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Home Video and DVD Releases for April 2001
Compiled by Eddie Cockrell,  1 April 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 April 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.


Bamboozled

USA, 2000, Released 4.17.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

When prissy Continental Broadcasting System flunkie Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans) is put under pressure by his boorish boss Dunwitty (Michael Rappaport) to deliver a hit show to the upstart network or else, he comes up with the dubious idea of teaming up with assistant Sloan Hopkins (Jada Pinkett) to hire street dancer Manray (Savion Glover) and his buddy Womack (Tommy Davidson) to star in the intentionally offensive “The New Millennium Minstrel Show.” It’ll be so bad, he reasons (“black actors with blacker faces”), that he’ll get fired—preserving both his perks and his dignity. Unfortunately, the show is a big hit, provoking all manner of outrage and controversy. Spike Lee has never been a subtle filmmaker, yet in the wake of such misbegotten real-life TV projects as “The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer” and “the PJs” the subject of marginalization and stereotyping on TV is ripe for lambasting. Yet the problem with the fatally ambitious Bamboozled (which cheerfully steals the plot of Mel Brooks’ The Producers) isn’t that the satire is too sharp, the problem is that the film as a whole just isn’t very good. Lee’s chosen the currently trendy digital video format, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, and as a result the picture runs 15 minutes over two hours—when it fact it would’ve run long at an hour and a half. In the course of that time he drops plenty of hot-button slang terms and program names (including, inevitably, the old “Amos’N’Andy” show), and the roster of quasi-celebrities appearing as themselves include Al Sharpton, Mira Sorvino, Johnnie Cochran and Matthew Modine. Still, this feels more like exploitation than satire; Lee’s come a long way since Do the Right Thing (newly available on DVD from the Criterion Collection), but Bamboozled doesn’t come close to that film’s corrosive social criticism. Warner Home Video’s DVD release includes a commentary track from Lee, deleted scenes, music videos and a production featurette.


Billy Elliot

UK, 2000, Released 4.17.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In a 1984 British coalmining town tense over a violent strike, young Billy Elliot (Jamie Bell) decides to be a dancer, with the support of his acerbic teacher Mrs. Wilkinson (Julie Walters) and despite the resultant anger and resentment of his father (Gary Lewis). Every year there are one or two films whose groundswell of popular support and positive word of mouth turn out to be more about studio publicity manipulation than honest, grassroots popularity. Billy Elliot is one of those movies, a strident and simplistic feel-good fable during which its characters change their emotional stripes to suit the mood of any given scene. And some of the characters, especially Billy’s cross-dressing transvestite friend Michael (Stuart Wells), seem more a sentimental fantasy of screenwriter Lee Hall than a credible, flesh-and-blood person. Still, debuting director Stephen Daldry brings a lot of energy to the proceedings, even if the movie never feels any more real than one of the stage productions on which he cut his teeth. Universal’s DVD includes production notes and a featurette on the film’s making


Bounce

USA, 2000, Released 4.10.01
review by Gregory Avery

Writer/director Don Roos' first film since his stunning 1998 The Opposite of Sex has Ben Affleck playing a high-rolling ad executive who, out of kindness, hands his airplane ticket to a man trying to get home quickly to his wife and family. The airplane Affleck almost boarded crashes, killing everyone onboard, and the ad exec falls apart: trying to resolve his guilt, he looks up the deceased man's wife (Gwyneth Paltrow, with (unflattering dark hair), who has not remarried, and the two of them start falling in love before the ad exec ever reveals what caused them to meet in the first place. Roos still shows that he has directoral talent and a way with turning out good dialogue, but parts of this film drag inexplicably, and Affleck and Paltrow just don't seem to fit the parts they're playing—during moments when we're supposed to be experiencing high emotion, we're instead wondering who could have done a better job in the roles. The whole film's off-kilter—it’s not terrible, it just doesn't work. There are very good performances from the two young actors (Alex D. Linz and David Dorfman) who play the wife's sons, sometimes director Tony Goldwyn, Natasha Henstridge, and Johnny Galecki as the ad exec's openly gay and unflappable office assistant, who's also been through substance abuse rehab and can see right through his boss' equivocations in a snap. Buena Vista Home Video’s VHS edition is priced to rent, while the DVD features a commentary track with Roos and producer Bobby Cohen; a scene-specific commentary track with Roos, Affleck and Paltrow; deleted footage with commentary (this feature is a high point of Roos’ Opposite of Sex DVD); a “making of” featurette; gag reel; Leigh Nash’s “Need to Be Next to You” music video; and something called “Ben and Gwyneth Go Behind the Scenes.


