For the week of July 29th, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is bringing director Deon Taylor's The Intruder to Blu-ray. The Intruder is, by and large, a fairly crude and obvious thriller. Crafted very much in the mold of early '90s potboilers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Pacific Heights - here, upwardly mobile Scott and Annie Howard (Michael Ealy and Meagan Good, respectively) buy their dream house in Napa Valley, only to contend with the house's former owner (Dennis Quaid), a too-genial widower who grows more and more unhinged as he keeps trying to ingratiate himself - The Intruder telegraphs every move it makes with the thudding gong of a steel drum. Quaid discusses the beautiful-but-deadly fox glove plant practically down the barrel of the camera so we'll get that the film sees the flower as a metaphor for his creeping menace; as soon as Ealy connects his distaste for guns to an oh-so-tragic backstory (his brother was a victim of gun violence), we know the film will end with him taking up arms against Quaid. At times like these, The Intruder functions less like a movie than it does the MacDonald's of studio programmers: the fewer surprises, the easier it is to guzzle down. And yet I can't quite dismiss the whole endeavor. Despite the creaking plot machinery and Quaid's terrible performance, Ealy and Good keep you semi-invested in The Intruder even when you've figured out all its major and minor moves. They're such compelling presences. I often think of how Ealy stole Margaret with like two scenes at his disposal, or how thoroughly Good energizes the already zippy Shazam when she shows up at the big climax. Best of all? They manage to inject their characters with something resembling authentic human behavior, revealing little fissures and cracks that have compromised their union before Quaid shows up. We learn that Scott has cheated on Annie, and whenever he's at work, we see him perilously close to repeating his mistakes. With any other actor, this stuff would reek of melodrama, but Ealy goes small, underplaying Scott's infidelities until they become all the more painful. He's more embarrassed of this stuff than anyone else, but he might not be able to stop himself. And Good has the even tougher part. The David Loughery script makes Annie act like a moron: no matter how slavering and twitchy Quaid gets, Annie keeps smiling and inviting him over for wine and pizza. Yet Good makes you believe her character's innate kindness is a feature, not a bug. Annie is so good and decent and open that she wants to see the best in everyone. Through sheer performance alone, Good redeems the most risible portions of the film's Idiot Plot. She also gets the film's standout moment: when Annie finally realizes what a nut Quaid is, she holds her composure and gently talks him out of the house before collapsing in a rush of hyperventilation and sobbing. As with Ealy, Good acts like a human being. That's what we remember. The other stuff is just noise.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that "certainly the movie might have been made better if Quaid's character, and his performance, weren't backed up against a predictable, trite, and tired arc that moves along a crude, basic trajectory that sees the movie hit, and embrace, all of the classic shots and scenarios. The audience knows how it's all going to play out well before the characters, in what order, who's likely to die, and where to look to spot Charlie lurking in shadows or gazing through windows. Quaid, to his credit, is a wild card that makes the movie tolerable, running with the idea that Charlie is a monster, not a troubled soul but an unquestionably insane individual with whom the audience cannot relate. Michael Ealy is well cast as Scott, a young, successful man who has to leave his comfort zone, man up, and confront Charlie in a way that might be uncomfortable, but necessary, because he has him pegged from the beginning but doesn't know just how far that particular rabbit hole runs. Meagan Good is quite good as Annie, the loving, trusting wife who buys Charlie's story hook, line, and sinker and repeatedly invites him into her home, brushing off the creepy vibes that alert her husband's radar, essentially offering an extended thanks to the man who helped make her dreams come true."
