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Home Video Releases for March 2000 by Eddie Cockrell and Gregory Avery Nitrate
Online explores a sampling of the most noteworthy, provocative and satisfying
video and/or DVD releases for the month of March (give or take a few weeks).
Titles are followed by original country and year of release, as well as release
date (if known). Street dates change constantly and often differ from format to
format, so check with your favorite online or brick-and-mortar supplier for
up-to-date information. All reviews are by Eddie Cockrell unless otherwise
credited. The
Bone Collector
(USA, 1999, March 14) As
with many a well-tooled Hollywood movie machine, this simplistic and implausible
adaptation of Jeffery Deaver’s crackerjack pulp thriller covers its fatal
flaws with a mixture of propulsive storytelling and provocative gizmos, but
eventually collapses under the weight of its absurdities. Denzel Washington
gives yet another authoritative performance as Lincoln Rhyme, a
newly-quadriplegic forensics expert drawn into the hunt for a sadistic serial
killer. The twist is that since he’s bedridden the forensic investigations of
the grisly crime scenes fall to rookie officer Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie),
whose natural affinity for the work is marred by her profound discomfort at the
gruesome sights she’s forced to document. Veteran director Phillip Noyce (Newsfront,
Dead Calm, Patriot Games) peppers the action with some atmospheric
thunderstorm effects, the whiz-bang computer array surrounding Rhymes’ bed and
the prerequisite procedural catchphrases (the phrase “work the grid” is
particularly overused). Yet by the time somebody asks “where we goin’ with
this?” most audiences will already be thinking the same thing. A
Spanish-subtitled tape is available, and the DVD features a commentary track by
Noyce. Drive
Me Crazy
(USA,
1999, March 7) That teen comedies now seem to all fuzz together isn’t the fault of individual films, as this genial if undistinguished programmer proves. Twenty-four-year-old industry vet Melissa Joan Hart (TV’s “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch”) stars as Nicole, a wise and with-it high school student who rekindles a dormant childhood friendship with the rebellious Chase (Adrian Grenier). The plot stitches together numerous iconic events that seemed life-or-death during those years (and still are to the movie’s target audience), including basketball games, parties, makeovers, shifting emotional allegiances and, of course, back seat make out sessions. It’ll be fun in a couple of years to survey these films, both for fashion/culture violations that look cool now but will expire shortly (if they haven’t already), as well as a yearbook of sorts for future stars. There’s a Spanish subtitled VHS of this title, and the DVD features Britney Spears’ music video of the title tune, Jars of Clay’s “Unforgetful You” and some weblinks. --Eddie Cockrell Eyes
Wide Shut
(USA, 1999, March 14) Is
it brilliant, or merely unfinished? Opinion is still divided over Stanley
Kubrick's final film, about the nighttime odyssey of a husband (Tom Cruise) who
learns that his wife (Nicole Kidman) at one time even considered being
unfaithful to him. Questions linger over whether the film would have undergone
final revision by its director, but one thing's certain: the digital
"masking" inserted into one scene, for U.S. release, will remain (for
now) when the film comes out on video. (The film has been shown outside the U.S.
unaltered). --Gregory
Avery Guinevere
(USA, 1999) The
highly-talented Sarah Polley plays a young girl who beguiles, then enters into,
a tricky relationship with a
professional photographer, played by Stephen Rea. Generally well-regarded by
those who were able to catch it during its brief, unenthusiastic, hit-and-run
theatrical release last fall. Audrey Wells, the writer and director, previously
did the screenplay for the comedy The Truth About Cats and Dogs. --Gregory
Avery Jakob
the Liar
(USA/France, 1999, March 21) Robin
Williams as an East European Jew who keeps hope alive among his friends and
neighbors in the ghetto by spreading false news of Allied advances against the
Nazis. The material worked well in a 1976 East German film, but this
well-intentioned remake simply doesn't work, and Williams' smiling-through-tears
performance is so squirm-inducing that it ends up making Charles Chaplin's
Calvino in Limelight look restrained by comparison. Good performances by
Armin Muller-Stahl, Bob Balaban, Liev Schreiber, and, particularly, Alan Arkin;
director Peter Kassovitz's son, Mathieu (also a film director), turns up in a
small role. --Gregory
Avery The
Limey
(USA, 1999, March 21) Along
with Run Lola Run 1999’s most exhilarating example of noodling around
with time and character point of view, director Steven Soderbergh’s pithy
follow-up to the bravura Out of Sight features a delightfully droll yet
commandingly intense turn by Terence Stamp as intense British ex-con Wilson,
determined to find the person or persons who caused the death of his daughter
while he was in stir. To this end he makes his first trip to Los Angeles in
search of preening record producer Terry Valentine (Peter Fonda), who is
surrounded by the Southern California good life and protected by ruthless
personal attorney Avery (Barry Newman, making a welcome return to the screen).
