The DVD Report #71

Another week and still no truly outstanding new films on DVD, but there are some that will at least keep you entertained in the waning days of summer.

Keanu Reeves is at his stoic best in action director David Ayer’s Street Kings. Though Reeves’ delivery can sometimes be construed as sleepwalking, his cool reserve here is one of the best things in this otherwise standard good cop vs. dirty cops film. He and the equally reserved Chris Evans are not only the moral centers of the film but are the only two actors in it who don’t go over the top in their performances. The same can’t be said for Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, whose tics give him away long before the script does; Jay Mohr whose supposedly ambivalent character is repulsive from the beginning; or Hugh Laurie who seems to be playing House as an internal affairs cop. The rest of the cast, including Cedric the Entertainer, isn’t given much to do.

Extremely topical, documentary filmmaker John Jeffcoat’s first dramatic feature Outsourced was a hit at film festivals wherever it played but had only limited theatrical release late last year. The film, about a mid-level manager who is dispatched to India to train his replacement when his Seattle call center is outsourced to that country, is both a cultural clash comedy and a wry look at the state of corporate America. Josh Hamilton, in a rare lead role, is excellent as the duck out of water in his new environment. In his 30s, he’s considered young and carefree back home, old enough to be a grandfather in the Bombay suburbs. The ending, which you may or may not see coming, is sad and funny at the same time, and a strong indictment of the way things currently are.

You may be surprised to see Seann William Scott act like someone his own age for the first time on screen in writer-director Steve Conrad’s low-key comedy The Promotion, but the screen’s perennial teenager acquits himself quite nicely. Not a lot happens in this slice-of-life will-he-or-won’t-he film, but Scott makes you care about his character, an assistant manager at a grocery store with an opportunity to become manager of a new store in town. The premise seems a bit old fashioned in these days of rapid career changes, but Scott and John C. Reilly, as his chief opponent for the job, keep up the suspense nicely. The cast includes Jenna Fischer, Gil Bellows and a shamefully wasted Lili Taylor as Reilly’s Scottish wife.

It’s a widely held belief that all actors want to direct, though few get the opportunity. A good example of why not every actor should is Anthony Hopkins’ Slipstream, a dismal puzzle of a film about a writer whose characters intrude on his real life and whose real life intrudes on his characters’. Ostensibly a film in the manner of David Lynch, but without the style and certainly without the substance, it features newsreel images of Adolph Hitler and Richard Nixon, two real life characters Hopkins once played, as well as John Turturo, Christian Slater, Fionnula Flanagan, Kevin McCarthy and others. I recommend it only as a sure cure for insomnia.

Much more entertaining is the HBO movie Bernard and Doris, directed by character actor Bob Balaban. Balaban may not be as famous an actor as Hopkins but he is a far better director and has an Emmy nomination to prove it, as do his stars Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes as Doris Duke and the butler she left in charge of her $1.3 billion fortune. Sarandon convincingly plays “the richest girl in the world” from her late seventies to her early eighties without old age makeup and Fiennes affects a haunting image of the butler who died of alcoholism three years after Doris. James Rebhorn heads the supporting cast as Duke’s skeptical lawyer.

The old Hollywood warhorse about childhood friends who grow up to find themselves on opposite sides of the law is given another spin in 1958’s Never Love a Stranger directed by Emmy winning TV director Robert Stevens (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) from an early novel by Harold Robbins. It is of interest today mainly because of the casting of Steve McQueen in his first major role as the noble District Attorney. John Drew Barrymore, whose father John and daughter Drew you are probably more familiar with, has the more colorful role of the gangster. Lita Milan, who shortly thereafter married the son of a Dominican Republic dictator and went into exile in Spain, is their co-star.

Universal, and, to a lesser extent, MGM, were the studios that were most successful at making horror films in Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s. That doesn’t stop Fox from releasing its own series of so-called horror films. Though more gothic thrillers than horror films, Fox’s first release in the genre was so successful it has now spawned a second called Fox Horror Classics Vol. 2. True to form, two of the three films in the set are not really horror films.

