang’s movie that was part of a French television series that
offered up miniaturized versions of classic films; audio classroom tapes of M editor Paul Falkenberg discussing the
movie and its history with film school students; a stills gallery with
behind-the-scenes photos and production sketches; and A Physical History of M,
which showcases some of the changes and cuts that were made to the film over
the years in various release incarnations.
The restored
black-and-white video transfer is also a beautiful thing, detailed exhaustively
on a featurette that covers the restoration. While the film’s original aspect
ratio of 1.19:1 doesn’t fully extend across standard television sets (it originally
allowed space for an optical soundtrack alongside the projected image), it’s
nicely framed here. Wrapping things all together is a 32-page booklet with an essay
by critic Stanley Kauffman, the script for a missing scene which may have
actually been shot but removed by the censor board, a 1963 interview with Lang,
an essay the filmmaker wrote for a German newspaper just prior to M’s release and other prima facie material from the early
1930s. A (Movie) A (Disc)
A warm glass of shut
the hell up, to borrow a phrase from Ben Stiller’s two-faced Happy Madison orderly, to anyone who
doesn’t appreciate the comedic brilliance of these, Adam Sandler’s first
leading man big screen forays. And rightly bundled here in new special editions
they are too, for each movie (don’t you dare
call these films) is of a comfortable template that allows Sandler to merely
and mildly tweak his own personality to suit these two titular comedic
personas. (Billy’s a happy, clueless buffoon; Happy, ironically, is the one
suffering from a pent-up social rage.)
When Billy Madison opened at the top of the
box office chart in February of 1995, it was a very big and surprising deal,
and by no means the guaranteed coronation of another SNL alum turned movie star. After all, Airheads, with Sandler as a highly touted co-lead, had flopped
miserably less than a year earlier. But audiences took to Sandler’s special
blend of dopey sweetness and sanitized rage, and bestowed upon him back-to-back
smashes that laid the groundwork for both his branching out into more dramatic
fare (Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk
Love, James Burrows’ Spanglish) and
a production shingle, Happy Madison, that would bring us movies starring SNL pals David Spade, Rob Schneider and
Norm MacDonald (who also appears in Billy
Madison).
Each movie,
co-written with Sandler’s New YorkUniversity roommate and Saturday Night Live scribe Tim Herlihy, is built on riffs, rapport
and surrealistic whimsy. Billy Madison,
helmed by Tamara Davis, finds Sandler’s dimwitted heir to a hotel fortune
having to repeat grades one through 12 in 24 weeks in order to gain his
father’s respect and satisfy nervous board members about the future of the
company. The West Wing’s Bradley
Whitford has a blast as his nemesis, a vice president at MadisonHotels with designs on the top spot for himself. Extras on this disc include feature commentary from director Davis, plus four
minutes of outtakes (ahh, the joys of working with kids) and more than half an
hour of deleted scenes, most of which revolve around pool lounging, porn and
Billy’s unexplained, hallucinatory visions of a penguin. There’s also a house
staff kickball match and more that fleshes out the subplot of maid Juanita’s
silly romantic obsession with Billy.
1996’s more polished Happy Gilmore, helmed by Dennis Dugan, finds Sandler’s amateur
hockey enthusiast (he’s got a killer tee game, courtesy of a powerful slapshot)
tackling the pro golf tour in an effort to win enough money to buy back his
beloved grandmother’s house. Christopher McDonald provides buckets of smarm as
Happy’s sneering foil, Shooter McGavin. Extras here include outtakes and 20
minutes of mostly interstitial deleted scenes, though there is material that
finds Stiller’s nasty orderly running a phone sex racket out of the nursing
home where Happy’s grandmother is forced to stay. My guess is this didn’t fit
too well within the MPAA’s unofficial guidelines for a PG-13 rating. Similarly, Billy Madison’s cursed O’Doyle family
suffers a (slightly) more explicit just deserts in the bonus material for that
picture. While some sort of supplemental tip of the cap from the notoriously
press-averse Sandler would have been a nice, direct-address gift to fans, both
films — err… sorry, movies — are
warmly inviting and still exceedingly quotable, and as such these discs are
both welcome additions to the DVD library of any comedy fan. B+ (Billy Madison) A- (Happy Gilmore) A- (Extras)
Though based upon Barry Gifford’s novel, director David Lynch’s Wild at Heart takes on a deranged tone and feverish temperature all its own. The winner of the 1990 Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie — equal parts unhinged road trip and American Gothic head trip — follows the careening love affair of Nicolas Cage’s snakeskin jacket-clad Sailor and Laura Dern’s gum-smacking Lula, two headstrong delinquents whose passion for one another is “hotter than Georgia asphalt,” in the latter’s inimitable words.
