Sexual
and erotic obsessions are at the hub of French filmmaker Eric Rohmer’s
canon, but don’t expect unadorned titillation. One of the founding
critics of the history-making Cahiers du cinema, Rohmer began
translating his written manifestos to the big screen in the 1960s,
standing apart from New Wave contemporaries like Jean-Luc Godard and
François Truffaut with his patented brand of gently existential,
hyper-articulate character studies — a thematic forerunner for everyone
from Woody Allen to Gabriele Muccino and Noah Baumbach. Set chiefly
against vivid seasonal landscapes, his half dozen “Moral Tales” — a
succession of jousts between fragile, mostly inwardly reflective men
and the women who tempt them — unleashed upon the world of film a
modern, liberating and nonjudgmental voice, one at once philosophical
and liltingly insightful on sexual matters.

Criterion’s fantastic new six-disc DVD collection, which also
includes a hearty book of essays and the original stories by Rohmer,
celebrates this vision, and kicks off with 1962’s simple, jazzy,
23-minute The Bakery Girl of Monceau. The film centers on a law
student (played by future director Barbet Schroeder) with a large
appetite and equally roving eye who daily stuffs himself full of
pastries in order to garner the attentions of the pretty brunette who
works in a quaint bakery in the Parisian borough of the title. But is
he truly interested, or is she just a sweet diversion? In the following
year’s evocative, 55-minute Suzanne’s Career, Rohmer works his
way deeper into his subject of interest, telling the tale of two
friends and the girl that comes between them. Bertrand (Philippe
Beuzen) bides his time in a casually envious friendship with college
chum and ladies’ man Guillaume (Christian Charrière). But when
Guillaume seems to be making a play for the spirited, independent
Suzanne (Catherine Sée), Bertrand jealousy and disapproval become more
pronounced.

The rest of Rohmer’s works in this arena are feature-length affairs. His first color work, 1967’s La Collectionneuse,
concerns a bombastic, womanizing art dealer (Patrick Bauchau) and his
painter friend (Daniel Pommereulle), who trip to a villa on the Riviera
for a relaxing summer getaway. Their idyll is disturbed, however, by
the presence of the bohemian Haydée (Haydée Politoff), a “collector” of
men. The stars collaborated with their director on the script and
dialogue, and the result is a movie full of remarkably realistic
battle-of-the-sexes jousting.

Coming two years later, the breakout Stateside hit My Night at Maud’s
is the brilliantly accomplished centerpiece of Rohmer’s series.
Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Jean-Louis, one of the great conflicted
figures of ’60s foreign cinema. A pious Catholic engineer in his early
30s, he lives by a strict moral code in order to rationalize his world,
drowning himself in mathematics and the philosophy of Pascal. After
spotting the delicate, blonde Françoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) at
mass, he vows to make her his wife, although when he unwittingly spends
the night at the apartment of bold, brunette divorcée Maud (Françoise
Fabian), his rigid ethical standards are challenged.

Wrapping up Rohmer’s “Moral Tales” are 1970’s Claire’s Knee (above, right) and 1972’s Love in the Afternoon (below; not
to be confused with the 1957 Gary Cooper/Audrey Hepburn film of the
same name). Both films focus on the lit fuse of marital temptation and
its relationship to the powder-keg of moral crisis — the former in the
form of teenagers Beatrice Romand and Laurence de Monaghan, the latter
in the form of the singularly monikered Zouzou’s unencumbered ex-flame.

Newly
restored, high-definition digital transfers grace the set, each
supervised and approved by Rohmer. Original theatrical trailers, a
video conversation between Rohmer and onetime subject Schroeder, a
video afterward with filmmaker Neil LaBute, all manner of archival
interviews, and five of Rohmer’s short films (including 1999’s
little-seen but quite interesting The Curve) also anchor this
wonderful set, and that’s not even getting to the wealth of essays from
a wide-ranging group of contributors that includes Molly Haskell, Geoff
Andrew, Phillip Lopate and Armond White. Rohmer’s films may seem talky
and arid by the standards of some, but they’re fascinating, unfussy and
naturalistic works that have great perspicacity about human nature,
interpersonal communication and relationships both amorous and
fraternal, and they superbly grouped and presented here. A- (Movies) A (Discs)

The
DVD format is great not only for the tricked-out explorations of past
American classics it can offer American film enthusiasts, but also
long-forgotten foreign films it can wash up on our shores anew. After
all, to borrow NBC’s sly small screen marketing line regarding
catalogue repeats, if you haven’t yet seen it, well, it’s “new to you.”
Case in point: two rarely screened Italian classics largely considered
lost, but fresh to DVD, Roma Città Libera and Francesco Maselli’s political drama Open Letter to the Evening News.

