DVDebuts: Chaff of the Week

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Asia Argento surely is a devoted daughter. As much as I love my own little girl (who actually works with me in my PR business and is doing ten times the job I ever did), I hope I would not corral her into a mess like MOTHER OF TEARS. Late Argento (Dario's, I mean) seems not nearly up to his earlier work, which was very much a matter of taste, in any case. I found some of it (Suspira, Deep Red) fun and unsettling in my formative years (aren't all our years formative?), but I don't think the director comes anywhere near that level these days. Here, he has notions that could work -- the world gone crazy around us -- but does little with them: no consistency or follow-through. His major accomplishment still, unfortunately, is to find new and ever more disgusting ways to mutilate and murder women.

You can't fault the actors -- Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams --who do their usual, excellent job. But material this derivative and obvious is beyond anyone's help. The generic title DECEPTION (which manages to give away at the outset what little mystery the movie supplies) is a good example of the stupidity on view. The film is pointless -- unless it happens to be one of the first "mystery" movies you've encountered in your young life.

I try to give roundly criticized movies a chance (and I recall reading a couple of positive notices amidst the raspberries here) but SPEED RACER delivers only color and light. I would imagine its story is too complicated for children below the age of ten but too tiresome for most everybody else. (Is the brother dead, or isn't he? keeps being asked ad infinitum. By the time we find out, we don't care.) The question "What could the Wachowskis have imagined they were doing?" comes to mind as the credits roll.

Below are new DVD releases movies that fall midway between wheat and chaff. Think of them as a "matter of taste" or perhaps "chaff can supply necessary roughage." Your move...

Like watching three or more segments of the cable TV show, SEX AND THE CITY: THE MOVIE goes on (and on) delivering pretty much what you'd expect. Which makes it OK -- or not -- depending on how your feel about these gals, who have exactly the depth (but from the looks of things, a lot more money) than most of the current USA population.

What fun to see Diane Lane and Laura Dern, not to mention Christine Lahti, in their younger years. But that's about it. LADIES & GENTLEMEN: THE FABULOUS STAINS seems particularly unbelievable at the very times it ought to work best. (Can it have ever been as easy to turn an entire audience around on a dime as it appears here?) While the film offers some interesting precursors to later music videos, nothing really clicks as well as it should.

Small scale in budget and ideas, THE FIST FOOT WAY hopes to make us care about (or at least become interested in) an egotistical clod of a martial arts instuctor. Evidently the movie manages this feat for some. As the song says: "But Not for Me."

Unlike the above film RUN, FAT BOY, FUN is large-scale in budget, but, again, small in ideas. It boasts a very nice cast, all of them trying hard. But David Schwimmer's movie (so unlike his earlier, dark and very funny high school reunion-themed Since You've Been Gone) proves far too tired, obvious, and finally phony-feel-good to rustle up much enthusiasm.

The title is certainly on the mark, as TORTURED offers quite a few scenes of just that. Its cast is more than competent, and for a time the story proves intriguing. But the downhill ride start midway and by the end I think you'll feel put through the mill to little purpose. I suppose you could say that the film opens up the subject of what our government has been doing in Iraq and elsewhere, then brings it home to our own neighborhoods. But I'm afraid that's stretching: This is mostly a convoluted thriller with a payoff that only works in half-assed fashion.