Of course, love is never easy, and in Sailor and Lula’s case it’s endangered by Lula’s psychotic mother (Diane Ladd, Dern’s real-life mom), who puts a hitman on Sailor’s scent when they hit the road and elope — one of but several shady characters looking to do them ill. Sexy, surreal and yet also strangely, almost indescribably affecting, Wild at Heart is eminently watchable because it shocks and disgusts even as it makes you laugh and lean forward with tension. It’s also studded with some wonderful (and wonderfully unsettling) supporting performances, notably from Willem Dafoe, Grace Zabriskie and Crispin Glover. Most notable, however, is the brand new transfer and mix of the movie, supervised by the notoriously meticulous Lynch himself. Cruddy VHS tapes can now be slapped up on eBay, though why anyone would bother to bid on them when taking a look at, say, the crisp improvements in the dark night scenes set in Big Tuna is beyond me.
The disc’s extras are headlined by a superlative and fairly comprehensive half-hour making-of documentary that includes new interviews with Lynch, Cage, Dern, Gifford, Dafoe, Ladd, Glover, director of photography Frederick Elmes and many more. “Leftovers” from this main doc are then divvied up into nine more two- to four-minute segments under the banner of “Del’s Lunch Counter.” A featurette on the “specific spontaneity” of Lynch’s colorful, abstract direction, a music-set image gallery, a DVD introduction of sorts from Lynch detailing the release’s color-timing and remixing process, the theatrical trailer and several TV spots also follow.
There are the few nagging issues left unfulfilled, particularly for hardcore Lynch fans. Some sort of material on the film’s wonderful score and music — be it an interview with frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti or the inclusion of either of the two music videos for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” — would seem to have been a no-brainer, but neither are anywhere to be found. Additionally, it’s always slightly irritating when deleted and extended scenes are explicitly mentioned and discussed in interview material, and then left out. But these miscalculations of omission aside, Wild at Heart is still a sterling catalogue release, with a flowchart of the movie’s characters for your dunderheaded roommate and a nice slipcase to boot. Now fans need only await a proper release of Lost Highway to bring Lynch’s oeuvre more fully up to the digital age. A- (Movie) B (Disc)
The first two Scary Movies were sort of akin to cinematic versions of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” — mad, headlong dashes through the horror and suspense genres, name-checking as many films as possible in all manner of dizzying, gross-out send-ups. With director David Zucker on board, though, the last two films in the series have broadened their comedic horizons, spoofing science-fiction and now even the media and politics. But for those wondering, however, yes, there are still plenty of flatulence jokes.
Anna Faris returns as the ever-naïve Cindy Campbell, her breathy, brow-raised obliviousness the anchoring ballast of the Scary Movie series. The story this time around finds Cindy seeking a career in home healthcare, and teaming up with divorced dad “himbo” Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko) when the world is attacked by giant alien iPods that spring forth from the ground as part of a madman’s plot to destroy humankind. A quick roll call of the movie’s main spoof ingredients consists of War of the Worlds, The Grudge, The Village, Saw and Million Dollar Baby, with Brokeback Mountain running a distant sixth.
Shaquille O’Neal and daytime gabber Dr. Phil open the movie in a Saw spoof, and Charlie Sheen, Anthony Anderson, Simon Rex and Leslie Nielsen reprise their roles from the third movie in the series, the latter as clueless President Baxter Harris. Back too is Regina Hall as Cindy’s intrepid and horny best friend, Brenda, while series vets Chris Elliott and Carmen Electra turn up in different capacities. Other featured players include Cloris Leachman, Bill Pullman, Michael Madsen, Molly Shannon, Debra Wilson and a litany of rappers who pop up to sow the franchise’s mushrooming urban appeal.
There is, of course, absolutely no natural narrative rhythm to Scary Movie 4, and the mondo physical gags (the serial abuse of Tom Ryan’s Dakota Fanning-esque daughter, the gross-out prerequisites) frequently wear on for too long, in effect apologizing for the movie’s PG-13 rating by goosing audiences past the point of complete numbness with potty humor. This, to me, makes it much more suited for a casual and possibly piecemeal at-home viewing, but others might raucously disagree.
