DVD Report
New Releases| Tom Russo
'Idiocracy' cooks up a future to roast the present
Unless you're a big fan of Mike Judge 's work on "Beavis and Butt-head " or in "Office Space ," you probably missed the fleeting theatrical release of "Idiocracy " (2006 ). The live-action comedy was dumped on about a hundred movie screens last fall, with a conspicuous -- and curious -- lack of publicity. Hollywood observers speculated that the movie's skewering of dumbed-down American culture made studio execs nervous. Whatever the case, this is no straight-to-video dud.
Luke Wilson stars as Joe Bowers , an Army desk jockey whose everydude existence is shaken up when he's ordered to take part in a hibernation experiment and accidentally lands 500 years in the future. There, he and time-traveling companion Maya Rudolph find a world collapsing under the weight of its own sheer stupidity. Failing crops are being "watered" with Gatorade, law degrees are handed out at Costco , and subtlety and innuendo have been steamrollered by a painfully dense literal-mindedness. (In Judge's dopey dystopia, Fuddrucker s is far too clever a name not to get a lowbrow tweak.) Can average Joe save them? That's what America's wrestler-president (Terry Crews of "Everybody Hates Chris ," going amusingly over the top) is counting on.
While one can imagine Judge's less-than-ecstatic reaction to the movie's release strategy, it's almost as if he made this with his sights set on DVD himself. Take, for instance, the various deliberately phony sci-fi landscapes, which beg for freeze-framing to verify that, yep, these fools did use a giant rope to try to keep a skyscraper from toppling.
Extras: Hardly surpisingly, there's not much here -- just a handful of deleted scenes that show that Judge did shoot some dead-end material. (Fox, $27.98)
"THE ILLUSIONIST" (2006)
Both in his performance and in a story context, Edward Norton plays magician not with a showman's wink, but with a solemnity that alternately grounds and trips up this period-piece brainteaser. Set in early 1900s Vienna, the film opens with Norton's Eisenheim targeted for arrest by Paul Giamatti 's chief inspector and the Austrian crown prince (Rufus Sewell ). An extended flashback explains how Eisenheim's class-blind youthful romance with a duchess (Jessica Biel ) eventually put s him square in the prince's sights -- but commendably reveals few of his other secrets. It's almost enough to make you buy the idea of magicians as the cool-cat pop stars of the day, but not quite.
Extras: Writer-director Neil Burger supplies commentary. (Fox, $29.98)
"SNAKES ON A PLANE" (2006)
After all the Internet hype and subsequent underwhelming run in multiplexes, Samuel L. Jackson 's unabashedly foolish action flick lands on DVD. The Globe's Ty Burr cautioned against waiting to catch the movie on disc, contending that it demanded a group viewing experience. This correspondent was eager to test that theory, partly as a social science exercise, partly to save on having to get a babysitter for, please, "Snakes on a Plane." Conclusion: It obviously must help to have someone next to you screaming, because a majority of the time, you won't be. After all, once you've seen one pair of lusting hotties get burned for trying to join the mile high club, you've seen 'em all. Even if it's a crate full of gangster-agitated poisonous snakes doing the burning.
Extras: Jackson sits in for commentary with the filmmakers. Production featurettes include, aptly, a segment on snake wranglers and another about the pre release online phenomenon. (New Line, $28.98; available now)
"CRANK" (2006)
Jason Statham ("The Transporter ") gives an exhausting, amusing, anything-goes performance as a hitman who's been fatally poisoned and has to goose his adrenal glands with epinephrine and car chases to survive long enough to get revenge. Co directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor deliver a wild, hyperactive riff on "D.O.A. " but should have worked harder to come up with dialogue that jumps like the visuals.
Extras: Production featurette material is presented in pop-up commentary form. (Lionsgate, $28.98)
Indie DVD | Wesley Morris
Boy meets girl in a changing world
At its core, "Quincean era," a modest but remarkably poignant comedy, is the story of a neighborhood. But it's also a boy-meets-girl story. The boy, Carlos (Jesse Garcia ), and the girl, Magdalena (Emily Rios ), are first cousins. She's pregnant and he's gay, and both find themselves cast out of their respective religious Mexican homes and into the small backyard house of their 83-year-old bachelor uncle. This is a boy-meets-girl story because after much antagonism between them, the two become loving, allied outcasts.
The title of "Quincean era" comes from the traditional celebration Latinas have when they turn 15 -- Magdalena is on the verge of hers. This is Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland's second feature together, and what the movie lacks in visionary skill it makes up for in charm and discrete but unmistakable wistfulness about the depleting effects of gentrification.
