DVD Corner

“Capote”: Truman Capote – a hive of contradictions and complications. Before booze got the best of him, he had enough talent and drive to put himself on top, where he belonged, but also enough self-hatred, selfishness, pain and heartbreak to generate the sort of mystery that tends to create legend. He was a gifted, weird little genius, complex beyond reason, smart enough to use his quirks to his benefit, and then careless and human enough to fall prey to them all. Both sides are examined in Bennett Miller’s smashing film, “Capote,” in which Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for his mesmerizing portrayal. The film is tough to shake. Throughout, Miller weaves through the debris of what Capote wrought when inspiration struck thanks to a New York Times article he read about a clutch of murdered Clutters in the Kansas hamlet of Holcomb. It was 1959, the deaths were brutal, the details intriguing. Fresh from the success of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and looking for a new triumph in a new work, Capote found both in this felled Midwestern family, whose heads were blown off in cold blood by Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Richard Hickcock (Mark Pellegrino). With the financial blessing of his New Yorker editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban), Capote decided to leave New York City and his lover, Jack Dunphy (Bruce Greenwood), to get the story with the help of his childhood friend, Harper Lee (Catherine Keener). It would take him almost six years to do so. What the movie nails is the savagery of an artist such as Capote; Miller understands that writing sometimes isn’t the white-gloved profession some perceive it to be. The reason his movie is so good is that he sees that writing can be just as cutthroat as committing murder. There’s passion involved in each, and where’s there’s passion, there can be blood. For Miller, Perry and Capote weren’t so different. Separate the fine clothing from the prison uniform, peel away the personalities to their cores, and what you have are two tragic, damaged individuals who ruined themselves. Rated R. Grade: A

“Chicken Little”: Obviously, the source of the current bird flu. A lazy, pilfering affair from Disney, the film’s energy and depth are driven almost entirely by its soundtrack. In it, beleaguered Chicken Little (voice of Zach Braff) makes a public gaffe when he believes a piece of the sky has fallen on his head. Humiliated by a mean herd of classmates, including the vicious Foxy Loxy (Amy Sedaris), he eventually is struck by another chunk of sky, and this time it’s clear that he’s dealing with something of an alien nature. It’s here that the movie breaks – what do aliens have to do with “Chicken Little”? Surely sci-fi doesn’t have to enter this universe. But it does. In all of the derivative chaos that ensues, there are a few saving graces – the characters, in particular, are undeniably cute – though without Pixar at their side, Disney has creatively cooked its own goose. Rated G. Grade: C-

“Derailed”: Tucked in the middle of this modest thriller is a swell twist that’s better than anything else in the movie. Clive Owen is Charles Christopher Schine, a frazzled ad executive with an unhappy home life who meets on a train the lovely Lucinda (Jennifer Aniston), who has a pretty face and the sort of legs that stretch up to here. Charles would prefer that they hook around there, meaning his waist, so their flirtation heats up, with Lucinda revealing to Charles that she also isn’t happy at home. Naturally, they head to a hotel, where things get dicey – really dicey – but in ways we’ll leave for you. This is a movie about technique, with a good deal of it borrowed from “Double Indemnity” and especially “Fatal Attraction.” Owen grounds the movie. Aniston is less sure of herself here, but you have to give it to her for trying something new. In a key scene where she must deliver the goods, she pulls through, sporting the sort of mean mouth and hard eyes that would likely render an old friend still. Rated R. Grade: C+

“Paradise Now”: Follows two Palestinian men who believe they are called upon by God to strap bombs to their bodies, travel to Tel Aviv, and then move into a crowded area, where they will detonate those bombs in two separate suicide attacks. For Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) – lifelong friends struggling to find meaning in their lives – there is no shame, evil or disgrace in this. They consider their selection as martyrs to be an honor, their calling to heaven. Trouble is, when Suha (Lubna Azabal), their friend and the daughter of the revered revolutionary spearheading the attacks, gets wind of what Said and Khaled are about to do, her staunch opposition raises its share of questions within them. Is martyrdom the answer to solving the conflict between Israel and Palestine? The film offers no easy answers, though its timeliness is gripping. It takes a slice of what plays out nightly on the evening news and puts a human face to it. Some won’t want to see the humanity behind the inhumanity, but there it is, and so the discussion deepens about the Middle East. Grade: PG-13. Grade: A-

“The Squid and the Whale”: A movie about a bickering New York couple – Bernard (Jeff Daniels) and Joan (Laura Linney) – who decide to divorce after 17 years. They are writers and they are academics – the worst sort of academics – inflated with ideas that are not their own, but which nevertheless inform their own empty rhetoric. They exist in metaphor. Their lives are abstract. As such, their divorce is proving disastrous for their children. Caught in the middle, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline) are forced to watch their peculiar family dissolve, with Bernard and Joan making the pretentious mistake of treating each boy as their equal, and thus fully capable of understanding and accepting the complexities of what’s to come, which isn’t only cruel, but ridiculous. In this war their parents wrought, the kids hold their own as long as they can. While there’s nothing new in that, what sets the movie apart is its caustic stripping down of the indignant, out-of-touch, false academic, a satisfying approach that generates interest because of the egos on display, and because of the egos deservedly bashed. Grade: B+