Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan to Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-nominated
Letters from Iwo Jima. But what of
the first great battle to end all
wars, World War I? Set against the backdrop of embryonic aerial warfare and
infused with a healthy pinch of cross-cultural romance, Flyboys attempts to remedy that indistinctness in modern-day
filmmaking.

Inspired by the true story of the legendary Lafayette
Escadrille, the movie is set in 1917, when the Allied powers of France, England,
Italy and
others were on the ropes against the German juggernaut. While millions of young
men were dying overseas, the United States
remained, officially at least, out of the fray. Still, some altruistic young
Americans disagreed with this nonintervention, and volunteered to fight
alongside their counterparts in France.
Of these conscripts, a handful decided to learn how to fly, and became part of
the aforementioned air corps.

Offering up a fictionalized ensemble around this juicy non-fiction
tidbit, Flyboys centers around headstrong
cowpuncher Blaine Rawlings (James Franco), who after a brawl leaves behind his
family’s foreclosed ranch a step ahead of the law. In France,
he joins, among others, rural Nebraskan William Jensen (Philip Winchester), New
York blueblood Briggs Lowry (Tyler Labine) and black
expatriate boxer Eugene Skinner (Abdul Salis). All are eager to learn how to
fly, but their romanticized sense of adventure, however, quickly takes a hit when
their war-weary French captain, Monsieur Thenault (Jean Reno), and an equally battle-scarred
American pilot, Reed Cassidy (Martin Henderson), who’s the cynical sole
survivor of his group, show them the grim realities of their equipment and
circumstance.

The new recruits quickly train, and learn what they can on
the fly (no pun intended), but are quickly thrust into the heat of battle. Blaine,
meanwhile, concurrently falls for rural French girl Lucienne (iridescent
newcomer Jennifer Decker). There are good times and bad — including the looming
prospect of a mole in their midst — but in time the young Americans prove
themselves, routing the “Fokker scourge” and learning the true meanings of fraternity,
courage, love and tolerance.

With a variety of replicas and rented vintage aircraft, Flyboys represents the biggest mobilization
and fleet of World War I aircraft since Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels, and over the course of its 138-minute running time
it presents a variety of dogfights, a massive shootout involving a German
zeppelin, all manner of bombed-out locales, rainy weather and a pet lion (don’t
ask). Still, Franco gives the film a human anchor, and provides a rooting
interest in the more intimate dramatic scenes. He and Decker have a nice,
playfully naïve chemistry, and director Tony Bill — who made his mark as a
producer on The Sting in 1973 and has
since juggled a career both in front of the camera and behind it as a director
in film (Untamed Heart), television
movies (Harlan County War) and serial
television (Felicity, Monk) — does a good job of weaving
together all these disparate threads into something that’s greater than merely the
sum of their parts.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case, Flyboys is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, to preserve
the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition. It also comes with a plethora
of discrete audio options — English language Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and
5.1 DTS tracks, plus complementary French and Spanish Dolby surround sound
tracks. Nice use is made throughout of both aural shading and effects,
particularly in the aerial battle sequences. Optional English and Spanish subtitles
are also available; Francophiles are on their own, though the native setting
certainly helps in a few scenes, including an awkward-cute flirtation between Blaine
and Lucienne. The transfer is quite solid, with extremely little grain and no
problems whatsoever with artifacting.

Strangely, the only supplemental feature is a feature-length
audio commentary track with Bill and producer Dean Devlin. Given their intimacy
in mounting this $60-million, independently produced project against great
odds, these two are a comfortable pair, and this guided chat benefits from their
familiarity. They talk about everything from the scripting process and the arduous
development track of the film to Trevor Rabin’s sweeping score, done on a
budget. They effortlessly cram in all sorts of fascinating period trivia and
production detail, too, whether it’s on the functionality of those oh-so-dashing
scarves that pilots wore or the insurance necessary for the world’s oldest
functioning plane, a Bolerio used in background scenes in Flyboys. Would-be producers, too, are given some practical advice
regarding foreign shoots; because it was cheaper, Devlin had entire sets built
in Czechoslovakia,
and shipped abroad. The only bummer comes when the duo talks about deleted
scenes — material that isn’t included herein. A gallery of preview trailers for
Copying Beethoven, The Last King of Scotland, Home of the Brave and The Illusionist closes out the disc. B (Movie) C+ (Disc)

The result is last year’s quietly released adult rom-com Boynton Beach Club, a
middling movie about the amazing capacity of the human heart to rebound and fall in love at any
age.

Recently widowed Marilyn (Vaccaro), still reeling
over the sudden passing of her husband, finds an unexpected new circle of friends
when she accepts an invitation to join the titular bereavement group.
While not ready to embark on a relationship herself, she is amused to realize
that so many of her contemporaries are actively looking for love. Lois (Cannon) is being courted by a
younger man (Nouri), while Harry (Bologna) tries Internet dating
and encourages his friend Jack (Cariou) to pursue a romance with the
mysterious Sandy (Kellerman). Through all sorts of ups and downs, these adults rage — individually and collectively — against the autumn of their years.

Boynton Beach Club posits that “60 is the new 40,” though this is more a product of fanciful language than realistic depiction. That the movie is able to wring occasional laughs from its set-ups is a testament to both some of its cast — Cariou and Bologna are in particular quite nice — but also its bawdiness, its refusal to conform to staid expectations regarding the niceties of language, body image and the like. Writer-director Eric Schaeffer tried this in 2001’s Never Again, with Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Clayburgh, which fitfully achieved patches of interest, and Boynton Beach Club goes down much more smoothly, if not quite as, ahem, memorably. So that’s a good thing, actually, but also a bit indifferent. Cannon is serviceable, much more sympathetic than I remember seeing her before, but I didn’t have much use for Kellerman, alas. It’s the aforementioned men that strike one as most interesting, surprising for a film with so much estrogen coursing through its veins.

