New DVD Spin: Michael Clayton, In the Valley of Elah, Criterion, and More

Among this year's Academy Award nominations are films that received such limited distribution that even the more ardent moviegoers watching the ceremony at home may not have seen half of them. The studios, though, can be quick enough to get their DVDs out ahead of the ceremony, so we can cheer for our favorite nominees even if we've just seen them at home the night before Oscar time. Topping our new-release list this week are two titles you'll be hearing a lot about come next Sunday evening.

Michael Clayton (Official site) (Warner Bros.)
This refreshingly restrained, engrossing, and tightly executed film ranked high on many critics' lists of the top ten best films of 2007. In Time magazine, Richard Schickel named it his No. 1 film of the year, calling it "a morally alert, persuasively realistic and increasingly suspenseful melodrama, impeccably acted and handsomely staged by Tony Gilroy."

A moody corporate/legal intrigue puzzler, Michael Clayton avoids routine Hollywood formulas and gimmicks, instead rewarding our attention with the sort of intellectually challenging suspense that's tightened with a slow vise rather than pounded with a meat mallet. As critic Eric D. Snider said here last October, this "tasty mix of crowd-pleasing action and whip-smart storytelling," starring George Clooney, gives us "satisfying revelations, twists, and double-crosses that we expect from a legal thriller. Think of it as a classier, more introspective John Grisham story." The film is now up for seven Oscars, including one for best picture, one for Clooney as best actor, and one each for superb supporting cast members Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. It's also nominated in the categories of writing and directing -- two worthy nods that each go to one person, writer-director Gilroy in his directorial debut.

On the DVD's commentary track, which Tony shares with his brother and editor, John Gilroy, we learn about the long, frustrating history of Michael Clayton, a film that came too close to not getting made at all. Gilroy wanted to make a movie more substantive than the typical legal thriller. No courtroom histrionics, no by-the-numbers scenes played out in mahogany-paneled offices. He wanted gritty backroom law firm corruption with the action far removed from the familiar Law and Order heroics. But despite his cred from writing the three Bourne films, the studios weren't biting. "I had gone through a whole 'walking in the wilderness' period trying to get the movie made in a variety of ways," he says. Desperate and disheartened, Gilroy saw his fortunes begin to change when Steven Soderbergh set him up with George Clooney.

But even as he passed through the door of Clooney's mansion, Gilroy was this close to throwing in the towel. He'd lost the fire. "All the sell had gone out," he says. But that also meant that rather than do the whole high-pressure song-and-dance, "I was open to having a real, honest, laid-back conversation with him." After nine hours of real, honest, laid-back conversation, only some of it about the film, Clooney had become such a believer in the project -- and in Gilroy -- that he agreed to star in Michael Clayton, giving the production his name, clout, and passion while offering to essentially "work for free." Clooney, says Gilroy, "became the ultimate bodyguard, the protector for what we were doing. I doubt I'll ever have that situation again."

Warner Bros. brings Michael Clayton to DVD and Blu-ray disc with a beautiful 2:35 anamorphic image that well serves the outstanding cinematography by Robert Elswit (who also shot There Will Be Blood). Audio options are English 5.1, English 2.0, French 5.1, and Spanish 5.1. Among the subtitle options (English, Spanish, French and English for the hearing-impaired), a rare feature here is the extension of subtitles to the DVD extras, including the audio commentary. Those extras are modest, but they don't load up the disc with fluff and filler either. Besides the commentary, we get three deleted scenes (totaling a little over five minutes) with optional commentary from the Gilroy brothers.

In the Valley of Elah (Official site) (Warner Bros.)
One of the year's best -- and most undeservingly ignored -- films, here's a sober and sobering murder mystery with causes and affects tied with barbed wire to the Iraq war. And it has given Tommy Lee Jones an oh-hell-yeah slot on the Best Actor nominations list. That's doubly impressive given that he costars alongside two first-rate previous Oscar winners, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon. Written and directed by Paul Haggis (who this time gives us a film more worthy than his phony and formulaic Crash), In the Valley of Elah explores the collateral damage of corruption high and low after ex-military policeman Hank Deerfield (Jones) leaves behind his wife (Sarandon) to travel from Tennessee to New Mexico, determined to investigate the disappearance, then the brutal slaying, of his son, a Marine just returned from Iraq. His son's buddies are no help, so Deerfield enlists the aid of a local detective (Theron). Although a military investigator (Jason Patric) tries to stonewall them, evidence points to troubling truths both about the Army's story and the effects of the war on Deefield's son. Josh Brolin, who was all over our screens in 2007, appears as Theron's boss. The final scene is overwrought to the point of mawkishness, but In the Valley of Elah is a bold and compassionate film about hard truths, and about so many soldiers whose stories don't get a Hollywood treatment.

