The DVD Beat - April 21

DVD PICK OF THE WEEK:

The Wrestler
Everyone has been labeling Mickey Rourke’s performance in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” as a comeback. I think of it more as a resurrection. Rourke has always been a terrific actor and a magnetic presence, but even he admits that he hadn’t appeared in a decent movie in a while. This film came along at just the right time: Randy “The Ram” Robinson not only fits Rourke’s gruff charm and weathered looks, but it also mirrors Rourke’s anguish so closely that at times we feel like we’re watching a personal confession. The actor and the role are inextricably linked, and we not only fall for Randy but for Mickey as well. “The Wrestler” works as an old-fashioned underdog story, it works as a portrait of life on the underside of celebrity, and it works as a showcase for Rourke’s astonishing performance. I named it the best picture of 2008, and my opinion hasn’t changed. See this movie—see it, see it, see it. [R; 111m.]

ALSO ON DVD:

Frost/Nixon
Ron Howard’s “Frost/Nixon” does what Oliver Stone’s “W” failed to do: It takes an easy political target and approaches it from an angle we aren’t expecting. Stone’s film was meant to be an empathetic portrait of our then-President, but it was really just a cartoonish polemic that told us nothing new or enlightening about its subject. Howard’s film, on the other hand, is not about Nixon the President but Nixon the man. It does not take sides—it simply observes. Based on Peter Morgan’s stage play, the film is a fictionalized re-creation of British reporter David Frost’s 1977 interviews with Nixon, which concerned such touchy subjects as Watergate, Vietnam and the President’s resignation. Michael Sheen is terrific as Frost, a fluff TV host who is determined to disprove his critics. And Frank Langella, Oscar-nominated for his work here, is pitch perfect as Nixon--intimidating, vulnerable, devious, pitiable. [R; 122m.]

Notorious
Christopher Wallace was only 24 when he was gunned down in L.A., an apparent victim of the escalating East Coast-West Coast rap battles. Wallace, better known as the Notorious B.I.G., is the subject of “Notorious,” a standard biopic that chronicles Wallace’s rise and eventual downfall. Wallace is played by newcomer Jamal Woolard, whose performance is the best thing in the film, as is the soundtrack, which features Biggie’s genre-defying music. The only problem is that “Notorious” is extremely conventional, existing almost as a shrine to its subject—he is loved by his contemporaries but his personal life is a mess, and he only realized his full potential right before he died. It probably doesn’t help that two of the film’s producers are Wallace’s mother, Voletta, and his producer, Sean Combs, both of whom are characters in the movie. It’s a moderately entertaining picture, and worth seeing if you’re a fan of Wallace’s oeuvre. [R; 123m.]

Killer cops, killer beats, killer lips

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

WHAT TO RENT THIS WEEKEND:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Woody Allen is one of my favorite writer-directors, and the fact that I haven’t really admired anything he’s made since “Bullets Over Broadway” is distressing. But “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” although far from a masterpiece, is the best picture he’s made in a very long time. It’s a breezy romantic comedy, as light and airy as a soufflé, concerning two students (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) vacationing in Spain and their brief but tumultuous relationship with a toothsome artist (Javier Bardem) and his eccentric ex-lover (the brilliant Penélope Cruz). Like an Eric Rohmer mosaic, the film revels in showing us beautiful people in beautiful locales—the Spanish scenery is absolutely gorgeous, as are Johansson, Hall and Cruz. But Allen doesn’t treat his characters as asides: The women especially are written with refreshing complexity, and this is Allen’s best portrait of female psychology since the great “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Read my original review here.
Grade: B+

ALSO ON DVD:

