New Releases | Tom Russo
In two films, female victims become vigilantes
Three decades ago, Jodie Foster was party to the controversy that "Taxi Driver" instigated over vigilante violence. She returns to that thicket from a markedly different angle in Neil Jordan's "The Brave One" (2007). Foster plays Erica Bain, a talk-radio deep thinker whose cozy liberal existence turns blood-red dark when she's viciously beaten and her fiance is killed during a mugging. Shakily at first, then increasingly brazenly, Erica tries to regain control over her circumstances, buying an illegal handgun and using it against various lowlifes. The film hurts itself in the way it quick-sketches Foster's character at the start. When she's assaulted, your living room will turn silent, but you'll likely feel that the trauma is happening to a stranger rather than someone relatable - probably not what Jordan and Foster intended. That said, the pair effectively communicate their fascination with the idea of placing a female character into a traditionally male situation. "She's not the statistical norm," Foster notes in the disc's lone, efficient featurette. "And she's confused by that."
Those with the viewing equivalent of a cast-iron stomach can find a further exploration of female retribution themes in the NC-17 indie "Descent" (2007), in which Rosario Dawson plays a rape victim who gives her attacker some gut-churningly graphic payback. Dawson sits down for commentary and a Q&A session with writer-director Talia Lugacy, and there's much discussion about the film's genesis as a high-minded exercise in the provocative. But doth they protest its sensationalist side too much? Consider: Dawson enlists the help of a sort of underground psychosexual Mr. Fixit to avenge her, with shocking amorality. Foster enlists a 9mm. Which sounds more like revenge fantasy? ("Brave One," Warner, $28.98; "Descent," City Lights, $26.98)
"ACROSS THE UNIVERSE" (2007)
How is it that no one ever thought to repurpose Beatles tunes as a fiction narrative before? Director Julie Taymor's characteristically trippy handling of the idea has been a long time coming, and it's sporadically worth the wait. Jim Sturgess stars as Jude, a Liverpool shipyard worker who journeys to America, befriends privileged Ivy Leaguer Max (Joe Anderson), and falls in love with Max's sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) - all while '60s social and political turbulence is suddenly turning their shared bohemian scene complicated. For all of the film's imaginativeness, some of the most enjoyable numbers feel like variations on the familiar; witness Max's Army induction, which seems to use "Hair" and "The Wall" as inspirational springboards.
Extras: Commentary by Taymor and partner Elliott Goldenthal, the film's music producer; extensive production featurettes. (
"THE APARTMENT" (1960)
There's no forgetting how charming Jack Lemmon is playing a junior company man who's a mensch at heart, but can't let on to friends and neighbors for fear of messing up his racket of loaning out his bachelor pad for executive trysts. What will surprise you, though, in giving Billy Wilder's classic a fresh look is to remember just how moving the film is. Shirley MacLaine turns despondent over smooth-talking paramour Fred MacMurray's unwillingness to commit, and Lemmon sympathetically tells her he's been in a similar place himself. He's kidding, she suggests - and you're inclined to agree, until a solemn moment much later confirms that he wasn't. It's almost a throwaway - and it couldn't be smarter storytelling.
Extras: Film historian commentary; a half-hour featurette looking back at the film and Wilder's career, and a segment remembering Lemmon. (MGM, $19.98)
"ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE" (2007)
It's telling that Cate Blanchett earned an Oscar nomination as the Virgin Queen (her second for the role), yet director Shekhar Kapur's decade-later sequel was otherwise all but shut out. Blanchett again shines, whether she's thwarting the holy-warring Spanish or being thwarted at love by Clive Owen's Walter Raleigh. The film itself, though, offers few real surprises.
Extras: Commentary by Kapur; featurettes spotlighting the film's opulent production design. (Universal, $29.98)
Indie DVD | Wesley Morris
Realism pervades the story of a scam
"Great World of Sound" is the name of the record label in Craig Zobel's comedy. It has a majestic old-school ring. You can hear folks who record for Stax or Sun or Motown jumping ship to make music at this production company. The bad news is that it's bogus. Local musicians show up for an audition - in Charlotte, N.C., in Nashville - play their hearts out, and are praised into fronting some of the production costs for a recording session.
The scam has an upside: the movie itself. Of course, that's built on a sham, too. The filmmakers placed seemingly legitimate ads in local papers seeking aspiring musicians to audition. Many answered. None knew Great World of Sound was an experiment. This sounds mean, but it turns a large section of the movie into a quasi-documentary about a musician's human need to be discovered, even at the cost of financial injury. The film traverses the pop-music industry's shady underbelly. It deftly grazes matters of sex and race and the ethics of salesmanship, while suggesting that the tension between being famous and not being broke can be illogical and very cruel, comically so.
