It’s definitely the dog days of DVD summer this Tuesday. Unless you are interested in failed TV shows, outsider genre offerings (with less than tantalizing titles like Back Woods, The Tooth Fairy and Electric Zombies — UGH!) or various permutations of the rock and roll vanity project (video collection concert performance, etc) there’s very little in the way of legitimate mainstream motion picture fare. While this means that those few identifiable releases are guaranteed a bigger slice of the consumer pie, such a selection won’t necessarily drive patrons to the old brick and mortar. After all, will you be going out of your weekly way for the gay comedy Adam and Steve? Or some butchered box set of Westerns/Mysteries/Horror offerings? So take the following list with a healthy dose of skeptic’s salt. PopMatters isn’t necessarily recommending them — “recognizing’ may be a better term. The selections that grabbed SE&L’s attention for August 8 are, in alphabetical order:
Brick
Beginning like a typical teen thriller, then slowly sinking into a prickly post-modern noir, this third film from director Rian Johnson is a real Indie gem. Featuring a clockwork script, impressive acting, and enough twists to keep you guessing right up until the end, this throwback to the days when men were macho, women were cheap and crime never paid (it just loaned out its joys for reimbursement later) can be a little bracing at first. After all, we aren’t used to high school students talking like pulp private dicks. Yet once it discovers its own particular rhythms and settles into its unfolding puzzle box story, the result is something unique indeed.
The Hidden Blade
As much a revisionist look at the samurai film as a staunch follower of same, Blade represents writer-director Yoji Yamada’s second installment in his trilogy based on a series of novels by Shuuhei Fujisawa. In a career that’s spanned 41 years and 77 films, Yamada was mostly known for his Toro-san films — all 48 of them. But with 2002’s superb The Twilight Samurai, Yamada garnered a great deal of critical attention. Twilight was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and walked away with 13 Japanese Academy Awards. Word is that Blade is just as good as it’s predecessor. If true, this bodes well for this DVD release — and the upcoming Bushi no ichibun, the final installment in the triad.
Inside Man
Spike Lee spices up the heist film with his own unique brand of urban angst, and brings Tinsel Town A-teamers Denzel Washington, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Jodie Foster, and Clive Owen along for the ride. He ended up with the biggest box office hit of his career, and an outpouring of critical affection almost unheard of in this auteur’s 20-plus years behind the lens. While some felt the ending was unsatisfying, especially in light of all that came before it, this is still one of the most entertaining and engaging films in the director’s diverse career. It offers a maturity and an intelligence that argues for a new phase in the filmmaker’s always contentious canon.
The Jayne Mansfield Collection
Consisting of three of Mansfield’s more memorable movie turns (The Girl Can’t Help It, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw), this is one compendium overloaded with both cinematic and camp value. Loads of DVD extras (commentaries, documentaries, featurettes) and pristine transfers help disprove the theory that Mansfield was nothing more than a low rent Marilyn Monroe. Though she never really got a chance to stretch as an actress, this is one sex symbol that was more than an over-inflated chest — at least, for a short while.
Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
While utilizing the human personification of the New South NASCAR numbskull, this member of the Blue Collar Comedy tour takes fat, drunk and stupid to whole new levels with his first feature film. What a man with questionable hygiene would know about wellness and cleanliness must be one of those Tinsel Town issues resolved by that cinematic catch-all, the suspension of disbelief. With the late great Jim Varney unable to rise from the dead and pump out another Ernest P. Worrell extravaganza, we’ll just have to settle for this entertainer whose more catchphrase than comic.
Manderlay
As the second film in Danish director Lars Von Trier’s proposed trilogy on the United States (entitled “USA – Land of Opportunity), Manderlay lost its original lead (Dogville‘s Nicole Kidman) and gained a potential young talent in The Village‘s Bryce Dallas Howard. This, and other casting changes didn’t bother critics as much as the storyline’s suggestion that right minded liberals may not always have the best interest of “the races” at heart. Sure, all of the first film’s tricks (bare stages, chalk mark “buildings”) are present and accounted for in this plantation potboiler, but no one can successfully mesh art with outrage like Von Trier. Sadly, this may be the filmmaker’s final word on such a provocative subject. The final film (Wasington) is currently on ‘indefinite hold’.
Shinbone Alley
Image offers up its own digital version of this 1971 rarity, a crazy cartoon featuring music by George Kleinsinger, a script by Mel Brooks and Joe Darion, and all based on a Broadway show compiled from the stories by Don Marquis (noted New York newspaper columnist and short story writer). This tale of Archy the author who’s reincarnated as a cockroach, only to fall in love with a fickle feline named Mehitabel, has long been hailed as either a work of visionary pen and ink grandeur, or a minor effort in the otherwise bloated world of ’70s serious animation. With a tagline that shouts “It’s sophisticated enough for kids, simple enough for adults!”, it’s kind of hard to tell which side is right.
And Now for Something Completely Different
In a new weekly addition to Who’s Minding the Store, SE&L will feature an off title disc worth checking out. For 8 August:
Ever wonder what porn stars do in their off hours. Why, they make low budget softcore sex romps. The fearless Fred Olen Ray, responsible for such hack classics as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Invisible Mom, and Teenage Cavegirl, is on hand to tell the story of an actress named… Muffin Baker, who returns to her hometown to attend the reading of her dead Uncle’s will. Of course, all kinds of spooky and sexy hi-jinx ensue. With Method meat puppet Evan Stone along for the ‘ride’ and enough sin and skin to keep an adolescent boy ‘engaged’ for hours, this sort of self-effacing schlock has been Ray’s bread and bodkin butter for decades now. Apparently someone likes what he does.
![Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered [MUSIC] May-August 2024](https://www.popmatters.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/all-things-reconsidered-call-music-may-2024-720x380.jpg)