The movie’s production team deserves special mention, though, in that their keen eye toward faithful recreation helps go a long way toward sustaining the… well, if not “conceit” of the movie, then at least its downhill momentum. In addition to some comparatively sly visual gags (Tom Ryan splitting Dura-logs, and complaining about the monotony of his job as crane operator while playing a lift-and-drop slot game), there are also a few cleverly subversive bits that would have never found a home in the first Scary Movie, including a send-up of President Bush’s distracted reaction when first hearing about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Billed as “the fourth and final chapter of the trilogy,” Scary Movie 4 is every bit as naturally disposable as one might expect, but that’s hardly a damning criticism in a country that, if not predicated on convenience and whim, is now certainly deeply in its thrall. As an irreverent repackaging of just-of-the-moment pop culture, Scary Movie 4 evidences no signs of franchise slowdown. Quite to the contrary, it’s doing just fine. Belch!(Dimension/Weinstein Company, PG-13, 80 minutes)
Before Anna Nicole Smith or Carmen Electra or even really Marilyn
Monroe, there was Bettie Page, who grew up in a conservative religious
family in Tennessee, became a photo model sensation in 1950s New York
and became the target of a Senate investigation into pornography
courtesy of her legendary fetish poses. Directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol), The Notorious Bettie Page
takes a look back at the unlikely woman who blossomed into an erotic
icon, and whose iconic status continues to enthrall fans to this day.
Gretchen
Mol stars as Page, and there’s a real, lockstep sweetness to both the
character and her performance; she’s the best thing about the movie.
While shocking to some, Page always regarded her pin-up work — and most
famously the bondage, leather and shoe fetish specialties — as a
dress-up goof, perhaps because of the lack of men in any of the shoots.
Working first with Paula and Irving Klaw (Lili Taylor and Chris Bauer,
respectively), and later Bunny Yeager (Sarah Paulson), who would snap
her iconic Playboy Christmas-tree cover, Page worked as a model
to fund her dream of acting, though an ironic performance nervousness
would derail her dreams there.
The Notorious Bettie Page is in many ways as much about women
and the general boiling over prurient desires in pre-hardcore America
as it is about Page herself. There’s a darker side to Page’s lot later
in life — she spent several years in a mental institution for stabbing
her landlady in an argument — that isn’t touched on at all here; after
a bit of a glimpse of Page’s rough adolescence and its victimization,
the film hones in sharply on her years most in the public eye. There’s
a kick to many of the fetishistic recreations, and Matt Hupfel’s
cinematography — particularly in the washed-out color segments of the
’60s — conveys the playful yet demure nature of the work Page did,
especially the giggly pin-up work for girlie mags with innocent names
like Wink, Flirt and Titter. Yet the movie feels dramatically inert and, most damningly, psychologically shallow.
One can easily make a convincing case that Page’s sunny disposition
is the result of suppressed trauma, but the script — by Harron and American Psycho
collaborator Guinevere Turner — doesn’t delve into how and why this
drives Page. In directly implying incest and showcasing (albeit
non-graphically) a teenage gang rape, the film gives us back story with
no attendant follow through, and thus continues Harron’s dubious
tradition of muted portraits of fascinating subjects. The Notorious Bettie Page gives us a veneer, brightly lacquered but one-dimensional. (Picturehouse, R, 91 mins.)
Charles Bukowski, celebrated blue collar novelist, poet, alcoholic and sonorous bullshitter, was well known in Los Angeles long before his autobiographical novels delivered searing portraits of a Southern California underclass that
would resonate worldwide. The meandering but genial documentaryBukowski: Born Into This,
an official selection at the 2003 Sundance Festival, looks back in time
to this era, as well as sifting through an abusive childhood, a half
dozen turbulent relationships and a variety of low-paying, non-creative
menial occupations that included 14 years as a postal employee. For the full review, from IGN, click here.
Reduced to caricature prior to its release, and now a new form of derisive shorthand for bigots everywhere, Brokeback Mountain
remains a powerful and acutely affecting film, and not nearly for the
reasons many out to wage their own political crusade ascribe to it.
Yes, it is a love story centering around two homosexual cowboys. But
its observational prowess is nearly unrivaled in all of American film
of the past several years not directed by Alexander Payne. Brokeback Mountain
is also a keen rendering of the corrosive nature of self-denial. Dreams
of all types are buried and traded in every day across the world, but Brokeback Mountain
shows — in moving, modest and melancholic fashion — just what it means
to deny something that is a part of you to your very core.
Opening
in Wyoming, the story throws together two itinerant ranch hands, Ennis
Del Mar (H eath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), who find work
under Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) herding sheep in the summer of 1963.
Both rugged individualists, the pair forge an unexpected bond and
tumble into a lusty physical clinch, but part ways at the end of the
job. Engaged to Alma (Michelle Williams), Ennis gets married; Jack also
weds, tying the knot and having kids with outgoing, well-to-do rodeo
queen Lureen (Anne Hathaway). A couple years later they reconnect,
though, and enter into a protracted, if limited, affair consisting of
stolen fishing trips and camping vacations.
