The DVD Report #75

Some of the major films released earlier in the year are now making their way to Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Character actor Richard Jenkins has the role of his career in one of the year’s best films, Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor, now available in both formats. Much like McCarthy’s earlier The Station Agent, it’s one of those films in which nothing seems to be happening while life sneaks up on you and grabs you by the throat.

Jenkins plays an emotionally dead college professor who reawakens to the joys of life when he befriends a young illegal alien couple who has rented his New York apartment from a con man while Jenkins was living in his Connecticut home. The film explores a side of New York life that most people never see, about people that the materialistic characters of Sex and the City would pass and never notice.Haaz Slieman and Danai Gurira are superb as the struggling young couple and Israeli Arab actress Haim Abbass brings both dignity and charm to the role of the young man’s mother.

An engaging comedy from producer Judd Apatow, Forgetting Sarah Marshall was written by the film’s star Jason Segel who plays the composer of background music for a TV show starring his live-in girlfriend, Kristen Bell, who dumps him for singer Russell Brand. Mila Kunis is the hotel clerk with whom he finds solace while still pursuing Bell on a vacation in Hawaii. Full of nice comic bits, the best is the climactic Dracula-with-puppets mini-musical performed by Segel and company. Extras include karaoke sing-alongs to the film’s songs, among them “Dracula’s Lament” and “Inside of You”.

With a little bit of Batman, a little bit of Spider-Man, and a lot of heart, director Jon Favreau has given us the year’s first superhero of classic stature in Iron Man featuring a strong central performance by Robert Downey Jr. as the playboy entrepreneur-turned-savior of the world. Gwyneth Paltrow has her best role in years as his loyal assistant and Jeff Bridges adds to his gallery of memorable characters as the driving force behind Downey’s business ventures. Tons of extras include a story about the comic character’s origins.

Just in time for Halloween, a number of classic scary films are being released on Blu-ray.

The oldest of the lot is 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, a fantasy film that only the very young may find scary. The rest of us can thrill to Ray Harryhausen’s wondrous stop-motion animation and Bernard Herrmann’s great score. Based on tales of the Arabian Nights, the film, which was directed by former art director Nathan Juran, an Oscar winner for How Green was My Valley, stars Kerwin Matthews and Kathryn Grant as Sinbad and Princess Parisa. Extras include commentary by Harryhausen.

Not scary at all, but a terrific spoof of scary movies, Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein,released in 1974, is perhaps the writer-director’s best film. It’s certainly his best looking black-and-white film, and looks better than ever on Blu-ray.

Gene Wilder is the college professor grandson of the original Frankenstein who inherits his grandfather’s castle and proceeds to conduct the same experiments that got his predecessor in trouble. Hilarity abounds with a terrific supporting cast that includes Peter Boyle as the monster, Madeline Kahn, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman and Marty Feldman. Loads of extras include interviews with Wilder, Leachman and Feldman.

Scary is ratcheted up a few notches with 1976’s The Omen, the first of four films in The Omen Collection. Also included are 1978’s equally scary Damien: Omen II; 1981’s Omen III: The Final Conflict; and the completely unnecessary 2006 remake of the original.

Jerry Goldsmith’s eerie score for the original version of The Omen sets the mood for the terrifying tale of the Antichrist born of a wolf, switched at birth with the murdered baby of rock-solid Gregory Peck and his beautiful but emotionally unstable wife Lee Remick. David Warner as a frightened soothsayer, Billie Whitelaw as an evil governess and Harvey Stephens as the child monster, Damien, all excel under the direction of Richard Donner and the cinematography of Gilbert Taylor.

Every bit as frightening and brilliantly played is the film’s first sequel, Damien: Omen II with William Holden and Lee Grant taking over as the guardians of the young Antichrist, now entering puberty. The grade A supporting cast includes Lew Ayres, Sylvia Sidney, Robert Foxworth, Nicholas Pryor and Jonathan Scott-Taylor in the title role. Goldsmith’s score once again supplies the perfect level of eeriness under the direction of Don Taylor and the cinematography of Bill Butler.

The second sequel, The Final Conflict, is a decided step down as the now adult Damien, played by Sam Neill, seeks to bring on Armageddon. Neill, though good, is stymied by the script, which even the redoubtable Rosano Brazzi is unable to rise above. Graham Becker directed.

