Monthly Archives: May 2006

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews



If I were perhaps a smarter man I’d delve into a lengthy critical analysis of Mr. & Mrs. Smith as it relates to the tabloid soap opera regarding stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. But I’m not and I typically don’t give half a shake of a chinchilla’s ass about such matters as it relates to a film’s merits, so there you have it.

Pitt and Jolie, of course, star as John and Jane Smith, a suburban couple bored with their quiet domestic life and its humdrum dinners and disagreements over curtains. In therapy they discuss their ennui and free-floating dissatisfaction. Both lead secret lives as assassins, however, secretly hopscotching the world and killing for hire. When given the same mark, a young kid nicknamed “Tank” (The O.C.‘s Adam Brody), their competing agendas expose their identities to one another and thus their competing agencies as well (Pitt’s contact is a jittery Vince Vaughn; Jolie works with a group of exclusively black-clad women, which is I guess the ultimate form of grrrl power). Each is given under 48 hours to kill the other, and so a game of shoot-’em-up cat-and-mouse ensues, before John and Jane stop to ask themselves why they might have been assigned the same target.

The debut script of Simon Kinberg — who went on to pen xXx: State of the Union and the third installment of the X-Men franchise — is at its core an energetic but intellectually so-so execution of a solidly imaginative premise. Assigning fault is somewhat hard to determine, though, because of the film’s lengthy, split shooting schedule and the fact that, come to find out via a little research, entire villains — two pairs, played first by Jacqueline Bisset and Terence Stamp, and then Angela Bassett and Keith David — plus other characters (cash that check, William Fichtner!) were cut out of the movie wholesale, leaving only a disembodied David as Jolie’s boss and one glimpse of him in reflection.

It’s not a surprise, then, that the spy-versus-spy specifics of the movie don’t really work, even for the world of heightened absurdity that Mr. & Mrs. Smith sets up. Given that the pair works for agencies where discretion is in theory prized and integral to their continued success, having an entire hit squad kicking in doors and rappelling from helicopters probably isn’t the best tack for assured anonymity.

What saves Mr. & Mrs. Smith — which is very much an action movie, albeit one that’s uncharacteristically mischievous and lighthearted — is the fact that Pitt and Jolie are two of the most effortlessly magnetic and playful screen stars in Hollywood today. Their star wattage and winning performances — each channels into cathartic physical form the sheer exasperation of a sputtering relationship — elevate the good-but-not-great banter and make Mr. & Mrs. Smith quite worthy dinner party guests. DVD extras on this two-disc, widescreen unrated version of the movie include deleted scenes, analternate ending, a feature-length commentary by Liman, sequential breakdowns with storyboards and animatics, a fairly staid, non-dishy behind-the-scenes featurette, a photo gallery and much more. Those looking for a dissection of the stars’ burgeoning love affair, however, will have to consult the US Weekly microfiche files at their local library. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Sixth Season

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

Given his penchant for litigation, I wasn’t sure that Tom Cruise would be cool with me re-posting this old DVD review, originally published upon the commercial release of the sixth season of Dawson’s Creek. But no, Cruise was adamant — he wanted to get the word out as widely as possible. To wit, this effusive DVD review, transcribed by me, as told to me by Cruise:

“Being a globe-trotting movie star is great and all, what with the pay, the fame, the free travel, the first-class accommodations and the endless supply of other perks. But there’s another benefit, in that my schedule allows me, Tom Cruise, plenty of time to catch up on the lives of my favorite, smart-talking teens — Dawson Leery (lovably enormous-headed James Van Deer Beek), Jen Lindley (gay cowboy lover Michelle Williams), Pacey Witter (fellow gay cowboy lover Joshua Jackson) and Joey Potter (future Oscar winner Katie Holmes). For a long time I was just TiVoing everything off of TBS like the rest of the world, but recently technological advances have spawned things called DVDs, and now Hollywood studios are releasing films and entire seasons worth of television programs. The best and most recent — Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Sixth Season!

