Be Kind Rewind (New Line, $27.95)
After helming a trio of critically acclaimed but little seen features, it stands to reason that Michel Gondry would want to try and earn some box-office cred by directing a Jack Black/Mos Def buddy movie. But because this is Gondry we’re talking about, he couldn’t suck it up and churn out a straight comedy where Black ran around shirtless in bright tights while Mos Def glowered in the background.
Instead, he made another one of his eccentric comedies that will please his fanbase, but leave general audiences cold. Filmed on location in picturesque Passaic, New Jersey, Be Kind Rewind casts Mos Def as Mike, an employee at a run-down video store operated by Elroy Fletcher (Danny Glover). When Elroy goes away on vacation, Mike is put in charge of the shop and he makes his first managerial mistake when he lets his bumbling friend Jerry (Black) through the front door. See, Jerry’s brain has been magnetized after a run-in with an electric fence, which means that whenever he’s in range of a VHS tape, he instantly wipes its contents clean. So within seconds of his arrival, every single tape in the store is rendered blank and customers keep flowing in looking for cheap entertainment. What’s a resourceful, slightly weird guy to do? Remake every single movie as a super-low budget home movie of course! “Why would anyone in their right mind want to watch a homemade version of Ghostbusters or Rush Hour 2?” I hear you ask. Well…that’s a good question and one that the movie never bothers to answer. And you know what? I’m okay with that. Like all of Gondry’s movies, Be Kind Rewind takes place in a slightly skewed version of the real world—heck the fact that VHS is still a popular home entertainment format in this universe tells you that the film bears only passing resemblance to reality. Besides, the larger point that Gondry is making has to do with the joy of creating something to give back to your community. Like this summer’s delightful coming-of-age story Son of Rambow, Be Kind Rewind encourages us to stop swallowing overpriced Hollywood entertainments and get out there with friends and family and make our own films. Even though that message will likely fall flat with a mass audience, amateur filmmakers around the country are bound to feel a small swell of pride with Gondry’s feature-length pat on the back. Surprisingly, the studio has released Be Kind Rewind on a virtually bare-bones DVD; the only extra included here is a 10-minute featurette about Passaic—no commentary tracks, no extended clips from Jerry and Mike’s Ghostbusters and no “how to make your own home movie” documentary. Here’s hoping that those extras will be included on a two-disc special edition somewhere down the line.
Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (Universal, $29.98)
A rambunctious family comedy that wears out its welcome around the 45-minute mark, Malcolm D. Lee’s Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins nevertheless functions as a fun showcase for comedians like Mike Epps and Cedric the Entertainers and unexpectedly hilarious actors like Michael Clarke Duncan and Joy Bryant. Interestingly, the one performer who isn’t very funny happens to be the film’s star—Martin Lawrence. The former Bad Boy plays a Dr. Phil like chat-show host who reluctantly agrees to return to his small Southern hometown for his parents’ anniversary. Accompanying him on this rare pilgrimage home are his tweenage son Jamaal and his new fiancée—and recent Suvivor champion—Bianca (Bryant). Naturally, the vacation gets off to a rough start as Bianca’s “me-first” ways clash the laid-back Jenkins clan and Roscoe re-starts an old rivalry with his cousin Clyde (Cedric). But before long, life lessons are learned, parental wisdom is absorbed and everyone is happy and healthy as the final credits roll. On the commentary track, Lee talks about how the actors seized every opportunity to go off book and that’s obvious in the way scenes ramble on past their natural stopping point. At the same time, many of the film’s best lines are clearly ad-libbed making it harder to blame the director for not clamping down on his cast. With all that improvisation going on during filming, it’s no surprise that there’s such a wealth of deleted and extended scenes included on the DVD. The outtakes reel alone lasts almost 15 minutes and there’s almost a full half-hour of alternate takes or dropped scenes. Other extras include two making-of documentaries and a music video.
