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Elia Kazan's true-life drama of a murder in a small town belongs
to the realist wave of American crime movies that newsreel producer Louis de
Rochemont brought to Hollywood at the end of World War II. The story follows the
public pressure on the police after the shocking murder of a priest (and the
scene is shocking and startling without ever showing the deed) and the political
pressure on the State's Attorney (Dana Andrews) to bring a speedy indictment to
their only suspect, a drifter played by Arthur Kennedy. This is not Kazan's most
gripping film, and you can feel his straining to get out of the brightly lit
courtroom drama and back to the dramatic confrontations in back rooms, private
dens and shadowy night-time streets, where the dirty business of politics favors
power and money over justice. That's where Kazan and the film work best. Lee J.
Cobb, Jane Wyatt and Sam Levene co-star. The commentary by film noir historians
Alain Silver and James Ursini is a terrific balance of historical backstory and
informed observation, all in the easygoing, conversational give-and-take of
longtime collaborators; and the DVD also features galleries of production stills
and posters, and the trailer. Fox debuts two other films in its branded
"Fox Film Noir" series. "Road House" is a vivid crime melodrama centered on a
romantic triangle between Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde and a pathologically jealous
Richard Widmark in a rural tavern near the Canadian border. The buzzing
character dynamics make this cult item simmer. There's no such dynamism in Jean
Gabin's moody American film debut, " Moontide," a film that evokes the French poetic
realist dramas that made Gabin's fame in the '30s but fails to bring any
dramatic life to the evocative world of fog-bound docks and grimy coastal
taverns. MSN's own Kim Morgan teams up with "czar of noir" Eddie Muller for a
colorful commentary on " Road House" and contributes historical backstory and creative
insight to the featurettes on both discs (including the instantly immortal line,
"Who doesn't like a hot threesome?").
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| The Boys in Company C |
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Sidney J. Furie's brash platoon drama updates the colorful
personalities of the classic World War II movies to late '60s America (naive
farm boys meet nervous college boys, racist crackers meet streetwise blacks) for
a tour of duty in Vietnam. The 1978 film is the missing link between "M*A*S*H"
and "Full Metal Jacket," with classic platoon cliches rejiggered for a portrait
of war as utter chaos. Stan Shaw and Craig Wasson star, and R. Lee Ermey barks
out instructions as a movie drill sergeant 10 years before "Full Metal Jacket."
Shot with the energy of a madcap comedy and played in a constant state of
agitated action, it's frayed and messy and broadly played, and surprisingly
effective for all that. The new wide-screen DVD features commentary by co-star
Andrew Stevens, but it has not been mastered for wide-screen TVs.
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| The Case of the Grinning Cat/Chris Marker Collection |
Chris Marker is known to most cinefiles for his time-travel
drama "La Jette." Less well known is his legacy of imaginative pointed film
essays exploring history, culture, politics and modern society. His 2004
documentary "The Case of the Grinning Cat" traces the sudden appearance of
smiling cartoon cats graffitied all over Paris through the social and political
culture of the 21st century, and the disc supplements the hour-long piece with
seven bonus shorts all featuring animal themes. It's one of four collections of
Marker's works released by Icarus Films this week, all making their DVD debuts.
The others: " The Sixth Side of the Pentagon," Marker's short portrait of
the 1967 protests against the Vietnam war; " The Last Bolshevik/Happiness," which pairs Marker's
documentary on Soviet filmmaker Aleksandr Medvedkin with Medvedkin's 1934
classic comedy; and " Remembrance of Things to Come." |
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| War Requiem |
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Part 18th century costume epic, part martial-arts action
thriller, part arcane conspiracy movie, Christophe Gans' colorful, kinetic genre
mash was a box office sensation in France. Samuel Le Bihan is the two-fisted
naturalist sent by Louis XV to southern France to stop 'The Beast of Gevaudan.'
Japanese-American Mark Dacascos co-stars as his butt-kicking Iroquois
blood-brother sidekick. What begins as an atmospheric thriller with an
undercurrent of political intrigue becomes a high-concept monster movie that
everyone involved seems to take way too seriously. In France it ran 151 minutes
but it was trimmed by 10 minutes for its stateside release -- and it still felt
too long. The footage is all put back in this new two-disc set, which also
features two feature-length documentaries on the making of the film and 40
minutes of deleted and extended scenes among its supplements, all in French with
English subtitles.
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| Bright Lights, Big City: 20th Anniversary Edition |
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Michael J. Fox tries to shake his comic persona in the
big-screen adaptation of Jay McInerney's novel of '80s excess in New York. His
character, once-aspiring novelist Jamie Conway, hates his magazine job and tries
to lose his numb disappointment and overwhelming depression in a hazy nightlife
fueled by booze and cocaine and the aggressive lead of his social vampire of a
best friend (Kiefer Sutherland). It's handsomely directed by James Bridges, who
keeps it all at arm's length, and Phoebe Cates, Dianne Wiest, Jason Robards and
John Houseman co-star. The anniversary edition features two new commentary
tracks (one by novelist/screenwriter McInerney, the other by cinematographer
Gordon Willis) and two retrospective featurettes.
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In addition to his regular contributions to MSN Movies, Sean Axmaker is a
film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for MSN
Entertainment. He is also a contributing writer for GreenCine.com, Turner
Classic Movies Online and Asian Cult Cinema, among other publications.
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Get Smart! Please!In honor of bumbling Maxwell
Smart, a brief history of our favorite clueless detectives On the RocksWith 'Iron Man' and 'Hancock' featuring
heavy-drinking protagonists, we reflect on the most memorable drunks in movie
history UnclassicsThough they may be listed among the
greatest films of all time, these 10 movies deserve to be
downgraded | |
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