Zobel wrote the movie with George Smith, and they've centered the story on the dynamic between two Great World of Sound employees. Martin (Pat Healy) is a meek, moral white guy, a pleaser from the radio business who just got this job. His partner in crime is a dapper African-American charmer named Clarence (Kene Holliday). They have an unexpected click that understates the occasional clashes of their opposite natures - it's Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau dialed down to an Altmanesque key.
"Great World of Sound" turns, instead, into a study of character and acquaintanceship. The scenes between Martin and his girlfriend (Rebecca Mader) don't entirely add up, but there is more to Clarence than meets the eye. The movie we've got is a work of earthbound realism, imbued with Altman's cynical sensibility and his way with naturalistic acting. The limitations are no big deal. It's smart, feeling, and ultimately moral. Zobel and Smith have made a unique movie about work and stardom. Nothing is fair, Clarence says. He's right. Dreams here don't die. They're abducted, even his.
Extras: Additional scenes, deleted scenes, filmmakers' commentary (Magnolia, $26.98)
Musical DVD | Mark Feeney
The Memphian candidate?
The 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death saw a wave of DVD reissues last summer. So why the half-year delay in reissuing "Blue Hawaii"/"Paradise, Hawaiian Style"? At least it makes sense pairing them as a two-disc set. Basically, they're travelogues - so get twice the surf and sand in a single package! It would have made even more sense to include Elvis' other Hawaiian movie, "Girls, Girls, Girls."
Both "Blue Hawaii" and "Paradise, Hawaiian Style" are junk, of course. (Hollywood's crimes are so many that the relentless taxidermy it inflicted on Elvis can't rank all that high on the list - but it was criminal.) That said, "Blue Hawaii," for one, has two notable aspects. First, it has Elvis' all-time best slow number, "Can't Help Falling in Love." Second, it has Angela Lansbury playing Elvis' mother. This was the same year, 1962, she played the mother in "The Manchurian Candidate" - surely, the strangest maternal one-two punch in screen history.
The funny thing is, just as Lansbury is the best thing in "Candidate" (it's one of the landmark performances in American film), Laurence Harvey, as her son, Raymond, is the weakest. Wouldn't Elvis have been better? Seriously. The narcotized, post-brainwashing Raymond is simply a higher-grade version of movie Elvis. The part would have been second nature to him - and imagine getting to see him sharing the screen with Frank Sinatra in the deprogramming scene. American music might never have recovered.
Extras: "Blue Hawaii" trailer (Paramount, $14.98)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD" (2007)
Filmmaker Andrew Dominik ("Chopper"), Brad Pitt, and Oscar nominee Casey Affleck deliver a take on the fateful James-Ford relationship that channels "The Sopranos" in its constant paranoia, but which is also startlingly mournful and introspective for its genre.
Extras: None, a release strategy that ought to be outlawed, since you know a properly outfitted edition has got to be on the way. In the meantime, inquisitive viewers might fill the void by checking out last summer's "First Films of Samuel Fuller" set from Criterion, which includes the old school "I Shot Jesse James." (Warner, $27.95)
"FEAST OF LOVE" (2007)
The heart has its way with everyone, from lovelorn coffee shop owner Greg Kinnear to lusting Radha Mitchell, in director Robert Benton's pleasing ensemble piece, adapted from Charles Baxter's novel. With Morgan Freeman and Selma Blair.
Extras: Production featurette. (MGM, $29.98)
"THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB" (2007)
Writer-director Robin Swicord draws modern light entertainment out of classic, somehow weightier light entertainment with this group portrait of chatty readers (Amy Brenneman, Maria Bello, Hugh Dancy, Emily Blunt, and friends) encountering Austen-esque predicaments. From the best seller by Karen Joy Fowler.
Extras: Cast and crew commentary. (
"TWO DAYS IN PARIS" (2007)
In Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset," Julie Delpy spent all kinds of time walking and talking, talking, talking in urban Europe. Here, she directs and stars in a lighter variation, bickering through a whirlwind vacation stop with jealous boyfriend Adam Goldberg.
Extras: Delpy interview; extended scenes. (Fox, $27.98)
REISSUES
"MIDNIGHT EXPRESS" (1978)
Thirty years on, it's still rough going watching director Alan Parker and writer Oliver Stone's take on Billy Hayes's experiences as an American tourist psychologically and diplomatically lost in a Turkish prison.
Extras: Commentary, essay, and photo journal by Parker; new production featurettes. (Sony, $19.94)
"YOU'VE GOT MAIL" (1998)
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan re-create their screen magic (and shill for AOL!) in Nora Ephron's breezy romantic comedy.
Extras: New production featurettes; commentary by Ephron. (Warner, $19.97)
"THE ARISTOCATS" (1970)
Extras: Interactive games; deleted scene. (Disney, $29.99)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
