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Home Video and DVD Releases for February 2001
Compiled by Eddie Cockrell,  1 February 2001
Written by Eddie Cockrell, Gregory Avery

Nitrate Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying video and/or DVD releases for the month of February 2001 (give or take a few weeks). Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release date (if known). All reviewed DVD’s are Region 1 unless otherwise indicated. Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to format, so check with your favorite click or brick supplier for up-to-date information.


Animal Factory

USA, 2000, Released 1.9.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Convicted of some low-level drug offense or another, twenty-one-year-old middle-class bad boy Ron Decker (Edward Furlong) falls victim to a judicial crackdown and receives a hefty jail sentence in the local Animal Factory. Once in stir at the state pen (the film was shot at the dormant century-old Holmsburg State Prison outside Philadelphia), Decker develops an uneasy and ambiguous mentor relationship to the well-connected Earl Copen (Willem Dafoe), who commands grudging respect from all jailbird demographics. Eschewing the standard and explicit sensationalism of a modern-era prison picture in favor of a more deliberately developed set of interpersonal relationships, director Steve Buscemi (Tree’s Lounge) brings none of the eccentric, nervous energy associated with his acting to the film. Instead, the complexities of men thrown together against their will between cinderblock walls is fleshed out deliberately and provocatively, with the novel by Edward Bunker (partnering with John Steppling on the script) as the blueprint. Thus, Earl’s motivations for taking Ron under his wing, at first suspicious, stay on the level but never become completely clear. Again with shaven skull (in preparation for his turn as Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire), Dafoe gives one of his better career performances, part menace and part benevolent father figure. He’s surrounded by an authentic group of character actors, the two most startling of which are Tom Arnold as a lusty backwoods inmate and Mickey Rourke -- virtually unrecognizable in heavy drag makeup -- as the cellblock queen "Jan the Actress." Even Furlong’s punky demeanor, previously annoying, serves him and the material well. Both the English and Spanish subtitled video editions are priced to rent, while the Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment DVD pressing has no extra features.


Bait

USA, 2000, Released 01.23.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

When sassy two-bit thief Alvin (Jamie Foxx) spends a little quality time in a cell with the scruffy Jaster (Robert Pastorelli), himself fresh from the desertion of his partner Bristol (Doug Hutchison) in the midst of a $42 million gold bullion robbery, determined Treasury agent Clenteen (David Morse) comes to believe that Alvin knows where the fortune is hidden. But does he? Setting itself up initially as a by-the-numbers brother-on-the-run-against-The-Man thriller, Bait morphs slowly into something else, a genuinely absorbing innocent-in-peril saga that benefits greatly from Foxx’s clever performance; just when the audience thinks they’ve got him pegged, it turns out the gears have been turning and he’s again eluded the agent’s wrath (a pity the forceful and complex Morse is becoming the go-to guy for hard-ass heavies). And if the high-octane pace and whizbang gadgetry often hides the true ancestry of Bait’s story (by Andrew Scheinman, Adam Scheinman and Tony Gilroy) under a technological sheen, director Antoine Fuqua (The Replacement Killers) seems to know full well that he’s working at the intersection of Bond and Hitchcock. Warner Home Video’s DVD edition features a commentary by Foxx that, while not previewed at press time, promises to be an irreverent and inventive spin on the standard filmmaker discussion track


Bless the Child

USA, 2000, Released 02.13.01
review by Gregory Avery

How did Kim Basinger and Christina Ricci get mixed-up in this movie? Basinger plays a mother whose child is supposed to have unusual -- even messianic -- powers; Ricci pops in and out of the film as a bedraggled runaway who warns her that her child is being sought after by an organization that's "like a religion, only it's the opposite of religion". They're lead by Rufus Sewell (Cold Comfort Farm), whose eyes seem to be pointing in two different directions at the same time during all his close-ups. Whether this was intentional or not, I can't say, but the filmmakers' crass attempt to wring audience reaction to this wretched material by repeatedly placing a young child in danger (at one point, positioned on a ledge and being encouraged to step off of it) was most definitely, and contemptibly, intended. The film also stars Jimmy Smits as an FBI cult expert and Ian Holm as a Jesuit priest. Paramount Home Video’s tape release is priced to rent, while the DVD features a commentary track with director Chuck Russell (who helmed that energetic remake of The Blob) and visual effects supervisor Joel Hynek. Cast and crew interviews round out the package.


