November 07, 2024
Column

DVD Corner

“Aeon Flux”: Acid Reflux. The last time we saw Charlize Theron on DVD, she was a coal miner’s daughter – and a coal miner – in the hard-scrabble “North Country,” which won her an Academy Award nomination. Earlier in 2005, however, she also was Aeon Flux, the hard-bodied hottie fighting crime in a future bearing clones because of human sterility. From the inventive, MTV “Liquid Television” shorts, the movie fails to translate that series’ ingenious animation to a full-length, live-action movie. Theron looks great, as do the sets, but the movie never gels, and its quick-cut editing is an overbearing stunt. Rated PG-13. Grade: C-

“The Bob Newhart Show: Complete Third Season”: Group therapy, big laughs and no sign of series fatigue. In this third season of the show, Newhart’s psychologist, Dr. Robert Hartley, takes group therapy to new lows and highs thanks to his troubled cast of characters. As Hartley’s wife, Suzanne Pleshette strikes the balance, keeping the series – and Hartley – as down to earth as possible; she’s his foil. Working against her are Bill Daily, Peter Bonerz, the towering Marcia Wallace and a host of others. It’s the genius of Bob Newhart’s reactions – his blank, questioning expressions, his passive-aggressive outbursts, the sense that the world is having its way with him (and not the other way around) – that are the gift of Newhart’s comedy. Highlights include the episodes “Battle of the Groups,” “We Love You … Goodbye,” and “Tobin’s Back in Town,” with a memorable guest starring performance by Fred Willard. Grade: A

“Casanova”: As the great 18th century lover Giovanni Giacomo Casanova, Heath Ledger initially is all pony behind the ponytail, trotting through Casanova’s alleged 10,000 sexual conquests as if he were perfectly game for the sport, which by all appearances he is. Watching him bed-hop with so many women is enough to make you want to send “Brokeback Mountain” co-star Jake Gyllenhaal a note of condolence. But then you finish “Casanova” and you realize that Ledger should be receiving the note. The Catholic Church wants Casanova hanged for seducing his share of nuns, but the Doge (Tim McInnerny) intervenes, proclaiming that if Casanova marries the presumably pure Victoria (Natalie Cormer) and puts a stop to his philandering ways, he might be spared the gallows. All of that sounds well and good, but catching Casanova’s eye is Francesca, a tense piece of work with a secret life who is played by Sienna Miller with so much hard-mettled moxie, it’s tough to like her. Lifting the proceedings somewhat is Oliver Platt as the overstuffed, overfed Papprizzio; Lena Olin as Francesca’s fantastically bewigged mother; and Jeremy Irons as the inquisitor Bishop Pucci. In the end, what sinks “Casanova” is that history knows he was far more interesting than the horny dullard presented here. This slight, silly costume comedy gives the illusion of frivolity and movement, but in spite of its teaming onslaught of subplots, it’s oddly static and uninvolving. Rated R. Grade: C-

“Match Point”: The movie in which Woody Allen becomes an expatriate. Here, Allen leaves the States to set his movie in Great Britain, where his focus isn’t on New York or his characters’ neuroses, but on romantic obsession and class differences, with crimes and misdemeanors laced throughout the show. As written by Allen, the movie crafts a complex web of deceit when former tennis pro Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is hired by an exclusive country club to teach tennis to the wealthy English clients whose lives he covets. In short order, he meets the good-natured Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), who takes such a liking to him, he introduces him to his family – wealthy father, Alec (Brian Cox), boozy mother, Eleanor (Penelope Wilton), and shy, bright sister Chloe (Emily Mortimer), who is so taken by the absurdly good-looking Chris, she immediately sets her sights on him. But when he is invited to the Hewetts’ country house for a weekend of shooting, he meets Tom’s absurdly sexy fiancee, Nola (Scarlett Johansson), a failed American actress, and all bets are off as they launch into a dangerous affair. If it weren’t for a few telltale motifs Allen chances throughout – the opening credits, for instance, which are indelibly his – one would be hard pressed to know that this was Allen at all. But this is indeed Allen, and what it finds is what he revealed in his youth – a filmmaker willing to take risks, only in this case without the anarchy of those earlier films, and with a sharper focus. Rated R. Grade: A

“Shopgirl”: The movie is about Mirabelle (Claire Danes), who works behind a glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles, and the boundaries she must learn to set if she’s to continue her May-December romance with Ray Porter (Steve Martin), a multimillionaire businessman who made his fortune in the tech industry. Ray is damaged goods holed up in a fabulous house and decked out in more Armani than Armani is. When he cruises Mirabelle at Saks and asks her to dinner in ways best left for you, none of it has a whiff of anything insidious because Ray isn’t a creep. He’s just a man with a wary heart, which he tries to explain to Mirabelle as clearly as he can when they fall into their affair. For a time, it’s wonderful, particularly for this girl from the backwoods of Vermont, whose lonely life heretofore was inhabited by Jeremy (Jason Schwartzman), a sketchy amp salesman cum font artist whose own relationship with Mirabelle ended in an awkward separation. Adapted by Martin from his own novella, the movie becomes too neat as the threads of these relationships do what you know they will do – they cross. Still, when they do, the very reserved, well-bred “Shopgirl” doesn’t make too much of a fuss about it. And maybe that’s why it packs such a tough, sideways punch. In “Shopgirl,” we learn that life moves on, that love can and does beat within iron hearts, and that people come into and out of one’s life for a reason. It’s how Danes, Martin and Schwartzman handle the familiarity of their situation that makes “Shopgirl” the fine movie that it is. Rated R. Grade: B+


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