MCN DVD Reviews: March 3, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

Ben X

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

My advice to members of small, loyal core of vieweradvocates who helped reverse the fortunes of Donnie Darko, turning a box-office disappointment into a cult hit on DVD: find a video store or mail-order service that specializes in artsy titles and rent Ben X … now. You won’t be disappointed.

In his debut as a writer-director, Belgian filmmaker Nic Balthazar has shaped an extremely moving and deeply empathetic drama from a scenario that just as easily could have been reduced to a run-of-the-mill high-school bloodbath. Ben is a gangly Flemish teenager who’s a master video-game player, at home, but a target of depraved bullies at school. He struggles with Asperger’s Syndrome, a form of autism that reduces his ability to communicate with his family and classmates.

Even though he’s highly intelligent in his own way, Ben’s malady has long been misinterpreted and misdiagnosed by his teachers and doctors. Given the opportunity, Ben would be an asset to any classroom, but the public school he attends is lousy with slackers and thugs who make learning impossible. Within the realm of his medieval role-playing game, Ben’s heroic status is unquestioned. He even is allowed an attractive Internet partner and love interest. When he isn’t playing the game, Ben uses its familiar graphic structure and iconography to help him get from here to there and back, again.

Usually that’s all the guidance he needs. Lately, though, the bullies have raised the level of harassment to unconscionable levels and Ben no longer can contextualize their bad behavior and find shelter in his imagination. Neither are his teachers and principal willing to punish the miscreants, if only because it’s one problem among many. Now, from this point in a teen psycho-drama, there are only a very few directions it can go. In the American version of Ben X, the boy would solicit the advice of his video-game allies and use copies of their weapons to slaughter his enemies in a grisly revenge plot.

Or, after Ben reluctantly agreed to represent his school in an important competition, his success turned the rest of his classmates against the villains. Or, after committing ritual suicide, Ben would return to school as a ghost and lead a virtual army of fantasy warriors against those who drove him to it. None of those things occur in Ben X, although I wouldn’t have been surprised if they did. While there are surprises aplenty throughout the final half of the movie, the best one is saved for last. Ben X was a festival favorite in Europe and, with lots of good luck and buzz, could find a loyal audience here. If his English-language skills translate as well as his body language, newcomer Greg Timmermans could enjoy a fine career, working both sides of the Atlantic. – Gary Dretzka

Milk

Sean Penn’s portrayal of the nation's first openly gay elected official is reason enough to recommend Milk. The support Penn got from James Franco, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsh, Diego Luna, Alison Pill, Victor Garber and Denis O’Hare was extraordinary, as well. Gus Van Sant wonderfully captured the fervor of the times and look of a very specific neighborhood, while also making us believe the American political process actually worked … for a while, at least.

Dustin Lance Black's script avoided most of the pitfalls and detours that diminish most biopics, by constantly reminding us that the film’s (and his) hero was a flesh-and-blood human being capable of deceit and insensitivity, as well as passion, generosity and humor. If one needed another excuse to see Milk, however, it would be the confluence of events that resulted in the movie being released at a time in California history when the controversy over Proposition 8 had reached a fever pitch and celebrities were pitting themselves against religious leaders over the burning question of same-sex marriage.

The popularity of Will & Grace and The L Word notwithstanding, the passage of the referendum and subsequent court battles would demonstrate just how great a divide remains on the issue of equal rights and to what lengths some people would go to defend the myth of the American family … you know, the one that would have us believe divorce and infidelity are preferable to nuclear units in which the parents are gay. Splendidly rendered, Milk is as uplifting and inspirational as it is tragic and disheartening. Of course, those viewers who can’t stomach the sight of men kissing each other on the lips are advised to keep reminding themselves, “It’s only a movie. It’s only a movie.” The bonus features on Blu-ray include the featurettes Remembering Harvey, Hollywood Comes to San Francisco and Marching for Equality; deleted scenes; and BD Live access. - Gary Dretzka

Happy-Go-Lucky

Everyone knows someone like Poppy … a person so perpetually happy, chatty, upbeat and perky that it’s possible to wonder if he or she is retarded … or hasn’t read a newspaper in the last 20 years. In Happy-Go-Lucky, Poppy at various times is an elementary-school teacher, a dangerously unfocused student driver and a party-hardy pub crawler. When bad things happen to Poppy or people around her, she engages in a moment or two of quiet reflection before returning to the sunny side of the street, undeterred.

