For the week of May 21st, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing Side Effects to Blu-ray. Steven Soderbergh has claimed that this feature will be his last theatrical venture - he shot his Liberace docudrama, Behind the Candelabra, for HBO - and if the notoriously prolific director is telling the truth, then he's going out on a high note. Side Effects ranks alongside Out of Sight and the Ocean's Trilogy as one of Soderbergh's most playful works; he and Contagion screenwriter Scott Z. Burns load the picture with all sorts of movie references, from Rosemary's Baby to Psycho to Body Heat. But this isn't just a goof for film buffs - Soderbergh keeps the stakes high, thanks to his predictably elegant filmmaking and great performances from the likes of Jude Law and Rooney Mara, who bests her Academy Award-nominated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo turn as a young socialite seemingly in the thrall of a mental breakdown.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown comments that "to watch the [Side Effects] trailers is to watch an entirely different movie; a topical drama that shines a harsh light on the ills of the pharmaceutical industry and the dangers of anti-depressant medications, which are being prescribed with questionable, arguably alarming frequency. Side Effects is not that film. Oh, it pretends to be for quite some time, and the intricacies of its long-con are both masterfully structured and genuinely shocking. Therein, though, lies the carefully wound psychological thriller's greatest asset and greatest flaw."
While Side Effects marks Steven Soderbergh's exodus from the world of Hollywood, the action-adventure The Last Stand announces the big-screen return of screen icon Arnold Schwarzenegger. Minus some brief, jokey cameos in Around the World in 80 Days, The Rundown, and the two Expendables movies, Schwarzenegger has spent the last ten years focusing on his career as governor of California, but with his political tenure now ended, he has the time for programmers like The Last Stand. The film isn't at the same level as Schwarzenegger's classic Terminator and Predator features - it's way too predictable by even Schwarzenegger's standards, and there's no tonal consistency among the (needlessly) large supporting cast - though it more than satisfies in terms of visceral, on-screen mayhem. Director Kim Jee-woon brings some of the fluid action choreography that galvanized The Good, the Bad, the Weird and I Saw the Devil to the proceedings, and Schwarzenegger fits into the chaos like a comfortable old jacket. He's in his element here, and that familiarity is a pleasure to watch.
Jeffrey Kauffman used his Blu-ray review to brand the film "a lot more entertaining than it probably has any right to be...There's absolutely nothing new under the blazing Arizona sun in The Last Stand, but I was actually a little shocked at how breezily entertaining this film is. It's often quite gruesomely violent, but it has the requisite Schwarzenegger-esque sense of humor (replete with lame one liners) and the action is impeccably well staged. You'll see virtually every plot point coming from a mile (or more) off, but chances are you won't really care all that much because there's enough mayhem to keep you properly distracted."
Warner Brothers offers up a comedy classic with its second HD iteration of National Lampoon's Vacation. This year is the picture's thirtieth anniversary, and viewing it afresh is somewhat of a revelation: this first Vacation is markedly tougher and raunchier than the more family-friendly fare that followed it (National Lampoon's European Vacation, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Vegas Vacation, which also makes its Blu-ray debut on Tuesday). I'd hate to spoil any of the gags for those unfamiliar with director Harold Ramis' feature, but let's just say that the Caddyshack and Groundhog Day helmer finds self-love, incest, and dead relatives just as comedically viable as star Chevy Chase's manic, increasingly desperate need for vacation togetherness. A word on Chase - before subpar sequels and the Community debacle diminished his brand, he was at the top of his game in National Lampoon's Vacation, turning Clark Griswold into an indelible mix of charisma and fearless self-loathing.
Martin Liebman's Blu-ray review noted how "director Harold Ramis...and writer John Hughes allow Clark's blunders to pile up one after another, and that plays right into Chase's strengths as a comedian. While Vacation finds plenty of laughs in Clark's misadventures, it's his "everything's fine, nothing to see here, move alone now" reactions and the way he tries to go with the flow and mold a solution to a sticky situation on-the-fly only to find himself in deeper trouble with his family and whatever hot water he's landed himself in that truly defines the picture's humor. It's the constant build-up of Clark's insistence that everything's going to be alright now and for the rest of the vacation that's not only the main theme here but in most of the Vacation films. It's rare to find a formula and an actor that works time after time, but that's a major reason why the Vacation series has maintained its appeal over the years."
The Criterion Collection adds Medium Cool to its Blu-ray catalog this week. The feature-film directorial debut of Haskell Wexler (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Medium Cool finds the Academy Award-winning cinematographer experimenting boldly with cinematic form. While the film's narrative is pure melodrama - a cynical news cameraman (Robert Forster, Jackie Brown) regains his humanity through his relationship with a beleaguered single mom (Verna Bloom, National Lampoon's Animal House) - Wexler's treatment of the plot is boldly revolutionary. He inserts Forster's character (and us) into the pressing news stories of the times, shooting his actors alongside actual social happenings. The result is a heightened realism where fiction and non-fiction merge as Forster and Bloom make their way through the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the Chicago riots that followed it.
Svet Atanasov wrote that "Medium Cool remains firmly grounded in reality - the angry political statements and the total mayhem surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago never once feel artificial. There is none of the in-your-face preaching that is often present in Godard's most radical films either (typically delivered by a passionate narrator). On the contrary, like John the viewer is pushed right in the middle of the chaos and then left alone to make sense of it. Something similar happens in Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, but eventually all of the scattered pieces there are properly aligned. There is no old-fashioned Hollywood logic in Medium Cool, which is why the film looks and feels deadly serious...Forster and Bloom are spectacular together. The latter, in particular, really does look like a woman on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown at the end of the film. It is also virtually impossible to tell how many extras were used for some of the mass scenes as they look incredibly real. (The film does use authentic footage from convention preparations as well as extracts from popular political speeches)."
Finally, we end the week with a Hayao Miyazaki double-feature from Walt Disney Home Entertainment: My Neighbor Totoro and Howl's Moving Castle. Totoro, the earliest of these two films - it made its Japanese premiere in 1988 - is one of Miyazaki's most beloved Studio Ghibli works; it tells the story of two sisters who become acquainted with the magical forest creature of the title. This picture finds Miyazaki at his most gentle, but My Neighbor Totoro loses nothing because it lacks the intrigue and bombast of his Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Totoro's wit and humanism make it an enduring favorite.
2004's Howl's Moving Castle, by comparison, is far more aggressive. Miyazaki's heroine is Sophie, a young woman turned prematurely old by the machinations of the Witch of the Waste; in order to escape her wizened state, Sophie must team up with mercurial wizard Howl and brave an ever-encroaching, warlike presence. Narratively, Howl's Moving Castle lacks the perfection of My Neighbor Totoro or the great Spirited Away - it's too sprawling and feels, at times, if Miyazaki constructed it from leftover ideas he couldn't fit into other movies. That said, this freewheeling quality gives the film a certain ramshackle charm. It is endlessly quirky and interesting, and the visuals, especially the ones dramatizing the titular castle, are among the most breathtaking of Miyazaki's late-period works. Plus, the master animator gives the film's antiwar message a surreal, frightening immediacy that recalls Isao Takahata's masterwork Grave of the Fireflies.