MCN DVD Reviews: June 2, 2009

The Wrap Up ...

	..MCN Review
	..MCN Weekend

Revolutionary Road
The Fox and the Child

The marketing campaign that preceded the release of Revolutionary Road seemed far more interested in promoting the reunion of Titanic lovers Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio than anything else about the film. Critical praise failed to nail down more than a handful of awards nominations and, anyway, TV talk-show hosts tend to love any angle that doesn’t require sampling the product a guest is selling.

Any other resemblance between those two movies – or the stars’ performances therein – was limited to the presence of Kathy Bates in a key supporting role. Methinks, it could have been handled better. Set in the same post-World War II, pre-Vietnam War suburbia as Mad Men and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit -- Leave It to Beaver, too -- Sam Mendes’ adaptation of Richard Yates’ novel locates the American Dream at the intersection of Main Street and the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

Like too many other couples who met, fell in love and felt obligated to marry after a condom broke (oral contraceptives weren’t approved for sale until 1963), Frank and April Wheeler convinced themselves that they would have plenty of time left to chase their dreams, after the kids graduated from college. When, however, the Wheelers attempted to defy the Gods of commerce and conformity, by deviating from the approved program, bad things happened. Feeling stifled by the limitations of life in an affluent Connecticut suburb, April convinced Frank they could afford to move to Paris.

She knew work was available at the American embassy and the kids could get into a decent English-language school. Meanwhile, Frank could pursue the dreams that had attracted her to him in the first place. It was at this precise moment, however, that his boss at Knox Business Machines offered Frank a promotion, key account and substantial raise in pay. Her escape route blocked, April knew that nothing good could come of Frank’s willingness to put his career before their joint bliss. As terrific as DiCaprio and Winslet are together, what keeps Revolutionary Road from collapsing into flat-out melodrama are the superb supporting performances by Bates, Richard Easton and the Oscar-nominated Michael Shannon, as suburban gargoyles, and Frank’s fellow office drones Dylan Baker and Zoe Kazan.

Mendes, a Brit, had previously assayed a more advanced strain of suburban rot in American Beauty, as had Ang Lee in The Ice Storm. Among other notions about money, security and parenthood, both directors nailed the mass psychosis that prompted each new generation of Americans to construct plush prisons around themselves, effectively preventing them from succumbing to the temptation of pursuing more fulfilling lives. The DVD includes commentary by Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe; the featurette, Lives of Quite Desperation: The Making of Revolutionary Road; deleted scenes; and, for Blu-ray, Richard Yates: The Wages of Truth.

Winslet also found time recently to lend her voice to Luc Jacquet’s The Fox and the Child, a compelling family adventure that removed the boundary separating fairytales and nature documentaries. Jacquet had experience in this blurred realm. He had written and directed the surprise hit, March of the Penguins, which, in the original French version, employed a decidedly more anthropomorphic approach to its documentation of the Emperor penguins’ amazing cycle of life in the frigid cold of Antarctic.

The only common element between March and The Fox and the Child is the amount of time the title characters spend in the snow … here, the scenic mountains of France, Italy and Romania. Freckled redhead Bertille Noel-Bruneau plays a lively 10-year-old mountain girl who befriends an undomesticated fox, Lily. Together and separately, they tackle the elements, predators and other seasonal hazards. No Hollywood CGI wizard could produce a more exciting chase than the one Jacquet captured in the snowy forest, between the animal actors playing Lily and a hungry bobcat. Even though his Emperors were able to conquer American megaplexes, Jacquet’s wily fox and Heidi look-alike weren’t even given the courtesy of a tryout.

There’s no reason The Fox and the Child shouldn’t succeed here. The mountains are captured splendidly, the animals are fun to watch and the story has distinctly Disney-esque sheen. And, yes, Winslet’s narration is as crisp, clean and refreshing as breath of fresh Alpine air. - Gary Dretzka

..MCN Review

Defiance
History Channel: The Bielski Brothers
Man Hunt

If World War II hadn’t happened, Hollywood might have had to invent a conflagration of similar scale from which to draw stories. As sick as I am of seeing images of Adolph Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, and watching archival footage of demented Germans, Italians and Japanese saluting tyrants, hardly a month goes by without some newly uncovered intelligence or unheralded heroism being revealed in a movie or cable TV show. More than any other monumental historical event, World War II is the one to which filmmakers turn when a point needs to be made about heroism, patriotism, courage, sacrifice, selflessness, tragedy, bigotry, intolerance, barbarism, demagoguery, deception, greed and horror … even comedy, as the creators of Kelly’s Heroes, Catch-22, McHale’s Navy and Hogan’s Heroes would have us believe. World War II had it all, and it happened on Hollywood’s watch.