Control (The Weinstein Company, $28.95)
Joy Division (The Weinstein Company, $22.95)
Released to a surprising amount of acclaim last fall, Anton Corbijn’s Control arrived on DVD two weeks ago and, to my eyes at least, it’s standard issue musical biopic fare. This time, the subject is Ian Curtis, lead singer of the English rock band Joy Division, who committed suicide at the age of 23, just as the group was poised to conquer America the same way the Beatles had over a decade ago. Shot in beautiful black-and-white, Control does do a fine job evoking the gritty, desolate feel of late ’70 Manchester, but all of the beautiful photography can’t hide the deep flaw at the movie’s center–namely that Curtis comes across as a spectacularly boring and unpleasant guy. As played by Sam Riley, Ian is, simply put, a pill–he’s unhappy with the band’s growing success, unhappy with his wife Debbie (Samantha Morton) and their young daughter and unhappy with his mistress Annik. If there’s a source for this depression, it’s not well dramatized by Riley or the film’s screenplay. Mainly, you find yourself wanting to slap Curtis across the face in the hopes that he’ll finally get over himself. A more objective portrait of Ian and the band at large is offered by the feature-length documentary Joy Division, which interviews the surviving band members as well as the real Annik. (Debbie Curtis is represented only by passages from her book, though.) The truly devoted Joy Division groupies will want to check out the 75-minutes of bonus interviews included on the DVD, which touch on the band’s post-Curtis career as New Order among other topics. Although the studio is clearly hoping you’ll see both movies together, if you only get the chance to see one Joy Division film this year, pick Joy Division and leave Control on the shelf.
Also on DVD
TV-on-DVD fans have their hands full this week as two soon-to-return summer shows and one recently cancelled cult oddity make their way onto disc. In their ongoing attempts to steal HBO’s thunder, Showtime unleashed Californication (Paramount, $42.99) on the American public last August and viewers responded well to this adult sitcom’s mix of sex, lies and David Duchovny’s naked rear end. This two-disc set collects all 12 episodes from the show’s first season along with bonus episodes of Showtime’s other hits, Dexter and The Tudors. Earlier in the summer, USA Network grabbed a sizeable amount of eyeballs for their spy series Burn Notice: Season One (Fox, $49.98), about a Jason Bourne-like covert operative (played by Michael Western) who finds himself “burn noticed” (i.e. “blacklisted) by his former employers. Extras on this set are more extensive, with cast and crew commentaries on almost every episode as well as a gag reels and a handful of featurettes. Last but not least, Jericho: Season Two (Paramount, $39.99) collects the final seven episodes from the post-apocalyptic CBS series that was brought back from a premature burial thanks to a peanut-themed fan campaign. Unfortunately, all that passion didn’t generate into higher ratings. The network cancelled the series right before the final episode aired. An alternate ending—which would have served as a set-up to a third season—is included among the extras. In kid movie news, the Disney classic The Sword in the Stone (Disney, $29.99) turned 45 this year and scored a special edition DVD release. Loosely based on the first part of T.H. White’s seminal book The Once and Future King, the film tells the tale of young boy named Wart who, with the help of a wizened wizard named Merlin, grows up to be—you guessed it!—King Arthur. Not as extras-packed as most Disney special editions, The Sword and the Stone does come with DVD games for young viewers and bonus movie shorts. While your kids are watching the adventures of Wart and Merlin, sneak off to another room to check out Boarding Gate (Genius Products, $26.98), a twisted, sexy thriller starring Asia Argento and Michael Madsen. Or, if you’re in the mood for action, Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee headlines the Hong Kong cop flick Invisible Target (Dragon Dynasty, $24.95), also starring Shawn Yue and Nicholas Tse and directed by Benny Chan, who made the smash hit Gen-X Cops. As usual, Dragon Dynasty does a bang-up job with this two-disc release, throwing in a plethora of action-oriented featurettes that should please HK movie buffs. Finally, the newly founded company Legend Films has partnered with Paramount to release 17 rarely-seen titles from the studio’s extensive back catalogue all for the bargain price of $14.95. Among the movies making their DVD debut are the sci-fi parable ZPG: Zero Population Growth, the Richard Pryor drama Some King of Hero, the twisted (and, frankly, unwatchable) comedy Jekyll and Hide…Together Again and, best of all, the politically incorrect historical drama Mandingo, which really has to be seen to be believed. Set in the pre-Civil War Deep South, the film follows a torrid affair between a slave and his master’s sex-starved wife. Sounds ordinary enough, but trust me, this movie is seriously messed up.
