New on DVD/VOD

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This article was published 11/12/2014 (4302 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s no accident that a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy just happens to get released on DVD in the vicinity of Christmas. On the plus side, it does make Christmas shopping a little bit easier.

With that in mind, here are a few seasonal recommendations for the cinephile/couch potato on your list.

 

Guardians of the Galaxy

COMPARED to properties such as X-Men, Spider-Man and The Avengers, this seems a one-off about an obscure band of heroes familiar to few but the most committed comics geeks.

Apart from being unpopular kids, this band of heroes is a disreputable lot, consisting of a thief (Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-Lord), a glamorous assassin (Zoe Saldana as Gamora), a muscle-bound, vengeance-obsessed “maniac” (pro wrestler Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer), a super-intelligent, genetically enhanced raccoon (Bradley Cooper voices the irascible rodent Rocket) and a tree creature named Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel, who finally gets some mileage out of those “be a tree” exercises in acting class).

The group come together in space prison after attempting to steal a mysterious orb containing a weapon sought by Ronan (Lee Pace), a bloodthirsty Kree warlord intent on a mission of genocide.

Director/co-writer James Gunn employs a wise-ass sensibility, a penchant for sardonic dialogue, a soundtrack of all-’70s hits la Reservoir Dogs and makes it work very well indeed. Wall-to-wall wisecracks notwithstanding, Gunn manages to locate the heart of it. Note Groot’s oft-repeated line of dialogue: “I am Groot.” Just when the joke starts to get stale, Gunn gets stirring emotional resonance out of it in a key climactic scene.

Canny casting helps. As Quill/Star-Lord, Pratt is a studly-looking guy who meets the qualifications of the buff comic book hero, but he has major comic chops.

The Blu-ray includes a sneak peek at the Avengers sequel Age of Ultron. ****

 

Calvary

THIS film, one of the year’s best from director John Michael McDonagh, gives us an embattled protagonist in Father James (Brendan Gleeson), a parish eminence in his rural Irish community. But the abuses and corruption within his church have effectively cut him off at his bended knees.

In the startling opening scene, in a confessional, an unseen parishioner tells Father James of the horrific sexual abuse he suffered as a child. In a state of latent rage, he confesses to a sin he has not yet committed. “There’s no point in killing a bad priest,” he says. “I’m going to kill you because you’re innocent.”

The date is set for Sunday next. He advises the good father to get his affairs in order.

From there, Calvary proceeds in a seemingly contradictory fashion, as an often comic sketch of a tiny Irish parish, but with a darker, insistent undercurrent of whodunit (or who-will-do-it, as the case may be).

Father James touches base with the members of his flock, each of whom might well function as a station of the priest’s own cross. Each has his own personal problems and axes to grind. Wealthy heel Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran) has accumulated great wealth but has been cut adrift by friends and family. Town butcher Jack Brennan (Chris O’Dowd) is suspected of hitting his troubled, sexually uninhibited wife Veronica (Orla O’Rourke). An American expatriate credited only as the Writer (M. Emmet Walsh) asks the good father to secure him a pistol so that he may end his own life before he becomes too infirm, a task not quite befitting a priest.

Father James’s own daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly) — he was a husband and father before his wife’s untimely death allowed him to answer “the calling” — returns for a visit, fresh from a traumatic breakup and a suicide attempt. Their scenes together are beautiful in their painful tenderness.

As in McDonagh’s last collaboration with Gleeson, the unsung comedy The Guard, the writing here is wonderfully sharp and the performances uniformly excellent. Gleeson is particularly magnificent. ****1/2

The Sopranos: The Complete Series on Blu-ray

ONE cannot add much to what’s already been said about David Chase’s The Sopranos, the game-changing HBO TV series exploring the intersection of a Mafia family and a mafioso’s family.

Suffice to say, this collection not only takes up a lot less space on your DVD shelf, it includes most of the extras that were included on past season-by-season releases, with the 28th disc (!) packed with new stuff. These include an illuminating interview with Chase conducted by self-avowed Sopranos fanatic Alec Baldwin, and a doc called Dinner With the Sopranos, in which Chase sits down to two separate dinnertime gabfests with cast members including Edie Falco, Steven Van Zandt, Dominic Chianese, Robert Iler and Aida Turturro, as well as some significant behind-the camera talent, to discuss everything from developing characters, acting for the first time (Van Zandt) and of course, a deeper exploration of the enigmatic scene that ended it all. *****

 

Herzog: The Collection

SUCH is the breadth of German director Werner Herzog’s career, he even makes a guest appearance in The Penguins of Madagascar as a documentary filmmaker who callously alters the lives of that movie’s four indomitable heroes.

Herzog has himself vacillated between drama and documentary in his own career, which is nicely summed up in this 16-movie collection, handsomely packaged in book form (more suitable for the bookshelf than the DVD shelf), rich with essays on each film.

Among his dramas are his collaborations with loose-cannon thespian Klaus Kinski (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu the Vampire and Fitzcarraldo) and a documentary about what a pain in the ass Kinski was (My Best Fiend).

With its wide array of subjects and styles, this is a solid summation of a director with a lively, curious, searching sensibility. *****

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca