Irish aliens and more

DVDs for July 19 by Boo Allen

This week, we begin in Ireland:

Zonad (***)
On the night the Irish village Ballymoran celebrates a UFO-stargazing event, a man in a shiny red plastic suit, wearing goggles and what looks like a bike helmet, turns up passed out on the floor inside a local home. He speaks haltingly and claims to be Zonad (Simon Delaney), from worlds beyond. The fact that everyone believes him throws this low budget, totally loopy film into absurdist territory. Actually, Zonad escaped with a friend (David Pearse) from a nearby alcohol rehab facility. The perceived alien takes advantage of his situation, with free room, board, drinks, and even some female attention; that is, until his friend turns up and claims to be Bonad. Ridiculous film ends up with a surplus of Irish charm and off-kilter humor.
Not rated, 75 minutes.

This week, on-demand Warner Archives releases one enjoyable confection and two heavy melodramas, all unrated and all from the RKO Pictures library:
A Damsel in Distress (***), The Woman on the Beach (**), In Name Only (***)
Graced with an abundance of superlative talent, Damsel/Distress stars Fred Astaire as an American movie star in London who becomes unwittingly involved with a titled British lady (luminous Joan Fontaine). Based on maestro P. G. Wodehouse’s story, who also co-scripted, the film also features music and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and co-stars George Burns and Gracie Allen, who perform two capable tap numbers with Astaire. Quintessentially Wodehousian-fluffy and fun (1937, 100 minutes). French director Jean Renoir made several films in the U.S. during World War Two. In Woman/Beach (1941, 71 minutes), one of his last, Robert Ryan plays Scott, a troubled Coast Guard lieutenant who falls under the spell of a mysterious woman (Joan Bennett) he meets on a local beach. She is married to Tod (Charles Bickford), a once celebrated painter. Although Tod has lost his vision, Scott believes he can still see, leading to a series of embarrassing confrontations, recriminations, and situations. The tonally uneven film fluctuates between maudlin drama and torrid romance. Cary Grant and Carole Lombard are also a conflicted couple in In Name Only (1939, 94 minutes). Alec (Grant) suffers through a name-only marriage to Connecticut socialite Maida (Kay Francis). He meets Julie (Lombard), and they fall for each other. Maida agrees to a divorce but goes back on her word after she disrupts everyone’s life. In addition to its steady stream of heightened emotions, the film also paints a good example of antiquated divorce laws.

Peep World (***)
A good overall cast helps elevate this discomforting comedy about a young novelist who gains fame when he dishes dirt about his family and then must face them all at their father’s 70th birthday party. Ben Schwartz plays Nathan Meyerwitz, author of successful novel, and soon to be movie, Peep World. He relates how his married brother Jack (Michael C. Hall) frequents porno shops, how brother Joel (Rainn Wilson) fails at everything, and how sister Cheri (Sarah Silverman) is a raving loon. Only the cold, distant father (Ron Rifkin) remains unscathed, causing even greater tsuris in the family. Louis Black narrates.
Not rated, 79 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray, includes five minutes of deleted scenes.

Tekken (**1/2)
This action-thriller based on the video game of the same name takes place in a future (2039) in which the earth is now run by corporations, and Tekken runs what used to be the Americas. Once a year, a bloody elimination cage match takes place involving the fiercest warriors, male and female. Street fighter Jin (Jon Foo) wins an elimination bout and finds himself in a competition he wants to win so he can avenge the death of his mother (Tamlyn Tomita) by Tekken’s evil ruler. The garish, glossy production provides plenty of action and some eye-popping special effects.
Rated R, 91 minutes. The DVD, also on Blu-ray, also offers a 51 minute featurette on the film’s impressive stunts.

Two releases from the ongoing on-demand Fox MGM Limited Edition Collection grabbed our attention this week: Another Man, Another Chance (***), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (****)
In 1966, Claude Lelouche had an international mega-hit with his lush romance A Man and a Woman. In the 1977 Man/Chance (rated PG, 130 minutes), he returns, as he often has, to a favorite theme of pre-destination. James Caan plays a contemporary photographer who flashes back to the story of his grandparents in the 1870s old west. She (Genevieve Bujold) flees war-torn Paris with her to-be husband, a photographer gunned down in his American studio. He (also Caan) is a frontier veterinarian left with his infant son when his wife (Jennifer Warren) is raped and killed. Lelouche juggles their two stories with several other plot lines that end with their inevitable coupling in this ambitious but engrossing film. Peter Hall (father of actress Rebecca Hall) directed the 1966 Midsummer/Dream (not rated, 124 minutes), Shakespeare’s frolicsome comedy about misdirected love, parental fealty, and mischievous fairies in an Athenian forest. His all-star cast includes Helen Mirren as Hermia, Diana Rigg as Helena, Ian Richardson as Oberon, Judi Dench as Titania, Ian Holm as Puck, and many other British luminaries. Hall thankfully lets his cameras capture the actors, often in close-up, as they heed Hamlet’s advice to actors to “speak the lines as they are written.” The actors here deliver the text with superb diction, letting the emphasis remain on the words while Hall renders visually pleasing images to complement Shakespeare’s treasure.

And, in this week’s TV offerings:

The Girls Next Door–season six
In this latest season of ten episodes, on two discs, peaking behind the ascetic life of Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Mansion, new characters arrive, and the cameras capture camp-outs and a European jaunt.
Not rated, 243 minutes.

Also on DVD: Amer, Cracks, Desert Flower, Limitless, Potiche, Race to Nowhere, The Reef.