Reviews of films available on video and/or DVD:
"Seabiscuit" (2003)
Rated PG-13
While several award hopefuls crowd into moviehouses for the year-end holidays, "Seabiscuit" has to hope it won't be neglected or dismissed just because it's already on video and DVD.
"Road to Perdition" was the mid-2002 masterpiece that committed the crime of being released too early in the year to peak during awards season. Let's hope "Seabiscuit" doesn't suffer similarly.
One unnecessary sex scene notwithstanding, it's a beautifully textured (and mostly family-suitable) true story of a horse rescued from the glue factory and varnished into a galloping racetrack contender.
Gary Ross directed it as if determined to make the definitive horse movie.
His cast is headed by Chris Cooper (fresh from an Oscar for "Adaptation") as a veteran trainer and loner, Jeff Bridges as a risk-prone entrepreneur and Tobey Maguire as a jockey who shares with Seabiscuit a sense of dislocation.
Although it ranks No. 15 on the year's chart of box-office champs (its $120 million far surpassed expectations) and is sure to drop as Christmas pictures crowd in), "Seabiscuit" was easily the film that drew the most enthusiastic adult comments.
The DVD has some nice features besides the standard commentary by Ross and director-friend Steven Soderbergh. It includes a featurette on the movie, another on the real Seabiscuit, a shot-by-shot breakdown of one scene and a collection of photos Bridges took on the set.
Within the next two weeks the picture is going to make a lot of Best 10 lists.
"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (2003)
Rated PG-13
Terrible technique, which is to say, darkly photographed and MTV-edited action, does irreparable damage to a great idea.
Several fictional characters from literature a century or so ago gather in 1899 to try to offset what would be known in 1914 as The Great War and eventually World War I.
They include Allan Quatermain (Sean Connery) of "King Solomon's Mines," Mina Harker (Peta Wilson) of "Dracula," Dr. Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde (both Jason Flemyng, the Invisible Man (Tony Curran), Dorian Gray (Stuart Townsend), Captain Nemo (Naseeruddin Shah) and Tom Sawyer (Shane West), who has become an American secret service agent.
But who truly is who's allyâ¢
Connery, who reportedly was unhappy with the film, could hold his own in any ensemble in the world, but "League" is the kind of picture that begs that every role be filled colorfully - with, say, Michael Caine, Ian Holm and Bob Hoskins. The pallid cast here fades straight into the woodwork when the special effects take over.
The DVD contains 12 deleted scenes, a featurette and a pair of audio commentaries, each featuring many of the participants.
"Freaky Friday" (2003)
Rated PG
As suspected before the 2003 remake of "Freaky Friday" premiered, the fact that its internal logic jumps track early and never reconnects with its trolley didn't matter with its target audience.
They bought the premise anyway, and Jamie Lee Curtis collected a lot of praise for her portrayal of a mother who swaps bodies with teenage daughter Lindsay Lohan.
Mary Rodgers' 1972 novel had been filmed twice before by Disney - for theaters in 1977 with Barbara Harris and a pre-Oscar Jodie Foster and again as a TV movie in 1995 with Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffman.
The new film never gets beyond the fingernail polish of its content. It's satisfied in the most superficial way to demonstrate the incongruity of a middleaged woman acting like a goofy movie teen, while the newly mature teen looks exasperated.
There's an angle involving the girl's suitor, who is attracted even to the middleaged version of her, that bears exploring but isn't.
The DVD contains bloopers, a deleted scene, alternate endings, a featurette and two music videos.
"Bonjour Tristesse" (1958)
Unrated but PG in nature
More than any major director of his generation, the ferocious and autocratic Otto Preminger (1906-86), who notoriously reduced his stars to weeping whipping boys and girls, rose and fell with his screenplays.
When his work was good it was splendid ("Laura," "Anatomy of a Murder," "In Harm's Way"), and when it was bad it dropped jaws ("Skidoo," "Saint Joan"). He was the most objective of directors, concentrating on impersonal shots, as if he were filming plays, that left the point of view to the audience to an inordinate degree.
"Bonjour Tristesse," based on a melodramatic Francoise Sagan novel, is dispassionate to the point of not registering emotionally at all.
Widowed playboy David Niven and spoiled 17-year-old daughter Jean Seberg romantically exploit all who are attracted to them. In an uncharacteristic fit of conservatism, Niven proposes to long-time friend Deborah Kerr to the seeming approval of his daughter. But the first time Kerr exerts herself as a stepmother figure, Sagan resolves to destroy the relationship.
Not a frame plays persuasively because all of the leads are miscast. Still, it's an unusually interesting example of how sterile a film can be when only its surface is photographed.
"Dirty Dancing" (1987)
Rated PG-13
One of the women who made "Dirty Dancing" said when it was new that it had cost a fortune to buy the rights to the more than two dozen oldies used in the film.
She gambled that the recordings they purchased would help sell the picture just as a cornucopia of oldies drove the sleeper "American Graffiti." She was right to do so.
"Dirty Dancing" was a sleeper, too, with a setting that several movies visited in the 1980s - the Catskills.
Jennifer Grey acts a 17-year-old Jewish girl who vacations with her family and gets hung up on dance instructor Patrick Swayze, who is several years her senior.
You don't expect such a situation to lead into the subject of abortion, particularly when the soundtrack is stuffed with uptempo goodies such as "Wipeout," "Be My Baby," "Do You Love Me?" and "Hey, Baby."
The new double-disc DVD contains Grey's screen test, interviews with several participants (Grey but not Swayze), a commentary track by writer-co-producer Eleanor Bergstein and another shared by several behind-the-scenes contributors.