Director Marcello Pagliero’s neorealism classic Roma Città Libera is set in a war-shattered Rome newly freed by the Allies. A rainy night brings together four strangers: a heartbroken youth (Black Sunday’s
Andrea Checchi) rescued from taking his own life by the intervention of
a thief (Nando Bruno), a lonely typist (Valentina Cortese) who’s turned
to streetwalking and a distinguished gentleman (Oscar winner Vittorio
de Sica) who’s lost his memory. All four take refuge in a bar
frequented by American GIs, and inside the bar they encounter a group
of jewel smugglers whose leader has stolen the young man’s girlfriend —
the very betrayal that pushed him toward suicide.

Scripted by Ennio Flainano and made during the seminal years of Italian neorealism, 1946’s Roma Città Libera
was directed by Pagliero, famous for having played the stoic
resistance leader tortured to death by the Nazis in Roberto
Rossellini’s incendiary Rome, Open City. Its title is an
understandably purposeful evocation of that film, and the movie’s rich,
redolent location filming, by Aldo Tonti, hints at the same mixture of
street-level grittiness and breathless magic he would a decade later
bring to Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. Completely
restored from the original vault negative and presented in its original
1.33:1 aspect ratio, in Italian with optional English subtitles, Roma Città Libera
retails for $19.95, and includes an introduction by and separate
interview with screenwriter/assistant director Luigi Filippo D’Amico,
the movie’s original theatrical trailer and an interview with film and
TV journalist Stefano Della Casa.

Open Letter to the Evening News,
from 1970, centers on a group of leftist Italian radicals who, hoping
to shake up their native complacent Communist Party, sends an
incendiary letter to a major evening newspaper declaring their
intention to volunteer to fight American troops in Vietnam as a
political statement against the war. When the newspaper actually prints
the letter, drawing public attention to the situation, the provocateurs
face the hard choice whether their commitment to the cause is worth
risking their lives.

As directed by Francesco Maselli, former assistant to Michelangelo
Antonioni, this searing black-comedy-by-way-of-political-drama is a
brash example of Italy’s celebrated “cinema politico,” and its
scandalous period release interestingly echoes current stories of the
American Taliban and homegrown al Qaeda sympathizers. Despite its
status as a cause célèbre curio, the film has largely languished in
obscurity, denying Maselli his rightful place alongside the provocative
likes of Francesco Rossi and Bernardo Bertolucci and Costa-Gavras.
Spread out over two discs, this exclusive, uncut special edition from
distributor No Shame was prepared with the filmmaker’s participation,
and includes both interviews with him, Virna Lisi and Claudia
Cardinale, an exclusive photo gallery and the feature-length
documentary Fragments of the Twentieth Century, which is
Maselli’s highly personal overview of Italy’s film and political
histories. A collectible booklet, meanwhile, contains previously
unpublished essays by Michelangelo Antonioni and Italo Calvino. B (Movies) B+ (Discs)

It
may sound cruel, but you can oftentimes judge the relative quality of a
super-low-budget flick that happens to have a scene set in a strip club
by the class and lithe attractiveness of its pole-dancers. And the girl
writhing around in the opening moments of Live Feed is, um… not
totally the most toned beauty ever to grace screens big or small. If
slightly more comely ladies eventually drop blouse, it hardly makes this
sadistic Hostel rip-off any more stomachable.

Presented, ironically, by Plotdigger Films, Live Feed is written and directed by special effects artist Ryan Nicholson (Torched, Hell Hath No Fury),
with his father Roy sharing a writing and producing credit, because
apparently the family that makes wretched movies together stays
together. To start off on a somewhat positive note, I’ll grant the
movie this allowance: it features some decently unnerving opening
credits, flashes forward into the grisly terrain we’re about to enter.
Unfortunately, it’s almost all downhill from there.

After a group of five Americans (Taayla Markell, Rob Scattergood,
Caroline Chojnacki, Lee Tichon, Ashley Schappert) vacationing in China
disgustedly witness a dog getting carved up, they stumble into a bar —
where they befriend a brooding Japanese man named Miles (Kevan Ohtsji,
coming the closest to acquitting himself), whose quick talking gets
them out of a dust-up with some thugs — and then a sex club owned by
brutal crime boss (Stephen Chang). Here, drugs are done, best friends
are screwed (both figuratively and literally) and time is bided until
the senseless blood-letting commences, much of it at the hands of a
giant, hooded executioner (Mike Bennett), in the fashion of the recent See No Evil.
Shot in nervous, unfocused fashion by cinematographer Sasha Popove
(exterior scenes are strung together with zoom-laden stock footage, and
the later bloody interiors evince no sense of properly delineated
space) and driven forward in sloppy fashion by Patrick Coble’s score, Live Feed
features precious little interior logic, all manner of inane dialogue
and both blood and awful acting by the bucketful. In short, it had me
at the homely stripper and reaffirmed its awfulness with a sequence
where a guy jams a glass pipe down one victim’s throat so that he may
release a snake directly into her esophagus.