From Lionsgate Home Entertainment comes the high-concept romantic comedy Long Shot. As a rule, I've nothing against "high concept." And Jonathan Levine's Long Shot has, in theory, a pretty solid one - what if the brainy but slightly aloof Secretary of State (Charlize Theron) mounted a presidential campaign where she threw caution to the wind and said exactly what was on her mind? That's high concept, it's politically resonant, and it's a great vehicle for Theron, who has the misfortune of being a full-fledged movie star at a time when the Movie Star itself is fading away. When Long Shot is working, it's almost exclusively because of her. There's a not unamusing sequence where her straight-laced Charlotte Field decides she wants to break bad and "do a Molly"; just as she's riding the crest of her ecstasy-high, she has to broker a hostage situation in the Middle East. Theron is so good at playing goofy and letting her quirks spark off her movie-star glamour. The problem is, the movie is interested in the wrong high-concept hook. Instead of doubling down on Field and her nontraditional campaign, Long Shot settles for the unlikely romance between Field and her newest speechwriter, the shambling Vice-esque journalist Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), who balances his earnest pursuit of truth, justice, and the American Way with bouts of profanity-laced juvenilia and copious drug use. It's very much Rogen in his comfort zone, and we're supposed to find it oh-so comically unbelievable that Theron would ever fall in love with this shambling mess. And that's the problem: we do, and not in a good way. I don't hate the kind of mismatched partners rom-com that Long Shot is offering. The film moves smoothly enough, and there are a few good jokes and lots of welcome appearances from accomplished farceurs. Bob Odenkirk is playing things a little too broadly as a President who wants to quit being Head of State so he can transition into movies; but Claudia O'Doherty is a delight as the lone female host of a Fox and Friends talk show (she grows slowly more contemptuous of her idiot male co-hosts over the course of the movie); and Randall Park underplays to nice effect as Flarsky's long-suffering boss. Best of all are the great June Diane Raphael (playing Field's withering Chief of Staff) and O'Shea Jackson Jr., Flarsky's boisterous best friend and the movie's not-so-secret weapon. Jackson loves casual substance abuse, the GOP, and God, and he elevates all his scenes to such a degree that you wish the movie had given him more to do. And Rogen and Theron are appealing performers - they just don't work that well together. It's not that they're mismatched in terms of mutual physical attractiveness; Theron had great romantic chemistry with Patton Oswalt in Young Adult. Rather, Theron is so composed and direct and interesting that you don't buy that she'd have any connection (romantic, professional, or otherwise) to this immature boy. She's Furiosa. He once deadpanned the relative merits and demerits of seeing a donkey show in Tijuana. There's a disconnect between what Long Shot wants from her and Rogen, and the movie never quite sells us on why we should care.
Finally, Warner Archive is bringing the classic crime-comedy The Thin Man to Blu-ray. The Thin Man has long enjoyed a sterling reputation thanks to the following elements: the interplay between stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as well as the fact that director W.S. Van Dyke shot the entire film in just twelve days. On the subject of the former, there are few Hollywood screen couples as delightful as Powell and Loy are. Eighty-five years later, their Nick and Nora Charles still play like true originals. Nora's an heiress with money to burn, and Nick's a retired detective content to help her blaze through it. They love each other, their dog Asta (the adorable wire fox terrier Skippy), and drinking, and in that order. It takes a little too long for Nick and Nora to enter the movie - Van Dyke has to establish some moderately interminable exposition involving Clyde Wynant (Edward Ellis), the titular "thin man" whose disappearance kicks off the film's central mystery - but when they do, The Thin Man breezes into snappier, more surprising dimensions. For the most part, Nick and Nora are equals. Nora is just as enthusiastic about working the case as Nick is even though he's quick to remove her from the equation (two details that any modern remake would change: Nick wouldn't send Nora away when he ventures into dangerous locations, and he wouldn't punch her in the face to knock her away from a gunsel's bullet), and she can match him drink for drink any night of the week. You will find it very hard not to fall in love with Nora when she orders "six martinis, all lined up in a row" to catch up with her husband's drinking, and harder still when the film cuts to her hangover the next morning, floored from all that liquor in such quick succession. He buys her a fur coat that she won't take off even though it's stifling outside; she buys him a BB gun and barely bats an eye when he blows out a windowpane shooting at their Christmas tree. They banter and parry - much of their crosstalk improvised, according to Loy - and in these moments, The Thin Man becomes something far more vital than a cheapie MGM programmer: a witty, deeply affectionate ode to the pleasures of being married.
In his Blu-ray review, Randy Miller III wrote that the film "feels like a character piece first and a mystery second. In fact, aside from Nick's eventual participation - which officially begins during a late-night dog walk and climaxes in a classic 'whodunit' dinner party sequence - the core story isn't nearly as compelling as the colorful characters that make up The Thin Man's world. It's a dense and layered mystery, sure, but one that doesn't seem expertly planned...which isn't necessarily a complaint, mind you. The Thin Man's lightweight and charming tone are what drive its engine and, combined with the terrific lead characters, it's no wonder the franchise spawned more books, the five movie sequels, a radio program, a TV series, musicals and stage plays, and probably even a breakfast cereal if it were made recently. I'm thinking little oat "N"s with martini-shaped marshmallows, and maybe even a cute little Asta figurine inside the box...The Thin Man remains a very accessible and entertaining slice of pre-Code 1930s cinema and, if you've somehow never seen it before, a potential gateway into several sequels, remakes, and other iterations that have surfaced during the last 85 (!) years."