New Major DVDS This Week
There may be over one hundred DVD’s actually coming out tomorrow, but I just don’t care! There are only 2 that are worth your money. So here’s an early look and I had better hear that you bought them both!
AMELIE- What a strange career path for director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. First he and collaborator Marc Caro make the black-hearted cannibalism comedy Delicatessen, which is set in some bleak near-future. It has some of the most elaborate, flashy, “look-at-me” camerawork since the Coen Brothers got drunk on the possibilities of cinema with Blood Simple. Then the two men deliver the opaque City of Lost Children, a full-out sci-fi epic that plays more like a Rube Goldberg contraption than a movie. Jeunet and Caro split up and Jeunet is seduced by Hollywood into making Alien Resurrection, a flop that kills a franchise. So what does Jeunet do? He turns around and delivers Amelie, starring Audrey Tautou and Mathieu Kassovitz. It’s a valentine to love and possibility that delights in romance almost as much as it delights in filmmaking itself. Tautou becomes a star and Jeunet is redeemed as surely as her insecure but lovable waitress. The witty voice-overs make this an ideal double-bill with Y Tu Mama Tambien.
BETTER OFF DEAD- In 1985, the same year John Cusack made the marvelous romantic comedy The Sure Thing and the fine Disney flick The Journey of Natty Gann, he delivered this oddball flick about a teenager desperately trying to commit suicide and only embarrassing himself in the process. The Sure Thing may be considered by many to be the better film, but Better Off Dead proved Cusack was one to watch. The mere fact that he made a film with someone called Savage Steve Holland proved Cusack wasn’t willing to play it safe. And his earnest charm grounded the bizarre, scattershot storyline (including that hilarious running gag about the newspaper delivery boy). After this, anyone paying attention knew Cusack had the smarts to forge a career. What would follow? Just Eight Men Out, Say Anything, The Grifters, Bullets Over Broadway, Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Being John Malcovich and High Fidelity, to name a few. Now if we can only get the other Cusack/Savage Steve Holland film, “One Crazy Summer” released then many a happy night will be had.
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