Packaged in a regular Amray case, Live Feed is presented in
16×9 widescreen, with interactive menus, scene selection, trailers and
optional Spanish subtitles. Though not on the review copy we were
serviced with, the final release supposedly includes a
behind-the-scenes, making-of featurette, deleted and alternate scenes,
plus an alternate ending. The film is also available in both rated and
unrated versions, and the latter iteration includes a director and cast
audio commentary track and footage from some of the grisly
movies-within-the-movie that Live Feed incorporates. F (Movie) C (Disc, speculatively)

Jazz
has been one of America’s truly unique and far-ranging inventions, an
art form unto itself. And while there have been many regions throughout
the country that have contributed to the development of the genre, the
coasts have been where a lot of the most timeless evolutions and
recordings have been made, ergo the sometimes awkward, sometimes
arbitrary divisions of Jazz Shots From the East Coast and its left coast partner.

This
outstanding continuing series of DVDs pays homage to the two respective
coasts and to some of the most important musicians who spent major
portions of their careers in one of the two titular hubs. While a great
many of these musicians were born in the Midwest or the South and later
moved to one of the two coasts, what is taken into account when placing
the musician is both where they spent the bulk of their artistic career
and where they recorded their most influential works, as well as the
nexus of subsequent generations that they in turn influenced. A bit
subjective? You bet, but unlikely to start an East Coast/West Coast
beef that will take down major players or fans. And hey, if it tricks a
few geographical chest-thumpers into discovering more about jazz, I’m
all for it.

In Jazz Shots From the East Coast, John Coltrane’s “Afro
Blue” is notable for the way it takes a minor slip in key and bends it
into a new clever new phrase, while Miles Davis & the Gil Evans
Orchestra give “The Duke,” “Blues for Pablo” and “New Rumba” notable
workouts. Mission: Impossible composer Lalo Schifrin pops up on
several numbers tickling ivories, including the Dizzy Gillespie
Quintet’s “Blues After Dark” and “Lorraine.” (And yes, the
aforementioned maestro’s cheeks still reached comical, bullfrog
proportions even back then.) Other standout tracks include the Count
Basie Orchestra’s “Dickie’s Dream,” Charlie Parker’s “Hothouse,” Louis
Armstrong’s “Someday” and Miles Davis and John Coltrane trading licks
on “So What.”

Jazz Shots From the West Coast includes plenty of
contributions from Teddy Edwards, the under-regarded Wes Montgomery,
the Shorty Rogers Quintet and Lester Young (including a nifty rendition
of “On the Sunny Side of the Street”), but Stan Kenton’s short, sweet
“Limehouse Blues” and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five” and “(It’s
a) Raggy Waltz” leave a lasting impression as well.

Packaged in regular Amray cases, each disc in the Jazz Shots
series comes keyed in its own color, and is presented in 1.33:1 full
frame. Though frequently lacking in crispness of image, the transfers
are generally pretty good in terms of grain, and some of the footage is
in color and some in black-and-white. The artistry on display also
varies pretty widely; evocative close-ups and fade ins and outs stud
the Jimmy Smith Trio’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and a few other tracks,
while others are shot in straightforward, pedestrian fashion.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any supplemental bonus features to round
out these titles, but they are — individually and collectively — superb
and engaging treats, either as introductions to jazz or valentines for
longtime fans. B+ (Shows) C- (Disc)

Dumbland is billed simply
as “an absurd animated comedy.” While definitely not for all tastes, in
its out-there, tongue-in-cheek indulgence of the infantile it affords
viewers a telling and sometimes amusing glimpse inside the auteur
filmmaker’s mind, one that might be surprising to those that somehow
consider Lynch unapproachably highbrow. This DVD collects all eight of the original, three- to five-minute pay site episodes, and marks their only commercial availability thus far. For the full review, from IGN, click here. To order Dumbland or check out more from Lynch’s site, click here.

The third and final season of Fox’s gloriously dense single-camera sitcom Arrested Development
— the comedic equivalent of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, except
entirely less fattening — hits DVD August 29, marking the official end of
its incarnation… on the small screen.

The series revolves
around Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the proverbial good son and
seemingly only sane adult member of the extended Bluth clan. With his
corner-cutting, approval-withholding father George (Jeffrey Tambor)
perpetually either on the lam or under house arrest awaiting trial,
Michael must run the family construction business and try to keep his
offbeat family — including, among others, his manipulative, icy mother
Lucille (Jessica Walter), self-centered, struggling magician brother
Gob (Will Arnett), self-centered, capricious sister Lindsay (Portia de
Rossi) and sheltered mama’s boy Buster (Tony Hale) — on the up and up,
all at the expense of his own relationship with his 14-year-old son,
George Michael (Michael Cera).

