I’m of two minds about Duplicity, the new crime thriller from Tony Gilroy, the long time screenwriter who won writing and directing Oscar nominations for his directorial debut Michael Clayton.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have smart, witty dialogue delivered in high style by a cast of gifted actors. On the other hand, it’s a bit disconcerting not to be able to make neither head nor tail of what’s going on until it all comes together in the end.

Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play corporate spies who are on opposite sides of a plot to steal information from one company for another, or are they? The narrative moves back and forth between the present and the past, taking the story from five years earlier to ten days before the climax and back to the present. Sound confusing? It is, but Owen who is almost always good, and Roberts who hasn’t been this good since Erin Brockovich,make it a pleasant time killer.

The top notch supporting cast includes Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giammati, Tom McCarthy, Kathleen Chalphant and True Blood’s Carrie Preston.

Duplicity is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Two of today’s most gifted actresses, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, turn in memorable performances as sisters in Sunshine Cleaning, written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs, neither of whom I’d heard of before, but whose work I’d like to see more of.

More of a character study than a fully fleshed out narrative, the two women start up a business in which they clean up the bio-hazards left behind after murders, suicides and decomposing bodies. The heart of the film is the familial relationships between the two women, their widowed father, played by Alan Arkin, and Adams’ young son, played by Jason Spevack. Also around are Clifton Collins Jr. as a one-armed cleaning supplies store owner, Steve Zahn as Adam’s married cop boyfriend and Amy Redford (Robert’s daughter) as Zahn’s pregnant wife. 24’s Mary Lynn Rajskub and veteran Paul Dooley have featured roles.

Sunshine Cleaning is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The Warner Archive, which began promisingly with its initial releases of classic films from the silent era through the 1950s, has moved the clock forward a bit for its latest batch of releases. Their August releases concentrate on comedies, including several stage adaptations, from the 1960s, and cult classics from the 1970s and 80s.

The earliest release from the current batch is 1961’s A Majority of One directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Rosalind Russell as a Jewish widow from Brooklyn and Alec Guinness as a Tokyo widower doing business with her son-in-law’s company. Sold as a comedy of manners, it’s really a treatise on racial harmony and understanding. Russell’s son was killed in the Pacific during World War II and Guinness’ daughter was killed in the bombing of Hiroshima, making a friendship, let alone a romance, between the two, seem unlikely.

Russell was not Jewish and Guinness was certainly not Japanese, but no matter. They both bring a great theatrical dignity to their roles, rendering such concerns irrelevant. Russell, who won a Golden Globe for her performance, is particularly impressive in a role that was played on Broadway by Gertrude Berg, who was to generations of mid-century audiences the Jewish matron. Guinness’ role had been played by fellow countryman Cedric Hardwicke. A huge hit at the time and still greatly moving today, the only question is why Warner didn’t release it as a regular DVD.

The 1964 comedy Kisses for My President, directed by Curtis Reinhart and starring Polly Bergen and Fred MacMurray, is a really bad movie, but one that can be appreciated as a time capsule of what pre-feminist America was like. Bergen is a competent businesswoman who becomes the first female president. MacMurray is her befuddled husband. It starts out promisingly but ends ludicrously with Bergen resigning when she becomes pregnant. It’s as though we’re watching one of those Rosalind Russell comedies from the 1940s in which she’s a successful businesswoman who throws it all away for the love a man in the last reel. Bergen, a successful businesswoman in real life, redeemed herself decades later as the mother of “first female president” Geena Davis in the short-lived TV series Commander-in-Chief.

Maureen O’Sullivan is best remembered as Johnny Weismuller’s Jane in the still highly regarded series of 1930s and early 40s Tarzan movies and for being the mother of seven children with husband John Farrow, including superstar Mia Farrow. She, nevertheless, had a sizeable acting career beyond that which included stage and television work as well as more than ninety theatrical films, which took her all the way into the 1990s.