Charlie's Angels

USA, 2000,  Released 3.27.01
review by Gregory Avery

Not hard to see why this was such a hit last fall: the very first moments provide perfect escapism, even if there wasn't a Presidential election fiasco going on. The movie's fast, it's fun, it's watchable, it's disposable, well, maybe not that disposable, but, still, I dunno.... As you may have heard, Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz and Lucy Liu play the titular trio, out to prevent a technological plan that could create an invasion of the world's privacy, yet. The only gripes I had with the movie, once you resigned yourself to the fact that there wasn't going to be much of a story to worry about, was that, in our post-Matrix world, it looks like we're now going to be seeing cinematic action sequences and mano-a-mano fights where, like a DJ at a rave sliding from one music track to the next and then to a third, the participants will suddenly suspend themselves in mid-air, like ibises, before providing the resolution to the motion that we're desperately waiting to see the outcome of. True, this is not visually disagreeable, but with the evident work that the three female leads put into doing all their fight work without employing firearms of any sort, the visual manipulation ends up making whatever physical work they're doing look totally artificial (it doesn't make any difference if they're doing their own stunts or not -- compare it with Jackie Chan's work in a movie like Project A, Part 2, and you'll see what I mean.) The other disquieting aspect is Bill Murray, who plays Bosley to the new Angels, and, boy, does he look noticeably uncomfortable for some reason. This turns out to be one of Murray's rare dud performances: he can't seem to get a grasp of what he's supposed to be doing here or how he's supposed to be playing it. On the other hand, Diaz gets all the best lines (when Kelly Lynch maliciously knocks a cell phone out of her hand while she's talking to Luke Wilson, Diaz takes offense by saying, "Hey, I liked that guy!" and then really lays into her opponent); and Liu's turn as a corporate efficiency expert in one scene shows that, if Barrymore's production company is next supposed to turn two of Jean-Claude Forest's "Barbarella" graphic novels into a film, maybe they should give Liu a crack at playing Guido Crepax's "Valentina". Aside from the Destiny's Child song, the soundtrack mixes together an amazing array of tunes so that they work splendidly well together without imposing on the action. Columbia TriStar Home Video’s VHS edition is priced to rent for now (there’s a Spanish subtitled tape as well), and the DVD includes a slew of features, commentaries, production featurettes and music videos.


Girlfight

USA, 2000, Released 3.27.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

In present-day Brooklyn, teenager Diana (Michelle Rodriguez) learns to channel her rage at the local boxing club under the watchful eye of wry yet wise trainer Hector (Jaime Tirelli), until a relationship with cocky fighter Adrian (Santiago Douglas) threatens to stall her progress. More than one critic noticed the fact that the independently-made Girlfight might well be the flip side of the Billy Elliot coin, yet for all the latter movie’s obviousness, director Karyn Kusama’s film feels fresh and unmannered -- in direct contrast to the potential pitfalls presented by its Rocky-ish story. And Rodriguez is a true find as Diana in a big-screen bow reminiscent of Juliette Lewis’ memorable debut in Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (let’s hope her career is more varied and less labored). Seldom does a movie come along as unassuming and modest as Girlfight, which is reason enough to see it right there. The Columbia TriStar Home Video DVD pressing features Kusama’s commentary track and a production featurette; the fullframe VHS is priced to rent. 


Little Nicky

USA, 2000, Released 4.24.01
review by Gregory Avery

The latest Adam Sandler comedy did not go over well with audiences, who were probably expecting more of the heedlessly cruel comedy of Happy Gilmore. Instead, this picture turns out to be a story about a son trying to save his father -- Nicky (played by Sandler), who prefers playing air-guitar in his room more than anything else, must rush to halt a series of events which is causing his father, Lucifer (Harvey Keitel, in a not-ineffective performance), to literally crumble away to nothing. This requires Nicky making a trip to Earth for the first time, and seeking help from a charming girl played by Patricia Arquette. Lots of superficial low humor, but oddly ingratiating underneath, and with a host of appearances from, among others, Rodney Dangerfield (as Grandpappy Lucifer), Reese Witherspoon, and, as a blind street preacher who appears to be patterned after John Carradine in The Sentinel, Quentin Tarantino. New Line’s so-called “Platinum Series” edition DVD is a typically lavish affair for the imprint, featuring a commentary from director Steven Brill and the cast; the behind-the-scenes documentary “Adam Sandler Goes to Hell”; the heavy metal documentary “Satan’s Top 40”; deleted scenes; and the music video for P.O.D.’s “School of Hard Knocks.” 


Men of Honor

USA, 2000, Released 4.10.01
review by Gregory Avery

Based on the true story of Carl Brashear, the African-American son of Kentucky sharecroppers, who joins the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and sets his sights on becoming a member of the service's elite deep-sea diving and recovery team, then achieving the rank of Master Chief, the highest rank that can be attained in that division. Brashear not only undergoes demanding physical training, but learns, despite his having a 7th-grade education, the scientific knowledge needed to succeed in his duties. Brashear's story is a good one -- Truman had ordered the armed forces to become desegregated, and many officers complied not only because it was an order but because they thought it was right, as commanders and as human beings, but racist nonsense still continued on the sly in many places for years to come. The movie recounts Brashear's story, though, in ways that are simplistic, clichéd, erratic, and, most of all, predictable. In making the movie "inspirational,” the filmmakers have also more-or-less dumbed-down the material (doing it a great injustice in the process). Cuba Gooding, Jr. does some fine individual work and gives a fully-rounded portrayal of Brashear. As Billy Sunday (no relation to the evangelist), the Master Chief who trains Brashear and then goes into a career slide while Brashear's climbs, Robert De Niro seems hamstrung by the way the movie has been worked out: the filmmakers decided they didn't want to give the audience a portrayal of someone who harbors full-blown racism, but Sunday has to have some sort of conflict with Brashear for the sake of the story, so Sunday's motivations remain murky and difficult to pinpoint (often from one scene to the next). The real villain of the piece turns out to be an officer (David Conrad) who is officious and speaks about the "new Navy,” causing the film to lurch in its final segments into a contest between the modern, sterile "new" and the tried-and-true honor and tradition of the "old". The film also cops out on two of the most important points in the concluding segments: why Brashear resorts to going to such extreme lengths to remain in his position in the service, and why Sunday should so valiantly rush to his aid. George Tillman, Jr., who made a name for himself with the popular 1997 film Soul Food, directed, from a screenplay by Scott Marshall Smith. The CBS/Fox Home Video DVD has a slew of features highlighted by no less than 11 deleted scenes.


