New DVD Spin: Atonement, I Am Legend, Enchanted, Ice Storm, HorrorFest, and More

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Focus Features

Love in the Time of Cholera

Mar 18, 2008, Mark Bourne

This week's new spotlight DVDs:

Atonement (Universal)
Director Joe Wright's 2007 adaptation of Ian McEwan's bestselling novel is an epic English romantic drama that's one of your most moving and memorable viewing experiences, or else it hits you as an over-praised melodrama that's maudlin and manipulative. Either way, it is sumptuously executed and one of the best book-to-film transitions in recent memory. One virtuosic scene by itself takes our breath away with one of the great cinematic tracking shots (Robbie on the beach at Dunkirk, filmed in one take). And as in his 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice, Wright shows everyone how to put Keira Knightley on a big screen. Atonement won the BAFTA and Golden Globe for Best Film, and earned Oscar nominations for Best Film, Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design. James McAvoy, Romola Garai, Vanessa Redgrave, and Brenda Blethyn also star. In The Washington Post, critic Ann Hornaday said, "How fitting that a novel so devoted to the precision and passionate love of language be captured in a film that is simply too exquisite for words."

At DVD Beaver, Gary Tooze tells us that this "perfectly realized cinematic experience" arrives on DVD with "some fabulous supplements including an interesting and telling commentary by director Joe Wright," seven deleted scenes with optional commentary, and two featurettes: "Bringing the Past to Life - The Making of Atonement" (27 mins.) and "From Novel to Screen: Adapting a Classic" (5 mins.).

I Am Legend (Official site) (Warner Bros.)
In the desolate and abandoned disaster zone that is Manhattan in the year 2012, it's Will Smith vs. vampire-zombie mutants as Dr. Robert Neville (Smith) is among the sole survivors of a genetic plague that transforms its victims into the violent and cannibalistic "dark seekers." The first two-thirds or so are moody and broody and, says Film.com's Laremy Legel, decent even if story logic is sacrificed for carelessly zippy pacing. Then the whole thing descends into your average vapid video game shooter.

However, with the two-disc edition (on DVD, Blu-ray, and HD-DVD), the second disc gives us an "Alternative Theatrical Version with a Controversial Ending" -- MaryAnn Johanson wrote about it for Film.com -- which is more faithful to Richard Matheson's 1954 novel (filmed previously as Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth and Charlton Heston's The Omega Man) and proves to be the better cut of the movie.

Enchanted (Official site) (Disney)
This occasionally clever comedy charmer doesn't rise to the full potential of its premise -- a cartoon fairy-tale princess (Amy Adams) due to wed her dim but valiant and handsome prince (James Marsden) is banished by a wicked witch (Susan Sarandon) to that anti-happy-ever-after realm known as real-life New York City -- and it's almost mortally wounded by an off-key CGI climax where a half-dozen better options immediately come to mind. But for a lightweight, step-by-step predictable, and kid-friendly family movie, Enchanted has enough going for it. Top of the list is Adams, who is delightful as she builds on the adroit charm that first knocked our socks off in Junebug. Secondly there's the glee with which the movie punctures 70 years of Disney's own saccharin tropes and romantic "princess" conventions that warped little girls for generations. The production number "Happy Working Song," with hordes of synchronized dancing urban vermin cleaning Patrick Dempsey's high-rise apartment, may encourage your kids to wish they had a pack of gray rats to help with washing the dishes.

Along with startlingly immersive Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio, the DVD's extras include a commentary by director Kevin Lima, three production featurettes, six deleted scenes introduced and explained by Lima, a blooper reel, a Carrie Underwood music video of the song "Ever Ever After," and especially for the kids there's "Pip's Predicament," with the animated chipmunk in his own pop-up adventure.

The Ice Storm (Criterion)
Suburban Connecticut, 1973. While the Watergate hearings blast from the TV, the wayward Hood and Carver families try to navigate a Thanksgiving break simmering with unspoken resentments, sexual experimentation, and cultural confusion. With crystalline clarity, characteristic subtlety, and even a dose of wicked humor, Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee adapts Rick Moody's acclaimed novel of American malaise into a trenchant, tragic portrait of lost souls. Featuring a tremendous cast of established actors (Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver) and up-and-coming stars (Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Katie Holmes), The Ice Storm is one of the finest films of the nineties.

