DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
Carell is sweetly adept at playing lovelorn
It's one big case of good news/bad news lately for Steve Carell fans. Yes, the end of the writers' strike means that new episodes of "The Office" are coming - but we've still got to wait a month. And yes, there's Carell's side gig "Dan in Real Life" (2007) to watch in the meantime - but the movie won't give you nearly the fix you're craving. Director Peter Hedges casts Carell as Dan Burns, a widower raising three daughters, leaving him spending lots of time dealing with adolescent rebellion and no time at all looking for new love. We're also told that Dan is an advice columnist, but that's beside the point. Although there's potential in the idea of this beleaguered nice guy dispensing personal guidance to others, Hedges works this angle for about 10 minutes before shifting to family reunion comedy. While Dan is on retreat with his brother (Dane Cook) and the rest of their clan, he meets Marie (Juliette Binoche), a fellow vacationer soon revealed to have a pretty complicated connection to the family already. Carell plays lovelorn comically but also with adept sweetness, much as he did in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." (Try catching that breakthrough on basic cable sometime, and you'll be amazed at how well the movie works even with its raunchiness cleaned up for TV.) But the whole hovering relatives element is a ruinous distraction, as every other scene tosses them all into a talent show or touch football game or, yes, aerobics session. Carell long ago proved he had the chops to segue from "Daily Show" wag to offbeat lead, but movies like "Dan" and "Evan Almighty" make it seem as though Hollywood misplaced the memo on how to consistently leverage his appeal.Extras: Commentary by Hedges; production featurette. (Touchstone, $29.99)
"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" (2007)
Talk about instant gratification, Joel and Ethan Coen's Oscar winner for best picture arrives on disc two short weeks after their victory. Whether you're watching for the first time or watching again, you'll groove, of course, to Javier Bardem's scary, scarily coiffed killer. Ditto for the Texas wasteland aesthetic on display as Bardem stalks rugged protagonist Josh Brolin and a missing satchel of drug money. But you might also be compelled to go online for a refresher on what Oscar competition trumped the Coens' more satisfying, slightly less honored "Fargo" a decade ago. It's certainly clear enough from the title of Cormac McCarthy's story that this noir Western isn't about anyone riding off into the sunset. But the Coens also resist sending anyone out in a blaze of glory, making for curious if nonformulaic bits of character resolution for Bardem, Brolin, and laconic sheriff Tommy Lee Jones.
Extras: A half-hour-plus collection of featurettes gives one particularly effective glimpse into Coen-think, when Joel says of Kelly Macdonald's trailer-residing character, "I don't know if it's a cliche, but at least people recognize what we're talking about" - and both brothers crack up. (Miramax, $29.99)
"GATTACA" (1997)
Writer-director Andrew Niccol's meditation on the perils and wonders of genetic engineering has aged well, in large part because its commentary on individualism is so thoughtfully, intelligently handled. (You can also give credit to that fabulous torn-from-the-fragrance-ads production design.) Ethan Hawke is a near-future dreamer whose parents were foolish enough to create him the old-fashioned way, sans test tubes, leaving him with genetic imperfections that bar him from becoming, say, an astronaut. Jude Law, in his Hollywood debut, is an irreparably injured golden boy with the DNA to help Hawke fake his way through the space program. You might not buy all of Hawke's many close calls with being outed, but there's definitely resonance in Niccol's argument that this could be the future of prejudice.
Extras: Hawke and Law look back in a 20-minute retrospective, but Niccol is disappointingly MIA. Deleted scenes include an intriguing coda speculating that if the film's science had been around ages ago, figures such as Lincoln, who had Marfan syndrome, and the dyslexic Einstein might never have been born. (
Documentary DVD | Ty Burr
Abortion in black and white? Think again.
"Lake of Fire" is an insurmountably rude provocation that's also necessary: a sprawling, at times profoundly upsetting documentary essay that forces us to ask what abortion means to the women who have one, to the people who oppose it, and to us.
The director is Tony Kaye, the British filmmaker ("American History X") and legend in his own mind who has made the movie as much to rattle his own assumptions as ours. He gives us voices from both camps in the abortion debate, from the rational and lunatic wings within each camp, and from thoughtful midpoints in between. The great divide turns out not to be political or even religious but a matter of primal wiring: There are people on both sides who want to discuss, convince, and resolve, and there are those who want to obliterate what they can't stand.
And there are the women and the fetuses, of whom we see a lot. You're quickly grateful "Lake of Fire" is in black and white, because the unblinking graphic footage of tiny extracted body parts would be impossible to take in color. This is arrant sensationalism and, again, necessary to Kaye's argument: He wants the most committed pro-choicers to understand exactly what it is they're defending; the most fervent pro-lifer to see exactly what a desperate woman is capable of.
