The DVD Report #42

Just in time for this Sunday’s presentation of the 80th Annual Academy Awards, DVD companies have released some of the year’s major contenders. They include Michael Clayton,nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Original Screenplay; In the Valley of Elah nominated for Best Actor; Elizabeth: The Golden Age, nominated for Best Actress, Gone Baby Gone and American Gangster, both nominated for Best Supporting Actress; and if you have access to Region 2 releases, Atonement, nominated for Best Picture and Supporting Actress as well as several other awards. These join the previously released Away From Her, nominated for Best Actress and Adapted Screenplay; La Vie en Rose nominated for Best Actress; Eastern Promises nominated for Best Actor; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford nominated for Best Supporting Actor; and Sicko and No End in Sight, both nominated for Best Documentary Feature.

The only film to earn more than one acting nomination this year, Michael Clayton is a taut legal thriller that marks the directorial debut of longtime screenwriter Tony Gilroy. It provides Best Actor nominee George Clooney with his meatiest role to date as the fix-it guy of a high-priced law firm. Equally memorable are the performances of his co-nominees, Tom Wilkinson as a manic depressive litigator who goes off his meds and sees the light, and Tilda Swinton as the in-house counsel of a corporation embroiled in a class action suit. The unusually strong supporting cast includes Sydney Pollack, Michael O’Keefe, Ken Howard and David Lansbury in key roles.

Tommy Lee Jones gives the performance of his career in his Oscar-nominated role in Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah. Playing the father of a missing soldier home from Iraq, Jones’ world-weary demeanor, slow, deliberate gait, and craggy, weather-beaten face are perfect attributes for the role of the man piecing together a puzzle he wishes he never had to solve. Charlize Theron as an intrepid policewoman, Jason Patric as her military counterpart and Susan Sarandon as Jones’ wife lend quiet authority to their supporting turns and James Franco, Josh Brolin, Barry Corbin and Frances Fisher among others offer interesting cameos, but it is Jones’ heartbreaking performance that you will long remember in this film based on a real life incident.

Not to be confused with the similarly themed TV mini-series of 2006, Elizabeth I,Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age suffers by its close proximity to that landmark work. Whereas Elizabeth I had a colorful script, a brilliant lead performance by Helen Mirren and excellent supporting performances, Elizabeth: The Golden Age has a dull script and a tired looking cast supporting its Oscar-nominated star, Cate Blanchett. Blanchett herself is quite good reprising the role she played in Kapur’s 1998 film, Elizabeth,about the early life of the Virgin Queen, but she is given little to sink her teeth into. The Oscar-nominated costumes are quite stunning, however.

Actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ben Affleck made his directorial debut with Gone Baby Gone, a terrific atmospheric thriller about the kidnapping of a little girl in Boston. Ben’s brother Casey gives his most assured performance as a private investigator brought into the case to augment the police by the missing child’s aunt. Bridget Moynihan is his partner in business as well as life, Morgan Freeman a police chief and Ed Harris a police detective. Amy Madigan is the aunt. All of them are terrific, but the standout is little known Amy Ryan, Oscar nominated for her portrayal of the missing girl’s distraught mother. The on location filming in Boston with numerous locals in small parts is an asset.

Based on the true story of a Harlem crime lord and the corrupt NYC drug enforcement division of the late 1960s and ’70s, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster is an epic film featuring charismatic performances from Denzel Washington as the entrepreneurial crime lord and Russell Crowe as the honest cop who goes after his empire. As commanding as the drug and crime scenes may be, the best part of the film are the domestic scenes, especially those involving Oscar nominee Ruby Dee as Washington’s mother. There may not be much to her part, but as the saying goes, what’s there is choice.

The year’s most eagerly awaited literary adaptation, Joe Wright’s film of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, provides audiences with smash reconstructions of the novel’s three main sections, but fails to provide any transition between the sections making character motivation difficult to fathom. What we’re left to marvel at, though, are gorgeous scenery, knockout costumes, a killer four-minute tracking shot and a handful of memorable performances. James McAvoy and Keira Knightley are star-crossed lovers and three actresses play Knightley’s younger sister Briony, the film’s “villain”, at three different stages of her life. They are Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan who plays her as an adolescent in the 1930s. Romola Garai, who plays her as a young woman during World War II. And Vanessa Redgrave, who plays her as an old lady in the present.

In addition to the Oscar nominees, some of last year’s other high profile films have just been released on DVD as well.

Having the misfortune of being released in theatres a week after Gone Baby Gone, and on DVD at the same time,James Gray’s We Own the Night suffers in comparison, but is a gripping police thriller in its own right. Joaquin Phoenix gives another of his, by now, trademark portrayals of a good man in a lousy situation. He plays the son and brother of the local police chief and captain, played by Robert Duvall and Mark Wahlberg respectively. His relation is in spirit only as he has professionally changed his name to his mother’s maiden, in order to avoid conflict in his career as the manager of a nightclub controlled by the Russian Mafia. The film’s highlight is a killer rainstorm car chase.