The deluge of WWII movies, mini-series, documentaries and DVDs released in just the past year – capped by the blitzkrieg of hype surrounding Inglourious Basterds -- has been overwhelming: The Reader, Valkyrie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Counterfeiters, Miracle at St. Anna; DVDs of Arnaud des Pallières’ Drancy Avenir, Claude Miller’s A Secret, the original Inglorious Bastards and Roger Spottiswoode’s The Children of Huang Shi; PBS’ World War Two: Behind Closed Doors and a couple dozen History Channel & A&E shows. Hell, even South Pacific was revived on Broadway. If some of the theatrical titles have done well with the critics, none has performed particularly well at the box-office (neither, though, did Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima couplet). The common denominator in this year’s crop of titles is that none of the protagonists were cut from the same cloth as Audie Murphy or John Wayne.

The Holocaust has been a centerpiece of too many movies to count. Only a few, however, have shown Jews in anything but a purely defensive or subjugated position, their acts of heroism generally occurring in ghettos or concentration camps. Defiance documents the little-known story of Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski, three Jewish brothers, who, after seeing their parents and siblings led away to their deaths, established a partisan camp in the dense forests of Belarus and actively engaged the Nazis in battle. Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell play the brothers, who lacked a formal education but learned how to survive using their heads, hands and wiles, like any other boys raised in the country. They had the respect of their neighbors, but knew that anti-Semitic behavior wasn’t limited to one nationality or army. Even after they allied themselves with Red Army irregulars, and proved themselves in combat, the Bielskis were mistrusted by Russian officers and the Jewish partisans were required to fend for themselves, when it came to finding food, medical supplies and shelter.

As their reputation grew, the Bielskis’ ability to accommodate newcomers was sorely tested. The fighters alienated nearby farmers by demanding food. The new arrivals were unfamiliar with even the most basic survival skills and almost none had used a gun or knife in anger. No one could have anticipated a day when they would be required to brave the winter in lean-to shelters and tattered clothing. Even under constant fear of attack and treachery, the Bielski partisans managed to survive, largely intact, for 2½ years. It’s an amazing story, made even more compelling by the testimony of survivors and descendents found in the bonus package.

Critics have argued that director Ed Zwick milked the contrast between the rough-hewn Bielskis and the more learned city folk for comic relief, especially as the intellectuals were taught the proper use of weapons and building tools. If such sentimentality were a crime, though, hardly any Hollywood filmmaker would be without guilt. At its core, Defiance is a heck of war movie. It would be every bit as exciting – if not as ironic, perhaps – if the partisans were Greek, Italian, Filipino or Gypsy. I suspect some of their stories have already been filmed, but have yet to arrive here on video or find an audience beyond their borders. Americans so hate to share the limelight, after all.

The History Channel’s The Bielski Brothers also brought together survivors to relate their experiences in the forest camp. Their emotionally charged stories explain how the partisans managed to escape the German occupation, find the Bielskis and survive in conditions that would test the mettle of any soldier or outdoorsman. Neither do the films sugarcoat the tactics used to provide food and clothing during the harshest winter months.

Man Hunt is significant for several reasons, including its choice of director. Austrian-born Fritz Lang had made Metropolis, M and three Dr. Mabuse movies before being asked by Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels to lead the German Cinema Institute. After buying some time to make a decision, Lang split for Paris and the United States. (Leni Riefenstahl would accept the post in his absence.)

Acutely aware of the threat posed by the Nazis, Lang accepted the rush assignment to adapt Geoffrey Household’s hit novel, Rogue Male. America had yet to commit itself to war, and, in fact, the government had ordered Hollywood studio heads to soften any portrayals of Hitler’s rhetoric and brutal repression of Jews, leftists and intellectuals. Lang’s boss at Fox, Daryl F. Zanuck, decided to risk sanctions by putting Man Hunt on the front burner. In it, renowned big-game hunter Capt. Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon) is caught setting his rifle’s sights on Adolf Hitler, while he was in residence at his mountain retreat.

