Big screen romances are such a dependable genre because we
like to relive that which pleases us, and love’s mad pursuit and rich bloom are
universal if frequently still mysterious feelings. Since the very earliest days
of the medium, Hollywood romances have frequently been
told in broad strokes and stark relief, with war and other grand spectacles
serving as both backdrops and obstacles to be overcome. This continues to suit
filmgoers — though some more regularly and open-armed than others — mostly
because falling in love can feel so
big and completely overwhelming, like a massive tilt on life’s pinball machine.
The advances of modern filmmaking, meanwhile, have helped love stories span
time in new ways.

Love Story, have also been looking for
ways to dress up romance in such a fashion that we step back and take a look at
the very smallest pieces of attraction, and what it means to tether ourselves
to another person. Penned by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Ron Bass, Mozart and the Whale is, like 1999’s The Other Sister, a movie about two
people whose emotional and mental challenges threaten to sabotage their budding
relationship.

Josh Hartnett portrays Donald, a young cab driver afflicted
with Asperger’s Syndrome whose obsessions with numbers, patterns and birds keep
him isolated and largely unable to form connections with others. Things change
when Donald meets Isabella (Silent Hill’s
Radha Mitchell) in a support group of his own creation. Rambunctious and
freewheeling, she’s in many ways completely contrary to Donald, but as Paula
Abdul and MC Skat Cat once famously taught us, opposites can indeed attract. As
Donald and Isabella try to reconcile their two worldviews and fumble toward a
private understanding that others can’t fully comprehend, we come to bear
witness to a surprisingly poignant connection.

Based on title alone, of course, Mozart and the Whale would make an interesting double feature with
Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.
In tone, however, the film is like a genial cross between a Hallmark Channel presentation
and something like the aforementioned Other
Sister, which located the robust humanity of its characters with honesty
and aplomb. Hartnett and Mitchell — an odd pair on the surface — have a nice if
somewhat reasonably dry chemistry together; anyone still thinking of Hartnett
as a Tiger Beat pin-up would do well
to see both this and the spry, labyrinthine Lucky
Number Slevin. Yes, Mozart and the Whale is a bit syrupy, but it doesn’t tip over into flat-out embarassing sentimentality.

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, Mozart and the Whale comes with in matching
Dolby digital 5.1 audio tracks in English and French, with optional subtitles
for each language as well. The only supplemental extra is a so-so audio commentary
track with screenwriter Bass, in which he talks at length about the development process
for the film and the true story upon which it is based. C+ (Movie) C+ (Disc)

Elizabeth Banks — cast here as Vincent’s love interest Janet, a lifelong Giants fan and fellow bartender — is only allowed to run things up to half-mast.

Presented in 2.35:1 widescreen with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound track (and French and Spanish subtitles, alongside English closed captioning), Invincible includes two feature-length audio commentary tracks. The first is with Core and editor Jerry Greenberg; the second features the real Papale, producer Mark Ciardi and writer Brad Gann. The only other supplemental feature — but the best in earned fashion, not by default — is a 25-minute, behind-the-scenes documentary in which the making of the movie is intertwined with more on the real life story of Papale. Interviewees include cast and crew, the real-life Vermeil and Papale, the latter’s various Eagles teammates, radio announcer Merrill Reese and more. It’s a great little look at by all accounts a humble and charismatic man, and includes a look at his current-day family and kids as well as an amusing anecdote about the Eagles’ infamous “Who’s Nuts” T-shirts. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Vida Guerra (above) an actress? No, not so much. But she does have a prodigious posterior, and that can get you cast in a lot of movies, especially when the appellation of dubious ownership “National Lampoon’s” is affixed to the front of the title, as is the case with Dorm Daze 2, the latest direct-to-video teen sex comedy. For the full DVD review, from IGN, click here.

Blake Lively), the anarchic college comedy Accepted — a mash-up of anynumber of ’80s adolescent broadsides, with a healthy pinch of FerrisBueller’s dreamer’s disease thrown in — takes this notion and runs withit, to mostly amusing effect. For the full DVD review, from IGN, click here.

Directed by first-time filmmaker Jason Rem, Put the Needle on the Record is an award-winning documentary about house music, and it claims to be loaded with both thoughtful interviews and enough woozy audio-visual mood pieces to hold the attention of genre fans and newbies alike. In reality, though, this is just a very well-produced celebration of the obvious, a sermon to the choir… well, if that choir consists of gyrating music video hootchies, bass-heads and B-boy-style deejays.

