MCN DVD Reviews: April 28, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

The Savages	Leo Tolstoy wasn't just whistling Dixie when he observed, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. That pretty much sums up the plots of half the films showcased at Sundance over the last 30 years. Indeed, it was festival co-founder Robert Redford, who, in 1980, raised the bar with his Oscar-winning directorial debut, Ordinary People. That film described how one seemingly stable Midwestern family crumbled under the weight of a tragic accident and unreasonable feelings of guilt. Learning that this sort of dysfunctional behavior wasn't limited to families living in trailer parks and posh Manhattan brownstones probably didn't come as news to anyone living on Chicago's North Shore, where the movie was set. By outing the Jarretts and their demons, however, Ordinary People encouraged a new generation of filmmakers to pull the skeletons out of their own closets and put them on public display. Mercifully, most of their films wouldn't be as unrelievedly downbeat as Ordinary People. Some were downright hilarious. The many traumas endured by Jon and Wendy Savage growing up in the home of an abusive father remain painfully real, even if the events surrounding their forced reunion two decades later translate into laughter. In Tamara Jenkins' The Savages, Jon and Wendy (Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman) are awakened by the kind of phone call no one wants to receive. Their long-estranged father has sunken irretrievably into dementia, and their presence is required to arrange for his future care. As much as the siblings would have preferred for the old man to die and save them a trip to Arizona, they can't bring themselves to consign him to living hell in a generic, low-rent nursing home. Instead, they agree to move him to a care facility in Buffalo, where Jon, a theater historian, is trying feverishly to finish a book. (Wendy, an aspiring playwright, lives only a few hours away, in Manhattan.) The occasionally lucid Lenny, as portrayed by Philip Bosco, isn't about to go gentle into that good night, preferring to rage against the kindness of his children. Jenkins (The Slums of Beverly Hills) tips her hand early on by having Jon soothe Wendy's apprehension about their trip to Arizona with, We are not in a Sam Shepard play … even if they are. In this way, she allows her audience the freedom to laugh - albeit uneasily - as Wendy struggles to get her dad on the plane to Buffalo and into face-saving Depends. In addition to a strict deadline, Jon also is forced to deal with a severely wrenched neck and the imminent departure of his Polish girlfriend. Other diversions arrive in the form of a pot-smoking Nigerian care giver (Gbenga Akinnagbe), who's able to predict when people will die, and a movie-night screening of The Jazz Singer, during which Lenny's memories conflict with those of fellow patients, who are black. In overall tone, The Savages more closely resembles The Squid and the Whale than it does Little Miss Sunshine or The Family Stone, all seemingly about similarly ordinary people. The extras include extended scenes, interviews and a photo gallery. -- Gary Dretzka

Charlie Wilson's War The True Story of Charlie Wilson: History Channel	While undeniably entertaining and revealing, Charlie Wilson's War and The True Story of Charlie Wilson beg a question raised countless times by ethics professors and at least one Twilight Zone episode, If you were transported back in time to Nazi Germany, on or around Krystalnacht, would you have attempted to assassinate Adolph Hitler, and save the world from the horrors of World War II? Or, as it applies here, If a well-meaning American congressman, CIA operative and Dallas socialite hadn't conspired to provide Afghan mujahedeen with the Stinger missiles used to drive Soviet forces from their soil, would we have been spared the events of 9/11 and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? The answer: who knows? Neither film dwells on that unanswerable question, preferring instead to profile the motley trio of outsiders who helped bring down the Evil Empire. The History Channel edition takes a more objective approach to the same material than that employed by Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin, whose film borders on political satire. Tom Hanks portrays Wilson as the notorious rascal he was, while Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts are predictably excellent as the renegade spook and anti-communist socialite. The portrayal of a Congress and CIA too paralyzed by internecine rivalries to find common ground on so important an issue might have been more amusing if we didn't already know that their lack of concern ended when the last tank crossed the border into the USSR. Our refusal to play an active, non-military role in the aftermath, ensured several more years of bloody fighting and the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The History Channel documentary adds quite a bit more background to the portrayal of Wilson, as well as a closer examination of the games played in Washington by grown-up boys with extremely dangerous toys. -- Gary Dretzka

