"Michael Clayton" and other recent DVD releases

"Michael Clayton" is a dense, atmospheric, deftly paced finely acted thriller starring George Clooney in the title role, a gambling addicted, divorced father, deeply in debt fixer for a corporate law firm. His current assignment involves repairing the damage caused when Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), the firm’s chief litigator who is defending U/North, an agri-chemical company accused in multi-million dollar class action lawsuit of endangering the health of a Wisconsin community, begins taking off his clothes during a deposition and screaming that his client may actually be responsible. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), U/North’s corporate counsel, decides the situation needs a more "drastic" fix, especially when she learns that Edens may have in his possession documents that prove U/North knew in advance what they were doing was dangerous. When Clayton realizes what’s going on, he becomes the target of Crowder’s brand of remedy. The movie works because the events move logically and with precision and because all the roles are so well-acted. This is a rare thriller, one that doesn’t end with a big gunfight but, instead, a verbal face-off outside a hotel ballroom—the tension here is not manufactured, it’s earned. Grade: B+

"Death at a Funeral" follows a familiar theme of British farce — lancing the traditional stiff upper lip — and no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still find it funny. The British even find a way to treat potty humor with decorum. Family and friends gather at an English estate for the funeral of the estate’s patriarch. My favorite among those in attendance are Martha (Daisy Donovan), a niece of the deceased, and her fiancee Simon Smith (American Alan Tudyk) who is terrified at the thought of encountering Martha’s father and the deceased’s brother Victor (Peter Egan). During a quick stop to pick up Martha’s brother Troy (Kris Marshall), Martha spots a bottle of Valium and gives one to the nervous Simon. It turns out however that Troy, a closet chemist, has concocted an hallucinogenic drug that he has put in the Valium bottle and Simon spaces out through the funeral to a point where he winds up nude and threatening to jump from the estate’s roof. Then there’s Daniel (Matthew MacFadyen), the deceased’s oldest son and would-be novelist who still lives on the estate with his wife Jane (Keeley Hawes) who is desperate to move out into a flat of their own in London. There’s Daniel’s younger brother Robert (Rupert Graves), who now lives in New York and is a successful novelist. There’s Daniel’s friend Howard (Andrew Nyman), who is obsessed with his own skin condition and must also babysit Daniel’s ancient Uncle Alfie (Peter Vaughan) whose lot in life is to be loud and embarrassing, And I haven’t even mentioned the vicar (Thomas Wheatley) who wants to rush through the ceremony because he’s scheduled another engagement for that afternoon; Justin (Ewen Bremner), who has a major crush on Martha; and the mysterious short guy (Peter Dinklage, natch) who comes bearing a secret that could throw another monkey wrench into the whole proceedings. "Death" does not rank up there with the best of the old Ealing Studios efforts, but it has its moments that you will find you laughing out loud and consistently smiling. Grade: C+

"Rendition" follows a recent tradition of internationally themed movies with one name titles ("Traffic," "Crash," "Babel," "Syriana") that deal with complicated issues in an overly simplistic manner. They mean well, but, except for "Traffic," they trivialize. They fail to deal with human emotions honestly, instead treating them so they can manipulate the feelings of the audience. "Rendition" deals with our use of torture in response to international terrorism. A terrorist bomb explodes in a marketplace in an unnamed North African city killing, among others, a newly arrived CIA operative. At the same time, Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a Chicago businessman who was born in Egypt, is returning home from a trip to South Africa. In ways that are not fully explained, messages from the terrorist claiming responsibility for bombing are traced to El-Ibrahimi’s cell phone and when he arrives in Washington to change planes, he is snatched under orders from Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), the head of a CIA office in Washington, and whisked back to North Africa where he is questioned and tortured over his alleged role in the attack. Meanwhile, his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) tries in vain to find out what’s happened to her husband and seeks help from Alan Smith (the peerless Peter Sarsgaard), an aide to U.S. Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin) and finally the senator himself. Meanwhile, Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a conscience-stricken CIA section chief in North Africa, begins to have doubts about the treatment of El-Ibrahimi at the hands of his questioner, police chief Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), who is the chief target of the terrorist bombers, one of whom, Khalid (Moa Khouas) is in love with Fawal’s daughter, Fatima (Zineb Oukach). If you’re starting to scratch your head, you’re beginning to see the problem here — too much story to support a film that’s supposed to be about issues. And just when it seems you might be getting a handle on it, the film doubles back on you during the last act in a move that defies all logic. Grade: D+

"Goya’s Ghosts" wastes a lot of Grade A talent: director Milos Forman, and actors Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard and Natalie Portman in a project that probably has a point buried somewhere, but I sure couldn’t locate it. Francisco Goya produced etchings that pictured the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and a movie about what drove Goya to engrave this grotesque images might have made a compelling film. Instead we get a soap opera. Portman plays Ines (in one of two parts she has in this movie but I’ll get to the other in a second), the daughter of a rich Madrid merchant Tomas (Jose Luis Gomez) who apparently had an ancestor who was Jewish. Brother Lorenzo (Bardem) has warned the Catholic faithful to be on the lookout for these "Judiazers," and Ines is caught in this web, tortured and sent to prison. Goya (Skarsgard), who once used Ines as a model, intercedes with Lorenzo, at the request of Tomas who wants to know the fate of his daughter. Lorenzo visits Ines in her prison but instead of helping her, he rapes her. He then goes back to tell Tomas there is nothing that can be done for his daughter because she confessed to crimes and even though she confessed under torture, if she had been innocent, Lorenzo claims God would have protected her through the torture. Tomas, in a move that would have made Paul Kersey proud, demonstrates how that might not be so and, as a result, Lorenzo must flee Spain. He returns, however, 15 years later as part of Napoleon’s occupation troops. They free all the political prisoners, including Ines, who by this time has gone completely insane but does remember she gave birth to Lorenzo’s daughter in prison and sets out to find her. It’s at this point the move descends into pure soap, with Portman also playing the daughter, Alicia, who turns out to be a prostitute. The whole mess crashes into a completely unsatisfying ending with Goya reduced to nothing more than a spectator. But then that’s all Goya may have been, but it would have been more rewarding if we could have seen him as the spectator of the events that produced his great works and not this dull story. Grade: D+

"Silk" is a terribly miscast un-dramatic drama where the viewers spend a lot time waiting for something to happen. And then, finally, when something does happen, it concerns the revelation of some translated letters and the natural reaction is "I sat through all this just to see that?" In a French village in the 1860s, a merchant decides to gamble on the future of the silk industry and enlists the son of the town’s mayor to help him. Now, this being a French village, director Francois Girard casts the last three actors anyone would think could play convincingly French -- Alfred Molina as the merchant, Michael Pitt, who thinks brooding is an art form, as the mayor’s son and, to top it all off, Keira Knightley as Pitt’s wife. A disease all but wipes out the European silk worm, so Molina dispatches Pitt to Japan to buy good worms. We are told that the trip to Japan is long and arduous and that the Japanese don’t allow Westerners inside their borders so Pitt may face certain death at any moment. Ha! The journey sequence is handled so poorly, all we get is some spectacular scenery, but no sense of hardships, and once he gets to Japan he enters with all the uneasiness of Shane. There’s a dalliance with a Japanese concubine and the silliness involving the letters and scenes with Pitt in full beard followed immediately by scenes where he is clean shaven and ... oh, why bother going on. Grade: F