The crushing ambivalence of young adulthood is often lost under the thick glaze of hormonal revelry typically applied to teenage and twentysomething coming-of-age tales. But “Take Me Home Tonight” — an in many respects pedestrian comedy that otherwise coasts along on its energy and the winning appeal of its cast — gets this crucial detail of feeling right, which helps mitigate direction that often lacks a sense of snappishness, and a second and third act that don’t emotionally resonate as much as they could or should. The film, co-written by director Michael Dowse, from a story co-conceived by star Topher Grace, unfolds in 1988 and centers on a recent MIT grad, Matt, who has returned home to Southern California, and works at a video store while trying to figure out his life. When his best friend Barry (Dan Fogler) gets canned from his job at an auto dealership, the pair head out into the night to a party, where Matt takes romantic aim at the longtime object of his crush, Tori (Teresa Palmer, quite lovely). He succeeds, but at a cost — awkwardly painting himself into a corner by lying about his occupation.
“Take Me Home Tonight” has a shaggy specificity in its dialogue that helps mark the movie as a bit off-kilter. And, again, it does a good job of locating the age-appropriate panic and uncertainty that so many movies of this ilk miss the mark on. It’s a shame, then, that some of its sidebar conflicts and comedic resolutions aren’t more original, or sharply defined. The film comes to DVD presented in a 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio. Supplemental features arrive by way of 11 minutes of deleted scenes; a music video featuring the cast; and a separate chat with the cast members, in which their reminisces about production are intercut with film clips, outtakes and audition footage.
As Blu-ray has picked up in popularity, the number of catalogue titles getting complementary releases on the high-definition format has been on the rise. Two recent ones, “The Usual Suspects” and “Some Like It Out”, illustrate frustratingly different paths taken by studio distributors. The latter film, from legendary director Billy Wilder, stars Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as two Chicago musicians who witness a gangland murder and hop a southbound train to Florida to escape detection. The rub? They have to dress as members of an all-girls jazz band, which complicates Curtis’ pursuit of Marilyn Monroe, as well as an aging playboy’s courting of Lemmon’s character. The movie, from 1959, is in black-and-white, but that matters not one whit. Smartly written, well acted and snappishly framed and paced, this is a comedy classic — entirely deserving of its slot on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Films of All Time list. The film arrives on Blu-ray on a 50gb dual-layer disc, in a 1.66:1 widescreen transfer that preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical presentation. Blacks are strong and clear, and the image consistent, with only a bit of remaining grain and dirt occasionally visible. Audio, meanwhile, comes by way of an English language DTS-HD 5.1 master audio track, plus French 5.1 DTS and Spanish mono tracks.
Director Bryan Singer’s 1995 crime classic “The Usual Suspects”, meanwhile, comes to Blu-ray in an attractively packaged digibook, but with only a theatrical trailer as added on-disc content. The durable packaging (its spine is even just a bit slimmer than a regular Blu-ray case, and about one-third of an inch taller) is nice, and includes some essays on the movie, behind-the-scenes production stills, cast biographies and character quotes. But the issue here is one of comparative value, since “The Usual Suspects” already saw a previous Blu-ray release, in 2007, and a special edition DVD release with a robust complement of supplemental material. Why not port over some of those features here? It makes no sense, really, and this release is a major disappointment, given the understandable inclination of repeat-viewer fans to want to delve further into the making of the film.
Holding on to irrational grudges born of middle school science filmstrips, some folks still consider documentaries boring. But if there’s something virtually guaranteed “not” to be boring, it would have to be orgasms, right? Liz Canner’s “Orgasm, Inc.” is that movie — at least from the female perspective — and it even bears two different DVD covers, since one poster art campaign (of a woman lustily clutching a giant, strategically placed bottle) apparently didn’t sail in red states, or some such thing. (The alternate cover, a close-up of lipstick-clad lips pursed around a pink pill, is even hotter, in my opinion.) Subtitled “The Strange Science of Female Pleasure,” Canner’s film centers around what is considered — with the possible exception of an anti-baldness pill — the new holy grail of pharmaceutical companies: a female Viagra. Canner was hired to produce or edit some erotic videos for one such company in some clinical trial research they were doing for an orgasm cream, and convinced its makers to open up their doors to her and let her also make her own documentary about this pursuit, and the targeted alleviation of this alleged female shortcoming — an inability to reliably achieve orgasm via vaginal penetration and/or clitorial stimulation.
