Rain Man (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

Rain Man (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Drama, Tom Cruise

****/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, Jerry Molen
screenplay by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow
directed by Barry Levinson

by Alex Jackson From its opening shot of a Cadillac craned across the smoggy Los Angeles skyline as The Belle Stars‘ iconic cover of “Iko Iko” plays on the soundtrack, Barry Levinson’s Rain Man announces itself as one of the very best films of the 1980s. The ultimate high-concept movie, it has a fashionably icy Adrian Lynne/Michael Mann/Ridley Scott aesthetic that’s semi-parodied by way of an absurdist, non-sequitur twist. Pauline Kael called Rain Man “a piece of wet kitsch” while paradoxically impugning its “lifelessness.” In terms of content, it certainly sounds like sugary glurge, but as rendered in the emotionally-detached lexicon of ’80s advertising, all the irony, all the junkiness, has been bled out. The film equates Yuppie materialism with autism, and in a subtle, underhanded way, this humanizes the alien while undermining the film’s own pretension. Once we see this hip disengagement in terms of pathology, we’re no longer attracted and/or repulsed by it.

The Lion King (1994) [Platinum Edition] – DVD|[Diamond Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical

**/****
DVD – Image A Sound A Extras B+
BD – Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
screenplay by Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts and Linda Woolverton
directed by Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff

by Bill Chambers The day The Lion King came out, during the summer of Gump, I bought a ticket for Wyatt Earp instead, convinced that I would be more satisfied by its three hours than by The Lion King‘s hour and change. Nobody remembers this now, but back then, the trades were counting on the reunion of Silverado collaborators Lawrence Kasdan and Kevin Costner to deliver the sleeper hit of the summer; although back then everybody involved in the production tried to pawn off the film’s failure on the growing cult of Tombstone, the fact is that Wyatt Earp is, if not the most boring movie ever made, perhaps the second-most. Still, even when a friend rolled up his sleeve for me a few weeks later to reveal four fingertip-sized bruises he sustained from watching The Lion King with his girlfriend (she white-knuckled her way through the wildebeest stampede ’til his arm went to sleep), I remained unconvinced that Disney’s latest blockbuster cartoon, which had grossed over $200M by that point, was worth the price of a ticket, having been taken for a ride by the prestige surrounding the dreadful Beauty and the Beast.

Scarface (1983) [Limited Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2011, Al Pacino, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Gangster

Scarface1

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Loggia
screenplay by Oliver Stone
directed by Brian DePalma

by Bryant Frazer One of the most powerful moments in Scarface is the culmination of a violent, perfectly judged sequence of events crafted for maximum impact by screenwriter Oliver Stone and staged with ferocious efficiency by director Brian De Palma. It takes place at the end of a night when Al Pacino's Cuban gangster, a feisty little hard-on named Tony Montana, has survived an attempt on his life that left him with a bullet in his shoulder. He has overseen the execution of his boss, who was behind the hit. He has shot dead a corrupt cop who was extorting his cash and favours. And he has just been upstairs to collect from between satin sheets his boss's woman, a sleek blonde dressed in white who is his prize. The camera zooms out from a medium close-up on Pacino's face as, still bleeding, arm in a sling, exhaustion writ large across his face, Tony Montana peers through 20-foot-tall glass windows, staring dumbly into a Giorgio Moroder sunrise as an advertising blimp floats over the water, its pithy slogan an empty promise of greatness yet to come: "The World Is Yours…."

Vera Cruz (1954) + The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (DigiBook) – Blu-ray Discs

Vera Cruz (1954) + The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (DigiBook) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in****/****, 1950s, 1970s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, FFC Must-Own, Western

****/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Burt Lancaster, Denise Darcel, Sarita Monteil, Cesar Romero
screenplay by Roland Kibbee and James R. Webb
directed by Robert Aldrich

****/**** Image A+ Sound A Extras A-
starring Clint Eastwood, Chief Dan George, Sondra Locke, John Vernon
screenplay by Phil Kaufman and Sonia Chernus
directed by Clint Eastwood

by Jefferson Robbins One mistake in looking at the U.S. Civil War is to assume it began at Sumter and ended at Appomattox. If the wars of living memory have had such tremendous social and personal repercussions, how much could that war among countrymen have? Western movies, for better and often worse, have plumbed this question in the same way noirs and horror movies inquire about their own present moment. Think about the sheer number of greedy killers and dead-eyed psychopaths required to populate “the West” as we came know it through our cinema; what else but a national trauma could create so many murderers and flush them out to the frontiers.