Cloverfield	In the nearly hysterical build-up to the release of Cloverfield - a hybrid of Blair Witch and Godzilla - fanboys and maybe a few fangirls were tantalized by images leaked to various Internet sites, untitled teaser trailers and a TV spot that revealed the movie's best gag. Considering that Cloverfield ran all of 84 minutes, very few secrets were left to the imagination, as was the case in TBWP. After the monster reveal, it was all over but the pyrotechnics. The destruction of Manhattan, as described in Cloverfield, also played out entirely through the lens of a hand-held digital camera. (In TBWP, a color camcorder and 16mm black-and-white camera were used.) Through its lens, we join a young couple on a visit to Coney Island, and, later, attend a loft party on the Lower East Side. Shortly after being introduced to the key neo-yuppie characters at the party, all hell breaks loose. A loud explosion from the direction of the Statue of Liberty prompts the partygoers to go to the roof, where the severity of the situation becomes obvious. Instead of terrorists, the fiery blasts are being triggered by a force that will remain anonymous throughout the course of the movie, as if in anticipation of a sequel. As the young hotties stream out of the building in their expensive high-heels and micro-mini-skirts, we see that the most ominous threat is a creature that combines the physique of Godzilla and with the face of Seabiscuit. Our intrepid cameraman seems every bit as interested in documenting the plight of the 24-hour party people as in capturing the historic amphibious assault on New York. Neither do producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alien) and director Matt Reeves seem particularly interested in anything more interesting than blowing stuff up real good and adding subway rats to the equation. To their credit, though, the finale left something to the imagination. The bonus features add plenty of behind-the-scenes information, interviews and commentary. -- Gary Dretzka

Starting Out In The Evening	In an unusual twist on the old mentor-seduces-protégé scenario, the geezer here isn't a lecher and the ingénue is no vulnerable blossom. Lovely Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) plays Heather Wolfe, a grad student desperate to interview New York novelist Leonard Schiller (Frank Langella) for her thesis, and, we suspect, other career-boosting reasons. He declines, fearing it would take time away from the completion of what he expects to be a valedictory novel. She eventually wears him down by arguing that, when published, her interview will raise Leonard's dormant literary profile will rise. Their relationship remains mostly academic, even though the novelist's none-too-together middle-age daughter, Ariel (Lili Taylor), tries her best to dampen any flame between them. She suspects Heather of being an evil seductress and that her father is incapable of resisting her red-haired charms. Against her dad's advice, Ariel has just gotten back together with a boyfriend she left years earlier because he didn't want kids, and still doesn't. A high-concept film, Starting Out in the Evening isn't. Andrew Wagner and Fred Parnes' adaptation of Brian Morton's novel is, instead, a highly intelligent drama about memory, accomplishments and regrets. It isn't likely that anyone who rents the DVD of Cloverfield also will add Starting Out in the Evening to their basket, and vice versa. The more mileage one has on their tires, the more likely they are to enjoy this very compelling drama. -- Gary Dretzka




