For the week of September 5th, Warner Home Entertainment is finally giving a Blu-ray upgrade to The Iron Giant. Better late than never, I guess, but it seems perverse that viewers should have to wait at all for one of the 20th Century's great animated adventures. Dumped by the studio during its initial release, The Iron Giant quickly developed a devoted cult following; you get the sense that if Warner had more confidence back in 1999, people would hold the film in the same regard as other Class of '99 Members like The Matrix or Fight Club or Being John Malkovich or Bringing Out the Dead or Magnolia. In its own quiet, unassuming way, The Iron Giant is every bit their equal. For his first full-length feature, Ratatouille and The Incredibles director Brad Bird takes audiences back to Maine, circa 1957. Cold War tensions couldn't be higher, even for young Hogarth Hughes (voiced by Eli Marienthal), so he's understandably worried when he discovers a giant metal automaton (Vin Diesel, in what's probably his best performance) of unknown provenance hiding in the Maine woods. However, Hogarth and the Giant are able to look past all the paranoia surrounding them and form a deep friendship, but their relationship might not be enough to prevent disaster when an unctuous government stooge (the sublimely hateful Chris McDonald) decides to try and use the Giant as an excuse to escalate World War III. That description reads as more grave than most children's entertainments skew, and in fairness, The Iron Giant retains an admirably clear-eyed and honest viewpoint towards the messy realities of the world - Bird knows that sometimes, the worst is unavoidable, and that good people can suffer when there are too many bad ones. But he also allows for great tenderness and humor. The scenes where Hogarth and the Giant just laze around have the unforced grace of a lazy Sunday, as do the more human-scaled moments between Hogarth, his mom (Jennifer Aniston), and a local beatnik artist (Harry Connick Jr.). We care about these people, so when the outside world begins to violently intervene, The Iron Giant takes on the tone of great tragedy. The drama culminates in a beat that...well, I've seen it render the most hardened of moviegoers to blubbering tears. One could argue that the right people all saw The Iron Giant. Bird became one of the premiere animated auteurs in short order, and you can trace key DNA from this film straight to Wreck-It Ralph or Guardians of the Galaxy (hell, you get the sense Diesel knows what a high-water mark his work here was, given the degree to which he cannibalized it when he voiced Groot). But that's still not good enough. I want everyone to see this movie. Now, more of us have the chance. Thus endeth the lesson.
Michael Reuben correctly called the film "both a comedy and an adventure, but the film's emotional core is the deepening relationship between Hogarth and his hulking new pal. As events unfold, Kent Manley's concern that the Giant might be a weapon turns out to be justified, but with his memory gone and Hogarth as his guide, the metal leviathan becomes a gentle and caring creature. An encounter with deer hunters introduces him to the concept of 'death,' which initially makes no sense to the alien machine, because he is capable of self-repair, but which Hogarth explains to him with a clarity and simplicity of which most adults would be incapable. Brad Bird's initial pitch for The Iron Giant consisted of a simple question: 'What if a gun developed a soul?' Under Hogarth's tutelage, the Giant discovers the soul beneath his forbidding exterior, but his better nature is challenged when he is found by Manley and attacked with the full fury of General Rogard's military forces. Defensive reflexes trigger the Giant's original programming as a weapon of war, and the awesome power of the alien technology concealed inside him prompts an escalation of firepower from his human attackers. In the end, though, it is the Giant's devotion to Hogarth that rescues the town from destruction."