Cecil B. Demented

USA, 2000,  Released 02.23.00
review by Eddie Cockrell

In modern-day Baltimore, a group of cinema terrorists calling themselves "The Sprocket Holes" and posing as the staff of the grand old Senator Theater kidnap visiting star Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith), a bitter industry bitch who soon falls under the spell of crusading leader Cecil (Stephen Dorff) and willingly participates in his bizarre production of Raving Beauty ("we are all part of one giant projector," is a typical example of their fractured agitprop). Spoofing both the current independent cinema craze and the Patty Hearst story (she’s a long-time Waters cohort with a bit part here), the film is Waters’ most energetic in years, as exuberantly stupid and potty-mouthed in its way as Pink Flamingos nearly thirty years ago. He hasn’t changed, but the industry around him has embraced his crudity with little of his panache to temper it. Sure, he still has difficulty modulating his actors, and the story jumps around with an abruptness that is either unbridled enthusiasm or lack of pacing skills, depending on the level of your partisanship. But remember: Waters was doing this kind of guerilla filmmaking long before most of his troupe was born (well, not Melanie Griffith), and when somebody yells "bad reviews can’t hurt me now!," it can’t help but serve as a reassuring endorsement of Waters’ eternal manifesto. Artisan Entertainment’s DVD edition of the film features a commentary track by Waters and the Comedy Central production featurette Canned Ham: Cecil B. Demented Behind the Scenes. -- Eddie Cockrell


Dinosaur

USA, 2000, Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Raised by lemurs, the young iguanodon Aladar is forced to deal with his upbringing and the nature of tolerance and survival when a meteor forces the relocation of his adoptive, uh, herd. Anthropomorphism continues apace at the Mouse House (that’s Walt Disney Productions), but the example set by Dinosaur is particularly jarring: the consistently impressive hyperrealism of the animation, which combines real exterior nature shots with computer-generated animals, is at odds with the slang-y dialogue of the beasts, an undistinguished running commentary of Saturday morning-level situations and asides (one lemur describes himself as a "love monkey") that may play well with tots but is tough sledding for anyone over about twelve. Why, then, does the film insist on the kind of mature brutalities that can only terrify its intended audience? These and other logical questions about the wisdom and success of the undertaking are moot, as Dinosaur came in ninth in the 2000 revenue sweepstakes with $137.7 million at the domestic box office -- proof, as if any were needed, that technical spectacle, relentless marketing and product branding will usually overcome a lazy and superficial story. That success, in turn, spawned an admittedly impressive two-disc collector’s edition with more features than can manageably be listed here.  


Disney's The Kid

USA, 2000, Released 01.23.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

After an adult life spent as a remorseless, ambitious and very angry image consultant in Los Angeles, forty-year-old Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis) gets a makeover of his own courtesy of himself as eight-year-old Rusty (Spencer Breslin). Charming beyond all reason, this contemporary fantasy, a creative collaboration between screenwriter Audrey Wells (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) and director Jon Turteltaub (While You Were Sleeping) is unabashedly cloying: Marc Shaiman’s brassy score lays it on thick at every turn, while the cumulative message embedded in the story -- learn not to be a victim while you’re a child -- provides stressed-out adults with a little wish fulfillment in their entertainment. And therein lies the problem: who, exactly, is the film pitched at? Kids will find the exposition and various subplots far too abstract, while with a name like Disney’s The Kid, adults aren’t likely to rent the thing to begin with. Still and all, Willis proves once again to have strong comedic skills (and is developing quite a sixth sense for choosing material keyed around children), Breslin is amusing as Rusty, and Lily Tomlin has a number of good bits as his wisecracking assistant. Disney’s VHS tape is priced to sell, and the DVD edition includes a commentary track from Turteltaub and Breslin, a conversation with the director, production featurette and trailer.