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ratio of its original (however limited) theatrical exhibition, Boynton Beach Club comes with a 5.1 Dolby digital English language track, and optional English subtitles. The transfer is relatively nice, and free of digital artifacting and, for the most part, grain. Seidelman also sits for a feature-length audio commentary track, the disc’s sole supplemental feauture. Therein, she discusses her own mother’s grappling with aging, and what she thinks it foretells for her, as well as all manner of production anecdote, sprinkled liberally along with much genial backslapping and congratulations for the cast. C (Movie) C+ (Disc)

That former porn star, wrestling show producer and (apparently) metal enthusiast Jasmin St. Claire “hosts” this disc is its main claim to fame, but even that shouldn’t be enough to inspire a rental or purchase from anyone but the most hardcore metal devotee with an Andrew Jackson burning a hole in his or her wallet, and absolutely no proximity to a Taco Bell.

The disc’s subtitle, if you will, is “The Deeply Disturbed,” and that appropriately describes the feeling one will likely have after subjecting themselves to the screeching, screaming, posing and derisible pontificating of this roster of rightfully undiscovered and unacclaimed bands. The track listing is as follows: an interview with Paul Romanko and Brian Fair, of Shadows Fall (not to be confused with Darkness Falls); an interview with Terrance Hobbs and Frank Mullen of Suffocation, followed by the music video for their song “Surgery of Impalement”; an interview with Rick Hunolt and Gary Holt of Exodus, followed by the music video for “War Is My Shepherd”; an interview with members of Deconstruct, followed by live footage of a performance of “Deeper Down”; an interview with The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strand and Brian Eschbach; and an interview with Arch Enemy’s Sharlee D’Angelo.

The cachet, I suppose, comes from the scope of the material, which spans from backstage at the Key Club in Los Angeles to the NAMM Music Conference and a small roster of other summer music festivals. Unfortunately, though, the mix of back-slapping biographical chat and balls-to-the-wall tunage is an awkward one, and at a scant 70-plus minutes, makes for a disc that’s irritating on several levels. Naturally, despite her enthusiasm, St. Claire isn’t necessarily the most discerning interviewer. Despite a few bonus videos — Fight Paris’ “Complete Heat” and Firewind’s “Tyranny” — I found this a big waste of time. Lots of “rawk” signs are flashed, though. And before you write me any hate mail, angry linked readers, just go back to Blackmetal.com already, will you? D- (Concert) C (Disc)

Suzanne’s Diary for
Nicholas costars real-life couple Christina Applegate and Jonathon Schaech,
and explores parallels between the lives of its in-bloom characters, teasing
things up into a lucky-to-have-loved chorus.

New York City
book editor Kate Wilkinson (Kathleen Rose Perkins) is a chronic workaholic who
thinks she’s finally found the perfect man in the form of author Matt Harrison
(Schaech). But on one of the most important nights of their relationship, Matt
suddenly ends their affair without explanation. (They’re not in the middle of a
war, alas, so this small nod to Graham Greene goes mostly un-highlighted.) Soon
after, a devastated Kate receives a package from Matt containing a diary
written by his wife Suzanne (Applegate) to their unborn son. Reading it, Kate
gets drawn into Suzanne’s tender, stirring story — about a Martha’s Vineyard marriage
between a housepainter who dreams of being a writer and a female doctor who
yearns to be a mother but it hamstrung by a serious heart condition. Slowly but
surely, Kate sees certain connections to her own life.

The general (and just) knock on made-for-TV fare
is that it’s reductionist emotional pabulum — cookie-cutter fare (except maybe
with better-looking people) made only to conform to expectation and give us a
mirror image of our own wishes and desires that we’re too lazy to act upon. On
this charge, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas,
broadcast on CBS two springs ago, is essentially guilty. Yet by the same token,
it’s also decently rendered and acted, a sort of down-market version of The Notebook, if you will. Director
Richard Friedenberg is a veteran of this type of material, and accordingly
pulls out all the stops. There isn’t much thought to a larger canvas, but the
movie’s achingly sincere purity of spirit makes for a passable tearjerker.

Presented in 1.78:1 widescreen aspect ratio, enhanced for
16×9 televisions, the film comes with a Dolby digital 2.0 stereo track. Both
are entirely adequate, as there’s not much in the way of grandeur to inject
into the narrative. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus materials to
complement the DVD release, which is puzzling only insomuch as the title of
such ridiculous ownership would seem to beg for some sort of interview or chat
with James Patterson. Alas… no. C (Movie) C- (Disc)

The Guardian is a sincere and capably
executed film, if ultimately also a dispensable one.

Despite copious exclamations of “Hoo-rah!” and the like, the
sort of machismo on display in The
Guardian is fairly tame, and the movie isn’t an overt and specific portrait
of American military culture in the vein of last year’s Annapolis. Set
in Alaska, the story centers
around the mentor-protégé relationship between a veteran Coast Guard Rescue
Swimmer and one of his young charges. Ben Randall (Costner) is legendary
amongst his peers, but after a terrible accident claims his crew, he’s haunted
by the memory. His commander temporarily reassigns him to an instructional
post, where we meet Jake Fischer (Kutcher), an ex-high school swim champion who
has spurned a variety of college scholarship offers to give the Coast Guard’s “A” School for Rescue Divers a crack. The
elite program has a washout rate of more than 50 percent, but Jake readily
distinguishes himself, even if his focus on training records makes Ben uncertain
that he’s there for the right reasons — to save lives.