In anyone else’s hands than Brit maestro Mike Leigh, Poppy would be forced to endure frequent ridicule or be given endless hills to climb, as were Tracy Flick in Election and Hayley Mills in Pollyanna. Even if nothing truly significant happens in Happy-Go-Lucky, Sally Hawkins infuses Poppy with so much confidence and enthusiasm that it’s impossible not to enjoy spending a day or two with her and her friends. (Eddie Marsan’s embittered driving instructor is a different story, altogether.)

As usual, Leigh required of his cast that they study their characters as if they were biologists dissecting the last frog in the barrel. His methods – not to be confused with madness -- are fully explored in the bonus package. – Gary Dretzka

Australia

I suspect Baz Luhrmann would have been very comfortable working within the parameters of the Hollywood studio system, bouncing between elaborately staged musicals, frothy song-and-dance rom-coms and epic period melodramas. At 165 minutes, Australia is about the same length as How the West Was Won and a half-hour shorter than Giant, grand examples of Hollywood showmanship, as well as budgetary excess and sentimentality. It contains cattle drives, choreographed brawls, swell dames, rugged cowpokes, noble savages, ruthless ranch owners, racist legislation, Jap planes, campfire-side romance, a gala ball, the ritual singing of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and, yes, kangaroos and crocodiles.

As the fish-out-of-water Lady Sarah Ashley, Nicole Kidman does a decent impersonation of Barbara Stanwyck’s Sierra Nevada Jones in Cattle Queen of Montana (opposite Ronald Reagan). Hugh Jackman is suitably studly as the cattle driver known only as the Drover, a cowboy who more closely resembles Clint Eastwood’s youthful Rowdy Yates, in Rawhide than John Wayne’s jaded Thomas Dunson, in Red River.

Because Australia’s Wild Northern Territories remained untamed more than a half-century after American ranchers began fencing in the Old West, Luhrmann was able to use Japan’s devastating attack on Darwin to trump the range war raging further inland. The air raid effectively puts the kibosh on Luhrmann’s campy conceits, however, dividing the movie into distinctly different tonal units. It’s possible to enjoy Australia without buying into it as a work of substance. After all, it’s really just a long Western, not the longer and vastly more interesting story of Australia’s evolution from prison state to a fully realized economic power, albeit one still haunted by the inhuman breeding-out of its native Aboriginal blood. The landscapes, alone, are worth the price of a rental, though. The historical and making-of featurettes could have been a lot more interesting and informative.

If Australia doesn’t sufficiently sate your hunger for Aussie fare, The Shiralee surely will. The mini-series, which was shown on Masterpiece Theater and the Disney Channel, likewise was set in the Outback midway through the last century. Bryan Brown plays an itinerant laborer who treks through the countryside with the 9-year-old daughter he considers to be something of a burden (hence, “shiralee”). In their travels, they meet all sorts of oddball Outbackers and enjoy one of the world’s last frontiers. It was adapted from D’Arcy Niland’s best-selling novel. - Gary Dretzka

Synecdoche, NY

Charlie Kaufman’s extremely difficult, yet often revelatory Synecdoche, NY is a movie that demonstrates, quite incidentally, just how much will be lost when the endangered American film critic goes the way of the dodo bird, South African quagga and wooly mammoth. While Synecdoche polarized pundits – eliciting full-blown raves and outright contempt in equal measure – it demanded of the writers that they suck it up and defend their opinions in prose generally reserved for Pulitzer-bait thumb-sucking.