The final year of genius creator Kevin Williamson’s amazing show is chiefly one of roiling discontent, with broken hearts and interrupted dreams causing major friction for the entire extended Bayside gang. (Thankfully, no one seeks solace in the form of mind-altering psychotropic drugs or psychiatric treatment — they instead rightfully indulge in pithy one-liners as a mechanism of self-defense.) Dawson and Joey rekindle their romance, but that flame quickly dies out when he reveals that he had a romance with an actress in Los Angeles — the same actress coming to Boston to star in Todd’s movie. Speaking from experience, as I’ve been in a similar situation, I can safely say that “the Beek” should just move on and let his publicist and lawyers deal with the situation.

At any rate, Audrey (Meredith Monroe) helps Pacey get a job through her father, and makes her singing debut with Emma’s band, but her inner demons and addiction threaten to destroy everything. Hot up-and-coming band No Doubt gets showcased in “Spiderwebs,” and in “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,” Pacey struggles to tell Dawson about a costly investment debacle, which reminds me of the time I had to tell Nicole about the $5.5 million check I scratched the Church of Scientology for a special endowment. In the compelling “Sex and Violence,” meanwhile, Dawson is tempted with an offer to make a film that he doesn’t really believe in, which is exactly how I felt about Far and Away.

The two-hour series finale flashes forward five years into the future. Dawson is the creator of a successful teen-centered television show (The Creek!) and Joey is a book editor in New York City. Single mother Jen, meanwhile, having failed to commit herself to Scientology, faces the biggest challenge of her life in the form of an incurable congenital heart defect. What an ending!

All 23 episodes of Dawson’s Creek: The Complete Sixth Season are presented here in 1.33:1 widescreen with an English language Dolby digital surround sound track. Optional subtitles are available in only Portuguese and Spanish, so the rest of the world will have to learn one of those three languages to indulge in the brilliance of this four-disc set, presented in gatefold cardboard packaging that showcases pictures of the entire Dawson’s Creek gang and a nice solo shot of a swinging Holmes. There’s also a great little full-color scrapbook that features character biographies, a vast assortment of promotional photographs, trivia (Simon and Schuster published 15 novels based on the series!) and teleplay excerpts. Creator Williamson and Paul Stupin sit for an audio commentary track on the finale. My only complaint here is that there’s not a pop-up collage or punch-out baby mobile of the beautiful Holmes. Otherwise, this is clearly the best show in the history of small, talking picture boxes, docked a half-grade only because Xenu doesn’t make a special guest appearance.” A- (Show) B- (Disc)

With the Cast of 12 & Holding

Interviews

12 & Holding, which opens this week and expands in arthouse venues across the nation in June.

A quirky tale centering around three 12-year-olds who lose a brother and friend at the hands of two older kids in an unfortunate bullying incident gone wrong, the movie examines the fashion in which these pre-teens cope with grief and other altered circumstances, especially as they run into parents who either suppress, discourage or can’t fully cope with the new ways in which they act out. Zoë Weizenbaum, who played the young Pumpkin in Memoirs of a Geisha, gives a memorably remarkable performance as Malee, a young girl who develops an inappropriate crush on one of the patients, Gus Maitland (Jeremy Renner), of her therapist mother.

“I had some apprehension about the movie just because of the things that (Malee) does,” admits Weizenbaum. But the director, Michael Cuesta (L.I.E.), “explained to me that she’s a really lonely and confused girl, going through all these changes, and her mother is really disconnected from her. It’s an emotional rollercoaster going through puberty and being a teenager, and when you don’t have support it makes it a lot worse. She doesn’t have a father figure (and) she looks to Jeremy as someone to talk to, but I guess she approaches it in the wrong way. She’s just really confused and lonely. It’s sad, what she does.”

