Been doing the DVD thing a moderate amount. So, let's consider I Robot, American Gigolo, Big Trouble in Little China, Get Real, The Libertine, The Dreamers, Capote and Ella Enchanted.

Knowing not to expect Asimov’s story made I Robot much more enjoyable—no dashed expectations to overcome. And the line in the credits suggested by Isaac Asimov’s book is certainly not more than the truth. A competent techno-thriller. (Particularly if you suspend disbelief at the crucial moments.) I was amused to discover the robot Sonny was played by Alan Tudyk.

Easily the best thing about American Gigolo is Richard Gere’s performance. Just as well, since he is almost always on-camera. The story of a man’s life falling apart, the film itself would probably have worked better as a full tragedy. It’s wandering direction does not entirely work and the script lacks sparkle. Intelligence without wit does not really work as cinema.

Listening to the DVD commentary by Kurt Russell and John Carpenter for Big Trouble in Little China is a hoot. Kurt Russell obviously doesn’t take himself too seriously. They point out, and it is obvious once they do, that Kurt Russell’s character, Jack Burton, is the sidekick. The real hero is his Chinese friend Wang Chi—he’s the one who knows what to do, is the much better fighter and gets the girl. Burton does the sidekick stuff—ask the dumb questions, be comic-relief klutz. One of the great fun films.

Get Real is one of my favourite gay films. It is nicely observed—our hero’s somewhat gormless father being a Dr Who fan with a great Cyberman outfit is a particularly nice touch. The contrast between Ben Silverstone’s Steven Carter (gay, bookish and happy with it, though not out) and Brad Gorton’s John Dixon (school captain, champion athlete and so not happy with his sexuality) works nicely as a polarity to explore being a gay teenager at school. Charlotte Brittain as, effectively, Steven’s fag hag has some great lines well delivered.

The Libertine is Restoration England in all its sparkling, grubby sensuality. (Many of the characters appear not to have washed recently.) A biopic of the last years of the short life of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. Johnny Depp plays in his early 40s someone who died in his early 30s. But he is certainly pretty enough to bring it off (and make the syphilitic decline all the more striking). A bit too episodic to entirely work, it is still rather fun with a fine cast. John Malkovich’s Charles II does not convey Charles’s charm, but does bring out the deeply political animal he was. Rosamund Pike is particularly effective as Rochester’s strong-minded wife.

The Dreamers is a nice little film about desire and obsession with the events of May 1968 in Paris as backdrop. Young American cinephile comes to Paris to study French for a year and gets taken up by French twins (boy and girl). American hooks up with girl, gets bothered by the semi-incestuous nature of their relationship, sees it (correctly) as a fear of growing up yet wishes to continue. They are only tangentially connected with the events around them as they argue about cinema with a dash of politics—the action is interspersed with many sequences from classic films. The film appears to end rather abruptly, but it seemed to me to follow quite straightforwardly from—and complete—what had gone before. Despite being based on a novel by an English writer and having an Italian director, the young American apparent naif is very much not used as a foil to flatter, but to sharply probe, European sophistication. (For a reminder of the spirit of Mao worship, this “the Cultural Revolution was great” propaganda piece is useful. The Simpsons puts it in perspective.)

The novelist wrote the screenplay and is, along with director and producer, one of the commentators in the commentary in the DVD. I found his comments to be very thoughtful about cinema-making, about the difference between film and novel. He originally saw the actor as the formless thing which is poured into the bottle of the character to give the character shape. He came to conclusion that this simile was the wrong way around—the character was poured into the bottle of the actor who gives it shape. So the role of the screenplay was to provide room for the actors to do so, and to provide character who cou.d “get under the skin” of the actors. Since the novel was semi-autobiographical, there were loose chains connected what happened to the novel, the screenplay to the novel, and what the actors did to the screeplay. Also particularly liked the Director’s concluding comments on May 1968—it was a political failure (thank God!) but a social success (a good thing too).

Capote is an effective biopic, mainly due to Philip Seymour Hoffman’s remarkable performance as Truman Capote. The film covers the period when Capote wrote In Cold Blood, his acknowledged masterpiece. A genuinely new form of writing (the non-fiction novel) which was also the last book he ever completed prior to drinking himself to death over the next almost 20 years. As the tale of an artist destroyed by his masterpiece, Capote doesn’t quite work, which is why it is not a great film. But it gives you enough to see how it happened, so it is effective. Capote is not turned into any sort of secular saint. The underlying dishonesty of his interaction with Perry Smith, one of the convicted murderers, is quite explicit. (Perhaps a little too explicit, since the script has Capote tell Smith barefaced lies about his book.) Capote becomes emotionally attached to Perry but cannot complete his book until Perry is executed—thereby providing the ending for the book.

Catherine Keener gives a very effective performance as Lee Harper, Capote’s research assistant and about to become Pullitzer-prize winning famous with her novel To Kill A Mockingbird. She is the moral centre of the story, who can see the wrongness of what Capote is doing, and quietly tell him so, but remains his friend. Capote is a good film about the price of artistic creation and invokes well the time and milieus in which the story occurs.

Ella Enchanted (Cinderella redone) with Joanna Lumley as the wicked stepmother, Cary Elwes (in a real English accent but not doing as you wish) as a wicked uncle being evil in suitable style, Eric Idle narrating when required, Vivica Fox as a sassy-powerful-but-stupid fairy, Minnie Driver as the nice-but-lacking-magical juice house fairy, the best giant wedding you will ever see and a village of dancing elves. What’s not to like? It’s fantasy-medievalism for the kids where the “medieval” is a backwards reflection of the modern (skyscrapers, lifts, hand-turned escalators, mejieval magazines). Lots of fun, and very good-natured.