MCN DVD Reviews: April 14, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

	..The MCN Reviews Vault
	..The MCN Critics Roundup

The Spirit: Two-Disc Special Edition + Digital Copy
Sin City: Blu-ray

First, my apologies to the fanboys and fangirls who live and die with each new film created or inspired by Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. Having been weaned on the Underground Comix of R. Crumb, S. Clay Wilson, Gilbert Shelton, Robert Williams and other acid-bent mid-century artists, I have a natural curiosity about graphic novels and sequential art.

In my opinion, though, the movies adapted from V for Vengeance, Watchmen, 300, Sin City, The Spirit and, for that matter, Fritz the Cat, have failed to improve on what’s already appeared on the printed page. They’re fun to ingest in small doses, but far too cold and aggressive to enjoy at feature length.

Written for the screen and directed by Miller, The Spirit was adapted from a series of newspaper comics and comic books by the late and deservedly iconic Will Eisner. The Spirit first saw the light of day in 1940 as Denny Colt, a police detective who seemingly was killed off on the third page of the first installment. He re-emerged as a masked crime fighter with no particular superpowers, except a desire to protect the citizenry and, in particular, beautiful women.

In The Spirit, Colt/Spirit (Gabriel Macht) was pitted against his evil nemesis, the Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a hyper-violent villain with an aversion to showing his face to anyone other than his victims. The super-sexy dolls and molls are represented by Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Paz Vega, Jaime King and Sarah Paulson. There was a story buried somewhere in the digital bowels of The Spirit, but, after the first 15 minutes, or so, all I saw was a bloody re-enactment of the first 10 years of WrestleMania. In addition to the grisly violence, Miller injected his movie with enough wise-cracking dialogue and lurid sexuality to satisfy the Comic-Con geeks. The Blu-ray edition, which greatly enhances the inky noir look, also includes Green World, a treatise on the technical wizardry on display; Miller on Miller, in which the master examines his own work; History Repeats, an in-depth look at the origin of the Spirit and testament to Eisner's genius; an alternate storyboard ending, with voiceovers by Jackson and Macht; audio commentary; BD Live options; and a digital copy.

Sin City also benefits from the translation into Blu-ray, a technology that adds depth and texture to what already was a pretty dramatic presentation. In addition to new commentary by Rodriguez, Tarantino and Miller on the restored theatrical version, a second disc adds the "Recut, Extended, Unrated" edition (previously released on DVD), a “film school” short; a special green-screen-only edition; and 47 minutes of featurettes on Miller, Tarantino, cars, costumes, props and special effects, also previously shown on DVD.

Other notable re-releases on Blu-ray include the commitment-phobic, The Last Kiss, with commentary by director Tony Goldwynn and stars Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett, Rachel Bilson, Michael Weston, and Eric Christian Olsen, as well as making-of pieces; the Heathers look-alike, Mean Girls, with Tina Fey, Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams; and Strange Wilderness, from the Happy Madison factory of doofus comedies.- Gary Dretzka

The Pope’s Toilet

In 1988, Uruguay was one of four South American nations visited by Pope John Paul II. Uruguay may look no larger than a speck on the map of the continent, but it was the second time in two years that “the Traveling Pope” had stopped in the capital city, Montevideo. The novelty of having such an important world leader tour tiny Uruguay probably had worn off by the time the pontiff arrived in the city of Melo, in 1988, to conduct an open-air mass.

The Pope’s Toilet, a quietly subversive and intellectually engaging film, describes what happened when great expectations collided head-on with cold reality. Thanks, in large part, to the media hysteria that typically attends any papal excursion, the citizens of Melo logically expected tens of thousands of pilgrims from neighboring Brazil to descend on the underdeveloped city. Although some residents considered it to be sacrilegious to exploit the pope’s visit for financial gain, others believed God had sent John Paul II to the impoverished region so they could profit from sales of food, drinks and souvenirs. After all, the American Catholics who scalped tickets for papal masses in New York and Washington hadn’t been struck down by lightning.