What Malee does includes an awkward, attempted seduction — a scene difficult for any actress, but especially one only 14 years of age. “The disrobing scene was done really tastefully,” says Weizenbaum, “and working with Jeremy I basically didn’t have any nerves when it came to doing the scene because of how buddy-buddy we were and how professional he was.” Adds Renner: “Zoë is just so smart and giving, and it’s very easy to like and adore her. I didn’t have to be patient, which I thought I might have to be working with someone younger. She’s probably more professional than I am. She’s just a gem to work with, she felt like family.”

While the Malee-Gus arc is the film’s strongest, it isn’t home to the only interesting, naturalistic adolescent performance. Like Weizenbaum, Montreal native Jesse Camacho — who plays Leonard, a pudgy kid who attempts to reform his family’s eating habits when he loses his sense of taste — won his role after sending in scenes of himself on tape. Cuesta “said I was very natural,” relates Camacho. “I had done these sit-ups in one of the scenes, and apparently those really helped me land the role because they weren’t very good.” No worries — nobody will be saying the same thing about Camacho’s screen work, or that of any of his 12 & Holding peers.

A Nos Amours

Blu-ray/DVD Reviews

I’m off to a screening of The Devil Wears Prada shortly, but I endured some chilly, top-notch self-laceration late last night, in the form of director Maurice Pialat’s 1984 film A Nos Amours. The movie assays the cold, proxy comfort a young French girl looks for in the arms of numerous boyfriends. Craving the attention she’s denied at an unhappy home, Suzanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) flings herself into a destructive search for love and affection. Alternating fractured, dispassionate and clutchy encounters with long ruminative passages, the movie is at times slow going, but it succeeds in portraying in convincingly artistic strokes the manner in which serial adolescent alienation transmutes into destructive behavior.

As usual, Criterion does a bang-up job with its release of a new, restored high-definition digital transfer. Supplemental extras include the original theatrical trailer, a 2003 interview with Bonnaire and a 1999 documentary on the movie entitled The Human Eye. Interesting, too, are new video interviews with contemporary directors Catherine Breillat and Jean-Pierre Gorin on Pialat’s influence on French cinema. There’s also archival on-set interview material with Pialat and footage of some of the actors’ auditions. Rounding out matters are an insert booklet
including insightful essays by critics Molly Haskell and Kent Jones and
further textual interviews with Pialat and cinematographer Jacques Loiseleux. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

John C. Reilly on A Prairie Home Companion

Interviews

Based on Garrison Keillor’s quirky, long-running eponymous
public radio series and set during said fictitious variety group’s last
broadcast, the musical dramedy A Prairie
Home Companion is director Robert Altman’s 25th feature film, but it still
represented a heartening first for John C. Reilly. “I was doing A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway,
and thinking, ‘What’s the next movie I ought to do?’ I literally made a list of directors I wanted to work
with,” recalls Reilly. “Altman was the first one, and four days later he called
me to do the movie. So I was thrilled, obviously, because he’s a pretty special
director. Not every filmmaker has the guts to give people the freedom that Bob
does. He kind of just lets you find your own way into the character and if you
ask him questions about something he’ll give you a straight answer, but if
you’re asking him what you should do he’s gonna say, ‘Well, I don’t know, I
hired you. You tell me what you should do!’”

Shaping his own character was a treat for Reilly,
particularly given his frequent on-screen scene partner — Woody Harrelson, who
Reilly met and befriended on the set of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, another project from a true American auteur. “Me
and Woody are Dusty and Lefty, these old trail hands — archetypal characters
that Garrison has created over the years,” says Reilly. “We do some singing… go
at it a lot. It’s similar to our own friendship — we like to give each other a
hard time, let’s put it that way. But there’s also a lot of funny stuff in
there.” Indeed, set over the course of one rainy evening, the show takes place
against the backdrop of the sale of the radio station, making for much
seriocomic tension.

For Reilly, the experience of actually working with Altman
outstripped even his own inflated expectations. “I found myself many times on Prairie Home Companion having no idea
whether I was on-camera or off-camera,” he says, “and there’s a real,
delightful freedom in that because most of the time in movies you’re all too
aware of where the camera is. There’s a lot of joy in a Robert Altman movie.”