The joke writing on the show is top-notch, but it also mixes and
folds in all manner of humor, from one-liner zings and double entendres
to clever puns and absurdist arcs. What redeems most of the characters’
surface foibles, meanwhile, are a group of actors who understand the
material and give the hyper-realistic setting a real sense of
investment.

While the ensemble cast is spot-on, and each given emotionally
palpable and consistent through arcs, more than any primetime series in
recent history, Arrested Development also makes (I guess I’ll
have to fight through the pain and start using the past tense) smart,
hilarious use of a wild mix of guest stars. This season’s group
includes Scott Baio, Judge Reinhold, Justine Bateman, Dave Thomas and
Charlize Theron, the latter as a mentally handicapped girl with whom
Michael unwittingly strikes up an unlikely relationship. This isn’t
taking into account recurring bit players like Henry Winkler as the
Bluth family’s chronically inept attorney, Ed Begley, Jr. as a
follically-challenged business competitor and Liza Minnelli as a
vertigo-stricken neighbor of Lucille’s.

Spread out over two discs in a regular Amray case with a snap-in tray, Arrested Development: The Complete Third Season
is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, only enhancing its cinema-worthy
compositions, in which sight gags and visual humor lurk in the
backgrounds of frames. (In one especially memorable moment, Michael
returns to the company’s offices and — all while talking on his cell
phone, advancing the A-plot — wanders past a hobbling employee. We then
see a toppled ladder in front of an only partially hung and visible
sign reading “Risky Business.” Finally, in the payoff, another
shrugging employee wanders by, dressed like Tom Cruise’s sock-sliding
character.) The audio is presented in English, Spanish and French
language Dolby digital 2.0 surround sound mixes, with optional
subtitles in the former two tongues.

A nice assortment of deleted and extended scenes kickstart the
supplemental extras. A seven-minute blooper reel includes loads of
obscenity-laced gaffes and flubbed lines that devolve into various
proffered and solicited sexual favors, as well as David Cross surprising
guest star Reinhold with use of the word labia. (“So, welcome to Arrested Development,”
you hear a crew member say off-screen.) Sans only Tambor, there are
three cluttered cast commentary tracks herein, including a slightly
pining entry on the finale, all full of good-natured backbiting. There
are some very funny moments here (pointing out various visual echoes
back to the pilot, assaying Cera’s “headshot pose” in a bedside photo),
but it’s a bit wearying to sift through, to be honest. Finally, there’s
a seven-and-a-half-minute featurette on the show’s last day on location
aboard the Queen Mary, interspersed with more interview footage with
Bateman, though not series creator Mitchell Hurwitz. Mitch, how can we
believe the sly insinuation of an Arrested Development movie that the finale imparts, via narrator Ron Howard’s cameo, if you won’t flirt with us on camera? A+ (Show) A- (Disc)

Part of the “Mystery!” series on PBS, Jericho is a good, old-fashioned investigative import. The
first season of the across-the-pond series is comprised of two dark and
gritty mysteries, both of which are included here. At the center of the
series, set in 1950s London, is Chief Inspector Michael Jericho of
Scotland Yard (Horatio Hornblower’s Robert Lindsay), a
respected, uncompromising and forward-thinking detective tasked with
investigating different high-profile murders. A media darling, Jericho
is haunted by memories of his father, a policeman whose murder he
witnessed as a young boy. (Telling, the differences between the
collective American and British psyches that he didn’t then don a cape
and mask as an adult, but rather an inspector’s cloak.)

Set as it is against a fascinating social and historical backdrop,
when London saw an explosion of color, glamour and shifting attitudes
and mores after the end of World War II, Jericho has a certain
keen anthropological detail, with its protagonist constantly surveying
and reevaluating a familiar city changing drastically before his very
eyes. Though alone since his childhood sweetheart left him for another
during the war, Jericho slowly finds himself drawn to his beautiful
French neighbor Juliette (Aurélie Bargème), a prostitute with a
tortured past. Mostly, though, he’s a stiff-upper-lipped working man,
driven by a do-gooder’s desire and aided by his faithful friend and
colleague Sergeant Clive Harvey (David Troughton, of Foyle’s War) and an ambitious young constable, John Caldicott (David Copperfield’s Ciaran McMenamin).

