Salon.com > Dvd reviews

10 year time capsule: The puzzle movie hits made possible by DVD

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:37:00 +0000

In 2001, DVD players outsold VCRs for the first time ever. I can't claim that this advent of home technology was the reason that "puzzle films" like Christopher Nolan's "Memento," David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" and Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" caught on, but it's a reasonably sound guess. With VCRs, you could watch a film at home, you could pause it, and you could rewind it. But DVDs were made to withstand intense scrutiny: high-res freeze-frames, replaying and jumping chapters, and of course those neat little bonus features that held the promise of providing supplemental material to the film.

Before "Memento" was released to the public on March 16, 2001, the most popular thriller mysteries of the past several years had been films like "The Sixth Sense" and "The Usual Suspects." Both great movies, sure, but both included clear expository endings to make sure the audiences understood what the hell they had just paid good money to see. But when Andy Klein wrote his definitive "Everything You Wanted to Know About 'Memento'" essay for Salon and created a numerical and alphabetical system to use to watch the scenes of the film in chronological order, it was only because DVDs had recently given us the ability to do so. As Andy says:

DVDs you should have seen — but didn’t: Beat the winter blahs!

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 01:30:00 +0000

If you're new to this sporadic franchise, some guidelines to help you write letters of complaint:

1) Yes, the title is obnoxious. In many cases it may also be wildly inaccurate. No, I do not think that "Modern Times" or "The Night of the Hunter" are especially obscure releases.

2) Yes, lots of better known and more contemporary films have come out recently on DVD. Hey, have you heard about "The Social Network"? Yeah, it's pretty good. For that matter, plenty of terrific films we've covered extensively here, from Gaspar Noé's nutty and gorgeous "Enter the Void" to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's deliriously slapstick "Micmacs" to the mesmerizing documentary "The Tillman Story" (an Oscar omission, if you ask me) have made it to home video in the last few weeks.

When should a director stop messing with a movie?

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Sitting in my in box is a press release about a Blu-Ray edition of "The Last of the Mohicans" that's being hyped as "an all-new director's definitive cut by acclaimed director Michael Mann."

The phrase "definitive cut" made me laugh. I like Mann's films a lot, but definitive he ain't. He's a serial recutter, and this is his third go-round with "Mohicans." The first was the 1992 theatrical cut, which remained unchanged until 1999, when Mann released a second version on DVD that removed four minutes but added eight (mostly small moments of character development). I have no idea what this new version will contain, and frankly I'm in no hurry to find out, or buy the disc, for that matter. Why? Because I don't want to encourage Mann to continue tinkering with his movies -- and because the entire phenomenon of director's cuts and definitive director's cuts and restored cuts and expanded cuts and alternate cuts has gotten out of hand and needs to stop.

DVDs you should have seen — but didn’t

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:01:00 +0000

Let me save you some time, along with wear and tear on those e-mailin' fingers. Yes, the title of this sporadic feature is obnoxious, and the DVDs reviewed are (in some but not all cases) almost willfully obscure. That's pretty much the point! I mean, look: "Kick-Ass" is out on DVD too. But let's think about that for a second: You don't care what I think about that movie, and neither do I. Are we clear?

I've neglected this franchise for so long that I had to winnow down insanely to get to an initial list of 25 or 30, and then just pick the final 10 (actually 11) by pure whim and/or recent release date. I could do an entirely different list of DVDs released before May, not to mention the veritable gold mine that lies ahead of us in August. I could have done a list that read even more like an infomercial for the Criterion Collection than this one does. So ritual apologies to the publicists who torment my mail carrier, and we'll get to some more discs soon.

Straight to DVD: Original “Karate Kid” on Blu-ray

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:14:00 +0000

"Hey, it's the 80s," says Daniel Larusso, aka Daniel-san (Ralph Macchio), as he hands his car keys to his girlfriend Ali (Elizabeth Shue) in the original 1984 version of "The Karate Kid." And it is the '80s, all right. Daniel-san wears a headband throughout the last half of the movie, his mom is nearly crushed under the burden of enormous shoulder pads and even the evil sensei has feathered hair. When you add a soundtrack populated with cuts by Survivor, Bananarama and Gang of Four (!), you've got a real time-capsule movie on your hands. You can cram "The Karate Kid" into an indestructible canister along with beta tapes of "Top Gun," "The Breakfast Club" and a couple of episodes of "The A-Team" and just wait for civilization to end, knowing that future generations will get what the '80s were all about (providing they can find a working Sony Betamax).

Straight to DVD: “The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!”

Sat, 08 May 2010 12:01:00 +0000

Some straight-to-DVD movies come into this world as stand-alone works, destined to become orphaned pieces of flotsam and jetsam getting baked by the sun on flea market seller's tables. Many others are sequels or follow-ups that rely on the faintest glint of name recognition to coax the bored masses into selecting them from the ol' Redbox. These movies require at least a passing awareness of the original film or television series to stave off viewer confusion and maximize entertainment value. A subset of that last category needs both viewer familiarity and a half-bottle of Cazadores Añejo to ensure a pleasurable video experience. After more than a few tequila shots chased by beer, I can safely catalog "The Drawn Together Movie: The Movie!" among that last substratum of downloadable knockoffs.

Straight to DVD: Beware “Neowolf”!

