One of the year’s nicest surprises, newcomer Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer is a bittersweet charmer about a boy falling in love with a girl who doesn’t return his affections.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the former child star of TV’s 3rd Rock From the Sun continues his meteoric rise to screen fame following his critically acclaimed performances in Mysterious Skin and The Lookout.
Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Daschenal, best remembered for Elf, make an engaging couple. Gordon-Levitt has just been nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance and the film itself has been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.
(500) Days of Summer is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.
At the other end of the comedy spectrum, Todd Phillips’ gross-out, The Hangover, is one of the year’s silliest movies. Sadly, this nonsense about a groom-to-be and his groomsmen adrift in Las Vegas was a bigger hit than (500) Days of Summer and is in competition with the latter for this year’s Golden Globe for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy. Neither Bradley Cooper nor any of the film’s other, mostly unknown, actors are nominated.
The Hangover is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.
Speaking of awards, Tilda Swinton who won an Oscar two years ago for her supporting role in Michael Clayton has also been winning awards around the globe for her lead performance in Erick Zonca’s Julia. Not to be confused with the 1977 classic of the same name or this year’s Julie & Julia, Zonck’s film has more in common with 1980’s Gloria about a moll and a kid.
Swinton plays an amnesiac alcoholic who gets involved in an insane plot to kidnap the eight year-old grandson of a billionaire. The plot, which is sort of resolved at the end albeit with the character facing a still uncertain future, is more character study than gangster story, but contains enough thrills to satisfy the most jaded action addict. Swinton is glorious in a demanding role requiring her to be on screen for almost all the film’s 2 ½ hour running time. She plays a character who does everything wrong, yet wins our sympathy as she risks her life to protect the child from far more dangerous Mexican kidnappers. The film is really one of the year’s unsung gems.
Julia is available on standard DVD only.
Another film involving the kidnapping of a child in Mexico, Dror Soref’s Not Forgotten is a film that should be forgotten, and quickly.
The director, whose previous experience consists of directing Weird Al Yankovic diedeos should have stuck to his day job. He has no sense of style and the entire cast, including Simon Baker of TV’s The Mentalist as the father of the kidnapped girl, is ill-used.
Not Forgotten is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.
Amazon.com has begun releasing video on demand DVDs of United Artists films controlled by MGM
The first three releases are of Trapeze; The Group and Rich in Love.
A huge hit in 1956, Carol Reed’s Trapeze pits Burt Lancaster against Tony Curtis for the love of Gina Lollobrigida. Thomas Gomez and Katy Jurado co-star in what was one of the outstanding circus films of its day.
A marvelous cast of young actresses, some of them making their screen debuts, co-starred in Sidney Lumet’s 1966 film, The Group from Mary McCarthy’s novel about eight friends at an upper-class girls’ school in the 1930s.
Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett, Elizabeth Hartman, Shirley Knight, Joanna Pettet, Mary-Robin Redd, Jessica Walter and Kathleen Widdoes are the girls. James Broderick, James Congdon, Larry Hagman, Hal Holbrook and Richard Mulligan are among the men in their lives.
Bruce Beresford, the Australian director of Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy who excels at character driven stories of the American South, provided us with one of his best with 1983’s Rich in Love.
Albert Finney has one of his best roles as the perplexed retiree whose somewhat younger wife, Jill Clayburgh, decides to leave him to find a life of her own. She leaves him behind with their two daughters, Kathryn Erbe and Suzy Amis, and their beaus, Ethan Hawke and Kyle MacLachlan. Eventually Finney finds another woman to love in warmhearted Piper Laure, and Clayburgh returns. Their differences are worked out to the satisfaction of all involved.
Warner Brothers, the studio that began the video on demand craze earlier this year, has restored and released through its Warner Archive Collection, one of the best Christmas movies made for TV.
An Emmy winner as the year’s outstanding made-for-TV movie, Randal Keiser’s The Gathering is about the struggles of a wife (Emmy nominated Maureen Stapleton) to bring her estranged family together to say goodbye to their dying father, her husband, played by Ed Asner.
The premise may seem maudlin but the execution is anything but. Bruce Davison, Lawrence Pressman and Gregory Harrison are his sons. Veronica Hamel, Gail Strickland and Stephanie Zimbalist are their wives. Veteran John Randolph provides strong support as Asner’s friend and doctor and John Barry (The Lion in Winter; Midnight Cowboy) provided the music.
Although Warner Bros. Has impressively restored The Gathering, they have not restored the sequel, The Gathering, Part II, which is provided as an extra.
Though interesting the sequel is not as extraordinary as the original. The most ironic thing about is that Efrem Zimblist, Jr. co-stars as the new man in widow Stapleton’s life, but Zimbalist’s daughter, Stephanie, is not in the f lm, her character is now played by another actress.
Coming next week: a review of the year’s best DVD releases.
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