Category: Movie DVD Quicktakes (Page 18 of 41)

Tunnel Rats

July 28, 2009 / Jason Zingale

As this generation’s Ed Wood, Uwe Boll has made some truly terrible films. So how does the German director fare when he’s not making a movie based on a video game? A little better, but not as much as you’d hope. With “Tunnel Rats,” a Vietnam War flick about a group of U.S. soldiers sent to kill Viet Cong resistance fighters hiding in the jungles and tunnels of Cu Chi, Boll has proven that he isn’t quite as clueless behind the camera as he appears. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his screenwriting skills. I’m not exactly sure who this movie is supposed to be meant for, but the Vietnamese are depicted as bloodthirsty savages and the Americans as scared morons. They act like morons, too, as they’re all systematically killed off like a bunch of teenagers in a slasher flick. I mean, if the tunnels were causing the U.S. Army so much trouble, why didn’t they just drop a couple of grenades down them instead of sending soldiers in one at a time to be brutally murdered? Boll is clearly a fan of the genre – he crams as many Vietnam War clichés into the first 20 minutes as humanely possible – but that doesn’t make him any more qualified for the job. “Tunnel Rats” may have sounded great on paper (it’s certainly an original idea for an overdone topic), but with Boll in charge, it never had a chance to succeed.

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For All Mankind

July 24, 2009 / Bob Westal

Reissued by Criterion to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, this documentary from journalist-turned-filmmaker Al Reinert is comprised of truly remarkable, extremely high-quality footage from NASA’s own vaults. Featuring all 24 of the Apollo program astronauts who went to the moon, the film impressionistically leaps back and forth in time, covering both the mundane day to day preparations for the various trips by both astronauts and mission control personnel and moving forward to the ecstatic reveries brought on by traveling through space and ultimately reaching the moon. Since the only narration is provided by comments from the astronauts themselves and much of the footage has a fly-on-the-wall feeling to it, “For All Mankind” feels very much like a vérité documentary. The effect can be prettymind-blowing at times, as we realize that we are watching science fiction become living history, and with a visual clarity that the millions who watched the original Apollo landings on their television sets never imagined was even possible.

Still, for an 80-minute documentary, “For All Mankind” plays a bit long. First-time director Reinert does a solid job here of assembling the footage, but the film’s impressionistic structure makes it feel a bit more arty and, yes, spacey than it really needs to be. Also, with all due respect to the great musical innovator, musician/composer/producer Brian Eno, his atmospheric score, while often beautiful, at times lends an air of unwelcome pretension to certain scenes. Still, no space enthusiast is going to want to go through life without perpetual access to this remarkable film and some reliably awesome DVD extras from the folks at Criterion.

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Beau Geste

July 22, 2009 / Bob Westal

William Wellman’s 1939 hit is the second and best-known version of the frequently filmed adventure novel by Percival Christopher Wren. This 1939 action not-quite-classic features superstar Gary Cooper (“High Noon”) and then-rising stars Ray Miland (“The Lost Weekend”) and Robert Preston (“The Music Man”) as three English brothers and best pals who flee their ancestral home in the wake of the mysterious theft of an extremely valuable emerald. Joining the infamously torturous French Foreign Legion, the brothers Geste encounter the brutal, greedy, thoroughly villainous but entirely courageous Sgt. Markoff (Brian Donleavy), who quickly hears of the stolen jewel and becomes determined to re-steal it for himself between attacks by Arab groups who’d prefer Frenchie goes home.

Unlike other classic-era tales of imperialist derring-do, “Beau Geste” doesn’t go out of its way to glamorize or morally justify the work of the Legion. At the same time, the mystery of the stolen jewel takes the focus away from the setting and becomes a kind of odd distraction. Ironically made in the same year as two similar but superior adventures, George Stevens’ comedic “Gunga Din” and Zoltan Korda’s wondrous, propagandistic “Four Feathers,” “Beau Geste” has been beautifully restored to its black and white glory and is worth seeing for its lucid direction, a moving finale, ans the outstanding cast. Character actor Brian Donleavy’s evil-but-admirable Markoff pretty much walks away with the film. It’s a savagely honest portrait of pure selfish survival instinct that makes this tale of brotherly love and sacrifice work, more or less.