While its rescue sequences are credibly handled, the movie
lacks the gigantic scope and additional nonfiction heft of Wolfgang Petersen’s The Perfect Storm. What director Andrew
Davis’ The Guardian has in abundant
earnestness, it also matches in recycled conventions, as various military pic
genre touchstones — tortured flashbacks and nightmares, unconventional training
methodologies, inter-branch antagonism, romance with a townie — all receive
hearty workout over the course of 139 minutes.

A good half hour or more could easily have been cleaved off
of The Guardian were it not for the
picture’s dutiful insistence to hit all the beats of synthetic conflict, from
Ben’s crumbling marriage, a casualty of workaholic neglect, to an arbitrary
second act detour in a confrontational Navy bar. A love story between Jake and
local schoolteacher Emily Thomas (Melissa Sagemiller), while bringing a wisp of
early levity to the proceedings, is also a non-starter.

Ironically, too, it’s this persistence in attempting to give
Ben and Jake lives outside of work that robs the movie of a chance to get to
know any of its other characters beyond purely the functions they serve in the
story. Ron L. Brinkerhoff’s script is a fine model of structure, but offers
little in the way of interpersonal insightfulness, and its rescue finale is a
somewhat credibility-stretching combination of all tests rolled into one. A
late play at mythic significance also misfires.

Costner, unlike some aging semi-contemporaries, seems quite
at ease sliding into grizzled mentor-type roles, and he already has such a
pleasantly well-worn demeanor suited to these roles that you glimpse, even in
something as predictable as The Guardian,
a successful future in substantive movies about aging, busted romances and
reconciliation.

Kutcher, meanwhile, showed in A Lot Like Love that he could subjugate his sitcom instincts and
play the “normal,” orbiting body to a more colorful or outrageous character, at
least in a comedic/romantic context. In the role of apprentice here, however,
he’s less successful. Part of this is a function of how the character of Jake
is written — vaguely haunted by a secret we know will eventually come out, but
not truly obstinate enough to create substantial friction with Ben — but his
performance is also uneven, hampered early on by indistinct, wide-eyed stares.

The Guardian is housed
in a regular Amray plastic case with snap-shut hinges, which in turn slides
into a glossy cardboard slipcover. The movie is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic
widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, and comes with complementary Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound audio tracks in English, French and Spanish. Supplemental
bonus materials kick off with a genial, two-handed feature-length audio commentary
track from Davis and Brinkerhoff in which the pair discuss paring to the script,
plus location and production detail. You get the sense that theirs was a close
collaboration, particularly when Brinkerhoff talks about being the only writer
on the project, and his enjoyment at seeing the movie through completion.

An 11-minute making-of featurette delves further into elements
of the movie’s partial Louisiana shoot and water tank work, and is replete with
enough choice talking head interview bits to give an overview that feels
substantially longer. A second featurette, clocking in at five and a half minutes,
focuses on the real-life Coast Guard, a bit of its history, and the fine job
they do of rescuing those in distress. Finally, excised material also gets a
workout in the form of seven minutes of deleted scenes — including a further
fleshing out of Jake and Emily’s relationship — as well as a much more “Hollywood”
(and thankfully unused) alternate ending, all with additional commentary from
Davis and Brinkerhoff. A small collection of preview trailers round things out. C+ (Movie) B (Disc)

Set both amidst an outdoor Old West movie set and the
surrounding prickly cacti, as well as the adjacent “Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace” watering hole, this DVD release offers up
a musical celebration of two bands that have used the desert and their own headstrong
dedication to forge a musical family and an artistic homestead lasting almost
two decades.

Famed alt-rock godfathers Cracker burst into the mainstream
courtesy of their 1994 funky-grunge hit “Low,” with its evocative electric slide
response. I’ll always associate them most with Kerosene Hat hidden track “Euro Trash Girl,” however, since that was
the funky ditty one of my apartment mates at the time dropped on repeat for his
marathon Nintendo sessions. I learned of the group’s forerunner, cult-status
indie rock innovators Camper Van Beethoven, then, in reverse — and was certainly
glad when I did.

Billed as a first annual “Campout” gathering at the
aforementioned site in the high desert of Southern California, near Joshua Tree Monument, this disc was filmed and recorded in September 2005. Captured in all of its
raw, live purity and joyous fervor, it features not only sets from Cracker and
Camper Van Beethoven (in a rare reunion with CVB’s original drummer, Chris
Pedersen) but also several rare, live performances from side projects and interrelated
spin-offs: groups and solo acts like the Monks of Doom, Johnny Hickman, Victor
Krummenacher, Jonathan Segel and Greg Lisher, plus bootlegged excerpt footage
from a late-night, impromptu “Porchstock” jam.

Forthrightly presented in 1.33:1 full-frame, the two-plus
hours of music here is top-notch stuff, and very small crowds gives it a backyard BBQ-type feel. CVB’s two-part “Eye of Fatima” holds
serve, as does “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” Cracker’s aforementioned “Low” is given
a nice treatment — with the frontman of both groups, David Lowery, holding
forth in a UVa t-shirt and pinched ranch-hand hat — and the rest of their outdoor,
nighttime, 25-minute set includes “Movie Star,” “Teen” and “Big Dipper Cracker.”
(No “Get Off This,” unfortunately…) Johnny Hickman’s unbilled contributions, meanwhile (consisting of “The Great
Decline” and “Little Tom”) are a wonderful evocation and empowerment of those
that have slipped through the cracks, and rank as some of the best of the material
here. Monks of Doom’s outdoor offerings include “Poison” and “Riverbed,” as
dusk quickly bleeds out into night, and Krummenacher presents “Not Coming Back,”
“Bittersweet” and “Questa Sunset.”