Sort of a cross between the cool stylistic calisthenics of John Boorman’s Point
Blank and the scruffy 1970s Raymond Chandler retooling of Robert Altman’s The
Long Goodbye, The Limey was written by Lem Dobbs, directed by
Soderbergh and photographed by respected international vet Ed Lachman with a
knowing wink towards those and other genre movies as well as the flamboyant and
well-documented public histories of Fonda and Stamp. In fact the latter’s
character name, Wilson, is the same as the young man he played in Ken Loach’s
1967 Poor Cow -- the film from which black and white clips are lifted to
illustrate his memories here. This is only one of the numerous time-shifting
strategies employed by Soderbergh in a continuation of the stylish structure he
brought to Out of Sight. Taken together, the two films signal a
tangible rebirth for a director whose track record until now (from the indie
fave sex, lies & videotape to the wretched The Underneath) can
charitably be called erratic. --Eddie
Cockrell Outside
Providence (US, 1999, March 14) Bobby
and Peter Farrelly, the merrymakers behind There's Something About Mary,
co-wrote, with director Michael Corrente, this comedy about a working-class lad
(Shawn Hatosy) who winds up attending an upper-class prep school. Corrente
previously directed the underrated screen adaptation of David Mamet's American
Buffalo; the altruistic may want to check out the appearance of a
bulky-looking Alec Baldwin, as the young protagonist's dad. --Gregory
Avery Plunkett
& Macleane
(United Kingdom, 1999, March 21) Two
of the stars of Danny Boyle’s last decent movie, Trainspotting, are
re-united in Plunkett & Macleane, a confused and resolutely offensive
story of two eighteenth-century British highwaymen who, in the immortal words of
the poster’s tagline, “Rob the Rich…And That’s It.” Unfortunately,
that’s it for wit as well: first-time director Jake Scott brings all the wrong
influences from his previous life as a music video director, resulting in a
movie that looks like a leaden cross between Ridley Scott’s The Duellists
and Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones, scored to some wildly inappropriate
contemporary dance music. Teaming up in prison, smart guy Will Plunkett (Robert
Carlyle) and gigolo James Macleane (Jonny Lee Miller) embark on a crime spree
that makes them the toast of the town, winning the heart of a bigwig’s
daughter (Liv Tyler) along the way. None of it is believable for a second, with
only Alan Cumming leaving any kind of impression as a particularly unrepentant
libertine. There’s a Spanish subtitles tape of Plunkett & Macleane,
and the DVD includes a feature on the production. --Eddie
Cockrell Pokémon:
The First Movie
(Japan/USA, 1999, March 21) Those
pesky animated critters are turning up everywhere. Now, after scurrying through
theaters and sending armies of kids on mad rampages for training cards, they've
arrived on video -- which will either be a blessing or a curse for parents. The
plot? Who cares? Just seeing those colorful little Lego-like homunculi banging
to and fro across the screen, like Whammo balls on meth, and disgorging power
rays and whatnot, will be enough to keep the kiddies kontented. --
Gregory Avery The
Sixth Sense
(US, 1999, March 28) Audiences seemed mesmerized by this soft, stealthy thriller about a social worker (Bruce Willis, in his best performance in years) who comes to the aid of a young boy (Haley Joel Osment) who sees specters of the dead who, apparently, want something from him. The film's outcome, and one's reaction to it, turns on the kind of plot twist which is very tricky to pull off, but there's no denying that Osment's performance is remarkable and deeply affecting, and that the film achieves its effects without resorting to the truly crass or vulgar. -- Gregory Avery Also:
Beyond
the A-list: Autumn
Sun (Sol e otoño, Argentina, 1996, March 7) Novelist-turned-filmmaker
Eduardo Mignogna has scored a heartwarming hit with his third film, following