Filmed in Miami during the Winter Music Conference — an annual week-long event attended by more than 20,000 electronic music fans, artists and industry professionals — Put the Needle on the Record is nothing if not exhaustive in its cataloguing of current and nascent electronica talent, featuring interviews with everyone from the Crystal Method, BT, Deep Dish and Mark Farina to Paul Oakenfold, DJ Sammy and Nigel Richards. Other folks who I hadn’t previously heard as much about include Dave Ralph, Charles Feelgood, Christopher Lawrence, Francois K, Donald Glaude, Roger Sanchez, Liquid Todd, Josh Wink, DJ Rap, Timo Maas and Marques Wyatt. These artists and other folks help pin down the sound’s birthplace roots, crediting the gay club scene of chilly Chicago with spawning the swooping, dance-happy bass and big-break beats of the scene.

Footage from events around the globe and (naturally) a pretty solid soundtrack combine to make for a high-energy offering, but Rem doesn’t really do much to push beyond the personalities and delve deeply into what such a constructionist/collagist mindset says about the state modern music. Neither does he elevate the air-quote artistry of those involved in the genre; in fact, if the intent of this film were to more deeply ingrain people’s preconceptions of its makers, it would be a hearty success. Put the Needle on the Record flaunts house and techno as being something approaching a “lifestyle,” but doesn’t make a persuasive case for its psychological depth when compared to even fairly rote rock ‘n’ roll.

Supplemental materials of this region-free widescreen release, presented in Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound, include an audio commentary track from Rem, a behind-the-scenes photo slide show and plenty of extended interview material, including Roger Sanchez in Chicago, DJ Mea in Los Angeles, Sen-Sei and David Coleman in San Francisco and DJ Agency in New York City. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

An equally lighthearted, mid-level generic brand re-working of
roughly the same premise as 1997’s Picture
Perfect, in which Jennifer Aniston’s career gal takes on a fake beau in
order to succeed at work, the Hallmark Channel’s Family Plan finds Tori Spelling working overtime to gin up the appearance
of a perfect little family. It’s a purely cookie cutter-type movie, and flatly shot
to boot by director David S. Cass, but one whose intriguing ensemble cast gives
it a decided qualitative bump.

Jordan Bridges, son of Beau,
nephew of Jeff), and also drafts Stacy’s little girl Nicole (Little Miss Sunshine’s Abigail Breslin)
to play her own offspring.

Charlie thinks it’s just a one-night gig, but things get
even crazier when Mr. Walcott and his wife decide to move in next door to “her”
house, which is actually Stacy’s abode. Naturally, Buck eventually falls for
Charlie, and she for he, but the house of lies can’t last forever, and Mr.
Walcott is none too pleased when he finds out the truth.

Penned by Richard Gitelson, Family Plan tries to inject a bit of literate, Noises Off-type mania into the proceedings, though thankfully we
don’t have to cope with any physical comedy bits from our star. Spelling is, of
course, characteristically awful. To witness her screw up her face in
concentrated mock “feeling” is a painful experience, certainly in any dramatic
context. Here, though, things are light and airy enough that she’s merely generically bad
without completely sabotaging the
film. Also, even if you’ve never been struck before by poor music in a movie,
you’ll likely notice in cringing fashion the aural accompaniment on display in
Family Plan, so dopey and awful are
the compositions.

That said, for what it is, Family Plan hits its marks, for the most part, with to-scale aplomb.
What really helps make things watchable is Germann — who retains his spot-on
comic timing from both Ally McBeal
and a recent turn in Friends with Money
— but chiefly Bridges, previously so charming in the completely under-regarded little
gem New Suit. (Maybe I’ll write more
about that sometime soon.) He’s got a face at once pliable and sympathetic, and
his easygoing demeanor makes him the perfect — and perfectly relaxed — foil for
a piece like this. For fans of Little
Miss Sunshine, young miss Breslin, too, displays nice chops, though her
role is filled out with only pretty standard jokes.

Though the review copy we screened had none of the
following, the commercial release of the Family
Plan DVD is said to include interactive menus, chapter stops, cast
biographies and filmographies, optional Spanish subtitles and a collection of
preview trailers for other MTI releases. C+ (Movie) D (Disc, speculatively)

I’m not sure if there’s a definitive earlier incarnation of the
phrase, “The calls are coming from inside the house!” but it traces most
memorably back to this 1974 flick, a moody little thriller generally credited
with helping kick-start the modern-day slasher genre. Naturally, this holiday
season brings us the inevitable remake/re-imagining, from the producing tandem
of Glen Morgan and James Wong.

