The DVD Report #140: January 26, 2010

Films set outside the U.S. dominate this week’s new releases.

An overwhelming sadness permeates Jane Campion’s Bright Star, the story of the brief, doomed romance of 19th Century British seamstress Fanny Brawne and dying poet John Keats.

Abbie Cornish, who appears in almost every scene, received the lion’s share of the notices for her portrayal of Fanny and she’s quite good, but so is Ben Whishaw as the great romantic poet who died at 25 thinking himself a failure.

Paul Schneider as Keats’ friend, Mr. Brown, is quite annoying, but the supporting cast headed by Kerry Fox as Fannie’s mother is letter perfect. The rich period detail is exquisite but the film doesn’t play fair with history. It would have you believe that after Keats’ Fanny roamed the moors like a madwoman until her own death, but in reality she lived another forty years, married someone else and raised numerous children so she must have had other things to do besides walk up and down the moors mooning about the lost love of her youth.

The DVD includes several making-of documentaries.

Bright Star is available on standard DVD only.

Another poet, Spain’s Federico Garcia Lorca is the subject of Paul Morrison’s Little Ashes. The film follows Garcia Lorca from his college days to his affair with Salvador Dali to his murder by the militia at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. More a series of scenes than a coherent work, the film doesn’t really offer any insight into the minds of Garcia Lorca, Dali or their college chum, future filmmaker Luis Bunuel.

Javier Beltran gives an excellent account of himself as Garcia Lorca, but a pre-Twilight Robert Pattinson as Dali is a mixed bag. His acting is fine, but between the horrid wigs and fake moustache, his appearance is often cartoonish, detracting from the tragic events around him. Like Dali’s art, the film is quite abstract and not for all tastes.

Little Ashes is available on standard DVD only.

Scott Hicks has made his first film in South Australiasince Shine. Called The Boys Are Back, based on a memoir by New Zealand writer Simon Carr, Hicks’ film, which moves the narrative to Hick’s homeland, takes full advantage of the beautiful landscapes of the beaches and vineyards of that part of the country. The results are breathtaking to see. The story, while compelling, suffers a bit in the telling from the flashbacks, fanciful sequences and a bit too much will he, won’t he, in the characterizations. Nevertheless the film is an actor’s showcase, particularly for Clive Owen as the recent widower who over-indulges his six year-old son (Nicholas McAnulty) and has an awkward reunion with his estranged fourteen year-old son (George MacKay) who comes from England for a stay.

You haven’t got a heart if you don’t turn misty-eyed during the climactic scene in London’s Paddington Station.

DVD extras include a fascinating get-together with the actors playing the boys and their real-life counterparts, now 25 and 17.

The Boys Are Back is available on standard DVD only.

Drew Barrymore makes her big screen directing debut with Whip It, a coming of age story revolving around an Austin, Texas roller derby. Ellen Page stars as the teenager passing for a 22 year-old with Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern as her clueless parents and Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Kristin Wiig and Eve among the professional skaters. Jimmy Fallon is the Master of Ceremonies. It’s a decent time killer, nothing more.

Whip It is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Criterion does its usual classy job with Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy featuring the masterworks, Rome Open City, Paisan and Germany Year Zero along with tons of extras.

All three films are introduced by Rossellini himself, who recorded the introductions in French for TV showings in France in 1963.

The commentary on Rome Open City by Rossellini scholar Peter Bondanella was recorded for the 1995 laserdisc release. Extras include several documentaries on the importance of the film which was made near the end of World War II.

Similar extras are provided on the other two films. Both Rome Open City (aka Open City) and Germany Year Zero, were early DVD releases but oddly enough the Oscar winning Paisan has not previously been available on home video.

Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy is available on standard DVD only.

Major new releases on the TV front include Cranford: Return to Cranford, Damages – The Complete Second Season and Law & Order: The 7th Year.