Dr. T & the Women

USA, 2000, Released 02.06.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

In contemporary Dallas, wealthy and popular gynecologist Sullivan Travis (Richard Gere) seems overwhelmed by the women in his life, who include his mentally deteriorating wife Kate (Farrah Fawcett), soon-to-be-married eldest daughter Dee Dee (Kate Hudson), her paranoid sister Connie (Tara Reid), his meddlesome sister-in-law Peggy (Laura Dern) and the torch-carrying secretary Carolyn (Shelley Long). It isn’t until the good doctor’s new patient Bree comes along (in the person of Helen Hunt, suddenly ubiquitous once more) that he can make any kind of sincere connection with another woman. Essentially an opportunity for some of today’s brightest and most promising actresses to work with an indestructible sex symbol (Gere) and equally tenacious director (the great Robert Altman), Dr. T and the Women provides a loosey-goosey improvisational platform for all of the above, courtesy of the broad script from Anne Rapp (who also penned Cookie’s Fortune). Since disparity is the watchword in an Altman ensemble cast, the above are augmented by Liv Tyler, Lee Grant, Janine Turner, Robert Hays and, of all people, Andy Richter, who seems to have found a new comedic gravity now that he’s off Conan’s couch. So why wasn’t this a hit? In the same year that found Altman’s monumental Nashville finally coming to DVD to little acclaim, the hazards of intricately spontaneous filmmaking are readily apparent: these kinds of movies, the kind at which Altman excels, require a lot of audience concentration for a payoff that is less dramatically motivated than dictated by the satisfaction of improvisation and character development. Thus, while it is tempting to say "nothing happens" in Dr. T and the Women, look closer: the production is, in fact, a bit more than modestly enjoyable as another one of those creative hothouses presided over by Altman which end up enriching all who take part. The videotape is priced to rent, and the DVD edition includes an interview with Altman and an isolated music track commented upon by long-time cohort Lyle Lovett.


Humanity
L’humanité

France, 1999, Released 02.27.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

When an eleven-year-old girl is found brutally raped and murdered outside her tiny working-class town in northern France, the subtle emotional ripple effect of the investigation eventually overwhelms sensitive police superintendent Pharaon De Winter (Emmanuel Schotté), who lives with his mother and hangs out with his neighbor Domino (Séverine Caneele) and her boorish boyfriend Joseph (Philippe Tullier). In 1997, director Bruno Dumont received decidedly mixed reviews for his debut feature, The Life of Jesus. As with Humanité, it is a deliberate, often inscrutable blue collar drama with the courage to show life’s mundanities in real time: villagers walk, talk, eat, work, bicker and make love (in nearly explicit sequences) with a deliberate rhythm some found seductive and others maddening. Nevertheless, Humanité followed in the previous film’s footsteps and won numerous high-profile festival awards, including Best Actor (Schotté is a timid, wide-eyed marvel of confused compassion), Best Actress, the Grand Prize of the Jury and the Palme d’Or award for best film of the festival. Patience is decidedly a virtue in order to completely appreciate these extraordinary films, as is a belief that the cumulative actions of each individual point unerringly to their destiny in life. Winstar’s letterboxed VHS tape is priced to rent, and it shares with the spartan DVD edition a clean, crisp transfer.


Jesus' Son

USA, 2000, Released 01.30.01
review by Gregory Avery

One of the biggest surprises of the 2000 film year was this entirely engaging film, with Billy Crudup, in an astonishing performance, as the hapless protagonist who can't help but screw-up everything, from getting addicted to drugs, having a relationship with his girlfriend (Samantha Morton), making a living for himself, or having an encounter with a malevolent, snakeskin-wearing man who may or may not be the Devil. He finally attains stability, and redemption, in the Southwestern desert, where he learns how to interact with people at a retirement home and through an Amish couple whom he sees but never introduces himself to. Director Alison Maclean (Crush) has marshaled numerous names, including Denis Leary, Will Patton, Dennis Hopper and Holly Hunter, in supporting roles, and Jack Black, previously of High Fidelity, is brilliant, again as a hospital orderly with whom Crudup's character works for a spell. The VHS edition is priced to rent, with no compelling extras on the DVD.


Woman on Top

USA, 2000, Released 02.13.01
review by Gregory Avery

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Penelope Cruz gives a dynamite performance in this small, fleeting, but nonetheless enjoyable romantic comedy as a cook who leaves her native seaside town in Brazil to go to the U.S. -- and San Francisco, another town by a sea -- after having trouble with her boyfriend. The boyfriend goes after her, and so, too, does everyone else, after they get a taste or even a whiff of her cooking. (It is not, of course, just how she makes it, but the feeling that she puts into it while she makes it that causes people to become enchanted.) Brazilian director Fina Torres' film may seem technically crude or unsophisticated by Hollywood standards -- but sometimes that's not such a bad thing. And the music, with original tunes by Luis Bacalov, combined with Cruz's performance, is wonderful. The DVD has no extras.


Beyond the A List


Black Narcissus

UK, 1947  Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Among the most ravishingly beautiful Technicolor films ever made (Jack Cardiff won an Oscar for his cinematography), Black Narcissus, adapted by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from the novel by Rumer Godden, tells of a young Mother Superior, Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), and her struggles establishing a school and hospital with an offshoot of her Sisters of Mary order at a remote, windswept former palace and harem 9,000 feet up in the Himalayas. Wracked by doubt and desire, Sister Clodagh tries as best she can to manage the four nuns under her, only to watch as the increasingly unstable Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) cracks under the pressure of putting thoughts of sexy British local Mr. Dean (David Farrar) out of her mind. An update of the lauded laserdisc issued by The Criterion Collection some time back, this newly expanded edition features a gorgeous digital transfer from a 35mm interpositive print (created with Cardiff’s input), a fine essay by respected film critic Dave Kehr on the fold-out inner sleeve, a theatrical trailer, English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired and an exciting collection of production stills (incredibly, the film was shot entirely in and around London’s Pinewood Studios, with a collection of matte paintings and camera tricks, supplementing Alfred Junge’s production design, that puts modern computer generated images to shame). The most important extras of the set are a commentary track featuring a conversation between Powell (who died in 1990) and Martin Scorsese, a huge fan of the film whose editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, was married to the director; and the whimsical, specially commissioned "Painting With Light," Craig McCall’s 27-minute documentary on Cardiff and the making of Black Narcissus. Sure to be listed among the top DVD releases of the year (pity Entertainment Weekly couldn’t hold their January 10 "50 Best DVDs" issue a few weeks), Black Narcissus -- named for the exotic imported aftershave used by one character -- is an essential part of any movie fan’s burgeoning collection. Perhaps Scorsese puts it best, when he describes this one-of-a-kind film as "bathed in color."


The City
La Cuidad

USA, 1998  Released 02.13.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In a bleak part of New York City, a group of Spanish day laborers bicker among themselves before one is crushed by a falling wall; two teenagers from the same village meet by chance at a wedding reception, only to lose each other in the concrete canyons; a homeless puppeteer tries to enroll his daughter in a public school; a sweatshop worker desperate for wages to send home to her sick daughter stands up to her callous employer. Five years in the making, The City (La Ciudad) employs classic elements of black and white photography, documentary and social realist filmmaking to tell a quartet of stories, linked by a visa lottery photographer’s storefront shop and peopled with immigrants selected by photographer-writer-filmmaker David Riker (who moved from pictures to film because "I wanted the people in my photographs to be able to speak"). "The pain you go through in this country to get a life…," someone says in the first episode, and to the heartbreaking strains of Tony Adzinikolov’s score this remarkable film gives an eloquent face to that daily struggle. Available on tape only, The City is in Spanish with English subtitles and is at present priced to rent.