Presented in 5.1 surround sound and 2.0 stereo, Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven sounds
great, and is nicely photographed, with blends and fades that showcase a light
artistic hand but don’t become too heavy on the directorial interjection. Some
of the interior footage suffers in comparison to the outdoor sets due to its
lighting, but the disc comes up with ways to get around this — rendering Lisher’s
set in a heavy sepia tone, for instance. The bummer of the release is that
there really isn’t a fuller explication of the genesis of the event, or any interviews,
commentaries or even biographies that would shine a light on the cooperative
and celebratory nature of these musicians for lapsed fans or newcomers. As is,
it’ll just have to settle for being great, and hope an appreciative and
nostalgic alt-rock audience finds it. A- (Concert) C- (Disc)

It’s another Clinton
— with her chirpy solicitation to “chat” — that’s taken over the news recently, but comedienne Kate Clinton’s eponymous
stand-up show displays her own hard-edged contours, albeit in typically
self-effacing fashion. Taking material from her 2005 one-woman show “Talking a
Blue Streak,” Clinton offers up her
own uproarious opinion on feminism and lesbianism, and how they in turn feed
her points-of-view on all of the burning issues of the day.

A columnist for The
Progressive as well as The Advocate,
Clinton has performed for more than 25 years, at venues as diverse as comedy
festivals, colleges and universities, gala fundraising events, off-Broadway
playhouses and gay-themed cruise ships and resorts. She touts herself on her laudable
web site as a “faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and
family entertainer,” so one knows right off the bat that they needn’t expect
Andrew Dice Clay-style (or Linda Lampanelli-type, for that matter) screeds for
shock’s sake.

Still, there’s a bit of bite contained herein. Clinton’s
self-described “Bush fatigue” runs deep, and feeds most of her best bits, but
she sometimes delves a smidgen too deeply into wonkish policy tangents instead
of merely jabbing at the hypocrisy of an administration whose Vice President’s
openly lesbian daughter is set to adopt a baby with her partner pushing so
transparently for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. When she gets wound up,
Clinton has an energy that recalls
the sputtering, good-natured exasperation of Roseanne Roseannadana. It’s her
writing experience, however, that most deftly serves her, allowing for seamless
transitions between bits about gay love and dating, reality television,
political activism, interior decorating and eco-friendly legislation.

Housed in a regular Amray plastic case and presented in
1.33:1 full screen, Kate Clinton
comes with an English language Dolby digital stereo 2.0 audio track, and runs
just under an hour-and-a-half. The picture is crisp and clear, and Kerry
Asmussen’s direction doesn’t overdo the fawning crowd shots, as with many
concert films. There are a few other preview trailers for films and series from
distributors Here! Films and Genius Products, but unfortunately no supplemental bonus
features. B- (Movie) C- (Disc)

Perth as “Singapore’s
answer to Taxi Driver,” and its
artwork — complete with a yellow cab and its cigarette smoking, blank-faced
proprietor looming in the foreground — further induces feelings of queasy
disconnection with society at large. It’s a comparative swing for the fences,
naturally, and thus a bit of an over-sell. A better leaping off point of comparison, however, might well be 1997’s
Korean import Audition, which spent a
lot of time working in the murky interstices of discontented personal lives
before taking a headlong plunge into shocking violence and torture.

Directed by the singularly monikered Djinn — a gambit that’s
worked out OK thus far for McG, but considerably less well for Tarsem — Perth centers on Harry Lee (Lim Kay
Tong), a Singaporean part-time security guard and taxi driver who wants nothing
more to do with the fast-paced, status-driven society that’s left him a step behind,
socio-economically speaking. Harry’s wife (Liu Qiulian) is cheating on him, and
his dependence on the bottle is leaving him less and less satisfied. His dream,
randomly enough, is to move to the titular Western Australian coast town, but
his attempts to migrate are complicated when he hooks up with some gangster
types and takes on a job ferrying prostitutes about town. The situation becomes
increasingly unstable when he takes an interest in one of the girls in
particular, Vietnamese Mai (Ivy Cheng). This reawakens in Harry a certain amount
of long-missing tenderness, but will his dark and dangerous attempts at
personal redemption pay off or merely bloodily pull down more of those around
him?

Djinn composes his film in woozy, saturated fashion, and with
a heavy reliance on close-ups, but he still packs his frames with telling
detail, and occasionally utilizes quick inserts of domestic objects to convey a
grounded sense of setting. He also deftly deploys a small company of vivid
supporting characters — misogynistic and racist fellow cabbies, quietly
colorful local thugs — who give the movie a well-rounded vibe, along with its
cannily mixed Cantonese, Mandarin, English and local dialects. The film goes a
long, long way toward establishing Harry as a reprehensible character before attempting
to redeem him, and it’s a credit to Tong’s fine performance that we remain
engaged if not totally sympathetic. In this way, Perth also
reminded me a bit of Battle of Heaven
in its focus on wounded souls, though that film ends on a note of violence a
lot closer to Perth’s
midway point.

