POWER PLAY: Tony Curtis (background) and Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success.
BAMBI (1942). Is it nothing short of monstrous not to consider the beloved Bambi one of the very best of Disney's 50 (and counting) official animated features? Arriving in the first wave of the studio's cherished big-screen output, this saga about a young deer's maturation contains neither the dark complexity of Pinocchio nor the bright hilarity of Dumbo — though it surely deserves some sort of mention for the emotional devastation caused when "Man" takes out Bambi's mom, a seminal cinematic moment for children that surpasses even the fate of Old Yeller. Where the picture most triumphs is in its vision of nature and the inevitability of change, growth and the cycle beginning anew each season. Walt Disney elected to use real children to provide the voices of the youthful characters (as opposed to the usual course of adults pretending to be kids), and this decision makes the oversized "acting" often difficult to take. But the characters are all genuinely likable, from Friend Owl to Flower the skunk to the scene-stealing Thumper the rabbit.
Blu-ray extras include an interactive exploration of Walt's story meetings for Bambi (featuring interviews, voice reenactments, cartoons and more); an interactive "activity book" centering on Bambi's forest home; an interactive art gallery (with production photos, storyboards and more); a 9-minute making-of piece; two deleted scenes; and the deleted song "Twitterpated."
Movie: ***
Extras: ***1/2
11 HARROWHOUSE (1974). Charles Grodin has enlivened many a film as either the comic foil (Midnight Run, Heaven Can Wait) or sad-sack protagonist (The Heartbreak Kid, Beethoven), but whoever had the bright idea of casting him as a jewel thief/romantic lead in 11 Harrowhouse was clearly barking up the wrong tree. Then again, perhaps it was Grodin himself, since he was also responsible for bringing Gerald A. Browne's novel to the screen (he receives "adaptation" credit; Jeffrey Bloom gets "screenplay" billing). Grodin plays a diamond salesman who's hired by an inscrutable millionaire (Trevor Howard) to rob a London clearinghouse (located at the title address) of its sizable gem reserve from under the nose of its ruthlessly efficient head (John Gielgud). His wealthy girlfriend (Candice Bergen) is game to lend a hand, but the most valuable assistance comes from a disgruntled employee (James Mason) at the facility. Grodin's voice-over narration throughout the course of the picture is overbearing, while Bergen delivers the same sort of monotonous performance that earned her a label as one of the worst actresses of the seventies (check out The Golden Turkey Awards as evidence). Mason offers a measure of dignity to the project; the rest is slapdash and unconvincing, climaxing with an endless chase through Howard's opulent estate.
The only extra on the DVD is the original theatrical trailer.
Movie: **
Extras: *
THE LAST UNICORN (1982). Shades of Bambi: Would the act of giving The Last Unicorn a mediocre rating be tantamount to kicking a puppy? This animated feature from the Rankin-Bass team (with further backing from Japan, Germany and England) was hardly a blockbuster upon its original release (at least not stateside), but over time it has developed a sizable following — heck, even my own daughter (now 19) has watched it countless times over the years. Peter S. Beagle adapted his own novel about the title critter (voiced by Mia Farrow), who sets out to discover if there are any other unicorns existing outside her neck of the woods. She eventually teams up with a bumbling wizard named Schmendrick (Alan Arkin as the least likely mythical character ever), finds herself frequently fleeing from the menacing (and vodka-free) Red Bull, and, after she's turned into a human, falling for the dashing son (Jeff Bridges) of a menacing king (Christopher Lee). A few scattered scenes exhibit some innovation, but for the most part, the animation is limp and practically all of the actors deliver alarmingly flat line readings. And the less said about the music score by America, the better. Note: For legal (and shameful) reasons too knotty to explain here, Beagle only makes money from sales of this title when it's purchased through Conlan Press (www.conlanpress.com); anyone planning to buy this Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack should keep that in mind.
Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Beagle and publisher Connor Cochran; a 13-minute making-of featurette; a piece on Beagle's various works; a photo gallery; and a gallery of works from the 2010 The Last Unicorn art contest.
Movie: **
Extras: ***
LOVE & OTHER DRUGS (2010). For all the pleasure it reportedly provides, Viagra does flirt with potential side effects, including headache, upset stomach and blurred vision. Similarly, while Love & Other Drugs offers its own pleasures, this adaptation of Jamie Reidy's Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman results in such possible side effects as irritation, frustration and disgust. For the most part, this is an intelligent piece in which cocky pharmaceutical salesman Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) tries to make his mark in business while also engaging in a no-strings-attached relationship with the no-nonsense Maggie Murdock (Anne Hathaway). The picture is initially as light and carefree as their romance, but as their mutual commitment deepens, so does the film, with Maggie's medical misfortune — and Jake's reaction to it — resulting in some standout sequences and coaxing a knockout performance from Hathaway. Alas, the idiotic character of Jamie's odious brother (Josh Gad) cheapens an otherwise mature seriocomedy, and some formulaic romcom trappings feel equally out of place. The mental and emotional stimulation caused by the film is strong enough to recommend it, but had some flaccid passages been trimmed, its studio might have had an awards contender on its hands.
Blu-ray extras include 8 minutes of deleted scenes; an 8-minute interview piece with principal cast and crew members; and two 3-minute shorts in which Gyllenhaal and Hathaway each discuss their own characters.
