Home Media Magazine - December 16-22, 2007 - (Page 11)

REVIEWS Edited by John Latchem www.homemediamagazine.com I SCENES OF A SEXUAL NATURE Prebook 12/20; Street 1/15 ThinkFilm, Comedy, $27.98 DVD, ‘R’ for language and sexual content. Stars Ewan McGregor, Eileen Atkins, Hugh Bonneville, Tom Hardy, Andrew Lincoln, Sophie Okonedo, Mark Strong, Polly Walker, Catherine Tate. S cenes of a Sexual Nature sounds naughtier than it really is. This collection of short tales of couples wiling away a Wednesday in London’s Hampstead Heath park plays like Love Actually. A gay couple discusses adopting children. A husband and wife exchange divorce papers. Two people meet for an awkward blind date. A man befriends a woman, and they discover they were sweethearts 50 years ago. A wife catches her husband checking out a beautiful young woman. The strengths of Scenes of a Sexual Nature are the small surprises set up throughout the film that knock your expectations askew. No dramatic twists — just reminders that one can’t judge a relationship by its cover. Playboy Billy (Ewan McGregor) is in a 15-year relationship with steadfast Brian (Douglas Hodge), but he’s the one who wants to settle down with children — even promising to stop his casual-sex cheating. The jealousy displayed by the blinddate man (Hugh Bonneville) is far more ridiculous than the humorous reaction of the wife whose hubby stares at another woman’s panties. As with any series of vignettes, a few fall flat. In one, the lovely Sophie Okonedo plays a woman who just dumped her boyfriend for being uninteresting. The persistent though dumb young man who decides she’s an easy target for his pick-up artistry suffers the same fate. Unfortunately, the whole sketch suffers that fate, too. But on the whole, director-producer Ed Blum does a bang-up job of balancing the scenes. Rather than having each play out in whole, he intersperses two or three at a time. Some of the characters naturally fade away — after all, you’ve got to leave the park sometime — while others weave in and out naturally among the other park guests. The pacing is perfect, as is the ensemble cast playing out these slice-oflife glimpses. This isn’t a film just for fans of British romantic comedies; it’s for any moviegoer seeking an intelligent, fun traipse through relationships, sex and love. – Laura Tiffany I THE TEN Prebook 12/18; Street 1/15 City Lights, Comedy, B.O. $0.8 million, $26.98 DVD, ‘R’ for pervasive strong crude sexual content including dialogue and nudity, and for language and some drug material. Stars Paul Rudd, Adam Brody, Rob Corddry, Famke Janssen, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Ken Marino, Gretchen Mol, Oliver Platt, Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Joe Lo Truglio. I t’s one thing to apply a sketchcomedy format to a featurelength film. It’s another to find comedic inspiration from the Bible. To combine the two is simply inspired. The Ten, directed by David Wain and written by Wain and Ken Marino, both of the comedy troupe Stella, presents 10 stories based on the 10 Commandments (the Catholic version, with coveting thy neighbor’s wife and goods counted separately). Guiding us through this journey is Jeff Reigert (Rudd), who during the interstitials argues with his wife (Janssen), then cheats on her with Jessica Alba. He constantly makes reference to the fact that he exists in an empty black space filled by two giant tablets. The film also has fun with its transition gimmick, which involves a word from the tablet beaming into the similar concept from the sketch (the word “not” beams into a man tying the knot on his shoe). The comedy is hit or miss, but the performers are having too much fun, and the sketches are so bizarre, that it’s hard not to find entertainment in the total package. The film creates a world all its own, with characters who cross over from one story to the next. The stories include a virginal librarian (Mol) going on vacation in Mexico and being deflowered by Jesus; a white woman telling her two black sons their father is Arnold Schwarzenegger, leading to a hilariously bad impression by Platt; a doctor (Marino) being thrown in jail after jokingly sewing a pair of scissors inside a patient; a skydiver (Brody) forgetting his parachute and surviving the impact, though he is stuck forever in the ground and becomes a celebrity; a newlywed (Ryder) falling in love with a ventriloquist dummy; and two neighbors (Schreiber and Lo Truglio) collecting CAT-scan machines to one-up each other. What these have to do with the actual commandments is open to interpretation. – John Latchem I ADRIFT IN MANHATTAN Prebook 12/18; Street 1/22 Universal/Screen Media, Drama, B.O. $0.002 million, $24.98 DVD, Available in ‘R’-rated and unrated versions. Stars Heather Graham, Victor Rasuk, William Baldwin, Elizabeth Peña, Marlene Forté, Dominic Chianese. H eather Graham (Boogie Nights) leads a talented ensemble in Alfredo De Villa’s quiet, sometimes intense character study about a group of troubled New Yorkers. Rose (Graham), is a depressed eye doctor still coping with the aftereffects of a family tragedy. She becomes the voyeuristic subject of Simon, a young, emotionally crippled photographer (Rasuk of Raising Victor Vargas). The young man has other problems, aside from his voyeurism. He lives with his mother (Forte), who is unusually sexual. Tommaso (Chianese), Rose’s patient, is a talented painter who is slowly going blind, hindering his art and his evolving relationship with a caring co-worker (Peña). Baldwin plays Rose’s estranged husband, whose desire to give the relationship one more chance is met with resistance. Part of De Villa’s skill as a director is that he lets the action unfold at a leisurely and thoughtful pace, letting viewers put the pieces together themselves. In that regard, his latest effort is reminiscent of such classic indie films as Metropolitan and Stranger Than Paradise. However, De Villa and screenwriter Nat Moss have trouble reining in the separate storylines. The resolutions feel rushed, given the film’s short running time and the relative lack of action beforehand. De Villa’s decision to include a graphic sex scene shatters the movie’s observant, subdued tone and is a major distraction. Graham delivers a credible performance; it helps immensely that her good looks are toned down. The rest of the cast is very strong, especially Chianese, best known as Uncle Junior on “The Sopranos,” and Peña, a veteran actress who was a key player in John Sayles’ outstanding Lone Star. – Pete Croatto December 16–22, 2007 Home Media Magazine 11 http://www.homemediamagazine.com

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Home Media Magazine - December 16-22, 2007

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