This new edition from Criterion -- a director-approved double-disc set -- features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Ang Lee and director of photography Frederick Elmes; audio commentary featuring Lee and producer-screenwriter James Schamus; a new documentary featuring interviews with actors Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, Sigourney Weaver, and Elijah Wood; a new video interview with novelist Rick Moody; deleted scenes; footage from an event honoring Lee and Schamus at New York's Museum of the Moving Image; visual essays featuring interviews with the cinematographer, production designer, and costume designer; and a new essay by film critic Bill Krohn.

Also out this week from Criterion are Alberto Lattuada's brilliant dark comedy Mafioso and Hiroshi Teshigahara's "bold and sensual" exploration of Catalan architect Antonio Gaudí.

Steep (Sony)
Filmed in high definition, the most thrilling documentary of 2007 places us zooming alongside the world's best skiers as they go beyond their dreams to conquer the steepest runs ever faced. From the sheer cliffs of Grand Teton, to the treachery of the French Alps in Chamonix, to the untouched Alaskan peaks of Valdez, these extremers sacrifice their lives for a thrill, but what a thrill it is. Fantastically beautiful images of the most magnificent peaks on the globe along with devastating avalanches and fatal spills only serve to push them harder. Steep's gorgeous cinematography can serve as your excuse to finally get that Blu-ray player. Whether you get it on DVD or Blu-ray disc, the bonus features include a commentary and Q&A with director Mark Obenhaus and skiers Ingrid Backstrom and Andrew McLean.

Love in the Time of Cholera (New Line)
Javier Bardem (you know who in No Country for Old Men) stars in the feel-good title of the week, an adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, which follows a man who waits a lifetime to be with his true love. The cast also includes Benjamin Bratt, Liev Schreiber, John Leguizamo, Marcela Mar, and Catalina Sandino Moreno. Glenn Erickson, a.k.a. DVD Savant, reports that this "handsome, ambitious and fairly unique" movie "looks fabulous" with a "beautiful enhanced transfer, with glowing colors." The extras are a feature commentary by director Mike Newell; a "making of" documentary with Newell, actor Liev Schreiber, and others; and deleted scenes with commentary from editor Mick Audsley.

Southland Tales (Sony)
Directed by Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko), here's one of 2007's more painful and incomprehensibly muddled wash-outs. Set in post-World War III Los Angeles during a three-day heat wave just before a huge 4th of July celebration, an action star stricken with amnesia meets up with an adult film star developing her own reality television project and a Hermosa Beach police officer who holds the key to a vast conspiracy. It stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Curtis Armstrong, and Joe Campana. Over at DVD Talk, Thomas Spurlin says that at least the DVD's image is "utterly fantastic" and "the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio surround presentation worked its magic across the board." The extras are a 30-minute behind-the-scenes "making of" featurette, a nine-minute animated short titled "This is the Way the World Ends." and 16 previews.

Don't Drink the Water (Studio Canal/Lionsgate)
This weak 1969 Cold War comedy, a loud and unsubtle diminishing of Woody Allen's early stage play, stars Jackie Gleason, Estelle Parsons, Ted Bessell, and Joan Delaney. An American caterer's dim-witted family becomes trapped behind the Iron Curtain while on a European vacation.

The Lost (Anchor Bay)
Horror fans seem to like this 2005 adaptation of Jack Ketchum's horror-thriller novel about a suburban sociopath (Marc Senter). Michael Bowen, Dee Wallace-Stone, Ed Lauter, Megan Henning, and Erin Brown also appear. For this DVD release, genre specialty site Monstersandcritics.com has an interview with actor Marc Senter. The DVD sports and audio commentary with novelists Ketchum and Monica O'Rourke, audition footage, outtakes, and a storyboard sequence.

The 8 Films to Die For series (Lionsgate)
"8 Films To Die For" -- a.k.a. "Horrorfest" (official site) -- is an annual horror film festival featuring eight independent horror movies, with possible "secret" bonus films, distributed by After Dark Films. HorrorFest 2007 took place last November in over 350 theaters across America. It's a great concept -- on hundreds of big screens around the country, show a collection of indie films (that need audiences) to geared-up fans (who need the films). I wish the idea would catch fire across the indie film continuum. Imagine an annual AnimationFest, DocuFest, ComedyFest, FirstFilmFest, ImpenetrablyArtsyFest, and more over select weekends everywhere. Everybody wins. Leave it to the fright-factory folks to blaze the trail. Lionsgate this week releases all eight titles from last year's scare-o-rama. The ones I previewed are reliable B-movie fare, modestly budgeted and serviceably produced, exactly what you expect and just right for an easy weekend FreakoutFest on the couch with Domino's delivery. This year's set, available bundled together and individually, are: