DVD Report
New Releases | Tom Russo
There's more fun than fumbles in football tale
There could be a simple lesson behind the tepid reception George Clooney's "Leatherheads" (2008) received at the box office: Don't open a football movie at the start of baseball season. (At least the DVD got the release strategy right.) Poor timing seems like a better explanation than the critical knock that Clooney's latest directorial effort fumbles as an old-fashioned screwball comedy. The truth is, there are plenty of laughs in this mix of throwback humor and did-you-know research into pro football's 1920s beginnings by former Sports Illustrated writer Duncan Brantley and columnist colleague Rick Reilly. The movie goes far lighter on the sports element than it effectively could, and there's a crackle to the repartee between Clooney's aging gridiron vet Dodge Connelly and Renée Zellweger's spunky reporter Lexie Littleton. Nope, they're not Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, but they have a good time aspiring. The pair's banter revolves around Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski of "The Office"), a college gridiron star and WWI hero recruited by Dodge to legitimize his ragtag Duluth Bulldogs and the foundering pro game as a whole. Lexie, though, sees Carter as her ticket to an editor's job, if she can get to the bottom of a report that his war record is bogus. It's only when the movie focuses on the scandal, and not so much on playing cute, that the action gets stacked up at the line of scrimmage.
Extras: Clooney supplies easygoing guy's-guy commentary with "Good Night, and Good Luck" producing pal Grant Heslov, but to our disappointment, sheds no light on the vaguely referenced dirty plays - "Pig in the Poke," "Crusty Bob," etc. - that are Connelly's stock in trade. Some documentary material on the real game of the era also would have been welcome. (Universal, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98)
"SEX AND THE CITY" (2008)
The biggest surprise about this feature encore to Sarah Jessica Parker's HBO galapalooza isn't the tragedy that befalls (or doesn't) Carrie Bradshaw and true love Mr. Big (Chris Noth), but just how accessible the movie is. As a male viewer with no particular interest in high fashion, I always found the show about as comfortable a fit as those masochistic heels obviously were for Parker. But you don't need to have caught many episodes to be drawn in by Carrie's trials as a secretly overeager 41-year-old bride, or by a significant marital bump for Cynthia Nixon's Miranda. Kim Cattrall's Samantha and Kristin Davis's Charlotte draw the short straws in terms of character arcs.
Extras: Additional 10 minutes of footage, plus deleted scenes; conversation with Parker and writer-director Michael Patrick King; commentary by King. (New Line, $34.99; single-disc theatrical version; $28.98; Blu-ray, $35.00)
"DECEPTION" (2008)
Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman are decently cast as an uncool New York accountant and the corporate stud who befriends him, then promptly ushers him into an anonymous sex network full of wild career women. If only this aren't-we-naughty thriller weren't as anonymous as its backdrop. Director Marcel Langenegger and writer Mark Bomback not only lay out a story that's thoroughly predictable, they leave the sex club element feeling grafted on, as though it could be dropped completely without mattering much. After a time, it is.
Extras: Director's commentary; requisite featurette on, yes, the truth behind sex clubs. (Fox, $27.98; Blu-ray $39.98)
"KABLUEY" (2008)
Lisa Kudrow is paired with, essentially, a male version of herself in writer-director Scott Prendergast's festival circuit comedy, an unexpected fusion of Noah Baumbach family dynamics and Richard Kelly unease. Prendergast plays Salman, a twitchy slacker called in by his sister-in-law, overwhelmed military wife Leslie (Kudrow), to supply live-in daycare while her husband serves in Iraq. She also lines him up with a miserable, surreal job donning a puffy blue mascot suit for a failed Internet concern, and handing out fliers in the middle of nowhere. Despite its deliberate inarticulateness, the movie makes a nice little assortment of statements about responsibility, loyalty, compassion, and even war.
Extras: Extensive deleted scenes. (
Documentary DVD | Ty Burr
Compelling stories from a cancer ward
There are some places the human heart just doesn't want to go, and a four-hour documentary about children with cancer is one of them. But there are also experiences that leave a viewer with a profound awareness of life's fragility and our own unexpected strength, and "A Lion in the House" is one of those, too. The product of eight years of work by filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, the film focuses on a handful of patients undergoing treatment in Cincinnati at the Cancer Center of Children's Hospital, more commonly referred to by staff and families as "5-A." Some of these children will be healthy at the end of "Lion" and others will have died; the film crosses its fingers and watches. One of the most compelling narrative threads here is watching 15-year-old Tim Wood take on gravitas over the long haul - his disease matures him even as it wastes him.
The children are only one point in the film's larger design. In almost every case, the physicians become welded into the inner family circle, but it's the parents who are the film's fractured saints, and their strength is as awe-inspiring as their frailties are understandable. Alex Lougheed's mother, Judy, is a tough, upbeat dynamo who only inadvertently lets the cracks show; ironically, her husband, Scott, may be better off for being the weaker vessel. Everyone faults him for his insistence on one last, deluded round of chemo during his daughter's final days - the doctors, his wife, even himself. Judge this man at your peril, the film implies; God forbid, you should have to make the same decision.
"A Lion in the House" holds its length for the most part; if these people are in for the duration, so should we be. Nor does the film pull punches: We see brain operations, experimental treatments, results both cheering and tragic, and are present shortly after moments of death and during open-casket funerals.
Little of this feels exploitive. Bognar and Reichert use narration sparingly and take the time-honored fly-on-the-wall approach to their subjects. The subjects, in turn, understand the camera's intrusion as a form of sharing and commemoration. It's a hard bargain, but everything about this movie is hard, especially if you're a parent. Sometimes you have to look steadily at the worst to understand what's precious, and "A Lion in the House" never flinches.
Extras: Deleted scenes, interview with filmmakers, making-of featurette. (Docurama, $26.95)
Crime DVD | Mark Feeney
Watching you not watching me
"The Anderson Tapes" is a pretty good, if slickly sour, heist movie from 1971. Sean Connery stars as Duke Anderson, a just-released ex-con who's planning to rob the ritzy Upper East Side apartment building that his girlfriend (Dyan Cannon) lives in.
Three things earn "Tapes" a larger place in movie history. It was director Sidney Lumet's initial venture into the world of New York cops and robbers, thus paving the way for "Serpico," "Dog Day Afternoon," and the rest. It marked a major step in Connery's escape from James Bond bondage, demonstrating he could get away with playing a non-period non-Brit role. Finally, "Tapes," which was based on a Lawrence Sanders bestseller, helped kick off that '70s standby, the paranoid thriller. Even as Connery plans the robbery, he's under electronic government surveillance (unbeknownst to him, of course). It's a tribute to the genre's staying power that a remake, set in Miami rather than Manhattan, has been announced for 2010 release.
"Tapes" has something else going for it: an eclectic, bordering-on-bizarre cast. In her last movie role, Margaret Hamilton plays a building resident. Ralph Meeker and Garrett Morris, of the original "SNL" cast, show up as cops. Alan King plays a Mafia boss (the mob bankrolls Connery's plan). Martin Balsam swishes it up as an antiques dealer. And a young Christopher Walken is part of Connery's gang. Yes, it's true, Christopher Walken was young once, and here's proof.
Extras: None. (
ALSO THIS WEEK
"THE FOOT FIST WAY" (2008)
Danny McBride ("Tropic Thunder") apparently built a decent cult following for his work as an abrasive, ego-freak tae kwon do instructor. The character plays like a redneck version of David Brent from the BBC's "The Office," but it's all a little obvious, and hard to take after a while.
Extras: Commentary by McBride and director Jody Hill; over-the-top alternate ending. (Paramount, $19.99)
"FINDING AMANDA" (2008)
Denis Leary's "Rescue Me" co-creator Peter Tolan writes and directs a characteristically dark comedy about a young Vegas hooker (Brittany Snow) with a self-deludingly cheery outlook, and her gambling-addicted sitcom writer uncle (Matthew Broderick), who self-deludingly plans to save her.
Extras: Commentary by Tolan and Broderick; premiere interviews. (Magnolia, $26.98; available now)
"MOTHER OF TEARS" (2008)
Italian gorehound Dario Argento wraps the "witch trilogy" that he began with 1977's "Suspiria," this time casting daughter Asia ("xXx") as an art restorer who fusses with the wrong relic, unwittingly unleashing hell on Rome. Unapologetically excessive.
Extras: Conversation with the director; production featurette. (
REISSUES
"RENO 911!: MIAMI" (2007)
Nevada's Finest sure do pack an awful lot of improv in the their holsters: This two-disc reissue of the Comedy Central hit's feature spin-off includes an hour-plus "lost" version composed entirely of deleted and alternate scenes. Cheekier, arguably - but definitely with more "cheekery," as Thomas "Lt. Dangle" Lennon notes in an intro.
Extras: Commentary by Lennon and castmates Robert Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver; digital copy. (Fox, $14.99)
"DOLLARS" (1971)
Achtung, baby: Con man Warren Beatty and call girl Goldie Hawn hightail it around Germany after double-crossing some tough customers in this solid heist movie from writer-director Richard Brooks ("Elmer Gantry").
Extras: Breezy featurettes. (
"BEETLEJUICE" (1988)
Michael Keaton polished his wackjob-on-the-edge routine as Tim Burton's obnoxious ghoul, not to mention tuning up for more masked mayhem with Burton on "Batman."
Extras: Episodes of the animated spin-off. (Warner, $19.96; Blu-ray, $34.99; available now)
TELEVISION
"OPPENHEIMER" (1982)
Years before "Law & Order," Sam Waterston portrayed the deeply conflicted A-bomb scientist in this Emmy-nominated seven-part PBS miniseries.
Extras: 1955 Edward R. Murrow interview with Oppenheimer. (BBC Video, $39.98)
"STAR TREK": ALTERNATE REALITIES COLLECTIVE (2008)
Kirk's split into good and evil halves is just one highlight of this survey of tweaked realities, parallel dimensions, etc., from every incarnation of the show. Includes 20 episodes.
Extras: New interviews; cast and crew commentaries. (Paramount, $42.99; available now)
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified. 