The Million Dollar Hotel

USA/Germany, 2000, Released 4.3.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

While it might not be, in star Mel Gibson’s words, “as boring as a dog’s ass” (what Wim Wenders film could be?), The Million Dollar Hotel is nobody’s idea of a cinematic triumph, either. The surreal adventures of the denizens of the titular downtown Los Angeles flophouse in a slightly askew near future (actually, spring 2001), the story was originally conceived by U2 lead singer Bono during the band’s “Rattle and Hum”-era infatuation with lowlife urban Americana. Jeremy Davies (Saving Private Ryan) stars as Tom Tom, a mentally challenged resident who is most affected by the arrival of a bizarrely scarred federal agent (Gibson) investigating the murder of an eccentric artist. A drabbed-down Milla Jovavich co-stars, and the large, disparate and unwieldy supporting cast includes the always-dependable Peter Stormare as a burnout who imagines himself the fifth Beatle, Amanda Plummer, former “NYPD Blue” heartthrob Jimmy Smits (why do good TV actors leave their secure jobs for wildly erratic movie careers?), Gloria Stuart, Bud Cort and an uncredited Tim Roth. Wenders is going for dreamy but achieves murky, with some typically stylized visuals courtesy of D.P. Phedon Papamichael and a daringly fine soundtrack from in-studio pickup band Bono, Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Daniel Lanois and others. The Sterling Home Entertainment VHS is priced to rent, while the DVD is a bare-bones affair that cries out for a commentary track from the intellectual and endlessly fascinating director. So while The Million Dollar Hotel is a heartbreaker, what we’d all really like to see come to DVD is that legendary five-hour-plus cut of Wenders’ magnificent 1991 futuristic fable Until the End of the World


One Day in September

USA, 1999, Released 4.24.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

Winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the 72nd Academy Awards ceremony, One Day in September is the riveting and entirely true story of the hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics in which Palestinian terrorists, calling themselves Black September, snuck into an athletes’ dormitory and took nearly a dozen Israeli athletes and coaches hostage. After a 21-hour standoff, the situation detonated into bloodshed and tragedy. Seen today, the standoff and its botched handling by the West German authorities was the touchstone for current security levels at high-profile events. Director Kevin Macdonald counts Errol Morris among his influences, and the film has the same kind of breathless propulsiveness as many of Morris’ best films. Hampered by an apparent lack of footage documenting the climactic airport shootout, the film actually gains impact from Macdonald’s solution, although the period tunes (including the rare authorized use of a Led Zeppelin song) are jarring in the context of the tragedy, to say the least. Nevertheless, as a stand-alone experience or in concert with Simon Reeves’ recent book of the same title, One Day in September is strong stuff. The Columbia TriStar Home Video VHS edition is priced to rent, and the letterboxed DVD is said to include production notes, a theatrical trailer and talent files. 


102 Dalmatians

USA, 2000, Released 4.3.01
review by Gregory Avery

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Superfluous sequel to the superfluous 1996 remake of the 1961 animated film, plus it has the distinction of being possibly the worst-plotted big-budget commercial film to come out in years: the filmmakers have just a couple of ideas to sustain things for over an hour and a half, and they just keep throwing those ideas at us, again and again, while we in the audience recall wistfully the enjoyment that once could be had by watching a story unfold in a film. Actually, two of the ideas in the film aren't bad ones: Cruella De Vil (played by Glenn Close, also in the 1996 film) undergoes behavioral modification while in prison and emerges not only with an aversion to fur but as an animal advocate. And one of the puppies from the previous film, Dipstick, has sired a litter of his own which includes Oddball, a dalmatian without spots. However, the film isn't really about the dogs, it's about the outrageously caricatured Cruella, who very quickly  re-develops her maniacal pursuit of a puppy-skin coat. And she's less a creation of Glenn Close's acting abilities than those of her costumer (the excellent Anthony Powell) and hair stylist -- Close’s involvement seems almost coincidental, although, if she really wants to look like this in a movie, who are we to stop her? She also suffers one of the biggest travesties of a comeuppance -- for a performer, at any rate -- since Marlon Brando was sent skidding at high speed on his backside down a muddy hill in Bedtime Story. This is also your chance to see Ioan Gruffudd, cable TV’s Horatio Hornblower, engaged, in his very first scene, in a tug-of-war battle with a dog, both participants holding onto their end of the rope with their teeth. And there's more!: Gérard Depardieu (yes, that Gérard Depardieu) appears as a couturier named Jean-Pierre le Pelt who, in his first scene, appears on a fashion runway wearing an outfit with a codpiece shaped like a leopard's head. Since none of the dogs speak -- again -- the anthropomorphic yakking is provided by a parrot who speaks fluent English and thinks it's a dog. After a while, one yearns for a hungry cat to turn up, just to shut it up. Walt Disney Home Video’s DVD is so burdened with bells and whistles that it more than earns the title of one featurette: “Puppy Action Overload.” 