At other times, though, "Lake of Fire" is almost spookily tender. A long sequence with Norma McCorvey - the "Roe" of Roe v. Wade - leads us on this woman's long, strange journey, culminating in what has to be one of the great "reveal" shots in recent movies.
Kaye grasps that while men talk about this issue, women live it. That's why the section on McCorvey is so sympathetic and why the final segment is so devastating. We follow a pregnant woman through an abortion, from check-in to check-out. It's her fifth procedure; she's 28 but looks years older. A victim of abuse, she's also a survivor. The camera unblinkingly documents the sights and sounds of the medical removal of the fetus - or its killing, if you prefer. Then it hovers near the woman in the recovery room, letting her talk both honestly and self-defensively before caving in to exhausted tears.
If you even think you have an opinion on this subject, the movie's essential viewing.
Extras: None. (Velocity/ThinkFilm. $27.98)
TV DVD | Matthew Gilbert
'Five Days' takes its time solving mystery
"Five Days" is like a deluxe installment of "Without a Trace." The miniseries is five hours long, so it's able to go five times as deeply into the mystery of a missing mother of three. It has all the detail, and all the character depth, that an hourlong TV procedural can't possibly muster.
Each episode is set during a different 24-hour period, beginning with the day Leanne Wellings (Christine Tremarco) seems to vanish into thin air. She pulls her car off the highway to buy flowers, and moments later, she's gone. At times, "Five Days" recalls the chilling darkness of the "The Vanishing" from 1988, one of the most disturbing missing-person movies ever. But "Five Days" has a more complicated and twisty narrative.
An HBO-BBC co-production, the miniseries benefits from a remarkably strong cast. David Oyelowo (above) plays the bereft husband with riveting stillness, and Janet McTeer stands out as a lonely cop who is close to retirement - like Helen Mirren in "Prime Suspect."
The closed-circuit cameras on the British highway system help the detectives figure out what happened to Leanne. But the solutions in "Five Days" emerge gradually, and there are character revelations along the way to the last hour. Some of the detours aren't relevant to the crime plot, and there are developments that strain credulity. Written by Gwyneth Hughes, the script perhaps reaches too far and falls short. And yet "Five Days" rewards with enough gripping moments to make it worth investigating.
ALSO THIS WEEK "BEE MOVIE" (2007)
It might be wrong to compare Jerry Seinfeld's family animation foray to an episode of his sitcom, but oh, what the heck. This is hardly a classic on a par with "The Contest," but Seinfeld's tale of a worker bee railing against the citified world delivers the hoped-for amount of amusingly excruciating minutiae.
Extras: Commentary by Seinfeld and filmmakers; promo shorts; games. (DreamWorks, $39.99; single-disc version also available, $19.95)
"SLEUTH" (2007)
Jude Law's golden vibe hasn't tarnished as he stars with Michael Caine in this update of Anthony Shaffer's two-character stage exercise, previously filmed in 1972 with Caine playing Law's role. Law is a wannabe actor who's sleeping with Caine's wife, but who's all attitude and no apologies as he swaggers into the wealthy crime novelist's high-tech manse to chew over the affair. Remake director Kenneth Branagh and writer Harold Pinter tweak the original in a way that lets both actors attack their interplay with terrifically nasty, violent relish. Some disguise work straight out of the Clark Kent school of suspended disbelief is the one bit of fun that falls a little flat.
Extras: Commentary by Branagh and Caine, plus a second track by Law; production featurettes. (
"NANCY DREW" (2007)
Tween idol Emma Roberts ("Unfabulous") and director Andrew Fleming gamely try to lend some contemporary relevance to yesteryear's kid-pulp heroine. Ultimately generic, despite some fun riffs on how a square like Nancy could possibly roll with the text-message crowd.
Extras: Production featurettes. (Warner, $28.98)
"AUGUST RUSH" (2007)
The rush, such as it is, is far too sugary in director Kirsten Sheridan's tale of a castoff, runaway musical prodigy (the likable Freddie Highmore, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory") kicking around New York with Dickensian mentor Robin Williams. Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers costar as the parents.
Extras: Deleted scenes. (Warner, $28.98)
"HITMAN" (2007)
Hitman alive, does Timothy Olyphant ever need to find more work on a level with "Deadwood." He sure isn't coming up with it in this noisy video-game adaptation, in which he plays the barcode-stamped product of a secret society of killers.
Extras: Unrated footage. (Fox, $29.98)
REISSUES
". . .AND JUSTICE FOR ALL" (1979)
Director Norman Jewison's indictment of legal-system deal-making is rightly tagged as a flawed mix of drama and satire, but Al Pacino's roaring, Oscar-nominated performance is a must.
Extras: Interviews with Jewison and writer Barry Levinson. (Sony, $19.94)
Capsules are written by Globe correspondent Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 