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Home (Re) Viewing: Game, Dance, Match
Neither of this week’s best video releases set the box office on fire, but both could — and indeed should — catch on at home.
Match Point: Many critics claimed that Woody Allen’s most acclaimed film in ages was barely recognizable as one of his movies. Actually, it is very much of a piece with his work, with intellectuals getting in over their heads when a sultry siren (Scarlett Johansson) enters their lives and murder raises its specter. Allen covered similar territory in Crimes and Misdemeanors. Still, this is a movie even non-Allen fans may like, as it becomes a twisty, black-hearted thriller about how sheer luck (or lack of same) can change lives. GRADE: A
Shopgirl: Claire Danes finds herself in a love triangle between an older man not so interested in love (Steve Martin) and a younger goofball screw-up who most definitely is. (Jason Schawartzman). This warm, lilting and funny adaptation of Martin’s novella got lost in the shuffle last year, and that’s a shame. Danes’ radiant performance alone makes it worth seeing. GRADE: A
FROM THE CATALOG
Classic Musicals from the Dream Factory: Five MGM musicals make their official DVD debuts today, in this box set or individually. While these are lesser-known titles, two in particular stand out.
Summer Stock was Judy Garland’s last musical for the studio, and it’s as corny as an Orville Redenbacher plant, but it sports two classic numbers: Garland’s immortal “Get Happy,� performed with such conviction it’s like a call to arms, and Gene Kelly’s dance with a squeaky floorboard and some newspaper.
There’s Kelly again in It’s Always Fair Weather, which was a box-office failure in 1955. It doesn’t have the spit n’ polish of earlier classics like On the Town or Singin’ in the Rain, but it does have some ingenious set pieces, including a dance using trash can lids as shoes, a split screen number in which Kelly, Dan Dailey and Michael Kidd synchronize their dancing, and the astounding “I Like Myselfâ€? in which Kelly defies gravity by tap-dancing … with roller skates.
The box also includes Till the Clouds Roll By, Three Little Words and Zeigfeld Follies.
Also out today:
Aeon Flux: Charlize Theron pulls a Halle Berry by winning an Oscar, then following that up shortly by starring in a comic adaptation in which her tightly-costumed body is the star. For some people that’s enough. You know who you are.
Casanova: What if Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller starred in a costume drama and no one cared?
Tristan + Isolde: What if James Franco and Sophia Myles starred in a costume drama and no one cared?
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