Director Ang Lee, working from an adaptation of Annie Proulx’s short
story of the same name and using Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting score
as an aural highlighter, locates the unseen social forces and the
limits of personal nerve that inform his characters’ behavior. The
fierce insight and clench-jawed genius of Ledger’s performance in
particular lies in the manner in which he never allows himself to even
entertain the possibility of honest happiness.
Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ratio of the film’s original theatrical exhibition, Brokeback Mountain
comes housed in an Amray case, and features English and French language
Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks alongside optional English, French and
Spanish subtitles. Four single-digit-minute featurettes comprise the
disc’s bonus materials, looking in cursory fashion at the film’s
character development, the modus operandi of director Lee, the
particulars of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s adaptation and the
production itself. Of this quartet, the “script to screen” featurette
is probably the most interesting, but everything about this release
clearly augurs a more comprehensive, double-disc special edition DVD
somewhere down the line. To that end, hedge your collecting plans
accordingly. A (Movie) C- (Disc)
Based on the true story of a wealthy English widower who operated a
nude revue on the West End during World War II, director Stephen
Frears’ awkwardly titled Mrs. Henderson Presents is a cheeky look at the special
type of wartime fortification that no amount of guns and sandbags can
provide. A sort of hodge-podge mixture of Topsy-Turvy, The Full Monty and that old episode of The Golden Girls
where ostentatious, entitled Blanche finally meets her male
counterpart, the film works chiefly as a sharp, smartly funny
two-hander — a delicious showcase for stars Judi Dench and Bob Hoskins
— before taking a final act turn that overreaches just a bit in its
grasp at grand statement. For the full review, from IGN, click here.
Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is making a convincing claim for “Year of” honors in
impending 2005 wrap pieces and awards season races everywhere. Gyllenhaal is
Swofford, a naïve sharpshooter who comes to the Marines from a dead-end
background. There he meets up with the taciturn Alan Troy (Peter Sarsgaard) and
many others, and they train under Staff Sergeant Sykes (Jamie Foxx) before being
summoned to the desert staging ground in a five-month-plus ramp-up to conflict.
A big part of Jarhead is about the tedium of war, as chronicled
through that wait. It’s here that the movie’s keen and glancingly heartrending
sense of detail (a “Wall of Shame” for Polaroids of cheating girlfriends and
wives back home; coerced drug liability waivers signed just prior to going into
battle) gets its hooks into you. Once the bullets start flying, however, Jarhead ironically becomes a bit more unfocused. This was, after all, a
war won quickly through the air, and while the movie depicts honestly and
forthrightly the conflicted feelings the Marines have about this (bloodthirsty,
combat-hungry but on-edge), there’s not a clear sense of the lines of the front
for the skirmishes that do take place to feel rooted and substantial.
That’s part of the point, I realize. War is a big word — perhaps the heaviest
three-letter word in the English language — but Jarhead gets the micro
right while the macro feels out of focus a bit. The film isn’t a minor work, but
neither does it achieve masterpiece status; its meter is actually more like that
of a stageplay than a film, due in large part to the anecdotal nature of the
source material. That may be a turnoff for some folks, and certainly account for
divided/conflicted opinion, both critically at large and even within one’s own
reflections on the movie.
Jarhead reminded me in significant ways of the recent Iraq war
documentary Gunner Palace, because it assays the very personal cost of
broad, international conflicts. Mendes’ film isn’t incendiary, or even
particularly an antiwar salvo. It’s not an indictment of one political
philosophy, but rather a rebuke of the system and a psalm for the pawns of the
chessboard. One particularly effective scene finds the soldiers — pushed into a
full-gear demonstration football match — haranguing an irritated Sykes in front
of a camera crew about all the pieces of equipment that either they don’t have
(and haven’t for months) or don’t properly work.
On an end note, slightly amusing is the fashion in which the film is being
doggedly sold as a hoo-rah!, pro-military, bootstraps actioner, with
Foxx’s proud speechifying capping off bits of strung-together action mayhem. The
irony is that within the film that speech, while sincere, comes at a down
moment, when two men are sharing a frank conversation wherein the undiscussed
white elephant is the essential futility of their grunt existence but devotion
to it nonetheless. Americans who’ve never served have a complicated,
contradictory and often almost embarrassed relationship with our Armed Forces. Jarhead grippingly flirts with peeling back the layers of truth on these
subjugated capital-I issues, but as its brawny marketing shows us, that
awkwardness will not likely change anytime soon. DVD extras include two audio commentary tracks (one with Mendes, another with Swofford and screenwriter William Broyles, Jr.), deleted scenes with an introduction by Mendes and editor Walter Murch, news interviews and more. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)
Jean Renoir’s brooding, palpably anxious 1938 melodrama La Bête Humaine
is a bit of a curveball in the legendary French filmmaker’s canon, but
no less a work of considerable intrigue and import. Adapted from Émile
Zola’s novel, the film, starring Jean Gabin (Pépé le Moko, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi),
is perhaps Renoir’s most roundly populist offering, and remains to this
day a hardboiled and suspenseful journey into the wounded psyche of an
everyday working man.