Old Tomas (Chalo Gonzalez ) has been living blissfully in that garden house in Los Angeles's Echo Park area for 28 years. The property was recently bought by Gary and James (David W. Ross and Jason L. Wood ), the white gay couple who live in the condominium above Tomas's place. These two find it hard to resist Carlos, who dresses like a cholo, inviting him to a housewarming party and eventually into their bed. Eventually, unfortunate circumstances force Carlos and his two roomies to do a bit of scrambling.
Glatzer and Westmoreland are themselves a couple (they're Echo Park denizens, too), and they've allowed into their movie an unflattering but not inaccurate glimpse of some gay men as selfish, exoticizing imperialists, keeping what they find attractive and junking what they find intolerable. In so many ways, James and Gary come to represent the cultural climate change in a lot of urban American neighborhoods. Poor ethnic enclaves turn gradually less poor, less ethnic, and more homogenized.
The movie is overwritten and good news tritely follows bad, yet somehow it feels authentic in all its small details. But really, "Quincean era" is most impressive as a document of transition. We can see ownership and perspective in the neighborhood sadly changing hands, but not without some kind of challenge. After Carlos shows Gary a few gang hand signs, Gary (who's English to boot) is wowed: "You live in a whole 'nother world, don't you?" "No," says Carlos, "you do."
Extras: Commentary from filmmakers and cast; making-of featurette. (
Documentary DVD | Sam Allis
'Street Fight' carries bite of mayoral race
Properly told, political underdog stories are as compelling as pratfalls from banana peels are funny. Each is timeless and carries an integrity impervious to cynicism.
"Street Fight" is a classic tale that pits a bright young reformer against a city machine. For starters, it's real. We've got Cory Booker, 32, a dazzling product of Stanford and Yale Law School and a Rhodes Scholar to boot, who runs for mayor of Newark, N.J. , in 2002 against the 16-year incumbent and old-fashioned political boss, Sharpe James.
The documentary is simple and strong, and its grit lifts it above its mechanical shortcomings. Marshall Curry wrote, produced, filmed , and directed "Street Fight." It is his first feature-length documentary and it shows. His camera work is primitive and the film has its dead spots. But these are minor problems in a story too good to ignore.
The campaign, as the title denotes, will be determined in the streets of Newark, where strong-arm tactics prevail. As Booker's name recognition rises, so too does the level of intimidation from James. Uniformed police remove Booker signs, others are defaced. A Booker campaign office is burglarized. Both men are Democrats, but this doesn't stop James from calling Booker a Republican and denigrating him as a fake black man because of his comfortable suburban upbringing.
It is no secret that Booker lost the 2002 race after scaring the daylights out of James . Booker ran again in 2006, this time against Ronald Rice, and won. The thing about a political underdog story is the good guy eventually wins. (Genius, $24.95)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"THE NIGHT LISTENER" (2006)
Robin Williams is a nighttime radio host who develops an on-air bond with Rory Culkin , a dying teen who's written a memoir about the past sexual abuse he suffered. But the film's building mystery takes a wide, jolting turn toward horror when Williams steps away from the mike to go find out more about Culkin and guardian Toni Collette.
Extras: Deleted scene. (Miramax, $29.99)
"I TRUST YOU TO KILL ME" (2006)
Those suffering from Jack Bauer overload might want to unwind with Kiefer Sutherland in a decidedly different mode: moonlighting as manager for an indie rock band, on a tour chronicled in this feature documentary. (First Independent Pictures, $19.98)
"BANDIDAS" (2006)
Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz saddle up as unlikely gal-pals turned even more unlikely frontier bank robbers. Two of our finest Spanish-speaking actresses, in the roles they were born to play! (Or, wait, was that "Frida" and "Volver"?) The stars are likable, but this is forced comedy straight from the "Wild Wild West" school of dubious cross-appeal.
Extras: Commentary by Hayek and Cruz; production featurettes. (Fox, $27.98)
FOREIGN
"THE DR. MABUSE COLLECTION" (2007)
Fritz Lang's criminal mastermind lives on even past the director's retirement in a trio of slight but entertaining '60s sequels: "The Return of Dr. Mabuse," "The Invisible Dr. Mabuse," and "The Death Ray Mirror of Dr. Mabuse." Dubbed in English. (
"SIBERIADE" (1979)
Filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky ("Runaway Train" ) takes a sweeping look at 20th century Russian history through the story of two Siberian families and the social upheavals and changing fortunes they encounter over three generations. Presented in its uncut 260-minute form. (Kino, $29.95)
TELEVISION
"MI-5": VOLUME 4 (2005)
This imported spy series continues to build its image as the BBC's answer to "24," but with gutsier cast changes. And how's this for nerve: the season finale even flirts with the idea that the British government plotted Princess Diana's death.
Extras: Cast and crew interviews and commentary; production featurette. (BBC Video, $79.98)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 