One imaginative citizen of Melo came up with a brainstorm idea that would satisfy both the needs of tourists and improve living conditions at home. Well played by Cesar Troncoso (XXY), Beto is one of many local residents who take money from local merchants to smuggle – by bicycle – consumer goods across the land border from Brazil. In anticipation of the pope’s visit, Beto decided to invest his meager bankroll in the construction of a private outdoor toilet along the road leading in and out of town. He could charge the pilgrims a fee for its use and the luxury of sealing the deal with varying lengths of toilet paper. Considering the lack of modern plumbing in Melo, it actually was a decent idea. Just like everything else that happened that weekend, though, the plan fell well short of success. Using the same set of circumstances, co-directors Enrique Fernández and César Charlone could easily have turned The Pope’s Toilet into a broad farce. By playing it straight, however, they delivered a far more interesting message. - Gary Dretzka

Doubt

I wonder if the backers of Doubt ever seriously considered taking their production to France, where Roman Polanski could have adapted the powerful period drama for the screen, just as he had interpreted it for the Paris stage. Certainly, all the unfinished business surrounding his conviction for the statutory rape of a 13-year old girl, more than 30 years ago, would have created a shit storm of controversy, as gossip rags tried mightily to equate his crime with the one Father Brendan Flynn may or may not have committed in Doubt.

Considering the low risk/reward ratio, though, why bother? At best, Polanski might have resisted the temptation to “open up” the decidedly theatrical inquisition by adding background characters as comic relief and moving a couple of key scenes outside the claustrophobic confines of the parish. Instead, playwright John Patrick Shanley elected to assume the duties of screenwriter and director, a role he played only once before, on the regrettable Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle, Joe Versus the Volcano. As such, Shanley had only himself to blame for such miscues as causing the fallen leaves of autumn to swirl around Sister Aloysius whenever she stepped outside or tried to close a window in her office. Are movie audiences so dense that they needed to visualize the metaphorical winds of change (a.k.a., Vatican II) before they could understand what was at stake when the conservative nun and progressive priest butted heads?

Sister Aloysius so despised the charismatic priest that she willed herself to believe an unsubstantiated rumor about Father Flynn’s relationship with a troubled youngster, who just happened to be the Bronx school’s first black student. It’s to Shanley’s credit that, as much as viewers want to believe Flynn, we’re never quite sure he wasn’t guilty of something. (Have today’s headlines made us pre-disposed to distrust all priests, even those four decades removed from recent scandals?) But, this kind of doubt is what the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning drama was designed to provoke, anyway. Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis all were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances in the film version, just have nearly all of the actors in the various New York editions either were nominated for or winners of Tonys and Drama Desk awards. It’s that kind of actor’s showcase.

On stage, Doubt demanded of its audiences that they leave the theater each night aggressively debating which of the four characters was on the right side of God. The movie version makes it all too easy for us to simply dismiss Sister Aloysius as a Neanderthal and take Father Flynn at his word that his compassion was misconstrued. The making-of material explains how Doubt was informed by Shanley’s own experiences as a Catholic schoolboy and why nuns of New York’s Sisters of Charity order were required to wear habits that might have been designed by the Taliban. – Gary Dretzka

Donkey Punch
Fight Night
Street Warrior
Mask of the Ninja

I wouldn’t want to ruin anyone’s appreciation of Donkey Punch by trying to explain its title. Suffice it to say, donkey-punching is a sexual technique, which, like erotic- and auto-erotic asphyxiation, could prove fatal to one of the participants if not performed correctly. (A more precise definition can be found at the Urban Dictionary website.)

In Oliver Blackburn’s seaborne thriller, the intended beneficiary of a donkey-punch orgasm was an aspiring sexual sadist with access to Ecstasy, a digital camera and a boat moored in a Majorca harbor. The victim of the young man’s clumsy performance is one of three young women from the north of England, who, while on holiday, choose the wrong four men with whom to party hardy. When filmed evidence of the woman’s death is presented to the other revelers, Donkey Punch crosses the border from edgy to downright sinister. Think Dead Calm and Dead in the Water, crossed with Very Bad Things and Stag.

One probably could find in Donkey Punch the same kind of promiscuity-is-evil subtext that informed so many early slasher flicks, but why bother? Despite being relegated to a limited theatrical run, the movie is better than most of the movies dumped into the direct-to-DVD marketplace, where cheap thrills can reap big rewards. To this end, the unrated edition is preferred to the one made to secure a “R” rating. The extras include deleted scenes, interviews and a making-of featurette.