Black Christmas is set
in the college town of Bedford,
where the girls of Pi Kappa Sig are preparing for the holiday season. These
young women include brassy, cynical Barb Coard (Margot Kidder), Phyllis Carlson
(Andrea Martin) and Jess Bradford (Romeo
& Juliet’s Olivia Hussey), who’s secretly pregnant by her boyfriend
Peter (Keir Dullea). They’re beset by a series of harassing and lewd phone
calls in which the cracked, deranged voice makes sexually suggestive comments,
repeats the phrase, “It’s me, Billy,” and threatens to kill the girls — a
threat on which he eventually makes good. When one girl goes missing in advance
of meeting her father, police investigator Lt. Kenneth Fuller (John Saxon)
steps into the proceedings, trying to figure things out.

Looking back now, Roy Moore’s screenplay cribs a bit from
other notable genre entries, including Psycho,
and there are additionally swathes that are outdated, to be certain (all of the
phone tracing stuff, for one). Still, Black
Christmas stands as a worthy genre forebear. It isn’t flashy or gory, but deals in tension and locates its
payoff in held “shock” shots. The dialogue has an edge, both in glancing
content (“You can’t rape a townie,” spits Barb) and doting coarse language, and
Porky’s director Bob Clark trades in
smartly thought out compositions — including a single take push-in for the
final shot — and subtle POV work that much lesser directors would then
completely grind into the ground.

There have been previous editions of this movie on DVD, but
none have captured its cult appeal with quite the same painstaking attention to
detail. A newly created 5.1 stereo surround sound audio track stands alongside
a 2.0 stereo track and digitally re-mastered video here, presented in 1.78:1
anamorphic widescreen. DVD special features herein include two original scenes
with a new (and different, heretofore unused) audio track, as well as a
20-minute documentary with a slew of cast and crew interviews and a nicely
guided narration that both points up the title’s cult genre appeal and also
includes plenty of anecdotal highlights. Among the best bits are excerpts with
cameraman Bert Dunk, who explains how he and cinematographer Reginald Morris
devised and composed some of the unique point-of-view shots in the movie. The
only rub: while the doc does touch on it, I wish there had been a bit more in
the way of specifics about the movie’s botched American distribution, where it
saw release under the monikers of both Silent
Night, Evil Night and Stranger in the
House.

Twenty minutes of Q&A footage with Clark and Saxon from a December 2004 screening at Los Angeles’ Nuart Theatre prove a nice addition. Three discrete interview segments are also included in their
entirety — 17 minutes with the polite, mannered Hussey, 23 minutes with Art Hindle and 22
minutes with the aforementioned Kidder, who unflappably cops to partying off-set and, when
asked about similarities between director Clark and Brian De Palma, breezily
points out that she was sleeping with the latter filmmaker during the making of
Sisters. She’s a candid, pretty
fascinating interview, and if the off-screen interviewer too frequently lobs
some of the same, overly vague questions her way, and has the audacity to try
to compare Black Christmas’ success
to that of Superman (a foolhardy
notion which Kidder quickly shoots down), you’re certainly never bored with her
direct responses, recounting and ruminations. B (Movie) A- (Disc)

Wassup Rockers charts a skipped school
day in the life of these “Latino Ramones” — black-clad, tight-pants-wearing
punk aficionados who, constantly harassed for being different, fight to be
themselves. Along with a few friends, the group takes a series of busses up to Beverly
Hills to skateboard. There, hassled by the police,
targeted by residents and seduced by two schoolgirls (Laura Cellner and Jessica Steinbaum) who spark as much to their ethnicity as their scruffiness, the boys
must navigate a surrealistic maze of mock-danger and try to return to the
air-quote safety of their own impoverished burg.

Clark’s films typically have a
roughhewn quality, but here he somewhat eschews the handheld nihilism of his
earlier work for a few more staged and rooted shots. He still has his
cinematic, fetishistic affection for skinny, shirtless teen boys and pouty,
jailbait girls (in Clark’s world, everyone
under 21 is a sexual magnet) and there’s his usual discerning eye for quick,
shorthand detail — from the dirty crasher’s den that’s perfect in its
name-brand-less anonymity to a scene where one character’s mother returns home
in the morning with a wad of single dollar bills. The kids, too, are all right — they have a natural
charm.