Nana LoveCom: The Movie I have no idea how popular movies and DVDs based on Japanese manga have become in the U.S. There must be some demand, as packages carrying screeners are appearing with increasing frequency on my doorstep. Real aficionados probably do their DVD shopping in Little Tokyo, where release dates and copyright infringement remain quaint concepts, at best. The manga-to-DVD movies (a.k.a., J-Pop and Japanimation) that I've seen are amusing, if primarily for their mangling of familiar western cinematic clichés and pop iconography. Hollywood studios have wasted a lot of money attempting to exploit the free-spending, if elusive tweener-girl demographic. Apart from such Disney Channel phenoms as High School Musical* and Hannah Montana - and the occasional OC and Gossip Girl - few home runs have been hit by the networks, either. Nana concerns two very different girls linked by the coincidence of having the same first name. Nana Hachi Komatsu is a mousey sort, who moves to Tokyo to broaden her horizons, while Nana Osaki is an aspiring J-Punk singer with boyfriend issues. In *LoveCom, a tall high-school girl and much shorter boy become the target of teen matchmakers. Both movies exude the goofy charms of their genre. Judging solely by its cover art, Oban Star-Racers, Vol. 1: The Alwas Cycle looks very much like any other standard-issue sci-fi anime. It's actually a well-funded, long-in-gestation co-production between French and Japanese animation studios. Set only 70-plus years in the future, the film imagines an intergalactic race that occurs once every 10,000 years, and involves the sort of pod racers first seen in Stars Wars: Episode One. As is the case with so many Japanimation films and TV series, Blood+: Volume One** entrusts a teenage girl with the future of mankind. This one has just recovered from a bout with amnesia, which means no one should be surprised when a mysterious gentleman hands her a sword to be used to vanquish all sorts of monsters and shape-shifting vampires. -- Gary Dretzka

Fireworks Wednesday Horizontal Landscape Cuba: An African Odyssey Pakistan Zindabad Would anyone be truly shocked if, sometime between Labor Day and Halloween, our President and Vice President find an excuse to send one or two Stealth bombers on a mission to destroy nuclear reactors in Iran? Their hope would be that red, white and blue Americans rally around the flag, once again, thereby reducing the hopes of Obama and/or Hillary to only so much collateral damage. Sounds improbable, but the current leaders of the Islamic Republic have given the tag team of Bush and Cheney more probable cause for an attack than did Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion. In addition, almost no one would miss them. Before anyone pulls the trigger on such an action, though, it would be nice if the White House screening room was used for something other than watching movies starring John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone and the Three Stooges. Asghar Farhadi's Fireworks Wednesday, for example, would offer them a glimpse into the everyday life of poor and middle-class Iranians, who aren't nearly as obsessed with the Great Satan as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Indeed, the people we meet in Fireworks Wednesday couldn't be all that different than the flesh-and-blood Iraqi non-combatants who fell victim to errant bombs and misguided missiles during the Shock and Awe phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Here, a young woman from the outskirts of Tehran takes a job cleaning the home of an upper-middle-class couple about to spend the long Persian New Year holiday in Dubai. Rouhi (Taraneh Alidoosti) takes the temporary job so she can pay for a trip to the beauty parlor before her impending wedding. The holiday, Chahar Shanbeh Suri, is unique not only for the liberal use of fireworks by celebrants, but also because they're encouraged to eavesdrop on passing conversations. This ritual spying somehow is supposed to shed light on the hopes and wishes of the listener. The assignment affords Rouhi -- a shy and modest teenager with a bit of a mischievous streak - numerous opportunities to share in the secrets of her bosses, their neighbors, landlord and children. At the same time, Rouhi is exposed to life among the privileged set, whose values, give or take a hijab or two, aren't much different than those displayed by condo owners in New York, L.A. or Chicago. Their heated conversations and shady liaisons - alternately sad and funny -- plant a seed of doubt in Rouhi's mind about the potential for the success of her own marriage. And, of course, all of this marital mayhem is punctuated by the constant bang-bang-bang of fireworks. Fahradi and co-screenwriter Mani Haghighi keep things moving at an even pace, saving the many surprising plot twists for the final third of the film. These are not the same faces we see on network news reports, threatening America and Israel with destruction. These are the faces of our own friends and neighbors. This month's package of new releases from Facets Video brought several films that challenge pre-conceived notions of what life was like behind the Iron Curtain and during the formative years of Third World governments. Released in 1978, on the eve of the Gdansk shipyard strike and the pontificate of John Paul II, Horizontal Landscape is set primarily at a huge construction site overseen by Communist Party