Perth
is presented in a solid if saturated anamorphic widescreen transfer, with so-so
Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound audio tracks. (Djinn’s
reliance on source audio and lack of foleyed effects mars a handful of scenes.)
Djinn also sits for a somewhat tinnily recorded audio commentary track in which
he cites influences as diverse as Lee Tamahori’s Once
Were Warriors (which I can see) and Don
Quixote (which I have more trouble visualizing); more engaging is the
erudite Tong, who also sits for his own solo commentary track. Doling out
production anecdotes (the production photographer is drafted to play a random character
who’s dog Harry steals) alongside thoughts on Harry’s quiet inner rage, the
thoughtful and avuncular Tong serves up as pleasant an aural guide as could be
imagined for a film as grim as Perth. He also contributes his thoughts to
six minutes of deleted scenes. An 11-minute set design featurette on art
director Andy Heng’s work rounds things out, along with the movie’s original
theatrical trailer and previews for other Tartan releases. B (Movie) B+ (Disc)

In Her Line of Fire
is an interesting-in-theory, recombinant amalgamation of various pieces of tried-and-true
genre formula. The title, of course, immediately summons to mind Clint Eastwood’s
superb Secret Service actioner In the
Line of Fire, and that’s no accident. There’s also a heartier helping of
more old school action film tropes, though — reaching back to something like Sylvester
Stallone’s soldier-of-fortune Rambo
movies. Then there’s the imperiled travelogue element of something like John Boorman’s
1995 film Beyond Rangoon. There’s
also a side serving of Lost (no polar
bears, though), since the movie takes place in the wake of a plane crash on a
remote island. Oh, and did I mention it’s got a lesbian angle? Fascinated yet?

In
Her Line of Fire is no better or worse than this elementary grab-bag necessarily
sounds. Mariel Hemingway stars as Lynn Delaney, a tough Secret Service and
ex-military officer agent assigned to guard the Vice President Walker (David
Keith). While flying over the Pacific Ocean for the troubled nation of San
Piedro, the group’s plane goes down in a storm, and Walker is kidnapped by a
cabal of rebel soldiers led by a power-hungry mercenary (David Millbern, chewing
through scenery and enjoying his closely shorn haircut). Against this backdrop
of rescue, Delaney leads the fight to save all of their lives while also developing
a crush on press pool secretary Sharon Serrano (Jill Bennett).

The notion of local political unrest as filtered through
white liberal eyes is a tired chestnut, so director Brian Trenchard-Smith (the
telepic DC 9/11: Time of Crisis) and co-scripters
Anna Lorenzo and Paula Goldberg avoid it as much as possible, though their
America is one of slightly tweaked, left-leaning reality, with warm and fuzzy
policies regarding human rights issues and alternative fuel sources. Lorenzo
and Goldberg also treat the lesbian love affair as frosting, much in the breezy
manner of a ’80s actioner. (Well, OK, it’s slightly
more updated, but still of that vein.)

The movie is shot rather flatly, and the scope of its action
scenes isn’t particularly jaw-dropping. Neither is Hemingway’s performance born
of the same type of physical transformation we saw from Sigourney Weaver in the Aliens franchise or Demi Moore in G.I. Jane. Still, the weight is definitely
placed more on the action and escape elements of the movie (in Australia it was
released as Air Force Two, a great
kitschy title), and in its own wily way, In
Her Line of Fire succeeds as a piece of lightweight entertainment, mainly
because it lets its idealistic updates to societal norm lay lightly and
concentrates more purely on diversionary pleasures.

Housed in a regular, sturdy Amray plastic case and presented
in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, the film benefits from a fairly solid video transfer,
with rich and consistent colors amongst its lush green-blue palette. An English
language Dolby digital stereo 2.0 audio track anchors things aurally, but apart
from a smattering of trailers for other Here! releases, there are unfortunately
no supplemental features, which is both somewhat puzzling and slightly unkind
for the release of such a niche film. C+ (Movie) D+ (Disc)

Written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, 2006 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award winner Quinceañera is a little curio that starts out as what seems like a bit of a cultural jerk-off, an awkward mash-up of teen melodrama and Larry Clark’s predilections for minority youth culture and shirtless young boys. It quickly blossoms, though, into something better, richer and deeper — a movie marked by a rarely glimpsed authenticity with respect to its specificity of setting, fully-dimensional young characters and ethnic particularization.

Set in Los Angeles’ Echo Park area, where actors who can’t afford the Hollywood Hills’ rents and other arty types live alongside a cross-section of blue-collar Latino families, Quinceañera centers on Magdalena (Emily Rios), a storefront preacher’s daughter who is just a few months away from her 15th birthday, a cultural touchstone. She frets about her parents being unable to afford the comparative extravagances of her cousin’s party, but soon another problem rears it head. Magdalena is pregnant, though she swears to her mother — and we’re inclined to believe her — that she and her boyfriend, Ernesto (Jesus Castanos), haven’t had sex. Eventually, though, Magdalena is bounced out of her home by her angry, disgraced father.

Champion “black sheep” status, however, won’t come easily for Magdalena, as her hotheaded cousin Carlos (Jesse Garcia) wears that crown in the family. Carlos lives with his great-great-uncle, Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez), a weathered but unbowed old man who makes his living selling champurrado on the street from a little pushcart. In a development that takes a bit of getting used to because, you realize, it feels so intimately ripped from real life, Carlos falls into a relationship with a nearby affluent, white gay couple — comprised of Londoner Gary (David Ross) and the slightly older and less sensitive James (Jason Wood) — who are pioneers of gentrification in the neighborhood. Is Carlos gay? Feeling the first pangs of such a realization? Submitting to so-called “gay-for-pay”? Answers are a bit slow developing, but pleasingly so — never rushed or artificial.

