Recent DVD Releases

"American Gangster" is a good movie that misses by a whisker of being a very good one. It stars Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, a Harlem drug kingpin of the 1970s, and Russell Crowe as Lucas’ nemesis, police detective Richie Roberts. The two never come face to face during the first two hours of the film’s two hour and 37-minute running time, so what director Ridley Scott does is switch back and forth between the stories of the two men. That is a problem. Of the two, Lucas is by far the more interesting character and it feels like the early scenes involving Roberts were beefed up because a major star like Crowe was cast in the part. Not only are these scenes unnecessary, they constantly slow any momentum the film tries to build. But the biggest problem with the film is there is never any tension developed between Lucas, a man who doesn’t hesitate to set a gasoline soaked man aflame or shoot another one in the head at point blank range on a crowed Harlem street, and Roberts, a straight-arrow cop who follows all the rules. In fact, when the two finally meet, they seem to get along pretty well together. Then the film sells out as we learn that Lucas wasn’t Roberts’s real target all along. But the film does give us a fascinating portrait of the gangster trying to be to drug users what Best Buy is to its customers and Washington and Crowe are always fascinating to watch. There’s also a dynamite performance from Josh Brolin as a dirty cop and an Oscar-nominated one from Ruby Dee as Lucas’ mother. The DVD contains a theatrical version, which these comments are based on, and an unrated, extended version. I wouldn’t call the latter the "director’s cut," because I’m betting in a year or so Scott, being the savvy marketer that he is, will package a "version you were meant to see in the first place," probably combined with yet one more edit of "Blade Runner." Grade: B

"Margot at the Wedding" is a disappointment considering it was written by Noah Baumbach, who directed "The Squid and the Whale," a film I ranked as the fourth best film of 2005. This time Baumbach tells the story of Margot (Nicole Kidman) who drags her son Claude (Zane Paris, in his film debut) from their home in Manhattan to the Hamptons for the wedding of her sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to a layabout named Malcolm (Jack Black). Margot is a writer who appropriates the lives of her family for use in her novels, appropriations that don’t sit well with the family. In fact, Pauline blames Margot’s appropriations for the failure of her first marriage. Each sister approaches the nuptials with a secret she shares with the other, only to have their confidences betrayed. The sisters have wounds they have inflicted on each other that obviously haven’t healed. Unlike the emotions dealt with in "Squid," the issues in "Margot" all seem superficial and inconsequential. Plus, none of the characters in this film are remotely likeable, except perhaps for Margot’s husband (John Turturro in somewhat of a cameo) and Margot is leaving him. The film is well acted, especially by Kidman and Leigh, but watching this made me feel like a normal person trapped in a never-ending group therapy session with a bunch of selfish neurotics. Grade: C+

"In the Valley of Elah" stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield, a Vietnam vet who now makes his living hauling gravel in Munro , Tenn. As the movie opens, Hank learns his son Mike (Jonathan Tucker), who has just returned stateside from a tour of duty in Iraq , has gone AWOL. Hank, distressed because he didn’t even know Mike had left Iraq , decides to drive to the army post where Mike was reported missing to find out what’s going on. He’s there for only a short time before he learns Mike has been murdered. The rest of the movie, unfortunately, involves Hank’s determination to find out who was responsible for his son’s death and why he was killed. I say "unfortunately" because the movie could have been and should have been more important than a retread of "A Soldier’s Story." Hank’s oldest son also was killed while on active duty, in a helicopter crash in North Carolina . The film could have explored the various stages of grief experienced by a veteran who apparently forced his sons to follow in his footsteps only to see both of them killed, but neither in a combat situation. There are two scenes in the film that illustrate how marvelous this film could have been and both of them feature the wonderful Susan Sarandon as Joan Deerfield, Hank’s wife. In the first one, she learns of Mike’s death in a telephone call from Hank. In the second, she views Mike’s remains for the first time. Those scenes dealt honestly with what the characters were feeling, which is far more courageous filmmaking than scenes dealing what what the characters are doing. It is also clear that the Mike Deerfield who came home from Iraq was not the same person who left Tennessee . Writer-director Paul Haggis wants us to know that the servicemen returning from the Iraqi conflict are completely desensitized, but for some reason he doesn’t want to explore the why or the how. Instead he settles for a routine whodunit in which Hank suddenly becomes Sherlock Holmes giving lessons to all the local investigators. Haggis, who gave us "Crash," which will be remembered as one of the worst movies ever to win a best picture Oscar, throws us a lot of red herrings a long the way before arriving at a conclusion that is totally unsatisfactory and then throwing in a final scene that is a travesty, ridiculous and completely unnecessary. Charlize Theron as detective Emily Sanders makes more out of the clichéd role of a police investigator than Haggis gave her to work with and Jones does remind us that he is an actor who can say more with a look than many other actors can with a page of dialogue. He has a scene with Devin Brochu, as the detective’s son, in which he tells him the story of the battle between David and Goliath that took place, of course, in the valley of Elah . In a prime example of how Haggis writes with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, this is a "tonight you go to bed as a boy, tomorrow you wake up a man" scene. Jones, however, has the chops to almost make the scene work. Grade C