Despite her considerable reputation, O’Sullivan was the lead in only one film, 1965’s Never Too Late, directed by Bud Yorkin, which came at the mid-point of her long career. Adding insult to injury, Warner Bros. gave her third billing in the film behind Paul Ford who played her husband and Connie Stevens who played her daughter. Nevertheless the film belongs to O’Sullivan as the middle-aged woman who finds herself pregnant at 50. The rest of the cast, including Jim Hutton as her son-in-law and Jane Wyatt and Lloyd Nolan as family friends are fine, but it’s O’Sullivan’s gumption that shines through the shenanigans in a repeat of her acclaimed Broadway performance.

Maggie Smith had one of her first starring roles opposite Peter Ustinov in 1968’s crime caper comedy Hot Millions written by Ustinov and directed by Eric Till. The film, in which Ustinov is a bumbling ex-con trying to make one last big score, benefits immensely from the droll wit that both he and Smith as his equally bumbling secretary bring to their roles. The film has many funny set pieces including one involving a giant computer and another involving a deck of cards. Bob Newhart as Ustinov’s co-worker who has designs on Smith, Karl Malden as their dim-witted boss, Robert Morley as a man whose identity Ustinov steals and Cesar Romero in an amusing cameo add to the fun.

Regarded by many as the scariest TV movie ever, 1973’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, directed by John Newland, strikes me in these days of Supernatural and True Blood, as more creepy than scary, with supposedly intelligent people acting like downright morons in the supposedly haunted house. Kim Darby is the young bride who has inherited the house from her grandmother. Jim Hutton is her ill-tempered husband, Barbara Anderson her concerned friend and William Demarest the elderly carpenter who keeps re-sealing the fireplace in the basement from which the dangerous dwarfs emerge intent on dragging Darby in with them. My advice is to hold out for the theatrical remake due next year, which may or may not be better.

The Band’s Robbie Robertson produced, co-wrote the screenplay and composed the midway music for1980’s Carny, a one-of-a-kind film about two carnival buddies played by Robertson and Gary Busey and the girl who comes to love them both, played by Jodie Foster. The film, directed by co-writer Robert Kaylor, is based on Robertson’s real-life experiences as a carny before he became a musician. Busey plays the guy in clown make-up who taunts customers into throwing balls to dump him in a tank while Robertson drums up business and pays off the local sharks. Foster, who plays an 18-year-old was only 16 or 17 at the time of filming. Meg Foster, Kenneth McMillan and Elisha Cook Jr. co-star.

Several films through the years have been given the title Reckless, but it most appropriately fits James Foley’s 1984 film, scripted by Chris Columbus. It should have made Aidan Quinn a huge star (something he didn’t quite become despite this and his next two roles, both of which were in high profile films, Desperately Seeking Susan opposite Rosanna Arquette and Madonna, and An Early Frost, the legendary TV movie about AIDS co-starring Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara and Sylvia Sidney). His mercurial talent was certainly on display here as the 1980s rebel without a cause who romances Daryl Hannah, who also impresses in her last film before her breakout role in Ron Howard’s Splash opposite Tom Hanks.

Writer-director James Bridges’ 1984 film Mike’s Murder, a tense murder mystery, reteamed him with Debra Winger who became a star in his 1980 film Urban Cowboy. Winger, riding high on back-to-back Oscar nominations for An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, was, alas, still not a big enough star to make a hit out of this nifty late film noir. She plays a twenty-something bank officer looking into the murder of her former tennis coach, with whom she’d been having an off-and-on affair, coming close to being murdered herself as her investigation takes her deeper and deeper into the L.A. drug underworld. Paul Winfield, the only other name player in the film, makes a strong impression as a corrupt gay record producer.

On the TV front, House, M.D. – Season Five has been released. This is the season in which one of the main characters dies so that the actor playing him can go to work for the Obama White House. No, it’s not series star Hugh Laurie nor one of his original co-stars Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Morrison or Jesse Spencer.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 25, 2009)