The DVD of the Week is, without a doubt, Criterion’s magnificent edition of the 2008 restoration of Max Ophul’s final film, Lola Montes, and I review it here. But along with something old, Criterion has something new, or rather a couple of somethings new, foremost among them Steve McQueen’s unforgettable Hunger (Criterion). Before he went out speaking the king’s as a crisply proper British officer in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Michael Fassbender played Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands who, at the age of 27, went on a hunger strike in 1981 to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize IRA inmates as political prisoners. British artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen creates a film unlike any traditional biopic or historical drama: an overwhelming visceral experience composed of the sight and sounds and sensations of men in prison, played out as an almost abstract portrait in power and resistance until the film’s sole dialogue, a debate between Sands and a Catholic Priest.

Michael Fassbender as Bobby Sands in "Hunger"

McQueen isn’t taking sides or making political points; in the brutal world of Ireland during the troubles, there’s plenty of reprehensible behavior to go around. Hunger is a study in the deterioration of the human body (we literally watch him waste away on camera) and the will it takes to endure such self-mortification in the name of cause. Available on DVD and Blu-ray, both featuring the tightly focused 13-minute documentary “The Making of Hunger,” bonus video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender and a 1981 British TV documentary on the Maze prison hunger strikes, plus a booklet. As a side note, the menus are particularly haunting and unsettling.

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That Universal’s visually sanguine yet emotionally bloodless revival of their most ferocious and most tragic movie monster is a complete stiff is beyond debate. The real question is how anyone can direct this story, at heart about a man under a curse that transforms him from a moral being into a beastly predator and then transforms him back with the knowledge of his deeds, without even accidentally stumbling into tragedy and pathos and the terrible torment of his ordeal?

The Beast Within Emerges

Curt Siodmak’s screenplay for the original 1941 The Wolfman is credited as the source for this Victorian-era retelling (there are elements also taken from the uncredited 1935 Werewolf of London) and, while great liberties are taken with the family history, it’s remains true to the basics and even begins by quoting directly from the source: “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” This (purposely?) clumsy bit of doggerel sounds like some peasant folk legend by way of child’s rhyme but it is as much Hollywood invention as the story itself (while shapeshifters are common through folklore, the specifics of the werewolf legend—the full moon, the silver bullets, only a true love can kill it—were created whole cloth, or rather fur, by Hollywood). It’s both carved into stone and spoken aloud with a heavy gravity, ostensibly an effort to create a sense of foreboding. It merely elicited titters from the preview audience I was with and offered a preview of the pose of ominous mystery and gloomy Gothic drear that smothered any hint of personality, dramatic tension or fun.

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The zombie comedy is hardly fresh territory (and really, will anyone top Shaun of the Dead?) but the creators of Zombieland (Sony) do a fine job of mining the humor inherent in the end of the world. Jesse Eisenberg is the loner college geek who finds that his obsessive-compulsive instincts are just what he needs to survive a world gone wild. He puts together his simple rules for survival and goes off in search of… what, we’re not really sure, but he’s happy to discover another warm body when the gun-toting Woody Harrelson comes careening down the wreck-filled highway and gives him a lift. This redneck madman takes a more devil-may-care approach (zombie-bashing as sport) while Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin, a cagey pair they find in a supermarket stop, have simply adapted their mercenary skills to life after people.

Batter up!

Think of Zombieland (as in “We are now the United States of Zombieland”) as I Am Legend as a road movie comedy. First-time feature director Ruben Fleischer moves it along with decent momentum while punctuating the sardonic humor with cheeky graphics that flash and crash on screen, and he certainly doesn’t skimp on the splatter or the sport. But it’s a character piece at heart and these oddballs discover that, emotional baggage and survival scars aside, there’s something to be said for human companionship in a world where every other living thing wants to eat you.

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Kevin Hamedini’s home grown Seattle horror is part of the “After Dark Horrorfest” series playing in select theaters across the country. Here’s an expanded version of the review I wrote for the film’s SIFF showing.