A beautifully wrought follow-up to 2007’s Cranford, Cranford: Return to Cranford takes its time grabbing hold of you but proves well worth the time in the end. Judi Dench, Julia MacKenzie, Jonathan Pryce, Jim Carter, Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie and Franmcesca Annis are among those representing the older generation, while Jodie Whattaker, Tom Hiddleston and Alex Etel are the principal younger players. Tim Curry appears in the final sequence.

The emphasis on this two-part follow-up to the six-part original is on the building of the railroad and the coming together of the town. Unlike the first part, in which there was a major death every twenty minutes or so, there are only two in this, including one that is, oh, so very deserved.

Cranford: Return to Cranford is available on standard DVD only.

The second season of Damages is engrossing as the first. If you haven’t seen the show and are watching it for the first time on DVD, I recommend you set aside enough time to watch all thirteen episodes in one day. You won’t be able to sleep until all the pieces of the puzzle, make that several puzzles, are put together.

Glenn Close, Rose Byrne and Tate Donovan are once again the hard edged litigators this time involved a case that includes corporate double-dealing, government cover-ups and of course, murder. William Hurt, Marcia Gay Harden, Timothy Olyphant and James Naughton join the previous season’s villain, Ted Danson, with Tom Aldredge repeating his role as Close’s elderly henchman.

Once again nothing is as it seems, but the loose ends are tied up more neatly than in the first season with several unresolved mysteries from that season coming to an end as well.

Damages – The Complete Second Season is available on standard DVD only.

Carey Lowell joins Jerry Orbach, Benjamin Bratt, Sam Waterston, S. Epatha Merkeson and Steven Hill for Law & Order: The 7th Year which initially ran from 1996-1997. I say initially because like every other year of the now twenty year-old megahit series, it has run repeatedly in syndication.

The show has been slow in finding its way to home video compared to its spin-off Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which has released its first ten seasons to DVD. This is only the eighth year of the original series to be released. The fourteenth season, Orbach’s last, was released out of sequence.

Law & Order: The 7th Year is available on standard DVD only.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 26, 2010)

The DVD Report #139: January 19, 2010

Canadian director Kari Skogland takes on both the murderous Irish Republican Army and the duplicitous British occupation force in 1980s Belfast in 50 Dead Men Walking, based on the true story of an Irish Catholic youth recruited by the British as a spy within the IRA. The title refers to the fifty men whose lives he saved.

Jim Sturgess is the young hero who is shot six times at close range by an IRA hit man “somewhere in Canada” in 1999 at the beginning of the film which then flashes back to 1988 when his story begins. Ben Kingsley is his controller, Kevin Zegers his best friend, Natalie Press his fiancé and Rose McGowan an Irish Mata Hari. Filled with murder, mayhem, explosions and betrayal on all sides, Skogland proves that Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) isn’t the only female action director operating at the top of her game in today’s cinema.

50 Dead Men Walking is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Whimsy is a very fragile thing. If you’re going to make a film built on it, you’d better make sure your vehicle can sustain it. I Married a Witch and Henry Koster’s The Luck of the Irish are examples of whimsical films that worked in classic Hollywood. More recent examples that worked include Wes Anderson’s Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Rian Johnson, who endeared himself in some quarters with his first film, the high school noir, Brick, goes in a different direction with his sophomore effort, The Brothers Bloom.

The film is about con artist brothers played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo who spout inane dialogue while travelling the world in search of their next con. Rachel Weisz is the object of Brody’s affection and the subject of Ruffalo’s latest con. I found it insufferable but others seem to like it.

The Brothers Bloom is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

A mild but pleasant and ultimately poignant study of Arab Christians in America, Cherian Dabis’ Amreeka features ingratiating performances by Nisreen Faour and Melkar Muallem as mother and son immigrants from Palestine living with Faour’s sister and her family in Minneapolis.

The always amazing Hiam Abbas is the sister, a woman who has been in this country for fifteen years but still finds it difficult to assimilate despite the fact that her husband is a successful doctor and her children were born here. The scene in which she finally tastes a hamburger serves as the climax of the film.

