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Wilmington on DVDs
Ghost Town, The Lady With the Little Dog...
plus, this week's box set picks

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COPICKS OF THE WEEK: NEW

Ghost Town (Three Stars)
U.S.; David Koepp, 2008 (DreamWorks)

David Koepp‘s spookily amusing Manhattan romp Ghost Town, starring the odd threesome of Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni, is a “Topper”-like little jokefest about ghosts, seduction, and not-so-painless dentistry. Koepp, who also wrote Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull this year, has a flair for science fiction and fantasy (A Stir of Echoes), and this romantic comedy/fantasy has something to offer: spot-on actors, brainy writing, and some of the high style, sparkle and narrative agility we loved in those old Golden Age screwballers.

What it doesn’t have is a Cary Grant type in the lead. Instead Ghost Town has Gervais, the hilariously persnickety boss of the British TV version of The Office, and an actor who reminds you more of tart-tongued ‘30s movie comedians like Eric Blore or Franklin Pangborn -- or even of Roland Young, the wry chap who played Cosmo Topper, the fuddled gent who alone could see the spectral antics of playboy ghost Grant.

There’s a parallel: Gervais’s persnickety dentist Bertram is the only human here who can observe the somewhat Grant-like Kinnear’s recently departed two-timer Frank Herlihy, as well as a whole "Sixth Sense” horde of ghostly others around him -- result of a near-death experience that leaves Bertram with the ability to see scads of ghosts trying to wrap up unfinished business they left behind on Earth. Frank, for example, was a suave, quick-talking philanderer when he was alive and he, his cheated-on wife Gwen (Leoni) and Bertram all shared the same apartment building; now Frank wants to use Bertram to make sure that Gwen (played with somewhat Carole Lombard-ish pizzazz by Leoni) doesn’t marry her new fiancé, too-good-to-be-true lawyer Richard (Billy Campbell). Complication: Bertram falls for Gwen, natch.

That’s the set-up, and Koepp and the cast spin it out with verve, snap and some feeling. But much as I enjoyed Ghost Town, I did have a problem -- beyond those scenes when Bertram talks to Frank in public and people around them puzzlingly fail to react. (Maybe they think he’s on a cell-phone.) If Frank objects so strongly to Gwen-and-Richard, why does he promote a second romance between Gwen and Bertram, given that the dentist is initially a nasty snob who, in every way, seems a worse choice -- so mean, bitchy and dismissive, that we start longing immediately for his comeuppance? Unfortunately too, and to further weaken the climax, Bertram is only really funny and lively here when he’s nasty.

Are those flaws? In a film laden with wit, twists and autumnal Manhattan beauties, perhaps not.

PICK OF THE WEEK: CLASSIC

The Lady With a Dog (Four Stars)
Russia (USSR); Josif Heifitz, 1960 (Facets)

The setting is a summer resort, Yalta, in the 19th century but there’s something bleak and melancholy about it. The boardwalk is nearly empty, except for a beautiful, sad-eyed, lonely lady (Iya Savvina) who walks a little white dog every day and excites lewd speculation from some of the kibitzers in a restaurant. She excites more than that in the soul of a quiet, handsome gentleman (Aleksei Batalov) who also watches and eventually contrives to meet her. They talk, they walk. The little dog dances at their sides. They’re both married, they’re without their mates, they’re in love, but something happens between them -- something very romantic, very sad, very real…

This superb, but relatively little-seen film, which won almost universal critical acclaim on its 1960 release, and was singled out for high admiration by George Cukor in his book-length interview with Gavin Lambert, is generally, and rightly, regarded as one of the screen’s best adaptations of Russian writer Anton Chekhov. The source is Chekhov’s short story, also called “The Lady with the Little Dog" (a title I like better), and later remade, combined with more Chekhov fiction, in Nikita Mikhalkov’s fine, nostalgic Dark Eyes, starring Marcello Mastroianni.

Remarkably, this is the better version -- though Heifitz’s other work remains almost unknown here. One of the best Russian films of the post-Stalin era, it has a cold, dark, wistful mood that haunts you like guilt and regret. “Chekhovian” is a word often used -- and misused -- in movie reviews, to describe movies that probably owe more to Ingmar Bergman or Tennessee Williams. While this tale is smaller and sparer than the movie’s made from Chekhov’s matchless, moving plays, it’s as Chekhovian as you can get. There is no higher praise. (In Russian, with English subtitles.)

PICK OF THE WEEK: BOX SET

Murnau, Borzage and Fox: Films from an Era of Artistic Genius (12 discs) (Four Stars)
U.S.; F. W. Murnau. Frank Borzage, 1924-1932 (20th Century Fox)

F. W. (Friedrich Wilhelm) Murnau was a great, much admired German director, who died young (at 42) after taking the world cinema by storm with his 1924 classic The Last Laugh and then captivating the American film industry with his 1927 masterpiece Sunrise -- a moody classic about a dangerous triangle among a sexy city woman (Margaret Livingston) and a troubled country couple (Janet Gaynor and George O‘Brien) that was voted by the ‘50s staff of Cahiers du Cinema (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol, et. al.) as the best film of all time. Murnau in turn is now regarded as one of the greatest of all film artists, master of the moving camera, the deep focus shot, and tales of obsessive love.

Frank Borzage was an American ex-actor and veteran movie director whose career spanned the decades from 1916 to 1959. He was one of many Yanks influenced by Sunrise, though, ironically, it was Borzage who edged out Murnau for the 1927-28 best director Oscar, the first ever given, for his own personal classic, Seventh Heaven -- about a pair of poor Parisian lovers (Gaynor and Charles Farrell) separated by fate and war. (Diminutive and waif-like Janet Gaynor won the first best actress Oscar, for her work on both those films, as well as Borzage’s Street Angel.) Borzage‘s reputation is more controversial than Murnau‘s -- some dismiss him as a rank pop sentimentalist -- but most of us accept him as one of the great Hollywood romantics, a master teller of tales of lovers pitted against a hostile or uncaring world.

Murnau and Borzage were two giants of he silent cinema, whose paths intersected on the Fox lot (were they were part of a great directorial company that included John Ford and Raoul Walsh) and during the Oscar competition between Sunrise and Seventh Heaven. This excellent box set from Fox -- itself a masterpiece of the DVD era -- brings together two Murnau films (including Sunrise) and ten by Borzage (including both Seventh Heaven and Street Angel) along with fragments or reconstructions of one lost Murnau film (1928‘s Four Devils) and one partly lost Borzage (1929’s The River), and a documentary on both directors, and their work with their admiring studio boss, William Fox.

The model is Fox‘s previous magnificent Ford at Fox set. Here we get an oversize case, three discs to a page, and two oversize books loaded with pictures. Murnau and Borzage’s best work here is from the silent era, when both men could freely display their talents and tastes for poignant or near-tragic romance and their lush pictorialism. But Borzage’s early sound work, though marred by the stilted techniques of the 1928-31 era, shows the soul of a romantic and the touch of a poet as well. He would soon be making both Fox (and non-Fox) classics like Bad Girl, Man‘s Castle, and No Greater Glory.

This is a beautiful, great, illuminating set; Fox deserves very high praise for assembling both Ford at Fox and Murnau, Borzage and Fox. They may not be the highest selling DVD sets of their years, but they are DVD masterpieces all the same.

Includes: Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927). Four Stars. With Janet Gaynor, George O’Brien and Margaret Livingston (in a Louise Brooks part). The soul of romance torn between the bad, seductive city, and the simple, lovely country. Pure cinematic poetry; it takes us from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of horror and despair. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.) City Girl (Murnau, 1930). Three-and-a-Half Stars. With Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan. Murnau‘s last, compromised Fox film, another city girl-country guy romance, but this time the city woman (Duncan) is good -- and misunderstood. With its passionate strife and lush wheat fields, this one reminds you of Days of Heaven. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.) Lazybones (Borzage, 1925). Three-and-a-Half Stars. With Buck Jones. A sleeper, in the rustic-lyrical Griffith-Ford-Henry King mode. Jones plays a lazy, but eventually self-sacrificing and heroic country boy. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.)

Seventh Heaven (Borzage, 1927). Four Stars. With Farrell and Gaynor. One of the sublime Hollywood romances. Two working class Parisian lovers face the terrors of brutality, war and separation. A huge hit in its day. Borzage, a true pacifist, refused to shoot the battle scenes, but he had a first-rate second unit action man to do them for him: John Ford. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.) Street Angel (Borzage, 1928) Four Stars. Gaynor and Farrell in another star-crossed lovers tale, this time set in Italy. Powerful, lyrical. Neglected, but to me, just as good as Seventh Heaven. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.) Lucky Star (Borzage, 1929). Four Stars. Gaynor and Farrell again, in another collision of love and war. On the same high romantic pictorial level as the other two; perhaps they should really be seen as an unconscious trilogy. (Silent, with intertitles and music score.)

They Had to See Paris (Borzage, 1929) Three Stars. With Will Rogers, Elizabeth Patterson and Helen Chandler. Early Will Rogers talkie: a likable sub-”Dodsworth” tale of a newly rich oil tycoon whose wife and daughter succumb to Parisian sophistication. Song O’ My Heart (Borzage, 1930) Three Stars. With John McCormack and Maureen O‘Sullivan. A broken-hearted but staunch Irish tenor faces tragedy while America lures him to a concert tour. Script-wise, this is one of the weakest of the Borzages here. But it has one enormous plus: a well recorded star turn, with many Irish songs, by the massively popular tenor McCormack. Partly shot on location in McCormack‘s town, in Ireland; the set contains both the sound and partly-silent “synchronized” versions. Liliom (Borzage, 1930) Three Stars. With Farrell, Rose Hobart and Lee Tracy. Ferenc Molnar’s super-romantic play about Liliom, the irresistible carousel barker (Farrell) and the eternally faithful Julie (Hobart). Later fashioned into the Rodgers and Hammerstein ‘40s classic Carousel, and also remade, as Liliom, by Fritz Lang in France in 1934. Oddly, Borzage’s version has more German expressionistic touches than Lang‘s.