Lakeview Terrace
Neil LaBute, once a great indie provocateur, seems to have lost his edge as he’s gone mainstream. His newest film is “Lakeview Terrace,” a wannabe social commentary that plays it safe when it should be ruffling feathers. Samuel L. Jackson stars as a prejudiced cop who resents the young, interracial couple (Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) who move in next door, and he makes their lives a living hell: He installs bright security lights that shine through their windows, he spies on them in their backyard, he slashes their tires, he assaults and humiliates and frightens them. Why does he do all of this? Well, we wouldn’t question his actions if he hadn’t been written as such a hate-spewing cartoon, but the movie’s explanation for his behavior is so clunky and superficial that it undermines the film’s attempts at legitimacy. And by the time the picture reaches its last reel, it has completely deconstructed into a contrived Hollywood thriller.
Grade: C

The Rocker
Rainn Wilson of “The Office” has his first star vehicle, a pleasant but predictable feel-good comedy about a goofball rock ‘n’ roll drummer who’s kicked out of his band right as they’re making it big (think Pete Best). After years of slumming it, he becomes a replacement drummer for his teenage nephew’s garage band, which ends up becoming massively popular. The movie is slightly better than most in its genre: It doesn’t resort to mean-spirited or gross-out humor, and I appreciate that the characters are smart and that Wilson has a shaggy dog appeal. If only the script hadn’t recycled a formulaic story that involves the band’s meteoric rise to fame, the perils of the cutthroat music industry and Wilson’s tepid romance with the underused Christina Applegate.
Grade: C

RocknRolla
You’re either with Guy Ritchie or you’re not. I’m with him, but I say that with some hesitation: He certainly knows how to shoot and style a picture, but the jury’s still out on whether he can create compelling human drama (his remake of “Swept Away,” which actually attempted pathos, was a disaster). I can’t deny, though, that I’ve been mostly entertained by his films, and, almost in spite of myself, I liked “RocknRolla,” even if it’s a pale shadow of his “Snatch,” which was itself a pale shadow of his first feature, “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.” The plot is almost comically convoluted. Its characters include a powerful crime boss, a Russian real estate magnate, a sexy accountant, a drug-addicted rock star and a gang of foolhardy bandits. It plows along at a mile a minute, exploring London ganglands, the music industry and the art world, and it’s told in an aggressive, self-aware manner that excels in some scenes and becomes aggravating in others. But the movie mostly works—as a comedy, as a crime caper and as an example of cheeky, excessive style.
Grade: B

Journeys to both ends of the Earth

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

The Pick of the Week
WALL-E
WALL-E is an amazingly expressive character, yet he doesn’t speak. He communicates in blips and bleeps and other sound effects, but he has a wonderfully animated pair of eyes that resemble binoculars and convey just about every emotion. I suppose it would be more appropriate to refer to WALL-E as an “it,” not a “he,” but he—yes, he—is such a lovely character that we soon forget he’s a hunk of metal and invest our emotions in him.

He is a cute, ambulatory robot, existing alone on a long-desolate Earth. Some 800 years ago, when humans vacated the planet and now live comfortably in an orbiting space station, WALL-E’s were left behind to deal with waste management. Our WALL-E is the only one of his kind left, and over time he has developed a precocious personality.

WALL-E is lonely, with only an ever-resilient cockroach to keep him company, and he fantasizes about romance while watching his favorite movie, “Hello, Dolly.” When a robot called EVE shows up to search for plant life on Earth, WALL-E is smitten. But when EVE is summoned back to the human’s space station, WALL-E follows, and he incites mayhem aboard the ship, liberating a group of malfunctioning robots.

This is the point in the story when “WALL-E” sort of loses steam. It goes from an engaging physical comedy to an environmental sci-fi fable that only partially works. The space station is inhabited by fat, lazy humans, who resemble pustules in hovering chairs that they never get out of. They’re not as engaging as WALL-E himself, and it’s too bad that director Andrew Stanton, who previously helmed “A Bug’s Life” and “Finding Nemo,” can’t quite sustain the magic of the film’s opening half hour.

But “WALL-E” is not only a great animated film, but a great film period. Pixar continues to prove that animation is not just a medium for children, and that family films can be sophisticated, intelligent and charming.