If Fight Night weren’t so darn well-shot and acted, its premise would be deemed so preposterous as to be unredeemable. Set against a background of illegal prize fights, in which pugilists are willing to trade irreversible brain damage for a fast buck, Jonathan Dillon’s film raises the ante by pitting a petite woman kick-boxer against a rogue’s gallery of thick-skulled thugs. Katherine Parker is no flash-in-the-pan fighter. Pound-for-pound, and on a given night, Parker (Rebecca Neuenswander) could whip the vast majority of all the non-professionals she faced on the underground circuit. There is a limit, though, to the kind of punishment any human being could endure when inflicted by an opponent twice her size.

Adding to the weight of her burden is a manager who’s made the kind of enemies that would demand he fix the occasional match down the road. Fortunately for all concerned, what transpires next isn’t nearly as predictable as it might sound. Even so, I’m pretty sure the same effect could have been achieved if Katherine had started out competing against women with the same skills and working herself up to ever-more-butch combatants twice her size. Wagering could have still taken place and, if desired, the winner of the female division could have challenged the men’s champion on the same circuit. Still, Fight Night isn’t a bad first directorial effort for Dillan, and Neuenswander’s debut performance ought to win her better roles in the future.

One person’s ass Katherine Parker couldn’t kick, I suspect, is the one belonging to Iraq veteran Jack Campbell, hero of Street Warrior. Upon his return from the war, Campbell, (Max Martini) discovered that his brother was lying in the hospital bed, badly beaten and left in a comatose state. The beatdown was inflicted on him at an illegal fight club, whose destruction becomes Campbell’s next crusade. Like Street Warrior, Mask of the Ninja was shown first on cable’s Spike TV network. In it, Casper Van Diem plays a Los Angeles police detective required to battle a ninja force intent on stealing the secret code for a biological weapon. Van Diem holds the fate of the world in his hands. What else is new? - Gary Dretzka

American Swing
Painters Painting

Last summer, CBS tested a risqué hour-long series, Swingtown. Set in an upper-middle-class suburb of Chicago, in 1976, several of the show’s lead characters frequented spouse-swapping parties and occasionally drove into the city to hang out at a swank nightclub for swingers. Everyone, including the kids, appeared to be in great hurry to participate in a sexual revolution that had nearly run its course. Even though they enjoyed their time together, the polyester-attired suburbanites were required to succumb to the same feelings of guilt that befell most other TV characters who strayed from the straight and narrow path. That was fiction.

Mathew Kaufman and Jon Hart’s documentary American Swing chronicles what happened under similar conditions to real people in an actual New York nightclub, Plato’s Retreat. As crazy as it might sound 30 years later, the Manhattan sex club was a place adults could go to legally and openly engage in activities associated with the swinger’s lifestyle. It opened five years after Deep Throat became the most profitable movie of all time and a decade after a decade after San Francisco’s Summer of Love.

If Plato’s Retreat didn’t represent the first shot fired in the sexual revolution, it could hardly be blamed for exploiting the achievements of those who came before, literally and figuratively. Larry Levenson’s brainstorm flourished in the period just before free, unprotected sex would forever become associated with death. American Swing is informed by the first-hand accounts of members, journalists, club personnel and celebrities, ranging from Professor Irwin Corey, Melvin Van Peebles and Buck Henry, to Annie Sprinkle, Jamie Gillis and Screw founder Al Goldstein.

More nostalgic than provocative or revelatory, American Swing can be viewed alongside such films as Inside Deep Throat, Boogie Nights, The Ice Storm, Star 80 and Wonderland as chapters in an adult fairy tale. If it weren’t for the twin scourges of AIDS and crack cocaine, who knows what form love, American style, might have assumed? Judging from the smiles on the faces of the people interviewed in American Swing, we might all be in a happier place.

Released in 1972, Emile de Antonio’s Painters Painting documented the emergence of Abstract Impressionism from the tumultuous post-war New York art scene. Although not much painting is actually shown in the film, the interviews, conversations and gossip recorded for posterity are as entertaining and informative as anyone could expect from artists more at ease in front of a canvas than a microphone.

Among the painters, dealers and critics represented are Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffman, Jasper Johns, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Ollfski, Philip Pavla, Larry Poons, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, Leo Castelli, Henry Geldzahler, Philip Johnson and Hilton Kramer.