The two feature-length titles included here kick off with A Pair of Ragged Claws,
in which Jericho investigates the murder of a young black man in the
racially divided neighborhood of Notting Hill (Julia Roberts,
blissfully, does not appear). On the same evening as the killing, a
wealthy man is kidnapped and held for ransom, but Jericho susses out an
intriguing connection between the two events. In The Killing of Johnny Swan,
meanwhile, Jericho is assigned to the case of a murdered track champion
and his new bride — initially believed to have been erased by KGB — but
quickly finds out that not all is what it seems. Well sketched
characterizations and briskly paced directing help these period piece
tales seem anything but staid and boring.

Housed in two regular Amray cases in turn stored in a solid cardboard slipcase, the Jericho
mysteries are presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with solid picture
transfers. Like most other WGBH/PSB titles, his release doesn’t pimp
any special features, alas, but you can rest knowing that your purchase
helps support public television, and that’s not at all a bad thing,
right? B (Movies) C- (Disc)

I’m not sure how this escaped my knowledge for so long, but the TBS holiday staple A Christmas Story — the holiday movie “for the rest of the us” — in fact spawned an off-season sequel, 1994’s My Summer Story.
Instead of BB guns and provocative lampshades, though, this tale of
humid nostalgia tackles top-spinning contests, foreclosure auctions,
fishing trips and family feuds, while also still retaining a bullying
overlord presence to torment our protagonist.

Yes, the famed
role of Ralphie Parker played by Peter Billingsley in the original
movie is here embodied by Kieran Culkin, and Charles Grodin and Mary Steenburgen play his parents. (As younger brother Randy, Christian
Culkin doesn’t really have much to do.) The film, of course, dates
itself with its references to candy (six Mary Janes for a penny?!), and
its scope is a bit less convincing, but fans of A Christmas Story
will recognize and enjoy writer-director Bob Clark and source-material
author Jean Shepherd’s characteristically wry narration. “When the old
man was in a good mood, he gave me nicknames like ‘Rubber Band’ and
‘Spare Tire,’” notes Ralphie at one point. Later, after Ralphie and his
pals Flick (Geoffrey Wigdor) and Schwartz (David Zahorsky) have to
purchase yucky red jawbreakers in order to obtain black ones, a moment
of reverie comes in the form of the following voiceover: “With the
proper cheek tension, the soul-satisfying taste of those ebony
masterpieces began to course through our veins, and it was almost worth
the years of impacted wisdom teeth that were to follow.”

The film’s set pieces are a bit less memorable and smoothly staged
than the original — Ralphie challenges sneering bully Lug Ditka (Whit
Hertford) to a duel involving spinning tops, and his dad blasts their
hillbilly neighbors with classical music, only to suffer a hoedown as
retaliation — but it’s humorous and on-point the way that Ralphie views
fishing with his dad as a grand entrée to the adult world. The only
other beef I really have is Grodin. No doubt hired because he exudes an
irascible nature — put nicely to use for kids in the Beethoven
films — here he just seems like an awkward fit, missing the subtleties
of Darren McGavin’s gruff, bluffing demeanor by playing things far too
broadly.

Housed in a regular Amray case, My Summer Story is presented
in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with an
English 2.0 stereo track and optional English subtitles. Apart from
previews for other Sony releases (including the forthcoming bow of
Sony’s in-house animated branch, Open Season), there are
unfortunately no supplemental extras on this DVD, leaving an empty hole
for those seeking an additional nostalgic fix through some comments
from Clark, perhaps. Overall, My Summer Story is decently in step and of a piece with its family-friendly predecessor, though not quite on par. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

It’s
great, I think most of us would agree, that we’ve reached a point where
to be gay on screen doesn’t necessarily mean flamboyantly prancing
about — though Sean Hayes certainly did homosexuals no favors in this
regard on Will & Grace. A case in point, though, arrives in the form of Third Man Out,
a straightforward-to-the-point-of-somewhat-flawed procedural starring
erstwhile TV pin-up Chad Allen as a gay detective caught up in a
ripped-from-the-newspapers crime story.

The title passingly evokes The Thin Man,
and purposefully so. Director Ron Oliver says in the opening moments of
a 15-minute interview compilation at movie’s end that he saw the chance
to make “a gay Nick and Nora mystery” out of author Richard Stevenson’s
serial novels as an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. To this end, the
story centers here on Allen’s Donald Strachey, which one character
notes is “the only gay private eye in the capital area, maybe all of
New York state,” which is kind of doubtful. Still, when Strachey is
reluctantly drafted into protecting a gay activist, John Rutka (Jack
Wetherall), known for “outing” prominent citizens, he encounters a
mystery much deeper and more dangerous than he initially suspects. When
Rutka eventually turns up dead, Strachey must sift through an extensive
list of enemies, all with plenty of motive.