Bad Girl (Borzage, 1931). Three-and-a-Half Stars. With James Dunn and Duncan. Borzage won his second “best director” Oscar for this salty, touching story of a tenement couple during the Depression. After Tomorrow (Borzage; 1932) Two-and-a-Half Stars. With Farrell and Marian Nixon. Another, less affecting or salty Depression romance. Young America (Borzage, 1932). Three-and-a-Half Stars. With Spencer Tracy, Ralph Bellamy and Doris Kenyon. Sometimes striking, deeply sentimental juvenile delinquent problem drama, with Tracy as an unfeeling business man, Bellamy as a “bleeding heart” liberal judge and Tom Conlon as the town’s “worst” boy. Ray Borzage, the director’s nephew, does an extremely moving job as Conlon’s “outsider” young sidekick Nutty.

OTHER CURRENT AND RECENT DVD RELEASES

Eagle Eye (Two-and-a-Half Stars)
U.S.; D. J. Caruso, 2008 (DreamWorks)

Eagle Eye -- a hellbent-for-cyberspace thriller with Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan as a “wrong couple” bedeviled by cell-phones and pursued by super cops -- is just too damned fast for its own good. Directed by D. J. Caruso, it’s full of wild chases, blistering fights and spectacular explosions, and I’d be lying if I told you it wasn’t exciting. This movie pumps up an almost non-stop wave of shockeroos and that’s part of its problem.

As our companions on its wild ride, Eagle Eye gives us Jerry Shaw, slacker twin brother of an over-achieving U. S. Defense guy who supposedly died in a car crash and Monaghan as Rachel Holloman, divorced mom of adorable little Sam (Cameron Boyce), who’s set to play trumpet on “The Star Spangled Banner “ at the next State of the Union address. Both these average, likable, but very movie-sexy people are suddenly plunged into a mad chase to Washington D. C., with a mysterious female phone-voice giving them instructions on where to go and what to do -- after framing Jerry as a terrorist and telling Rachel that Sam will be killed unless she goes along. On their tail: Southern-fried “Fugitive”-style FBI agent Morgan (Billy Bob Thornton) and saucy New York Air Force knockout Perez (Rosario Dawson).

In Disturbia, Caruso and company were knocking off Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Here, he’s lifting from Hitch’s 1959 North by Northwest and his 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much -- and throwing in a little of the ‘60s anti-tech nightmares Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe as well, along with a nod to the Hal of 2001. But, unlike Hitchcock and Kubrick‘s works, Eagle Eye lacks modulation and structure; it has one slam-bang scene after another, briefly interspersed with a little character stuff. Zip! Bang! Crash! Pow! It works for about an hour, but then I wanted a rest. Or another movie, preferable by Lord Alfie or Kubes.

The Duchess (Two Stars)
U.K.; Saul Dibb, 2008 (Paramount)

In this movie, which I liked far less than I was supposed to, Keira Knightley plays Georgiana Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire, Princess Di’s ancestor and, according to the movie (and Amanda Foreman‘s recent biography), was a London cultural and fashion icon, a political progressive and a tragic figure, victimized (like Di) by a loveless husband (Ralph Fiennes glowers expressively as the Duke), by his not-so-secret mistress (Hayley Atwell) and by the chains of aristocracy and propriety -- but without a mass modern tabloid press to take her side and trumpet her story.

This move tries to fill that gap, but its both too proper and too romance-novel-ish to succeed. Despite a good cast (Charlotte Rampling is Georgiana’s mother) and plush settings, it left me cold. And Dominic Cooper as Georgiana’s lover Charles Gray, didn’t move me much either; the real Charles Gray, in his “Rocky Horror” drag, might have been more convincing. The project must have seemed like a good idea, Di-wise, but this Georgiana is a dubious victim and progressive -- deficient, heroine-wise, except for beauty and charisma.

Shoot ‘Em Up (Two Stars)
U. S.; Michael Davis, 2007 (New Line)

Flashy, tongue-in-cheek but ultimately forgettable neo-noir about hits, twits and terrible shits. A waste of Clive Owen, not to mention Paul Giamatti. Sadly, in other circumstances, Owen might be the new Bogie.

Read Michael Wilmington's Theatrical Reviews of the Week: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Valkyrie, Bedtime Stories, and The Spirit

Back to Wilmington On Movies

- Michael Wilmington
December 26, 2008

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