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New On DVD - The Aristocrats, Flightplan, Thumbsucker

by Robert Newton Jan 24th 2006 // 5:00PM

Filed under: New Releases, DVD Reviews, New on DVD, Home Entertainment



  • The Aristocrats - To communicate tastefully the sheer filthiness of the legendary joke at this gonzo documentary's core, one would have to present it in such a way as to render it nearly unintelligible: "A family goes into a talent agent's office and the father says, 'Have I got an act for you.'" From here, the clean version would end up resembling a question on "Match Game", in which Gene Rayburn would extract a key word and substitute it with the word "blank"; "So the father's blanking the mother while the" -- gads, the joke is too dirty to even clean up. Dirty, but funny. So surreally funny that those who do not smash their DVD players in outrage will be heretofore prone to thinking deep and hard about not only why they would laugh at something so patently horrific, but what the very nature of comedy is, too. In this way, director Paul Provenza and producer Penn Jillette have succeeded triumphantly. They have roughly a hundred fellow comics interpret the joke, each personalizing in the time-honored tradition that has kept it alive since its profane birth during the days of Vaudeville. While the punch line is always the same, most of the variegated deliveries defy our expectations, from a mime version to a card trick to Gilbert Gottfried's ultimate telling of this hairy chestnut. Like a traumatic event, witnesses to this glorious depravity will glean additional nuance from repeat viewings. The DVD features 2 extra hours of raunch not seen in the theatrical release.
  • Down And Derby - Any parent with preteens who can ignore the fact that the Boy Scouts of America discriminates against gays should approve this indie family comedy about a group of boys and their obsessed dads competing in the Scouts' annual Pinewood Derby car race. The humor and language is slightly crude, but considering the core of the movie's audience is pre-pubescent boys, the filmmakers waxing existential would be about as purposeful as playing Xbox with the TV off.
  • Flightplan - The setup to Panic Room star Jodie Foster's latest thriller mimics the flawed 2004 spookfest, The Forgotten, leading us to believe that the child she got on a transatlantic super-liner with was wiped from existence. It is a red herring, though, as there is a more earthly explanation for the young girl's disappearance. Not that it was hard to see it coming, for whenever Malkovich ringer (and ill-prepared recent SNL guest) Peter Sarsgaard shows his face, the odds say "bad guy". Foster gives it an earnest shot, but there is not enough payoff for buying into this setup. The plane set is nice, though, and director Robert Schwentke shoots it with an effective claustrophobic air.
  • The Fog - The answer to the question, "What if Hollywood did a remake and no one came?" was answered when Sony snuck this bag of poo into theaters as one would a camcorder (though even the least discriminating movie pirates knew that this remake of the minor 1980 John Carpenter flick). To quote Jamie Lee Curtis from A Fish Called Wanda : "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people." Available in original R-rated and new unrated versions (and I dare you to watch both to be able to tell the difference).
  • My Big Fat Independent Movie - This occasionally hilarious spoof of indie hallmarks like Pulp Fiction, Memento, Swingers, Amélie, Magnolia, The Good Girl, My Big Fat Greek Wedding and many others was written by Film Threat Magazine creator Chris Gore, who presently hosts IFC's show, The Ultimate Film Fanatic. Like most parodies, it has its share of things that make you go "d'oh!", but it moves fast enough to forget most of them. Anyone with a thing for lanky firecracker Paget Brewster after her recurring role on Friends should check out the Specials star working her comedy chops in a lead role here (or in a more dramatic one on Showtime's ballsy Huff.)
  • National Lampoon's Barely Legal - Before you raise a stink about how this American Pie-alike about some high school kids who make a porn film is a ripoff of The Girl Next Door, note that this was previously released in 2003 as After School Special, a year before The Girl Next Door. Before you raise a stink about how The Girl Next Door is a ripoff of this American Pie-alike, note that it was previously released in 2003 (and people didn't care about it then, either.)
  • Oliver Twist - Not that the world needed a big-budget version of the done-to-death Dickens novel, but at least this one, by fugitive director Roman Polanski, is pretty good. Ben Kingsley, looking much like The Cryptkeeper, plays grandfatherly grifter Fagin, with a very able English cast that for some reason does not feature Michael Caine or Judi Dench (someone call the authorities). Barney Clark, as Oliver, is no Freddie Highmore, but still manages to convey the boy's enduring innocence in a world that has gone to shite.
  • Our Fathers - While it may not be typical Friday night popcorn fare, this dramatized account of the recent sex scandal involving pedophile priests that befell the Catholic Church, which was nominated for two Emmys, is worth a look. Immortal actor Christopher Plummer plays now-exiled Cardinal Bernard Law, with Brian Dennehy as Father Dominic Spagnolia, the outspoken priest who challenged Law's mishandling of the accused and Ted "You Know It's A TV Movie When" Danson as attorney Mitchell Garabedian.
  • Poison DUst - Not only have we forced our oh-so-ugly ideas about freedom and democracy on the poor, poor people of Iraq, but now we are irradiating them and our over 1 million soldiers in rotation there with DU [depleted uranium] weapons. Like Michael Moore, filmmaker Sue Harris throws out a lot of what-ifs, backed by some facts and her perception of the truth, and while no film can be a one-stop shop for information, it is a good place to start to find out more about what may, in fact, be the cause of the mysterious (but non-existent by U.S. Government standards) affliction known as Gulf War Syndrome.
  • Repo Man: Collector's Edition - The previous (limited and numbered) Special Edition of Alex Cox's 1984 cult hit about the strange life of a repo man (Emilio Estevez) is the real collector's edition, as it contained the CD soundtrack, a 24-page booklet with liner notes by Cox biographer Steven Davies, a comic and a swell tin container. This has none of that, featuring the same commentary tracks by Cox, executive producer Michael Nesmith, casting director Victoria Thomas and three of the supporting players. Completists and other fanatics will have to pick it up, though as it contains three featurettes: "Repossessed" (a revisit to locales from the film), "Up Close With Harry Dean Stanton" (an interview with the incomparable character actor) and "The Missing Scenes" (Cox and the actual inventor of the neutron bomb, Sam Cohen, analyze deleted scenes).
  • Thumbsucker - The inevitable comparisons to Salinger's handbook of high school alienation aside, the feature debut of music video director Mike Mills (not of R.E.M.) is pretty affecting. When a gentle teenage boy (Lou Taylor Pucci of HBO's Empire Falls) is medicated for ADD, he becomes a steamrolling, adolescent Mr. Hyde, getting his first real look at the world through the eyes of a grown-up. Adult foils Tilda Swinton and Vincent D'Onofrio as his well-meaning parents and Vince Vaughn as his teacher are memorable, and Keanu Reeves as the boy's very Zen orthodontist is better than he has been in some time (interpret that as you will). The soundtrack, by The Polyphonic Spree with additional songs by the late Elliott Smith, is a real treat, too.

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