Part pulpy noir antecedent and part
exercise in grimy realism, the film’s story centers on Lantier (Gabin),
an unbalanced train engineer who, moved to groggy lust, plots with the
married Severine (Simone Simon) to bump off her older husband, Roubaud
(Fernand Ledoux). It gives away nothing to say that Severine’s
motivations are suspect, and so naturally lethal manipulations follow
all manner of mutual sexual exploitation. The commercial success of the
picture — Renoir’s biggest hit — lies somewhat in the sudsy nature of
its material, but also in the filmmaker’s infallible eye for authentic
detail. The story works so well because we feel the well-worn, dog-eared soul of Lantier, his pawned dreams and swallowed class resentment.
Criterion’s superb release features a new, high-definition digital
transfer of the original, uncensored full-screen version of the movie,
which really makes a difference in Curt Courant’s stunning
cinematography, particularly with shadow and in the recesses of the
frame. There are still apparently a few missing or irrevocably damaged
frames here and there, resulting in some occasional hitches, but
otherwise the film looks better than it has any right to, with very
minimal scratching. In a six-minute introduction to the film from some
considerable time after production, Renoir reveals that he hammered out
his adaptation in only a dozen days, and there’s also a new, 11-minute
interview with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich in which he waxes
philosophic and contextual about both Renoir and La Bête Humaine’s place in his filmography.
Also included is seven minutes of footage from 1957 of Renoir
directing actress Simon in a bit of a fanciful live recreation from the
movie, plus 24 minutes of interviews from a French television program,
with Renoir, Zola scholar Henri Mitterand and others, on the unique
challenges of adapting Zola’s work to the screen. Rounding out the
supplemental material is the film’s theatrical trailer and a gallery of
on-set photographs and theatrical posters that complement a 38-page
insert booklet featuring musings and memories from critic Geoffrey
O’Brien, film historian Ginette Vincendeau and production designer
Eugene Lourié. B+ (Movie) A- (Disc)
Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s animated series South Park
got its start as a defiantly crude slice of counterculture, with the
shock value of potty-mouthed adolescents and the bashing of various
sacred cows. As it’s aged, though, it’s only gotten smarter and better, surpassing The Simpsons as the best animated comedy on television several years ago, and holding onto that title with ease.
We swell the rolls here at Shared Darkness as
time and inclination permits. Ergo, this review of Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy, originally published upon its
limited theatrical release in November of 2001. What? You didn’t see it then? Well then it’s new to you, sucker! To wit:
Any way you slice it, 1,600+ movies is a lot of screen time.
So no matter how averse you are to pornography, chances are you’ve laid eyes on
one Mr. Ron Jeremy (below), the clown prince of smut, a 23-year industry veteran
nicknamed “The Hedgehog” for his chubbiness and preponderance of body hair.
Stop playing it off.
Boogie
Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson’s big-screen opus of porn as one big
dysfunctional family, the millennial/final frontier syndrome, or perhaps just a
general newfound reality-fed voyeurism, but there have been a spate of movies
over the past several years (almost all of which have been documentaries) to
tackle the adult film business and/or group sex. Yet few offer the truthful
duality of Scott Gill’s Porn Star: The
Legend of Ron Jeremy, which examines the daydreams and hard nights of the
world’s most improbable sex symbol. Unlike several other recent documentaries
from the women’s perspectives, Gill’s film — blissfully excised of cattiness
and paranoia — doesn’t shy away from the indeniably intriguing good time
theatrics of the porn industry. But it still manages to fleetingly capture in
its creases and folds Jeremy’s ennui and unspoken dissatisfaction with his dual
status in life.
At the center of this all, of course, is Jeremy’s unending
quest for professional legitimacy. We hear about it all, from his bit parts in Killing Zoe and Detroit Rock City to being edited out of John Frankenheimer’s Ronin. Affably self-touting, and
possessing a three-ring binder literally filled with thousands of scrawled
phone numbers of scattered-to-the-winds “contacts,” Jeremy’s obsession with the
craft of acting (at times he comes off as an earnest cousin of Jon Lovitz’s
“Master Thespian” character) and its application for him in mainstream movies
says everything that Jeremy himself won’t quite say.