Thorndike claimed that he was merely stalking Hitler, as he would any trophy beast, and had no intention of killing him. Sensing the potential for a propaganda coup, the Germans demand that he admit he was employed by the British government, or he would be released and hunted down like an animal. Thorndike chooses the latter, somehow managing to escape to England. It isn’t long before his Nazi nemesis makes the crossing, as well, using the hunter’s confiscated documents to cause even further mayhem. The deadly game of cat and mouse is made even more exciting by Lang’s adroit use of light, shadows and forested scenery.

So timely was the production that Lang was able to include footage of Hitler’s invasion of Poland to heighten the tension. (Britain would use the attack as excuse to enter the war.) Shortly after the movie’s release, Pearl Harbor would render all talk of neutrality and fair play for tyrants moot. Nearly 70 years later, Man Hunt can stand on its own merits as both a thriller and cinematic landmark. The bonus features add much background information on Lang, Zanuck and the period, as well as commentary by critics and film historians. - Gary Dretzka

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Joss Whedon’s breezy, segmented musical, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is an example of the kind of entertainment product the Internet was built to support … that, and top-secret government research and military communications. It’s fresh, inventive and designed specifically to be enjoyed in bite-size episodes.

Originally intended as a vehicle for creativity during the 2008 writer’s strike, Dr. Horrible works less well on DVD, if only because the long-form presentation doesn’t allow for as many surprises and cliffhangers. In Whedon’s tune-filled fairy tale, whose form might have been inspired by Pennies From Heaven, Neil Patrick Harris plays a daydream believer who video-blogs about his efforts to join the Evil League of Evil and to win the heart of Penny (Felicia Day), a damsel he met at the local laundromat. Also vying for her hand is the self-absorbed Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion).

Whedon’s creative team includes his brothers, Zack and Jed, and Jed's fiancée, Maurissa Tancharoen. Their musical contributions are offbeat, catchy and delightfully rendered by the cast, especially Harris. The DVD features add a pair of commentary tracks; Commentary! The Musical, in which the participants sing about the strike and each other; a 20-minute making-of doc; and 10 videos that were recorded by fans. - Gary Dretzka

Une Femme Mariee

Subtitled “Fragments of a Film Shot in 1964 in Black and White,” Une Femme Mariee (A Married Woman) is a virtually unknown entry in the canon of Jean-Luc Godard. Film scholars have characterized it has a bridge between the auteur’s Nouvelle Vague period and his eventual descent into tiresome left-wing polemics. Few filmmakers have provided as much fodder for critics and intellectuals as Godard, if only because his first feature, Breathless, made such a loud statement in arthouses around the world.

Less than a decade later, his willingness to abandon traditional structure and incorporate revolutionary dogma in his films would win the approval of the counterculturalists of the day. If some of his more experimental movies were indefensibly difficult to watch, the successes caught the spirit of the moment like a snapshot in time. Une Femme Mariee takes place in a pre-feminist Paris, where women are bombarded with images and instructions on what it takes to be “perfect.”

While men also are told how to fit into bourgeois society, they aren’t required to justify their flabby physiques or dull choices in underwear. The same media assault was occurring in other metropolitan centers around the world, but it’s possible Parisian women faced increased pressure as the embodiment of ooh-la-la sensuality. Here, Charlotte (Macha Méril) is caught in a trick bag between her brutish husband – who’s given her a stepson to watch and amuse while he’s on business trips – and her lover, Robert (Bernard Noël), a self-centered actor.

At first, Godard seems unfair to Charlotte, burdening her with a lack of intellectual curiosity that borders on the pathetic. (He also requires her to wear lingerie that is the opposite of sexy.) Forced to make a decision about the future of her marriage, though, Godard allows her to question her personal status quo and dependency on flawed men. Although this description might make Une Femme Mariee appear to be a museum piece, consider just how little the consumer media have changed since the 1960s. How much more different, then, was the marketing of Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Doris Day, than the emergence of such freaks as Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham and Madonna as role models? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Never dull or doctrinaire, Une Femme Mariee is at once relevant and fun to watch. – Gary Dretzka

Baby on Board
Anaconda: Blu-ray/Anacondas: Trail of Blood
Spring Breakdown
High Hopes
Ibid

You must have heard this one already, “It wasn’t released … it escaped.” As tired a cliché as it is, the line might have been written yesterday to describe Baby on Board. Instead of allowing his turkey to stroll quietly into the straight-to-DVD marketplace, director Brian Herzlinger reportedly rented a theater in L.A. to see if the names Heather Graham, Jerry O'Connell, John Corbett, Katie Finneran and Lara Flynn Boyle might entice a few rubes into buying a ticket.

