MCN DVD Reviews: May 27, 2008

*The Wrap Up ...*

National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth: History Channel	The timing was right for the DVD release of this, the second installment in what promises to be another lucrative franchise for Disney. National Treasure may not carry the same critical and commercial cachet of Indiana Jones, nor does Nic Cage look as if he were born to wear a fedora, as does Harrison Ford, but the Disney series has more than proven its worth in the theatrical and DVD marketplace. Detractors have painted both National Treasure and Cage’s dogged treasure hunter, Ben Gates, as being wanna-bes and a poor-man's Indiana Jones. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets may not have made $159 million in its first long weekend, as did Crystal Skull, but, even with a budget of $130 million, the Jerry Bruckheimer co-production outpace the bad press. While neither franchise should be confused with a documentary on the History Channel, Disney's action-fantasy requires a suspension of disbelief that is almost impossible to maintain for 120 minutes (the same can be said about the James Bond movies). The difference lies in director Jon Turtletaub's inability to compete against Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in the arena of masking implausibility with thrill rides, special effects and wisecracks. This time around, Cage and his cohorts are searching for a treasure trove mentioned in the newly recovered pages of John Wilkes Booth's diary. Supposedly, Britain had hoped to bolster the cause of the South in the Civil War, by leading its leaders to an underground city of gold left behind by ancient tribes. The bonanza could have been used to fill the coffers of the Confederacy, which desperately needed armaments and food. Historians, including Gates' father (Jon Voight), assumed the diary was set ablaze by the man ordered to decode it. When the great-grandson of one of Booth's co-conspirators (Ed Harris) shows up with a page of the diary, implicating Gates' great-grandfather in the assassination, the chase is on to find the gold and uphold the family’s honor. As if that weren’t enough to swallow, Cage and Harris follow 150-year-old clues to Buckingham Palace, the White House, the Library of Congress, Mount Vernon and Mount Rushmore, all of which prove remarkably porous to infiltration by outsiders. While this scenario borders on the preposterous, the discovery of the splendidly rendered Golden City – and a well choreographed avoidance of booby traps, entering and exiting -- saves National Treasure 2 from itself. This two-disc special edition adds commentary; bloopers and outtakes; deleted scenes; and featurettes on the sequel process, creating chases in London, the Library of Congress, the presidents' book of secrets and the creation of the multi-templed city. Both chapters of the National Treasure saga are being made available in Blu-ray, in a combined package. (Next month, Cage's Face/Off and Next also are being released in the hi-def.) A far more historically persuasive account of Booth's activities prior to and immediately after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln can be found in the History Channel's The Hunt for John Wilkes Booth. The two-hour documentary is informed by Michael Kauffman’s book, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies. Again, reaI history proves itself to be stranger than fiction. As villains go, Booth was in a league of his own. -- Gary Dretzka