While snarky quips and toxic sarcasm suffice when reviewing the kind of popcorn movies that come pre-sold on the Internet, Synecdoche required an expenditure of quite a bit more time and effort. Indeed, any critic who was required to formulate an opinion based on a single screening probably got it wrong. Most reviewers were fully aware, as well, that the core audience for Kaufman’s work – he also wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Human Nature, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind– is uniformly smart, well read and computer savvy. Loyalists wouldn’t hesitate lambasting any critic who couldn’t back up his or her words in the blogosphere arena.

For no good reason, I neglected to see Synecdoche upon its very limited theatrical release – 119 screens, max, over the Thanksgiving holiday – and was forced to wait until the re-launch in DVD and Blu-ray. This was just is well because, last fall, I wouldn’t have been able to arrange for multiple screenings, hit the reverse button whenever I deemed it necessary or tap into the informative bonus features. I’m still not sure where I would put “Synecdoche” on my list of favorites, but I know that it spoke to me in ways most other American movies no longer do.

In ways both obvious and subtle, Kaufman continually addressed subjects of concern to any mature adult whose life, career and sexual prowess are approaching their twilight period. Through his protagonist, he asked us to consider how and when a man or woman might come to accept death, believing they’ve fulfilled their commitment to themselves and humanity or wasted the opportunity to leave behind something meaningful.

In yet another great performance, Philip Seymour Hoffman portrays theater director Caden Cotard, whose MacArthur “genius grant” has freed him from the indignity of staging chestnuts in the boonies and afforded him the luxury of moving to New York, where he’ll have plenty of time to produce something that rivals “Finnegan’s Wake” in its complexity and ambition. Having been acknowledged as a genius, his backers give Cotard the leeway to mount a full-scale re-creation of key turning points in his life and those of millions of other residents of Manhattan. His concept is so grandiose that he needs to stage it inside a giant warehouse, which itself will be miniaturized repeatedly as if to mimic Russian nesting dolls.

The movie’s narrative continually jumps back and forth in time, aging and re-aging Cotard and his various wives, children and friends, as well as the actors playing them. Eventually, the process confuses Cotard as much as it does Kaufman’s audience, already made dizzy by the time warps.

The sterling ensemble cast includes Samantha Morton, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, Michelle Williams, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson and Tom Noonan. They’re all terrific. Kaufman also laces the story with several brilliant monologues and impromptu observations. In one eureka moment, Cotard declares, “I know how to do (the play), now. There are nearly 13 million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.” At another juncture, a minister concludes: “Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for 20 years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out.”

The bonus package includes the fascinating making-of featurette, In and Around Synecdoche, NY; an interview with Hoffman, The Story of Caden Cotard; Infectious Diseases in Cattle, in which bloggers discuss the film; and a master class with Kaufman, at the "NFTS/Script Factory.” - Gary Dretzka

Rachel Getting Married

Working off a script by freshman screenwriter Jenny Lumet (Sidney’s daughter), Jonathan Demme takes what has become a 21st Century cliché – self-absorbed child returns home from rehab just in time to spoil a family celebration and reveal the clan’s deepest flaws – and makes it his own. Anne Hathaway is wholly convincing as Kym, a former fashion model who was well on her way to drug-induced oblivion even before she found a new way screw up the lives of her parents and sister.

That sister, Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt), is about to get married, but not before a full lineup of parties, dinners and family rituals, which might qualify as the most ethnically diverse and politically correct in movie history. It’s even-money that the bride’s black-sheep sister will be a no-show, but, once she does return to the flock, Kym requires that the whole weekend revolve around her and her recovery. While the groom’s family seems perfectly normal and unaffected by the drama – they’re of the African-American persuasion, not that it matters to anyone -- the bride’s clan is a case study in sublimated dysfunction.