But something about Wassup
Rockers feels reductive, perhaps because there’s so little individual
insight into the characters. There’s no doubt legitimacy to the tension between
the Latino “rockers” of the title and their neighborhood’s African-Americans,
as well as the preppy teens they encounter in Beverly
Hills, but things here feel paradoxically authentic
as well as staged. The settings are grungily accurate — save for when we enter tonier
territory — and the crew eventually achieves a sort of collective wounded grace
and place in our memory (Clark is a superb caster, as
the careers of Kids alums Rosario
Dawson and Chloe Sevigny attest), but Wassup
Rockers is also beset with clownish, wildly farcical elements that ring false.

In his positive review, I believe Roger Ebert called this “Larry Clark’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” or at least compared the two films. And that’s a discerning and entirely apt point of reference. The films share the same sense of freewheeling adventurism. A key difference, I would argue, is that while the adults of Ferris‘ world almost all present obstacles and are frequently portrayed as derisible, they come off as emblematic of the way the film’s teens see adults. In Wassup Rockers, there’s a seesaw quality to the tone and pitch that is at first merely disorienting, and then eventually invites greater displeasure.

We know the kids aren’t Mexican, as they constantly have to
remind various folks they encounter, but they do come across as emblems of a cultural minority that Clark
seems to want to flog and celebrate by merely contrasting with buffoonish
subsets from other races. By the time Janice Dickinson, in a weird cameo, is
electrocuted in a tub after attempting to seduce Kico, you’re left wondering
exactly whose view of Los
Angeles Wassup
Rockers represents.

Clark’s defense of this comes in an engaging and interesting audio commentary track that serves as the DVD’s crown jewel supplemental extra, alongside extra behind-the-scenes footage and a collection of trailers. In this track, Clark talks about his influences for the movie, his sense of visual style and also how he wanted to both ground and exalt the rituals of his young charges by exaggerating and stereotyping the air-quote mainstream characters in the piece. Listening to this, I found myself coming around a bit — agreeing with what he was saying and seeing a greater aim to the work — even if I ultimately don’t think he entirely pulls it off. The film is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, and comes with English 5.1 surround and 2.0 stereo audio tracks, plus English and Spanish subtitles. C+ (Movie) B- (Disc)

Spanish import Queens, also known as Reinas in its country of origin, might be offhandedly described as
a sort of Pedro Almodóvar comedic B-reel, featuring as it does several actresses best
known for being part of his revolving repertory. A whimsical contemporary
ensemble about mothers and their gay sons, it’s a high-pitched hoot for fans of
energetic foreign flicks and alt-familial tales.

The story unfolds over the course of a weekend leading up to
Spain’s first
ever mass gay wedding. A quintet of uncompromising women (Carmen Maura, Marisa
Paredes, Mercedes Sampietro, Veronica Forqué and Betiana Blum) used to getting
their way must learn to cope with a variety of conflicts surrounding the marriages
of each of their sons. Chaos ensues, naturally, as prejudices and clashing temperaments
come colliding up against one another.

The madcap quotient is dialed up quite high here, and director
and co-writer Manuel Gomez Pereira does a good job of sustaining tone in a way
that makes the movie’s many pieces and intertwined storylines fit snugly up
against one another. Flitting to and fro in time, he drives the story forward
with snappish, breezily captured recollections, and if we don’t necessarily have
enough investment to really believe in the love affairs we’re being served, the
pace and energetic performances are such that one doesn’t dote for long periods
of time on that fact. Paredes in particular gives a memorable, cathartic turn as
a famous actress whose snooty inclinations are brought low by her son’s choice of
her gardener’s son as a mate, and in her sexually rapacious character Forqué is
given a lot of fun material. Amongst the men of the piece, meanwhile, Raul
Garcia also makes a nice impression.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case and presented in 1.33:1
full screen, Queens comes with a
Spanish language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track, and
complementary English subtitles. There’s some slight grain during the second
act, and it seems mainly attached to the outdoor images, but overall it’s nothing
too sustained or bothersome, and certainly not a mitigating circumstance for casual
rental enjoyment. A brief but vibrant production featurette serves as the movie’s
bonus feature, alongside a collection of preview trailers for similarly themed
films and series from Here! Films and Genius Products, fare like Third Man Out and Dante’s Cove. B- (Movie) C+ (Disc)