From Sony Pictures Home Entertainment comes Whit Stillman's delightful period comedy Love & Friendship. Stillman has adapted Jane Austen's epistolary novel Lady Susan for the screen, and really, it's a wonder Stillman hasn't approached Austen sooner. Austen delighted in satirizing the social foibles inherent to the various class systems, and literally the only thing different about Stillman's approach (in films like Stillman's Metropolitan, Barcelona, The Last Days of Disco, and Damsels in Distress) is that he's telling stories set in the present-day. He shares Austen's archness, her dry wit, and the way she simultaneously ridicules and loves her oft-flustered protagonists. Love & Friendship finally makes it official, with Stillman relocating to the late 1700s in order to focus on Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale), a widow who values her social ambitions over pretty much anything else (her daughter, her reputation, the happiness of literally everyone around her). Lady Susan is Austen and Stillman's liveliest comic conceit. In most Austen tales, there's a character like Lady Susan, but she's strictly support, a villain that helps us sympathize with Austen's more demure heroines. Not so here. Lady Susan is the main character, and it's a trip to watch her bulldoze her way through the other characters, especially the ones that would usually draw most of our attentions. Morfydd Clark plays Lady Susan's daughter Frederica, and you get the sense that in another text, she'd be the hero, but Stillman and Austen help subvert that trope, making Frederica so painfully shy that any potential resistance to her mother seems a biological impossibility. And Beckinsale works wonders with Susan's monstrous self-importance. Years of slumming it in Hollywood fare like Underworld haven't diminished her gifts: as anyone familiar with Cold Comfort Farm or Shooting Fish can attest, Beckinsale is such a witty and inventive performer. She gets such a kick out of being the worst that we end up marveling at Lady Susan's machinations (better still: her sparkling interplay with co-star Chloë Sevigny - in their brief moments together, they turn Love & Friendship into a stealth prequel to The Last Days of Disco, where they first played best friends). Granted, you get the sense that Stillman has rigged the game in Lady Susan's favor. No one is her match, be it Xavier Samuel's 1790s dreamboat (Samuel is handsome but deathly boring - would that Stillman had cast a more lively performer, but maybe someone more dynamic would have thrown the balance) or Tom Bennett's epically stupid Sir James Martin (although Bennett comes close to stealing the film from Beckinsale: he's playing a Coen Brothers-level moron here to brilliant effect). And ultimately, that's okay. It's Lady Susan's world: everyone else is lucky to drift in her orbit. A wonderful little gem.
Martin Liebman wrote that "the movie takes on a rather playful tone, necessary by way of its off-color main character and the even more off-color man in the middle of it. Lady Susan distances herself from other Austen primaries, engaging in scandal and manipulation in a manner almost reminiscent of the stepmother in Cinderella, but without the doormat stepdaughter to push around or a second biological daughter competing for her mother's manipulations. Rather, it's Lady Susan conniving her way about polite society, ruffling feathers and upsetting the status quo of established love and marriage in an effort to make a place for herself amongst the upper crust. In that way, it seems a rather traditional narrative but made unique by her antihero methods. The movie's comical undertones offset the more serious machinations and balance the character's darker workings with an approachable, larger-scope ease of entrance. The cast plays it well, each of the main players satisfactorily understanding of their position in the story and bringing the best of both the serious currents and humorous structure with ease. Beckinsale becomes Lady Susan with uncanny precision. Her ability to intermix a high-class façade with her gutter wheeling and dealing obviously makes the movie. Beckinsale demonstrates a command of the character in the entirety of the necessary range, always finding the perfect delivery in interactions both grandiose and intimate alike. Morfydd Clark impresses as her daughter, pulled through the scheming and capturing that identifiable teenage rebellion while still maintaining as much period decorum as the character allows. The star of the show, however, is Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin, the buffoon character in the middle of it all who is too dense and slow witted to see how he's worked throughout the story."
However, if Jane Austen isn't your thing, might I suggest something far less subtle but just as enjoyable: Shout Factory's new Blu-ray of Rowdy Harrington's singular, delirious B-movie Road House. I can safely say that there's nothing quite like Road House on the market. It's one of those rare mainstream programmers that gets more deranged the more you think about it. Sure, in its broad strokes, it's a Western. We're relocated to the Midwest (Jasper, Missouri, to be precise) instead of the Old West, but the setup isn't dissimilar from something like Tombstone as a no-B.S. enforcer (Patrick Swayze) goes toe-to-toe against the corruption of a local crime syndicate (led by the great Ben Gazzara, devouring every last morsel of this paycheck role). So far, so normal. But we're in the 1980s, and that decade's excess creeps into the narrative, starting with our hero. Swayze's Dalton is a silent-but-strong badass, sure. He's also (hold on to your butts) a) the world's greatest bouncer (yep, that's a quantifiable thing) with b) a Ph.D. in philosophy from NYU (because of course he does) who has an affinity c) for advice that sounds like bad Zen koans ("I want you to be nice until it's time not to be nice." "Pain don't hurt.") and d) ripping bad dudes' throats out. And the more you pull at the mystery that is Dalton, the more treasures Road House reveals. Like his steamy, vaguely uncomfortable relationship with Kelly Lynch's sexy doctor (check out Lynch's great story about Road House and Bill Murray over at The A.V. Club). Or the surprisingly deep roots of his bouncer hierarchy, beginning, as one expects, with Sam Elliott's gloriously mulleted bouncing mentor. Or the many bar scenes, which unfold with all the elasticity (and logic, frankly) of a Tex Avery cartoon. So much about Road House is so cracked that it ends up crossing over from bad-movie nonsense into something resembling genre nirvana. It's so dopey it's profound. Or so profound it's dopey. See it for yourself and delight in its glories.