Forget the zombies: these boys are GAY!

I saw at a disadvantage when I saw this film: I was alone, watching a screener at home. It was funny, but this is a film to see in a crowd, where the exuberance of an audience becomes a part of the experience. The setting is Port Gamble, a small Pacific Northwest island town equivalent of Blue Velvet’s Lumberton, complete with the white picket fences but minus Frank Booth and his underworld gang. Instead, there’s a viral outbreak that turns everyone into zombies, immediately blamed on an Islamic terrorist based on the flimsy evidence of remarks made on an internet video. The joke is that no one even questions the dubious evidence or challenges the link.

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On a week as busy as this, you can only cover so much. Here’s what I was able to see. My pick of the week, Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD special edition of Paris, Texas, is here, but a close runner-up is another Criterion release: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy (Criterion).

Anna Magnani in Rome Open City

Roberto Rossellini had been a journeyman director working within Mussolini’s Italian film industry when he redefined his career and all but inaugurated the neo-realist movement with this trio of films made at the end of World War II. Though he was no partisan, he started working on Rome Open City (1945) before Rome fell to the Allies and shot his drama of partisans fighting the Germans and the Italian Fascists in the streets of the liberated city, amidst the poverty and devastation and uncertainty of the future. Rossellini famously scrounged raw film and unused short ends from American newsreel crews for footage and that’s been the explanation for years of bleary looking prints and home video copies. And yes, the conditions of the shoot have an enormous affect on the finished film; Rossellini only had to point the camera to get a portrait of the hard life on the streets. But while Criterion’s disc is hardly Hollywood Studio crisp, the newly mastered digital transfer, restored from a fine-grain 35mm print, looks better than you’ve likely ever seen it. The same can be said for all the films in the set, which are clean and clear enough to see where Rossellini and his crew made due with out-of-focus and unsteady images and shots grabbed on the fly. The fast newsreel footage is grainier than the film stock he was used to using for his studio films, but it gave Rossellini and his crew a flexibility to shoot in available light on the streets and it gave the images that jolt of documentary immediacy in key scenes.

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Downhill Racer (Criterion) is the feature debut of Michael Ritchie, the first project that frustrated actor and future movie star Robert Redford developed for himself and the first of Redford’s proposed trilogy about the meaning of “winning” in American culture. That’s what gives such a riveting perspective to what would otherwise be called a “sports movie”: Redford’s David Chappellet, the brash, self-involved hotshot on the American ski team, is less concerned with the beauty of the sport than the attention of victory and fame.

David Chappellet (Robert Redford) looks up to check his standing

Directed from a script by novelist James Salter and shot on location on the European ski circuit (where the director and star incorporated ideas and opportunities into the film as they arose), Downhill Racer makes no bones about Chappellet’s fierce ambition or dismissive arrogance, but the downhill runs are shot and edited with a visceral quality that takes us off the sidelines and into the skier’s perspective. The screen goes silent but for the cut of skis slicing a track through the snow and whoosh of the crisp mountain air whipping by and the camera captures the run in long takes and full shots to study the integrity of the athlete’s movement and at times watches the rush through the skier’s eyes, to give is the rush, the focus and the intensity of the experience. The rest of the film reminds us of the industry behind the sport—raising money for the national team, traveling from one contest to another, negotiating for top draws (the earlier the pick, the fresher the snow pack) and managing the media—and the culture of fame. Redford’s matinee looks are more than just Hollywood casting in this context; the film never says it in so many words, but it’s clear that Chappellet’s popularity is as much for his good looks as for his success. The crowds love a handsome champion. Gene Hackman is the practical coach who doesn’t like Chappellet or his attitude but knows that his ambition is the team’s best chance for a win and sixties screen beauty Camilla Sparv is Chappellet’s counterpart, a ski company rep who treats romance with the same emotional disconnection that Chappellet treats everything else.