the Eva Peron documentary Evita (1984) and the biopic of Argentinian
showman Florencio Parravicini, Flop (1990). For Autumn Sun,
Mignogna enlisted distinguished and popular actors Norma Aleandro (The
Official Story) and Federico Luppi (Cronos) to tell a
September-September romance set against the ethnic diversity of contemporary
Argentina. Clara (Aleandro) takes out a personal ad looking for a man of similar
age and station, only to find the Italian Raúl (Luppi) isn’t exactly who she
had in mind -- or anywhere near the cultured Jewish gentleman she’d told her
brother (about to arrive from Boston) she was involved with. Desperate to save
face with her family, Clara gets Raúl to play the part, with enlightening
consequences. “The aim of the film,” Mignogna said at the 1996 San Sebastian
Film Festival, “is to break down prejudice between human beings through a
story laced with both poetry and humor.” Bullseye: thanks in large part to a
clever script and the assured, endearing performances of the two leads, Autumn
Sun is a witty, urbane, grown-up drama. Bandits
(Germany,
1997, March 21) Help!
meets Thelma and Louise in this comedic drama that Variety Senior Film
Critic Derek Elley proclaimed “tough, romantic, grungy and exuberant [with]
enough energy to light a city.” As part of a German prison’s rehabilitation
program, four women inmates form a quartet (the name blends “band” and
“tits”). There’s master thief guitarist-vocalist Luna (real-life musician
Jasmin Tabatabai); flirtatious young con-woman bassist Angel (Nicolette Krebitz);
daffy yet intuitive middle-aged pianist Marie (stage and screen veteran Jutta
Hoffmann); and tough drummer Emma (Katja Reimann, star of director and
co-scenarist Katja von Garnier’s 1993 German mega-smash Making Up!).
While playing at a policeman’s ball outside the prison walls they hijack a van
and make a daring escape, prompting a series of adventures that include young
American “hostage” West (Werner Schreyer) and egotistical cop Schwarz (Hannes
Jaenicke) -- as well as the country-wide outlaw fame that’s always eluded
them. A propulsive brew of serious narrative and rock video-style clips, this
summer 1997 German box office hit is eye candy with a refreshingly European
flavor. The
Decalogue
(Poland, 1988-89, March 28) Unseen
in the United States outside of specialty festival screenings since it was made
for Polish television in the late 1980s, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s
monumental 10-hour contemporary extrapolation of the Ten Commandments, The
Decalogue, is near the top of most serious film fans’ list of cinematic
Holy Grails. Working with a series of actors and crew, Kieślowski and
co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz have fashioned an interconnected series of
provocative morality tales that unfold largely in and around the cramped flats
and dark corridors in a cluster of cold cement apartment blocks in Warsaw.
Although each episode plays independently of the next (and two, five and six,
were adapted into stand-alone features), a sense of déjà vu and foreboding is
heightened as characters from previous episodes pass through the background of
subsequent dramas (a trick Kieślowski later used to great effect in his Blue,
White, Red trilogy). Kudos to Facets Video for finally making this
masterpiece available to the American public in both a boxed video and DVD
edition. Destination
Moon (USA,
1950, February 29) Adapted
by Robert A. Heinlein from his novel (the sci-fi dean’s only foray into
movies), designed by Oscar-nomiated Ernst Fegte and featuring the breathtaking
work of astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell, the landmark Destination Moon
is shot through with a certain thrill born of optimistic discovery. Sure, it’s
a creaky dramatic vehicle, what with the quartet of noble spaceman and a craft
that looks roomy enough to play tennis in. But fans of the genre will want to
check it out nonetheless, as it offers a template much used in subsequent films.