Cockfighter
a ka Born to Kill

USA, 1974  Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In early 1970s Georgia, determined cockfighter Frank Mansfield (the late, great Warren Oates) plies his trade on the violent rural circuit. Among the handful of great cult movies of the 1970s, the film was adapted from hard boiled writer Charles Willeford’s novel by director Monte Hellman (Two Lane Blacktop) and an uncredited Earl Mac Rauch (New York, New York), produced by the legendary Roger Corman, photographed by the great Néstor Almendros (Days of Heaven), scored by the then-unknown Michael Franks and edited by Lewis Teague (Alligator). The cast features a young Harry Dean Stanton, an even younger Ed Begley Jr., Millie Perkins, Troy Donahue, Richard B. Shull and Troy Donahue. Owing to the violence of the rooster battles there’s been controversy surrounding this memorable work for twenty-five years, and to this day the film is banned from public exhibition in the United Kingdom. But above all Cockfighter is a film about honor and addiction, and a touchstone of such cultural importance that Almendros devotes a chapter of his sadly out-of-print 1986 memoir A Man with a Camera to his work on it and Willeford (whose name is misspelled on the sleeve) also wrote extensively about his experiences on the set. Note that the expressive Oates acts the role almost entirely mute, with his thoughts punctuating the action via narration. The splendid Anchor Bay DVD transfer is accompanied by Tom Thurman’s incisive fifty-four-minute 1993 documentary career overview Warren Oates: Across the Border, talent bios, various media spots (a TV ad refers to the film under one of its many alternate titles, Born to Kill) and a commentary interview in which Hellman and original production assistant Steven Gaydos (now the London-based co-executive editor of Variety) discuss the movie’s gestation and marketing -- including the director’s reluctance to make a movie with such violence towards animals and frustration at not having enough time to do it right -- with American Cinemateque programmer Dennis Bartok.


Desecration

USA, 1999, Released 03.14.01
review by Gregory Avery

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Dante Tomaselli's debut feature, which he wrote and directed, is about a woman who's found dead in her infant son's nursery, face-down in a birthday cake lying on the floor; a nun who is killed after being struck by a model airplane, and another nun who's attacked by a flying pair of open scissors; a young teenage boy (Danny Lopes) at a Catholic school who sees faceless nuns strolling on the lawn, and leering nuns looking in at him through the window; a sinister, tough-sounded priest (Vincent Lamberti) who wears a black leather overcoat, gives instructions to his class on how to perform a frog dissection by first placing "pins through its hands and its feet," and dispenses pills to the students on the q.t. ("Can priests take Valium?" one boy asks); the boy's grandmother (Irma St. Paule), who seeks help from the school's headmaster and, when that doesn't work, from a psychic (the psychic says that her grandson is "very far away, though. Much farther than you thought." "You mean, he ain't in New Jersey?"); phantasmagorical scenes which are supposed to represent the boy's deceased mother trying to use her son to get out of Hell; and, in one scene, the boy, clad only in a diaper, locked up in a wire animal cage while a woman torments him by shaking the contents of a baby's bottle at him. Tomaselli has described this film (which is beautifully photographed, by Brendan C. Flynt) as being like a visit to "a psychedelic fun-house"; he may want to turn his attentions more towards story and character. Without them, the film descends into being simply one freaky-deaky scene after another.


