Director James Gray has only made four films thus far, but each one of them has been distinct and interesting.

His first, 1994’s Little Odessa dealt with crime and punishment among Russian immigrants in Brooklyn and was beautifully acted by Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, Maximilian Schell and Vanessa Redgrave.

His next, 2000’s The Yards dealt with urban corruption among the contractors who repair New York City’s subway cars. The intriguing cast, led by Mark Wahlberg, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, Ellen Burstyn, James Caan and Faye Dunawaym, was superb.

Then came 2007’s We Own the Night, a provocative crime thriller about the Russian mafia in New York, again starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, joined by Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall, all providing terrific performances.

Gray’s latest, Two Lovers, is as usual, a terrifically moody, but far gentler film, about a man in his 30s recovering from a broken heart followed by several suicide attempts.

When we first meet Leonard, played by Joaquin Phoenix in his best performance to date, he is just going through the motions, working in his father’s dry cleaning shop. Then he meets two women, both of whom he falls in love with. Vinessa Shaw is the nice girl whose father is in negotiations to buy Leonard’s father’s business. Gwyneth Paltrow is the troubled rich man’s mistress who is being kept in an apartment in Leonard’s building.

Which one will he end up with? The film ends with a nice touch O. Henry would be proud of.

The supporting cast includes Isabella Rossellini as Phoenix’s mother, Julie Budd (Barbara Streisand’s sister) as Shaw’s mother and Elias Koteas as Paltrow’s lover.

Two Lovers is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Danish filmmaker Jonas Elmer has fittingly chosen as his first English language film the fish out of water tale New in Town. Unfortunately, the film, about a high level female Miami corporate executive transplanted to a Minnesota town just as the snow is beginning to fall, is only sporadically entertaining.

Renee Zellweger, keeping the mugging to a minimum, and Harry Connick Jr. as the union rep she tangles with both in business and bed, are charming enough for the material, and J.K. Simmons is a hoot as the shop foreman of the food processing plant she is sent to oversee but the rest of the cast is mostly dreadful.

A minute and a half of Siobhan Fallon Hogan and her kitchen full of scrapbooking lady friends with their phony mid-western accents, “doncha know”, would have been more than enough, but we get them sporadically interspersed throughout the film’s mercifully-short hour-and-a-half.

If you like tapioca, you won’t after seeing this.

New in Town is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It must have been the dearth of competition that won Shirley MacLaine both a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nomination for her performance in the TV movie Coco Chanel. She appears chiefly at the beginning and end of the film and at intervals during the narrative, but the story of the world famous designer takes place mostly in flashbacks before, during and after World War I sans MacLaine.

Thirty-five-year-old Slovakian actress, Barbora Bobulova carries most of the film from the time the young Chanel leaves the orphanage where she was brought up until after the death of one of her lovers culminating in the creation of her famous “little black dress”. The film then skips the remainder of Chanel’s lovers, including the Nazi officer who protected her during the Nazi occupation of Paris.

It picks up in 1953 when Chanel had her first showing in fifteen years. MacLaine plays her as she oversees that disastrous showing at the beginning of the films and her triumphant successful one at the end, after which she remained on top until she died at the age of 88 in 1971.

Would that MacLaine had more to do than look and act grumpy and chain-smoke cigarettes in her portion of the film, but Bobulova does nicely by the character throughout the main portion of the film. As an added bonus, the Costume Designers Guild-nominated costumes are quite lovely, evoking the feel of the various eras depicted in the film.

Coco Chanel is available on standard DVD only.

Long one of the most requested titles on DVD, Henry Hathaway’s 1936 film version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is finally here. The classic novel had been filmed three times before in 1914, 1916 and 1924, but this was the definitive version. The first outdoor film shot in color, it is glorious to look at as well as beautifully acted by a cast that includes Sylvia Sidney, Fred MacMurray, Beulah Bondi, Fred Stone, Spanky McFarland and Nigel Bruce. Bondi as the fierce proud mountain mother of one of the feuding families is the standout in the type of role she would reprise off and on for the next forty-plus years, finally winning an Emmy for one such variation guest starring on TV’s The Waltons in 1977 when she was close to 90 years old.

More than the first outdoor film shot in color, it was the first film in which color was subtly used as opposed to being highlighted. The colors in the previous year’s highly touted Becky Sharp were brilliant reds, purples, green and yellows meant to draw attention to themselves. The colors in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine were softer, more realistic.

The Trail of the Lonesome Pine is available on standard DVD only.

One of the most successful TV series of all time, Murder, She Wrote, ran from 1984 to 1996 and has been in syndication ever since. Though long requested on DVD, the first season was not made available until March 2005, but proved so successful that subsequent seasons have followed one another every few months. We are now up to the Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Tenth Season.

The most remarkable thing about the series is how little Angela Lansbury, as retired schoolteacher, mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher aged. Unless you know which season you are watching an episode from, it’s impossible to tell whether it was filmed in 1984 or 1994.

Subtle changes, though, did affect the series. The early years were heavy with well-known guest stars, most of whom either played the murder victim or the murderer. The middle years saw less participation by Lansbury. Several episodes had other actors take over her detection duties while she introduced the episode. Later seasons, however, when Lansbury herself produced the episodes, were stronger on plot and less top heavy with stars, making it more difficult to figure out whodunit. Such is the case with Season Ten.

Murder, She Wrote: The Complete Tenth Season is available on standard DVD only.

Another long-running mystery series, Matlock, starring TV stalwart Andy Griffith as a wily criminal defense attorney based in Atlanta, was a folksy amalgam of Perry Mason and Murder, She Wrote that hit the airwaves two years after the latter, running nearly as long from 1986-1995. Matlock has taken even longer than Murder, She Wrote to make its way to DVD. The first season was not made available until April 2008, but the second season followed in January of this year and now Matlock: The Third Season has been released.

Matlock: The Third Season is available on standard DVD only.

-Peter J. Patrick (July 7, 2009)