Grace is Gone	Even though Grace Is Gone couldn't be more different than the dozen other Iraq-themed movies that have crashed and burned at the box-office, its box-office failure can't be laid at the feet of unpatriotic Hollywood liberals. Its distributor found it difficult to find more than a handful of screens upon which to show a film that went out of its way to be balanced politically and empathize with the families of the men and women serving in Iraq. Writer-director James C. Strouse demands that we focus, instead, on how people grieve and struggle to get on with their lives. John Cusack plays the husband of a soldier killed in the line of duty in Iraq, and the father of two delightful pre-teen suburban girls. What makes Stanley Phillips noteworthy, aside from the film's gender-reversal conceit, is his complete inability to make sense of the sad news delivered to him by a decorated veteran and a chaplain, and be a rock for his daughters in their grief. Instead, he decides to shield them from the news and his heartache by taking them along on an unauthorized field trip to a Florida theme park, in effect buying time for the inevitable revelation and group breakdown. Phillips doesn't call in sick from work or inform the girls' teachers of his decision. This confuses the older girl, who's a good student, but she's willing to give her dad the benefit of a doubt. He'd previously attempted to shield them from the war by demanding they not watch network news shows, even though he's been nothing but supportive of his wife's decisions. Phillips simply can't form the words, "Kids, your mother was killed today in Iraq," and compartmentalize his pain long enough to deal with the shock, tears and possible resentment on their part. His plight is something with which any parent could empathize, and Cusack adeptly avoids the clichés that could diminish Phillips' credibility. Even so, it's impossible to believe that this likable, if distant human being could be so isolated from his family, friends and co-workers that he would choose to escape reality, rather than pick up the phone and seek help. But, hey, it's only a movie, right? Yes, and no. We're pre-disposed to buy into Cusack's interpretation of Phillips and assume he will honor our trust by re-interpreting the stereotype of the grieving widow with sensitivity and artistic integrity. Still, it's easy to feel manipulated when the only person in whom Phillips confides is his slacker brother, who refuses to disguise his disdain for President Bush and the war in Iraq. He's introduced not only to provide unnecessary balance – for or against the war, it's impossible not to shed a tear for the family – but also to share with his nieces some of his insight on their dad. Further along the road, Phillips also is required to deal with the implications of his oldest daughter's impending womanhood, a burden that easy qualifies as piling-on. And, so it goes. Cusack gets plenty of support from young Shelan O'Keefe and Gracie Bednarczyk, who deliver remarkable performances in difficult roles. One gets the impression, though, that Grace Is Gone has undergone much splicing and dicing since making a splash at Sundance. Among them was substituting the original soundtrack with piano compositions by Clint Eastwood. A featurette introduces us to an ex-marine whose family endured a similar ordeal and who informed Cusack's performance. Tellingly, though, his wife was a career Navy officer who died of a misdiagnosed illness, but not before her family could say good-bye. Another featurette concerns the support groups formed to help spouses of soldiers, living and dead. -- Gary Dretzka

Cleaner	Even the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, Ed Harris, Luis Guzman and Eva Mendes couldn't prevent Cleaner from going straight to DVD. Nor could veteran action director Renny Harlin -- not a universally respected filmmaker -- do anything more with Matthew Aldrich's debut script than add a well-polished veneer to the often incomprehensible narrative. Jackson plays a former Trenton cop, Tom, who runs a company that provides such biomedical and biohazard abatement services as cleaning up after murders and suicides. Here, Tom's required to clean up a blood stained sofa and the walls of a living room in a house belonging to a stool-pigeon and his hottie wife (Eva Mendes). The next day, when he returns to the house to return a key, the woman apparently has no recollection of a murder taking place in her home, let alone Tom's clean-up job. Apparently, the murder victim – whose body has disappeared – had the goods on some corrupt cops, and was about to spill the beans to a grand jury. It is at this point in the movie that Tom, a highly protective single dad, offers to help the wife cut through police red tape. It is a decision he comes to regret when two old cop buddies demand he stay out of their own business. It's at this point in the movie that I became hopelessly lost (maybe it was the disruptive dream sequences). A perusal of the deleted scenes helped a bit, but not enough to salvage Cleaner. -- Gary Dretzka