Space Cowboys

USA, 2000, Released 4.17.01
review by Gregory Avery

Clint Eastwood as the leader of a group of aging former NASA astronauts who gets the chance to reassemble the old team again and take the ride into space that was denied them decades ago. Eastwood, who has not been afraid to take a chance with new material in the past, gives this a good try but seems to have lost his way with the movie. The other former astronauts are played by Donald Sutherland and James Garner, who seem barely used in the film, and Tommy Lee Jones, who lays the Texas-boy mannerisms on a little too thickly. Marcia Gay Harden, ostensibly playing one of the main roles, seems barely in the film at all. And by the time the action moves into outer space, the movie has lost the chance to gain momentum. Not really a bad film, but one that goes out of your head rather quickly after seeing it. Warner’s DVD includes four production featurettes focusing on location filming, special effects, that Jay Leno sequence and the work of editor Joel Cox (who won an Oscar for Eastwood’s crowning achievment, Unforgiven). 


The Yards

USA, 2000, Released 4.17.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

In contemporary Queens, newly-released ex-con Leo (Mark Wahlberg) just wants to go straight and get a good job, but is sucked into the corrupt world of the New York City transit system and its ultra-competitive contractors by cold-eyed pal Willy (Joaquin Phoenix) -- with dire results. Nothing less than a cross between a 1930s Warner Bros. social melodrama and Sidney Lumet’s massively influential 1981 real-life police thriller Prince of the City, director and co-scenarist James Gray’s second feature (following 1994’s Little Odessa) is admirably restrained and subtly textured, casting the broodingly intense Wahlberg as a cross between Paul Muni and Prince’s brave straight-arrow cop Danny Ciello (played by Treat Williams). Many interpreted the stately pace and downbeat performances as drawbacks, but in fact the film builds a palpable spell of doom and foreboding that lingers long after the lights come up. The stellar supporting cast includes Ellen Burstyn, James Caan, Faye Dunaway, Steve Lawrence (yes, the singer -- sans Eydie Gorme) and Charlize Theron. The Miramax Home Entertainment VHS is priced to rent, and the DVD features a commentary track by Gray, original concept art and a behind-the-scenes production featurette. 


Beyond the A List



Anatomy

Germany, 2000, Released 4.3.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Intrepid third-generation medical student Paula (Franka Potente, star of Run Lola Run and Blow) discovers a secret cabal of medicos who perform autopsies on patients still alive in this sleek, diamond-hard German thriller. As with most movies of this type there are plot holes you can drive a truck through, but the novelty of a German-language genre film, combined with Potente’s appeal and Peter von Haller’s eye-catching cinematography, provide enough entertainment to propel one through the absurd bits (and it’s sure better than such lame American studio fare as The Skulls). Anatomy represents a decided change of pace for Austrian-born director Stefan Ruzowitzky, whose previous film The Inheritors (1998) showcased his eye for fluid composition but didn’t hint at his relish for genre. The first fruits of Columbia Pictures’ German branch, Anatomy actually had a brief commercial run in New York -- via a dubbed print. Luckily, the distributors’ handsome DVD edition is subtitle optional, and supplements the feature with Ruzowitzky’s commentary track, storyboard comparisons, deleted scenes, a music video, a production featurette and peek at the stylishly bizarre makeup effects. Both dubbed and subtitled VHS versions are priced to rent. 


Arbuckle & Keaton
The Original Comique/Paramount Shorts 1917-1920 Volumes 1 and 2

USA, 1917-1920, Released 4.10.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle was a portly and promising physical comedian from Kansas who moved from vaudeville to silent films in 1908 and never looked back. By 1917 the incredibly agile and baby-faced performer was so popular he could create his own production company, Comique. Over the next three years, Arbuckle and his troupe -- including the young an still-unknown Buster Keaton -- produced a number of dazzlingly inventive and howlingly funny comedy shorts, 10 of which are collected on two discs by Kino on Video (each volume is sold separately). While the quality of each varies, the impact does not: possessed of an astonishing talent for timing and tricks (watch him roll a cigarette or flip a butcher knife), Arbuckle was rightly assessed as the second most popular comedian of the period -- behind, of course, Charlie Chaplin. So why haven’t you heard of “Fatty” Arbuckle? In 1921 his career was ruined by a scandal involving the bizarre and grisly death of a young woman after a night of celebration (there’s a so-so 1975 dramatic version inspired by the events, entitled The Wild Party). After two hung juries Arbuckle was acquited of manslaughter, although the damage had been done and today his abbreviated career stands as the pivotal event in the formation of the Hays Code to battle the perceived amoral bent of Hollywood -- a body that would later morph into the Motion Picture Association of America. Each of these shorts has been digitally remastered, with evocative color tinting, restored intertitles and a new score created specifically for the releases by the Alloy Orchestra. This is funny, eye-opening stuff.