functionaries. The trio of construction workers at the film's center is assigned menial jobs that are complicated by soggy weather, insufficient building materials, inadequate tools and a corrupt supervisor who studies their every move through the lens of a long telescope. After work, the men drink themselves into a stupor, bemoan their fate and chase the occasional skirt. It's a bleak existence, but the men are young, mobile and often very funny. In hindsight, it's easy to imagine these same characters eventually making their way to the frontlines of the Solidarity movement. Copies of Cuba: An African Odyssey ought to be made required viewing for anyone interested in buying a T-shirt with the visage of Che Guevara on it. Made for French television audiences in 2007 -- four decades after the charismatic revolutionary leader was assassinated, in Bolivia -- this fascinating documentary details Guevara and Cuba's direct involvement in various African liberation movements from the civil war in the former Belgian Congo, to the release of Nelson Mandela. The story is told through the recollections of former fighters (both Cuban and African), American and Soviet diplomats and spooks, leaders of the newly independent states and colonial powers, and Fidel Castro. There's also much remarkable newsreel footage shot on both sides of the lines, and of Guevara in the field. Cuba: An African Odyssey presents the material in a straight-forward manner, framing the revolutionary rhetoric and Cold War dynamics in their proper historic context. Pakistan Zindabad (Long Live Pakistan) documents the nearly 70-year history of a manufactured country whose religious and political leaders, tens of millions of citizens and foreign interlopers hold the key to peace or Armageddon in the 21st Century. Because the film was made to explain the country to the rest of the world, it combines history and politics with a celebration of its many natural wonders. As such, it is an essential companion to daily coverage in the New York Times and BBC World News. -- Gary Dretzka

The Big Gay Sketch Show: Complete Unrated Seasons 1 & 2 The Lair: The Complete First Season The Adams Chronicles I Remember Nelson Masterpiece Theatre: Room With a View See No Evil: The Story of The Moors Murders Alien Nation: Ultimate Movie Collection College Hill: Interns Logo is part of the family of channels -- VH1, MTV, TV Land and SpikeTV -- under the umbrella of MTV Networks. While hardly formulaic, each channel serves its primary audience - here, the multifaceted LGBT community - in similar ways. Sketch and improvisational comedy shows are elastic enough to fit almost any format and demographic. While there's plenty of other gay-friendly programming on MTV, Logo is at an advantage because it isn't required to share its niche with anyone else, besides the similarly themed here!. Neither are its comedians compelled to balance the gay and straight material in their routines, as they might on Comedy Central or in clubs. On The Big Gay Sketch Show, you'll find such parodies as Gay Werewolf, Tranny 911, The Gay Honeymooners, Lesbian Speed Dating and Julie Goldman's Celesbian Interviews. On their own, none are particularly revolutionary. You can find variations of the same bits on SNL and Mad TV. Some work, others don't … no matter the audience. here! Is a premium cable and satellite service that likewise targets LGBT audiences with original programming, movies, podcasts, music downloads and video-on-demand. Here, too, the templates were drawn long before the demise of the broadcast networks. Fox's youth-obsessed Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 have proven to be more influential than Dallas and Falcon Crest, while the fashion-conscious Sex and the City and The OC appealed to the same gay and straight audiences as Friends. It remains an open question whether straight audiences will as readily cross over to similar programming on Logo and here! Such quirky soaps as Dante's Cove and The Lair, while not as polished as The L Word and Queer as Folk, could buck tradition. The first season of The Lair introduced a young reporter, investigating the murders of anonymous men in a small island town. Naturally, the marks on their necks provided one clue, at least, about the nature of the crime. Others led to him to a private gentlemen's club, the Lair, where vampires had been known to congregate. The show was created by the same folks who produced Dante's Cove, which also employs a supernatural, secluded-island subtext. Admirers of historical costume dramas who haven't already gotten their fill of John and Abigail Adams will be thrilled to learn that the much-lauded 1976 PBS mini-series The Adams Chronicles is newly available on DVD. The subjects