The Walker	Writer and/or director, Paul Schrader may be responsible for some of the smartest and most respected movies of the last 30-plus years – Taxi Driver, Hardcore, Raging Bull, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, Affliction, among them – but his sterling resume provides no guarantee that his new works will open in more than a dozen theaters. Schrader isn't alone, but being in good company is small comfort to those of us forced to wait for his movies to arrive in DVD. Better late, than never. In The Walker, Woody Harrelson was cast against type to portray one high society's least attractive fixtures, a parasitic creature known as a walker. These social moths are famous mostly for their willingness to accompany rich women to the kind of restaurants, shows and benefits their husbands avoid like the plague. Hostesses often enlist them to maintain a strict balance between men and women, as well as to keep the conversation lively. Some of these gentlemen are little more than well-dressed prostitutes, but those who are independently wealthy do it for the privilege of playing in the big leagues of society. The latter description applies to Harrelson's foppish Carter Page III, a sexually ambiguous dandy who has chosen not to fill the same well-heeled shows as his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, all of whom represented one sort of Old South royalty or another. Instead, he delights in escorting a trio of fashionable, if chronically bored political wives (Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Kristin Scott Thomas) around the nation's capital and keeping them amused. When he's not attending social events, or playing canasta with the girls, Page frequents gay bars and other venues that comprise Washington's underground society. As a true Southern gentleman, Page prides himself in being glib, discreet and loyal to a fault. When one of his society ladies becomes involved in the death of a male prostitute, he agrees to protect her identity – and that of her powerful husband -- from the cops and reporters. In The Walker, as in politics, no good deed goes unpunished. In an interview included in the bonus material, Schrader says he intended The Walker to complete his man in a room trilogy, which also includes American Gigolo and Light Sleeper. In all three movies, the impeccably attired male protagonist's loosely defined code of honor ultimately proves no match for the cynical machinations of the ultra-rich. The male characters he created for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull also fit Schrader's lonely man mold. Even if The Walker is the least of these titles, it's worth watching – like Robert Altman's smaller films – for great performances and the filmmaker's thematic indulgences. -- Gary Dretzka

Vanaja	Filmed in southeast India, Vanaja is a movie that combines traditional music and dance with a socially conscious storyline. Beyond that, Rajnesh Domalpalli's freshman feature bears only a passing resemblance to the musical melodramas churned out by the movies factories of Bollywood. In it, charming 14-year-old newcomer Mamatha Bhukya plays a low-caste girl, who, after going to work for the local landlady, is raped and impregnated by her politically ambitious grandson. The landowner is enchanted by Vanaja's ability to master the intricacies of Kuchipudi dance, yet is required to maintain a certain distance between upstairs and downstairs. She is further torn when the baby arrives and the needs of the mother must be balanced with possible political fallout. The grandmother takes custody of the boy –a girl might have been tossed on a trash heap – but disguises his humble origins from her high-class friends (a servant even applies lightening cream to the infant's face). The story divides its time between the lushness of estate residency and the poverty of villagers, whose superstitions include using elephants as mediums to the spirit world. The plot is enhanced brilliantly by the dancing of Bhukya -- like everyone else in the cast, a novice who underwent months of training – and a troupe of itinerate Burratha Katha minstrels. Domalpalli made Vanaja as part of his master's thesis at Columbia University. It was shot on location in the state of Andhra Pradesh, home to the thriving Telugu movie industry. The package includes an interview with the writer-director and another with Bhukya. -- Gary Dretzka




The Lather Effect There are few things more painful than being forced to attend the high school reunion of a lover or spouse. Apart from having to feign interest in the high points of other people's formative years, there's the constant threat of having one's marriage destroyed by revelations of ill-advised sexual liaisons and other indiscretions committed in the good ol' days. Just as I can't imagine my kids enjoying anything besides the music in The Big Chill, it's impossible for me to find much entertainment in The Lather Effect, which markets itself as a ‘Big Chill' for Generation X. Not. The theme of the reunion in Sarah Kelly's bittersweet comedy is Come as you were, which demands clothes and hairdos inspired by Pat Benatar and Madonna, circa Desperately Seeking Susan, and behavior informed by Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Say Anything … and The Breakfast Club. The movie opens only a few hours after the last of the revelers passed out or ran out of places to put their used condom. Kelly's camera pans the piles of garbage, discarded clothes and half-empty bottles, even as they reveal primitive forms of human life awaking from their drunken stupors. These zombie-like creatures apparently were members of a high school clique that set the standards for taste and behavior for fellow students in mid-‘80s. The rest of their day is spent cleaning up, barfing, sipping the hair of the dog, reminiscing, crying, delivering the occasional pun, lounging in a polluted hot tub, singing crappy '80s music and choosing partners for the long adulterous night ahead of them. Yup, just like The Big Chill … minus Lawrence Kasdan's sharp writing, evolved characters and much better music. But, maybe that's just me. It might actually be fun to revisit, a quarter-century later, the characters in Fast Times, but only if Cameron Crowe agreed to supervise the project. (Coincidentally, perhaps, Eric Stoltz appeared in that landmark film, while his co-star here, Ione Skye, was John Cusack's love interest in Say Anything) The bonus material includes deleted scenes, a tip of the hat to Crowe and a pair of hugely self-indulgent featurettes designed to flatter the writer-director and remind viewers of the inherent grooviness of making a movie, even if it isn't very good. -- Gary Dretzka