As Magdalena’s pregnancy grows more visible, she and Carlos find refuge with Tomas, and pull together as a sort of separate family within a family. But with the economics of the neighborhood turning against them and James’ jealousy spurring a vindictive eviction, a crisis blooms. Glatzer (America’s Next Top Model) and Westmoreland (Gay Republicans) are a somewhat unlikely pair, but they elicit from Rios and Garcia two fantastic, beautifully rooted performances, and Gonzalez also exudes a suitably well-worn charisma. Poetically real, Quinceañera is alternately rich, heartbreaking and full of the sort of dramatic tension — the peaks and valleys — one finds in real life.

Presented in an anamorphic widescreen transfer that preserves the aspect ratio of its theatrical presentation, the film comes to DVD with two separate audio commentary tracks. The first, with co-directors Glatzer and Westmoreland, is full of praise for their actors and plenty of anecdotal detail about the raising of stakes and capital leading up to production. The second track, meanwhile, includes Rios, Gonzalez and Garcia, and is a warm and fascinating affair — full of pleasant recollections but also plenty of discerning opinion and detail about the movie’s collision of cultures and mores. Other special features include a brief behind-the-scenes featurette, footage from the red carpet festival presentation of the film and a post-screening Q&A with cast and crew. All in all, this is a fantastic little movie, disarming in its humble but remarkable insights; this DVD presentation befits it nicely. B+ (Movie) B+ (Disc)

Before James Frey’s exposed memoir fictions and before the controversy over the identity of author J.T. Leroy, there was Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin’s The Night Listener,
a fictionalization of real-life events which detailed the writer’s
long-distance friendship with a horrifically abused, young teenager,
himself an author, and how Maupin came to doubt the very existence of
said boy. The film adaptation, whispery and solemn, skulks into this
cynical void, dutifully playing out a string that even those outside of
arthouse audiences will see coming.

Celebrated writer and
syndicated late night radio show host Gabriel Noone (Robin Williams) is
an intellectual magpie of sorts, taking the most colorful moments from
his life and the lives of those around him and discarding the rest
while weaving lyrical and elegiac musings on modern life and its myriad
disconnections. As his own personal life comes crumbling down around
him — his AIDS-stricken boyfriend Jess (Bobby Cannavale) moves out,
accusing him of plundering their relationship for creative occupational
gain — Gabriel develops an intense connection over the phone with a
devoted young listener named Pete (Rory Culkin).

Terminally ill, Pete lives in Wisconsin and is taken care of by his
adopted mother, Donna Logand (Toni Collette), and he has a horrific
backstory of abuse — sexual, physical and emotional — that he has
poured into a shockingly well-written memoir of his adolescence. This
manuscript, combined with Pete’s tremendous intellect and sardonic
vulnerability, immediately resonate with Gabriel. The pair talks
weekly, then sometimes daily. When questions begin to arise regarding
Pete’s well-being and very identity, Gabriel indulges his investigatory
instinct and travels to Wisconsin in order to get to the bottom of the
situation.

As directed and co-adapted by The Business of Strangers’ Patrick Stettner, the film could play as the opening half of a double bill with Williams’ previous One Hour Photo,
so guided is it by a loose sense of free-floating menace and
melancholy. Indeed, if one wandered into The Night Listener knowing absolutely
nothing about it and possessing patience for its measured rhythms, they
could easily be unnerved by Collette’s increasingly spookily detached,
evocative interpretation of Donna — is she a Misery-type
obsessed fan, merely a damaged soul, or both? But the revelation of
Gabriel’s investigation by its very nature tips the movie’s hand as to
just what kind of film it is.

The Night Listener is nominally about identity, but unlike thematically similar fare like Adaptation, The Sixth Sense, Swimming Pool, Mulholland Drive or even Identity,
there’s neither a strongly rooted and compulsively sympathetic central
character, nor an engaging, swirling elusiveness to the movie that
keeps it dancing ahead of total cognition until after the final reel.
Gabriel in and of himself is a well sketched and fully
three-dimensional character, and decently embodied by Williams, but his
obsession here with Pete seems arbitrary (the result of heretofore
obscured paternal instincts?), leaving the actor to fall back on that
trademark look of intestinal discomfort that substitutes, variously,
for pained worry, pained compassion and pained disappointment. As it
moves forward, the film, too, becomes rife with implausibilities. Joe
Morton plays Gabriel’s agent in a few scenes and Sandra Oh wanders in
as a friend of his, and while they feed and agree with Gabriel’s
doubts, none of these ostensibly bright people seems to have any good
ideas about how to discern the truth in non-dangerous and non-creepy
ways.

Presented on DVD in a solid, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that captures the movie’s somber palette, The Night Listener‘s supplemental features consist of eight preview trailers for other films, a single, 40-second, heartily disowned deleted scene introduced by Stettner, and a 12-minute spoiler-type featurette that focuses almost exclusively on the movie’s late-act plot twist. With interviews from Maupin and Williams, among others, this is a nice, if too brief, inclusion. An English langauge Dolby digital 5.1 track anchors the audio,
buoyed by only a few surround effects. English, French and Spanish subtitles
are also available. Without stronger connective tissue to the factitious disorder on display, The Night Listener is an exercise in moody obligations, though at only 82 minutes one that certain sympathetic arthouse audiences will likely find some measured enjoyment in. C+ (Movie) C (Disc)

I’m sorry, did you need to know about writer-director Nick Guthe’s audio commentary track on Mini’s First Time, in which he cops to some unexpected hurdles and problems as a first-time
filmmaker but also details
how, after six years of stops and starts with other producers, the
movie came to get off the ground with Kevin Spacey attached as a producer? Then by all means, for those details and the full DVD review, from IGN, click here.