Candy

France/Italy, 1969, Released 4.10.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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When Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg had the bright idea to recast “Candide” as a satire of pornography story structure, a film was sure to follow. One of the biggest commercial flops of the 1960s, screenwriter Buck Henry’s adaptation of the book has been out of circulation for a good two decades (Henry himself co-scripted and can be seen in Warren Beatty’s upcoming Town & Country -- and in an odd, wordless cameo as a mental patient here). Seen today, Candy is an uneven treasure trove of moviemaking do’s and don’t’s. Unknown Ewe Aulin is comely yet breathily annoying in the lead, but that’s more than made up for with the cavalcade of male stars who fall under her spell (representing various professions and temperaments), a virile roster that includes Richard Burton (as floridly dissolute poet McPhisto), Marlon Brando (as a “reformed mystic” in the movie’s weirdest and best sustained bit), James Coburn, John Huston, Walter Matthau (as the spiritual descendant of General Jack D. Ripper in the Southern-scripted Dr. Strangelove), Sugar Ray Robinson, John Astin (remember “The Addams Family”?), Ringo Starr as Emmanuel the Hispanic gardener (dig that Liverpudlian/Spanish accent) and French singer Charles Aznavour as The Hunchback. The monologues can become tiring, but each actor seems in a kind of masculine prime (particularly Brando), which gives director Christian Marquand’s film an air of revelation to those who know of it only vaguely or not at all. Dave Grusin’s psychedelic score is a pure hoot, and the unflaggingly imaginative art direction of Dean Tavoularis (who went on to do Oscar-winning work on Francis Ford Coppla’s Godfather Part II) and Giuseppe Rotunno’s photography are very evocative of the period. The Byrds perform the title song, with scattered tunes from Steppenwolf. Anchor Bay’s pristine DVD has no extras but comes packaged in a bright red slipcase and has some pretty groovy menus. 


The Color of Pomegranates

The Legend of Suram Fortress

Armenia/Germany, 1969/1994
USSR, 1985/1988
Released 4.3.01

review by Eddie Cockrell

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In The Color of Pomegranates, the life of Armenian national poet Sayat Nova is traced via colorful tableaux. The Legend of Suram Fortress fashions an ancient Georgian legend into a proudly nationalistic affirmation of warrior resolve and sacrifice. Ashik Kerib reimagines Lermentov’s wandering minstrel story as an experimental and lushly romantic ode to traditional art and music. Georgian filmmaker Sergei Paradjanov ran afoul of Soviet censors throughout his career (his florid style and folk celebrations were labeled “decadent”), yet managed to conceive some of the most ravishing and unique films ever made. Mentored by film theoretician Lev Kuleshov and influenced by Ukranian filmmaker Alexander Dovzhenko (Earth, available on tape from Kino on Video), his films were praised around the world even as he served four years for hard labor and was denied domestic access to foreigners. Under mid-1980s glasnost he was able to resume filmmaking but died of lung cancer in 1990. As they’ve done with selected other DVD pressings (Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sacrifice, Guy Maddin’s Careful) Kino has bundled The Color of Pomegranates with a documentary on the director’s work, esteemed film critic Ron Holloway’s enlightening 57-minute 1994 German-American co-production Paradjanov: A Requiem. Also featured on the disc is an early Paradjanov short, Hagop Hovnatanian. Both discs are technically solid if unspectacular, a symptom far more indicative of poor original print quality than distributor disinterest. In fact, Paradjanov is an important enough component in the development of Cold War-era individualism in Russian cinema that he’s been taught in film classes for over 30 years; thus, these discs are a key addition to the history-minded film fan’s collection. 


Contraband
Blackout

UK, 1940, Released 4.24.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In an atmospheric wartime London beset by the blackout, a Danish sea captain (Conrad Veidt) and his mysterious passenger (Valerie Hobson) match wits with a nest of Nazi spies operating out of a Soho basement. The second collaboration between British director Michael Powell and Hungarian-born scenarist Emeric Pressburger (following 1939’s similar-in-tone The Spy in Black, also starring Veidt and Hobson), Contraband reveals itself after some 60 years of obscurity (it was given a perfunctory U.S. release under the title Blackout) to be a sparkling Hitchockian thriller in the 39 Steps mold. Veidt glowers his way mischievously through the role, and Hobson’s slinky insouciance matches him note for note. Following Criterion’s recent DVD release of I Know Where I’m Going!, Black Narcissus and Peeping Tom, Contraband is essential viewing for those intrigued and beguiled by the most unique and rewarding collaboration of Powell and Pressburger. Kino on Video’s fine transfer to DVD highlights the expressionistic photography of the legendary Freddie (“F.A.”) Young (see Lawrence of Arabia, below) and the atmospheric settings of Alfred Junge, who went on to design both I Know Where I’m Going! and the essential Black Narcissus.