Forgiving the Franklins Jay Floyd's clumsy black comedy about hypocrisy in middle-class Christian communities works far better as soft-core porn than commentary or satire. The Franklins are a family of stereotypically self-righteous North Carolinian bible-bangers, who, after a brush with death, find themselves in a purgatory that resembles a Windows screen-saver. A Christ-like figure unburdens them of the guilt of Original Sin, and sends them back to Earth. No longer uptight about sex and nudity, three-quarters of the Franklin clan – a daughter was spared in the accident -- are free to enjoy the pleasures of unfettered hedonism. Now, that premise might actually work in the world of porn or late-night on Cinemax – The Devil in Miss Jones comes to mind – the novelty runs out of steam after the third or fourth time Mom wanders outside naked to get the morning newspaper. Forgiving the Franklins represents the debut of the veteran clearance administrator, Floyd, as a multi-hyphenate writer/director/producer. How this turkey found its way into Sundance, and, more than a year later onto DVD, is anyone's guess. -- Gary Dretzka

Flock Here's something you don't find every day: a direct-to-DVD thriller, starring actors of the stature of Richard Gere and Claire Danes, helmed by the director of all three Infernal Affairs policiers and build on a budget of $35 million. It was filmed in fresh environs of Albuquerque, not Vancouver or Edmonton, and cinematographer Enrique Chediak (Turistas, 28 Weeks Later) found a way to balance bright Southwestern skies and creepy dungeon-like interiors. And, yet, no major American distributor risked picking up The Flock, assuming opening-weekend grosses wouldn't even cover the marketing nut. They probably were right. Gere plays a 60-ish county employee, whose job it is to keep track of felons convicted of serious sexual and violent-assault crimes. His Erroll Babbage is a real hard-ass, notorious for taking the crimes committed by members of his flock way too personally. He's being forced out of his job in a cost-cutting campaign, and Danes has been assigned to tag along with him to learn the ropes. She's repelled by Babbage's cynicism and willingness to slam the parolees around when he suspects they're lying to him … which is most of the time. After a teenage girl goes missing, Babbage immediately begins making a short-list of possible candidates. Strongly discouraged from pursuing the case by local cops, his boss and liberal protégé, Babbage almost immediately begins interrogating parolees. Naturally, his suspicions are dead-on accurate, but his methodologies are deemed indefensible … even when compared to the threat posed by the growing network of fiends under his supervision. The rest of the story is right out of the Billy Jack/Buford Pusser playbook, so it's easy to see how The Flock might have scared off distributors looking for tamer fare. Because Gere's name isn't as familiar to fans of the S&M and horror as that of, say, Tobin Bell, his presence would hold little sway over fanboys and other genre geeks. Those who still dream about being swept away from their dead-end jobs by the Gere of An Officer and a Gentleman would toss their cookies before the movie hit the half-hour mark. Even admirers of director Wai-keung Lau's Hong Kong actioners might be stunned by his lack of adherence to such crime-fighting conventions – not to be confused with clichés – as demanding his cops at least pay lip service to the opinions of a case worker and, worse, allowing him to contaminate evidence at every turn. Even so, The Flock is professionally made and none of the actors look as if they phoned in their performances. It appears as if Lau might have lost control of his film late in the game, because Niels Mueller (The Assassination of Richard Nixon) was called in to perform some uncredited reshoots. Apart from some preview trailers and a chapter listing, no more money was wasted on special features. -- Gary Dretzka