Born Ronnie Hyatt in March 1953, Jeremy stumbled into the
adult film biz rather late (he graduated from Queens College with a Masters in
Special Ed, and even spent two years teaching disadvantaged children before
succumbing to the acting bug and chasing down off- off-Broadway parts in the
late 1970s), courtesy of a “Boy Next Door” photo mailed into Playgirl by his then-beau. Is there
anything in his upbringing that would seem to augur this sort of career path,
you might ask. No, not really. His popularity within adult film seems to stem
from sense of humor, but that humor is probably largely a defense mechanism,
the result of the death of Ron’s mother from Parkinson’s when he was in third
grade. But his upbringing was mostly normal, and he continues to have a good
relationship with both his father and sister.
Gill mixes style and footage admirably, following Ron from a
college party where he’s inducted as an honorary fraternity member to the set
of adult flick Ally McFeel, and includes
interviews with everyone from industry staples Al Goldstein and William Margold
to friends like actor Al Lewis (yep, Grandpa Munster) and director Adam Rifkin.
There are problems, though. Gill commits the cardinal sin of documentary
filmmaking, copping out on asking the tough (and most obvious) questions of
Jeremy’s family — it’s obvious that the adult industry, and Ron Jeremy’s place
in it, is his main interest, the rest of his life reduced to little more than
curio status. Yet you can’t really find it in your heart to hold these
transgressions against the film for long, perhaps evidence of Jeremy’s secret
sway, perhaps just an indication that this is a compelling story of a man who
is at once a hero and a pariah. (Maelstrom, unrated, 81 mins.)
Before the term “glass ceiling” really entered into the popular lexicon, 1980’s 9 to 5
tapped into the roiling undercurrent of feminine workplace discord in
telling the comedic story of three women who team up to put the screws
to their patronizing, deceitful bastard of a boss. It may seem like
nothing in hindsight, but the savvy in-triplicate casting of Jane Fonda (also a producer on
the project), Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin represented significant
shifts or steps forward for each of them, and the movie as a whole definitely benefits from
the starkly contrasting pleasures of their rich interplay.
Lucy Liu), Slevin gets mistaken for Nick and sucked
into a plot involving joint gambling debts to two feuding, equally
paranoid and security-conscious crime lords known as the Boss (Morgan
Freeman) and the Rabbi (Ben Kingsley).
In order to erase his debt to the Boss, Slevin is charged with
bumping off Yitzchok (Michael Rubenfeld), the gay son of the Rabbi. The
Rabbi, meanwhile, has his own demands of Slevin. It soon becomes
apparent, meanwhile, that “Smith” is actually Mr. Goodkat, a famously
discreet assassin, and he has strange and murky plans involving Slevin,
who must in turn start thinking on his feet in an effort to turn the
tables on those that would take advantage of him.
McGuigan also directed Hartnett in Wicker Park, another movie
on one level about the convergence of identity and opportunity, and he
made use there of all sorts of slurry, obfuscating devices. Here,
though, he has material whose ingrained archness better matches some of
the things he’s trying to do. Jazzy interstitials make short work of
many a character and scene, and the film’s opening preface from Smith
spells out its diversionary gambit. The set design is all flirty ’60s
décor, full of pop and lines of distinction. What’s left, though
incredibly arch, is energetic and charismatic.
Hartnett gets to play askance and off-kilter, something he does
well, and that many of his blander roles don’t afford him the
opportunity to do. The meet-cute banter with Liu is fun if tonally
dubious, harkening back to the days of Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell.
At one point Lindsey compliments Slevin by saying he reminds her of
James Bond; this later entails a discussion of whether or not this
really was a compliment, based on which Bond she was talking about. If
Willis, in full-on stoic mode, is merely a placeholder here, you don’t
fault him too much given the size and function of his part in this
rangy ensemble. As slick and masturbatory as it is freewheeling and
fun, Lucky Number Slevin is a crime caper predicated on head feints. If that bothers you, don’t play its slots. (MGM/Weinstein Company, R, 110 mins.)