It was also a huge hit in its day, and even won the Oscar for special effects.
This Image Entertainment Fiftieth-Anniversary DVD release, part of the Wade
Williams collection, features what appears to be the same sporadically scratchy
print as the recent videotape version. But the Technicolor fairly glows off the
disc, enhancing the pioneer spirit of this crucial work. Face
(United Kingdom, 1997, March 7) Robert
Carlyle starred in the underworld heist thriller Face for director
Antonia Bird (Priest) two years before Plunkett & Macleane
(see A-list above) but just after his one-two-three star-making punch of Trainspotting,
Carla’s Song (both 1996) and The Full Monty (1997). Here, he’s
Ray, a lifelong thief whose personal and professional lives become increasingly
intertwined following the robbery of a security deposit firm. When the take is
smaller than hoped for, the group of thieves that Ray assembled with some
trepidation begins to disintegrate with suspicion and fear. British music fans
have two reasons to rejoice, both for the tasty soundtrack and the presence of
Blur frontman Damon Albarn, who acquits himself quite well against such
heavyweights as Carlyle, Ray Winstone and Peter Vaughan in a short but key
supporting role. Bird and Carlyle often work together, and their most recent
collaboration is the bizarre cannibal comedy Ravenous. The
Highwayman
(USA, 1999, March 7) In
the continuing effort to distance himself from the pretty boy he played in the
“Beverly Hills 90210” television franchise, Jason Priestley has made some
intriguing career choices of late. Some, like his dignified, self-deprecating
performance in Love and Death on Long Island (1997) and his recent turn
as Detective Robert Hall in the “Homicide” TV movie, have turned out well
for him. Others, like the Barenaked Ladies documentary he’s recently directed
(both he and the group are Canadian) and this grisly programmer, are less
successful. In the direct-to-video road thriller The Highwayman -- sort
of a self-conscious cross between Natural Born Killers and Pulp
Fiction -- Priestley (who also has an executive producer credit on the
picture) plays a cool yet resolutely psychotic killer named Breakfast. Through a
convoluted, disconnected series of circumstances Breakfast and his more visceral
partner hook up with a young woman (Laura Harris, who’s awful) and embark on a
search for her father (played by veteran actor and Peter Weller lookalike
Stephen McHattie). First-time director Keoni Waxman shot the picture in Phoenix
and Toronto, attempting to massage the gray proceedings with some subtle but
self-conscious digital effects that do nothing to advance the story. As for
Priestley himself, he falls back on his innate cool as well as a cowboy hat and
thick moustache in an attempt to mask what is becoming increasingly obvious:
that he’s a pretty face with decent ability who can’t hold the big screen
the way he inhabits the small one. The
King of Masks
(Bian Lian, China, 1996, March 7) Film
fans fond of such recent international successes as Brazil’s Central
Station and the Czech Republic’s Kolya are urged to seek out the
lovely The King of Masks, a 1996 film from veteran Mainland Chinese
director Wu Tianming, who has gone from being a key player in the 1980s Fifth
Generation of Chinese filmmakers to running a video store in Los Angeles in the
early 1990s (he was on a trip to America when the Tiananmen Square massacre
occurred) to this triumphant return to personal, heartfelt filmmaking. The film
tells of an elderly street performer, Wang, whose life is changed when the young
boy he buys as an heir to his colorful skills turns out to be a street urchin,
Doggie -- and what’s worse, a girl to boot. As girls are not highly prized in
Chinese society, Doggie is at first shunned by Wang. Yet, in the spirit of the
Sichuan opera female impersonator who advises him “The world is a cold place,
but we can bring warmth to it,” Doggie wins Wang’s heart and the tradition
is passed. Veteran actor Zhu Zu is endearing as old Wang, and a young girl named
Zhou Ren-ying, who was abandoned at three and raised by an acrobatic troupe,
gives an extraordinarily nuanced performance as Doggie. The film has won
China’s Golden Rooster awards for Best Director, Best Child Actor and Best
Co-Production, in addition to nearly forty prizes at international festivals. The
King of Masks is well worth the effort to seek it out. Return
to Sender (aka
No Return Address, Sin remitente, Mexico, 1995, February 29) Carlos
