DVD Grab Bag September

By: Kevin Filipski

Tuesday September 12, 2006

Resident Kevin Filipski dishes on DVDs available in September.
Apparently, audiences were not ready to go to movie theaters to watch a re-enactment of the fateful flight of the lone plane which didn't reach its intended target on September 11. Will DVD viewers show more interest now that we've arrived at the 5th anniversary of the attacks?

Either way, United 93 (Universal) remains a superbly-made dramatization of what might have happened aboard that plane from the time it took off from Newark Airport until it crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania less than two hours later.

Paul Greengrass's film is as filled with verisimilitude as his previous docudrama, Bloody Sunday, which showed in exacting, painful detail how the massacre of Irish civilians by British troops occurred in 1972. United 93 supposes many events: how the hijackers prepared for and carried out their mission; how the air traffic controllers and military command posts reacted to and dealt with the ongoing horror of that morning; and, finally and most importantly, how the innocent passengers might have taken matters into their own hands to attempt to alter the course of history.

The physical production of United 93 is brilliant-the realistic sets, the razor-sharp editing which merges real and fictionalized footage, the stark photography-and if the script at times lags behind in its lack of urgency and realism, the inherent melodrama is the nature of such a beast. Still, that Greengrass never shows any family members of the hijacked passengers prevents his film from ever approaching the maudlin low that the TV version of the same events did.

Greengrass's commentary is a must-hear, as much for what he explains and discusses as for what he doesn't. Often, his silences speak louder than his colorful comments. Also included is a heartrending hour-long account of several victims' family members' reaction to the fact that a film is being made about how their loved ones horribly died, along with how they still cope with that day.

The now-infamous War on Terror that the Bush administration has loosed upon the world can be dealt with in many ways, but only Albert Brooks dares use it as an excuse to make another of his myopic, insular comedies of (lack of) manners. The stupid title, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Warners), is an obvious clue to casual moviegoers that this is not for them: only those who can appreciate Brooks's caustic, often inscrutable sense of humor would find anything remotely funny in this tale of a has-been comedian named Albert Brooks chosen by the State Dept. to go to India and find out what makes Muslims laugh.

That's the entire story: like most Brooks films, this one peters out before the end, but prior to that, it contains some of his most bitterly, blackly hilarious sequences, most of which are head over heels above the last 15 years of his film work-yes, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World is Brooks' most consistent comedy since Lost in America. Then again, it's no Modern Romance, but it does the satirical job it set out to do. The lone extras are five minutes' worth of deleted scenes, including a priceless bit where Brooks goes to different video stores to see if any of his movies are available. They're not.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Warners), Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black's directorial debut, has all the stylish wit and humor that those earlier movies lacked. That might not be the entire reason why it flopped at the box office, but I'd hate to think it was because its leading men-Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr.-are not big stars and have never been the kind of names to pull in the mass audience. Too bad for the mass audience.

Of course KKBB is a wiseass movie, filled with wisecracking and gunplay-the blueprint is obviously Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, whose influence on scores of movies has rarely been acknowledged-but the reason it works is because Kilmer and Downey are able to say Black's outrageous lines believably in character, not like movie stars pretending to be acting as they toss one-liners to each other (which marred Denzel Washington's performance in Spike Lee's Inside Man) Black, of course, has Downey narrate the movie and often nods to the audience that this is a movie, particularly at the end, but that never detracts from KKBB's success as sheer entertainment.

Extras include Black, Kilmer and Downey hanging out and dissing each other as they attempt an audio commentary, a brief making-of featurette and the usual goofball bloopers, which are becoming de rigeur on DVDs nowadays, as more and more actors seemingly mug and flub their lines to ensure such bonus material.

As a director, Sydney Pollack has always favored a no-nonsense technique, whether or not the material calls for it. Strangely, his first documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry (Sony)- which should be almost surreal in its visualization of the visionary buildings of the world's most famous (or infamous) architect-is as straightforward as Pollack's other pictures, but it works.