Thor (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Fantasy, Superhero

**/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B+
starring Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins
screenplay by Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and Don Payne
directed by Kenneth Branagh

by Walter Chaw An uneasy collision of the Henry V Kenneth Branagh and the Peter’s Friends Kenneth Branagh, Branagh’s foray into the long-form Avengers trailer sweepstakes Thor features a star-making turn from handsome Aussie soap actor Chris Hemsworth (whose star was actually made as James T. Kirk’s dad in the Star Trek reboot), a lot of debt to the kitsch elements of Superman II, and another waste-of-life post-credits teaser starring everyone’s favourite one-eyed motherfucker. It has the titular Norse God of Thunder deposited fish-out-of-water-style in bumfuck New Mexico (better than Arizona, I guess, where he’d be asked for his papers, denied an education, then probably shot), where he falls under the care of mousy (?) physicist Jane (Natalie Portman), her mentor Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård), and wacky alterna-intern Darcy (Kat Dennings). He’s been banished, see, by daddy Odin (Anthony Hopkins); betrayed by tricky brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston); and separated from his beloved hammer until such time as he can prove himself a true Asgardian. Gibberish? You bet. Leave it at this: the movie’s pretty decent in a Starman sort of way when Thor’s tossing down coffee mugs at a local greasy spoon and demanding more drink and pretty horrible when it’s depicting the war between the Norse and the Frost Giants on a massive CGI stage that triggers Tron: Legacy flashbacks like wet heat does Vietnam.

Prom (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

Prom (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD

Posted in2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Disney, Drama, DVD, Teen

*½/**** Image A Sound B Extras C+
starring Aimee Teegarden, Thomas McDonnell, De’Vaughn Nixon, Danielle Campbell
screenplay by Katie Welch
directed by Joe Nussbaum

by Bill Chambers Prom–not inconsequently promoted as “Disney Prom“–is an ensemble piece I’d love to call Altman-esque, but its major influence appears to be episodic television, specifically the seriocomedies one finds on Disney- owned and operated ABC Family. Much like that weekly dose of “Greek” or “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”, Prom features multifold, compartmentalized storylines, a cast that meets the minimum requirements for forming a model U.N., an unyielding soundtrack geared towards dictating emotions and/or spurring iTunes downloads, and subject matter that alternates between light comedy and light controversy. Its ending even feels like that of a season finale–enough to tide viewers over during the summer, perhaps, but hardly the soaring stuff of Chuck Workman montages. Audiences seemed to sense that Prom was just going to place a big-screen surcharge on the type of thing they’d normally watch for free, and without any larger box-office incentives (3-D, a certified heartthrob, a pre-established character), the film barely recouped its paltry $10M budget.

The Big Lebowski (1998) – [Limited Edition] Blu-ray Disc

The Big Lebowski (1998) – [Limited Edition] Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Coen Brothers, Comedy, Crime, Mystery, Sports, UK

****/**** Image C+ Sound A Extras B
starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi
screenplay by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
directed by Joel Coen

by Walter Chaw I think that once the book closes on the Coen Brothers, they’ll be seen as the premier interpreters of our time: the best literary critics; the Mark Twains. I used to believe they were simply genre tourists on this mission to do one for every genre, but it becomes apparent with each new No Country for Old Men and True Grit unlocking each vintage Miller’s Crossing and The Hudsucker Proxy that they were interpreting genres long before they took on specific pieces as a whole. Coming full circle from the wry noir of Blood Simple and Fargo and presenting itself eventually as of a piece with a later Coen noir, The Man Who Wasn’t There (just as A Serious Man is a companion piece to Barton Fink), The Big Lebowski serves as the transition point in that process while also moving the brothers from broad genre takedowns to a very specific kind of literary adaptation. That they would follow it up with O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their take on The Odyssey, speaks to a mission statement of sorts: like it, The Big Lebowski is a distillation of a classic piece of literature (Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep) that completely understands its simultaneous responsibility to its own medium and to its source material. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Executive Decision (1996) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1990s, 2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Thriller

***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Kurt Russell, Halle Berry, John Leguizamo, Steven Seagal
screenplay by Jim Thomas & John Thomas
directed by Stuart Baird

by Jefferson Robbins SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Stuart Baird’s Executive Decision begins and ends as a bad, bad movie. It starts off wobbling distractedly from one fraught international locale to another, complete with bleeping, wordy chyrons telling us where we are and with whom. It ends in a pile of airliner-in-peril clichés and some flirty banter so terrible it puckers the ears, acting as though Airplane! never happened. In between, the picture gets better, tighter, and tenser than a sub-Tom Clancy military political thriller starring Steven Seagal has any right to be. It accomplishes this, in part, by throwing Seagal off the plane.

