The week’s DVD start off with the sublime THE DESCENDANTS
DVDs for March 13 by Boo Allen
This week, we begin in Hawaii:
The Descendants (****)
Near the end of The Descendants, a middle-aged man wakes up his 17 year-old daughter’s boyfriend
sleeping on the couch and asks why he can’t connect with his
daughter. Why is she so rebellious and does nothing he says or asks?
What could dad possibly do differently? What is he doing wrong? he
wants to know. It’s obvious that Matt King (George Clooney) nears
the end of his understanding, and patience, not only because of his
helplessness with daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley), but also
because of the many other problems he is currently trying to juggle.
The Descendants walks through the exhausting five stages of death and dying and then throws in a few
more stages not covered in the textbooks. In examining these
agonizing conditions, director and co-writer Alexander Payne again
shows the most acute and perceptive understanding of the American
psyche of any current director. Payne and fellow writers Nat Faxon and Jim Rash
use Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel to burden Matt King with a biblical
amount of woes, a somewhat surprising state considering King’s
privileged status. King lives in Hawaii and descends from some of the
state’s founders, who left him a huge legacy of land and money.
About the time he faces a deadline on making a
multiple family-wide decision on how to disperse lucrative land
holdings, his wife suffers a boating accident which sends her into a
vegetative state–not a plot spoiler because she opens the film in
the hospital. She has left a will mandating that she not be
resuscitated after a period of time, one coinciding with Matt’s
scheduled land decision. To compound the building stress and guilt of
this delicate state, King and his wife had not had a good
relationship when her accident occurred.
Clooney powerfully portrays the pressurized Matt
King as he gathers his two daughters, Alexandra and ten year-old
Scottie (Amara Miller), in an attempt to hold his family together,
something at which he has not previously excelled.
But during his attempt to fortify, other family
secrets reveal themselves. These discoveries illustrate King’s
impossible task of re-creating a nuclear family. They also put King
under even greater pressure about the land deal from his entire
extended family, which includes a number of cousins, and his wife’s
senile mother and belligerent father.
Everyone connected must balance the inequitable and
thankless dispersal of family riches with the encroaching death of
King’s wife. And the reactions vary infinitely, with each helping to
complete this layered family portrait.
With such rich material, Payne delivers a series of
highly emotional, resonant scenes, involving both the pain involved
with the death of a family member and also with other components of
grief and even betrayal. Payne has such a steady hand and sure feel
for his material, he can still inject small amounts of levity into
the narrative to further heighten the film’s emotional effectiveness.
All of which makes The Descendants a fulfilling yet bittersweet experience, one rarely seen in today’s
movies.
Rated R, 115 minutes. The DVD, in all formats, includes
deleted scenes, featurettes on George Clooney, working with Alexander
Payne, the casting, the real-life Descendants, the difficulties of
working in and around water. Plus: a silent film on Hawaii, a joint
interview with Clooney and Payne, and three music videos,
My Week With Marilyn (***1/2)
Michelle Williams turns in an engaging, Oscar-nominated
performance as Marilyn Monroe in this whimsical look at a week in the
life of the cinematic icon. Taken from a memoir by Colin Clark (Eddie
Redmayne), who worked on set during the filming of 1957’s The
Prince and the Showgirl, the engaging opus captures the magic
and charisma that enshrouded the troubled star. Fellow Oscar nominee
Kenneth Branagh plays Laurence Olivier, Monroe’s put-upon director
and co-star. Watching the original today reveals how the American
stole the show from her British co-stars, With a superb supporting
cast: Dominic Cooper, Julia Ormond (as Vivian Leigh), Emma Watson,
Dougray Scott (as Henry Miller), Derek Jacobi, and others.
Rated R, 99 minutes. The DVD, in all formats, includes
director’s commentary and the compelling 19 minute featurette about
Monroe “The Untold Story of an American Icon.”
