New Releases | Tom Russo
In the heights of antiwar storytelling
For all the critical praise heaped on "Crash" a couple of years ago, writer-director Paul Haggis also was faulted by some for what were viewed as the film's tonal contrivances - a gripe that seemed to grow louder when the movie beat out "Brokeback Mountain" at the Oscars. Haggis's follow-up, the Iraq fallout drama "In the Valley of Elah" (2007), has all the makings of a similar divide. Tommy Lee Jones plays Hank Deerfield, a sober former Army man who gets a call that his soldier son has gone AWOL since returning from a war stint. Packing his pickup and making the long-distance haul to the base, he quickly susses out that his son isn't just absent, he's missing. As the case turns darker, Hank pairs up with a local beleaguered police detective (Charlize Theron) to try to unravel the mystery, which has everything to do with what's gone wrong in Iraq.
Look at some of the other geopolitically minded movies meriting only capsule reviews on this page, then look at "Elah," and there's no questioning Haggis's storytelling smarts. He has a weakness for overdone statement at times; bookend sequences in which Hank gruffly raises a schoolyard American flag stick out unnecessarily. But there's also a fair amount here that's unexpected. Jones could easily be on curmudgeon auto-pilot, but instead he and Haggis make Hank a man who's crustily driven but also crushed in a way he won't admit to himself. It's a vital, vastly more effective character choice.
Extras: A 45-minute production segment underscores that the filmmakers are against the war, not the troops, as it chats with the movie's young soldiers - some of them actual former servicemen - and a father whose story served as an inspiration. (Warner, $27.95)
"MICHAEL CLAYTON" (2007)
As a "fixer" with a powerful law firm, George Clooney's title character is a guy who's made a career of keeping things under control - in this case, a meltdown by colleague Tom Wilkinson that's jeopardizing a multibillion-dollar case. But Michael's subtleties of expression - weary eyes, molar-pulverizing clenched jaw - unmistakably tell us that he doesn't feel good about it, and understands full well the value of a life lived with integrity. Clooney's modulated performance helps writer-turned-director Tony Gilroy to convey the film's messages engrossingly, with maximum economy and minimal preaching.
Extras: Gilroy supplies commentary with his brother, the film's editor, noting his sketchy early story goal of delivering a legal thriller that never enters the courtroom. (Warner, $28.98)
"MARGOT AT THE WEDDING" (2007)
Credit Nicole Kidman for a sharp performance as a wound-up neurotic with zero ability to self-edit her opinions. Credit director Noah Baumbach for doing something fresh with a scenario others likely would have spun into some dopey romantic comedy, as Kidman's Margot meddles in the upcoming nuptials of her sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). But give the film no more credit than that. You'll suspect that all the buzz about how darkly hilarious it is must have come from folks well versed in the neurotic themselves. Baumbach handled similar family dynamics far more accessibly in "The Squid and the Whale." Jack Black is fun as Leigh's no-account boyfriend, but his presence feels like a device to keep the movie from suffocating.
Extras: Conversation with Baumbach and real-life spouse Leigh. (Paramount, $29.99)
"HELEN MIRREN AT THE BBC" (1974-82)
Following up on last year's release showcasing Judi Dench's work in one-off teleplays, the BBC spotlights similar credits for another Actress to Be Reckoned With. The power Mirren displays here, though, is very different at points from her portrayals of royalty or "Prime Suspect" cop Jane Tennison. A highlight of the five-disc, nine-program set are Mirren's youthful sexpot turns as mistress - to a future monarch in George Bernard Shaw's "The Apple Cart," and to Mussolini in "Caesar and Claretta." In a bonus vintage interview, a talk show host introduces her by noting, "She's especially telling projecting sluttish eroticism" - only to have Mirren, all ABBA locks and attitude, come slinking out and make him squirm. (BBC Video, $79.98)
Documentary DVD | Mark Feeney
Inside the defense of indefensible evil
The radical French lawyer Jacques Vergès is an absolutely compelling figure: exotic, resolute, beguilingly smug. He holds the screen with an effortless authority, and he's the subject of Barbet Schroeder's absorbing documentary, "Terror's Advocate." (In French, "avocat" means both attorney and advocate.) At once biography, spy thriller, and moral meditation, the film raises an acute if unanswerable question: At what point does idealism become nihilism - or worse?
Vergès, 82, has defended a clientele that runs the ethical gamut from righteous (Algerian anticolonialists) to monstrous (Slobodan Milosevic). "It was exhilarating," Vergès says of defending the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. The son of a Vietnamese mother and French diplomat father, Vergès fought with the Free French in World War II and then took up the law. "It's not an odious profession," he remarks.
Vergès represented members of the Algerian National Liberation Front in several high-profile trials that helped reveal the French military's use of torture. "Morally, the use of torture was a terrible defeat," Vergès observes. American viewers can make their own inferences.
After Algerian independence, Vergès became involved in the Palestinian cause. Then, from 1970-78, he vanished. Did he take refuge in Pol Pot's Cambodia? Was he secretly an agent of the French - or East Germans? Perhaps he was simply on the lam from creditors.