Grade: A-

Also on DVD
Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World” would probably be just another Discovery Channel nature documentary had it not been for Herzog himself. He is such an engaging character, and his off-beat narration is so earnestly kooky that it almost threatens to overtake the images. Actually, I take that back. The images in this movie are glorious, Herzog or not. The director travels to the South Pole to observe the scientists living and working there, and he finds some tremendously interesting people—a man who was nearly kidnapped and killed by Venezuelan militants, another who discovered he was of royal Aztec heritage because of the lines on his hands, a lady who once “traveled from Denver to Bolivia in a sewer pipe.” The world below the ice is even more astonishing. There are moments in the movie where Herzog allows his camera to simply observe, and the sights of the strange aquatic life, the towering icebergs and the vast desolation of the ocean are, at times, breathtaking. And then there’s Herzog at the center of everything. When he secures an interview with an eccentric penguin biologist, what does he ask? “Is there such a thing as a gay penguin?” You have to love the guy.
Grade: A-

Two Liv Tyler movies in one day? Count me in!

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

The Incredible Hulk
In 2003, Ang Lee made a noble effort to adapt “The Incredible Hulk” comic book series onto the big screen. The film’s visual style was remarkably good, but the story was dull, the drama turgid and the Hulk itself unimpressively rendered—it looked more like a Lump than a Hulk.

Now we have this sequel-of-sorts, which replaces the cast and director and has been retooled to be more of a straight-up summer blockbuster.

Edward Norton is a substitute for Eric Bana, and he’s a much better choice for the role of scientist-turned-science experiment Bruce Banner. As the film opens, Banner is living in secrecy in Brazil when he’s tracked down by a British mercenary named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth). Blonsky has been assigned to capture Banner and hand him over to power-hungry General Ross (William Hurt), who has plans to siphon the Hulk’s power and use it to engineer an army of all-powerful superhuman soldiers.

Banner becomes a fugitive, reuniting with his old flame Betty (Liv Tyler), General Ross’ daughter. Naturally, he doesn’t want to be the Hulk anymore, but he’s forced to reconsider when Blonsky, who has been injected with a military-grade serum, has become an equally incredible mutant known as the Abomination.

This version of “The Hulk” is less ambitious than Lee’s version, but it’s more entertaining because of it. The special effects are better this time around, the action sequences have more oomph and the relationship between Norton and Tyler isn’t nearly as gooey.

And if you were curious, this movie finally resolves the mystery of Bruce Banner’s pants, which stay miraculously intact when he transforms into the Hulk: They have elastic waistbands.

Grade: B-

The Strangers
Rather than write a review for “The Strangers,” I’m tempted to simply direct you to a better film it very much resembles, a highly effective French thriller called “Them.”

Both movies begin with the same premise—a young couple in an isolated home is tormented and tortured by a group of masked killers—but whereas “Them” is stylish, scary and unpredictable, “The Strangers” quickly devolves into a depressing and pointless exercise in nihilism.

The young couple here are played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, and as the movie opens, their relationship is on the verge of disintegration. They’re staying in his parents’ vacation home, nestled so deep in the woods that if you were screaming for help…well, you know the drill. A trio of mask-wearing, knife-wielding psychos shows up and tries to slice and dice our protagonists, and what results is basically an extended chase sequence, with the good guys trying to outrun the bad guys and never getting anywhere

“The Strangers” has been made with a lot of skill, and the director, Bryan Bertino (making his debut), wrings a few legitimate scares out of this well-worn formula (there’s one particular shot—Tyler stands remote in the foreground as a masked man steps serenely out of the shadows in the background—that is absolutely masterful).

But once the flash of the opening scenes wears off, “The Strangers” falls back on rudimentary hack-and-slash elements we’ve seen time and time again, and Tyler and Speedman scream and cry their way through sequences that go from terse to sadistic as the script grows desperate for ideas.

Bertino has already mastered the superficial elements of moviemaking—he knows how to edit, score, light and frame a scene for maximum impact. He clearly has a future behind the camera; now let’s find him a competent screenplay.