Criterion’s disc advertises itself as 1.85 but is actually adjusted to the TV widescreen standard of 1.77:1. The disc features two interview featurettes, each running about half an hour. “Redford and Salter” features new video interviews with Redford, who lays out the history of the film and his career and his determination to get it made in the face of studio resistance, and writer James Salter, who discusses the evolution of the script and how it changed during the filmmaking. “Coblenz, Harris, and Jalbert” features film editor Richard Harris, production manager Walter Coblenz, and former downhill skier Joe Jay Jalbert, who served as technical adviser and ski double. There are audio-only excerpts from a 1977 American Film Institute seminar with director Michael Ritchie, the archival promotional short How Fast? and a booklet with an essay by critic Todd McCarthy.

I’ll be writing about another essential release this week, Milestone’s excellent two-disc edition of Kent McKenzie’s The Exiles, as well as two features from Seattle filmmaker Lynn Shelton, My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday, in another post. As I’m personally involved in the former (I participate in the commentary with author and filmmaker Sherman Alexie and interview Alexie for a bonus audio supplement) and am friends with Shelton, director of the latter, I can hardly be objective. But I can and will be supportive of both releases in a separate piece. (Update: it’s now up and posted here.)

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Directed by Paul Weitz; screenplay by Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland, from the series of books by Darren Shan.

Hey, you know what we really need? Another teenage vampire epic, but with, like, really weird looking folks populating the cast. And maybe we can tie up the fate of the supernatural world in the conflict between two best friends turned (im)mortal enemies. Think a tweener Tru Blood (without all the sex) by way of Freaks, or better yet, a Twilight saga for teenage boys, without all the icky romantic torment and gooey longing and emo-vampires.

John C. Reilly as The Vampire

There’s plenty of other references I could call to mind in describing Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant: the dark carnival riding into town out of Something Wicked This Way Comes, which turns out to be a refuge for outcasts like the HBO series Carnivale, while there’s a conspiracy afoot to shatter the fragile truce between the (relatively) good and evil poles of the supernatural world that plays out an awful lot like Nightwatch.

That’s not to say that this film, adapted from the first couple of novels in the series by Darren Shan, is in any way inspired by/ripped off from any of the above-mentioned films. It’s just that the whole supernatural franchise thing itself is awfully derivative. The wellspring reaches back to Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia (the books, not the movies, themselves drawn for the myths and legends of numerous cultures and religions) and should, conceivably, continue in new variations forever, the classic conflicts reworked for the social worlds of each new epoch. But at the moment it’s running dry as every publisher and film studio looks for its own series and ends up redressing the same archetypes without coming up with any fresh stories.

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Stephen Frears directs and Christopher Hampton scripts Cheri (Miramax), a deft adaptation of two Colette novels of love and life in La Belle Epoque Paris (when high society prostitutes were veritable celebrities), but it’s Michael Pfeiffer who brings the film alive as the aging courtesan Lea who makes a business of romance. “This was my only place of business and the customers have all gone,” she sighs while sitting on her bed, a mix of regret and relief and acknowledgment of her fragile power in a culture that reveres youth and beauty. So she reaches out for her own taste of youth through Cheri (Rupert Friend), the callow, decadent, 19-year-old son of a fellow courtesan she takes as a lover in brief affair that lasts six years, until social convention intervenes. It’s a flip on the usual May-December romance and the chemistry of these performers makes it not just believable but almost inevitable: emotionally guarded beauties who inadvertently allow affection into their relationship. Includes “The Making of Cheri” and deleted scenes.

Cheri dallies with a very good friend

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William Castle is the carnival showman of horror cinema. Once a journeyman director in the B-movie basement of Columbia Pictures, he became so frustrated with his assignments that he went independent and recreated himself as a drive-in Hitchcock with a P.T. Barnum sense of ballyhoo and self-hype. It was a cagey make-over that he nurtured carefully with goofy gimmicks (his first was an insurance policy—backed by Lloyds of London—to insure all ticket buyers against “death by fright” during his 1958 film Macabre; needless to say, no one tried to collect) and personal appearances promoting and introducing his films, just like Hitchcock was doing on TV. And in some ways it trapped him in that identity: the director as huckster, successful but not taken seriously as a filmmaker. The William Castle Film Collection (Sony) collects eight newly remastered films—three of them making their DVD debut—in a box set offering a cross section of his most entertaining films, his most creative gimmicks and his most lighthearted efforts.