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Nickelodeon/The Last Picture Show

July 16, 2009 / Bob Westal

This two-disc set is basically the agony and the ecstasy from the collected works of film critic/scholar turned boy wonder writer-director-actor Peter Bogdanovich. Placed in reverse chronological and quality order, Disc One is 1975’s agonizing “Nickelodeon,” one of a series of box office and/or critical failures that ended the young director’s early career hot streak. A forced slapstick comedy drawn very loosely from the silent era reminiscences of Hollywood greats Leo McCarey, Raoul Walsh and Allan Dwan, it’s a good-natured but entirely unfocused bore despite the strong efforts of an all-star cast led by Burt Reynolds and Ryan O’Neal, and featuring Tatum O’Neal (“Paper Moon”) and John Ritter (“Three’s Company”), among many others. The disc includes both a brand new black and white director’s cut alongside the original color theatrical version, but it will take more than the majesty of monochrome to save this one. Bogdanovich’s DVD commentary provides better movie history and better entertainment.

“The Last Picture Show” is, of course, something completely different. On his second feature, Bogdanovich blew the 1971’s cinema world’s collective mind and drew comparisons to his friend and mentor, Orson Welles, with this crisply wrought black and white adaptation of an early Larry McMurtry novel. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, it details the late teen years of two high school football players (Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges) and a manipulative beauty (Cybill Shepherd) following in the footsteps of her unfaithful mother (Ellen Burstyn) in a rapidly dying Texas town. A minor cause celebre at the time because of its nudity and blunt sexuality, its glory is its acute visual storytelling and Robert Surtees’ masterful photography, a biting and heartbreaking script, and a large number of genuinely tremendous supporting performances. In particular, Cloris Leachman as a deeply lonely housewife who falls for a high school boy and Western mainstay Ben Johnson (“The Wild Bunch,” “Wagon Master”) as the charismatic walking embodiment of the town, Sam the Lion, won entirely deserved supporting acting awards. A sardonic yet humanistic exploration of fractured relationships and poor choices, it remains a riveting and moving work of cutting edge movie-making from a true cinematic reactionary.

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Allan Dwan Ben Johnson Burt Reynolds Cloris Leachman Cybill Shepherd Ellen Bustyn Jeff Bridges John Ritter Larry McMurtry Leo McCarey Nickelodeon Peter Bogdanovich Raould Walsh Robert Surtees Ryan O'Neal Tatum O'Neal The Last Picture Show Timothy Bottoms

Lookin’ To Get Out!

July 5, 2009 / Ross Ruediger

Honestly, there was nobody more excited than me by the prospect of experiencing a “lost” Hal Ashby film. He directed some of the best – “Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Coming Home,” and “Being There” and when it was announced that Jon Voight had discovered a longer cut of this nearly forgotten Ashby offering that he felt placed it among the greats, there was reason to get one’s hopes up. Unfortunately, it is not one of the greats. It’s not terrible by any means, but it’s also not comparable in quality and vision to any of the aforementioned films. Voight stars as a fast (but not smooth) talking gambler who’s in over his head. He and his buddy, played by Burt Young, head to Vegas (where else?) to fix their situation. Once they arrive, they meet an old friend of Voight’s (Ann-Margret), and he may be the father of her child. Is it just me, or does all of this sound old hat? With some tweaking, it didn’t have to be.

The biggest problem with “Lookin’ to Get Out!” is not the hackneyed premise but, rather, the execution of it. The entire affair is dialed far too much in the direction of comedy, and the laughs either aren’t funny or just don’t work. For instance, there’s a wacky chase through a casino that kicks off the third act that’s painfully overlong and soaked with a dreadful ‘80s synth track (as is much of the film). If the whole thing had just been shifted into a slightly more dramatic direction, it likely would’ve played much better, as is evidenced by the few scenes where Voight gets to play some genuine pathos. His work is generally pretty good here, even if the material isn’t, and it’s certainly a much different Voight than we’re used to seeing. (Keep an eye out for the screen debut of a very young Angelina Jolie in the film’s final scenes.) It’s difficult to recommend to anyone who isn’t a student of Ashby, and yet, despite its problems, fans of the maverick director could do a lot worse than to at least check it out.

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