Once again Warner Bros. gives us an excellent DVD and Blu-ray disc, delivering a flawless 2:35 anamorphic image and excellent sound. Extras include a behind-the-scenes "making of" featurette, then another that looks at the plight of returning veterans, including an interview with the real-life couple whose experiences inspired the film. Also here is a deleted, but worthwhile, full scene that furthers Deerfield's investigation into his son's murder.

Pierrot le fou (Criterion)
Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou (1965) is one of the high points of the French new wave, and was Godard's last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

The usual Criterion superlatives describe this two-disc DVD's newly restored transfer (approved by cinematographer Raoul Coutard) and the authoritative extras such as a new video interview with actor Anna Karina, A "Pierrot" Primer (a new video program with audio commentary by filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin), a fifty-minute French documentary about director Jean-Luc Godard and his work and marriage with Karina, and more. Trés bon!

Walker (Criterion)
A hallucinatory biopic that breaks all cinematic conventions, Walker, from British director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy), tells the story of nineteenth-century American adventurer William Walker (Ed Harris), who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune, and for several years dictator of Nicaragua. Made with mad abandon and political acuity -- and the support of the Sandinista army and government during the Contra war -- the film uses this true tale as a satirical attack on American ultrapatriotism and a freewheeling condemnation of "manifest destiny." Featuring a powerful score by Joe Strummer and a performance of intense, repressed rage by Harris, Walker remains one of Cox's most daring works.

Along with Criterion's new, restored transfer approved by director Alex Cox, the special features include an audio commentary by Cox and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, an original documentary about the filming of Walker, "On Moviemaking and the Revolution" (reminiscences twenty years later from an extra on the film), and more

Also out this week:

Margot at the Wedding (Official site)
Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black, and John Turturro star in this dour drama about a judgmental woman who comes to visit for her sister's wedding to an unemployed musician and artist. Extras: a conversation with Leigh and husband Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale), who wrote and directed the movie.

American Gangster (Official site) (Universal)
Ridley Scott directed Denzel Washington as the notorious Harlem drug dealer Frank Lucas. Russell Crowe is the New Jersey cop on his trail. Extras: an extended version, deleted scenes, commentary, and featurettes on the film's music, the drug trade, and the real-life men behind the characters. A three-disc DVD set has more documentary segments and music videos.

Lust, Caution (Official site) (Universal)
Director Ang Lee returns to Asia for his follow-up to Brokeback Mountain, spinning a twisting World War II-era tale of a young Chinese woman (Tang Wei) drawn into a seductive plot to kill a man (Tony Leung) collaborating with the Japanese. The movie is available in the steamy NC-17 theatrical release or a toned-down R-rated version.

Nightmare Detective (Unrated) (Official Japanese site) (Dimension/Genius Products)
From J-horror fave director Shinya Tsukamoto (Ichi the Killer, Tetsuo: The Iron Man), this effective and suitably gruesome mystery/horror chiller from 2007 is pretty low-key compared to Tsukamoto's previous hits, but this borderline Nightmare on Elm Street riff (the cops call on the supernaturally gifted Nightmare Detective to stop the killer by infiltrating people's dreams) features Tsukamoto himself playing the "Zero" killer ("0" being the last number his victims call from their cell phones) and Japanese pop star Hitomi as rookie cop Lt. Keiko Kirishima. Catch it before Nightmare Detective II is released later this year (and before the inevitable American remake). The DVD includes both English and Japanese DD5.1 options, English or Spanish subtitles, a "making of" featurette, and the theatrical trailer.

Catacombs (Lionsgate shop) (Lionsgate)
"From the producers of Saw" boasts the DVD box's come-on copy. But fans of that particular enterprise in cinematic self-trepanation shouldn't be fooled. Although it's set in the famous skull-filled maze of ancient catacombs beneath Paris (played convincingly enough by a location in Romania), and stars singer Pink and Shannyn Sossamon, Catacombs is a padded and scare-free amateur-hour bore. After an underground rave, Sossamon gets lost in miles and miles of darkness with some murderous thing pursuing her. Twenty minutes worth of story are stretched to an hour and a half. Then the "you have got to be kidding me" ending will probably boost the sales of new home-theater screens after legions of whoa-dude horror fans hurl their remotes through their current ones.

The DVD production is pretty crappy too, with a letterboxed (non-anamorphic) widescreen image and a pre-menu automatic loop of trailers that's difficult to stop. The extras bring us a chatty and informative commentary track with directors/writers Tomm Coker and David Elliot. There's a short "making of" promo puff piece, "The Making of 'Blue Butterfly' with Violet UK" on the recording of the film's signature song, and a storyboard gallery with commentary by Tomm Coker.

