It makes sense to honour the Mordecai Richler-inspired film Barney's Version this week, of all weeks. We are honouring Canada Day. Richler, the late Montreal author and self-created legend, was just named an inductee into Canada's Walk of Fame. Richard E. Lewis' excellent film adaptation of Barney's Version just debuted on DVD and Blu-ray.
Like Canada, sitting in the shadow of its neighbour, Barney's Version has been overshadowed at the box office and on the awards circuit. Despite lead actor Paul Giamatti's Golden Globe win, Barney's Version earned just a single Oscar nomination. While it garnered seven of Canada's Genie Awards from 11 nominations, Barney's Version even failed to win best picture.
So now we need to celebrate it on home entertainment. You will not be disappointed if you enjoy mature cinema rooted in the human experience. Giamatti, in a stunning performance the equal of any nominated for an Oscar, plays Richler's fictionalized alter ego.
Womanizer, blowhard, drinker, troubled film and television producer in Montreal -- curmudgeonly Barney is no saint. But we joyfully follow four decades in his tumultuous life as he churns through wives. Rachelle Lefevre, Minnie Driver and Rosamund Pike play the woman with real style, Dustin Hoffman is wonderful as Barney's dad, while Scott Speedman and Bruce Greenwood are terrific in support. Director Lewis and producer Robert Lantos (Richler's long-time friend) cast well. The film plays with energy and intelligence.
Both the DVD and Blu-ray are worthy. While Barney's obviously looks better on Blu-ray, the DVD is its equal in bonus materials. Among them is a vintage Richler interview (a must-see, even if it is short), along with fresh material. Film academic Annette Insdorf hosts a 61-minute Q&A with the charming Giamatti. Lewis, Lantos and screenwriter Michael Konyves do the commentary. These are first-rate releases showcasing a quality film that now deserves to find its mainstream audience.
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SEASON OF THE WITCH
With Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman playing Crusaders, Season of the Witch is unintentionally funny. It is also ridiculous, overwrought, murky and supernatural. All that makes it a fun as a good-because-it's-bad experience. After deserting from the Crusades following a Christian massacre of Muslims, our warrior knights are forced to undertake a last mission for God: Transporting a suspected witch to a remote monastery. On the journey, all Hell breaks loose ... literally!
Director Dominic Sena's movie is hokum, like 1960s adventure flicks but with expensive digital effects. That makes the Blu-ray the best option. Both offer the same extras. Among them is an alternate ending that lacks the devilish extremes of the theatrical version. Featurettes demonstrate that the filmmakers were lost in the Dark Ages, thinking they were making a classic about the 14th century.
BEASTLY
Vanessa Hudgens figures that Daniel Barnz's Beastly is "an edgier and sexier twist" on the Beauty and the Beast saga. Instead -- in the words of Alex Pettyfer's beast-boy -- it "embraces the suck" with too much enthusiasm. Pettyfer plays a vain, pretty-boy moron turned beastly by a witch after insulting her in high school. He has a year to get a girl -- Hudgens -- to say "I love you."
The catchline is "love is never ugly" but bad writing and directing and dismal direction are ugly. The DVD and Blu-ray options contain identical extras, among them featurettes with Hudgens and Pettyfer hyping their opus while trying to save their sorry butts. But the best thing on-screen is Mary-Kate Olsen as witch-bitch. Wish she would make them all disappear, along with this movie.
NEW THIS WEEK: Barney's Version , Season of the Witch, Beastly, Sucker Punch, The Lord of the Rings, Motion Picture Trilogy: Limited Extended Edition (Blu-ray).
NEW NEXT WEEK: Of Gods and Men "¢ Hobo with a Shotgun.
COMING SOON: Rango (July 11).
New weirdness on 'Sucker Punch' DVD
Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch did just that: It knocked us upside the head with a vicious, unexpected blow. Now there is even more force behind the punch. Snyder just added 17 minutes and 45 seconds of action, attitude and weirdness to his fantasy nightmare.
Sucker Punch: Extended Cut arrived this week as a three-disc combo pack, including in a sleek steelbook edition. Two Blu-rays offer the theatrical and extended cuts with the extras divided between them. Snyder's robust maximum movie mode offering is with the extended cut while the 11 minutes of animator Ben Hibon's artsy promotional shorts are with the theatrical cut. The combo box's DVD (with digital copy) is clumsily slid into its own loose cardboard sleeve inside. There is also a stand-alone DVD and a separate stand-alone Blu-ray available, each offering the theatrical cut only.
At first incomprehensible and then too easy to deconstruct before descending into madness, Sucker Punch is a tragic morality tale. Snyder tells the story of a 1960s fetish plaything who is nicknamed Baby Doll and played by Emily Browning, who also sings. She is a Lolita type but initially more innocent. Thanks to her evil stepdad, she is jailed in a Gothic insane asylum where a doctor (Jon Hamm) performs frontal lobotomies.
Baby Doll escapes into a layered fantasyland, first in a seedy slave-brothel, then in a ever-changing battleground that has Baby and four girlfriends from the asylum fighting zombie German soldiers, Samurai demons, fire-breathing dragons and other creatures borrowed from violent video games.
Sucker Punch is crazy and offensive and preposterous. Yet you compulsively watch. His excellent hosting of maximum movie mode at least brings some clarity to what he was trying to do, even if he failed so spectacularly.
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