A Man Called Horse (1970) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Mexico, Western

Mancalledhorsecap

*½/**** Image B+ Sound B-
starring Richard Harris, Dame Judith Anderson, Jean Gascon, Corinna Tsopei
screenplay by Jack De Witt, based on a story by Dorothy M. Johnson
directed by Elliot Silverstein

by Bryant Frazer Hey, peoples of the world: white guys are awesome! Suppose a white guy–a pasty English lord, let’s say–were kidnapped by a bunch of Lakota Sioux. Sure, he might try to escape from captivity once or twice, but after a while he’d be totally cool with it. Instead of whining like a paleface, he’d go out and kill some other Native American people, maybe grab him a scalp or two, and then finally prove himself to his tribe by undergoing a bizarre physical ritual and fucking the chief’s sister. Eventually, he’ll be the leader of the tribe, rocking a tomahawk and a headband and showing them how to skirmish, English-style.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2011, Action, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Sci-Fi, Superhero

**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
Emerald Knights
screenplay by Alan Burnett and Todd Casey
directed by Lauren Montgomery
The First Lantern
screenplay by Michael Green and Marc Guggenheim
directed by Christopher Berkeley
Kilowog
screenplay by Peter J. Tomasi, based on “New Blood” by Peter J. Tomasi and Chris Samnee
directed by Lauren Montgomery
Mogo Doesn’t Socialize
screenplay by Dave Gibbons, based on the story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
directed by Jay Oliva
Laira
screenplay by Eddie Berganza, based on “What Price Honor?” by Ruben Diaz and Travis Charest
directed by Jay Oliva
Abin Sur
screenplay by Geoff Johns, based on “Tyger” by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill
directed by Christopher Berkeley

by Jefferson Robbins The DC Universe direct-to-video animation series continues to earn its reputation, for good or ill, as a by-fans/for-fans endeavour. Producer Bruce Timm and company pump out Green Lantern: Emerald Knights as a kind of B-side to Martin Campbell’s disappointing Green Lantern feature film–a supporting document, the sort of thing valued mostly by collectors and fetishists. DC Comics fanboys will thrill to a flashback glimpse of planetary invasions carried out by back-issue bad-guy species the Dominators; casual viewers will likely just think it’s cool how the guys with the rings blow shit up with giant green energy swords in outer space.

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2006, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

THE FOX AND THE HOUND
***½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
uncredited screenplay, based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix
directed by Art Stevens, Ted Berman, Richard Rich

THE LITTLE MERMAID
*½/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A
written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With The Fox and the Hound and The Little Mermaid bookending an especially turbulent decade for a studio mortally locked in a struggle to reconcile its animation pedigree with its crass commercial instincts, the former has come to be regarded in the Disney mythology as the Good Friday to the latter’s Easter Sunday. It’s therefore fitting that the two films they most emulate are 1942’s Bambi and 1950’s Cinderella, respectively, as the Forties marked the last time the Mouse House was on the brink of foreclosure. (The Fox and the Hound goes so far as to recycle cels from Bambi.) Much like The Little Mermaid represented a somewhat cynical reboot of the fairytale default, so, too, was Cinderella a glorified salvage operation following the money-/audience-hemorrhaging pro bono work Uncle Walt did on behalf of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. Alas, the Good Friday and Easter Sunday analogy applies to not just Disney’s phoenix-like resurrection but also the tonal and moral disparity between the two pictures: one is the sad truth; the other is wishful thinking.

Breaking Bad: The Complete Second Season (2009) + Breaking Bad: The Complete Third Season (2010) – Blu-ray Discs

Posted in2009, 2010, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Drama, Television, Thriller

Breakingbads23cap

Season 2 – Image A Sound B+ Extras B+
“Seven Thirty-Seven,” “Grilled,” “Bit by a Dead Bee,” “Down,” “Breakage,” “Peekaboo,” “Negro y Azul,” “Better Call Saul,” “4 Days Out,” “Over,” “Mandala,” “Phoenix,” “ABQ”

Season 3 – Image A- Sound B+ Extras B+
“No Mas,” “Caballo sin Nombre,” “I.F.T.,” “Green Light,” “Mas,” “Sunset,” “One Minute,” “I See You,” “Kafkaesque,” “Fly,” “Abiquiu,” “Half Measures,” “Full Measure”

by Bryant Frazer “Breaking Bad”‘s first season delivered a pulpy, compulsively watchable crime drama. I was a fan, but I found a lot to complain about, too. The show seemed ready to burst with hackneyed family drama, inane narrative tangents, and placeholder characters who pointed the way to tense moments without earning their screentime. I didn’t even like AMC’s key art for that first year, a dopey shot of protagonist Walter White (Bryan Cranston) standing in the middle of the desert, pantsless and packing heat. It turns out that “Breaking Bad”‘s debut season, truncated to seven episodes by a writer’s strike, was just an overture. The second season is a big, meaty pot roast of a show, cooking slow and low for eleven long hours. And that tour-de-force is damn near eclipsed by Season Three, which sees the series growing leaner and meaner than before, more forceful and more focused in its almost playfully outsized sense of menace.

The Final Destination in 3-D (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

The Final Destination in 3-D (2009) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2009, 2011, Action, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Horror

The Final Destination
**/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras C-
starring Bobby Campo, Shantel VanSanten, Nick Zano, Mykelti Williamson
screenplay by Eric Bess
directed by David R. Ellis

by Alex Jackson It’s the summer of 2009. I arrive at the movie theatre, a multiplex twenty miles from home (making it the closest one), to discover that while Rob Zombie’s Halloween II has already started, I’m just in time to catch The Final Destination in 3-D. Thinking that I didn’t really care which one I saw, that’s good enough for me, and so I buy a ticket for the fourth (and, we were led to believe, last) entry in the Final Destination franchise.

Bellflower (2011) + The Change-Up (2011)|Bellflower – Blu-ray Disc + DVD

Bellflower (2011) + The Change-Up (2011)|Bellflower – Blu-ray Disc + DVD

Posted in2011, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, Fantasy, Romance, Theatrical

BELLFLOWER
***/**** Image A Sound A Extras B
starring Evan Glodell, Jessie Wiseman, Taylor Dawson, Rebekah Brandes
written and directed by Evan Glodell

THE CHANGE-UP
½*/****
starring Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde
screenplay by Jon Lucas & Scott Moore
directed by David Dobkin

by Ian Pugh SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Bellflower earns the right to its melodrama by asking what you have to live for and, more importantly, what you’re willing to do to keep your life uncomplicated. Woodrow (writer-director Evan Glodell) and Aiden (Taylor Dawson) don’t seem to have much of a life beyond hanging out with their friends and drinking too much–but their minds were suitably “warped” by a second-generation VHS tape of Mad Max. Now they spend their days constructing flamethrowers and muscle cars destined to fit right in with that film’s end-of-the-world milieu. Woodrow hooks up with a young woman named Milly (Jessie Wiseman), and as the relationship blossoms (and breaks down), Glodell takes the opportunity to explore the unfathomable guilt and anger that drove George Miller’s original road warrior–as well as what Glodell’s own heroes have failed to understand about his journey. When we first meet him, Woodrow doesn’t know too much about guilt or anger, so his coping mechanisms are extremely fractured. Confrontations with others are typically brief, sometimes without logical end, and the director intentionally tones down most of the violence so that his characters can wallow in passive-aggressive detachment. Sometimes the violent images are chopped out entirely, only to be saved for later in the movie, where they may or may not have been mentally re-edited by Woodrow to conform to a more favourable outcome. That’s the thing about the apocalypse: it never goes quite the way you want.

How Do You Know (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

How Do You Know (2010) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in2000s, 2010, 2011, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Jack Nicholson, Romance

*½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras A
starring Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson
written and directed by James L. Brooks

by Angelo Muredda “We’re all one small adjustment away from making our lives work,” Paul Rudd’s George chirps, a little too eagerly, in the interminable, banally titled, and curiously unpunctuated How Do You Know. It’s a strange thing for an indicted man on the verge of financial ruin to say, but then How Do You Know is a strange movie, less the tidy romantic comedy its trailer pitches than a monument to the incidental pleasures of narrative ungainliness and lax comic timing.

Better Off Dead (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Teen

Better Off Dead…
***/**** Image B- Sound C-
starring John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Diane Franklin, Kim Darby
written and directed by Savage Steve Holland

by Jefferson Robbins Better Off Dead… probably wouldn’t have outlasted its peers among cheaply-made ’80s teen comedies minus three crucial factors. There’s John Cusack’s extraordinary Everyguy deadpan: He reacts to absurdity without visibly reacting, a still pivot for the scene around him and the best possible audience surrogate for a vehicle like this. There’s writer-director Savage Steve Holland’s visual wit, rooted in classic cartoons and well-abetted by editor Alan Balsam (Revenge of the Nerds). And finally, there’s Holland’s clearly demonstrated understanding of what it’s like to be a teenage male–collapsing in the face of spurned love, so immersed in one’s own fantasies and neuroses that everyone, even relatives and close friends, seems a grotesque. This internal state gets externalized in Better Off Dead…, as no matter where Cusack’s Lane Meyer goes, he’s confronted with such bizarre contortions of humanity that he might as well be an astronaut among aliens.

Arthur (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

Posted in2000s, 2011, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Ian Pugh, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, DVD, Romance

*½/**** Image B Sound A- Extras C-
starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Greta Gerwig, Jennifer Garner
screenplay by Peter Baynham, based on the film Arthur written and directed by Steve Gordon
directed by Jason Winer

by Ian Pugh Boy, that Russell Brand sure does talk a lot, doesn’t he? Jason Winer’s modernization of Steve Gordon’s 1981 comedy Arthur serves as your latest reminder that Brand is turning his long-winded rambling into a full-blown comic empire–and it’s a good thing it makes that point perfectly clear, because otherwise I can’t think of any reason why this remake exists. Brand’s slurring motormouth is on full display here, and he’s such a suffocating presence that Arthur Bach’s now-famous inebriety hardly plays a role. Who needs booze when you’ve got an immature dude who just won’t shut up? Of course, the character is still nominally an alcoholic–and the film attempts to “fix” that problem in precisely the wrong way. Fearing it will be seen as an implicit endorsement of excessive drinking, Arthur launches into an overwritten screed about the attendant dangers of same, somehow assuming that Gordon’s original didn’t comprehend the seriousness of its own premise. Between that mistaken belief and its broad, bland humour, the picture might be more accurately considered a remake of the notorious Arthur 2: On the Rocks.

Lolita (1962) – Blu-ray Disc

Lolita (1962) – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1960s, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Stanley Kubrick, Drama, Romance

****/**** Image A- Sound A
starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon
screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel
directed by Stanley Kubrick

by Alex Jackson Who is Lolita? There seems to be no independent, cognizant life to the character. She exists purely to be desired or despised. Certainly, she is seen as neither a tragic figure nor a victim–Lolita is always in control. She always has a tight grasp on what her needs are and understands how she’s going to meet them. But simply being clever and conniving doesn’t make you a real person. Humanity could be defined as our ability to experience pain and Lolita lives a practically pain-free existence. Double entendre intended, if you prick Lolita, she isn’t going to bleed. In her eyes, sex doesn’t have many drawbacks. Men lust after her and this gives her power over them.

The Great Dictator (1940) – The Criterion Collection Blu-ray Disc

Posted in1940s, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Chaplin, Comedy, Directors: Charles Chaplin, Drama, The Criterion Collection

***½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras A-
starring Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie
written and directed by Charles Chaplin

by Bryant Frazer In the late 1930s, as a little man named Adolf Hitler prepared the fearsome German army to run roughshod over the country’s European neighbours, Charles Chaplin, one of the greatest of all film artists, responded to the threat of war in the only way that made sense: He prepared a new comedy, The Great Dictator, that mocked Hitler directly.

American Graffiti (1973) [Special Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Coming of Age, Drama, FFC Must-Own, Teen

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Richard Dreyfuss, Ronny Howard, Paul Le Mat, Charlie Martin Smith
screenplay by George Lucas and Gloria Katz & Willard Hyuck
directed by George Lucas

by Jefferson Robbins The skeleton key to George Lucas’s American Graffiti isn’t in its setting–the cruising culture of exurban southern California, 1962, as witnessed by young participants with the ’50s at their back and Vietnam ahead. Instead, it’s disassembled and scattered throughout the text, oblique until it becomes obvious. There’s the front-seat monologue recited by Laurie (Cindy Williams) for the benefit of her drifting boyfriend Steve (“Ronny” Howard): “It doesn’t make sense to leave home to look for home, to give up a life to find a new life.” It sounds like her own reverie, but in fact she’s quoting an offscreen speech by her college-bound brother Curt (Richard Dreyfuss), who earlier in the film has a hushed alleyway talk with the “cool” teacher (Terence McGovern) who washed out of an artsy New England school and came back to shape young minds in his diesel-scented hometown. This teacher’s name, as it happens, is Mr. Wolfe. It’s not so much that you can’t go home again as that home changes under your very feet. The instinct to cling to its first incarnation–Curt’s fondling of his old school locker, John Milner’s (Paul Le Mat) continued mingling with high-school kids at roughly age twenty–is really a hope that you’ll find something just as valuable in the wider world you know you must face.