Amreeka is available on standard DVD only.

Michelle Monaghan gives one of the year’s best performances as the estranged mother of an eleven year old son in first time director James Mottern’s Trucker.

Although you can guess where the film is going from the moment her dying husband’s current girlfriend drops the kid off at her door, the fun is in getting there.

Jimmy Bennett, who played the young James Kirk in Star Trek is quite good as the boy as are Nathan Fillion as Monahgan’s drinking buddy and Benjamin Bratt as the dying ex-husband, but the film belongs to Monahgan who comes into her own as the hard drinking, sexually loose long haul trucker who is forced by circumstance to re-think choices she made long ago.

Trucker is available on standard DVD only.

The success of the Warner Archive collection in 2009 resulted in Universal releasing a handful of films from its vaults through Movies Unlimited and Amazon releasing a few films owned by MGM, all produced on demand in DVD-R format. Now Amazon and Universal have joined hands to release more than a dozen logn sought titles from the Universal vaults. Among the titles are Death Takes a Holiday; Ruggles of Red Gap; The Chalk Garden and Resurrection.

Originally released as bonus disc on the first pressings of the 1998 remake, Meet Joe Black, Mitchell Leisen’s original 1934 version of Death Takes a Holiday has long been out of print.

Leisen’s version of the 1929 play is a lively affair starring Fredric March at his most charismatic as Death who take on human form and falls in love. Both the 1971 made-for-TV remake with Monte Markham and the 1998 big screen remake with Brad Pitt suffer from heavy-handedness.

Evelyn Venable is March’s lovely leading lady and the supporting cast includes such stalwarts as Guy Standing, Henry Travers and Helen Westley, all of whom provide outstanding robust performances.

One of the best loved films of the 1930s, Leo Mc Carey’s Ruggles of Red Gap featured Charles Laughton in one of his signature roles as the English butler transported to the American West.

Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland, ZaSu Pitts and Roland Young all turn in wonderful supporting performances, but it’s Laughton’s film all the way. His recitation of the Gettysburg Address is one of the decade’s highlights.

This was actually the third version of the story following two silent films. It was subsequently remade as Fancy Pants with Bob Hope and Lucille Ball and as a TV musical under its original title with Michael Redgrave and Jane Powell, both in the 1950s. None, however, hold a candle to McCarey’s 1935 masterwork.

From the 1950s through the mid 1960s, it was routine to turn successful Broadway plays into movies. One of the meatiest plays of the era for women was Enid Bagnold’s The Chalk Garden which Ronald Neame brought to the screen in 1964.

Bagnold was most famous for her 1935 short story, National Velvet which was turned into a smash hit movie in 1944 that made 12 year-old Elizabeth Taylor a star. Although The Chalk Garden features a major role for a young actress, in this case Hayley Mills, its central characters are the mysterious governess and imperious grandmother who battle for her soul. They are played by Deborah Kerr in her last significant screen role and Edith Evans in a grand Oscar nominated performance. Hayley’s real life father, John Mills, has the principal male role as Evans’ butler, but it’s the fireworks between Kerr and Evans that makes it something special.

Forget the heavy-handed mysticism and cheesy special effects in Daniel Petrie’s 1980 film, Resurrection and simply enjoy one of the most exquisitely acted films of all time. Ellen Burstyn is a joy to behold as a woman who awakens from a near-death experience with the ability to heal others and she is beautifully supported by Sam Shepard, Eva Le Gallienne, Roberts Blossom, Richard Farnsworth and others. Burstyn and Broadway legend Le Gallienne (as her grandmother) won richly deserved Oscar nominations.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 19, 2010)

The DVD Report #138: January 12, 2010

You now no longer have an excuse for not being able to find 2009’s most acclaimed film in a theatre near you. Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which has appeared on hundreds of ten best lists and won more Best Picture awards than other film this year, has been released on DVD.