I kept waiting for Fiona Apple rolling around on shag carpet in lingerie (I know, I know, a different song, but the same album…), yet it never materialized. Instead, all I got was an in-depth look at Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s ass crack and Stephen Dorff rocking out with his cock out. Damn you, Shadowboxer, damn you! For the full review, from IGN, click here.

Extreme Chickfights is an 81-minute compilation of roughhewn, amateur dust-ups that finds homegrown entertainment aping (hilariously? sadly?) the modes of mainstream, “aggro” product. To wit: is there really, inherently, a mass audience for a
bare-knuckle brawl between a skinny Arkansas accountant and a pudgy
hood rat who calls herself Stimulator? Or, for that matter, two
wheezing fatties who get winded after 15 seconds and then spend the
next nine minutes spinning around and taking full-bodied, two-handed
swings that would make erstwhile Punch Out! doormat Glass Joe’s
jabs look like those of Muhammad Ali? (That last fight, incidentally,
ends with each girl, completely spent, literally tapping the other in
the face; the one who vomited up her mouthpiece from exerting herself
so strenuously actually wins.) For the full, mouth-agape review, from IGN (as well as more pictures!), click here.

Shottas, a
Jamaican-set underworld flick executive produced by musician Wyclef Jean, is proof that a movie can at least on some
level come across as authentic, and yet still generate no real sympathy for its
characters or deep involvement in its narrative.

Written and directed by debut filmmaker Cess Silvera, Shottas is in some regards similar to
Frank E. Flowers’ recent Haven, which
was set in the Cayman Islands and also focused at least
partially on drug-slinging, gangland n’er-do-wells. Both are films rooted
considerably in atmospherics and setting, and whose chief selling points or
thrust of interest stems from their perceived genuineness as locally shot
articles. While Haven had more than
its share of problems, they were shortcomings of overreach and artifice
compared to Shottas, which traffics
exclusively in recognizable formulas and brings nothing new to the table in
terms of either execution or depth of character.

The film opens in Kingston, Jamaica,
1978, with two young, prepubescent friends skipping school and barely skirting
trouble. Looking admiringly upon the local gangsters — for whom the movie’s
title is slang — they do as they see, and manage to grab enough money to
purchase visas to take them to a better life in the United
States.

Cut to several decades and a few busted and waylaid dreams
later. Hustling drugs in Miami
proved quite lucrative for Biggs (Kymani Marley, above left), but he’s been deported back
to Jamaica, and
views it sullenly, as a sort of gangland demotion back to the kiddie pool.
There, though, he reconnects with his childhood pal Wayne (Spragga Benz), who
convinces him that together they can live even larger. Their extortion of local
businesses — abetted by an alliance with police commissioner Mr. Anderson
(Munair Zacca) — blows up in their face after they murder a man in broad
daylight, and a group of officers exact revenge by killing Wayne’s brother.

With the body count growing and the political pressure
rising, Wayne and Biggs accept visas to go back to the United
States, where they immediately make moves on
a former associate of the latter, seizing his territory and business. Predictably,
more bloodshed ensues, though not before each guy has had the opportunity to
buy some nice jewelry and hook up with a big-breasted, two-dimensional
gold-digger.

All the tough guy talk, political corruption, criminal
maneuvering and flossy, drug-runner lifestyle stuff are bits we’ve seen
countless times before, from Narc, Carlito’s Way, Goodfellas, Dirty and The Departed all the way back to Scarface and Mean Streets, as well as any number of straight-to-video urban
flicks who’ve found their inspiration in the same. On a purely base, budgetary
level, of course, Shottas can’t run
with most of those films, but it doesn’t even have the dignity of penetrating
characters, and once it moves back to the United
States it loses any sense of distinctive
personality. There, the movie heartily falls back on one of the laziest clichés
of screen violence, depicting its carnage either in fetishistic slow-motion or
indiscriminate, squib-happy bursts — both signs of a clear lack of directorial
vision.

Still, there are a few positives. Silvera elicits
naturalistic adolescent performances (from Carlton Grant, Jr. and son J.R.
Silvera) during the set-up of Wayne
and Biggs’ camaraderie and, early on, trades in metaphor-rich frames that are
entirely missing in the movie’s second and third acts. If red is the color of
passion, it’s also the color of mortality, and Biggs and Wayne’s bloody future
is foreshadowed in scenes dotted with menacing splashes of red — a deliveryman’s
truck, the local hood who becomes the duo’s first mark, and even Biggs’ de
facto outfit, a ripped Winnie the Pooh T-shirt. So there’s that. Oh, and thanks to the subtitles of the
heavily accented film, I can now curse in Jamaican.

Presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen, Shottas benefits from a fairly solid
video transfer with rich and consistent colors and very little grain, and also
comes with a Dolby digital 5.1 audio track. The DVD is being released as a two-disc special edition, and touts an extended cut of the movie, a multi-part making-of documentary and a “Shottas for Life” featurette. The single-disc review version I received, however, included only the set’s other supplemental features — namely a cursory, 90-second introduction to the film by Silvera and Marley; an innovative “Shottas dictionary,” featuring definitions for the slang in the movie (and links directly to clips where it’s used, a nice touch); and a boisterous, party-fueled group audio commentary track which eventually comes off as misogynistic and crass. Still, it’s loaded with loads of nice production detail, as when Silvera and Marley point out the shot in which he broke his finger while diving over a couch in a staged shootout. Actually, Silvera sits for a solo commentary track as well, and amusingly points out a scene where a car doesn’t start for some robbers, and they take off on foot. The rub? The car really broke down, and the actors’ response was spontaneous and uncut. C- (Movie) B+ (Disc, speculatively)

Kristy Swanson used to be a looker, that’s for sure. But in her latest film, the passably stitched together if somewhat dubiously plotted psychological horror picture Living Death, she’s shot tightly to frame her in the most flattering light. The contours of the face and upper arms don’t frequently lie, though. It’s one of the things your mind occasionally wanders to during the movie, which otherwise trots through obligatory paces in its story of a philandering, vindictive wife and her psychotic, unhinged husband.