Mr. Sardonicus

Among the latter are two tongue-in-cheek productions starring Tom Poston: Zotz! (1962), a whimsical fantasy about a magic coin, and a remake of The Old Dark House (1963) as a comic romp of eccentrics killing one another off for an inheritance. Both make their DVD debuts here, as does 13 Frightened Girls (1963), a light espionage thriller with a Nancy Drew heroine in the form of a diplomat’s daughter (Kathy Dunn) at an exclusive European private school who turns sweet sixteen Mata Hari. It’s not a horror film (despite the title, a reference to his earlier 13 Ghosts) and not really a thriller. The girls may be frightened in the first scene, but by the end of the film they’re just having a grand time goofing with the Chinese assassins. These are the films that Castle completists have been waiting for, but are lesser titles compared to his gimmicky classics like The Tingler (1959), Castle’s third feature in this vein and his second and final film with Vincent Price. “Ladies and gentleman, please do not panic,” Price cautions the audience. “But scream – scream for your lives!” Given that the creature of the title is a cheap rubber model that looks like a lobster crossbred with a centipede, such encouragement is necessary. Theatergoers were goosed into a reaction with a device that Castle dubbed “Percepto,” a fancy name for a small, motorized vibrator placed under select theater seats and wired to the projection booth. Home video audiences are left to imagine the effects.

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Look on the back of the case of Eagles Over London (Severin) and you’ll see this Italian World War II action adventure identified as a “Macaroni Combat.” This rather clumsy moniker is a recently coined phrase in the “spaghetti western” vein but hardly expressive of this military caper thriller from Italian genre specialist Enzo Castellari (of the original The Inglorious Bastards fame). The plot is quite clever: a squad of Germans don British uniforms and identities and infiltrate Britain through the chaos of the evacuation of Dunkirk, while a British Lt. (a colorless Frederick Stafford with a thick European accent) stumbles upon the plot and tries to track them through London before they can execute their missions. Castellari is not an elegant director, but then that’s not what makes a World War II adventure like this work. Made in the shadow of The Dirty Dozen and The Battle of Britain, this film straddles both genres, delivering impressive spectacle—from the evacuation of Dunkirk (shot on the coast of Spain) to the air combat of the Battle of Britain (largely shot on soundstage in Rome)—and espionage action. There’s a lot  of dubbing (most of the Italians are replaced on the soundtrack) and a cacophony of unlikely accents (the aforementioned Stafford, whose accent is justified by his Hungarian origins, and Van Johnson as a British Air Marshall right out of middle America), but it’s still quite entertaining, like an energetic B-movie with a lavish budget (you can see the money poured into the Dunkirk scenes, with its epic vistas filled with extras and a strafing run by a German fighter) and energetic direction.

The Germans in London in "Eagles Over London"

Originally titled La battaglia d’Inghilterra (“The Battle of Britain”) and also known as Battle Squadron, this film never received an official American release according to Quentin Tarantino (a big fan of the film and of Castellari’s oeuvre). Severin took a cue from QT to give the film its American DVD and Blu-ray debut and they got Tarantino to participate in the extras: a 14-minute interview with director Enzo G. Castellari (the discuss the film and the oddities of the Italian movie industry of the time) and an appearance hosting a rare film screening in L.A. with Castellari, gushing on stage while a woozy handheld video camera records the occasion. Also features a brief deleted scene with the German High Command discussing the invastion (in German with English subtitles).