Madadayo

Japan, 1993, Released 3.13.01
review by Gregory Avery

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“Madadayo” apparently means “not yet!” in Japanese, and is the response retired German teacher Hyakken Uchida (Tatsuo Matsumura) gives to the students and family who throw him a once-a-year-birthday party, at which they ask, in unison, “Mahda-kai?” (“are you ready?”). To emphasize his vow to keep living his rewarding life, he quaffs a large glass of beer as his respectful and adoring students cheer. Unavailable for years in the United States, Akira Kurosawa’s final film exhibits none of the epic sweep for which he is known (The Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Ran), focusing instead on the ordered satisfaction of a life lived well. That the multi-decade timeframe of the film includes the messy post-World War II rubble of Tokyo seems only fitting, as the counterpoint of order and chaos is never far from the surface. Bereft of booklet, chapter headings or extras, Winstar’s simple and dignified DVD pressing of Madadayo -- which is based on a true story -- needs none of those things, as the deliberate, sentimental and placid film itself provides its own rewards -- in stark counterpoint to much noisier movies which deliver far less satisfaction. 


The Mystery of Oberwald
Il Mistero di Oberwald

Italy, 1980, Released 4.10.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Referring to a 1930s experiment in three-strip color that set the pace for the move away from black and white filmmaking in Hollywood, one critic called Michelangelo Antonioni’s rarely-seen 1980 experimental melodrama The Mystery of Oberwald “the Becky Sharp of cinema’s long-promised and long-deferred electronic era.” In the years since, that brave new world of tape has arrived with a vengeance, and very little of it resembles the experiments in color and saturation found in Antonioni’s turgid adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s historical romance “The Eagle Has Two Heads.” But that’s not to say this long-unavailable work is without merit: first of all, along with the director’s subsequent film Identification of a Woman (also recently released by Facets), The Mystery of Oberwald has remained out of reach for the home video collector since it’s production (that’s not the same as being available in poor prints, which is sadly the fate of many of Antonioni’s most pivotal work, including the trilogy of L’avventura, La notte and L’eclisse). Secondly, Antonioni himself wrote of “finally using color as a narrative, poetic means” -- and of his disdain for the material. Thus, the statically rendered story of a 19th century queen (Antonioni regular Monica Vitti) who falls in love with her assassin serves principally as a canvas for the director’s experiments with color manipulation. And although he himself thought the results “banal,” fans of the director’s rigorously intellectual work will rejoice at the availability of The Mystery of Oberwald and the serious approach to pushing the technical bounds of cinema it represents.


The Natural

USA, 1984, Released 4.3.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In 1930s America, young phenom Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) rocks the baseball world by materializing seemingly from nowhere to lead the no-account New York Knights to victory. Just in time for baseball season, Barry Levinson’s 1984 critical and box office hit The Natural has been given a dazzling digital makeover by Columbia TriStar Home Video that enhances Caleb Deschanel’s luminous photography and one of Randy Newman’s best-ever scores. Although the film itself still plays long and fragmentary, the pristine transfer elevates what’s good about the movie beyond these concerns. The uniformly excellent supporting cast includes Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky, Richard Farnsworth and an uncredited Darren McGavin. The DVD package includes a choice of no less than seven languages for the subtitle tracks, the usual collection of trailers, talent files and production notes, and, most appealing for fans of the sport, an exclusive documentary featuring Cal Ripken Jr. Play ball. 


Pola X

Mauvals Sang
Bad Blood/The Night is Young

Boy Meets Girl

France, 1999/1986/1984, Released 4.10.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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To attempt to understand the cinema of French phenom Leos Carax, start with his name: born Alexander Oscar Dupont in 1961, his nom de film is an anagram of his first two names, Alex and Oscar. A gesture both mischievous and mystifying, it perhaps sums up the visually arresting yet dramatically obscure nature of his four feature films to date (the third, 1991’s Lovers on the Bridge, was released in the United States by Miramax after a multi-year delay). His debut film, Boy Meets Girl, is an arrogantly affectionate black and white tribute to the French new wave, with Denis Lavant (in his first of three films with Carax) playing an aspiring filmmaker opposite Mirielle Perrier’s Jean Seberg-ish lovelorn waif and a post-modern musical approach. Working again with Lavant and cinematographer Jean-Yves Escoffier (who went on to shoot both Good Will Hunting and Nurse Betty), Mauvais Sang switches to vivid primary colors and tarts a young Juliette Binoche up to look like Jean-Luc Godard’s muse Anna Karina. There’s nobody named Pola in Pola X; the title comes from the first letters of the novel on which it is based, Herman Melville’s disasterous 1852 work “Pierre, ou les Ambiguities” (the X apparently refers to the 10th draft of the screenplay, which was the one shot). Guillaume Depardieu -- Gérard’s son -- stands in for Lavant as an aspiring writer and self-centered aristocrat driven to flamboyant distraction by a number of women. As is usual in a Carax film, there are striking sequences (a nighttime confessional during a trek through the woods, Catherine Deneuve astride a motorcycle), but the overall effect is of a beautiful confusion -- a phrase that might well serve as title of his sure-to-be baffling critical biography. Winstar’s DVDs of the titles (available separately) offer no accompanying booklet but include various interviews with the director as well as the usual raft of interactive menus and filmographies; the latter two titles sport brief outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage among their extras (the VHS tape editions are priced to rent).


