The DVD Report #36

Inexplicably lost among the summer blockbusters, Stardust rightfully won the Phoenix Film Critics Society Award as the most overlooked film of 2007. Judging its DVD sales numbers, it could also emerge as the most overlooked DVD of 2007-2008.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake), this rollicking adventure is worth all the year’s blockbusters and sequels rolled into one. Charlie Cox stars as the son of a man from the real world and a woman from the fantasy world who enters the fantasy world in search of his mother and finds all sorts of adventures involving witches, ghosts and goats among other things. Sienna Miller is the mortal girl he thinks he’s in love with while top-billed Claire Danes is his true love, a fallen star.

The cast includes a wealth of name actors who provide terrific support, chief among them are narrator Ian McKellen, Peter O’Toole as the dying ruler of the fantasy world, Robert De Niro as a sea captain of the air and Michelle Pfeiffer as the most wicked of witches. This is the second film this year, after Hairspray, in which Pfeiffer steals the film playing a villain. It’s terrific fun.

Elmore Leonard’s short story, 3:10 to Yuma was the basis for a memorable 1957 western of the same name directed by Delmer Daves (Spencer’s Mountain) with Glenn Ford as a captured gunman and Van Heflin as the rancher who volunteers to escort him to prison for some much needed cash. Fifty years on, James Mangold (Walk the Line) has directed a new version of 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe as the gunman and Christian Bale as the rancher.

The new version is more complex, with more richly developed characters and situations. While I am not generally in favor of remakes, if you’re going to do one, this is the way to do it: take a good movie and make an even better version. Bale is especially good here playing his first middle-aged character, but the entire cast including Gretchen Mol, Dallas Roberts, Peter Fonda, Alan Tudyk and Logan Lerman is quite good. The one exception, in my view, is Ben Foster’s over-the-top portrayal of a loathsome cold-blooded killer that has been much praised elsewhere. The film has excellent production values including Phedon Papamichael’s (Sideways) cinematography and Marco Beltrami’s (Scream) score.

I often complain about the practice DVD companies have of double dipping, i.e. releasing a popular film in a movie only-edition, then going back and re-issuing the same film with special features. A rare instance of double-dipping that is worth renting or buying the expanded edition is Zodiac. At least in this case, they were up front about it, readily admitting that the movie-only DVD was being released because there hadn’t been time to put together a special edition, but that one would be forthcoming.

This is indeed a movie that cried out for a special edition, as the film raises more questions than it answers. The two-disc Special Edition includes commentary by stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey, Jr., producer Brad Fischer, producer/writer James Vanderbilt, and L.A. Confidential author James Ellroy, and several documentaries.

Among the documentaries are This Is the Zodiac Speaking, an all-new feature length film covering all aspects of the investigation, featuring interviews with original investigators and surviving victims, and His Name Was Arthur Leigh Allen about the prime suspect in the case. The “director’s cut” of the film itself, at 2 hours and 42 minutes, runs five minutes longer than the theatrical release.

Warner Bros. is throwing the spotlight on five directors whose work is not especially well known, by releasing five classic films made between 1968 and 1982, one film from each of them.

The oldest and best known of the group is 1968’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, directed by Robert Ellis Miller (Reuben, Reuben), most of whose previous and subsequent work has been on TV. Alan Arkin won a richly deserved New York Film Critics Circle Award for his moving portrayal of a deaf mute savant who is able to solve everyone’s problems but his own. Both he and Sondra Locke, in her film debut, as a sensitive teenager and stand-in for author Carson McCullers, also won Oscar nominations for their performances, but the entire cast is outstanding. It includes Chuck McCann as Arkin’s dimwitted friend, Stacy Keach as a recovering alcoholic, Percy Rodriguez as a haughty black doctor and Cicely Tyson as his troubled daughter. Dave Grusin’s score is also noteworthy.

Another film from a director known mostly for his TV work is 1973’s Payday, directed by Daryl Duke (The Thorn Birds). This very cynical film, which compares favorably to Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd Crowd, exposes the truth about a beloved country singer much in the way the Kazan film exposed the truth about a popular television star. Rip Torn has one of his best roles as the singer who is a total jerk in real life.

Terrence McNally (Frankie and Johnny) adapted his hit Broadway play, The Ritz, for the screen in 1976. The director is Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night), whose work is probably the best known of the five directors represented here. Jack Weston stars as the bookkeeper hiding out from his mobster brother-in-law Jerry Stiller in a gay bathhouse whose denizens include Treat Williams and F. Murray Abraham. Rita Moreno, repeating her Tony Award-winning role as a never-been has-been singer, has never been better. It’s a hilarious farce from beginning to end.

Oscar-winning actress Lee Grant (Shampoo) is also an acclaimed director. Her 1986 film, Down and Out in America, won an Oscar as best documentary of its year. Represented here, though, is one of her earlier dramatic films,1980’s Tell Me a Riddle. Featuring acclaimed performances by Oscar winners Melvyn Douglas (Hud, Being Therer) and Lila Kedrova (Zorba the Greek), it is basically a character study of an elderly couple who have grown apart and re-connect as the wife lies dying of cancer. Kedrova is especially moving as the wife who has spent much of her life turning off her hearing aid and retreating into her books to shut out the world.

Oscar-winning writer Robert Towne (Chinatown) made his directorial debut with 1982’s Personal Best, one of the best sports films of its day. Mariel Hemingway, who spent much of her career making trashy films, gives perhaps her best performance as an Olympic track and field hopeful. Scott Glenn as her coach, Patrice Donnelly and Kenny Moore as fellow athletes, with whom Hemingway has affairs, are also quite good. The film is also notable as one of the first mainstream American films to realistically depict a lesbian romance, the one between Hemingway and Donnelly. Moore later wrote, and Donnelly acted as technical advisor on, Towne’s unjustly neglected Without Limits.

Criterion has given the two-disc special treatment to the 1971 cult road movie Two-Lane Blacktop. Singer-songwriter James Taylor and the Beach Boys’ Dennis Wilson star in their only film as a drag racer and his mechanic who enter into a cross-country race with the older owner of a new car. Acting honors go to Warren Oates as the other driver. Director Monte Hellman insists his film is a better movie than The Graduate and Easy Rider. It isn’t, but if you’re into 1955 Chevys and 1970 GTOs it may just be your cup of tea.

From Fox comes the 50th Anniversary Edition: An Affair to Remember, a two-disc special edition that includes Leo McCarey’s beloved romantic comedy starring Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant as well as an AMC back story on the film, and documentaries on Kerr, Grant, McCarey and producer Jerry Wald.

Until next time, that should be enough to keep you warm and dry.

-Peter J. Patrick (January 8, 2008)