The dialogue and acting here are of above-average quality, though
the actual story itself and directorial execution — though obviously
done on a shoestring budget — are a bit less than stellar, suffering
from a certain obviousness. Third Man Out works to the degree
that it does because of the careful balance in tone. Its characters are
quippy, but not flip or derisive; its tone turns dangerous, but never
so menacing as to make everything else feel out of sorts. All in all,
gay and metrosexual Law & Order fans will find ample reward in this title, which also costars Sean Young and Woody Jeffreys.

Third Man Out sees release from Genius Entertainment alongside the first season of Dante’s Cove, a sort of mash-up of the pre-hysterical bitchery of Melrose Place (there was a time, believe it or not) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
wherein surf culture and gothic horror are interspersed with
supernatural mystery and quotidian relationship struggles. Again, both
titles score points by not overly doting upon many of the struggles
traditionally associated with being gay — and particularly found in
sermon-to-the-choir independent film, I’m afraid to report — but
instead simply presenting their characters as professionals who
incidentally happen to be gay.

Third Man Out is presented in what is billed as 1.78:1
widescreen (though it looks more like 1.66:1, to be honest), with Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and stereo audio mixes. The aforementioned
production featurette is the sole bonus feature, but it does thankfully
cover a good bit of ground. There’s a lot of frank discussion and broad
range of opinion on coming out, including Allen talking about his
attempted real-life extortion at the hands of a tabloid. Gay adult star
and Third Man Out bit player Matthew Rush, meanwhile (who here,
yes, plays a porn star), pops up to offer this hilarious nugget of
wisdom: “I’ve been doing a lot of stage work over the past two years,
and also adult movies, and they’re very different.” Umm, no kidding —
really? To purchase the film via Amazon, click here. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

It’s
become a bit of a joke in the subsequent years, even though its title
and premise seemingly augur a successful big screen adaptation in these
culturally tapered times, or at least some completely unironic, “red
state”-baiting small-screen telepic. Yes, it’s The Flying Nun,
and it’s quite dated, sure. But there’s a certain perplexing charm
often associated with seeing stars bring their talents to bear in
projects prior to their ability to more fully exercise significant
(read: staid) personal choice, and that can certainly be said of Sally
Field and The Flying Nun.

Starring Field as bubbly,
90-pound novice nun Sister Bertrille, who uses her “jet” cornet and
ability to become airborne to stir up trouble at Convent San Tanco in
Puerto Rico, the series became an unlikely hit after being initially
rushed into production to avert the expiration of a holding deal on its
star. Although her aims are always benevolent, Sister Bertille’s means
are frequently bemoaned by Mother Superior (Madeleine Sherwood),
leaving her fellow nuns (a group including Shelley Morrison, Marge
Redmond and Linda Dangcil) to frequently help cover for her.

All 26 episodes of the show’s second season, spanning 1968 and ’69,
are included here, many of which are written by Arthur Alsberg, who
would go on to pen Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo and Hot Lead and Cold Feet
and give the loose-limbed, ever-jocular pitch and tone of those efforts
a fair workout here. The episodes are fairly self-contained, so the
show runs a little bit hot and cold qualitatively, sailing by thinly on
Field’s charms. Among the more notable episodes are “The Rabbi and the
Nun,” in which the sisters sing “Hava Nagila” at a Jewish wedding in
the convent garden; “Cast Your Bread Upon the Waters,” in which the nun
goes into the bakery business to help raise funds; and “To Fly or Not
to Fly,” in which Bertrille actually tries to stay grounded for
solemnity’s sake. Other shows — involving hypnosis, kleptomaniac
monkeys and kitschy songwriting gambits — come off as either forcedly
wacky or otherwise uninspired.

The Flying Nun: The Complete Second Season is housed on three
discs in two slimline plastic cases, which are in turn stored in a
brightly hued cardboard slipcase. As with the release of its inaugural
season, all the episodes herein are presented in their original
full-frame aspect ratio; audio tracks are in English, Spanish and
Portuguese, with optional subtitles in the latter two languages as
well. Field sat for an interview on the previous DVD release of the
first season, but unfortunately there are no episodic commentaries or
extra material from that sit-down included here, a bummer for those
seeking an additional nostalgic fix. C (Show) C (Disc)

The
old handle of “a young girl’s sexual awakening” is typically shorthand
code for softcore crap, but it holds factual and genuine in this
Australian import, widely regarded as the English language Emmanuelle, but in fact superior to that better known film.