of the ongoing HBO mini-series John Adams represent only one of the four generations of Adamses profiled in the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series, which spans 150 years of American history. The players also include future president John Quincy Adams; Charles Francis Adams, a minister to England during the Civil War; the historian Henry Adams; and railroad magnate Charles Francis Adams Jr. Soap-opera elements are balanced by sound research and adherence to historic fact. The 1982 Masterpiece Theater presentation of I Remember Nelson, on the other hand, combines soap-opera melodrama with old-school sea-faring action. The mini-series profiled naval hero Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson from the point of view of four people close to him, including his embittered wife, a friend who helplessly shared his wife with Nelson, a captain who frowns on upon his behavior while land-bound, and a doomed sailor. Another Masterpiece Theater production, but of more recent vintage, is Andrew Davies' adaptation of E.M. Forster's A Room With a View. Davies is a veteran on the PBS circuit, which essentially means his scripts will be interpreted on tighter budgets than those allowed James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, whose adaptation of the same material starred Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Daniel Day Lewis and Julian Sands. Given the PBS audience, Davies also was able to de-emphasize the less-literary flourishes demanded of more commercial products. Here, Lucy Honeychurch is played by Irish actor Elaine Cassidy, who was very good in Disco Pigs and Felicia's Journey, while the always wonderful Timothy Spall and fresh face Rafe Spall (Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead) portray the male Emersons. Elizabeth McGovern provided a familiar name for American audiences. Granada/ITV's two-part mini-series, See No Evil, offers a chilling reminder of the horrific Moors Murders that held Manchester in their grip in the '60s, and became Britain's entry in the trial-of-the-century sweepstakes. Enhanced by some truly exceptional acting by Maxine Peak, Sean Harris, Joanne Froggatt, Michael McNulty and George Costigan, See No Evil is successful both as a police procedural and a study in pure evil. Mercifully, with one exception, the murders of the children and teens are left to the imagination. Even so, director Christopher Menaul is able to create a sense of dread that is palpable throughout. The stark topography of the moors, while strangely beautiful, also adds to the pervasive creepiness. Incidentally, the 2006 HBO drama, Longford, was based on killer Myra Hindley's ability to convince a British lawmaker that she had seen the light and deserved an early release from prison. It features even more great acting - Samantha Morton, Jim Broadbent, Andy Serkis - and insight into the mind of a sociopath. When in doubt, send in the aliens. Back when Fox was still considered a fledgling network, its programmers threw all sorts of pasta against the wall to see if it would stick. By the time the spin-off series Alien Nation found a home on the network's prime-time schedule, in 1989, The Simpsons and Married … With Children already were staples, and Cops would prove to be just as popular. Success with hour-long dramas, however, would have to wait until The X Files and Beverly Hills 90210. Essentially, Alien Nation was a law-and-order show with strange looking cops and robbers, and a bit more moralizing on racism and tolerance. Not all of the aliens wanted to destroy civilization as we know it. Some had escaped mandatory servitude and wanted merely to fit into human society. Others wanted to scoop up the former slaves and put them back to work. The series lasted all of a year, but would return to the network a few years later in the form of five full-length films. They comprise the newly released Ultimate Movie Collection set. It adds commentary, making-of featurettes and gag reels. The BET reality-based series College Hill has expanded its base to include Interns, a show that keeps tab on a group of students who have been accepted as interns at Fortune 500 firms. Theoretically, if any of the interns make a name for themselves here, they can graduate to full-time jobs at a company that will expect them to work 80 hours a week and give up any semblance of a social life. Or, they could upgrade to Donald Trump's show on NBC and TiVo themselves being fired. Among the many TV-to-DVD sets enjoying a repeated iteration are Clive Cussler's Sea Hunters: Set 2, in which the noted adventurer discovers even more submerged treasurers; and the fourth seasons of Melrose Place: The Fourth Season and Laverne & Shirley. -- Gary Dretzka