The story centers around Victor Harris (Greg Bryk), a twisted, trust-fund millionaire who’s used to getting what he wants — both in matters of finance and kinky sex. When we first meet him, he’s busy cheating on wife Elizabeth (Swanson) by putting the moves on a random skeezer and taking her… to his meticulously gloomy attic torture chamber. Her resultant crippling injury is settled by Victor’s dutiful lawyer Roman Arbogast (Josh Peace), who’s also carrying on an affair with Elizabeth. Together the two hatch a plan to knock Victor off, using an allegedly undetectable drug that paralyzes him. When Victor comes to in the morgue, however, and suffers a bunch of medical students poking at him, he’s understandably pissed off, and sets off on a campaign of brutal revenge.

That all of this leads to a climactic showdown in which Victor and Roman square off against one another, with Elizabeth rushing into the breach to get her piece of the action, is certainly fated, and not necessarily amazingly rendered in Leo Scherman’s story. But director Erin Berry works up a few good effects shots (arms being ripped from a torso, for instance), and smartly keeps his cast all on the same page regarding the tone of the material. (The medical students are especially funny, and nicely given a small bit of some fleshed-out dimensionality.) There’s nothing really too special here — this is your typical calling card-type film for the below-the-line and behind-the-scenes folks, and a quick payday for actors you mostly haven’t heard of — and the gore factor isn’t high enough for genre diehards, but for fans of Raising Cain who are irked that film never spawned a direct-to-video franchise, this one’s for you.

The film is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, with an accompanying English language 5.1 Dolby digital soundtrack. Nicely, there’s a 21-minute making-of featurette, which includes jokey, good-natured, on-set interviews with the principal cast and a bit of behind-the-scenes material. The first seven minutes, though, consist of director Berry, who talks about the movie’s rootedness in real-life, and how the original script wasn’t as much of a revenge picture, but rather had a more sympathetic version of Victor. Berry then half-jokes that the character was reworked to incorporate more of his own personality traits, and to make him “a complete asswipe.” This segment is compelling in its differentiation from most stuffy interviews with would-be auteurs; Berry comes off as a bit smarmy, and not particularly erudite, but kind of funny and endearing nonetheless. C (Movie) B- (Disc)

The Simple Life
launched in 2003, back when Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie were only
demi-celebrities, it was pitched with the tagline of, “They’re rich, they’re sexy
— they’re totally out of control.” The gist of the show, at least at its point
of initial conception and mass marketing, had less to do with celebration of one
(or two, depending on your scorecard) trollop’s obliviousness and excess, and
more with exploring the supposition, however tongue in cheek or slyly, that the
preposterously affluent were still faced with their own sets of problems. In pulling
these two down from the penthouse to the sidewalk, this was to be cast in stark
relief, and everyone could laugh along together and maybe even feel a bit
uplifted.

Distressingly, I’m not sure many people in the series’ target
audience picked up on the joke. Whatever the status — today, this fleeting
moment — of Hilton and Richie’s smile-for-the-cameras! friendship, they’ve
peeled off three small screen re-ups of the show, as well as all manner of
endorsement deals, pop albums, perfume scents, etcetera. They’re also both…
authors. Sigh.

What began as a goof has seemingly fed into if not outright inspired
a whole generation of tweens sporting low-rise sweatpants with “Juicy” emblazoned
on their asses, and women carrying around little frou-frou dogs in custom-made
purses. It needs to stop, as the fourth season DVD release of the series
confirms.

I’m certainly not above some good, old-fashioned, low-class
fun. Newlyweds was a dryly brilliant comedy,
and the recent re-up of VH-1’s Flavor of
Love was similarly inspired. (No, seriously.) Hilton and Richie’s act,
though, has run its course. After the third season’s “interning” bent (sans
berets and Lewinsky reenactments, alas), The
Simple Life 4 finds their “feud” spilling over the carefully groomed plastic
hedges of this thinly sketched concept, already stretched perilously thin.

The first episode opens at a coffee shop, where Hilton and
Richie exchange wan bitchery. Then, over the course of the next nine shows, the
pair whine, kvetch and fumble their way through assigned domestic duties in the
SoCal suburbs, naturally leaving disasters and unfinished tasks in their wake. Whereas
Jessica Simpson’s idiocy on Newlyweds
was at least somewhat endearing insofar as you can tell she’s definitely not in
on the joke, Hilton’s shenanigans too frequently come off as blithely cruel-hearted
— those of someone, well, spoiled and un-thoughtful. If Richie is less grating and deplorable, that’s hardly an accomplishment of the highest order. That the show doesn’t
incorporate cathartic and lasting, consequential comeuppance for in particular
Hilton is to its irredeemable detriment. Can we, as a society, make a collective New Year’s to start ignoring both these lasses?

All 10 episodes of The
Simple Life are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, spread across two discs,
and retailing for around $19.98. An English language Dolby 2.0 surround sound
audio track anchors the release aurally, and there are (unfortunately? blissfully?)
no supplemental special features. D (Series) C- (Disc)

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