Carrera’s Return to Sender won the Best Film, Best Actor (Fernando
Torre Laphame) and Best Director Ariel awards -- Mexico’s version of the
Oscars -- in 1996. The film is an assured and deliberate tale of deceit and
empathy, as a cruel joke against a lonely old man escalates out of control. Salón
México is a sensationalist melodrama about a murderous dance team and their
tempestuous affair, and the film also won the Best Film Ariel as well as the
Best Spanish Language Foreign Film Oscar at Spain’s national award ceremony,
the Goyas. These are two of the six titles released by Facets Multimedia as part
of their Facets Video/Chicago Latino Cinema Collection. The
Sacrifice
(Sweden/France, 1986, March 7) A
landmark of spiritual cinema from the man once hailed as “the only Soviet
director to do exactly as he wanted,” Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice
-- the final film before his death of cancer in 1986 at age 54 -- makes a
triumphant debut on DVD, courtesy of Kino on Video. Produced in Sweden and
photographed by the great Sven Nykvist, the film (which won the 1986 Cannes
festival Jury Prize) stars Ingmar Bergman regular Erland Josephson as an aging
patriarch who, upon learning of the imminent end of the world by nuclear
annihilation, makes a deal with God to spare civilization. “The issue I raise
in this film,” Tarkovsky explained, “is one that to my mind is most crucial:
the absence in our culture of room for a spiritual existence.” In his
illustration of that, The Sacrifice is a virtual compendium of the visual
and thematic ideas that have obsessed the director since his early work (an
splendid example of which, the 1974 film The Mirror, is also part of this
release). What makes this DVD edition of The Sacrifice an essential part
of any serious film lover’s library is the inclusion of Michal
Leszczylowski’s Directed By Andrei Tarkovsky, a feature-length
documentary on the making of The Sacrifice and Tarkovsky’s major themes
by the editor of the film that stands to this day as one of the most intimate
and illuminating records of a life in movies ever made. Sitcom
(France, 1998, March 7) Although
he’s been making movies throughout most of the 1990s, French director François
Ozon didn’t begin to make a name for himself until the unsettling yet
straight-faced Sitcom played New York’s prestigious New Directors/New
Films series nearly a year ago. Filmed in the manor of a television program
(hence the title), the film tells of the odd disintegration of what purports to
be a typical French suburban family after a pet rat and assertive Hispanic maid
are introduced to the delicately balanced and deceptively normal-looking nuclear
family. As with John Waters and the early Almodovar, Ozon is concerned with how
appearances can be misleading, and to that end the family falls apart in ways
both sexual and violent. Yet his approach is oddly chaste, even prim, giving the
humor, for those who are inclined to see it, a more malicious edge. While the
subtitles on the copy of the New Yorker Video release caught were less than
crisp, this isn’t a movie about subtlety -- either verbal or visual. Western
(France, 1997, March 7) Wandering
is the theme of Manuel Poirier's oddball triumph Western, his fourth
film to fondly examine the lives, loves and adventures of the rural French lower
middle class.
Although
he's been robbed by pint-sized Russian émigré Nino (Sacha Bourdo), travelling
Spanish shoe salesman Paco (Sergi Lopez) teams up with the diminutive hustler
while on an enforced three-week hiatus from the lover (Elisabeth Vitali) he met
when Nino first ripped him off. As this odd couple for the 1990s (men behaving
Frenchly?) travel the backroads of Brittany, it becomes apparent that Paco's
uncanny success with women is matched only by Nino's ability to self-destruct
during even the most casual human contact. But, as Paco discovers from the wily
Nino, you can always learn something new. Western is the kind of movie
where adversity is dwarfed by cheerfulness, as well as a kind of cosmic decree
that all adventures turn out for the best. And no matter how selfish or criminal
their characters act, Lopez and Bourdo imbue their characters with warmth and an
increasingly tattered but intact dignity. With a heart as big as its widescreen
photography, Western has found in New Yorker Video a distributor with
Nino's wiles and Paco's luck. Also:
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