Also included on the DVD is footage of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's landmark exhibition, “New York Painting and Sculpture 1940-1970,” the featurette Emile de Antonio on ‘Painters Painting’ and an essay by Doug Kellner. Painters Painting pairs nicely with Morgan Neville’s, The Cool School, a 2008 documentary that recalled the Los Angeles art scene of the 1950s. - Gary Dretzka

November Son

Ariztical Entertainment is an up-and-coming L.A.-based distributor and producer of theatrical films and DVDs targeted at expanding LGBT audience. Among other things, it can boast of releasing into the American DVD market the first gay anime, Kizuna; sending out Different Strokes: The Story of Jack & Jill … and Jill, starring the late child star, Dana Plato; and producing the first gay theatrical sequel, in Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds.

The genre-bending November Son is characterized as a gay horror, but it also could be categorized as a psychological thriller or story of obsessive love with paranormal overtones. The photograph of the chiseled Sasha Sackett on the cover – instead of pulpy shots of scream-queen icons Judith O’Dea, Brinke Stevens and Debbie Rochon – leaves little room for doubt as to whom the intended audience for this sequel to October Moon might be. From a marketing perspective, this means November Son could fit equally well on shelves reserved for thriller, horror and gay titles.

Essentially, November Son describes how the survivors of the bloodbath that ended October Moon coped with their heartbreak and loss, and what happened when a handsome stranger appeared out of nowhere, bearing secrets, a couple years later. The film also marks the return of writer-director Jason Paul Collum to Kenosha, a favored location in the heart of Wisconsin’s kringle belt.- Gary Dretzka

Lost in Austen/Pride and Prejudice: Blu-ray
She Fell Among Thieves
The Mary Higgins Clark Collection: Murder, Mystery & Suspense

April has turned into a very good month for American fans of Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice, in particular. Not only has the BBC’s definitive version of P&P finally been released in Blu-ray – the better to appreciate Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy – but the delightful British mini-series Lost in Austen also has been made newly available here.

Borrowing a page from Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Amanda Price is a perfectly modern Londoner, who, one evening, discovers Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet primping in her bathroom. Apparently, a portal in her apartment leads backwards in time and literary space to the very period and place Austen imagined in “P&P.” To her great delight, Amanda finds herself surrounded by her favorite literary characters and all the romantic intrigue she can handle.

Meanwhile, Bennet encounters a world she could never have thought possible. The DVD package includes a 43-minute making-of featurette. Gemma Arterton, who was the red-headed Bond girl martyred in Quantum of Solace, plays Bennet, while Jemima Rooper portrays Amanda Price. The Blu-ray edition of P&P also contains several featurettes that chronicle various aspects of the production of the 1995 mini-series.

Thirty years ago, the BBC mini-series She Fell Among Thieves was chosen to launch Mystery! on PBS. Set in 1922 in a Pyrennes chateau, Malcolm McDowell plays an English gentleman forced to match wits with Eileen Atkins’ devious landowner. It becomes the duty of the gallant Brit to rescue Vanity Fair’s stepdaughter, before she’s forced to enter into a marriage of economic convenience that will only benefit one person. The mini-series was based on the novel by Dornford Yates. It’s a lot of fun.

The made-for-TV movies included in The Mary Higgins Clark Collection: Murder, Mystery & Suspense originally were broadcast on the old PAX TV, a network dedicated to “whole family fare.” Among the titles are A Crime of Passion (2003), Before I Say Goodbye (2003), He Sees You When You're Sleeping (2002), I'll Be Seeing You (2004), The Cradle Will Fall (2002), Try to Remember (2004) and We'll Meet Again (2002).

Other TV-to-DVD packages include: Intelligence: Season 2, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries: Set 4 and Wings: Final Season. - Gary Dretzka

Da Booty Shop

An exotic dancer played by Trina McGee (Boy Meets World) inherits a struggling hair salon from her newly imprisoned brother, Tyrone, portrayed by Marcello Thedford (Playmakers), who also served here as producer, exec producer, writer and director. The sister, Yolanda, makes plans to sell the business, but reneges on a deal after she sees an opportunity to get out of the stripper game. She also comes to think of it as place where other dancers could work without taking off their clothes. (Indeed, there isn’t enough nudity to warrant a PG-13, even.)

Da Booty Shop adds a sexy spin to the formula already developed by Barbershop and Beauty Shop.- Gary Dretzka