The big screen version of famed children’s radio series, 1932’s Chandu the Magician, was co-directed by Marcel Darvel and William Cameron Menzies. It starred Edmund Lowe as the mystical magician and Bela Lugosi, straight from playing Dracula, as an evil madman who wants to control the world. The film spawned two sequels in which Lugosi, interestingly, was cast as the magician hero. Leading lady Irene Ware had been Miss United States in 1926 when she was just 16 years old.

The directorial debut of screenwriter Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946’s Dragonwyck, starred Gene Tierney as a young governess who falls in love with the lord of the manor, played by Vincent Price in one of his early villain roles. A superb supporting cast, including Glenn Langan, Walter Huston, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, and Harry Morgan, surrounds them. But it is the tug of war between Tierney and Price that holds this gothic thriller together.

The one real horror film in the collection, actually Fox’s first horror film, Dr. Renault’s Secret, was produced in 1942 with character actor J. Carrol Naish in a rare lead as a half-man, half-ape with a blood lust. George Zucco is the evil scientist who controls Naish’s character. Lynne Roberts is Zucco’s innocent daughter and John Sheppard is the young doctor who loves her. It was directed by Harry Lachman and produced by Sol Wurtzel, the man who discovered both Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe.

A genuine horror classic, 1988’s Child’s Play spawned a long-running franchise with Chucky the killer doll featured in four sequels and a brand new remake, but the original, directed by Tom Holand, remains as fresh and engaging as it ever was. Catherine Hicks is the mother of the six-year-old boy who buys him a life-size doll for his birthday unaware that it has been possessed by the soul of executed murderer Brad Dourif. Chris Sarandon is the slow-to-respond detective, and a terrific Alex Vincent is the kid. The brand new 20th Anniversary Edition features commentary by Hicks and Vincent as well as two other separate commentaries, one by writer Don Mancini and producer David Kirschner, and a scene-specific one by Chucky himself.

Major TV series continue to release prior season compilations in order to draw attention to their coming seasons. This week there are three high profile releases.

One of the most compelling series of recent years has been Medium, based on the life of Phoenix, Arizona psychic Allison Dubois. This season is more compelling than ever as Allison and her husband Joe, both having lost their jobs at the end of Season 3, struggle to raise their family and pay the mortgage while looking for new jobs. Having been held up to public scorn at the end of that season, Allison, played by Emmy winner Patricia Arquette, must now overcome her own notoriety in addition to the skepticism that was always there, in solving the most heinous of crimes. She has a new ally in private investigator Cynthia Keener played by Oscar winner Anjelica Huston who is nominated for an Emmy for her seven guest appearances over the course of the season.

Less compelling is Grey’s Anatomy – Season 4, a series that in the past countered its soap opera situations with life and death matters that drew you in even when the soap opera elements let you down. Last year’s Emmy winner Katherine Heigl got a lot of heat for taking herself out of this year’s Emmy race saying her story lines didn’t warrant consideration. She was right, but instead of being hailed for her honesty, the always cynical pundits berated her for trying to upset the show’s producers to the point where they would tear up her contract so she could make more high profile theatrical films. Heigl wasn’t the only one let down by the scripts, the abbreviated season did no favors for Ellen Pompeo, Sandra Oh, Patrick Dempsey, or any of the other cast members, either.

Coming off a fabulous first year, the sophomore season of Ugly Betty was bound to be a letdown. Whereas the first season mixed pathos with its irreverent comedy, the second season placed its emphasis on the funny bone with mixed results. Still, America Ferrara’s winsome Betty Suarez and Vanessa Williams’ catty troublemaking Wilhelmina Slater remain two of the freshest characters on television. Each earned Emmy nominations again this year, though it’s doubtful either will win. Tony Plana, Ana Ortiz and Mark Indelicato as Betty’s family members; Eric Mabius, Rebecca Romijn, and Judith Light as her boss and his family; Michael Urie as Wilhelmina’s assistant; and Christopher Gorham and Freddy Rodriguez as Betty’s love interests, are good, too.

Take you pick and pop one of these DVDs in your player this week.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 9, 2008)