Glory Annen (sorry, not Keri Russell) stars as Felicity Robinson, a
sheltered teen who surrenders her blossoming body to a world of bold
sexual adventure. It starts with some same-sex canoodling at an
all-girls Catholic boarding school in the countryside, and eventually
moves on to all sorts of exotic underground settings when Felicity goes
to Hong Kong. The odyssey includes hook-ups both scandalous and public
(a bus, movie theater, beach, etc.), and culminates in a love affair
with young Miles (John Michael Howson). It’s a legitimate journey, in
other words. Shocking, I know…

As directed by John Lamond — who also co-wrote the 1979 film with his wife — Felicity
idealizes sex, yes, but in an alluring and quite pretty way rather than
in crude or graphic fashion. The film’s nudity is copious, but the love
scenes don’t at all drag on. They’re all grounded in the story, the
galloping thrill of sexual discovery. The scenery, meanwhile, is
flat-out beautiful, with wide natural vistas of both day and nighttime,
country and city. Lamond goes the extra mile in both indulging a
location shoot with real extras of said areas, but also paying
attention to the other elements of filmmaking — artistic framing,
interesting shot selection and evocative music — that often get the
proverbial shaft in movies of this ilk. What holds this movie together,
though, is Annen, who gives a performance both fetching in the basest
sense but also psychologically rooted in the commingled implication of
shame and pleasure.

Distributor Severin’s sterling, colorfast, 1.85:1 widescreen DVD
presentation has very minimal grain, and includes both a Dolby digital
audio track and a feature-length audio chat with Lamond and Annen, who
jointly discuss in a very thoughtful and straightforward fashion their
collaboration on the film, and the state of erotic filmmaking today.
It’s also quite a shock and further delight to find out that Annen
isn’t even Australian (she was born in Ontario), and her accent in the
film is in fact another testament to her talent. For fans of classic
erotica, it indisputably doesn’t get much better than Felicity, a legitimate film that also happens to be sexy as hell. B (Movie) B- (Disc)

Brothers
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne came up shooting a variety of
documentaries about World War II and the Nazi resistance, so it’s no
surprise that their work has always had a grimy, unsparing immediacy
born of the real world. They first really burst onto the narrative
feature scene in 1996 with La Promesse, a searing social drama
about a super and his disaffected son who rent apartments to illegal
immigrants and take advantage of them in more than tacit fashion. Three
years later brought more acclaim in the form of Rosetta, a
movie that centered on a Belgian girl’s struggles with both her job and
her alcoholic mother; it picked up the top prize, the Palme D’Or, at
that year’s Cannes Film Festival.

L’Enfant continues the
brothers’ dual preoccupation with adolescence and the effects of
poverty and social-welfare rejects, pitching us deep and downward into
the life of Bruno (La Promesse’s Jérémie Renier), a down-and-out
petty thief in a small town Belgium who commands a gang of younger
hooligan pickpockets and panhandlers much like an authoritative pimp
casually directs his harem. Bruno hits rock bottom when he sells his
newborn son to a black market adoption broker, telling his devastated
girlfriend Sonia (Déborah François) that he thought they’d just have
another. Finally realizing the error of his ways, Bruno has a
humanistic awakening of sorts, setting out to try to undo his callous
deed in a manner that leads to a powerful personal transformation.

While not quite on par with either La Promesse or what might be their best work, 2002’s The Son, L’Enfant
nonetheless remains a convincing work in no small part because of its
makers impassioned compassion and ability to locate virtuousness in the
midst of despicable behavior. Their affinity for the grubby and
downtrodden could have the ability to come across as cloying and false
were it not for the Dardennes’ unsentimental, matter-of-fact style, and
an actor with whom they are so wholly on the same page as Renier, who
delivers a memorable performance.

Housed in a regular Amray case, L’Enfant is presented in
1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen, preserving the aspect ratio of its
original theatrical exhibition. A slight graininess mars the transfer,
but feeds the threadbare narrative rather than detract from the
proceedings. The audio arrives courtesy of a French language Dolby
digital 5.1 track, with optional English and French subtitles. In the
disc’s only supplemental extra, the Dardennes sit for a moderate
on-camera interview for a radio program, and discuss the genesis of the
idea for the movie and the consistency of their production techniques.
For foreign-language film fans, L’Enfant is a worthwhile rental. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)

What kind of folks would make a movie titled Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace, you might ask? Well, the same kind whose previous credits would included a movie entitled Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter, of course.

A
slapdash, silly, low-budget Canadian spy spoof, the film centers around
the titular secret agent (Phil Caracas) and his partner El Santos (Jeff
Moffet), whose quest is to track down a valuable missing necklace. Over
the course of the movie, this means showdowns with a hinterland horror
known as Bionic Bigfoot and a team of Amazonian assassins, among many
other trials and tribulations. Fish nunchakus and copious affected slow
motion are also deployed.

Writer Ian Driscoll and director Lee Demarbre have a deep affinity for kung-fu shenanigans, and Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace is full of the same type of marginally choreographed rows. Caracas — returning from Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter
as well — gives his character a certain goofy charm, but execution and
tonal consistency are the big bugaboos here. What glues the movie
together more than any sense of slapdash style is its breathlessly
anarchic tone. In Driscoll and Demarbre’s DIY world, continuity
problems are best incorporated and made fun of within the flow of
things, rather than painstakingly ironed out. This works a few times,
but eventually drags things down, because it just seems lazy.

Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace is at its best — a
term loosely applied — when dashing mindlessly over and around all
obstacles, but the movie’s running time, at just under two hours,
belies this model of brevity-as-virtue, and the “action” herein is far
too large a piece of the pie. People don’t want to sit through
low-budget films for more than a scene or two of inadequately staged
action; you have to woo them with ideas. This film has some, but
they’re not as entertainingly explored as in the filmmakers’ previous
work.

Housed in a regular Amray case, Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace
is presented on a region-free disc in a full-screen transfer that
preserves the imperfections of the movie’s 16mm production alongside a
Dolby digital 5.1 English track that’s a definite step up from the
visual plane of the movie. Cast and crew alike sit for an
audio-commentary track, and a 23-minute making-of documentary graces
the roster of supplemental material, along with a 25-minute 1999 short
film, Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy, that
serves as this feature’s predecessor. There’s also nine minutes of
footage from the film’s Ottawa premiere, meaning plenty of comical
pronunciations of the word “aboot,” as well as interviews with on-queue
fans and Demarbre’s mother. Alas, even proud mothers of those involved
might have some problems looking past the unevenness and wan double
entendres of Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace. D (Movie) B- (Disc)

Billed as an animated comic epic, Broken Saints
summons to mind myriad questions about form and entertainment. What
constitutes a movie or series? In the ongoing dialogue between the
comics and graphic novel industry and their Hollywood suitors, what
unique structural elements are inherent to each format? And where, too,
does original Web content fit into all of this?

Running over 10 hours and spanning two dozen episodes, Broken Saints
got its start on the Internet, where it was an original and independent
serial effort on an eponymous Web site. Fusing anime style and
comic-book text with more traditional cinematic effects and production
technique, the hypnotic and surreal fantasy/horror epic here gets a
full-blown DVD treatment, one that may hook new fans who appreciate
being able to enjoy in larger, discrete segments episodes, ranging in
length from nine minutes to a finale that, at 83 minutes, touches
feature length.

Written and overseen by creator Brooke Burgess, the story centers
around four strangers who each receive a sequence of chilling
apocalyptic visions. Drawn together from the corners of the Earth to a
single city, they come to find their fates are inexorably tied to one
another, and to a conspiracy involving a global satellite network and a
mysterious orphan girl with a terrifying secret. Their fates in turn
inform that of the world at large. Will they stand up to face the
encroaching darkness? And if so, at what individual price?

Broken Saints is reminiscent at least on some level of the old Aeon Flux
animated series on MTV, in that its conspiracy-dipped and
paranoia-tinged narrative is married to a style at once florid and
gracefully simple. The full breadth of innovative artistic effort on
display here is certainly impressive, and sometimes quite mesmerizing.
But the series as a whole is waterlogged by emotionally distant
metaphor and an obdurate devotion to flowery, cryptic prose that
prevents much accrued downhill momentum. (A mercifully succinct sample:
“I hear the ocean serenading the soft white sand and feel the warm sun
cradle its children. The trees beckon with gifts of fragrance, fruit
and shelter.”) The combination, too, of voiceover narration (The X-Files’
William B. Davis and Michael Dobson are among the voice talent) and
comic-book-style thought and spoken-word bubbles, is just a strange one
to get used to, at least for the length of the project here. The purred
meta-physical and philosophical musings herein swallow the story, and
the series’ running time kills off any sense of lasting wonderment.

Regardless of what one might think of the program, Broken Saints
is packaged and presented in an undeniably groundbreaking and
interesting fashion, one that definitely feeds its cutting-edge image.
With 24 episodes presented in 1.66:1 widescreen and over five hours of
supplemental material spread out over four discs, the series is a
mini-marvel of technical savvy and prowess — clean, clear and
streamlined. The set’s packaging unerringly continues this theme, with
an inch-thick binder housing four glued-in plastic trays, and in turn
slipping (topside) into a clear plastic case that features four
attached, double-sided, cardboard corner sleeves featuring characters
from the series.

The disc’s menu screen cheekily boasts of “tasty trailers and a
bounty of BS featurettes,” and it’s not kidding. Creator Burgess sits
for full series audio commentary, while a 19-minute production
featurette includes chats with camera-shy technical director Ian Kirby
and many others. Fan films, other behind-the-scenes featurettes,
documentaries and interviews only extend the immersive experience. On
the downside, so dense and crammed with content are the discs that the
menu screens are sometimes a bit slow, particularly when toggling
between episodic selections, which are replete with description. C (Show) A (Disc)