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Three directors, one screenwriter and a sprawling cast turn a
quartet of novels by David Peace into a mesmerizing trilogy of films, a rich,
dense and gripping saga of brutal murders, police corruption and victims
sacrificed to power and money set against the real-life backdrop of Yorkshire
and the terror of the Yorkshire Ripper. "1974," directed by Julian Jarrold
("Brideshead Revisited") and starring Andrew Garfield as a scruffy junior
reporter on the trail of child killer story, is a period piece that evokes
American crime dramas and investigative procedurals of the seventies. "1980,"
directed by James Marsh and starring Paddy Considine as an internal affair
investigator, is a widescreen production with a claustrophobic atmosphere that
becomes more oppressive as he digs into the rot of the West Yorkshire police. In
"1983," directed by Anand Tucker in a more fragmented style, the child killer is
back, inadvertently protected by the corruption and cover-ups of the police.
Though made for British TV, these films are all richly cinematic and dense with
detail (Tony Grisoni's scripts are brilliant) and played in theaters in both
Britain and the United States.
The supplements are something of an
afterthought. The anonymously executed 11-minute interview with director Julian
Jarrold on "1974" is the most informative of the pieces. The 18-minute "1980
Behind the Scenes" and the 6-minute "1983 Behind the Scenes" are indifferently
produced pieces with some insightful interviews while "IFC Exclusive Behind the
Scenes" is simply a three-minute commercial. Also includes deleted scenes, TV
spots and trailers.
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| Harry Brown |
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Michael Caine is a newly-widowed pensioner turned creaky
vigilante and gives a weary dignity to an otherwise improbable and very bloody
crime thriller. Director Daniel Barber strains to make some commentary on the
frustrating helplessness of citizens like Harry, an ex-Marine who served his
country only to become the target of hooligans and wild youth, but his rampage
is pure fantasy, a cathartic house-cleaning with a satchel of guns and an old
soldier's drive. By the end, it's turned from a geriatric "Death Wish" into a
one-dimensional "Taxi Driver" with a splattery spectacle of CGI sprays of blood
for flourish. Features commentary and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray also features
the usual interactive BD-Live functions.
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| OSS 117: Lost in Rio |
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The insufferably smug French secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de la
Bath (Jean Dujardin), aka OSS 117, is back in this swinging sixties spy movie
parody, which sends him on the trail of Nazis hiding out in South America with a
female Mossad operative (Dolorès Koulechov) that Hubert mistakes for a
secretary. It's more wacky than clever but director Michel Hazanavicius jazzes
up the action with era-perfect split screens and snazzy graphics and 117 proves
himself once again a reflexive bigot, chauvinist and nationalist who would sort
of admire the Nazi prejudices if he didn't despise them so much as enemies of
France. Includes a behind-the-scenes featurette. In French with English
subtitles.
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| 9th Company |
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This Russian war drama set in the final year of the Soviet
Afghanistan conflict aspires to be the Russian equivalent to "Platoon" and "Full
Metal Jacket" rolled into one, but for all the grim reality of death and danger,
it's mostly a paean to brotherhood, loyalty and honor in a lost cause. Grandly
executed but otherwise a conventional platoon film with a blindly patriotic
streak, it nonetheless was the number one film in Russia in 2005. Both the DVD
and Blu-ray include a bonus DVD of supplements, including the 38-minute "Making
the Movie" and half-hour "20 Years Later," featuring interviews with real 9th
Company veterans. In Russian with English subtitles, with an optional English
dub soundtrack.
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| Marmaduke |
The long-running gag comic about a giant dog hits the big screen
with Owen Wilson voicing the colossal canine and Lee Pace and Judy Greer
headlining the human cast. ""Marmaduke" isn't horrible, just irrelevant, and
it's not incompetent, just unnecessary," complains MSN critic James Rocchi.
"It turns out you can make a one-panel comic into a movie with a big enough dog
and a charismatic voice-over star; it also turns out you can't make that movie
very interesting." Available on DVD and Blu-ray, though neither were made
available for review by deadline. |
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Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a DVD
columnist for MSN Entertainment and a contributing writer for GreenCine.com,
Turner Classic Movies Online, Parallax View and Asian Cult Cinema, among other
publications. Find links to all of this and more on his shamelessly
self-promoting blog.
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