DVD 12/22/09: District 9, (500) Days of Summer, Extract, All About Steve, Blind Date, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
District 9: 2-Disc Edition (R, 2009, Sony Pictures)
The first sign that “District 9″ isn’t just another movie about just another alien invasion appears almost immediately: As the film opens, the invasion not only has already happened, but is 20 years in the past. When we step into the picture, the mothership hasn’t moved an inch in two decades, the aliens (derogatorily referred to as “prawns” because of their appearance) have long settled in as second-class citizens of Earth, and the mission at hand has members of Multi-National United (imagine a privatized United Nations) evicting the exploding alien population out of Johannesburg’s District 9 and into something resembling an internment camp. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine the metaphorical connotations potentially in play here, and “D9,” which is shot partly like a documentary and partly like a traditional feature film, doesn’t flinch in running its fiction through those filters. What emerges is something that’s absolutely fantastical in its construction of alien technology, language and makeup, but simultaneously, intelligently grounded in the realities of a powerful alien race descending on an equally formidable human race that doesn’t know whether to destroy it or observe it for its own betterment. Similarly, the heretofore-unspoiled result of the eviction makes for a wondrous marriage of science fiction and parallel-dimension discourse, and it corners the market on how to create a character (Sharlto Copley as MNU operative Wikus Van De Merwe) who can go from heroic to detestable and back and forth without ever stepping outside of who he is. Similar kudos are in store for “D9′s” special effects, which enhance the film’s realism to an unquantifiable degree rather than bog it down into yet another mess of computer graphics run amok. Forget the rumored sequel — there’s enough engrossing fiction and eye candy for an entire television series.
Extras: Director commentary, deleted scenes, three-part making-of documentary, four additional behind-the-scenes features.
(500) Days of Summer (PG-13, 2009, Fox)
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) doesn’t exactly handle the rocky path a relationship takes with a level head, but he can’t help it — he’s a romantic. Problem is, new coworker Summer (Zooey Deschanel) is not, and the wild effect her presence has on perfectly coolheaded males spells disastrous days ahead for poor, insta-smitten Tom. The literally-titled “(500) Days of Summer” doesn’t make us wait to confirm our suspicions: Jumping back and forth in time using the nifty trick of numbering the 500 days to always let us know where we are in the timeline, “Summer” immediately takes us to what appears to be a breakup before whisking us backward, forward, in between and wherever else it feels like taking us. The result not only is considerably more coherent than it sounds on paper, but also shrewdly astute in picking apart the comedy, tragedy and unexplainable grey areas that accompany that terrible and wonderful thing we call a relationship. “Summer” runs on the power of grey areas, in fact: It constructs its characters with complete care but never paints them into corners, and different viewers with different perspectives can view Tom and Summer in vastly different ways without upsetting the integrity of the story. And if you just want to kick back and enjoy it? Don’t worry: “Summer’s” pain and insight are real, but so are the dark laughs it provides. Geoffrey Arend and Matthew Gray Gubler also star.
Extras: Writers/director/Gordon-Levitt commentary, deleted/extended scenes.
Extract (R, 2009, Miramax)
It’s always nice when a film hits the ground running, as “Extract” does in introducing us to seductive small-time con Cindy (Mila Kunis) in its first, and arguably funniest, scene. “Extract” also manages a few nice laughs when shifting its attention from Cindy to main character Joel (Jason Bateman), who, in the tradition of sorry Mike Judge-created characters, is the owner of (a) an unexciting extract manufacturing business, (b) a next-door-neighbor (David Koechner) who won’t leave him alone and (c) a marriage (Kristen Wiig as wife Suzie) that might be even less exciting than the job and neighbor. Joel’s and Cindy’s stories eventually collide, and spoiling these and other developments would deny “Extract” its element of surprise — which, frankly, is something it cannot afford to lose. “Extract” is loaded in the cast department, rich with characters and full of story to tell, but beyond the occasional funny line, it rarely rises beyond modest amusement to approach anything close to laugh-out-loud funny levels. Judge’s comedies definitely have a certain underlying tone in common, and “Extract” is no different, but anyone waiting for Joel to unload on his life the way Michael Bolton did on the printer in “Office Space” will find themselves still waiting by film’s end. Ben Affleck, J.K. Simmons, Clifton Collins Jr., Dustin Milligan, Beth Grant and Gene Simmons also star.
