Guru

A time capsule trip back to early TV, though not the earliest TV version
of this ultra-famous Budd Schulberg novel (the name of which, as well as that of its leading character Sammy Glick, are probably better known by today's audiences than is the novel itself), What Makes Sammy Run? was made by NBC television in 1959. It was first dramatized a decade earlier in 1949 as "live" TV and starring Jose Ferrer. The version just released on DVD (in all its grainy, black-and-white charm) features Larry Blyden as the infamous Sammy, a not-so-nice Jewish boy from New York who begins as a copy boy on a Manhattan newspaper and climbs/claws his way up until he's the head of a major movie studio out west.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): *****

Anton Chekhov was unquestionably one of the great short story writers of all time, and though few of his tales have made the transition to the big screen, one couldn't ask for a better one than this 1960 film, based on perhaps his best known masterpiece, "The Lady with the Little Dog." Lenfilm Studio produced the film upon the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Chekhov's birth. Russian filmmaker Josif Heifits adapts the story in a lovingly relaxed style, focusing on faces and emotions, rather than regurgitating a bunch of dialogue or words; he creates images worthy of the original words.

In the years that followed, the beloved game ceased being a bugaboo featured on 60 Minutes, preying on Boomer parents' fears of Satanism and suicide and, though I left it behind, it evolved. Some still sit at tables, tossing the customary 20-sided die, but others spend their time online with the massively-popular massive multiplayer online game World of Warcraft and its many, many offspring.

Still others go even further down the rabbit hole, bringing it from these virtual worlds to the real one, donning the garb and making the weaponry and memorizing yet even more arcane rules and regulations and joining the ranks of the Live Action Role Playing Game (LARP). This is the world that the film Monster Camp surveys.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½

When movie stars turn director it can be for a number of reasons. Sometimes they're looking to further their career and expand their repertoire. Sometimes they're fed up and have decided that if they want something done right, they have to do it themselves. Sometimes they've found a juicy role for themselves. Other times they have a vanity project that no other director will touch. In the case of Paul Newman's directorial debut, no other director would touch it, but Rachel, Rachel (1968) could hardly be called a vanity project. Rather, it's a small-scale character study about a plain, spinster schoolmarm (based on Margaret Laurence's novel "A Jest of God") in which Newman wanted his beautiful and Oscar-winning wife Joanne Woodward to star.

It's even more amazing when you consider Newman as of 1968. He had received four Oscar nominations for Best Actor and was one of the country's biggest box-office draws. He was like a leaner, more vibrant Brando, rippling with Method acting muscles but with more bravado (and less off-puttingly peculiar). He seemed unafraid to try anything; just a few years earlier he played a crazy Mexican bandit in Martin Ritt's The Outrage (1964), which has been released on DVD alongside Rachel, Rachel. It's difficult to imagine this Newman behind the camera, making something so intricate and quiet.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): *****

Saved from the Flames: 54 Rare and Restored Films 1896-1944

Flicker Alley, the little company that could, continues to impress, releasing quality items that rival The Criterion Collection and Kino. Their newest is a pocket cinema museum, a three-disc set full of short gems of all stripes, all supposedly "Saved From the Flames." The 54 films included run a combined seven hours, so I'll just mention the highlights. It starts with a couple of classics from the Lumière Brothers, whose mise-en-scène still seems deceptively simple and undeniably effective: La Sortie des usines Lumière (1895) and L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1896). Georges Méliès is also represented here with Danse serpentine (1896); he made films at the same time as the Lumières, but was far more interested in fantasy than reality. (Flicker Alley also released an essential Méliès box set, very much worth seeking out; and 15 of his best shorts are included on this Facets collection.)