Although it takes place in Iraq, The Hurt Locker could be about any modern war in any country, which is what gives it its universality. It doesn’t take sides. It merely shows the activities of a small group of men whose job it is to diffuse bombs. Tension is there in every scene.

Jeremy Renner, whose best known role prior to this was in the title role as the cannibal serial killer in Dahmer, gives one of the year’s best performances, superbly supported by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty. Much of film may be beyond the experience of most viewers, but the last scene in a supermarket is something everyone can identify with.

Bigelow’s taut, skillful direction is likely to make her the first female to win the coveted Oscar as Best Director.

The Hurt Locker is available on both Blue-ray and standard DVD.

The funniest political satire since Dr. Strangelove, Armondo Iannucci’s In the Loop is a thinly disguised replay of the shenanigans in high places that led to the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq. One can only hope that most of it is the writers’ imagination at work.

Peter Capaldi and Tom Hollander head the cast as a foul-mouthed British government lackey and a junior minister whose every word is scrutinized by the media. Add in James Gandolfini as a duplicitous U.S. general and throw in Anna Chumsky for good measure as a U.S. government aide and you have the makings of one of the year’s zaniest comedies. The plot twists come as fast and furious as the gags in what is the year’s funniest film by far.

In the Loop is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Zowie Bowie is all grown up and now known as Duncan Jones. David Bowie’s oddly named son is a serious filmmaker whose first full length film, Moon is a major accomplishment.

Made as a homage to such classic science fiction films as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris, Moon is ostensibly about the mining of the dark side of the moon as an energy source for Earth. What it’s really about, though, is the nature of loneliness as explored by the character of Sam Bell played by Sam Rockwell in a remarkable performance. Bell is the only human on the moon coming to the end of his three year stint with only the robot Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey) his only companion.

Eschewing the current trend for more and bigger special effects, the film relies primarily on character development and suspense to tell its story and succeeds admirably.

Moon is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Why, oh way, do they keep remaking old movies and making such messes of them? The latest case in point is Peter Hyams’ remake of Fritz Lang’s Beyond a Reasonable Doubt.

Lang was one of Hollywood’s great directors (M ; Scarlet Street; The Big Heat). Hyams is one of the worst (The Star Chamber; The Presidio).

Lang’s original 1956 film was a noir near-classic about a writer (Dana Andrews) who sets out, at the behest of his father-in-law (Sidney Blackmer) to prove a D.A. (Philip Bourneuf) uses manufactured evidence to convict suspected criminals. The film, which co-starred Joan Fontaine as Andrews’ wife, had a socially conscious subplot about the unfairness of the death penalty. The remake steers clear of anything socially relevant and updates the writer to a TV investigative reporter. TV’s Jesse Metcalfe and Amber Tamblyn have the leads with Michael Douglas in a dreadful performance as the D.A. Not since Billy Zane in Titanic have we seen such a leering, prancing villain on screen. The rest of the cast is no better. Metcalfe’s line readings are embarrassingly amateurish.

If you haven’t seen or simply forgotten the ending to the original you may be mildly surprised, but Tamblyn’s last line to one of the characters is something you may find yourself screaming at the film itself.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

New on Blu-ray, the tenth anniversary edition of Ten Things I Hat About You reminds us once again how good a teen comedy can be when all the elements click. Of course it helps that the source material is Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It was directed by Gil Junger, most of whose work has been on TV, and provided early screen triumphs for Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, Joseph Gorden-Levitt and Andrew Keegan, all of whom are excellent.

The Blu-ray provides numerous bonus material including reminiscences of the writers and the director.

Also new to Blu-ray, is Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, the maestro’s 1963 masterpiece starring Marcello Mastroianni as the director going through a mid-life crisis as he tries to put together his latest film.

Fellini’s film was turned into the successful Broadway musical Nine, which in turn has been made into one of 2009’s most disappointing films. Skip it and watch the original in its pristine black-and-white glory instead.

The Blu-ray contains the usual plethora of Criterion bonus materials including an introduction by Terry Gilliam and a 28 page commemorative booklet.

