DVD Review of The Godfather Collection, Mother of Tears, Sex and the City, Deception and more…

The Godfather Collection: The Coppola Restoration (Paramount, $72.99)

Unlike his longtime friend George Lucas—who takes his sweet time releasing his signature Star Wars franchise on every new home entertainment system that comes along—Francis Ford Coppola is only too happy to endlessly repackage The Godfather trilogy in multiple VHS, Laserdisc and now DVD editions. Originally released on DVD in 2001, this new set features digitally remastered versions of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II that return both films to the way they would have been seen in theaters in 1972 and 1974 respectively. It goes without saying, of course, that the series’ red-headed stepchild The Godfather Part III isn’t awarded this treatment, although Coppola did tweak the audio track to make it a 5.1 experience. There’s really no point in me once again extolling the virtues of the first two Godfather flicks; as everyone knows, they are landmark films that just get better and better with age. (If I had to choose between them, Part II gets my vote, although the storytelling is far smoother in the first one.) But I would like to take a moment to mount a modest defense for Part III, a film that’s often dismissed as an unholy mess. That’s kind of unfair though as only half of the movie is an unholy mess. The first 90 minutes or so are actually quite good, as we watch a battle-scarred Michael Corleone mount one last, desperate attempt to legitimize the family “business.” The introduction of a bastard nephew Vincent Mancini (Andy Garcia) adds to the intrigue, particularly when he starts sleeping with Michael’s grown daughter Maria (Sofia Coppola, who really is out of her depth here). But about halfway though the picture, Coppola allows the story to get away from him. The intensity steadily slackens, building to a grand climax at an opera house that’s pedestrian at best. Still, in no way does The Godfather Part III deserve the vitriol that’s consistently heaped upon it—save that for movies like Jack and The Cotton Club, the true nadirs of Coppola’s career. It may be a deeply, deeply flawed film, but it’s also arguably the most personal of the whole trilogy.  Oh and true film buffs with Blu-ray capability must have the Blu-ray version of The Godfather Collection on their shelf.  The next-gen format makes these films look better than ever.

Extras: If you already own the 2001 set, you have most of the extras that are on this new version. Coppola’s original commentary tracks accompany each of the films and the fourth disc contains the same extras that appeared on the earlier release, including a making-of documentary, a Godfather timeline and deleted scenes. But Disc 5 offers roughly 90 minutes of new bonus goodies, most notably a half-hour doc that examines how difficult it was to get The Godfather off the ground. Hardcore fans will find a lot of this info repetitious, but newbies may enjoy hearing how Robert Redford was almost cast as Michael Corleone over Coppola’s strenuous objections. Other new extras are four short featurettes (including one that features various famous folks debating the merits of Godfather vs. Godfather Part II), a behind-the-scenes look at the restoration process and, most bizarrely, footage from the Cloverfield red-carpet premiere featuring that film’s cast and crew talking about how much they love The Godfather. Yeah…I don’t see the relevance either.

Mother of Tears (Dimension Extreme, $19.97)

Once upon a time, Italian director Dario Argento was one of the leading lights of international horror cinema. Movies like Suspiria and Phenomena alternately baffled and delighted fright flick fans with their bizarre plots, wooden acting and, best of all, copious bloodshed. When the ’90s rolled around though, Argento’s star plunged considerably and these days he’s mainly thought of (if he’s thought of at all) as a shadow of his former self. His latest gorefest, Mother of Tears, debuted to hoots and catcalls at last year’s Toronto Film Festival and quietly snuck in and out of American theaters earlier before its DVD release on the horror-centric Dimension Extreme label. Based on the buzz I’d heard out of Toronto, I was expecting to see something really messed up and transgressive, but Mother of Tears is disappointingly straightforward—a silly hybrid of The Exorcist and Harry Potter. When a strange artifact is discovered beneath a church in Rome, it turns out to contain a musty robe that reawakens the Mother of Tears, an evil witch hellbent on bringing about the Second Age of Witches. Only one woman stands in her way—Sarah (Asia Argento, the director’s daughter), the daughter of the lone witch that was able to battle the Mother of Tears to a standstill. It’s hard to tell whether Argento actually expects the audience to take any of this stuff seriously. The movie frequently dances close to the edge of self-parody, only to pull back just in time for a big emotional moment. At least the deaths are appropriately gruesome, most notably an awesomely painful eyeball-gouging scene that almost makes up for the general stupidity of the rest of the movie. Almost, but not quite.