Extra: Mike Judge feature.
All About Steve (PG-13, 2009, Fox)
Here’s a tip for all you single folks out there: If you think there’s a chance you might want to fake your way out of a blind date while it’s in progress, do some due diligence and plan your lie ahead of time. That’s an idea television cameraman Steve (Bradley Cooper) didn’t consider before experiencing a date with Mary Horowitz (Sandra Bullock), a small-time crossword designer who knows a ton of trivia but lacks any knowledge regarding how to keep that trivia and other verbal waterfalls from continually spilling out her mouth. Steve constructs a quick lie about having to travel across the country, the instantly-smitten Mary accidentally calls his bluff and follows him, and voila, we have a comedy. As movies go, “All About Steve” is a lot like Mary: It’s an improbable mess and far more cloyingly cute than it is laugh-out-loud funny, but it also contains enough fleeting moments of brilliance — a sharply-written monologue about love, an even sharper dressing down of Mary’s life by a deaf child trapped in a mineshaft, some pointedly funny jabs at Emmy-starved television reporters — to make it easy to like in spite of its many flaws. Thomas Haden Church, Ken Jeong, DJ Qualls, Katy Mixon, Howard Hesseman and perennial scene stealer Keith David also star.
Extras: Kim Barker/cast commentary, deleted/alternate scenes, bloopers (with commentary), Cooper and Jeong sing a capella (with commentary), two behind-the-scenes features (one of which very nicely parodies behind-the-scenes features), photo gallery (with companion rap by Mary Horowitz), episode of Fox Movie Channel’s “Life After Film School.”
Blind Date (NR, 2007, E1 Entertainment)
An unthinkable tragedy has driven a tumultuous wedge into Don’s (Stanley Tucci) and Janna’s (Patricia Clarkson) marriage, and the couple has resorted to engaging each other through a series of mock blind dates in hopes of repairing their relationship. Each date finds Don and Janna in character as different people, and each date purportedly peels away just a little bit of the bottled-up honesty and emotion that’s keeping the couple at arm’s reach from one another. Problem is, the walls that divide Don and Janna don’t just divide Don and Janna. “Blind Date” starts out with great promise by immediately offering us some insight into who our characters really are, but once the couple falls into its land of make-believe, we only fleetingly see it return to reality. Studious viewers can take away subtle insights from each encounter, but the sensation of distance never really dissipates between Don and Janna or them and us. Their frustration becomes our frustration, the film’s wheels keep spinning in place, and while everything about “Date’s” casting, script and visual presentation has polish to spare, it’s hard to be truly moved or entertained when the entertainment so stubbornly keeps pushing the viewer away.
Extra: Tucci/Clarkson commentary.
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (PG-13, 2009, Anchor Bay)
Award-winning television journalist C.J. Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe) has been slumming it with puff pieces since moving to the big city, but when he hatches a theory that unstoppable District Attorney Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas) is planting forensic evidence at crime scenes to win his cases, he sets out to prove it in a way only a preposterous movie could love — by getting himself falsely accused of murder. What could go wrong?! Besides C.J.’s plan, most everything, actually. “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” is a polished, pretty film that, at least on the surface, has all the ingredients it needs to be a prototypically textbook legal thriller. But it’s hard to shake the notion that the premise “Doubt” presents — and, later, the twists and unbelievably abrupt character personality transformations it employs for purposes of toying with viewers — are feasible in a world with characters as sharp as our intrepid reporter and district attorney supposedly are. You can see the cracks in both characters’ plans from the minute the plans are presented, and the only thing worse than that is the insultingly silly twist ending that, for all the wrong reasons, outdoes all that preceded it. Joel Moore, Amber Tamblyn and Orlando Jones also star.
Extras: Director/Metcalfe commentary, two behind-the-scenes features.