The films coming out on DVD right now are pretty fair, all things considered. Some Oscar nominees, some blockbusters, and a whole lot of TV on DVD. So let’s take a look at the new releases, care of our good friends at Scarecrow Video.
The big one coming out this Tuesday is The King’s Speech. And while the film is perfectly fine: an adequate screenplay and direction by Tom Hooper, great set design, and well-deserved awards Colin Firth’s portrayal of King George the stammerer. But The King’s Speech still was not the best picture of 2010, and assuredly, history will bear it out that in this instance old furs and pearls should not have beat the young modern movie. Everyone knows The Social Network is the one that’s evident of where film is going, not where it’s been for decades. Sorry, David Fischer, you wuz robbed.
Also out on DVD are two Oscar buzzworthy films that I saw at TIFF last year, Rabbit Hole and Casino Jack. When it comes to the film that earned Nicole Kidman a Oscar nomination:
My final festival film was Rabbit Hole, an adaptation of the 2007 Pulitzer prize-winning play about a husband and wife’s grief after the accidental death of their child. On stage, the couple was played by John Slattery and Cynthia Nixon, which in the film is translated into Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman. That makes sense–in both cases, he’s charming and she’s brittle. Both actors give strong performances (they’ve got the material to do so), and the patient, mature direction is surprisingly care of John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. The film fleshes out aspects of the play, adding characters only mentioned in the original piece, as well as throwing in a support group subplot that is entirely unnecessary. But despite all those positive attributes, Rabbit Hole runs into the eternal problem of turning a great play into a film (see Doubt): The exact reasons that a play works well–the focus on the words and the big speeches and the acting flourishes–are what limit it as a film. Simply put, I like Rabbit Hole the play more.
Meanwhile:
Casino Jack (not to be confused with the Alex Gibney documentary on the same topic with nearly the same name) stars Kevin Spacey as Jack Abramoff, another asshole role that Spacey can add to his asshole filmography. Spacey takes on the role with great relish–due to Abramoff’s real-life love of movies, he gets to show off his impersonation skills–with Barry Pepper as his partner in crime, Michael Scanlon. While the film has its moments (and Jon Lovitz, as a mob-affiliated businessman, steals nearly every scene he’s in), I still prefer the documentary to the narrative feature, if only because the truth is always stranger than the fictionalized version thereof.
I Love You Phillip Morris showed at Sundance a couple years ago, but it took that long for the studios to find a market for a gay con man prison love story with Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey, and even then, they weren’t quite sure how to market it. It’s supposed to be decent, though. Can’t say the same for the abysmal reviews given to Gwyneth in Country Strong, and while Sofia Coppola’s latest Somewhere got mixed reviews, I think it’s worth it for you to spend a couple hours in a hotel with Stephen Dorff and Ella Fanning.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 is of course one of the biggest DVD releases of late, and Disney released a Blu-ray version of the original Tron to go along with Tron Legacy. Those two films are certainly better than the gruesome twosome of Gulliver’s Travels and Little Fockers.
With its bad reviews and low box office gross, it looked as if The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader would be the third and final Narnia film, but it did well enough internationally to ensure that The Magician’s Nephew would be made. If you like well-choreographed Hong Kong martial arts film, then you definitely check out Ip Man 2 (and the first one for that matter). And you’ll have to wait until Friday for the DVD release of The Way Back, based on the true story of a POW escape from a Siberian prison camp, starring Ed Harris, Colin Farrell, and Jim Sturgess.
In new foreign film releases, The Taqwacores is about Muslim American punk bands in Buffalo, based on Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel. Claire Denis’ latest, White Material, about a French family trying to maintain their coffee plantation even as the African nation falls into civil war, gets the Criterion treatment. Vision – From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen is a striking portrait of the German mystic nun, and Farewell (L’Affaire Farewell) is a riveting drama from last year about a disillusioned Russian KGB officer who gives documents to a French businessman living in Russia, forcing him to act as a spy.
Speaking of great films from last year, Marwencol was one of the best documentaries from 2010, about a man who sustained major brain damage from an assault, and now creates a world that’s a mixture of reality and fantasy with dolls and intricately designed sets. Gas Hole is yet another documentary on the oil crisis and alternative fuels, while If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise is Spike Lee’s latest unflinching look at Katrina. On the lighter side, Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story is exactly what it sounds like, while Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber both have new looks at their careers in One Sequin at a Time and Rise to Fame, respectively.
In TV on DVD, Glee continues to milk the cash cow with the release of Encore, which is just a collection of musical numbers from season 1. Friday Night Lights is just about to start to run their fifth and final season on NBC, or you can rent it instead. Now that Big Love is over, you can get your polygamy mix with TLC series Sister Wives. Your choice on how to kill your brain: Sarah Palin’s Alaska, American Dad volume 6, or Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D List, season 4. Get slightly realer with Man Vs. Wild season 5. Or go back to your childhood with The Fresh Prince of Bel Air: The Complete Sixth Season and Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Season One.
New to Blu-ray: Taxi Driver, AI, and Fiddler on the Roof. There’s a Bambi two-disc diamond edition, another special edition of The Incredibles, and an Arthur/Arthur 2 Blu-ray set just in time for the terrible remake. Tracy and Hepburn have a new Definitive Collection, Ingrid Berman has a 3-Film Collection, Roger Corman’s new collection is Action-Packed, and early TV comedian Ernie Kovacs gets a collection too. And of course, Criterion has a few new films up their sleeves. Jean-Pierre Melville makes crime stylish in Le Cercle Rouge, Jane Campion creates an eccentric Australian family in Sweetie, Terry Gilliam and Johnny Depp go gonzo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Brian De Palma and John Travolta do their twisted version of Antonioni’s Blow-Up in an extras-heavy edition of Blow Out.
Let’s take a look at the grab bag. For a straight-to-DVD release, Summer in Genoa, with a widowed Colin Firth coming back to life in Italy, is supposed to be perfectly fine. Not so good is Colin Firth in war epic The Last Legion, out on Blu-ray this week. Steven Seagal has a new movie out, and in Born to Raise Hell, he gets caught in a bloody street war between a Gypsy gang and the Russians, because you know street justice has no rules. Danny Trejo is hitting while the Machete iron is hot in The Bill Collector, where he has come to get what is owed him. In Love Me or Leave Me, a mother abandons her twin infants only to re-enter their lives twenty years later. It’s complicated! And in Fubar: Balls to the Wall, two Canadian headbangers bet they can make some serious cash up north working on the oil pipelines. What could possibly go wrong?