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): **½

It should surprise no one that when Warner Brothers tapped Joseph Heller to adapt Cosmopolitan editrix's Helen Gurley Brown's 1962 bestseller Sex and the Single Girl the scribe behind hyper male-centric satires like Catch-22 and Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man would be somewhat befuddled by the plot-free (though delightfully ageless) testament to glamour and female sexual liberation. The resulting film would be a toothless sex farce celebrating marriage that feels at times oddly spiteful.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **

Why, it's high-toned sleaze from Masterpiece Theatre -- which is rather like finding The Story of O on sale at your favorite religious bookshop. To paraphrase a once-famous TV commercial, "I can't believe I watched the whole thing!" Yes, all three hours and eighteen minute of Painted Lady, in which a mis-cast Helen Mirren plays an aging rock star (think Marianne Faithfull, maybe?) who becomes involved in a "plot." Isn't it time to admit that this actress, as fine as she usually is, has no acquaintance with relaxation or the ability to simply throw away a line? But see for yourself, as this finely-honed piece of junk unspools before your ever-weakening gaze.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***½

Stuart Townsend wrote and directed Battle In Seattle and the film (the actor's first outing in those capacities), makes no bones about his utter dislike and disrespect of the WTO (World Trade Organization) and its "achievements." He lays all this out at the beginning and then launches into his docudrama set during several tumultuous days in 1999 when protestors, joined by labor organizations, managed to prevent the WTO from holding any kind of successful conference in the city of Seattle. At the time, this event -- an important part of the history of the Progressive Movement in the USA -- made big international news and gave a much-needed adrenaline jolt to progressive organizations worldwide.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): **½

Is Japan Japan (as used to be claimed about New York, New York) "so nice they named it twice"? Not really, although there is a kind of duality to the movie: For every good thing you encounter, there's something equally bad. Let's start with the rumor that the production budget was a mere $200. Amazing -- but, as they say, you get what you pay for. What about the hard-core stuff? It's there, all right, but completely un-integrated into the rest of the film. On the other hand, the entire film lacks much integration, so maybe you can appreciate the snatches of tumescent genitalia that occur early on and then forget it about it until the scene featuring Japanese internet porn in which -- but if I tell you what you'll be seeing, I'll spoil the surprise -- which (more duality again) turns out to be perhaps less a turn-on than a gross-out, depending on your particular tastes.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ***½

In the Electric Mist is based on one of my favorite modern mystery novels, James Lee Burke's "In the Electric Mist with the Confederate Dead," a whodunit with touches of southern Gothic ghost story. A few things are rearranged from the book -- one key murder happens later in the film, for instance -- but screenwriting team Jerzy and Mary Olson-Kromolowski (who wrote the somewhat similarly toned The Pledge) remain largely faithful to the story. Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (A Sunday in the Country, Round Midnight) is not as odd a choice as director as it might appear on the surface; after all, arguably Tavernier's finest work is the fantastic Coup de Torchon, which transplanted a seedy Jim Thompson pulp novel into colonial Africa. Yet despite this pedigree the film never even saw a legitimate theatrical release here, instead getting dumped unceremoniously to DVD. While it is far from perfect, it is quite a bit more interesting than that fate implies.

Reviewer: James van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ****

To someone like me, for whom television-watching defines the word anathema, arriving as a virgin to the British TV sitcom The IT Crowd proved a shock, to say the least. My initial reaction -- which almost caused me to eject the DVD from my machine -- was "Oh God, a laugh track! They still use this prehistoric method of making you believe something is funny?" They do, but get used to it. By the end of the first episode (there are six in this "complete first season," each one lasting about 24 minutes), my own laughter had taken precedence over the artificial track, and I was hooked. And that first episode is nowhere near the best this very funny series has to offer.

Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): ****

There's been a fairly long and interesting history of French adaptations of American mysteries, from Chabrol's Ruth Rendell-inspired La Cérémonie and The Bridesmaid to Tavernier's Jim Thompson (Coup de Torchon based on Pop 1280), but Guillaume Canet's Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne), adapted with Philippe Lefebvre from Harlan Coben's best-selling novel, succeeds as confidently as the best of them.