Double Suicide
Shinju Ten no Amijima

Japan, 1969, Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Married Osaka paper merchant Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura) sacrifices everything -- his family, his business, his very soul -- in service to his erotic obsession with courtesan (read: prostitute) Koharu, played by Shima Iwashita -- director Masahiro Shinoda’s wife and business partner. On the heels of their 2000 release of Kwaidan (see the 2000 Nitrate Online Fright Film Festival here), The Criterion Collection once again explores the stylized theatrical conventions of the Japanese film. Here, Shinoda and screenwriters Taeko Tomioka and Toru Takemitsu (the highly-respected composer) adapt Chikamatsu’s 1720 Bunraku puppet play, mixing obvious theatrical conventions and puppetry with live action, eccentric framing and a highly stylized black-and-white look. The emphasis in this version is on honor and destiny: the only way to transcend their transgression is through the extreme act of the title. Tellingly, both courtesan Koharu and Jihei’s wife Osan are played by Iwashita -- an indication, perhaps, that Shinoda (who may be glimpsed in the early scenes as filming is prepared) isn’t comfortable with the tradition. The DVD package features a generally fine digital transfer from a 35mm composite fine-grain master (which does show a little wear), an illuminating essay by the late feminist film theorist Claire Johnston, and newly transcribed and very clear English subtitles.


Fiend without a Face

UK, 1958, Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In a remote corner of western Canada, an American army base and the surrounding community are terrorized by a series of unexplained deaths until crusading Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) and his new squeeze Barbara (Kim Parker) discover that kindly yet intense professor R.E. Walgate (British character vet Kynaston Reeves) is actually projecting his thoughts via atomic energy into hideous mutant brains that fly through the air, whip their tales around the necks of their victims and suck out their brains. Now that’s entertainment: when not engaged in the preservation of more lofty cinematic touchstones (see Black Narcissus and Double Suicide, above), The Criterion Collection finds plenty of time to rescue and restore such legendary B movies as The Blob, Brian De Palma’s Sisters and Herk Hervey’s low-budget classic Carnival of Souls. Cinematographer-turned-director Arthur Crabtree’s Fiend without a Face fits snugly and proudly into this roster, a quasi-legendary genre exercise that overcomes some early inertia to generate a supremely creepy climax highlighted by a bevy of the brains terrorizing a group of humans trapped in the living room of a remote house (Night of the Living Dead, anyone?). The DVD sports a new, digitally-cleaned transfer from a 35mm fine-grain master that preserves the stark black-and-white palette, while the always-dependable Criterion extras include audio commentary from producer Richard Gordon and genre film writer Tom Weaver; an illustrated essay on British genre films by film historian Bruce Eder, an essay in the fold-out booklet by professor and author Bruce Kawin; still photos and ephemera with commentary; and vintage advertisements and lobby cards that provoke a tangible nostalgia for a long-lost era of shamelessly titillating promotion.


Goya in Bordeaux

Spain/Italy, 1999, Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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On the eve of his death in 1828 at eighty-two, the painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco Rabal) lies confused and ill in the house he shares with the last of his many lovers, Leocadia (Eulalia Ramón), and their young daughter Rosario (Dafne Fernández). Helpless to control the visions that come to him unbidden, his life and tumultuous times are then told in flashback, as the forgetful Goya (embodied as a younger man by actor Jose Coronado) spins tales of his eventful life -- he lived through the decline of Spain, four monarchies, occupied government and bloody war of independence -- to the tolerant Rosario, who’s obviously heard them all before. Beyond breathtaking, this collaboration between director Carlos Saura and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (whose numerous collaborations include Flamenco and Tango) pulses with life, energy and imagination, as key works from the painter’s oeuvre are brought vividly to life on lavish sets constructed at Rome’s storied Cinecitta Studios. Although unscreened at presstime, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment’s DVD edition of the film promises a stunning sensory experience, a riot of light, color and sound accessible regardless of prior familiarity with Goya or his work; the VHS tape is priced to rent.


H ollywood Rhythm - Volume 1
The Best of Jazz & Blues

USA, 1929-1941, Released 02.15.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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H ollywood Rhythm - Volume 2
The Best Big Bands & Swing