Extras: A half-hour making of documentary and a 20-minute one-on-one interview with Argento.

Sex and the City (Warner Bros., $34.98)

When Michael Patrick King agreed to transfer the beloved HBO series Sex and the City—which he shepherded though its fourth, fifth and final seasons—to the big screen, there were two ways he could have approached the assignment. The first would have been to take the show’s iconic heroines, sex columnist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker), uptight lawyer Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon), naïve homemaker Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) and sexually voracious publicist Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall), out of their comfy confines in New York and plop them down in a place where they can experience new challenges and fresh faces. The second would have been to make a feature-length episode of the series only on a grand scale—bigger costumes, bigger locations, bigger squabbles, bigger running time, bigger everything. Ultimately, King chose the latter approach and while that approach pissed off a lot of critics, who spewed vitriol all over the movie for being too long and too indulgent, his choice will probably thrill the show’s sizeable fanbase. Unfortunately, this is King’s first attempt at writing a movie script and it shows. The narrative unfolds in 30-minute chunks and, if you know the series well enough, you can tell exactly where he would have had the end credits roll after each half-hour. Were he a more disciplined filmmaker, he could have easily gotten this 142-minute behemoth down to a more manageable running time. But if his screenplay falls short, the four actresses and New York itself helps keep Sex and the City afloat.

Extras: Befitting the movie’s blockbuster status, this two-disc DVD includes a number of deleted and extended scenes that pushes an already long movie into Lord of the Rings territory, as well as several making-of featurettes and an exhaustive commentary track from King.

Deception (Fox, $27.98)

Proof that even the best actors can’t always overcome awful material, the relentlessly dumb thriller Deception wastes the talents of three, count ‘em three, great stars—Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams. McGregor plays meek accountant Jonathan McQuarry, who is introduced into the world of anonymous sex clubs via his new best buddy, a slick businessman named Wyatt Bose (Jackman). Although he enjoys the thrill of no-strings-attached booty calls at first, the numbers cruncher starts to desire something a little more permanent. Enter S (Williams), a gorgeous mystery girl who also seems to be looking for love. Just when Jonathan thinks he’s found The One, he quickly learns that there’s more to both S and Wyatt than meets the eye. At this point, the sex club stuff is completely abandoned for a series of C-grade plot twists that most moviegoers will be able to spot coming a mile away. I wish I could say that the three actors do the best they can with this script, but the truth is that none of them seem particularly happy to be here. Only Jackman displays anything that resembles a personality, while McGregor sleepwalks through the movie and Williams looks deeply uncomfortable every time she enters the frame. Here’s hoping that this formidable ensemble gets the chance to collaborate on a much better movie sometime soon.
Extras: A commentary track from first-time director Marcel Langenegger, a making-of featurette, several deleted scenes (including an alternate ending) and a short documentary about the concept of the sex club featuring interviews with several so-called “sex experts.”

