The trickle of late ’08 prestige films continues this week with two multi-Oscar-nominated releases: the gritty Mickey Rourke melodrama The Wrestler and the history-play Frost/Nixon. Both are alternately entertaining and clunky, though Frost/Nixon clunks far more often The Wrestler, which contains moments of deep emotion (largely due to Rourke) and moments of rare poetry (largely due to director Darren Aronofsky).
This week is also a good week for offbeat passion-projects, including the acclaimed late ‘70s sitcom Rhoda (review coming in two weeks) and the pilot movie for the Battlestar Galactica prequel series Caprica (review coming tomorrow). Perhaps the most significant of the offbeat passion-projects coming to DVD this week is Peter Bogdanovich’s 1976 folly Nickelodeon, a salute to the early days of moviemaking featuring a hero who’s very Bogdanovich-like in his demeanor and appetites. For the DVD release (packaged with Bogdanovich’s classic The Last Picture Show), Nickelodeon has been digitally “de-colorized” to achieve the black-and-white look the director originally intended.
Finally, this is an especially strong week for The Criterion Collection, which is releasing a new Blu-ray edition of Georges Clouzot’s 1953 political thriller Wages Of Fear and a three-disc collection of the surrealist nature films of Jean Painlevé. The Painlevé set, titled Science Is Fiction, includes some of the filmmaker’s more overtly experimental work alongside his commercial releases (which helped influence Walt Disney’s “True Life Adventure” series) and a set of films scored by indie-rockers Yo La Tengo.
Air: The Complete Series
Funimation, $49.98
The Arrival
Lionsgate Blu-ray, $29.99
The Burrowers
Lionsgate, $27.98