The strategy must not have worked, because Baby on Board disappeared almost as soon as it opened. If it weren’t for a couple of mercy bookings of the stars on Bonnie Hunt and Jimmy Fallon’s talk shows, it might not have opened at all. O’Connell and Graham play a yuppie couple about to become yuppie parents, even though condoms were used and both suspected the other of cheating. Their closest married friends -- portrayed by Corbett and Finneran – shouldn’t have been allowed to get married in the first place, let alone have kids.

When things go south on the marriage front, Corbett invites O’Connell to share a bachelor pad, a pair of strippers and the Fleshlight gadget he uses as a masturbation tool. Talk about new strides in product placement! Meanwhile, much to the chagrin of her shrew boss (Lara Flynn Boyle), Graham’s condition causes her to fart and burp during business presentations before stereotypical Japanese executives. Oh, yeah, she pukes on innocent bystanders, too. If they gave Razzies to the performers in just any crappy movie, Baby on Board would make a clean sweep of them. Even the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation has standards, though.

This isn’t to suggest that a Razzie nomination – or six – can keep a good bad franchise down. Take Anaconda … please. Newly arrived in Blu-ray, the 1997 sleeper hit starred emerging movie stars Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, young pro Eric Stoltz and old pro Jon Voight, all in pursuit of a lost Amazonian civilization. Instead, the secret agenda of their Paraguayan guide puts them on a collision course with a giant anaconda. The rest was history.

That guilty-pleasure begat three sequels, the latest of which, Anacondas: Trail of Blood, involves genetically engineered offspring of the original serpent. The fast-growing snakes thrive on the nectar of blood orchids, which apparently are in short supply. Terror ensues, this time without the benefit of a David Hasselhoff intervention. Crystal Allen and David Rhys-Davies return, however, along with a bunch of actors from the rain forests of Romania (where the last two movies were shot). Neither package offers much in the way of extras.

Nowhere near as dreadful a comedy as Baby on Board, Spring Breakdown nonetheless has been unceremoniously dumped into the DVD marketplace. Typically, whenever a project involving a Saturday Night Live cast member is about to open in theaters or on television, NBC serves as a willing pimp, allowing the stars to shill on all manner of programs. This time, as far as I can tell, nary a peep has been sounded in advance. It was screened at the Sundance and Seattle film festivals, but those would hardly provide the buzz necessary to sell the picture in the target demos.

I won’t argue here that Spring Breakdown could make anyone forget Animal House or Mean Girls. It deserved it a better fate, though. Amy Poehler, Rachel Dratch and Parker Posey play a trio of lifelong friends, whose geekiness put them at a distinct disadvantage to the cool girls while in college and, 20 years later, everywhere else. In an ironic twist of fate, the ladies are given an opportunity to prove their fabulousness as chaperones for a politician’s daughter (Amber Tamblyn) during spring break.

Their destination is South Padre Island, one of the more popular playgrounds for debauched youth. True to form, the ladies dress and act in as unhip a manner as they might have while in college two decades earlier. The politician’s daughter and her crew prove to be their equal in cluelessness, however. Somehow, the older gals’ nerdy, fish-out-of-water behavior fits right in with the stupidity that passes for fun at spring break. Dratch and co-writer/director Ryan Shiraki deserve credit for mining as much solid material as they did from such a depleted vein of comedy gold. It’s miles better than most than other movies inspired by “SNL” sketches.

It’s taken more than three years for High Hopes (a.k.a., Nice Guys) to make the non-stop journey from the Phoenix Film Festival to DVD. Like Spring Breakdown, Joe Eckardt’s anemic stoner comedy probably wouldn’t have made more than a few bucks in a theatrical release, but the intended audience won’t feel terribly cheated by a video tryout … especially if they’re as wrecked as the characters on screen.

To that end, High Hopes features the Cary Grant of potheads – Jason Mewes – to put everything else that transpires into smoky context. Basically, the story revolves around a stolen suitcase full of government-grade marijuana. A group of aspiring filmmakers needs the proceeds from the suitcase to finance a project, but a local dealer and a pair of FBI agents also want to get their hands on it. Mewes’ character would smoke the whole lode himself, but his good-natured generosity requires him to share with everyone who walks in the door, including the mentally damaged brother of a roommate’s girlfriend. For better or worse, it’s that kind of movie.

Ibid also is a story about an aspiring filmmaker and drugs, only this one involves schizophrenics and psychotropic healing. A pair of lifelong friends, permanently damaged from a childhood tragedy, split from a psychiatric center in Idaho in order to write and spread the news about certain new additions to the Ten Commandments. Things happen on their road-trip that defied any rational explanation or description.