Also on DVD
Sports movie fans and screwball comedy devotees had a lot of hope for George Clooney’s period pigskin laffer Leatherheads (Universal, $29.98), which the grey-haired sex symbol co-wrote, directed and starred in. Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t satisfy either crowd; there’s not enough on-field action to make it a decent football flick and it’s not amusing enough to keep our funny bones tickled. While Clooney and co-star John Krasinski seem to be having fun, the film’s biggest killjoy is Renee Zellweger, horribly miscast as a ’20s-era version of Katharine Hepburn. DVD extras include a surprisingly subdued commentary from Clooney, a batch of deleted scenes and several short featurettes. Another sports movie—kind of—is The Foot Fist Way (Parmount, $29.99), a not-as-funny-as-it-thinks-it-is low-budget comedy originally filmed in 2006. Danny McBride (the scene-stealer from this summer’s Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder) stars as an obnoxious Tae Kwan Do instructor with major marital problems and a dojo populated by underachievers. McBride and his director/co-star/buddy Jody Hill contribute a yak track and at least a dozen deleted scenes—as well as a really strange alternate ending—round out the special features. In the world of actual sports, A&E continues their excellent Essential Games line of baseball DVDs with The Essential Games of Yankee Stadium (A&E, $59.95), a set of six classic games that lit up the House that Ruth Built over its multi-decade history. Obviously, it’s a bittersweet time in Yankee-land right now, what with the team failing to make the playoffs for the first time since 1993 and the curtain coming down over the current Yankee Stadium as soon as the season ends. Still, the storied ballpark will live on in fans’ memories as well as DVD sets like this.
Blu-ray owners can look forward to adding Michael Bay’s Transformers (Paramount, $39.99) and the all-star animated comedy Madagascar (Paramount, $39.99) to their shelves this week as both make their high-def debut. The more-than-meets-the-eye antics of Optimus Prime and his cohorts looking particularly good in Blu.

Baseball isn’t the only area where A&E is dominating the DVD market this week. The company is also putting out the two best TV-on-DVD sets, Horatio Hornblower: Collector’s Edition (A&E, $59.95) and Agatha Christie’s Poirot: The Definitive Colleciton (A&E, $99.95). The former collects all eight BBC-produced adventures about the heroic Horatio Hornblower (played by Ioan “Mr. Fantastic” Gruffudd), a 19th century swashbuckling sailor who experiences mystery, intrigue and action on the high seas. The latter packages 12 films starring the late mystery writer Agatha Christie’s most famous creation: the meticulous, if overbearing Gallic sleuth Hercule Poirot. Keep both of these sets in mind as the holidays approach for your PBS-addicted relatives. Also out this week is Cashmere Mafia: The Complete Series (Sony, $29.95), the short-lived ABC series that was created and produced by Sex and the City guru Darren Star. As you may or may not remember, there were two competing SATC-type shows that debuted last winter, Cashmere Mafia and NBC’s Lipstick Jungle (which, as it happens, was created by Star’s old partner-in-crime Candace Bushnell a.k.a. The Real Carrie Bradshaw). Neither series attracted much critical love or big-time ratings, but NBC renewed Jungle for a second season, while the members of the Mafia bid farewell after seven episodes. At least ABC was able to console itself with their surprise hit Samantha Who? (ABC, $29.99), which stars the always-appealing Christina Applegate as an amnesiac who learns that losing her memory may have been the best thing that ever happened to her. It’s a comedy, I swear! Speaking of shows that are surprisingly funny, BBC’s new sci-fi hit Torchwood, a spin-off the stellar new Dr. Who series, deftly mixes humor and adventure in each action-packed, alien-filled episode. Torchwood: The Complete Second Season (BBC America, $79.98) hits stands today and copies of the first season box set should also be easy to find online and in stores. In classic TV news, Schoolhouse Rock: Election Collection (Disney, $19.99) is a special political-themed edition of the retro children’s series that taught kids all about the world around them through songs and funny cartoons. (It also inspired one of the funniest Simpsons moments ever, when Bart and Lisa are forced to watch a Schoolhouse Rock-type show after Itchy and Scratchy are taken off the air.) Friday the 13th: The Series ($54.99) is another vintage throwback; this late ’80s syndicated series actually had nothing to do with the famous film franchise beyond the name. Set in a haunted antiques store, the show followed three employees who deal with a variety of cursed artifacts week in and week out. Finally, although it’s not technically a TV series, the thriller Pathology (MGM, $27.98) does star two well-known small-screen faces, Alyssa Milano of Who’s the Boss? and Charmed fame and Milo Ventimiglia, best known for his role on Heroes and for dating his super-hot co-star Hayden Panettiere. Briefly released in theaters earlier this year, Pathology comes to DVD with some featurettes, deleted scenes and a commentary track.