DVD corner

“Atonement” DVD, HD DVD – Joe Wright’s “Atonement” has everything you could wish for in a period drama – beautiful cinematography, set design and costumes; exotic locales; and a story designed to rip out your heart and crush it when a rushed, heated romance between two young lovers is poisoned by the lies and deceit of another. Keira Knightley is Cecilia Tallis, a privileged, brittle beauty who isn’t especially likable, which is a problem since the movie eventually asks us to feel something profound for her. Looking bored and bothered in 1935 England, Cecilia has issues with Robbie (James McAvoy), who was put through Cambridge with Tallis money and who now is treated as something of a third-wheel member of the family. The youngest member of the household is spooky Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a lass with a mean mouth and a tight-fisted gait who fancies herself as something of a writer. She favors fiction, which is key, and she also has a crush on Robbie, which is critical to why she does all that she does in a key plot element not to be revealed here. “Atonement” isn’t a boring movie – there’s lots of lovely furniture to look at here, never mind the appealing vision of its romantic leads – but it isn’t a very gripping movie, either, because Cecilia and Robbie aren’t allowed to create a fierce, believable bond onscreen before they’re torn apart. The trouble with the film is that you’re always aware that you’re watching a movie. There’s no sinking into “Atonement,” no losing yourself to it, no moment when the screen fades away and the story and the characters come to the fore to overcome you. This is a film you watch from the sidelines, thinking how pretty Knightley looks in this gown, that bathing suit, and how the lighting in a key scene in which Cecilia and Robbie couple against a wall of books is more interesting than the scene itself. Rated R. Grade: C+

“Dogma” Blu-ray – Doggerel in hi-def. Kevin Smith’s unfunny slog through misogyny wants audiences to gasp at all its naughtiness, but why bother when its script lacks substance and bite? The film is a half-hearted attempt to pull Catholicism’s pigtails, and it could have been interesting had the director understood and explored the hypocrisies he senses within Catholicism and then skewered them with wit. He doesn’t. His film is about two fallen angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) who have found a loophole to get back into heaven. It makes the mistake of mining its humor from the gutter before wrapping it around reams of mind-numbing theology. That’s one of the reasons the film fails – Smith’s dialogue, so sharp in his previous films, is too dense here to pack a punch. Perhaps the movie is best defined by the scene in which a giant pile of feces bubbles up from a toilet and starts killing people. In that moment, three things become clear – the film’s creative think tank is empty, the director is desperate for a laugh, and he’s willing to do anything to get one. Rated R. Grade: D

“Gattaca” Blu-ray – Imagine a world where perfection is genetically possible. OK, that’s easy to imagine. But now imagine this: Life begins not in the womb, but in the test tube, where genetic elements are clinically tampered with to weed out any number of deformities. In the cold, futuristic world explored in “Gattaca,” those deformities might include, say, skin color, sexuality, obesity, what have you, with the end result being a child whose possibilities are so endless, corporate doors eventually will swing wide to accept this “valid” individual into their ranks. But what if you were created from a more natural form of coupling and still wanted the perks of the genetically perfect? Such is the case with Vincent (Ethan Hawke), an “in-valid” who dreams of becoming a crew member on an expedition to Titan, Saturn’s 14th moon. To do so, he first must land a job at Gattaca, a space station that routinely checks the “validity” of their employees by taking blood and urine samples. Does Vincent make it inside? Of course – just in time to meet the woman of his dreams (Uma Thurman) and to be rooted out for a murder he didn’t commit. This compelling variation of “Brave New World” is stylish and provocative, a drama that looks deep into the soulless perfection of the petri dish, where it sounds a warning bell by showing us exactly where our own world might be headed. Rated PG-13. Grade: B+

“The Ice Storm: The Criterion Collection” – Everyone in Ang Lee’s excellent drama about 1970s suburbanites in New Canaan, Conn., is emotionally bankrupt, morally afloat, afraid of the truth, and mired in the pseudo-intellectual dogma of the time. The film focuses on a period in our culture when suburban, middle-class families tried to play catch-up with the groundbreaking sexual revolution of the late 1960s. The problem? Lee’s characters aren’t revolutionaries. Thus, when they gather at parties to swap wives for an evening of casual sex, drink and do drugs in an effort to anesthetize their own ridiculousness, or willingly put their lives at risk during an ice storm, they seem at once shocked and rattled when they’re slapped with the deadly repercussions of their own reckless behavior. Lee strings a wealth of deeper issues throughout his film, but the characters are incapable of dealing with those issues. Why? Because in their emotional timidity and immaturity, they seem determined to live their lives solely on the surface, where things appear relatively safe and manageable – even while their lives are crumbling around them. For instance, Elena Hood (Joan Allen) knows perfectly well that her husband, Ben (Kevin Kline), is having an affair with their neighbor, Janey (Sigourney Weaver), but does she confront him with it? Of course not – that would mean stripping away the layers of her life and realizing that it’s not just empty, but a lie. At Thanksgiving dinner, Elena’s savvy daughter, Wendy (Christina Ricci), is asked by her father to give grace, which itself is a joke as these people bring agnostic to a whole new level. Still, Wendy seizes the moment and launches into an inspired diatribe that manages to include materialism, napalm, and how the white man stole this land from American Indians. When Ben shouts at her to shut up, it’s a pivotal moment that rings clear. How can these people deal with the pending impeachment of Nixon, napalm, and everything else that is wrong with the world, when they can’t even have a civil meal together? Their failure is Lee’s point. Rated R. Grade: A

“The Seeker: The Dark is Rising” – A mess, though you sense while watching it that it could have been tweaked into something more promising had it not been twisted into something so convoluted. Alexander Ludwig is Will Stanton, a pouty, 14-year-old American boy living in a small British nowhere with a large family of little flavor. When into his life come the Light and the Dark – otherwise known as good and evil – Will is pressed into action to keep the dark from rising. Or else, you know, evil will reign. Guiding him through his dull journey are the Old Ones, with Merriman Lyon (Ian McShane, wasted) and Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy, ditto) informing Will that he has special powers (which he rarely chooses to use) and encouraging him to seek out the six signs of light. To do so, he must travel through time, find the signs in bouts of chaos, and collect them so he can build a defense against the dark side, which is personified by the Rider (Christopher Eccleston). Trouble is, since Will is the seventh son of a seventh son with all that implies, pulling away from the dark side proves something of a challenge – just not a very entertaining one. Rated PG. Grade: C-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.