Reviewing 
 is a photographer in his early 30s. After striking up a<br />
chat-room relationship with young teenager Hayley Stark (an utterly<br />
fantastic Ellen Page), they meet at a local coffee shop. The checklist<br />
of phony seduction is fully satisfied — Jeff compliments Haley’s<br />
beyond-her-years intelligence, bonds over their shared musical taste,<br />
and buys her a token gift in the form of a T-shirt — and they soon<br />
repair to his house. There, <b>stilted and elliptical flirtation continues<br />
and the alcohol is brought out</b>. In a twist, though, it’s Hayley who<br />
spikes a drink. When Jeff comes to, he’s been tied up. In calm but<br />
calculated fashion, Hayley proceeds to explain her belief that Jeff is<br />
connected to the disappearance of another local girl. She first sets<br />
out on a quest to find child pornography in Jeff’s abode and, after a<br />
while, <b>reveals her plan to actually castrate him</b>. </p>
<p><b>Somewhat like <i>High Tension</i></b>, which took the stalking horror genre and wrapped it around a proto-feminist twist, <i>Hard Candy</i><br />
is similarly <b>a modern re-imagining of the cold-blooded vengeance pics<br />
of Charles Bronson’s heyday</b>. (Interestingly, neither of these two<br />
pictures are written or directed by women, which, to me, says as much<br />
about their overt commercial motivations as anything else.) Shot by Jo<br />
Willems (<i>London</i>) and constructed by Slade as a <b>veritable expo of primary colors and uncluttered sterility</b>, <i>Hard Candy</i><br />
is an excellent idea for a short film, and Slade has a great touch with<br />
the queasy-sleaze underpinnings that inform the movie. Still, <b>you can<br />
see the laboriousness of its construction and feel its wheels turning<br />
in its stretch to feature-length</b>. </p>
<p>Like <i>Saw</i>, <i>Hard Candy</i> takes delight in the macabre<br />
machinations of its “victims,” although here, of course, that word is<br />
further spring-loaded, and on the surface certainly more deserved. In<br />
alternating between the quippy and brusque, though, <b><i>Hard Candy</i><br />
never locates a satisfying, believable tone</b>. That the castration scene<br />
is prolonged to willfully torturous lengths could be forgiven (or<br />
indeed, embraced as being part of the point) were the film much more<br />
inspired in its interplay. Unfortunately, much of the natural tension<br />
it accrues over the first three-fifths of its running time dissipates<br />
via <b>a series of repetitive, merry-go-round exchanges between Hayley and<br />
Jeff</b>, and a nonsensical ending that just unravels wildly, bad-stock<br />
dialogue and everything. It’s here that you realize <b><i>Hard Candy</i><br />
doesn’t really have much to say</b>, and is in fact nothing more than <b>a<br />
rote, shrewdly packaged vengeance tale wrapped up in profundity’s<br />
clothing</b>. </p>
<p>To me, that’s almost a deal-breaker. <b>What recommends <i>Hard Candy</i>,<br />
though, is Page’s ferociously charged performance.</b> She holds the movie<br />
tightly and completely in her small hands. If it betrays her, she never<br />
betrays it. <b>(Lions Gate, R, 99 mins.)</b></p>
<div class=)
, the film<br />
stars Jake Gyllenhaal, who between this and his lead performance in <a href=)
Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain is making a convincing claim for “Year of” honors in<br />
In an effort to cheer him up, Kyle and the gang take him to the titular<br />
local chain restaurant known for chicken wings and prepubescent hot<br />
girls. It doesn’t work — Stan instead joins the goth gang and wallows<br />
in despair. Oblivious Butters, however, finds his heart set afire by<br />
the casual touch and chirpy sociability of a waitress, and takes that<br />
as a sign that she’s his girlfriend. Oblivious to the fact that she<br />
only spends time with him at the restaurant, he proceeds to spend all<br />
his allowance wooing her with tips.</p>
<p>DVD extras on this three-disc set — housed, like previous seasonal<br />
releases, in expansive gatefold packaging in a nice cardboard slipcase<br />
— consist of <b>mini-commentaries by Stone and Parker</b>. Running only several<br />
minutes apiece, these introductions contain a few <i>bon mots</i> here<br />
and there, such as when Parker reveals that the Mexican restaurant/fun<br />
park at the center of “Casa Bonita,” where Cartman tricks Butters into<br />
a bomb shelter so he can join Kyle on a birthday trip, is a real place<br />
in Denver. They also acknowledge the razor’s edge dance the series<br />
consistently engages in as far as the “political and religious shows<br />
that some kids don’t find funny.” It’s precisely those episodes, I’d<br />
argue, that make <i>South Park</i> so subversively brilliant. That<br />
said, a bit more behind-the-scenes material on just this very<br />
interesting sort of balancing act would really make this set sing. <b>A (Show) B+ (Discs)</b></p>
<div class=)
Boogie,<br />
from a story by Patricia Resnick, the film is set at dreary<br />