Bill Irwin plays the hypersensitive and overprotective father of the bride, while Deborah Winger is the emotionally distant ex-wife and mother. Kym tries her best to hold herself together by attending AA/NA meetings when things threaten to go sideways and smoking more cigarettes than an actor should be required to consume in a two-hour movie. Declan Quinn’s hand-held digital cameras don’t linger very long on any one character’s face and the constant motion reminds us of the chaos that attends every big, over-produced suburban wedding. The comedy, when it comes, is very dark and edgy.

Demme’s never skimped on music in his movies and, here, it’s the rare moment when the wedding bands aren’t practicing their songs or jamming to the rhythms of nations too numerous to recall. Indeed, one the biggest laughs comes when a distraught Kym yells, “Don’t they ever shut up?” The wedding party itself is equal parts Bollywood, Hawaiian luau, Carnaval, “Soul Train” and Demme greatest-hits collection, featuring Sister Carol East (“Something Wild”) and Robyn Hitchcock (“Storefront Hitchcock”).

The DVD and Blu-ray bonus packages add commentary tracks (Demme and Hathaway are AWOL); The Wedding Band, a featurette about the soundtrack; the decent A Look Behind the Scenes of Rachel Getting Married; deleted scenes; and a 50-minute Cast and Crew Q&A at Jacob Burns Center.- Gary Dretzka

Cadillac Records
Hip Hop Moguls: The Rags to Riches Stories of CEO’s of Rap

For his 1977 album, Hard Again, Muddy Waters wrote a nifty little tune, “The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock & Roll.” That observation, alone, might have inspired Darnell Martin to write a movie dissuading anyone born after 1970 of the notion that R&B and blues weren’t invented by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone and ripped off by former sharecroppers who had been handed electric guitars upon their arrival in Chicago. The true moment of birth is documented in Cadillac Records, an engaging musical biopic in which Waters represents the catalyst for change in the blues world, while Chuck Berry, Little Walter and Howling Wolf supply the strands of DNA that will shape rock ’n’ roll.

The other throughline traces the relationship between Waters and Leonard Chess, whose Chess Records was to Chicago what Sun Records was to Memphis (minus the white guys). As interpreted by Martin, Chess (Adrien Brody) was a visionary post-war hepcat with a passion for “race” music and Cadillac convertibles. Chess and his brother, Phil (a minor presence here), had owned a popular South Side bar and after-hours joint, the Macombo Lounge, which provided a stage for up-and-coming blues, jazz and R&B acts.

When the club was heavily damaged in a suspicious fire, we’re told that Leonard used the insurance settlement to create Chess Records. He would discover a struggling bluesman, Waters (Jeffrey Wright), who had just made the transition from acoustic to electric guitar, and together they would make music history. (Because this is a Hollywood movie, and most of the principals are long dead, Martin was free to re-write history to fit the needs of her concept.)

Soon, Waters would be joined in the studio and on Billboard charts by Little Walter, Wolf, Berry, Willie Dixon and Etta James, played respectively by Columbus Short, Eamonn Walker, Mos Def, Cedric the Entertainer and Beyonce Knowles. Berry, along with Chess artist Bo Diddley (unrepresented here), performed the marriage rite that united blues and R&B and spawned rock ’n’ roll. If Martin’s history lesson ought not to be taken serious, there’s no denying she captured the spirit of the moment and the infectious appeal of the music.

More than anything else, Cadillac Records provides a great deal of escapist fun. The bonus features, at least on Blu-ray, include deleted scenes and the featurettes Playing Chess: The Making of Cadillac Records and Once Upon a Blues: Cadillac Records by Design. MVD Video also has released “Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley: Rock ’N’ Roll All-Star Jam,” a 1985 concert during which some of the leading lights of rock paid tributes to their daddies.

Also from MVD: Hip Hop Moguls: The Rags to Riches Stories of CEO’s of Rap documents how Russell Simmons, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs (or whatever he’s calling himself these days) and Damon Dash became rich and famous, and how their amazing success influenced a generation of street poets and scratchers.