Grade: C-

To the beat of a different drum

The DVD Beat
Reviews by Nathan Weinbender

The Pick of the Week
The Visitor
Earlier this year, “The Visitor” slipped in and out of theaters with very little fanfare. It is now being released on DVD, and it is terrific. It stars Richard Jenkins (most recently seen in “Step Brothers” and “Burn After Reading”) as stuffy, unapproachable English professor Walter Vale. His wife has just passed away, and he returns to his apartment in New York in hopes of clearing his head. He discovers two immigrants, a Syrian man named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Sengalese girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira).

As surprised by their presence as they are of his, Walter reluctantly agrees to let the couple stay with him until they find another place to live. Their conversations ring of contrived courtesy—he considers them a nuisance, they find him distant and unfriendly. When Walter discovers that Tarek plays the drum, he becomes infatuated with the instrument, first taking lessons from Tarek in the living room and eventually joining in with the enthusiastic African men who beat drumsticks against upturned plastic buckets in Central Park.

In an unexpected turn of events, Tarek, who is not legally a U.S. citizen, is arrested and threatened with deportation. Zainab is devastated, and has no one to turn to other than the prickly Walter, who becomes the mediator in the situation, desperately seeking consul from a doubtful immigration attorney. There is tenderness to Walter’s relationship with Zainab, as he finds himself thrust into the position of nurturer, and later with Tarek’s mother (Hiam Abbass).

Jenkins has been a supporting actor for years, usually a face in the background, but this is the first film to put his talents to good use. He is remarkable here, and if the Academy has any common sense, he will be on the shortlist for this year’s Oscar nominations.
Grade: A-

Also on DVD
The Happening
For anyone who once thought M. Night Shyamalan had the potential to become the next Hitchcock, take a look at his newest film, “The Happening,” and have a long laugh. It’s a good candidate for the worst film of 2008, the type of movie that meanders without a sense of purpose or direction for an hour and a half and ends before anything interesting is allowed to happen.

Critics have been advised to keep major plot points secrets, which is likely because audiences would avoid the film in droves if they discovered what it was really about. So, what exactly is going on here? Well, there’s something in the air—is it a naturally-occurring toxin, or a deadly chemical engineered by terrorists?—that disorients humans, takes control of their nervous systems and fills their heads with irrepressible suicidal urges. Our protagonist, high school science teacher Mark Wahlberg, is out to pinpoint the cause of these strange incidents.

Why have the attacks originated in public parks? Why have they only affected cities on the East Coast? Why are large, concentrated groups of people more susceptible to the attacks than small ones? He stumbles upon these with surprising rapidity. It turns out that the planet can no longer sustain human life, and in an instinctual method of self-defense, its vegetation has released a kind of airborne poison that will level the playing field. This revelation results in long, ominous shots of trees and bushes, accompanied by scary music pulsating on the soundtrack.

“The Happening” is a very, very, very bad movie, and Shyamalan’s script is awkward and contrived, written without any semblance of how human beings actually speak or behave. There are the trappings of an effective film here, but Shyamalan approaches it all wrong: This tone-deaf man-versus-nature parable is somber and self-serious when it should be witty and utterly laughable when it should be scary.
Grade: D

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
Here’s one sorry excuse for a comedy. It’s even a sorry excuse for an Adam Sandler comedy. It doesn’t know what it wants to be or what it should be about, which I suppose could have been forgivable had it been at all funny.

Sandler plays the unmessable Zohan, a Mossad fighting machine who fakes his death and escapes to America to become a hair stylist. Soon, Zohan is working in a salon, and he becomes a neighborhood legend because he shtups his elderly female clients in the back room.

Some stupid storylines converge: Zohan strikes romance with the pretty Palestinan girl who owns the salon; he goes mano a mano with his nemesis, a terrorist called the Phantom (John Turturro); political turmoil between the local Israelis and Palestinians comes to a head; and an Evil Land Developer plots to bulldoze the salon and replace it with a shopping mall.