Just about everything you need to know about Gavin Hood’s Rendition can be gleaned from the trailer which shows a nine-month pregnant Reese Witherspoon searching for answers to the disappearance of her Egyptian-born husband, Omar Metwally. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as the out-of-his-depth American operative in an undisclosed Arab country while Peter Sargaard, Alan Arkin and Meryl Streep play politicians of varying degrees of sliminess. A sub-plot about a suicide bombing is compelling to a point, but the plot and sub-plot fail to connect in a cohesive manner.

An annoying film about annoying people, Noah Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding is about the reunion of sisters Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in the days leading up to Leigh’s planned wedding to wastrel Jack Black. The sisters despise each other and it doesn’t take long for us to loathe them and the insufferable Mr. Black as well. Nothing in this film works on any level beyond its ability to disgust at every turn.

More worthy of our time and money are three newly released sets: The Stanley Kramer Collection, the Charlie Chan Collecgtion, Vol. 4., and The Robert Donat Collection.

The Kramer collection consists of five films from the prolific producer-director. Four are re-issued with new introductions and commentaries and one is new to DVD. The signature piece is Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner 40th Anniversary Edition, the only of the five films being released separately. It’s a two-disc presentation including two documentaries on the making of film and several pieces on Kramer himself. The highlight of the collection, though, is the DVD premiere of 1952’s The Member of the Wedding directed by Fred Zinnemann. Julie Harris, then in her late twenties, won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of an awkward 12-year-old, but for my money Ethel Waters as Harris’ maid, cook and surrogate mother, and Brandon de Wilde as her ten-year-old cousin are the film’s real acting treasures.

Also included in the collection are 1953’s The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, a Doctor Seuss-inspired children’s classic directed by Roy Rowland; the 1953 Marlon Brando motorcycle drama, The Wild One, directed by Laszlo Benedek; and the Kramer-directed 1965 Oscar nominee Ship of Fools featuring Oscar-nominated performances by Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret and Michael Dunn, as well as the last screen appearance of two-time Oscar winner Vivien Leigh. That year’s Best Actor (for Cat Ballou), Lee Marvin, also had a prominent role.

Having exhausted the extant twelve Warner Oland Charlie Chan films, Fox has released a set of the first four films starring his replacement, Sidney Toler.

While the Swedish Oland was a character star with extensive knowledge of Chinese history and imbued the role with a great deal of warmth and charm, Toler who won the role after considerable searching upon Oland’s death in 1938, was a minor character actor whose warmth and charm were slow to build. He is a bit awkward in his first outing as Chan in Charlie Chan in Honolulu, but by his second outing in Charlie Chan in Rio he is fully in command of the role. Others included in the set are Charlie Chan at Treasure Island and Chalrie Chan in City of Darkness. One of the special features included is a reconstruction of a lost Chan film, Charlie Chan’s Courage. Sen Young as Charlie’s number two son replaces Keye Luke as Charlie’s number one son. Luke, who initially refused to work with any actor in the role other than Oland came back to work with Young and Roland Winters, who replaced Toler after his death in 1947, in the series’ last two films.

Released without fanfare, The Robert Donat Collection from Movieology, gives us three of Donat’s early starring vehicles: The Count of Monte Cristo, The 39 Steps and The Ghost Goes West as well as PDF books of both The Count of Monte Cristo and The 39 Steps and radio presentations of all three works.

The definitive DVD release of The 39 Steps remains the Criterion Edition of the film, but this is an excellent transfer of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, not one of those shoddy public domain presentations. While Rene Clair’s The Ghost Goes West had been previously available on VHS, this is the first time it has been made available on commercial DVD. The pièce de résistance here, though, is the first-ever commercial home video presentation of Rowland Lee’s The Count of Monte Cristo. Restored to its original length of 113 minutes and featuring Donat in one of his most acclaimed roles in what is still the definitive version of the Alexandre Dumont classic. The film is about the falsely accused prisoner of the Chateau d’If who escapes after 13 years and eventually returns to his home village unrecognized as thenow-wealthy count seeking vengeance on those who framed him.

Until next time, happy viewing and may at least one of your favorites win an Oscar on Sunday.

-Peter J. Patrick (February 19, 2008)

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Top 10 Rentals of the Week

(February 10)

The Game Plan
$7.41 M ($26.1 M)
The Brave One
$6.98 M ($6.98 M)
Good Luck Chuck
$5.58 M ($33.3 M)
Saw IV
$5.29 M ($20.2 M)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
$5.08 M ($5.08 M)
The Invasion
$4.84 M ($11.1 M)
Rush Hour 3
$4.54 M ($64.5 M)
Across the Universe
$4.45 M ($4.45 M)
3:10 to Yuma
$4.4 M ($36.8 M)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
$4.35 M ($4.35 M)