New On DVD - Enron, Lord Of War and Floyd (Mark 2)
Filed under: New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment
- Celebrity Mix - TLA Releasing kicks out this smart collection of short films, including the movie biz spoof Laud Weiner, starring David Hyde Pierce as a "producer, agent, all-arround-Hollywood-wonder guy", and Terri Edda Miller's hilarious Dysenchanted, about a group therapy session featuring Alexis Bledel and Laura Kightlinger as classic storybook heroines. Also out today from TLA is Swindled, the Goya-nominated thriller from Miguel Bardem that stars the lovely Victoria Abril as a grifter scheming big.
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room - While the recent spike in the popularity of the documentary can be credited in part to the work of master mixer Michael Moore, this wickedly smart chronicle of the rise and fall of energy giant Enron succeeds in many ways that the subjectively stylized Fahrenheit 9/11 director fails. Helmer Alex Gibney, who wrote and produced the sharp 2002 doc, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, keenly draws upon the finer points of Bethany McLean's and David Elkind's book, delivering a meaty and mostly objective political farce that both explains Enron's tragic, far-reaching smoke-and-mirrors show and warns how history could repeat itself.
- Junebug - From Phil Morrison, a guy whose résumé includes pretty much just music videos for Sonic Youth and Superchunk and episodes of Upright Citizens Brigade comes this remarkably refined drama about a Chicago art dealer (Embeth Davidtz) whose visit upsets the balance of her fiancé's North Carolina family. Davidtz is great, but the standout is Amy Adams as the naive Southern belle - rather, ding-dong - a turn that earned her a Special Jury Prize at last year's Sundance and Best Supporting Actress by the National Society of Film Critics.
- Lord of War: Special Edition - Nicolas Cage plays an arms dealer in The Truman Show creator Andrew Niccol's fierce political thriller, and they're both so good at this sort of dark humor that the whole talking-to-the-camera thing is entirely forgivable. Niccol taps his Gattaca star Ethan Hawke as the by-the-book cat to Cage's clever, bazooka-sportin' mouse, with Ian Holm in a fine turn as a gentlemanly rival arms dealer. This 2-disc edition offers a commentary track by Niccol, an "Inside The Arms Trade" feature and a deleted scenes. The single-disc is barebones.
- The Man - Drafting a gifted comic heavy-lifter like A Mighty Wind star Eugene Levy to do a running fart gag in a brain dead Midnight Run ripoff like this is like squandering Shakespeare's gift for prose by making him write idle stage banter for Mötley Crüe. It is a waste and a shame, though true to his talents, the "SCTV" vet, as a dental supplies salesman who gets shanghaied for a sting by Sam Jackson's pissy cop, is the best thing about this otherwise shrug-offable so-called comedy. With his inspired tic-fest, Levy distracts us from the shoddy flop-corn movie's total lack of character development and the fact that the plot seems lifted from a mediocre episode of "Spenser For Hire", which is still like saying that the clam chowder that gave you botulism was nonetheless rather tasty.
- Pink Floyd: Pulse - Fans of prog-rock gods Pink Floyd who have not been turning away since Roger Waters split after 1983's The Final Cut will be happy to retire their play-worn VHS (or multi-platter LaserDisc set), as this best-of the 1994 Earls Court performances is finally on DVD. Everyone else will be loathe to drop the $20 on what many consider a very lavish Floyd tribute band.
- Sueño - The soundtrack may serve as a variegated Latin music sampler, but the movie itself, about an amateur Mexican musician (John Leguizamo) who travels to L.A. and gets a shot at going pro (and dating two women), substitutes good intentions for good writing.
- Two for the Money - Anyone who visits a video store once a week will be pretty much forced to rent this drama starring Al Pacino and set in the oh-so-exciting world of sports betting. Matthew McConaughey, who stars in the upcoming romantic comedy Failure To Launch (March 10th), is likeable enough, and Pacino has a couple of moments, but the drama is overall pretty stale.
- Underclassman - The opening scene may be a tribute to/rip-off of Beverly Hills Cop, but the rest of this comedy, about a young, green L.A. cop (Nick Cannon) who goes undercover in a private school to solve a murder, is pretty laughless an uninspired, trading mostly on the Drumline star's energetic charm.
- Venom - For the money that Disney's genre arm Dimension spent making and marketing this no star-studded horror dud, they could have produced a dozen of those killer reptile flicks that The Sci-Fi Channel is becoming known for. That is the place one might expect to find such a sorry voodoo tale, about a Louisiana swamp town into which unspeakable evil slithers -- a place where its cheapness might be discounted. Paying customers, though, will want to take a bite out of producer Kevin Williamson, especially after realizing he did so much better when he helped reinvigorate horror with Scream in 1996.
