DVD Traffic Report: February 2008 Archives
February 11, 2024
Gone Baby Gone (Miramax)
In this gripping, self-assured crime drama, Ben Affleck flexes directorial muscles that nobody knew he had (except maybe Mama Affleck). Set largely in the working-class neighborhoods of South Boston, it begins with the disappearance of a four-year-old girl from her Dorchester home and ends in deeply ambivalent territory. Frustrated by law-enforcement efforts, the girl’s aunt and uncle hire a local husband-and-wife private-investigation team (Casey Affleck and Michelle Monaghan) to pound the pavement for leads. Complicating matters, the girl’s mother (Amy Ryan, teriff) is a drug addict with unpleasant entanglements of her own. It takes a while to gel, but eventually works up a tension and complexity that are underscored by a taut, troubled lead performance from the director’s younger brother Casey. There’s something going on behind that character’s eyes that’s hard to figure out, even after the film’s richly suggestive final scene. It’s not a perfect movie, but there’s a depth and urgency, not to mention a flotilla of generally expert actors, that carry it over the rough spots. The elder Affleck, who doubled as co-screenwriter, avoids pretension or high seriousness — this is highly entertaining, pulpy stuff. But it generates a provocative atmosphere of moral ambiguity that lingers for days. It’s a modest film, but an excellent one. (A version of this review originally appeared in the White Plains Times.)
Buy it from Amazon.com: Gone Baby Gone or Gone Baby Gone [Blu-ray]
We Own the Night (Sony)
With the heart of Greek tragedy and the soul of film noir, We Own the Night takes an intractable situation as its premise and then spends two hours showing us bad things happening. Joaquin Phoenix is the devil-may-care Bobby Green, who manages a successful-but-shady Brooklyn nightclub — and just happens to have a brother (Mark Wahlberg) and father (Robert Duvall) in high-profile jobs with the NYPD. They could use Bobby’s help infiltrating the Russian mob, but his loyalties are elsewhere. Once Bobby wakes up to the idea that he must choose sides, We Own the Night so vividly depicts his various betrayals of trust that the sentiment expressed in the film’s final scene feels somehow both monstrous and hilarious. Whether you enjoy this will depend in part on how much you mind a script that spells every little nuance of the story out in clumsy lines of dialogue — it’s writer/director James Gray’s worst impulse. But Gray has an appealingly old-fashioned approach to filmmaking and, of course, a terrific cast. (Phoenix, in particular, has never been better.) What’s more, he devises two show-stopping action scenes that propel the film’s second half — including a stylish, heart-pounding car chase in the rain. Good stuff. (This review originally appeared in the White Plains Times.)
Buy it from Amazon.com: We Own the Night, We Own the Night [Blu-ray] or We Own the Night [UMD for PSP]
Continue reading DVD Traffic Report: February 12, 2024.
February 4, 2024
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner)
Sometimes I wonder if I overrated this one, starved as I sometimes am for a sense of lyricism — anybody's sense of lyricism — at the multiplex. And then I remember the arresting cinematography by Roger Deakins (this, No Country for Old Men, and In the Valley of Elah seeing release in the same calendar year constituting some kind of triple play, even if I have a few problems with Elah); the presence of Brad Pitt as a laconic but intensely charismatic icon; and a sneaks-up-on-you performance by Casey Affleck as a kind of emotional parasite. And I decide that no, it is pretty great, and I look forward to catching it again this week. Here's what I wrote about it in October:
Tracing the roots of celebrity culture all the way back to 1883, writer/director Andrew Dominik imagines the last few months of the life of Jesse James as a hazy battle of wits between the sharp, charismatic bandit (Brad Pitt) and the gang of thieves he no longer trusts. James has good reason to be wary — two of his men are plotting to turn him in for the reward money, and another, the young wannabe Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), exhibits a neediness that borders on creepy. (He even sneaks up on James in the bath.) Close to three hours in length, the film has time to precisely detail the ways Ford’s idolatry of James turned to resentment and betrayal, with an ironic reversal in the last reel. Pitt invests James with charm, humor and occasional murderousness, effectively imagining a man on the downhill side of his own legend. As the outlaw loses his drive (the clear suggestion is that his death was a form of suicide), the film becomes more clearly Ford’s story, and Affleck’s fine performance snaps unexpectedly into sharp focus for the film’s final third. The result is a languorous masterpiece — a revisionist western about myth, moral compromise, and the male ego. (This review was originally published in the White Plains Times.)
Buy it from Amazon.com: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [Blu-ray] or The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Combo HD DVD and Standard DVD) [HD DVD]
Continue reading DVD Traffic Report: February 5, 2024.