Movie: ***
Extras: **
127 HOURS (2010). Let's be honest with one another. I'd be dead. You'd be dead. Almost everyone we've ever known would be dead. But not Aron Ralston. After five days of slowly withering away while his right arm remained lodged between a boulder and a rocky wall in a Utah canyon, Ralston did the unthinkable and used a small, dull knife to cut off the arm so that he might continue to live. The Oscar-nominated 127 Hours, based on Ralston's memoir, is writer-director Danny Boyle's mesmerizing account of those fateful days in the outdoor enthusiast's life. But while a stirring parable about the indomitability of the human spirit, this story doesn't quite lend itself to a cinematic rendition — it just sounds too simple, too constricted. Yet Boyle and co-scripter Simon Beaufoy expand the picture in all sorts of marvelous ways. Visually, the film is always hopping with the same energy as its protagonist (played in a career-best performance by James Franco), relying on split-screen techniques and other lively tricks of the trade. And thematically, the picture doesn't settle for the expected "man vs. nature" route, instead realizing that it isn't nature that's at fault but one man's own near-fatal folly. By turns funny, frightening, inspiring and, yes, nauseating, 127 Hours turns cinema into an extreme sport, leaving us satisfactorily spent.
Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Boyle, Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson; a 35-minute making-of piece; six deleted scenes; an alternate ending; and a 15-minute look at the actual incidents surrounding Ralston's rescue.
Movie: ***1/2
Extras: ***
RAIN MAN (1988). In what proved to be a great year for movies, the Best Picture Oscar went to this box office smash that earned additional awards for its director (Barry Levinson), star (Dustin Hoffman) and screenwriters (Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow). Now as then, it's clear that this was hardly the crowning achievement of its year (not when the slate also included The Last Temptation of Christ, The Accidental Tourist, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Bull Durham), yet that's not meant to take away from the film's crowd-pleasing appeal. Working from a finely honed script, Levinson created a first-rate drama in which a self-centered hot shot (Tom Cruise) looks after the autistic brother (Hoffman) he never knew he had. Never resorting to easy pathos, the film is unusually unsentimental in its approach to potentially mawkish material; for that, credit both Hoffman and Cruise, who never smooth away their respective characters' rough edges.
Blu-ray extras include three separate audio commentaries by Levinson, Morrow and Bass; a 22-minute making-of featurette; one deleted scene; and a 20-minute look at autism.
Movie: ***1/2
Extras: ***
SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1957). Even a three-course meal consisting of lobster bisque, a medium-rare steak and crème brulee doesn't come close to matching the exquisite, juicy taste of the dialogue slung around in this riveting drama written by no less than Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman. Practically everything clicks in this drama in which unscrupulous press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) will do just about anything to curry favor with powerful newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster). So when Hunsecker's sister (Susan Harrison) falls for a clean-cut musician (Martin Milner), Sidney agrees to appease the jealous J.J. (perhaps not since Scarface's Tony Montana has a movie character displayed such an unhealthy attraction toward his own sibling) by driving them apart through malicious gossip and outright lies. The contributions of two industry titans — cinematographer James Wong Howe and composer Elmer Bernstein — are key to the film's success (the jazzy score works in tandem with the evocative NYC location shooting), and while Curtis generally leaves me cold, his performance as Falco is arguably his greatest. Yet the rapid-fire dialogue is this film's truly astonishing component, from the classic lines (both from J.J. to Sidney) "I'd hate to take a bite out of you; you're a cookie full of arsenic" and "Match me, Sidney" to lesser known but equally impressive snatches of cynicism (I've always been partial to J.J. opining that "Sidney lives in moral twilight"). The film's only significant debit is its ending, which feels rushed, incomplete and therefore not entirely satisfying.
Extras in the two-disc DVD set include audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore; Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away (1986), a 45-minute documentary about the film's director, Alexander Mackendrick; James Wong Howe: Cinematographer (1973), a 22-minute look at the legendary, Oscar-winning director of photography; and a half-hour discussion with film historian Neal Gabler about columnist Walter Winchell (the inspiration for the Hunsecker character).
Movie: ***1/2
Extras: ***
WUSA (1970). Paul Newman had stated on many occasions — even during a press junket for Pixar's Cars here in Charlotte — that making Richard Nixon's Enemies List in 1971 (he was the only actor on the original list of 20 people; other celebrities like Gregory Peck, John Lennon and Joe Namath were added later) was the "highest single honor" he had ever received. Certainly, a movie like WUSA would never have been screened at the Nixon White House (at any rate, the president was too busy repeatedly watching Patton, including on the eve of his decision to bomb the hell out of Cambodia). In this adaptation of Robert Stone's novel A Hall of Mirrors (scripted by the author himself), Newman stars as Rheinhardt, who lands in New Orleans and quickly finds a job as a DJ at a right-wing radio station. Rheinhardt doesn't believe any of the nonsense he's asked to read on the air, but his progressive views have long been buried over the course of his hard life; that's not the case with Rainey (Anthony Perkins), a social worker whose frustrations surrounding his idealistic impotence boil over into violence. With a fine cast of actors (Joanne Woodward, Laurence Harvey, Pat Hingle) and a story sporting fangs, WUSA sounds like it can't miss. But it does — by a wide margin. So much time is spent on the relationship between Newman's boozy DJ and a sweet prostitute (Woodward) that the scenes at the radio station often feel like an afterthought; worse, the conservative zealots' plans to spread their messages of fear and hatred (predicting Rush and his odious ilk by a couple of decades) are murky and undeveloped. On the other hand, Neil Diamond fans will be happy to learn that "Glory Road" is played during the end credits.
There are no extras on the DVD.
Movie: **
Extras: *
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