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 13:01:00 +0000

If you can't afford a bale of yak hair, you've got no business making a werewolf picture. "Neowolf," the latest mass of confusion from Lionsgate, features some of the lamest werewolves this side of "The Boy Who Cried Werewolf" (1973) or "Werewolves on Wheels" (1971). But at least the lycanthropes in those two movies had the proper amount of hair affixed to their unconvincing latex masks. In "Neowolf," the creatures look no more lupine than a bunch of dudes from an Alice in Chains tribute band. Strands of hair are spaced randomly over their arms and chest in the special makeup effects equivalent of the comb-over, and the crinkled brows the contact lenses give to our shape-shifters make them all look cockeyed. Criswell, the narrator of many fine Ed Wood films, refers to such supernatural beings as "monsters to be pitied, monsters to be despised." Put special emphasis on the pitied part.

Straight to DVD: “Tenderness” and “Peacock”

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 17:17:00 +0000

This corner of Film Salon is usually the dumping ground for cage fighting movies with "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and slasher flicks hosted by Flavor Flav, but this week I've got a pair of films that boast a combined three Oscar winners, a best-actress nominee and a two-time Golden Globe winner. Consider this sudden deluge of talent to be a kind of upscale outlier. Rest assured, I'll be back to pondering the greater meaning of lesbian vampire epics and rock 'n' roll werewolf programmers soon enough.

"Tenderness," based on the 1997 novel by Robert Cormier, did make it into limited release mostly based on the star power of Russell Crowe in a top-billed supporting role. Since most of us are seeing it on the small screen for the first time, here it is. Lori (Sophie Traub) is a confused 16-year-old who re-enacts previous sexual abuse by making out with an older man she picks up at a gas station or pulling up her shirt while her boss at the supermarket strokes himself. She's obsessed with Eric Komenko (Jon Foster), a kid who murdered his parents with his archery set but got off with a light sentence by claiming that anti-depressants drove him into a parricidal rage.

The Perfect Double Bill: “2012″ and “Miracle Mile”

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:03:00 +0000

Two weeks after 9/11, in perhaps the finest and bravest act any American media institution undertook before Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner roast, the Onion ran a story with the headline, "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie."

They got that right.

One of the many things besides irony that faded in the few days after the attacks was a sense that assembly-line, ham-fisted, institutional movie violence of the kind so ably demonstrated by Bruckheimer's entire oeuvre was now behind us. A new era of a truly United States was ahead, and after the inevitable capture of Osama bin Laden, a new City on the Hill would rise, along with that magnificent Freedom Tower.

Well, as John Cusack says in "2012," ripping off Woody Allen in "Annie Hall," welcome back to Planet Earth.

This week marks the release of the above-mentioned blockbuster from that Auteur of Dumb, Roland Emmerich, a director who makes Irwin Allen seem like Michael Haneke, the man who puts the "nothing" in sound and fury signification. The most offensive thing about "2012" isn't that it is stupid, or about an hour too long, or full of bad science and worse dialog.

Mayor of the Sunset Strip and me

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:27:00 +0000

Caution: This story includes a link to the song "Beach Baby." If you listen to it, you will not be able to get it out of your head.

Recently I watched a movie called "The Mayor of the Sunset Strip," which tells the story of Rodney Bingenheimer, a seminal figure in the L.A. rock scene. Rodney has been a disc jockey on KROQ since 1976. He was the first person to play bands like the Sex Pistols and Blondie, the Blasters, the Go-Gos and X.

But before he was a disc jockey, he had a club called Rodney's, on Sunset. It was the first disco in L.A., when disco meant they played records instead of live music, and had nothing to do with the Bee Gees. And because of that club I watched the movie with more than a passing interest.

It was the summer of 1974, and I was 17. All of us had jobs, some of us had cars, and for a while we went to Rodney's as often as we could. We'd get all dolled up in our South Bay best and head north on the 405, then take Sunset east to faraway Hollywood.

“This Is It” and “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is”

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 01:26:00 +0000

British director Peter Hall once said of another British Peter, one named Sellers, "It's not enough in this business to have talent. You have to have the talent to handle the talent."

This dark art of handling the talent and dealing with deification is the tie that binds this week's Double Bill, which would be today's release of "This Is It," and its doppelgänger, the 1970 documentary "Elvis: That's the Way It Is." Obviously, it does not take any particular genius to point out connections between Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Haunted relationship with parent, incomprehensible musical genius, pet chimps, oh yeah, Lisa Marie, to count off just four of the easiest ones.

Not playing in a theater near you: “The Marine 2″

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 02:01:00 +0000

"The Marine 2," which is being stocked on the shelves of a Best Buy near you even as we speak, is the latest jackknife power bomb in Vince McMahon's drive to make his World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) into a legit multimedia company that delivers action both in the ring and on the screen. You cineastes may be tempted to snicker, but remember that the WWE has already transformed Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson from a wrestling champ into a near A-lister who plays the Tooth Fairy in Disney family comedies. In Hollywood and the squared circle, anything is possible.

"The Marine 2" already pulls off a near impossibility in being the first straight-to-DVD sequel that's better than the theatrically released original. The first "Marine" (2006), which sported the insanely huge John Cena grunting and groaning his way through car crashes and CGI explosions, was a PG-13 affair that watered down the brutality in a bid to make nonstop violence more family friendly. "The Marine 2," on the other hand, goes for broke with an R rating, since there's little to stop tweens from slipping a copy into the basket at Target when their moms aren't looking.