DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
Relationships are the currency in this 'City'
It's a dicey road toward a hopeful future in the slums-of-Rio drama "City of Men" (2008), a feature bookend to 2003's hot-button Brazilian film "City of God." Seriously import-attuned viewers might also recognize "Men" as the capper to a TV series of the same name. Where director Fernando Meirelles's "God" focused on the drug trade with impoverished favelas as its backdrop, "Men," which Meirelles produced, puts the community first. As in previous chapters of the saga, real-life Rio kids Douglas Silva and Darlan Cunha are featured as Ace and Wallace, best friends perched on the verge of adulthood, and dogged by father issues. Ace has a young son who he'd rather just treat as an afterthought, an especially dangerous attitude in their crime-plagued surroundings. Wallace is determined to make a connection with the father he's never known, a pursuit fraught with all manner of disillusionment. So goes life on "Dead End Hill," a neighborhood erupting in a gang war that alternately back-burners Ace and Wallace's hang-ups and brings them into sharper focus. A rift that forms between them is overly melodramatic, but the ambient violence keeps things real. Jonathan Haagensen is a particular presence as gang boss Midnight, all Brazilian Brad Pitt smolder and stung-lipped intensity.
Extras: A lone 15-minute featurette is a useful refresher on the saga's history. It's noted, for one thing, that flashbacks to Ace and Wallace's preadolescence were culled from the TV series. Silva and Cunha literally grew up on the saga, which tracked them from 12 to 18. Cunha also opens up about not knowing his own father. And director Paulo Morelli and crew offer some production background, coming off as a surprisingly white-collar group for a project so gritty. (Miramax, $29.99)
"MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS" (2008)
Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai's first English-language feature is as visually sumptuous as his reputation (and that swell title) would lead you to hope, all neon-kissed romantic tableaux and snippets of leisurely slow-mo. But surface gloss is far too much of the film, which episodically follows lovelorn Norah Jones on a meandering path to self-fulfillment. Jones commiserates with New York cafe counterman Jude Law; rubbernecks at the wrecked marriage of Memphis barfly David Strathairn and Rachel Weisz; and goes road-tripping with cynical Nevada poker pixie Natalie Portman. Jones, in her acting debut, is reasonably assured, yet also a bit of a cipher. But sure, we'll have more pie, please, with another dollop of Jones's true love smooching the stray filling off her lips.
Extras: A 20-minute cineaste Q&A with Wong also isn't especially deep. More than once, though, he references a Hong Kong short he made several years back that was the model for Jones and Law's scenes. Too bad you won't find that here. (
"MAD MEN": SEASON ONE (2007)
AMC's portrait of early '60s Madison Avenue ad culture boasts some of the subtlest writing on TV right now - fittingly, for a show all about subtle selling. The whole enterprise feels thoroughly unexpected, from the juicy setting to Jon Hamm's out-of-nowhere performance as enigmatic exec Don Draper. See the world through his eyes, and that ever-present, cigarette-smoky haze.
Extras: Extensive cast and crew commentaries. And, for the design-conscious, packaging shaped like a DVD-size Zippo. (Lionsgate, $49.98)
"VANTAGE POINT" (2008)
This feature "24" wannabe has a provocative gimmick: The movie hits rewind again and again on a terrorist assault during president William Hurt's diplomatic stop in Salamanca, dissecting the chaos. Unfortunately, that's the smartest it gets. Dennis Quaid is most visible as a jittery Secret Service agent, but he plays it with draining Harrison Ford grimness, and is given the unforgivably dopey moment of blurting out intel in front of news producer Sigourney Weaver. You might instead want to check out director Pete Travis's infinitely more thoughtful Irish terrorism drama "Omagh."
Extras: Commentary by Travis; production featurettes; digital copy. (
Documentary DVD | Saul Austerlitz
Compassion and pain, in close-up
The career of cinema verite pioneer Frederick Wiseman has been so multifaceted, so varied in subject (if not approach), that selecting any two of his films for comparison is like hitting shuffle on a stranger's iPod. The only genuine similarities between Wiseman's 1970 classic "Hospital" and 1985's "Racetrack" are gross-out surgical scenes; Wiseman's films are not suitable accompaniments to that extra-large tub of popcorn.
"Hospital," along with "High School" perhaps Wiseman's most acclaimed film, is close kin to the director's other late 1960s-early 1970s work, in which a single institution - a welfare office, a mental institution, a school - is assessed for its impact on the people it serves and those who serve. Here, a New York City hospital and its staff are challenged by a constant influx of the suffering: the elderly, the alcoholic, the drug-addled, the mentally disturbed. Wiseman is a compassionate filmmaker; at the same time his work is utterly pitiless. His compassion is built into his framework, with long, unbroken takes culled from hundreds of hours of film.
Like the doctors and nurses providing comfort, we cannot turn away from those in pain - we must confront their trauma, breathe it in, and make it our own. An agitated young man with a cherubic face struggles through a brutal drug-induced reaction, moaning to himself as he projectile vomits. An alcoholic with broken stubs for teeth ("When I have two beers, I eat good") cries as he tells a doctor his shameful ailments. Shame and degradation, in fact, are the lingua franca of the hospital; and its staff - brusque as they sometimes may be - exhibit profound compassion and care in their handling of society's forgotten.
Where "Hospital" is a high point in Wiseman's career, "Racetrack" is a rare misstep. Wiseman is gifted with the ability of sketching characters rapidly and efficiently, which makes it all the more surprising that "Racetrack" is almost entirely devoid of memorable figures. We watch trainers, jockeys, veterinarians, and bettors at the Belmont Park racetrack on Long Island, but "Racetrack" offers little sense of who they are. "Racetrack" is one of the shorter entries in Wiseman's filmography; it feels like the longest.
Extras: none (Zipporah, $29.95 each)
Architecture | Mark Feeney
His ode to banks is still on the money
The German filmmaker Heinz Emigholz (above) takes Goethe's famous remark about architecture being frozen music and does it one better. He makes documentaries that turn buildings into transcendent cinema.
Four of his architectural documentaries are available in the United States: "Maillart's Bridges," on the great Swiss engineer Robert Maillart; "Schindler's Houses," on the Modernist architect Rudolf Schindler's homes in the Los Angeles area; "D'Annunzio's Cave," on the poet Gabriel D'Annunzio's Italian villa; and "Sullivan's Banks," on the jewel-box-like banks Louis Sullivan designed in several small Midwestern towns in the early years of the 20th century. The Sullivan film is the first Emigholz made in the series, but only now released here.
The method is deceptively simple. A chaste intertitle gives the building's name and the date on which Emigholz shot it. A brief sequence of static shots of exterior and interior follows. There's no music or voice-over, only ambient noise on the soundtrack. Then it's on to the next building.
That description must make these films sound like an ordeal. They're hardly that. Emigholz's austere approach provides an ideal framing device for the buildings (literally as well as figuratively). It's especially well suited to Sullivan's banks, complementing their gorgeous ornamentation. More than that, as building views accumulate, something very nearly miraculous happens. These films create their own sense of space and time: relaxed, hypnotic, indrawing. It's as close as a viewer can get to being there - in that place, at that time - while remaining here. Rarely has the quality of stillness been so exalted onscreen.
Extras: Emigholz's film "The Whitman Project," on Walt Whitman (Facets, $39.95, already available)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"DRILLBIT TAYLOR" (2008)
Owen Wilson and Judd Apatow's comedy crew tries to dust off a long-shelved John Hughes story about a military dropout scamming his way into playing bodyguard for high school geeks. Apparently they should've tried the lemon-fresh Pledge, too - this one doesn't feel superbad at all.
Extras: Extended cut of the movie; cast and crew commentary; deleted scenes. (Paramount, extended and theatrical versions, $29.99 each; Blu-ray $39.99)
"THE HAMMER" (2008)
Back in the days when Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel were both kicking around Los Angeles radio station KROQ, there was no question which guy was funnier - yet somehow, Carolla's humor never translated quite the same way to the tube. This simply tailored comedy is a much better fit, casting him as a no-account construction worker who, at 40, takes a creaky shot at his old Olympic boxing dream. This is acting from the Seinfeld school, but Carolla fans won't be disappointed.
Extras: Commentary by Carolla; deleted scenes and outtakes. (
"RAILS & TIES" (2007)
Alison Eastwood, daughter of Clint, directs the story of a train engineer (Kevin Bacon) who's involved in a deadly collision, but finds unexpected solace for himself and his cancer-stricken wife (Marcia Gay Harden) through a boy who survived the accident. Some of the drama is contrived, but the performances are solid.
Extras: Additional scenes. (Warner, $27.95)
REISSUES
"HEATHERS" (1989)
In director Michael Lehmann's cult fave, Winona Ryder makes like a croquet mallet and gives peer pressure a good, solid thwack as a cliques-averse high schooler. Christian "Call Me Jack" Slater is the enigmatic rebel leading her down a comically murderous path.
Extras: Commentary by Lehmann, writer Daniel Waters, and producer Denise Di Novi; retrospective featurettes; DVD-ROM excerpt from the script's original ending. (Anchor Bay, $19.97)
"BABY IT'S YOU" (1983)
In this modest early career effort from John Sayles, Rosanna Arquette is a '60s Jersey high school girl pined for by "The Sheik" (Vincent Spano), a self-styled classmate with lounge-singing dreams. Characteristically well-scripted by Sayles. (Legend Films, $14.95)
TELEVISION
" 'TIL DEATH DO US PART": THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON (2007)
John Waters plays macabre "Groom Reaper," hosting a dramatized true-crime anthology series about couples whose marriages ended in - mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha - murder. Par for Waters's course, in its way, save for that first-run placement on Court TV. (
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