Jeffrey Kauffman noted that "the supplemental features also detail how in essence Road House is in fact a modern day western, making that watering hole allusion above perhaps even more relevant. Dalton is the "outsider" who arrives in a rowdy enclave in order to bring order, much as any time honored hero in a ten gallon Stetson does in iconic Westerns of yore. Dalton's challenges are made quite evident in the first sequence at the Double Deuce, where his arrival in a Mercedes invites umbrage from the '"Muricans' out front, who disparage his choice not to drive a 'Detroit' vehicle (one of the running gags in the film involves Dalton subsequently picking up a nice mid-sixties American sedan, which is then repeatedly vandalized). Things are even worse inside the club, where it becomes evident that the entire clientele is aching for a fight, or at least some kind of illegal activity. Road House's hyperbolic tendencies are on display from the get go, with Dalton's calm, assured responses providing a counterweight to the patently insane shenanigans surrounding him."
Finally, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is offering Ryan Murphy's phenomenal limited series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson this week. Murphy is no stranger to the vagaries of the limited series (his American Horror Story helped popularize the format before shows like Fargo and True Detective came around), but this time, he's sticking to the historical record with a kaleidoscopic look at the 1994-1995 O.J. Simpson Murder Case. There's a way to tell this story in strictly procedural terms - hell, Ezra Edelman's brilliant documentary O.J. - Made in America does just that - and while Murphy and screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (both of whom cemented their biopic bonafides writing The People Vs. Larry Flynt and Ed Wood) do stick closely to the historical record, The People v. O.J. Simpson isn't interested in presenting a strict docudrama version of the case. Sometimes the show hurdles into farce, whether it's alluding to the...ahem...future family issues of Simpson friend and attorney Robert Kardashian (a terrific David Schwimmer) or the celebrity delusions of Judge Lance Ito (Kenneth Choi). Other times it's a strict character study, both of Simpson (Cuba Gooding Jr.) as well as the people in his orbit, most notably prosecuting attorneys Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden (Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown, who both emerge as the stealth protagonists of The People v. O.J. Simpson). You could also subtitle this season "A Story of Los Angeles," given its insights into the racial, social, and political makeup of the city in the mid-1990s. And sometimes, it's high theater, especially when Courtney Vance's scene-stealing Johnnie Cochran emerges on Simpson's defense. None of this should work, except Murphy lives on the edge between good and bad taste, and only he could pull off what The People v. O.J. Simpson achieves. It's maybe the twenty-first century's seminal tragicomic study of race relations in America. That's not to say that The People v. O.J. Simpson is flawless. It wouldn't be a Ryan Murphy show if something didn't sound a discordant note, and we have two such tones here: John Travolta, whose Robert Shapiro quickly lapses into off-putting caricature thanks to Travolta's bizarre vocal affections and strange prosthetics, and Gooding, who, try as he might, lacks Simpson's fearsomely magnetic presence. However, it's saying that the highs are so compelling that even setbacks regarding the nominal stars of the show don't really register. It remains to be seen if Murphy can keep this going. To date, he's much better at starting shows than seeing them through (videGlee, Nip/Tuck, and American Horror Story, all of which enjoyed stellar inaugural years before curdling into things far more labored and unpleasant), and his plans for American Crime Story: Season 2 suggest a level of ambition that could spill out of control; for his follow-up act, Murphy wants to cover the injustices in and around New Orleans circa Hurricane Katrina. But he's certainly bought himself ample good will. The People v. O.J. Simpson is a towering network achievement, and as fully realized an example of the limited series as I've ever seen.