The week’s DVDs begin with the Bard:
DVDs for Oct. 8 by Boo Allen
This week we begin with the Bard:
Much Ado About Nothing (***1/2)
Writer-director Joss Whedon (TV’s Angel, Firefly) has ingeniously re-configured Shakespeare’s play about feuding lovers, resetting it to modern day Los Angeles but keeping intact its fresh wit and inventiveness along with dialogue that sounds fitting and completely natural to the settings. Whedon has recruited a fine cast made up mainly of actors with whom he worked while in television: Amy Acker (Angel) plays Beatrice, the tart-tongued beauty who bedevils the swaggering Benedick (Alexis Denisof, also of Angel). Their reluctant love plays out against another subplot of estranged lovers, Hero (Jillian Morgese) and Claudio (Fran Kranz), who have been duped by the evil Don John (Sean Maher). Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle) avoids the common mistake of over-playing the role of constable Dogberry, instead, infusing his character with warmth and understanding. The interior confines become a little crowded, and claustrophobic, at times, but Whedeon has obviously undertaken a labor of love, and it shows in his careful staging and filming.
Rated PG-13, 109 minutes. The DVD includes two commentaries, a 22 minute “making of” featurette, the bus-tour-centered, six minute featurette “Bus Ado About Nothing,” a music video, and more.
The Tin Star (***1/2), Bad Company (**1/2)
Anthony Mann, who turned out a number of fine westerns (The Man From Laramie, The Far Country), directed The Tin Star (1957, unrated, 93 minutes), a tough no-nonsense drama filled with high pedigree names both in front of and behind the camera. With script from Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach), the film also benefits from a haunting music score from Elmer Bernstein. Henry Fonda stars as Morgan Hickman, a grizzled bounty hunter who receives a town’s cold reception when turning in a dead body to a green new sheriff, Ben Owens (Anthony Perkins). Hickman reveals himself to be a former lawman, as he takes Owens under his tutelage, warning him against impending dangers and occupational hazards, all while a local drama plays out involving perennial tough guys Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand. Betsy Palmer plays the local woman who befriends Hickman against the town bullies.
As hard as it is to believe, Jeff Bridges was already starring in movies over 40 years ago. Bad Company (1972, rated PG, 92 minutes) reunites the screenwriting team behind Bonnie and Clyde, David Newman and first time director, Dallas-born, Waxahachie-raised, Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart). The story centers on a naive young man, Drew Dixon (Barry Brown, who died at 27), who leaves his Greenville, Ohio home to avoid the Union draft during the Civil War. He ends up in Jefferson City and somehow joins the loose knit gang of similarly-minded runaways, led by the charismatic, Fagin-like Jake Rumsey (Bridges). The two opposites somehow bond through the succeeding loosely joined sequences from Benton and Newman’s script. Drew and Jake and their crew meet a gang of robbers, a rifle toting Wells Fargo agent, a prostitute traveling with her erstwhile “business agent,” and other flavorful characters. Benton displays a loose narrative grip, rendering entertaining yet not always related scenes. Bridges reveals a rough draft of the insouciant, silky smooth performer he would eventually become.
Morning (**1/2)
Actor Leland Orser makes his debut as writer-director in this formulaic melodrama with a good cast. Orser and Jeanne Tripplehorn play Mark and Alice Munroe, whose only child has died tragically. The trauma tears them apart, but the film’s serious subject seems overly familiar and follows an expected pattern. With Laura Linney, Kyle Chandler, Jason Ritter, Elliott Gould.
Rated R, 93 minutes.
The Horses of McBride (**1/2)
In a twist on the usual holiday movie, this gorgeously filmed family drama sees a father, Matt Davidson (Aidan Quinn), and his young daughter, Nicki (Mackenzie Porter), spending their Christmas joining forces with their small town of McBride, British Columbia to help rescue two horses. The two horses have been trapped in the Canadian Rockies snow, and they have nothing to eat because of their isolated area that keeps humans away. With Kari Matchett, Edward Ruttle.
Not rated, 88 minutes.
And finally, from this week’s TV arrivals:
The Middle—season three
The Hecks, the self-described middle-class family from the middle of the country, return in this third season of 24 episodes on three discs. The Hecks, mom and pop Frankie and Mike (Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn), navigate their way through a season filled with adventures and hijinks with their children Axl (Charlie McDermott), Sue (Eden Sher) and Brick (Atticus Shaffer). The real-life family situations, comedies, and dramas include holiday dinner pressures, the prom, teen romances, and many other scenes taken from what seems to be real life. Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline created the series.
Not rated, 516 minutes. The collection holds a gag reel and deleted scenes.
Mama’s Family—the complete series
Vicki Lawrence starred in this spinoff series from “The Carol Burnett Show” that ran from 1983 to 1990. Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon created the series in which Lawrence played Thelma Mae, “Mama,” Crowley Harper, a 65 year-old widow. Sassy and smart-mouthed, she traded quips and performed some inspired sketches with “Carol Burnett” alums Harvey Corman, Tim Conway, and others, such as Rue McClanahan, Betty White, Ken Berry and Burnett herself. McClanahan played Mama’s sister Fran, and Berry was her son Vint. The series’ 130 episodes, never released on DVD, have been offered initially online but are now available on a packaged set of 24 DVDs. The set also holds abundant supplements, such as a cast reunion roundtable discussion, new interviews with Lawrence and Burnett, new interviews with various other cast members, the original movie “Eunice,” the precursor to “Mama,” a family album compete with biographies, and much more.
Also on DVD: Berlin Job, After Earth, The Exorcist–40th anniversary, The Hangover part III, The Purge.