Consolidated, a faceless company where Violet Newstead (Tomlin) is<br />
stuck in a dead-end job under a boss that she trained. That<br />
middle-management lothario is Franklin Hart (Dabney Coleman), and he’s<br />
spread rumors that he’s having an affair with his folksy secretary<br />
Doralee Rhodes (Parton), despite the fact that she’s spurned his<br />
advances. Fonda plays Judy Brenly, a newly divorced new hire hidden<br />
behind a beehive hairdo and huge glasses. As she acclimates to the<br />
office, Judy sees how Franklin takes advantage of his “girls,” making<br />
them run personal errands and just generally denigrating them.</p>
<p>The women bond, especially once Judy and Violet discover Doralee<br />
isn’t Franklin’s mistress, and one evening laughingly daydream of<br />
bumping him off. After an accident sends him to the hospital for real,<br />
though, and Franklin’s toadie Roz (Elizabeth Wilson) overhears the<br />
gals’ complicity in the mishap, Franklin tries to blackmail Doralee<br />
into sleeping with him and, once that backfires, goes to call the<br />
police. In a comical escalation, the women kidnap Franklin and keep him<br />
tied up and under house arrest while they work to uncover his illegal<br />
money-laundering scheme. They also make a few changes to office policy,<br />
resulting a more positive work environment for all.</p>
<p>Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen on a disc housed in an Amray case, <b><i>9 to 5</i>’s<br />
special features are special indeed, anchored by a gathering of the<br />
film’s three leading ladies for a full-length audio-commentary track</b>.<br />
With producer Bruce Gilbert serving semi-successfully as wrangler, the<br />
women offer up an entertaining if laugh-filled and frequently slipshod<br />
trip down memory lane. <b>Fonda won’t name names, but says she got fired<br />
from her first (and only) office gig because she refused to sleep with<br />
the boss.</b> She also outs the actor playing Tomlin’s screen son as a pot<br />
dealer, though then everyone interjects that they mean <i>the character</i>,<br />
of course (wink, wink). Parton is chirpy to a fault, and squeals when<br />
her character once curses. Everyone is congratulatory and glad-handing,<br />
but in a way that’s less irksome since they’re so far removed from the<br />
project. It’s obvious they haven’t seen the film in some time, and<br />
Fonda at one point gets so worked up that Gilbert has to interrupt,<br />
only half-jokingly, “Jane, it’s only a movie…”<b></p>
<p>A 25-minute featurette celebrates the making of the movie</b>, and<br />
includes interviews with the aforementioned principals plus Coleman,<br />
writer Resnick and others. Their reminiscences here are thoughtful and<br />
reverent (Fonda notes the “historic synchronicity between the film and<br />
a social movement”), but if there’s a complaint it’s that this piece<br />
relies too heavily on randomly inserted film clips. A more<br />
straightforward presentation would have benefited this piece. <b>A<br />
collection of deleted scenes runs more than 11 minutes</b>, and includes<br />
excised material from Violet’s demented Snow White fantasy sequence,<br />
wherein she poisons Franklin, and another extended scene where Franklin<br />
tries to plot an escape. <b>There’s also a karaoke bit, a four-and-a-half<br />
minute tribute to Higgins (who died of AIDS in the late 1980s) and a<br />
six-minute gag reel</b> where flubbed lines abound, and Parton lets loose<br />
with this blue joke: “What’s green and smells like Miss Piggy? Kermit’s<br />
finger.”<br />
Parton’s finger-snapping, Oscar-nominated theme song may be the only thing many people recollect about <i>9 to 5</i>,<br />
but it’s a worthy revisitation in this day and age, not merely for its<br />
table-turning feminist point of view, but because it has a trio of<br />
sharply defined heroines and sharp performances, and a squirmingly<br />
effective villain who receives a just, nicely plotted comeuppance at<br />
film’s end. <b>B (Movie) B+ (Disc)</b></p>
<div class=)
 and directed by Paul McGuigan (<i>Gangster No. 1</i>, <i>Wicker Park</i>), <b>this cinematic shell game has the jazzy panache of <i>Pulp Fiction</i></b>, the confidence of, well, <i>Confidence</i> and a series of twist endings nipped from <i>The Usual Suspects</i>. <b>It’s a <i>movie</i> all the way.</b> To some this will be a compliment, to others a dis. Either way, you’ll think yourself dizzy trying to keep up. </p>
<p><i>Lucky Number Slevin</i><br />
opens with a man who calls himself Smith (Bruce Willis) happening upon<br />
a stranger in an airport and telling him an involved, winding story<br />
about a fixed horserace from many years ago. From there, <b>the bodies<br />
start piling up at quite a clip</b>, before one really knows what’s going<br />
on. Finally we’re introduced to Slevin (Josh Hartnett), a 20-something<br />
guy who’s come to New York City to visit his friend Nick. After<br />
crashing in his pal’s apartment and happening upon his neighbor, cute<br />
coroner Lindsey (<a href=)
Lucy Liu), Slevin gets mistaken for Nick and sucked
