New DVDs: 'Revolver,' 'Southland Tales'

Guy Ritchie and his editor James Herbert sound like a couple of sophomores under the spell of a physics-for-poets professor as they try to explain their movie "Revolver."

"This film is essentially about the transcendence of the conceptualized self," Ritchie says on Sony's new DVD version of his trippy gangster movie. (Beat.) "That probably sounds more complicated and pretentious than it needs to be."

Complicated and pretentious would be typical of the criticisms thrown up at Ritchie's film, but viewers in the right state of mind can have big fun with "Revolver." And with Ritchie and Herbert's attempts to explain the movie, which are pretty (unintentionally) hilarious.

"The weed smokers seem to get it," Ritchie says as he urges DVD viewers to watch the film multiple times. "It's slightly unfair if you think you'd absorb it all in one hit."

"Revolver" concerns gambler Jake Green (Jason Statham) who gets out of prison after seven years. Green sets about humiliating and bankrupting a screwy casino owner (Ray Liotta), who promptly puts out a hit on the ex-con.

Tormenting and guiding Green are a con man (Vincent Pastore) and a chessmaster (Andre Benjamin), both dedicated to some kind of ultimate scam. Looming over all the action is the mysterious Sam Gold, who could be mankind's collective Ego or simply the Devil.

"Revolver" spins off a riot of visual ideas -- a caper sequence morphs into cool high-end animation; a hit man's big sequence is propelled by spatially twisted editing tricks; a green-screen mashup creates a glowing world of uncertain time and place. All the while, the script is riffing off Freudian/Jungian philosophy, game theory and quantum mechanics.

Sony's single-DVD version of "Revolver" looks and sounds bold. It includes an above-average docu that works through the film's production and post-production sleights-of-hand. Ritchie likes to work with the same "band" of filmmakers, resulting in a clubhouse atmosphere on the set. A lot of time is spent playing chess and busting chops.

There's the feature-length commentary from Ritchie and Herbert, as well as a repetitive video followup on the film's concepts. Even after these briefings, things still seemed clear as mud. I don't know if I've overthought or underthought the film's constructs, possibly best described as coming from the world according to Einstein and Freud.

Ritchie ("Snap") has this to say about his post-"Swept Away" experimentation: "(Filmmaking) is a format that has become stagnant to a degree. ... A director's job is to keep challenging that format."

One filmmaker who burst through those barriers with similar concepts is Richard Kelly, the young creator of "Donnie Darko." That mix of sci-fi, physics and philosophy worked beautifully in both its versions.

Now, after five years or so, Kelly is back, this time with the acutely awful "Southland Tales."

Dwayne Johnson stars as the Everyman hero caught in the middle of a pre-apocalyptic L.A. that's populated by a swarm of actors along the lines of Jon Lovitz, Wallace Shawn and Amy Poehler. The movie feels like a bad 1960s revolutionary goof, with all of the current multimedia-age's visual cliches furiously pumping.

Sony's DVD includes a fun and thoughtful animated short about life without mankind. Watch that, skip the feature. Brother.

Also circling the DVD blog's players this week are the Oscar-friendly romantic tragedy "Atonement"; Criterion's rerelease of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm"; and Disney's wildly popular "Enchanted" with Amy Adams.

Pick of the week: Revolver
Dog of the week: Southland Tales

New and notable:
Alpha Male (ThinkFilm)
Antonio Gaudi (The Criterion Collection)
Atonement (Universal)
Bull Durham (MGM)
Eight Men Out (MGM)
Pride of the Yankees (MGM)
Enchanted (Disney)
I Am Legend (Warner)
The Ice Storm (The Criterion Collection)
Jack Ketchum's The Lost (Anchor Bay)
Love in the Time of Cholera (New Line)
Mafioso (The Criterion Collection)
Revolver (Sony)
Steep (Sony)
The Untouchables, season 2, Vol. 1
The Wild Wild West season 4

Complete list of this week's releases on my pal Harley's site, onvideo.org

Comments

[Liz]

Boy, am I glad I didn't impulsively add Southland Tales to my Netflix queue.

See, this is why I read blogs - for important guidance. I'm still debating checking out Revolver, though.

[patrick roberts]

Dwayne Johnson and J.Timberlake are surprisingly talented actors; but i'm still trying to figure out what Southland Tales was about... maybe it's really obvious: life in Los Angeles is blurred, clutter, flashy and not always meaningful.