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Roman Polanski’s Chinatown gets a new special edition release this week. It’s hard to say if the timing is good or bad, given all the acrimony stirred up by Polanski’s arrest and probable extradition to the U.S. to face sentencing for a crime he confessed to before fleeing the country (over his fear of the rampant judicial misconduct in the case) over 30 years ago. Whatever one feels about Polanski the man (and in this case it is at the very least a disgust and revulsion for a man who raped a 13-year-old girl), it shouldn’t dim the accomplishment of the artist. Simply put, Chinatown is one of the masterpieces of American cinema of the seventies and a classic of American cinema, and Chinatown: Centennial Collection (Paramount) is a duly respectful DVD with intelligent supplements that dig into the creation of the movie and the Los Angeles history that inspired the story. Jack Nicholson strolls through the role of cynical private eye J.J. Gittes with the sneering confidence of a smart cookie in a situation far more complex than he realizes and Faye Dunaway brings an echo of tragedy to potential femme fatale Evelyn Mulwray, a socialite whose private life Gittes splashes across the newspapers. Robert Towne’s labyrinthine yet tight and resonant script, inspired by classic films noir and real Los Angeles history, won the film its only Academy Award (it was nominated for eleven, including Best Picture). Roman Polanski transformed the script into a modern film noir of sleek style, milky color, and sad cynicism, putting the corruption, greed, and moral monstrosity of Los Angeles in the thirties under the crisp light of the California sun. John Huston is brilliant as the maverick robber baron Noah Cross and Polanski gives himself an unforgettable cameo: he’s the weaselly thug who slices Nicholson’s nose.

Jack Nicholson in Chinatown

“So the first thing I was struck by was how much I liked how sinister the logo treatment is in black and white,” says filmmaker and unabashed fan David Fincher to screenwriter Robert Towne, jumping right into the newly-recorded commentary without even a preamble. It’s a conversation between professionals rather than a lecture and Fincher plays the impassioned fan making astute observations and asking provocative questions of Towne. It sometimes goes silent for what seems like minutes, but all in all it is thoughtful, considered and introspective and Towne seems to get more modest with age. The two-disc set also includes the original three-part, 80-minute documentary “Water and Power,” which explores the real-life history and politics of the irrigation of California at the center of the film, and the new 26-minute featurette “Chinatown: An Appreciation,” with contemporary filmmaker and film artists discussing the film. Carried over from the previous DVD edition is a collection of three retrospective featurettes with interviews with director Roman Polanski, star Jack Nicholson, screenwriter Robert Towne, and producer Robert Evans. It’s a fine edition, but my question is: when will Paramount give it the Blu-ray treatment?

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The cheese loving inventor and energetically eccentric entrepreneur Wallace and his silent but astute canine companion Gromit have become one of the most popular comedy duos in the movies after only three animated shorts (two of which won Oscars) and one feature film, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Not bad for a couple of plasticine creations brought to life through the painstaking process (and increasingly neglected art) of stop-motion animation. A Matter of Loaf and Death (Lionsgate) is their first screen appearance in four years and only their fifth film longer than three minutes since their debut twenty years ago, which makes it all the more exciting for fans young and old. Creator Nick Park is back at the helm for this “bread-based murder mystery,” which casts the pals and partners as bakers with a delivery business based out of an urban windmill that powers yet another magnificent collection of mechanical devices and Rube Goldberg contraptions. While Wallace falls in love with a former bakery pin-up girl, someone is killing the bakers around town and Gromit has a pretty good idea who… not that grinning goof Wallace will pay any attention to him in his starry-eyed infatuation.

Wallace and Gromit earn their bread and butter

It’s another half hour comic classic, with marvelously intricate bits of comic choreography and visual gags with the invention of Charlie Chaplin shorts and Bug Bunny cartoons, all rooted in the comfortable character of the moldable clay heroes. Fans of the series will be delighted. The DVD features the twenty-minute “How They Donut: The Making of a Matter of Loaf and Death” (it’s always a treat to see the models and the animators bring them to life) and a bonus “Shaun the Sheep” short, and it debuts in Blu-ray on a special edition disc featuring the Blu-ray debut of the previous three Wallace and Gromit shorts, A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1998), plus making-of featurettes for each short and all ten Wallace and Gromit: Cracking Contraptions of adventures in inventing (each under three minutes).

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