They’re chased by freelance evangelists, denied by their surviving relatives and inspired by the empty prairies to capture images of spiritual desolation. Why? Who knows? In the 1960s, such work would be embraced or dismissed as experimental, and left for the acid heads to decipher. Today, such On the Road-wannabe material almost feels quaint. The last thing anyone traveling along a lonely stretch of road would want to encounter in 2009 would be an escaped mental patient with a bible fetish and a handi-cam. The background music and original songs by Travis Ward are pretty interesting, though. - Gary Dretzka

Direct Contact: Blu-ray

Driven to Kill: Blu-ray

Manly-men action stars Dolph Lundgren and Steven Seagal may not have the same clout at the box-office as they once did, but they still carry weight at the video store. How else to explain the never-ending stream of titles bearing their names? Someone has to be renting them? If nothing else, they’re keeping a lot of film crews active in places like British Columbia, Bulgaria and Texas.

In Direct Contact, Lundgren plays a former American Special Forces operative, imprisoned in Russia, who’s given a shot at freedom if he rescues an American woman kidnapped by criminals unknown. Rescuing damsels in distress is something Lundgren can do in his sleep, of course. Dealing with lies and other personal, criminal and political agendas, though, is something quite different.

After vanquishing vampires and zombies in his last outing, Seagel returns to more familiar territory in Driven to Kill. In it, he plays a former Russian gangster, living in New York, who’s put aside his assassin’s tools for a typewriter. An attack on his daughter pulls him back into the game. Neither DVD/Blu-ray offers anything in the way of extras. - Gary Dretzka

Maintenance

This nasty piece of business describes what can happen when an attractive young woman fails to consider the downside of living in a near-empty apartment complex. You just never know when the janitor in possession of the duplicate keys to your apartment has a prison record. That, in a nutshell, is the lesson to be learned from Maintenance, whose creator also wants us to know that recidivism is a by-product of the American prison experience. Sure, it would be nice if apartment managers and personnel directors actually took the time to do proper background checks, but, then, where would the next generation of aspiring horror fetishists be? It’s worth noting, perhaps, that the reported budget for Maintenance was $5,000. – Gary Dretzka

Raising the Bar: The Complete First Season
Eddie Murphy: Delirious: 25th Anniversary
Biography: Harry Potter Kids

Steven Bochco turned to the cable universe to find a home for his latest series, Raising the Bar. It’s not as if the world needed another courtroom drama, in which the defendants are mostly poor and of color, and the lawyers on both sides of the fence are young, attractive and abnormally dedicated to their low-paying jobs. They drink, sleep and argue with each other, and the team with the white hats usually wins. The actors are good, however, and stories compelling … if overly familiar. For my money, the series’ greatest asset was Jane Kaczmarek’s portrayal of a nasty, un-ethical judge, who’s having an affair with her clerk (Jonathan Scarfe), who’s a closeted homosexual. The 10-episode collection adds a featurette on the show’s co-creator, David Feige, an actual public defender whose experiences are the series’ inspiration.

Today, Eddie Murphy is as familiar to movie audiences as the Hollywood sign is to tourists in L.A. Once known as an actor who could open any film in which he appeared, Murphy’s successful performances are greeted s anomalies. Delirious: 25th Anniversary reminds of the time when the 22-year-old comedian commanded every stage and medium on which he appeared. Brash, cocky and sporting a red patent-leather outfit, Murphy reminisced about his childhood, took on several industry icons and courted controversy with his profane commentary on gays, AIDS, sex, women and other politically sensitive topics. He was electric, and the DVD bears comparison with the recorded performances of Richard Pryor and Sam Kinison.

With the premiere of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince right around the corner, the Biography Channel has re-released Harry Potter Kids, the show that introduced us to Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as people, not just characters in a soon-to-be-popular movie franchise. We learn how they were discovered and what shape they hoped their characters would take.

Also new to TV-to-DVD: Army Wives: The Complete Season 2, a very decent prime-time soap set on a military base, where women must cope with interrupted marriages and stressed-out spouses; a visionary, The Jetsons: Season Two, Vol. 1; Cannon: Season Two, Vol. 1;Weeds: Season 4, during which the pot trade went international and the bathtub scenes got steamier; and Prison Break: Season 4, for those of us who prefer to watch our cliff-hangers back-to-back … why wait?

– Gary Dretzka