DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
These boots were made for wandering
One of the most compelling aspects of the backpacking-to-oblivion drama "Into the Wild" (2007) is the willingness of writer-director Sean Penn and star Emile Hirsch to make their story's subject look bad. And it's not just that they're making real-life wanderer Christopher McCandless look like hell physically as he retreats from society's confinements for a life on the road, and ultimately, in the Alaskan wilderness. For all their clear admiration for McCandless's conviction, Penn and Hirsch also offer snapshots of him as a privileged contrarian acting with unthinking abandon. Among the folks he encounters in his travels is earth mother Jan (Catherine Keener), who chastises him for distressing his materialist parents (William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden) by disappearing. (Keener's performance is on a par with Oscar nominee Hal Holbrook's as a lonely senior befriended by McCandless; Vince Vaughn actually outdoes them both as a farmer who appreciates McCandless's world view.) It's a good long while, presumably purposely, before the film offers a reason for McCandless's anger toward his parents beyond youthful rebelliousness. In voice-over narration, his sister (Jena Malone) achingly rationalizes that she, too, hasn't heard from him simply because he knows their relationship is solid enough to withstand such strain. And when McCandless finally, fatefully arrives at the snowy, roadless frontier, the guy dropping him off there has to give this ostensibly experienced, hard-walking "leather tramp" a basic pair of boots. Penn and Hirsch are fascinated by their protagonist, but they're seemingly puzzled by him as well.
Extras: Production featurettes give welcome time to author Jon Krakauer, who wrote the book that inspired the film. Still, it's soundtrack contributor Eddie Vedder who offers the smartest observation: "This young man is probably the last guy that would ever want a movie made about him." (Paramount, $29.99)
"THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE" (2007)
Halle Berry strives to remind us how she won that Oscar for "Monster's Ball," this time playing a well-off wife and mom reeling from the death of her saintly husband (David Duchovny, in a limited role). Her coping mechanism is to try to connect with Benicio Del Toro, a boyhood friend of Duchovny's who's stayed in the margins of the family picture despite a life-ruining drug problem. Danish director Susanne Bier ("After the Wedding") and writer Allan Loeb hit on a solid dramatic premise with the idea that guilt, sorrow, and loneliness would make these two intersect, even while they both question the wisdom of connecting. Some of their dialogue is genuinely poignant stuff. But the story asks too much by just casually expecting us to buy that Berry would head down to the methadone clinic and invite Del Toro to come stay with her and her two young kids. There's dramatic, and then there's ludicrous.
Extras: Production featurette; deleted scenes. (Paramount, $29.99)
"MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM" (2007)
Writer and first-time director Zach Helm ("Stranger Than Fiction") ventures into "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" territory with his tale of Dustin Hoffman's magical toy shop and the likable misfits who get in touch with their true selves while hanging there. Natalie Portman is the salesgirl with piano concerto dreams; Jason Bateman is the accountant who's forgotten how to spell fun; and Zach Mills is the friendly kid who's somehow chronically friendless. Although there's decent family entertainment throughout, the movie fares much better when it's going for quirky rather than just plain precious.
Extras: The featurette of most interest focuses on the shop's production design. (Fox, $29.98)
"DALLAS": THE COMPLETE EIGHTH SEASON (1984-85)
Beyond the earliest episodes and season three's essential "Who Shot J.R.?" cliffhanger, some of the Ewings' weekly drama can, admittedly, get numbingly repetitive. Still, this set is worth revisiting to catch Donna Reed's stint subbing as Miss Ellie for an ailing Barbara Bel Geddes. There's also Patrick Duffy's "death" in the season finale - ultimately the setup for that notorious cop-out where viewers were told that all of season nine was a dream. (Warner, $39.98; available now)
Indie DVD | Wesley Morris
On track for whimsy with soul
For a while, the most compelling thing about Wes Anderson's diorama "The Darjeeling Limited" is the genius of the central casting. Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman play brothers, the Whitmans. You have to admire that someone thought it'd be cool to assemble three of the movies' most fascinating noses for a 90-minute romp. (The idea gets funnier when it occurs to you Anjelica Huston is the mother.)
Most of "The Darjeeling Limited" is set aboard an eponymous Indian train, where Peter and Jack (Brody and Schwartzman) discover they've been lured into a fraternal reunion under false pretenses by Francis (Wilson), their older brother. They haven't seen one another since their father's funeral in New York a year ago, and since Francis almost died in a motorcycle accident himself, he's been feeling sentimental and wants to heal his broken family. The bickering and fisticuffs that follow are recognizable as vaguely human.
But, really, we're meant to appreciate the utter loveliness of Anderson's designer cartoon how, for instance, Brody might be part man, part TV antenna; or how dreamy the soundtrack music from Satyajit Ray's movies is. The brothers carry their father's set of butterscotch valises, which have been painted with little animals; they're like the Louis Vuitton kid-safari collection.
Just as you begin to consider how a man of Anderson's visual sophistication can continue to wade in the psychological and emotional kiddie pool, though, something amazing happens. The movie spills into life as it is actually lived and concluded. Suddenly, we are thrust between two funerals. One, for the Whitmans' father, might as well be imaginary (we never attend it). The other is for a son, and it feels momentously real.
The Whitmans detrain (they're evicted, actually) and hole up in a colorful, grief-stricken desert village. And Anderson, in a kind of empathetic breakthrough, drops his Richard Lester-Francois Truffaut impersonation to show anguish and pain. The post-facto news of personal torments Owen Wilson has recently endured only deepens the picture's sudden soul.
"The Darjeeling Limited" is as much a coloring book as Anderson's other movies are. But for several scenes, the coloring-book colors escape, inspiring a well of feeling not for the cotton-candy clouds and construction-paper sun that hover above so much of this movie, but for the flesh-and-blood men and women living beneath them.
Extras: Prequel short, "Hotel Chevalier"; alternate and deleted scenes. (Fox Home Entertainment, $29.95)
TV DVD | Christopher Muther
'Love,' exciting, goofy, and new
The producers of reality television, specifically those who prey upon the once-famous and infamous, can thank Aaron Spelling for perfecting the formula of bringing together several B-, C-, and D-list celebrities in a single program and turning it into entertainment. But unlike the train-wreck mentality of today's lower-rung celebs, there is an innocent optimism among the stars who frequented the first season of Spelling's "The Love Boat."
Perhaps it was because they at long last had an opportunity to engage in the free-wheeling, booty-bumping trends of the disco era, which was the risque thrill of watching the voyages of the Pacific Princess. Robert Reed beds his ex-wife, played by Loretta Swit, Meredith Baxter-Birney (back when she was still a Birney) poses for a centerfold, and Sherman Hemsley gets trapped in an elevator with his wife LaWanda Page(!), and they make sweet, trapped elevator lovin'.
As potentially dreadful as this all sounds - and at times it is quite tiresome - season one of "The Love Boat" can also be surprisingly engaging. It's not only the high camp of Bonnie Franklin's lime green pantsuit and the bad acting of a Scott Baio-Kristy McNichol shipboard romance that captivates, it's also watching the pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan era freedom of adults acting like goofy, lusty teenagers after a few of Isaac's pina coladas that makes the cliche story lines slightly more bearable. Well, that, and Charo, who turns every appearance into a surreal flamenco fantasy.
Extras: Episode promos (CBS, Paramount, $39.99).
ALSO THIS WEEK
"AWAKE" (2007)
Hayden Christensen endures a waking nightmare as a young millionaire whose anesthesia fails during heart surgery, leaving him conscious but paralyzed for the operation. Not surprisingly, the strange premise makes for hard-to-sustain suspense. With Jessica Alba and Terrence Howard.
Extras: Commentary by rookie filmmaker Joby Howard; deleted scenes. (
REISSUES
"12 ANGRY MEN" (1957)
Sidney Lumet and Henry Fonda's jury room classic is ensemble drama at its finest, and it's remembered here with a pair of new retrospective featurettes and insightful film historian commentary. (MGM, $19.98)
"101 DALMATIANS" (1961)
Cruella De Vil might have been a throwback to Tallulah Bankhead, but she's also got to be the Disney villain most ahead of her time. Two decades before PETA, she was all about sticking it in the animal huggers' faces. Her nastiness and the pooches' cuteness get a nifty digital restoration here.
Extras: Deleted songs; interactive adopt-a-puppy game; production retrospectives. (Disney, $29.99)
"BILLY WILDER FILM COLLECTION" (2008)
Expanding on last month's reissue of "The Apartment," studio vault minders have put together a four-film set that could just as easily be billed as a Wilder-Jack Lemmon collection, as it also includes "Some Like It Hot" and "The Fortune Cookie." (It was actually Walter Matthau who won an Oscar for the latter.) The Dean Martin-Kim Novak pairing "Kiss Me, Stupid" fills out the set.
Extras: Extensive retrospective material on "The Apartment" and "Some Like It Hot." (MGM, $39.98)
"HORTON HEARS A WHO!" (1970)
With the computer animated Horton feature on the way, the original 'toon by Dr. Seuss and animation legend Chuck Jones gets another look. A fun, worthy follow-up to the pair's collaboration on the Grinch.
Extras: Beware - there's some oddly family-unfriendly material in bonus programs such as a '40s adaptation of "Horton Hatches the Egg!" and the Seuss-Ralph Bakshi arms-race fable "Butter Battle Book." (Warner, $19.97)
"MRS. DOUBTFIRE" (1993)
Robin Williams does drag (for those who don't find him quite manic enough without it). For us, the real curiosity is seeing Pierce Brosnan, in those undeserved lean years post-Remington and pre-Bond, playing a stock smarmy boyfriend.
Extras: Production featurettes; previously unseen improv clips, naturally. (Fox, $19.98)
TELEVISION
"NEWHART": THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (1982-83)
It's William "Larry" Sanderson's world; Bob Newhart is just living in it. (Or dreaming it, as the case might be.)
Extras: Retrospective featurettes. (Fox, $39.98; available now)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 