"Lust, Caution" has far too much caution and not nearly enough lust. Director Ang Lee’s best films ""Brokeback Mountain," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and the terribly under-appreciated "The Ice Storm" – deal with simmering emotions his characters try to keep repressed until they finally erupt. With "Lust Caution" Lee gives us the eruptions, but none of the simmering. It tells the story of Wong Chia Chi (Wei Tang in a performance that should have earned her an Oscar nomination over, say, Cate Blanchett), who, in the late 1930s, is recruited by a semi-radical group of Chinese youth bent on administering their form of justice on fellow countrymen who are collaborating with the Japanese. I call them "semi-radical" because they are too soft to have ever made it as members of such 1960s U.S. radical groups as the Weathermen. They are idealists more than fighters. Still, they decide they must kill Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) who is involved with the Japanese in ways that are never really made clear by the film. Their plan is to have Wong Chia Chi seduce the heavily guarded Mr. Yee, gain his confidence and then lure him someplace where they can pop him. She performs her part in this plot admirably. She lures him into more "pop-able" places than Starbucks has outlets where they have sex that is so well choreographed the scenes earned the film an NC-17 rating. These moments, plus one other in which the hapless band of radicals knife another collaborator who has stumbled upon their plans, are really the only "alive" ones in the film. But I kept wondering during all this lovemaking why one of the radicals didn’t come out of a closet or out from under the bed and nail the guy. Instead, Lee stages his climax in a downtown Shanghai jewelry store in a scene that has no tension whatsoever. Grade: C

"We Own the Night" is a police thriller that strives and fails to be more than that. It was written and directed by James Gray whose last film was "The Yards," which, probably not coincidentally, also starred Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg. This time around Phoenix is Bobby Green who uses his mother’s maiden name instead of the family name, Grusinsky, because he claims it is easier to pronounce. The reality is that his brother Joe (Wahlberg) and his father Bert (Robert Duvall) are both high-ranking cops intent of bringing down the drug trade that operates in large part out of the Brooklyn nightclub Bobby manages. The story supposedly involves how Bobby is pulled into the his family’s police operations, but it is more like he jumps in, which brings me to the crux of the problems I have with this film. It is well-directed--there is one tension-filled scene where Bobby is brought blindfolded to the warehouse where heroin is being cut and another car chase film through a rainstorm that just crackles--but it is not well-written. Phoenix does what we can with the role but starting about the point where an attempt is made on his brother’s life, nothing Bobby does is remotely in character. Grade: C-

"Becoming Jane" is supposed to show us, I guess, the creative impetus behind the works of Jane Austen, but instead of ennobling the authoress, it diminishes her. One would like to believe her great novels came from a deep well of creativity but, according to this film, they are nothing more than superficial autobiographies, especially "Pride and Prejudice." History tells us little about Jane Austen’s life. Most of what is known about her is gleaned from letters she wrote to her sister Cassandra. It is known, however, that at the age of 21 she met Tom Lefroy, a friend of an older relative. Lefroy is only mentioned in two of Jane's letters to Cassandra so the consensus is the relationship didn't amount to much. In the second letter she wrote "At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy." "Becoming Jane" takes that as its nucleus and blows it up so that now a simple flirtation is a full blown passionate love affair with Jane as Elizabeth Bennett, Lefroy as Mr. Darcy and ... well, you get the picture. What saves the movie from being a total failure are the performances of Anne Hathaway as Jane, James McAvoy as Lefroy, James Cromwell as Jane’s father and that marvelous trio of British actors, Maggie Smith as a judgmental aristocrat, Julie Walters as Jane’s mother and Ian Richardson as Lefroy’s uncle and guardian. Grade D+