Vergès's reemergence saw his clientele grow increasingly beyond the pale: the Red Army Faction, Iranian assassination squads, Carlos the Jackal. Carlos, whom we hear interviewed by telephone, is among several other voices heard in "Terror's Advocate." Appreciating what a mesmerizing protagonist he has in Vergès, Schroeder sets him off with other talking heads and archival footage.
"Terror's Advocate," in a sense, conjoins Schroeder's two best-known films: the documentary "General Idi Amin Dada" (1974), and the feature "Reversal of Fortune" (1990), an adaptation of Alan Dershowitz's book about the Claus von Bülow case. Outrageous controversialist meets brilliant attorney, and fact intertwines with fiction. It's a mark of Schroeder's scrupulousness that he leaves it up to the viewer to draw the line between the two in Vergès' performance, a star turn every bit as memorable - and troubling - as Amin's in the one and Jeremy Irons's as von Bülow in the other.
Extras: Historical timeline (Magnolia, $26.98)
Documentary DVD | Ty Burr
Love thy neighbors, no matter their sexuality
Daniel Karslake's sometimes clumsy, always moving documentary "For the Bible Tells Me So" probes the conflict between an obdurate force and a movable object: the religious right's condemnation of homosexuality and the compassionate understanding of Christian parents of gay children. Some are well known, like former presidential candidate Dick Gephardt's embracing of his lesbian daughter, Chrissy. Others unfold as surprises. You couldn't find a more iconic pair of Southern Bible thumpers than Imogene and Victor Robinson, whose son Gene turns out to be the Right Rev. Gene Robinson, recently installed as bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopalian Church. The hate mail he gets is contrasted with the embattled pride and support he receives from his parents.
Jake Reitan's mother and father, longtime Lutherans, have left the church and joined their son in activism, risking arrest while attempting to deliver a letter to Focus on the Family's James Dobson. Other parents aren't so lucky. Mary Lou Wallner spurned her daughter Anna when she came out; following the girl's suicide, the mother founded TEACH Ministries to combat homophobia.
The love on the faces of these people is palpable, and it's the single strongest calling card of "For the Bible Tells Me So," standing firm against the convulsive hate of antigay Christian protesters. Karslake missteps with an ill-advised animated segment and some random dramatic reenactment footage, but the heart of his film is strong and true. "All loving relationships are honored by God," says the Rev. Laurence C. Keene in an interview, and that, Karslake insists, is the one true faith. (First Run Features, $24.95)
ALSO THIS WEEK "REDACTED" (2007)
Brian De Palma's drama examines the Iraq war from multiple viewpoints in the most technical sense, cutting together a soldier's camcorder grabs, security footage, militant Muslim website material, and various other elements. Visually showy but staged.
Extras: Behind-the-scenes material. (Magnolia, $26.98)
"AMERICAN GANGSTER" (2007)
Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe do polished work but deliver few real jolts in Ridley Scott's film about a suave Harlem drug lord (Washington) and the honest cop driven to take him down. Crowe's humanizing take on his character is interesting, but it doesn't translate nearly as well as his similarly jittery roles in "The Insider" and "A Beautiful Mind."
Extras: Extended cut running 18 minutes longer; extensive production featurettes; interviews with the real-life figures depicted in the film. (Universal, $29.98)
"RENDITION" (2007)
A good cast does some inelegant, melodramatic issue-grappling in this political thriller about the ethics of torture. Reese Witherspoon's Egyptian-born husband is suspected of terrorist ties and dispatched to a secret "interrogation" site abroad, with CIA operatives Jake Gyllenhaal and Meryl Streep viewing the situation from conflicted and rationalizing positions, respectively.
Extras: Commentary by director Gavin Hood ("Tsotsi"); production documentary. (New Line, $28.98)
"KURT COBAIN: ABOUT A SON" (2007)
In filmmaker AJ Schnack's unconventional portrait, the late Nirvana frontman is heard, not seen, as chunks of audio interviews are played over images of Cobain country. Intriguing, if not entirely emotionally effective. (Shout! Factory, $19.99)
REISSUES
"WALKER" (1987)
Alt-hip director Alex Cox ("Repo Man") plays it surrealistically loose with his biopic of 19th-century American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris) finding unlikely fame and political fortune south of the border in Nicaragua.
Extras: Commentary by Cox; production documentary; Cox on the film's reviews. (Criterion, $39.95)
FOREIGN
"LUST, CAUTION" (2007)
Ang Lee lushly chronicles an affair between Tony Leung, a cold government heavy in Japanese-occupied WWII Shanghai, and newcomer Tang Wei, a radical secretly plotting his assassination. Lee strives to make the NC-17 tale boldly erotic and emotionally compelling, but gets it only half right.
Extras: Production featurette. (Universal, $29.98)
"GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM COLLECTION" (1919-26)
Director Robert Weine's hypnotist-run-amok thriller "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" anchors a set of darkly atmospheric silent classics.
Extras: Behind-the-scenes footage of Weine shooting "Caligari"; cineaste-minded analysis. (Kino, $69.95)
"PIERROT LE FOU" (1965)
Jean-Paul Belmondo rides the height of the New Wave in this uniquely Godardian road-trip picture.
Extras: Archival interviews; liner notes. (Criterion, $39.95)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