The problem is, while Canner’s movie ably demonstrates the somewhat slimy incentivization that drives the pharmaceutical industry — how they benefit from a more strictly clinical diagnosis of this phenomenon, and thus pour money into research that validates it, hoping to then peddle its cure — “Orgasm, Inc.” lacks a strong sense of guided purpose. There’s a certain prurient connection, sure, and it’s amusing to hear and see a gentlemanly Southern clinician talk about his patented Orgasmatron (yes, seriously), but even at only 80 minutes, this movie can’t decide whether it wants to be a guided tour (a la the work of Morgan Spurlock), a more stinging indictment, or something else entirely. It flits to and fro, never settling upon a convincing tone or point-of-view. Yes, “Orgasm, Inc.” just can’t deliver complete satisfaction, ironically. The movie arrives on DVD with three bonus scenes (one of which is a “tour of the clitoris,” and its vestibular glands) that run about five minutes; a two-page scrollable director’s statement; a three-page scrollable biography; film facts and footnotes (accessible via CD-ROM); and trailers for the movie and other First Run releases, including “Plastic Planet” and “Kings of Pastry”.
Much more interesting, thankfully, is “American Grindhouse”, director Elijah Drenner’s look at the robust history of exploitation and outsider cinema in the United States, from Thomas Edison and pre-Code Hollywood on up through the subgenre splintering of the 1970s and ’80s. Narrated by Robert Forster, and packed with interviews and clips, the movie has all sorts of fasincating revelations. Still, a big part of what makes Drenner’s movie interesting are the insights and anecdotes of his interview subjects. “American Grindhouse” isn’t the most well ordered thing, and it misses some key opportunities to delve a bit deeper into subjects (producer Kroger Babb’s live-birth “instructional film” “Mom & Dad”, for instance, purportedly the third most profitable movie of the 1940s), instead too often shuffling off to another array of clips. In the end, too, it sort of peters out, asking general questions about what constitutes modern-day grindhouse and exploitation, or whether the subgenre is dead, rather than exploring it with a bit more intellectual gusto.
Arriving on DVD via Kino Lorber, “American Grindhouse” is presented in 1.78:1 widescreen, and includes a nice slate of bonus material. Drenner actually began his movie as a biography/documentary about filmmaker Jack Hill, he reveals in an eight-minute chat that divides interview clips of he and co-producer Dan Greene. Twelve additional minutes of interview outtakes include some salty anecdotes and amusing tidbits (as well as interviewee John Landis pointing out to Drenner where to stand behind the camera, to better match a sight-line). Vintage radio spots are also included, along with older interview material with Roger Corman (from Drenner’s abandoned Hill film), and footage of Jonathan Kaplan and Larry Cohen at Q&A introductions of their films at Los Angeles’ New Beverly Theater. Oh, and there’s a nice photo gallery too, which includes an interesting photo of the late, great Peter Falk in a trimmed scene from Ted Mikels’ “Astro Zombies”.
Finally, if true-event terror is your thing, there’s writer-director Andrew Traucki’s Aussie import “The Reef”, an at-sea drama that juggles human panic and outside menace quite well. Based on actual events, and very much in the vein of “Open Water”, the movie centers on a ship delivery man, Luke (Damian Walsh-Howling), who takes along four friends on the charted delivery of a yacht to its new owner. When the ship is ripped open by corral reefs just underneath the ocean’s surface, Luke, his girlfriend Kate (Zoe Taylor), Kate’s brother Matt (Gyton Grantley), Matt’s girlfriend Suzie (Adrienne Pickering) and local hired hand Warren (Kieran Darcy Smith) face a difficult decision — stay on board with a slim hope of rescue, or try to swim 12 miles through shark-infested waters to what they believe to be the nearest land.
“The Reef” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t need to. Traucki is smart about the conflicts and fears inherent in his story, and his attractive and capable cast delivers solidly on the film’s streamlined premise. It helps, too, that the movie doesn’t go overboard with CGI and gore; Traucki and his crew actually went to the trouble, via a separate second unit shoot, of filming real sharks, which are blended here in appropriately stomach-churning fashion with just a few other gimmicks. “The Reef” comes to DVD presented in 2.35:1 widescreen, enhanced for 16×9 televisions, with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track. Apart from a motion menu and the film’s trailer, there is but one bonus feature, but is a solid one — a 24-minute making-of featurette that includes extensive and well-blended interviews with the cast, Traucki and producer Michael Robertson, among others. Walsh-Howling shares details of his third-day accident (stepping on a stonefish), while some on-location footage (the film was shot at Port Lincoln, three to four hours north of Brisbane) shows the crew working in a makeshift cricket game on the beach. Most interesting, however, is Traucki’s detailing of the filming of the real sharks… and footage of one of them chomping down on a camera dangled overboard.
Written by: Brent Simon