The recent remake of The Omen steps up the gore but is lacking in every other way, from Marco Beltami’s score to John Moore’s diffident direction to the lackluster acting of Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, David Thewlis and Mia Farrow in the roles created by Peck, Remick, Warner and Whitelaw. Thewlis was so bad in fact, that he received a Razzie nomination for his performance.

From 1976, the same year as the original version of The Omen, comes another horror classic new to Blu-ray, Brian De Palma’s Carrie, arguably the best big screen version of a film made from a Stephen King novel. Sissy Spacek solidified her climb to film stardom as the mousy teenager who uses her telekinetic powers to reek vengeance on her callous classmates. Spacek hits all the right notes, becoming only the third lead performer, behind Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, to win an Oscar nomination for a horror film. The equally wonderful Piper Laure was nominated in the supporting category for her comeback performance as Spacek’s religious fanatic nut of a mother. William Katt, John Travolta, Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, P.J. Soles and Betty Buckley also turn in memorable performances.

A horror story of another stripe is Lawence Kasdan’s Body Heat from 1981, about the dangers of falling under the spell of a conniving lover. William Hurt is the dumb lawyer who falls for seductress Kathleen Turner who convinces him to murder her husband, Richard Crenna. It’s steeped in the traditions of 1940s film noir masterpieces like Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice but imbued with a frankness that was unavailable to film-makers of forty years earlier.

The rare film that improves on a classic original, John Carpenter’s The Thing from 1982 is a remake of Howard Hawks’ 1951 film, The Thing From Another World, adapted from the short story “Who Goes There?” Kurt Russell is the leader of a group of scientists in the Antarcitc besieged by a shape-shifting alien that first presents itself in the form of a dog. Wilford Brimley and T.K. Carter co-star. Extras include commentary by Carpenter and Russell.

Tim Burton’s sophomore effort, 1988’s delightful Beetlejuice, may be about ghosts but it isn’t really scary. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis are at their hilarious best as recently deceased ghosts who hire “bio-exorcist” Michael Keaton, a revelation in the title role, to rid their home of its obnoxious new occupants. Jeffrey Jones, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder are memorable as those occupants, as is Sylvia Sidney as an inhabitant of the after-life. Danny Elfman’s score is, as it is with most of Burton’s films, an added treat. Extras include episodes from the animated TV series that followed.

The most successful horror film of recent years, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense won six 1999 Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Direction, Screenplay (by Shyamalan), Editing (by Andrew Mondshein), Supporting Actor Haley Joel Osment as the boy who can see ghosts, and Supporting Actress Toni Collette as his mother. Bruce Willis stars as the child psychologist who tries to help the boy, though it’s he who really needs the help. Olivia Williams, Donnie Wahlberg and Glenn Fitzgerald co-star. Much of the film’s success derives from Mondshein’s skillful editing. Extras include deleted scenes and numerous documentaries on the making of the film.

Now to catching up with TV shows now out on standard DVD.

Getting through season four of Boston Legal has proven to be quite a chore. I can’t believe how bad this show has gotten and still managed to pull off Emmy nominations for Best Series, Actor, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress.

I kept waiting for some redeeming value to come through, but it just kept getting worse, not that it was all that great to begin with. Are there any more smug characters on TV than those played by James Spader and William Shatner? If so, I hope I never meet them.
The cases the firm takes on are mostly ridiculous to begin with, and the fact they win most of them is an insult to the intelligence.

The season’s cast of supporting characters is a washout. Newcomer Tara Summers has some nice moments, but Taraji P. Henson is ill-used and Saffron Burrows’ character, a highly paid attorney who doubles as a high priced madam with escort services in several major cities, is beyond bizarre. The men, aside from Spader and Shatner, are given short shrift. There are no young studs this season to give competition to middle-aged Spader and elderly Shatner who have all the easy women to themselves. A mannequin of John Larroquettte would suffice for his character of the managing attorney replacing the redoubtable Rene Auberjonois. Christian Clemenson’s tics grow more annoying with each episode and they seem to keep Gary Anthony Williams’ around just for the occasional cheap drag queen laugh.

The one saving grace aside from newcomer Summers is Candice Bergen who has two standout episodes. One, a reunion with old flame Scott Bakuka, and the other, a court case involving euthanizing her father. Guest stars aside from the ones playing judges aren’t given much to do, but thankfully those judges are played with such high style by Henry Gibson, Shelley Berman, Roma Maffeo, Chuck McCann, Loretta Devine and others that they at least make the courtroom scenes bearable.

-Peter J. Patrick (October 7, 2008)