It’s been a TV staple since 1997, but I only recently discovered the British mystery series, Midsomer Murders, which airs in the U.S. on A&E.

With an emphasis on character development, Midsomer Murders harkens back in style to the grand tradition of Agatha Christie, but with subject matter Dame Agatha never dreamt of, or if she did, didn’t dare put down on paper. Incest, in-breeding, rape, two-timing lesbians, licentious priests, geriatric nymphomaniacs, inter-generational sex, murderous children of both sexes - nothing is off limits.

The series is expanded from just seven novels by Caroline Graham, the first of which, The Killing at Badger's Drift is considered one of the greatest mystery novels of all time. The TV version, which served as the pilot, guest-starring Emily Mortimer, Jonathan Firth, Renee Asherson, Julian Glover, Elizabeth Spriggs, Richard Cant and Rosalie Crutchley, is every bit as good.

Veteran British actor John Nettles stars as Deputy Chief Inspector Barnaby who resolutely solves each case with one of three assistants played, in order, by Daniel Casey, John Hopkins and Jason Hughes. Jane Wymark as Barnaby’s wife and Laura Howard as his daughter figure into many of the intricate plots. A galaxy of veteran British stage stars, many of them in their 80s and 90s, are among the over 200 murder victims and more than 50 killers portrayed in the first fifty episodes alone.

By the time Nettles exits the show in 2011 he will have logged more than 80 episodes. The search is underway to find his replacement.

Midsomer Murders in available on standard DVD in numerous box sets including The Early Cases which encompasses all the episodes previously released in sets 1, 2, 3 and 5. Sets 4 and 6-13 have also been released, with Sets 14 and 15 coming soon. Each set contains 3 to 5 two hour episodes.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 12, 2010)

The DVD Report #137: January 5, 2010

Every year we lose a number of irreplaceable artists. 2009 was no exception. In celebration of the lives of those we bid adieu to in the year just ended, here are recommendations for films representing some of the best work of just ten of them.

Bea Arthur was best known for her TV work in the landmark series, Maude and The Golden Girls, but the veteran stage actress left us with two great silver screen performances as well.

As wonderful as she was in 1974’s Mame, the film itself is a mess so I don’t recommend you torture yourself by sitting through it, but I do recommend her earlier, even more wonderful performance in 1970’s Lovers and Other Strangers in which she and Oscar nominated Richard Castellano are the Italian-American parents typical of middle class parents in the fast changing world of the times. Bonnie Bedelia, Michael Brandon, Gig Young, Cloris Leachman, Diane Keaton, Anne Meara and others turn in classic performances as well, but the film belongs to Ms. Arthur and Mr. Castellano.

Lovers and Other Strangers is available on standard DVD only.

You’ve probably seen Betsy Blair numerous times in her Oscar nominated performance in 1955’s Marty, but she was equally memorable in a smaller role four years earlier in the gothic thriller, Kind Lady, in which she is the only sympathetic member of a mob out to rob and ill elderly Ethel Barrymore. Maurice Evans, Angela Lansbury and Keenan Wynn have a field day being as nasty as they can be but it’s Blair you remember most next to Barrymore.

Kind Lady has shamefully never been released on commercial home video in any format.

Jack Cardiff’s painterly eye made him one of the screen’s great cinematographers. Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes, The African Queen and Fanny are but a few of the great films he lensed, but he was also a renown director.

Trevor Howard and Wendy Hiller complained that they had to direct themselves in 1960’s Sons and Lovers because Cardiff was too busy lining up the best shots. A bit of exaggeration perhaps, but perhaps not. Howard, Hiller, Dean Stockwell, Mary Ure, Heather Sear and the rest of the cast were either beyond the need for direction or Cardiff in his sly way controlled their performances whether they knew it or not.

It remains an outrage that Sons and Lovers has still not been released on DVD in the U.S. and Canada.