Why? Mostly because Pollack, as tour guide and friend of Gehry's, humanizes the man and his work, making him less imposing than you'd think a "genius" would be. Pollack shows him, warts and all-although at 80 minutes in length, nothing is too deep or meaningful-and the end result is that architecture, a difficult subject at any length, is at least discussed informally. The lone bonus is a Q&A session with Pollack following a screening-the questioner is Sideways director Alexander Payne.

Since I've never been a fan of Penelope Cruz's looks or talent, I wasn't as impressed by her supposed transformation into an ugly, low-class tramp in Don't Move (Wellspring), actor Sergio Castellitto's directorial debut. Castellitto plays an upper-crust doctor whose long-ago affair with a scary but entrancing female informs his current life, including the nervy times following his daughter's near-fatal accident.

Castellitto is superb, as always, as the conflicted doctor; Cruz does what she can, but since her arsenal of tricks is so limited, she's not entirely successful. She does look the part, though, and it didn't take a thorough deglamorizing to achieve such an effect. Castellitto's wife Margaret Mazzantini, whose novel is the basis for the film, discusses her book's transformation into a movie, and there's even Cruz screen tests for completists.

It's too bad that Castellitto didn't cast Giovanna Mezzogiorno as his anti-heroine in Don't Move; her luminous acting in Don't Tell (Lions Gate)-which won her the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival last year-is the main draw of this intelligent melodrama about a woman and her brother who finally try to face the horrors of their childhood following their parents' death.

Cristina Comencini-who also adapted her novel-directed Don't Tell, and what she lacks in nuance she makes up for in empathy for her lead actress, and Mezzogiorno responds with the sort of finely-shaded, subtle characterization that deserves whatever accolades and awards that come her way. On the basis of The Last Kiss, Facing Windows and now Don't Tell, Giovanna Mezzogiorno is not merely one of the leading actresses in Italy, but in all of cinema. (I hear she's a superb stage actress as well.) Unfortunately, none of the interviews on the Italian disc have made it onto Lions Gate's DVD.

Stoned (Screen Media) sounded like it might have made for intriguing drama-the circumstances surrounding the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones's drowning in 1969-and, even though there is enough here for an interesting movie, director Stephen Wooley can't quite pull it off. He gets the miscellaneous details right, from the flower-child atmosphere to the psychedelic drugs and willing orgy participants, but he traffics in not-yet-proven allegations of who was to blame for Taylor's death. It's watchable and, if you're a Stones fan, good and gossipy, but Stoned too often lives up to its title-literally. The lone bonus is 20 minutes of deleted scenes.

Did we really need a remake of The Poseidon Adventure, the 1972 upside-down ship adventure that started the run on early and mid-70s disaster movies? (Next up, apparently, will be new versions of The Towering Inferno, Earthquake and Swarm!). By the looks of Poseidon (Warners), even 35 years of improved special effects can't help sell a story that's none too exciting to begin with. Wolfgang Petersen-who loves water-logged movies, from Das Boot to The Perfect Storm to this-is the best director for this type of material, but all too often that material forgets a competent script. Various stereotypes drown, fight to survive or die trying for what's at least a mercifully short 98 minutes, but the effects never pull us in; on the contrary, they seem excessively fake throughout. Only the water looks real.

The excellent bonuses on the Poseidon two-disc set range from short featurettes on various aspects of the production to a 45-minute History Channel episode on rogue waves (which overturns the ship) which is informative, factual, and-at least when it's not plugging the movie-consistently interesting to watch.

Raved about at various festivals, The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Sony) looks at the sad case of a singer-songwriter whose schizophrenia prevents him from fully utilizing his musical talents. While I think his actual talent is debatable-he's definitely no Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson (the latter of whom he's compared to in the film)-this is still an involving case study of the difficulties of true creativity. By showing Johnston in context-his family speaks freely, and there are many samples from his tapes, both musical and spoken, that form a running diary of his life-The Devil and Daniel Johnston makes an instructive psychological portrait, regardless of its rather negligible musical value.

Extras include deleted scenes, Daniel's audio diaries, and a featurette showing the touching reunion between Daniel and his high school muse Lauren after a festival screening.