Strange Wilderness The most ringing endorsement for the slacker comedy Strange Wilderness can found on the MPAA ratings bug, which cites non-stop language, drug use, crude and sexual humor for its R rating. Of course, any bong-banger sober enough to decipher those words couldn't possibly be stoned enough to enjoy the movie. Not that a synopsis is warranted, really, but Strange Wilderness concerns a group of young filmmakers who travel to South America to capture images of Bigfoot (don't ask) for their endangered nature show. Among the actors involved in this mess are Steve Zahn, Jonah Hill, Ashley Scott, Robert Patrick, Jeff Garlin, Allen Covert, Harry Hamlin, Justin Long, Joe Don Baker, Kevin Heffernan and, believe it or not, Ernest Borgnine. Apart from some stock jungle footage, Strange Wilderness was shot entirely in Los Angeles County, and freshman director Fred Wolf (SNL) probably didn't care who knew it. Why bother? Anyone who made it that far in the narrative would be too stoned to notice, or care. Even when measured against other stoner flicks, any similarity between Strange Wilderness and Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke is limited to the herb in the bowl of the chatacters' bongs. -- Gary Dretzka

The Big Trail: Two-Disc Special Edition John Wayne: The Fox Westerns Collection Fox Western Classics The Way West/Navajo Joe/Day of the Outlaw/Man With the Gun/The Gunfight at Dodge City/Man of the West/The Westerner The Shadow Riders Comanche Moon Aces N' Eights Typically, distributors wait until Father's Day to repackage and release vintage westerns gathering dust in their vaults. Dads are also expected to wait with bated breath for new collections of movies about sports, war and cars. They'd never get away with such stereotyping when it comes to Mother's Day gifting. Yeah, right. This year, Fox and MGM have opened the floodgates on oaters in which the good guys were manly men and villains looked as if they hadn't taken a bath since the South lost the war. Writers and directors adhered as much to the Hollywood Production Code as the Code of the West. They didn't try to re-invent the western with every new film or make their cowboys conform to the fashions of the day. Their protagonists spoke as straight as their pistols shot. Hell, even the prostitutes were chaste. The newly upgraded DVD of The Big Trail should be of special interest to anyone with even a passing interest in westerns, not just dads. Released in 1930, as exhibitors had begun to warm to pictures with sound and dialogue – if not those requiring an investment in 70mm projectors -- The Big Trail represented the state of the art. It incorporated Fox's Grandeur process and its Movietone sound-on-film technique, which did away with bulky audio discs. It was so new, in fact, the only theaters capable of showing the wide-screen image were in New York and Los Angeles. Anticipating this, Fox also shot the wagon-train epic simultaneously in standard 35mm aspect and alternate Spanish, German and French versions. Director Raoul Walsh went out on a limb, by hiring a 22-year-old John Wayne for the lead role of wagon master and shooting the film on location in seven western states. The intention was to replicate the journey endured by tens of thousands of setters hoping to reach the Pacific Northwest via the Oregon Trail. The Big Trail wasn't a commercial success, but it designed the template upon which future westerns would be created and, of course, made Wayne a bona fide leading man. The Big Trail is available in a special two-disc edition, which also includes the 35mm version, commentary by Richard Schickle and featurettes on Wayne, Walsh and the Grandeur technology. It also can be found in John Wayne: The Fox Westerns, alongside freshly polished editions of North to Alaska, The Comancheros and The Undefeated, all released in the '60s. The Fox Western Classics package adds Henry Hathaway's Garden of Evil (1954), an early Cinemascope effort starring Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Richard Widmark, Cameron Mitchell, Victor Manuel Mendoza and Rita Moreno; Hathaway's Rawhide (1951), which placed Hayward, and Tyrone Power in a stagecoach station terrorized by gunmen, and had no relation to the Clint Eastwood television series; and Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950), in which Gregory Peck plays the weary gunfighter Jimmy Ringo. Being sent out individually on disc are MGM westerns starring some of most popular leading men in Hollywood: Widmark, Cooper, Joel McCrea, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan and Kirk Douglas. In addition to The Way West, Day of the Outlaw, Man With the Gun, The Gunfight at Dodge City Man of the West and The Westerner is the spaghetti western, Navajo Joe, with Burt Reynolds. Apparently, Reynolds signed on thinking he would be directed by Serigio Leone, not Sergio Corbucci, but decided against pulling out at the last minute. The small screen is where most contemporary westerns can be found first these days. The medium has a tendency to reduce the stature of cowboy heroes, and, as in the old days, there's very little crossover from one screen to the other. In Louis L'Amour's ‘The Shadow Riders,' and other contemporary westerns, Tom Selleck and Sam Elliott have looked every inch the part, and Katherine Ross was fine as the damsel in distress. Fifty years ago, they would have been considered likely successors to the guys mentioned above. Instead, Hollywood fell out of love with cowboys. This distinction is more obvious in Aces ‘n Eights, in which a 90-year-old Ernest Borgnine – one of the original Magnificent Seven – still has more cowboy cred than relative newcomers Casper Van Dien and Bruce Boxleitner. Ditto, Kevin Sorbo and Lance Henriksen in the wagon-train oater, Prairie Fever, which arrives on DVD in two weeks. The CBS miniseries Comanche Moon fared better, if only because the project was awarded more time and money than most television westerns. It helped greatly, of course, to have retained Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana as writers and exec-producers. Comanche Moon didn't achieve the same huge popularity as Lonesome Dove, which was adapted from McMurtry's great novel, but that would have been an impossible goal. -- Gary Dretzka

The Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly Collection Frank Sinatra: The Early Years Collection Frank Sinatra: The Golden Years Collection The Rat Pack Ultimate Collector's Edition It's safe to say that Frank Sinatra enjoyed a much better movie career than Elvis Presley, if only because he could brag of winning an Oscar for his landmark performance in From Here to Eternity. It's been said that Presley coveted parts that required something more taxing than pretending to drive a race car in front of a green screen, but Colonel Tom Parker insisted he play the same character repeatedly in his post-Army movie career. No one took Sinatra too seriously as a non-singing actor until From Here to Eternity, either. Four new boxed sets from Warner Home Video testify not only to Sinatra's acting chops, but also to his versatility. His Oscar notwithstanding, the movies for which Sinatra is most often recalled are those filmed in the ring-a-ding '60s with other members of the Rat Pack: Oceans 11, Robin and the 7 Hoods, 4 for Texas and Sergeants 3. The Rat Packers scratched out these titles while cruising around Las Vegas, L.A. and Palm Springs on auto-pilot and Jack Daniels. None stands up well today, but the bonus material helps put them in the context of the period. The Early Years Collection is most interesting for the appearances of such co-stars as Groucho Marx, Jane Russell, Mel Torme, Dooley Wilson, Kathryn Grayson, Jimmy Durante, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse. The titles are: It Happened in Brooklyn, Step Lively, The Kissing Bandit, Double Dynamite and Higher and Higher. His collaborations with the great hoofer and very decent singer, Gene Kelly – On the Town, Anchors Aweigh, Take Me out to the Ball Game – are given a handsome and informative package of their own. Sinatra was nominated again in 1956 for his performance as the junkie and card mechanic Frankie Machine, in Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm. Some Came Running and The Tender Trap would soon follow. Marriage on the Rocks and None But the Brave, his directorial debut, are from the mid-'60s. - Gary Dretzka