Also from MVD come concert/interview sets, Iron Butterfly: Concert and Documentary; Vanilla Fudge: When Two Worlds Collide; Iggy Pop: Lust for Life; Linkin Park: Coupe D’Etat Unauthorized; Roger McGuinn: Live at the Basement; El Chicano: In the Eye of the Storm; Jon Anderson: Tour of the Universe, which revisits his work with Yes and Vangelis; and Videogame Theater, in which iconic video-game characters engage in mortal combat for various treasures.

- Gary Dretzka

The Boy in Striped Pajamas
A Secret

Based on a novel for tweeners by John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas took us into the home of a high-ranking SS officer assigned to oversee the death factory at Auschwitz. As such, the commandant is allowed to live in a well-appointed house, with his wife and two children, outside the perimeter of the concentration camp. Unfortunately, for young Bruno, there are precious few children with whom to while away the time between lessons on German history and Aryan purity.

During one of his clandestine excursions outside the guarded villa, Bruno is surprised to find another little boy – wearing green-striped coveralls – staring at him through a barbed-wire fence. They spend time chatting and playing the occasional game of checkers, but play close attention to bells and shouts that demand they return home. At about the same time as Bruno begins to wonder what transpires in the buildings beyond the fence, a Nazi propaganda team arrives with documentary footage that makes Auschwitz look like Club Med.

Despite the putrid odors that occasionally waft over the estate, Bruno buys into the ruse and wonders why his increasingly thin friend keeps insisting that only bad things happen in the camp. Meanwhile, Bruno’s well-attired and exquisitely coiffed mother, played by Vera Farmiga (The Departed), chooses to remain oblivious to the horrors being overseen by her duty-bound husband (a twitchy David Thewlis).

When evidence of mass death-dealing mounts to a point where it no longer can be ignored by the mother, she almost makes the mistake of condemning it in public. Tragedy strikes moments before she and the children are about to find a home with relatives far away from the camp. The movie’s ending is likely to surprise most viewers, so it won’t be revealed here. Suffice it to say that parental guidance is recommended for potential pre-and early-teen viewers. Writer-director Mark Herman does a fine job imagining how such a household might be look, and he rightly allows the drama to develop at its own pace. Bonus features include deleted scenes, commentary by Herman and John Boyne and the mini-doc Friendship Beyond the Fence.

From France comes another atypical Holocaust drama, this one adapted from Philippe Grimbert`s reality-based novel, Memory. Set during the early stages of World War II, Claude Miller’s A Secret uses flashbacks and flash-aheads to tell the story of one Jewish family’s attempt to escape occupied France and remain isolated from the impending storm. An affair between a stunningly beautiful athlete and one of the other women’s husbands adds an aura of tension and betrayal to the story, drastically changing how we feel about the man.

We want to blame him as much as the French border guards and Nazis for the ensuing tragedy, but are talked out of that notion. We’re far more appalled by his behavior immediately after his wife seals her own fate. The full extent of his treachery isn’t revealed to his surviving son until much later, and it leads him to fully investigate the events that led to his birth. When, even later in the story, we meet father and son again, Miller demands that we find more room for shock and dismay. The talented cast includes Cécile de France, Patrick Bruel, Julie Depardieu (Gerard's sister), Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) and Ludivine Sagnier (The Swimming Pool).

- Gary Dretzka

Marie and Bruce

Fans of Julianne Moore and Matthew Broderick should enjoy their portrayal of a sophisticated New York couple whose marriage unravels before our eyes. The movie progresses more like a stage play than a Hollywood drama or dark romantic comedy, which is where we would normally find these two fine actors. That’s because Marie and Bruce was adapted by Wallace Shawn(My Dinner With Andre) from his own play, and his razor-sharp wit and caustic humor are on full display. Marie and Bruce is a bit of a bumpy ride, but anyone hoping to re-visit the world of Virginia Woolf will find plenty to chew on here. – Gary Dretzka