DVD Reviews - June 9
John Adams
Stars: Paul Giamatti
Distributor: HBO DVD?box set
**** 1/2 (out of five)
As a Canadian, it�s hard to ignore a tug of envy while watching HBO�s 7-part dramatic miniseries on the life of America�s second president. While the U.S. cable giant seems to be struggling to replicate the success of The Sopranos and Sex And The City in its regular programming, it continues to hit high points with its special programming, such as this adaptation of David McCullough�s best-selling biography starring Paul Giamatti.
Giamatti plays Adams as a seether, a man with a healthy ego nonetheless surprised at how history and greatness keep tugging him into the centre ring. Adams was a complicated man, given the unenviable job of following George Washington into the presidency, aware of how he�d always be judged as lacking next to so clearly heroic a figure. Giamatti is perfectly cast as the small man on a big stage, as is Laura Linney as his wife Abigail, quite literally his better half emotionally and intellectually.
Watching this carefully assembled and undeniably dramatic story play out over nearly 10 hours, one can�t help but wonder that Canada has never found a way to do anything similar on the life of Alexander Mackenzie, never mind John A. Macdonald. (Our second and first prime ministers, for the historically illiterate.) There have been feints, but nothing on this scale, or with this sort of visual distinctiveness.
In a �making of� bonus feature, director Tom Hooper talks about his diligence in making sure his crew didn�t lapse into the habit � drilled into them by years of experience � of making the actors look too pretty. His late-18th and early-19th century is a grimy, dirty place, and a dermatological wasteland, judging by the close-ups. It helps that Giamatti and Linney are surrounded by a stellar supporting cast � watch out for Tom Wilkinson�s Ben Franklin and Stephen Dillane�s arrestingly still Thomas Jefferson.
Jumper
Star: Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Rachel Bilson
Distributor: 20th Century Fox DVD
** 1/2 (out of five)
Director Doug Liman built sequel potential into practically every scene of Jumper, but neglected to reward his audience with anything like a satisfying characterization or story. It probably didn�t help that he cast Hayden Christensen as his lead, an actor whose screen persona � a sort of smirking blankness that�s all the more unremarkable for how much it resembles so many other depthless young leading men these days � inspires little more than a collective shrug.
Christensen plays a young man who discovers an ability to teleport himself anywhere in the world he can visualize in decent detail, and who uses this power to fund the most awesome surfing, chick-tapping, 24-hour big screen party dude lifestyle he can, while pining for the hometown girl (Rachel Bilson) he left behind. His party gets harshed out when he discovers that a bunch of killjoys called Paladins led by none other than Samuel L. Jackson have been hunting down jump dudes like him for, like, forever. Why is a question presumably to be answered in some prospective sequel, where his long-lost mom (Diane Lane in a brief but significant role) would figure more prominently, now permanently postponed thanks to Liman�s refusal to let us care.
Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector�s Edition
Star: Klint Eastwood
Distributor: Warner Bros. DVD box set
**** 1/2 (out of five)
Warner�s deluxe Dirty Harry box includes quite a few cute but unnecessary extras, including a replica Harry badge and a map of the Scorpio Killer�s rampage through San Francisco, but the most useful extras are the documentaries that give some context for Eastwood�s career � he�s gone from a critical joke to a critical darling so thoroughly that it�s hard to find anyone who once reviled him as an essentially fascist filmmaker and movie star � and especially the Dirty Harry films.
The first film in the franchise, directed by Don Siegel, became the centre of a heated debate about vigilanteism and the lawlessness of American cities, and the debate has lingered so much that it�s clouded our memory of the picture. Anyone watching it expecting to make their day with a cathartic beat-down of the criminal class will be disappointed � from the first shot, Siegel�s film is full of a downhearted, curdled atmosphere redolent of the �70s, and while Harry�s relationship to the killer is hardly the model of moral equivalence that the film�s latter-day apologists claim for it, the finale hardly leaves one glowing with the sensation of justice served hot.
Eastwood tried to address his critics with Magnum Force, the second Dirty Harry film, by having the lone wolf detective fight against a death squad of vigilante cops, and further installments in the series took half-hearted stabs at issues such as feminism, race and leftist terrorists, but Eastwood�s Harry � lethal, tormented, and the owner of that really big gun � always remained the series� big draw, even when the films weren�t quite up to snuff.
Witless Protection
Star: Daniel Whitney
Distributor: Maple Pictures DVD
* 1/2 (out of five)
My standards might have been bruised beyond repair by this job, but I found myself disappointed that Witless Protection wasn�t nearly as good as Larry The Cable Guy: Health Inspector, the 2006 movie debut of Daniel Whitney�s comic alter ego. The first film was at least fast and inventive, letting Whitney�s Larry persona set the pace for the gags, while indifferently paying attention to where the plot was supposed to be taking us.
Witless Protection is a lot more sluggish, and the camera doesn�t seem half as interested in Larry�s non sequiturs and malaprop-ridden humour, which makes for a big let-down, even if your expectations have been suitable lowered and put in a supine position.
High Noon: Ultimate Collector�s Edition
Distributor: Maple Pictures DVD
**** (out of five)
The first mistake most people make when talking about High Noon is calling it a western. It might feature a sheriff, frightened townsfolk and a climactic gun battle with black-hat baddies, but it�s unlikely that anyone involved in making the film, from producer Stanley Kramer to writer Carl Foreman to director Fred Zinnemann, had making a standard western on their minds.
That�s probably why it remains interesting to this day � and still throbs with the significance it gained by being released as the Hollywood black list was the news of the day. It�s interesting to learn, though, that in an earlier version Foreman wrote the film as a metaphor for the United Nations, and not American in the age of HUAC. You can also, of course, read meaning into the story of Gary Cooper�s lone decent man abandoned by his fellow citizens from any political direction you want, and that�s probably the reason why, after all these years, this austere, slow-moving drama plays as well as it does.
Diva
Distributor: Maple Pictures DVD
*** (out of five)
Diva anticipated a world of high-�80s style with its story of a Paris mailman whose infatuation with a beautiful opera singer makes him cross paths with crooked cops, white slavers and Taiwanese music pirates. The story is a merry mess, but director Jean-Jacques Beineix treats it as a mere platform for ever more lovely images that, while definitely dated, still have style to spare.
Unfortunately, Lionsgate�s transfer of the film is also retro, but in a bad way � a low-definition digital scan that brings to mind early DVDs. It looks grainy and clotted on a big, high-def TV, which is why it loses a star�s worth in its rating. Better luck next time.
See Also
posted by alfredclowes1983 @ 20:59
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