This Week on DVD

The one comment I hear most often from people in re: the blog here is that the reviews are too long. For some reason, people are surprisingly open when criticizing the blog. If I showed you my novel, you probably wouldn't give it back to me a few months later saying it was good, but way too long, and you stopped reading after the first 40 pages. But, you know, you totally got what I was going for.

But when it comes to blog posts, everyone from friends to co-workers to family members will give me extremely frank, forthright feedback. "I started reading that review you wrote of Lifeboat, but it was so long! I mean, couldn't you just sum it up in a paragraph or something?"

Also, people seem to want grades or star ratings after all movie reviews. Oh, yeah, and more stories about me running out of gas and pushing my car up La Brea Boulevard.

Well, I won't go quite that far, but let no one ever say I ignore constructive criticism. Suggestion noted. I'll be altering the way I do weekly movie reviews. Instead of trying to write a complete doctoral dissertation about every random movie I happen to rent, I'll write maybe one or two proper reviews and then sum up everything else I see in a post...a-just like a-this one.

This will give me a chance to write some more about random and diverse movies, and also give you all just a teeny bit more insight into the full scope of my anti-social loserdom. Ideally, I'll publish these every Tuesday, when new DVD's come out. But I'm lazy and my work schedule can be erratic, so I make no promises.

Le Samourai



Criterion has released a gorgeous new transfer of this French gangster classic. (The still above is in B&W, but the film is in color). This is one of the most technically perfect, fastidiously designed films ever made. It's a thriller of the Croupier style, a slow burn in which attitude and tone matter far more than the mechanics of the story. Alain Delon is perfect as a total blank slate, a cold and vacant assassin set up by a crime syndicate after taking out a rival crime boss. Director Jean-Pierre Melville (one of the main inspirations to the New Wave directors of the following generation) returns again and again to the notion of loneliness and alienation - he opens with a quote from the Bushido ("The Way of the Samurai") about the isolation of the samurai, and is fascinated by the idea that it is the assassin's very removed from society and community that allow him to commit and get away with his atrocious crimes. A truly inspired film.

House of Wax



House of Wax, the most recent and successful classic horror remake from Dark Castle (producers of Ghost Ship, 13 Ghosts, House on Haunted Hill and other stuff that sucks), is likely to rank among the year's best American horror films. Granted, that's not saying much. The only other American horror film I've enjoyed at all this year was Romero's Land of the Dead, and even that is far from a perfect movie. But, still, I will give House of Wax its due...It's very gory, it has the good sense to get its female leads wet and semi-undressed often and its wax-imitation small town setting is effectively creepy. That being said, there are problems: it takes way too long to actually get to the House of Wax, and the 40 minutes of lead-in are horrible. The film has a small cast of young actors, all of whom give unconvincing, stilted and wooden performances. Yes, even Paris Hilton, hard though it may be to believe that an activity exists at which Paris doesn't excel. She does, on the bright side, get a chance to poke fun at her infamous sex video a bit, and is provided with the film's most outrageously grisly death.

The Wizard of Oz



Warner Brothers released a 3-disc set of this film this week. It's probably the third or fourth Wizard of Oz collection on DVD. Anyway, I'm not one to say that a movie is terrific just because it's a beloved American classic. I hate Gone With the Wind, and Ben-Hur ain't much better. But Wizard of Oz, though not one of my personal favorite films, holds up exceedingly well 60-some-odd years on. I mean, the thing looks goddamn amazing, and not just by 1939 standards. By any standard. Look at that picture! It's also kind of cool, in that it's a uniquely American fairy tale. Almost all the famous fairy tales are from Germany and other European countries obsessed with little blonde girls wandering about in the woods under suspicious circumstances. But here's one full of imagery from the American Midwest, relevant to our 20th Century history, teeming with memorable popular music of its era. I mean, I don't really think I ever need to actually hear "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" again (and I'm positive I don't ever need to hear the fucking Lollipop Guild song ever again). But that's onyl because I've heard them 100,000 times already. Well, okay, that Lollipop song is immensely annoying, but it is performed by a team of singing, dancing midgets. You take the good with the bad.

Okay, I have already realized that this column is pointless, because I will just end up writing one massive post full of a bunch of long movie reviews, rather than a series of long posts with long movie reviews. Damn it!