USA, 1929-1939, Released 02.15.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Here’s an invigorating and charming companion piece to Ken Burns’ Jazz (see January’s Box Set Corner). Filmed at Paramount’s studio in Astoria, Queens, these collections of authentic period short films from some of the greatest names in music -- originally conceived to preface and complement the Hollywood movies of the period on a theater’s bill -- flesh out the clips presented in the Burns work. Thus, while Jazz shows clips from Louis Armstrong’s A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (which gets disc one off to a propulsive start), the set-up to the song is included here to place it in dramatic context. A standout lighter moment on disc two features Anna Chang fending off the advances of obnoxious sailor Cary Grant in Singapore Sue. The roster of talent is truly impressive, with performances from Duke Ellington, Ethel Merman, Cab Calloway, Ginger Rogers, Fats Waller, Bessie Smith, Bing Crosby and many more. Without overt emphasis, the compilation also addresses the criticism that Latin influences on jazz are underserved in Burns’ documentary: Vincent Lopez’ Those Blues and the special bonus short Jazz a la Cuba, featuring Don Aspiazu and His Famous Cuban Orchestra doing that Rhumba thing under aerial shots of old Havana, provide a vivid climax to volume one. The clever menu page of these Kino on Video editions have a jukebox interface, which allows the viewer to click through each song and preview it in a window to the right of the title list. Inquisitive consumers should note that the back cover of each disc only hints at the dozens of songs within, which are detailed on each inner sleeve. Each disc is sold separately, and the picture and sound quality is generally very fine.


The Last Best Sunday

USA, 1999, Released 02.06.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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A conflicted yet feisty young woman, Lolly Ann (Angela Bettis) finds her ticket out of a repressed smalltown life in the form of Mexican classmate Joseph (Douglas Spain), who breaks into her home while on the lam from a violent run-in with racist locals. The generally firm-handed directorial debut of actor Don Most (Ralph Malph on the old Happy Days TV program), the film overcomes a heavy-handed racist subplot to soar on the wings of the chemistry between the two leads and Bettis’ remarkable, mercurial perf as Lolly Ann. An extraordinary complex creature whose demeanor recalls the noble vulnerability of Joan Allen and the defiant resolve of Holly Hunter, the teenager is straddling that fence between adolescence and womanhood, burdened with an austere childhood yet not quite ready to stand on her own two feet. In the same way Juliette Lewis commanded the screen in Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear by virtue of her anonymity, Bettis -- who segued from this to a distinctive supporting role in Girl, Interrupted -- gives proceedings an unpredictable, invigorating emotional charge. Vanguard International’s VHS release is priced to rent, and research indicates the DVD has no extra features.


Manhunter 

USA, 1986, Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Called out of retirement by his former boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) to help catch the crudely dubbed "Tooth Fairy" serial killer (Tom Noonan), intuitive and empathetic FBI Forensics expert Will Graham (William Peterson, who plays an older and wiser spin on the character in CBS’ surprise hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) is reluctantly forced to seek advice from his old nemesis, the now-incarcerated but still highly dangerous madman Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox). After the brutal killing of tabloid journalist Freddie Loundes (Stephen Lang), blind photo developer Reba (Joan Allen) is imperiled, only to be daringly rescued by Graham. Michael Mann’s third feature and first following the tremendous success of his television series Miami Vice, Manhunter takes a number of liberties with its source novel, Thomas Harris’ "Red Dragon" ("Lecter" somehow becomes "Lecktor"), yet Mann nails not only a suffocating mood of sinister dread but a visual strategy that is at once obviously 1980s lurid but somehow timeless in its elemental, stylized use of color -- qualities which have earned the film a reputation as among the most stylish and frightening of the decade. Credit cinematographer Dante Spinotti, working on his first American film, for refining a look that has served Mann well in his subsequent movies (both Heat, which was in gestation at the time, and the acclaimed The Insider reflect both story themes and visual motifs). Anchor Bay Entertainment offers both the razor-sharp and vivid transfer of the released version and a "Director’s Cut" on separate VHS tapes. The single DVD edition features two David Gregory documentaries on the film, The Manhunter Look: A Conversation with Dante Spinotti (ten minutes) and Noonan, Peterson, Cox and Allen’s reminiscences in Inside Manhunter (seventeen minutes), while a two-disc "Limited Edition" has the released version on one disc and the director’s version (only three minutes longer and reportedly of poor quality) on disc two. Conspicuously absent from any supplementary material is Mann himself.


Mutant
aka Night Shadows

USA, 1984, Released 10.30.00
review by Gregory Avery

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The spirit of the enjoyable "B" monster movies from the Fifties and early Sixties is alive and may be found in this 1984 picture (previously released as Night Shadows). Two brothers, Jack (the talented Wings Hauser) and Mike (Lee Montgomery), are on vacation and have their car waylaid outside a town in the Carolinas which, coincidentally, has a chemical plant nearby which is dumping toxic waste that is subsequently turning all the inhabitants in the town into toxic zombies with a very bad attitude towards garden-variety human beings (one zombie, trying to get at someone in a car, simply sticks its finger up to the glass of a closed window and melts his way through it). Bo Hopkins plays the town's disgraced sheriff, trying to make good, and Jennifer Warren is the town doctor. Jody Medford also provides some female interest: in her first scene, she says "I must look a mess," then takes off the kerchief ‘round her head, lets down her hair, and turns into a Vargas beauty. John "Bud" Cardos directed, and the picture has a lush music score by Richard Band, some surprising plot turns, fine make-up effects, and a couple of genuinely creepy moments.


Box Set Corner:

An occasional exploration of video and DVD’s higher end


The Films of Dusan Makavejev

various, 1966-1992  Released 01.30.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Among the most audacious and subversive conjurers in the cinema, Dusan Makavejev (b. 1932, Belgrade) used the do-it-yourself filmmaking aesthetic necessitated by his Yugoslav birth and upbringing, combined with a keen appreciation for psychology (in which he majored at university) -- and an eternally controversial championing of the libido over all -- to fashion some of the most distinctive and freewheeling feature films ever conceived. Built largely around staged sequences featuring actors improvising in real-life situations (often supplemented by "found" footage), each work is a volatile mix of drama and documentary, comedy and tragedy, sex and politics, all uniquely informed by the filmmaker’s nomadic lifestyle. After years of spotty availability, Facets Video has assembled six of his 10 features to date (including his first four) into one cohesive package that charts the improvisational yet firmly focused concerns of this visionary, provocative filmmaker. In Man is Not a Bird (Čovek nije Tica, Yugoslavia, 1965), an engineer assembling machinery in a small town finds love and wonder, while Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Ljubavni slučaj ili tragedija službenice, Yugoslavia, 1967) looks at the romance between a rat exterminator and the title character. Innocence Unprotected (Nevinost bez zaštite, Yugoslavia, 1968) reassembles the surviving cast and crew of a grade-Z 1942 melodrama made in Nazi-occupied Belgrade, while his most notorious work, W.R. -- Mysteries of the Organism (W.R. -- Misterije organizma, Yugoslavia/Federal Republic of Germany, 1971) hilariously mixes the teachings of sex therapist Wilhelm Reich with various dramatic and documentary sequences promoting political and sexual insurrection (that the "W.R." might also mean "world revolution" is just one of many elements that earned the film both the Luis Buñuel prize at the Cannes festival and a an exhibition ban from unamused Yugoslav authorities). Two flamboyant tales of sexual emancipation in France and Holland form the backbone of the eternally controversial and little-seen Sweet Movie (France/Federal Republic of Germany/Canada, 1975), while the 1992 return to form Gorilla Bathes at Noon (Germany, 1992) follows a disoriented and abandoned Russian officer around the changing Berlin landscape. Of his remaining four features, only 1981’s Swedish-British co-production Montenegro (aka Pigs and Pearls, starring Susan Anspach) is available; among the works apparently gone missing is among his most high-profile, 1985’s Australian-shot The Coca Cola Kid, in which Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi tryst against the backdrop of a whimsical soft drink war (many of these films will be broadcast on the Sundance Channel in early February). Each tape is also available individually at $24.95; at $149.95 the complete set is no monetary bargain but offers the committed cineaste an invaluable glimpse into iconoclastic mid-century central European filmmaking.


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