Lillie (Acorn Media)
This lavish, stately, and hugely successful 13-episode television serial -- made by London Weekend Television for ITV and broadcast in 1978 -- stars brilliant and beautiful Francesca Annis in her BAFTA-winning role of Lillie Langtry, the notorious 19th century British actress and the toast of London society who knew what side her bed was buttered on. Langtry's numerous scandals and lovers involved prominent and well-connected men such as the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's son Albert Edward ("Bertie"), a.k.a. the future King Edward VII. (Bertie, who had a house built especially for them in Bournemouth, once complained to Langtry, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship," whereupon she replied, "And you've spent enough in me to float one.") Judge Roy Bean named Langtry, Texas after her. And said George Bernard Shaw, "I resent Mrs. Langtry. She has no right to be intelligent, daring and independent as well as lovely. It's a frightening combination of attributes."

You may know Lillie from its run in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theatre. Fans of PBS might also remember Annis as Agatha Christie's Prudence 'Tuppance' Beresford in the Mystery! series Partners in Crime, or from the British serial Reckless, also shown on Masterpiece Theatre in 1998. The rest of us remember her as Lady Jessica in David Lynch's misbegotten Dune, or from the role that kicked off her career -- as Roman Polanski's nude sleepwalking Lady Macbeth in his bloody 1971 film interpretation of Macbeth (And I'm required by journalistic tradition to mention that she headlined regularly for 11 years as Ralph Fiennes' lover, after playing Gertrude to his Hamlet in 1995 and thus ending Fiennes' marriage to actress Alex Kingston. Ralph was 18 years younger than Francesca.) This mini-series -- in which Annis portrays Langtry from the age of 15 to her death at 75 -- features prominently in any biographical sketch of her long and still-active career.

In Lillie, Annis portrays Langtry as a flamboyantly amoral and only barely sympathetic manipulator -- elegant, confident, poised, and intelligent, yet self-obsessed, vain, cold, and nakedly ambitious. She uses her first husband, Edward Langtry (Anton Rodgers), as a stepladder up Victorian high society, all the while enjoying affairs that are as calculated as they are amorous. Still, Annis inhabits Lillie with subtlety and in three dimensions, giving us plenty of room to admire the classy crumpet's self-possession and stick-to-it-iveness in a society that valued conformity and propriety above all else.

Another standout here is Peter Egan as the writer and wit Oscar Wilde, Lillie's one steadfast friend and another nonconformist made to suffer for his impudence. Wilde adores Lillie (he wrote Lady Windermere's Fan for her), and together they see in each other ideal companions who could never, ever be. After he confesses that he loves and desires her, but cannot have her, she tells him, "If you let me, I would show you I'm more real than the goddess you imagine." He replies, "That is the one truth that I am frightened of." If only they could have ended up together, he might have stayed out of prison and she might have died a happier woman. Other actors among this superb and vast cast -- once again we swoon over British TV talent -- include Jennie Linden as Patsy Cornwallis-West, Don Fellows as James Whistler, and Annette Crosbie as Henrietta Labouchere. Denis Lill is Bertie, the Prince of Wales.

Acorn Media's four-disc DVD boxed set presents all 13 episodes (looking great, each is 52 minutes), plus cast filmographies and an essay on Langtry's influence on pop culture.

Chaos (Lionsgate shop) (Lionsgate)
Never leave it up to the intern to provide the PR tag line, otherwise you get routine, clichéd nonsense like "Between the corruption and the end of a gun lies chaos." That doesn't even sound as though it's supposed to mean anything. Still, I guess it fits this routine and cliché-riddled, but modestly entertaining, action thriller from 2006. Jason Statham plays Detective Conners, a cop on suspension ever since a hostage situation ended with the hostage's death and the dismissal of Connor's partner. Now he's hauled back to duty after a gang leader (Wesley Snipes) requests his presence during a Seattle bank heist. Connor and his new rookie partner (Ryan Phillippe) must track the gang, uncover the larger scheme that's underway, and reveal bad guys in "shocking" places. It's recycled junk we've seen done better a hundred times before, but for fans of autopilot plots and loud action it's okay for what it is. The DVD has a commentary from director Tony Giglio and the typical promo behind-the-scene featurette.

Rendition (Official site) (New Line)
Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin, and Robert Clotworthy star in this drama that aims to move our hearts and minds against the United States' questionably "legal" and morally reprehensible practice of outsourcing torture. Aims and misses, but thumbs-up for the strength of its convictions at least.

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