Qué Viva México! 

Mexico/Russia/USA, 1931/79, Released 4.3.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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After pioneering the process and intellectual ramifications of film editing via such landmarks as Battleship Potemkin and Strike, Russian director Sergei Eisenstein struck out for Hollywood in hopes of expanding his work. Unable to interest any of the studios in collaborative projects, the director ended up in Mexico, where he and collaborators/traveling companions Grigory Alexandrov (the producer) and photographer Eduard Tisse began working on a documentary about the land, people and customs of the country. The limited budget soon ran dry and the film was abandoned. In 1979, Alexandrov and Nikita Orlov were finally able to edit the film, using Eisenstein’s notes and storyboards as guideposts. The resulting 85-minute documentary offers tantalizing glimpses of the visual power and propulsive movement of the director’s best work, with Alexandrov’s Russian-language narration and historical photos and footage placing the events in historical context. The Kino on Video DVD (their VHS tape has been on the market for three years) includes Eisenstein’s first sound film, 1930’s “cinematographic study” (read: experimental short) Romance Sentimentale, as well as a 20-minute fragment from the trio’s 1929 health-themed work Misery and Fortune of Woman, as well as a clippings file of texts pertaining to the main feature (the accompanying single sheet insert has an anonymous essay on the supplemental material). Alongside The Criterion Collection’s upcoming 3-disc Eisenstein set (featuring restored copies of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible Parts 1&2), Qué Viva México! signals a renewal of interest in one of the founding fathers of cinema.  


Roy Cohn/Jack Smith

What's Underground About Marshmallows

USA, 1995/96, Released 3.27.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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The actor Ron Vawter is probably best remembered to movie fans as FBI agent Paul Krendler in Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs (it’s the same character bravely played by Ray Liotta in Hannibal). Shortly after appearing in Demme’s Philadelphia, Vawter -- who died in 1994 -- performed the well-received one-man show Roy Cohn/Jack Smith, in which he played both Joe McCarthy prosecutor Cohn and defiantly gay avant-garde film icon Smith -- wildly different men who had one thing in common: they both died of AIDS (Vawter himself was infected with the disease at the time of his death). What’s Underground About Marshmallows? is a fleshed-out version of the Smith segment of the play, taped in late 1993 -- the actor’s final performance. Both films are co-produced by James Schamus, co-writer and producer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And both films were directed by Jill Godmilow, an American independent filmmaker of uncommon vision and endurance, who has been making uncompromising features and documentaries lodged at the junction of sexual politics and the creative process for more than 30 years. Other titles in Facets Video’s exclusive, tape-only release of Godmilow’s work include the Chicago Serbian community documentary The Popovich Brothers of South Chicago (1978), the Solidarity movement docudrama Far from Poland (1984), and the provocative drama Waiting for the Moon (1986), in which Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett) and Alice B. Toklas (Linda Hunt) lead an all-star group of expatriates in Paris between the world wars. Valuable as much for their sociological inquiries as for their visually inventive styles, these films label Jill Godmilow a key player in the development of independent cinema over the last three decades.


Time Regained

France, 1999, Released 3.27.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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On his deathbed in 1922, Marcel Proust (Marcello Mazzarella) recalls the period of his life before and during the first world war in the drawing rooms and social engagement circuit of Paris. This impeccably measured film version of the final volume in Proust’s massive “Remembrance of Things Past” has a cast that will appear all-star to anyone with an interest in contemporary European cinema: Catherine Deneuve is Odette de Crecy, Emmanuelle Béart is Gilberte, Vincent Perez is Morel, John Malkovich is Baron de Charlus, Pascall Greggory is Saint-Loup, Marie-France Pisier is Madame Verdurin, Christian Vadim is Bloch, Arielle Dombasle is Madame de Farcy, Chiara Matroianni is Albertine, and Patrice Chereau is heard as Proust’s voice. Heretofore known as a prolific maker of low-budget international art films, Chilean-born Raul Ruiz has been slowly and cannily moving into another arena altogether: his 1992 Dark at Noon and 1995 Three Lives and Only One Death competed at the Cannes festival, and the 1997 drama Genealogies of a Crime won the Silver Bear at the 1997 Berlin festival (he’s got a new film in competition at the upcoming 2001 Cannes event). All these films have in common an intriguing fluidity of time, suggesting that Ruiz, as most artists eventually do, is now less intimidated by the passage of time than intrigued by it. Kino on Video’s fine letterboxed DVD edition features a four-page booklet in which J. Hoberman’s respectful and adoring “Village Voice” review is reprinted in its entirety, speaking for a critical community that welcomed Time Regained as a respectful yet daring approach to Proust’s writing. 


Triumph of the Will

Germany, 1935, Released 4.27.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In 1934, Adolph Hitler hired a young actress, dancer and aspiring filmmaker named Leni Riefenstahl to make a film about the National Socialist German Workers Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany. The resulting film, Triumph of the Will, has polarized audiences ever since. At once an exhilaratingly supple technical tour-de-force of technique and a frightening and distasteful display of nationalistic megalomania, the movie unfortunately documents Hitler at the beginning of the doomed 12-year Reich that would result in the most despicable acts of the 20th century. Although the original negative of the film was apparently destroyed during the waning days of the war and subsequent prints have suffered from poor quality and truncated subtitles, good prints do exist, and the tiny genre distributor Synapse Films has procured one from legendary restorer Robert A. Harris for this sharp transfer. Crisper than other copies in circulation, the print used displays many of the same blemishes but restores the minute-plus overture and sports subtitles so detailed and complete you may find yourself freezing the image to catch up. A commentary track by Virginia-based scholar and historian Dr. Anthony R. Santoro provides a wealth of information on Hitler’s inner circle and the politics of the Nazi machine, but very little on Riefenstahl herself (there’s not even a photo of her on the packaging or enclosed four-page brochure). Thus, the Kino on Video pressing of Ray Muller’s 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl is recommended as a companion piece to this eternally controversial work.


West Beirut

USA, 1954, Released 3.6.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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Just as John Boorman’s Hope and Glory recast the World War II bombing of London as a children’s wonderland of new and exciting experiences amid death and destruction, debuting filmmaker Ziad Doueiri’s West Beirut follows the adventures of three young people during Lebanon’s civil war in the mid-1970s. Centered on genial delinquet Tarek and his pal Chamas -- Muslims both -- the merry band grows to include vivacious May, a Christian. Lebanon-born Doueiri has worked as an assistant and second-unit cinematographer for Quentin Tarantino, which helps explain his nervous, fluid style -- aided by a score from ex-Police man Stewart Copeland -- and the lean propulsiveness of his autobiographical narrative (“the happy memories have cancelled the bad ones,” he has said). “Since when has the West understood the East?” someone asks in West Beirut. The triumph of the film is Doueiri’s ability to bridge the two worlds through the universality of adolescent emotion and experiences. New Yorker Video’s VHS-only release is priced to rent and worth seeking out at better video retailers.


Zero Kelvin

Norway, 1995, Released 4.24.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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On the bleak plains of Greenland, young Norwegian writer Henrik Larsen (Gard B. Eidsvold) goes toe-to-toe with vulgar sailor Randbaek (Stelan Skarsgård) during a fur trapping expedition. Zero Kelvin is a moody, enigmatic existential thriller from Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland, who understands the suffocating loneliness and rage of men cooped up together for too long. And for fans of the chameleon-like Skarsgård, the film offers yet another facet of his tremendously diverse skills: Randbaek is nothing short of a stringy-haired lunatic, but as he’s done in so many films over the last few years, the actor imbues the trapper with a chaotic, even touching dignity. Kino on Video’s DVD pressing and VHS version are letterboxed. Watch for Molland and Skarsgard’s follow-up collaboration, the emotional family drama/road movie Aberdeen, coming soon to an art-house theater near you.


Box Set Corner:

An occasional exploration of video and DVD’s higher end


Lawrence of Arabia

UK, 1962, Released 4.3.01
review by Eddie Cockrell

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In 1989, the restoration wizardry of Robert A. Harris (see Triumph of the Will, above) brought Lawrence of Arabia, director David Lean’s breathtaking, literate telling of British officer T. E. Lawrence’s work in the World War I-era Middle East, to a new generation of moviegoers and sparked the current trend of skillfully refurbishing pivotal works for big-screen exhibition. On the heels of their well-received Bridge on the River Kwai, Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment delivers a two-disc set of Lean’s multi-Oscared epic that will satisfy those new to the DVD realm but falls short of telling the film’s true and tortured production history -- or even delivering a commentary track. Worse, Harris not only wasn’t involved in this project, but isn’t even referenced for his late 1980s labors. On the plus side (and these are big plusses indeed), F.A. “Freddie” Young’s cinematography and Maurice Jarre’s music are given the best possible showcase (dig that overture, entr’acte and exit music). In a word, the movie looks gorgeous. And while many of the extras -- all on disc two -- seem distracted or even frivolous (what’s the point of Steven Spielberg popping up to reminisce about the film?), the discs’ DVD-ROM features offer a wealth of production stills and information -- but be warned: inserting either disc into your PC summons up the dreaded PC Friendly software, and they won’t play without installing it on your system (as good as the software may or may not be, consumers should retain the choice of using it or ignoring it). The accompanying 12-page booklet includes two essays originally found in the 1962 first-run brochure, and the handful of production documentaries include the featurette Wind, Sand and Star: The Making of a Classic. Other recent sword’n’sandal epics for those thematically inclined include Ben-Hur (1959), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Cleopatra (1963) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) -- all released, no doubt, in no small part to capitalize on the success of the most recent Best Picture Oscar winner, the similarly majestic but digitally tricked-out Gladiator. But accept no substitutes: despite the sins of omission, Lawrence of Arabia remains among the most beautiful and stirring of epics, and this two-disc set does the film itself proud. 


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