You probably know Dominick Dunne as the father of murdered Poltergeist actress Dominque Dunne and her brother, actor Griffin Dunne as well as for his many appearances discussing notorious criminal cases on Larry King Live.

The author of numerous novels and non-fiction works, his best novel to be turned into a TV mini-series was 1987’s The Two Mrs. Grenvilles which provided Ann-Margret and Claudette Colbert with two of their best performances. Colbert, in her last screen role, is mesmerizing as the controlling, socialite mother who helps slatternly daughter-in-law Annie cover up the murder of her son for propriety’s sake.

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles is available on DVD from the Warner Bros. Archives.

Susanna Foster did not have a large career. The girl with the pitch perfect lyric soprano was hired by MGM to be their answer to Deanna Durbin in the late 1930s. Unfortunately they never quite knew how to use her. Her one great role was ironically on loan out to Durbin’s studio, Universal. She blossoms in one of the iconic screen roles of all time as Christine to Claude Rains’ phantom in the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom of the Opera is available on standard DVD only.

Everyone is familiar with Maurice Jarre’s scores for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Witness and Dead Poets Society, but my favorite is his less sung but equally memorable score for 1970’s Ryan's Daughter. David Lean’s story of the Irish schoolteacher’s wife whose affair with an English soldier was considered overproduced and overly long but I’ve never understood how anyone could complain when Freddie Young’s Oscar winning cinematography continuously fills the eye and Jarre’s lilting score continuously enraptures the ear. Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Trevor Howard and John Mills are among the players whose performances are enhanced by his underscoring in David Lean’s film.

Ryan's Daughter is available on standard DVD only.

An incandescent star with five Oscar nominations and one win to her credit, Jennifer Jones was an actress who could play a wide range of characters from innocent and saintly (The Song of Bernadette) to ephemeral and dreamy (Portrait of Jennie) to worldly wise and poignant (Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing). One of her least acclaimed performances, but I think one of her best, was her last screen appearance in the 1974 disaster epic, The Towering Inferno. Amidst the spectacle and carnage, an all-star cast of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Richard Chamberlain and others weaves in and out of the film’s narrative but the two characters we care most about are Jones’ self-sacrificing teacher of the deaf and Fred Astaire’s aging con man who genuinely falls for her. Astaire won a much deserved late career Oscar nomination, but Jones should have gotten one, too.

The Towering Inferno is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Karl Malden had been on screen for sixty years beginning with 1940’s They Knew What They Wanted and ending with an appearance in TV’s The West Wing in 2000. He reached his peak with his Oscar winning performance in A Streetcar Named Desire and his Oscar winning role in 1954’s On the Waterfront, but my strongest early impression of him was in another 1950s film, Robert Mulligan’s Fear Strikes Out.

Playing the cold, demanding father of baseball player Jimmy Piersall, Malden has never been better than in the scene where he drives his son, played by Anthony Perkins, to a nervous breakdown.

Fear Strikes Out is available on standard DVD only.

By all accountsNatasha Richardson was a real life Auntie Mame, beloved by all who knew her. Her self-deprecating humor was in evidence even after the ski slope accident that took her life a few hours later. Shrugging off help, she made fun of her own clumsiness in trying to learn to ski at 45.

Acclaimed for her performance in the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret, she was at her incandescent best on screen in 1994’s Widows' Peak, a comedy/mystery gem in which she more than holds her own with veteran players Joan Plowright and Mia Farrow at their best.

Widows' Peak is available on standard DVD only.

Patrick Swayze is best remembered for Dirty Dancing and Ghost, films that people have seen so many times they can quote almost his entire dialogue, but there is another film in which he is also at his iconic best.

In 1991’s Point Break, he plays a rough and tumble surfer dude who is also the leader of a gang of bank robbers whose modus operandi is to disguise themselves as former presidents. Keanu Reeves is the FBI agent who infiltrates the gang. Both actors give the film a high adrenaline rush under the direction of Kathryn Bigelow, whose The Hurt Locker was one of 2009’s best films.

Point Break is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 5, 2010)