The screenplay is stylistically befuddled, and that it is credited to three talented writers (Sandler, Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow) is both enlightening and inexcusable—enlightening because it explains the origins of the film’s few fleeting moments of wit, inexcusable because all three men are smarter and funnier than this material suggests.
Grade: D

Now on DVD: Fatboys and Leatherheads compete in hit-or-miss comedies

Leatherheads
Review by Nathan Weinbender

It’s clear that George Clooney studied screwball comedies from the ‘30s and ‘40s before he plopped down into the director’s chair for “Leatherheads.” He more than likely wanted the audience to watch his film and remember the rat-a-tat dialogue of Preston Sturges, the polish of Frank Capra, the slapstick nonsense of the Marx brothers.

And he no doubt wanted us comparing him to square-jawed straight men like Gary Cooper, and Renée Zellweger to whip-smart blondes like Claudette Colbert in “It Happened One Night.” Unfortunately, “Leatherheads” doesn’t even come close to capturing the thousand-watt brilliance of those early talkies, and compared to the breezy sophistication of the films it desperately hopes to duplicate, it comes across as flat.

The movie begins in 1925, before pro football was legitimatized. Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, the star quarterback of the Duluth Bulldogs, who spends his nights in fisticuffs at speakeasies and likes the fact that his sport has very few rules. College football, on the other hand, is a booming industry, and the biggest name on the circuit is Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski from “The Office”), whom Dodge enlists as the Bulldogs’ newest player.

Enter Zellweger as no-nonsense newspaper reporter Lexie Littleton, who, on covering Rutherford’s rise to fame, starts to fall in love with the rough-and-tumble Dodge. This incenses the envious Rutherford, who goes ga-ga whenever Lexie steps into the room. The plot culminates lifelessly, as Lexie discovers that a war story Rutherford once told is likely fictional, but by that point we don’t much care.

Clooney and Zellweger spout off a lot of back-and-forth zingers, none of which are particularly funny or exceptionally well-written; Clooney can’t make his one-liners crackle the way Sturges could. (Take, for instance, this lousy exchange: Meeting in a bar, Zellweger tells Clooney, “I thought you had to be 21 to get into these places.” “I am 21,” he says, to which she quips, “I was talking about your I.Q.” Buhhh-zing.)

“Leatherheads” isn’t so much a period comedy as it is a document of A-list actors playing dress-up. Clooney’s attempts to reproduce the charms of films like “Sullivan’s Travels” and “His Girl Friday” fail because he approaches those movies as if they’re cute little artifacts that can be easily imitated. Not so—“Leatherheads” actually feels more old-fashioned than anything that Sturges or Capra ever did.

Grade: C

Directed by George Clooney. Written by Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly. Starring George Clooney, Renée Zellweger, John Krasinski, Jonathan Pryce, Stephen Root and Wayne Duvall. PG-13; 114m.

Run Fatboy Run
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Nothing particularly surprising or especially hilarious happens during the course of “Run Fatboy Run,” but it’s a harmless, charming movie nonetheless. It’s a routine story, predictable from beginning to end, yet it’s the presence of star and co-writer Simon Pegg (from “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) that makes the film watchable.

Pegg plays a low-life department store security guard named Dennis, who, five years prior, left his pregnant fiancée Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar. Now she’s engaged to a hotshot American businessman (Hank Azaria) who runs marathons for charity. Naturally, Dennis decides that he has to run a marathon as well, hoping his perseverance will pay off and Libby will come back to him.

You’ll be able to see exactly where the script is going at every moment, yet Pegg, with his genuine shaggy-dog appeal, keeps the movie’s basic conflict compelling: It’s a testament to his performance that we end up rooting for such a self-centered schlub. “Run Fatboy Run” is nothing to write home about, but here’s hoping that Simon Pegg gets some more work in the near future.

Grade: C+

Directed by David Schwimmer. Written by Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg. Starring Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton, Hank Azaria, Dylan Moran and Harish Patel. PG-13; 100m.

Also available on DVD today is “Sex and the City.” I decided to skip that one—I wasn’t feeling particularly masochistic.