On video and DVD

JUNEBUG, directed by Phil Morrison, written by Angus MacLachlan, 107 minutes, rated R.

The new Phil Morrison film, “Junebug,” never made it to the Bangor market, which is no surprise given the ongoing reluctance of local theaters to screen new, independent movies in the area.

It’s no secret that we’ve long been pegged as a “Cheaper by the Dozen” crowd, a “Hostel” crowd, a “Yours, Mine, & Ours” crowd, a knuckles-dragging-on-the-ground crowd, which is sad, really, since there is a large, untapped local audience who want access to a wider variety of films.

In three weeks, the Academy Awards will be broadcast, and unless you’ve gone to points south and east, you haven’t seen most of the nominated films, including “A History of Violence,” “Hustle & Flow,” “North Country,” “Transamerica,” “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” “Capote,” “The Squid and the Whale,” “Paradise Now,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” or “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” to name just a few.

For a city striving to be more culturally diverse, this lack of access isn’t just pathetic and inexcusable, it’s also embarrassing.

The new Movie Magic complex on the Odlin Road recently brought “The Producers” and “Pride & Prejudice” to town, so here’s a note of thanks to them – and a tip: Continue the trend and carve a niche. Offering something different from the competition might turn out to be a boon, particularly when the competition has proved they will choose movies such as “Final Destination 3” and “Big Momma’s House 2” every time over movies such as “Capote” and “Junebug.”

With “Junebug” now available on DVD – and with its co-star, Amy Adams, recently nominated for an Academy Award for her scene-stealing performance in the movie – the time is now to see it. It’s one of 2005’s best films, featuring a story about small-town America that just gets it right. As written by Angus MacLachlan, nuance is key here – one false note and the movie would have collapsed. That it doesn’t is a testament to the skill and to the care that went into its conception.

Unlike the recent movie it most resembles, Cameron Crowe’s mildly diverting yet schmaltzy “Elizabethtown,” what “Junebug” offers is something honest, touching, and far more complex. It’s a movie about the rural South and the people in it, though unlike “Elizabethtown,” you never feel manipulated while watching it, or empty after seeing it. Instead, there’s the sense that you’ve been allowed into a closed world, in which silence is used as a weapon, anger is an undercurrent, humor weaves through the neuroses and an uneasiness of outsiders goes along with the territory.

The movie stars Embeth Davidtz as Madeleine, a striking, sophisticated Chicago gallery owner who meets at her gallery the man who will become her husband. That would be George (Alessandro Nivola), about whom is a cosmopolitan polish that belies his simple upbringing in North Carolina, where he hasn’t visited for three years.

When Madeleine has the opportunity to obtain an artist’s work near George’s hometown, off they go to North Carolina, where they plan to stay with George’s family until Madeleine can seal the deal with the artist.

It’s there that Madeleine is introduced for the first time to her husband’s family, which includes his stoic father Eugene (Scott Wilson), meddling mother Peg (the excellent Celia Weston), seething brother Johnny (Benjamin McKenzie), and pregnant sister-in-law Ashley (Adams). It’s Ashley who holds you. She’s so rambunctiously chatty – and so desperate for the glamorous life she never had and likely never will have – that she immediately takes to Madeleine, who does have the life Ashley covets and who does do her best to understand this family in what increasingly becomes an awkward situation.

This is Morrison’s first feature film, and he nails it. What’s so satisfying about “Junebug,” the title of which refers to the nickname of the child Ashley is carrying, isn’t just the many small touches that are so spot-on, but how it guides us into and out of stories that never can be finished because the families involved are still creating them. Just like Madeleine, we’re dropped into the center of a family we do not know, where eventually so much catches fire as each character must rediscover who they are in the presence of a new dynamic.

Most of us have been there before. There’s the sense that Morrison and MacLachlan have been there several times. Apparently, they took detailed notes, because their movie is never anything less than authentic.

Grade: A

Also on video and DVD

JUST LIKE HEAVEN, directed by Mark Waters, written by Peter Tolan and Leslie Dixon, 101 minutes, rated PG-13.

Just like something that could only come out of Hollywood.

Here, as the indefatigable Elizabeth, a single San Francisco ER doctor whose car slams into a truck, Reese Witherspoon is a lively, bickering spirit who has the ability to look cute while walking through walls.

As David, Mark Ruffalo makes for an attractive drunk with no spirit who has given up on life after the death of his wife. Together, he and Elizabeth collide and find that they have issues, a good deal of which involve living space.

He has sublet her apartment, which she demands back. Trouble is, all signs point to Elizabeth being dead, which gets to the film’s other issue. She either really is a goner and thus David is dealing with a ghost haunting his apartment – cue the exorcism, cue the occult dude (Jon Heder) with the offbeat insights into the afterlife – or her presence is the direct result of his grief compounded by too much drink.

Either way you cut it, it can only cut one way – “Just Like Heaven” is a big-budget romantic comedy, which means that it won’t exactly take audiences with supernatural powers to figure out how it will turn out.

The movie is good in its early goings, with Witherspoon recalling the self-centered pluck of her younger days, and Ruffalo game as her watery co-star. But the moment this trip to heaven detours into its hive of complications, it derails itself with revelations that come uncomfortably close to one of last year’s greatest media sensations. Just what that is won’t be revealed here, but when it hits, it brings this little slice of heaven crashing back to Earth.

Grade: C+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays in Discovering, Fridays in Happening, and Weekends in Television. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.

THE VIDEO-DVD CORNER

Renting a video or a DVD? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores. Those in bold print are new to video stores this week.

Batman Begins – A

Black Dawn – D

Bride & Prejudice – B

Broken Flowers – A-

The Brothers Grimm – D-

The Cave – C-

Cinderella Man – A

Doom – C+

Dukes of Hazzard – D

Elizabethtown – B-

The Gospel – C+

Guess Who – C+

Happy Endings – C+

In Her Shoes – A-

The Interpreter – B+

Into the Blue – C-

The Island – C+

Junebug – A

Just Like Heaven – C+

Kingdom of Heaven – B-

Kung Fu Hustle – A

Lord of War – C

Oliver Twist – B+

Red Eye – B+

Saw II – D-

Serenity – A-

Time Tunnel Vol. 1 – B

Transporter 2 – B-

Undiscovered – D-

Upside of Anger – B

Valiant – C-

War of the Worlds – B+

The Wedding Date – B

Zathura – A-