Fast Scans: Top Foreign & Indie Picks, March 15, 2011
Mar 15, 2011The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. color. 148+ min. In Swedish w/English subtitles. Music Box Films. 2009. DVD UPC 705105743653. $29.95; Blu-ray UPC 705105743554. $34.95. Rated: R.
Having improbably survived her grievous wounds in the second part of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy,” Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) spends much of director Daniel Alfredson’s concluding film recovering in preparation for her trumped-up murder trial. Standard-issue courtroom scenes and murky conspiracy plotting deplete the kinetic energy that so auspiciously launched the series, but the finale rallies with some much-needed butt-kicking, even if the sting has dulled. Fans need their closure. [A four-disc boxed set with the complete trilogy (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, LJ 9/15/10; The Girl Who Played with Fire, LJ 12/10) and nearly two hours of new bonus material, including several interviews and a 53-minute documentary, is also available on DVD (UPC 705105743252. $59.95) and Blu-ray (UPC 705105743257. $79.95).]
Mesrine: Killer Instinct, Pt. 1. color. 113+ min. In French w/English subtitles. Music Box Films. 2010. DVD UPC 705105742854. $29.95; Blu-ray UPC 705105743059. $34.95. Rated: R.
Legendary gangster Jacques Mesrine, who along with his girlfriend, Jeanne, became known as the French Bonnie and Clyde, slashed across Europe and Canada in the 1960s–70s, robbing banks, shooting people, and escaping prison with abandon. In his most audacious performance yet, Vincent Cassel (Black Swan) oozes snaky charm as the cold-blooded Mesrine, a cocky criminal whose devil-may-care attitude made him into a notorious celebrity. Director Jean-François Richet’s sizzling thriller is that rare foreign film whose appeal will overcome subtitle phobia. [Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1, Pt. 2, will be released on March 29. DVD UPC 736211211453. $29.99; Blu-ray UPC 736211211354. $34.99.] [See Trailers, LJ 2/1/11]
The Naked Kiss. b/w. 90+ min. 1964. DVD ISBN 9781604653755; Blu-ray ISBN 9781604653748.
Shock Corridor. b/w. 101+ min. 1963. DVD ISBN 9781604653731; Blu-ray 978160465-3724.
ea. vol: Criterion Collection, dist. by Image Entertainment. DVD $29.95; Blu-ray $39.95.
Longtime major-studio player Sam Fuller (Pickup on South Street, House of Bamboo) went the independent route for this pair of pulpy, microbudget melodramas that stylishly transcend their B-movie material. Kiss concerns a bad girl (prostitute) turned good (caregiver), while Corridor deals with a determined journalist (Peter Breck) who goes undercover in a sanatorium to pursue a big story. Extras include a doc on Fuller (The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera) and recent interviews with Constance Towers, the striking female lead in both films. A double-shot of Fuller for his devotees.
Skin. color. 107+ min. Entertainment One Home Video. 2009. DVD ISBN 9781417233816. $24.98. Rated: PG-13.
Based on Judith Stone’s best-selling real-life story (When She Was White, 2007), director Anthony Fabian’s film powerfully, if not always subtly, dramatizes the years-long struggle of Sandra Laing, the lightly black-skinned daughter of white Afrikaner parents in apartheid-era Cape Town. Movingly played as an adult by Sophie Okonedo, Laing was brought up as a white child at the insistence of her racist father (Sam Neill) but later chose life as a “colored” in a segregated society. With its message of hope, tolerance, and absolution, this biopic should find wide appeal, with classroom use a definite option. [See Trailers, LJ 1/11]
