DVD Picks & Pans: Midwinter Potpourri

Tom Miller

DVD Picks & Pans: Midwinter Potpourri

Hollywood doesn't like January.  We can understand why few decent movies premier in mid-winter.  The kids are back in school, the weather is often frightful, and folks are in the mood to cocoon. 

What we can't understand is the dearth of desirable new DVDs.  With all those folks hunkering down until Punxsutawney Phil gives them the all-clear, you'd think that DVDs would be in great demand.  But, alas, the January release schedule is slim pickings. 

But, after January's diet, February is shaping up to be a feast.  The month's releases include "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," "Across the Universe," "The Brave One," "The Assassination of Jesse James," "Into the Wild," "We Own the Night," "Lust, Caution," "Michael Clayton," "Gone Baby Gone," and "Silk."  Just to name ten! 

Rummaging through the early January releases, we found a few interesting -- and diverse -- choices: a classic television series from the 1970's; a re-release (this time, the director's cut) of one of our Top 10 "Movies That Matter" from 2007; and yet another documentary on the Kennedy assassination.  Warm up the hot chocolate, grab a comforter, and settle in for a long winter's night. 

"Zodiac: The Director's Cut, Two-Disc Collector's Edition," DVD-2007 ($34.99, Paramount Home Entertainment) Also available in HD DVD.

Beginning with the July 4, 1969, shooting of a couple in a parked car, a serial killer self-identified as Zodiac terrorized the San Francisco Bay area for years.  Law enforcement officials were never able to make a definitive case against anyone, and their chief suspect, a convicted pedophile named Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), died in 1992. 

San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose ad hoc investigation became a personal crusade, refused to give up the search after everyone else had moved on and his compulsion is the logical focal point for Director David Fincher ("Fight Club,") and screenwriter James Vanderbilt ("Basic"). 

Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.), the Chronicle's dissolute crime reporter, also became caught up in the case, and in his frustration, spiraled out of control --abusing alcohol and drugs.  Likewise, lead investigator Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) devoted years to the case until being removed by his superiors under a cloud of suspicion. 

Fincher's subject is only tangentially the Zodiac killer, and it's not his goal to unmask or even psychoanalyze the killer.  His real subject is obsession, and he approaches it not from the perspective of the killer, but from the perspective of his pursuers, who pay varying prices for their single-minded quest.    

Fincher succeeds brilliantly in fashioning a taut and gripping cautionary study of the wages of obsession.  Credit also goes to screenwriter Vanderbilt for a literate and coherent script that juggles several complex characters and spans two decades.  The acting is uniformly excellent.   

Given Hollywood's long-running obsession with young audiences, ambitious films like "Zodiac" are always a treat.  One of Military.com's "Top 10 Movies That Matter" for 2007.  Military.com Rating: ***½

(DVD extras include commentary by Fincher and others; "Zodiac Deciphered," a documentary on the making of the movie; "This Is Zodiac Speaking," a feature-length documentary on the investigation; and "Prime Suspect," a chilling documentary on chief suspect Allen.)
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"The Rockford Files: Season Five," DVD-2007 ($39.98, Universal Studios Home Entertainment)

This five-disc set includes all twenty-two hour-long episodes of Season Five of the classic 1970's private eye drama. 

Emmy Award-winner James Garner played Jim Rockford, an iconoclastic ex-con turned private investigator, for seven seasons in one of television's most influential dramas.  "The Rockford Files" was nominated for eighteen Emmy Awards and won five, including Outstanding Drama Series.  TV Guide ranked the program 39th on its list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time."

What set Jim Rockford apart from the traditional private eye was his easy-going charm, his non-violent approach to detection (he kept his gun in a cookie jar in the kitchen), his lack of pretension (he lived in a dilapidated trailer near the beach), and the piddling cases that came his way (insurance scams, missing persons). 

Nevertheless, the show rode its quirky characters -- in addition to Rockford, they included his father Rocky (Noah Beery, Jr.), a retired truck driver; Rockford's former cellmate at San Quentin Angel Martin (Stuart Margolin); and LAPD homicide detective and frequent nemesis Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) -- and their engaging relationships to success.  Military.com Rating: ***
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"Oswald's Ghost," DVD-2007 ($24.99, Paramount Home Entertainment/PBS Home Video)

A tutorial on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its forty-five-year aftermath.  Conspiracy theories surfaced almost immediately after the assassination and have ebbed and flowed ever since.  Most Americans, then and now, reject the notion -- officially sanctioned by a presidential commission headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren -- that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president. 

Among the roster of suspects that have figured in the conspiracy controversy over the years include the CIA, the FBI, the Cubans (both pro- and anti-Castro), the mafia, the KGB, and the South Vietnamese. 

Filmmaker Robert Stone surveys all this and more in this relatively-balanced summary of the assassination, the subsequent investigation, the conspiracy scenarios, and the impact of all this on Americans.  Beginning with the assassination itself, captured chillingly on a Super-8 home-movie camera by Abraham Zapruder, Stone takes a hard look at the event, the conclusions of conspiracy theorists, and how it all played into Americans' growing distrust of their government. 

Drawing on archival material and interviews, Stone lets people on all sides of the controversy have their say.  He is careful not to explicitly take sides but he gives the final word to the late author Norman Mailer who admits that after much skepticism he came to believe that Oswald acted alone.  

Much of the material here will be old news to Baby Boomers for whom the Kennedy assassination was a watershed event.  Even so, Stone has crafted a workmanlike summary that comes about as close to a definitive answer as we're likely to get.  Military.com Rating: ***

(DVD extras include an interview with filmmaker Robert Stone and featurettes "A Visit to Dealey Plaza" and "The Zapruder Film and Beyond.")

Military.com Picks & Pans Rating Scale

* Pan -- Save your money & time
** Borderline Pick -- Okay but only as a last resort
*** Pick -- Worthwhile & enjoyable
****Enthusiastic Pick -- Excellent 

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Copyright 2012 by Tom Miller