Bellissima (***1/2), La Terra Trema (****)
Entertainment One brings to DVD two films from Italian
master-filmmaker Luchino Visconti. Bellissima (1951,
114 minutes) makes its long requested DVD debut and stars Italian
treasure Anna Magnani as a pushy stage mother who believes that if
her daughter wins a role in an upcoming film it will help them escape
their country’s dire poverty. Mother Magnani turns into a wild force
of nature, pushing her child and taking her for endless lessons and
rehearsals. The compelling La Terra Trema (1948, 160
minutes) follows a Sicilian family of fishermen, all non-professional
actors. They rebel against what they see as the unfair practices of
the local fish-merchants and try to become independent, a risky
strategy that proves disastrous for the poor family. Brilliantly
rendered by Visconti.
The Three Musketeers (**1/2)
Two movies seem to be going on at once in this big
budget extravaganza based on Alexander Dumas’ venerable action novel.
Part one faithful re-tells the Musketeer saga, with Logan Lerman
playing D’Artagnan, who comes to 18th century Paris from
the provinces and falls in league with the musketeers (Matthew
MacFadyen, Ray Stevenson, Luke Evans). They find themselves embroiled
in court intrigue against Englishman Buckingham (Orlando Bloom),
Cardinal Richlieu (Christoph Waltz) and their duplicitous
intermediary Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich). The other film takes
the shape of modern computer imaging, with loopy aircraft hovering
over Paris, and special effects that make everything shiny and
glossy. Despite its split personality, entertaining enough.
Rated 110 minutes. The DVD, in all formats, includes
commentary, a special “Access” feature available while watching,
four brief featurettes totaling around ten minutes, and 12 deleted
and extended scenes.
The Search for One-Eyed Jimmy (**1/2)
This 1994 low budget, independent film receives a return
look not because writer-director Sam Henry Kass went on to bigger
fame, but because many of his cast did. In an escalating shaggy dog
story, a young film-maker returns to his Brooklyn neighborhood with
hopes of making a documentary about the area. Upon arrival, he learns
from the brother (Steve Buscemi) of the title character that he,
Jimmy, has gone missing. The film crew then canvasses the
neighborhood, meeting and interviewing Jimmy’s mother (Anne Meara),
his dancing friend Disco Bean (John Turturro), Colonel Ron (Samuel L.
Jackson), a neighbor (Jennifer Beals), a fortune-teller (Aida
Turturro) and many others. Jimmy finally appears at the end, turning
out to be Sam Rockwell. Not a great movie but an interesting
artifact.
Rated R, 85 minutes.
Screwball: The Ted Whitfield Story (**)
Flat mockumentary satire probably timed for arrival for
the start of baseball season tells the story of the title character
(Ross Patterson), a one-time whiffleball superstar who once looked to
break the all-time home run record. All characters speak in broad,
irritating accents, possibly to show us they are in on the joke.
not rated, 85 minutes.
National Lampoon’s The Legend of Awesomest Maxiumus
Will Sasso plays the title character in the week’s
guilty pleasure, a broad satire that takes shots at Troy,
Gladiator, and, particularly, 300. The plot
revolves around a trumped-up Trojans vs. Greeks battle with General
Maximus leaving his hot wife Hotessa (Kristanna Loken) to do battle.
The anachronistic dialogue supplies many of the sexual innuendos and
scabrous banter. Rip Torn shamelessly cashes a check playing old King
Looney.
Not rated, 91 minutes. The DVD is available in all
formats.
Finally, from this week’s TV offerings:
Titanic: The Complete Story
This three part History production covers the story of
the famous ocean-liner, concentrating on the ship’s launching, its
enduring legacy, and the ship’s flaws as pointed out by ocean divers
and new CGI technology.
Not rated, 300 minutes.
The History of the World in Two Hours
The lack of commercials reduces this two hour program
down to 88 minutes, more than enough time to wrap up all that has
happened so far. From cable channel History, this fast paced
documentary starts at the beginning, the Big Bang, and takes the
viewer through the remaining 16.7 billion years or so. The
film-makers adequately explain how everything formed and expanded,
from humans to plants, planets, and animals. Plenty of experts lend
authority and expertise, making the explanations understandable and
accessible.
Not rated, 88 minutes.
Also on DVD: The Adventures of Tin Tin, Happy Feet Two, Melancholia, Young Adult.