Eco-horror from the frightmaster who directed Rain Man and a 20th anniversary for Schindler's List on DVD/BD this week
Pick Of The Week: New
The Bay
The last time director Barry Levinson tried his hand at horror, the result was Sphere, a calamitous Michael Crichton adaptation that inspired my friends and me to bat around the phrase “We have nothing to fear but Sphere itself” back in the day. (Weren’t we delightful?) News of Levinson trying his hand at the found-footage horror genre didn’t sound promising, but The Bay turns out to be chilling and smart, an environmental thriller that finds innovative ways to exploit a seemingly exhausted format. Constructed out of footage from all around the site of a July 4th ecological disaster—broadcast clips, home video and camera phones, surveillance cams, et al.—The Bay documents a deadly (and extremely gross) outbreak near the polluted waterway of the title. It’s Contagion as a zombie movie. The disc has a Levinson commentary track and a featurette called “Into The Unknown: Barry Levinson On The Bay.”
Pick Of The Week: Retro
Schindler’s List: 20th Anniversary Limited Edition
An event as unfathomably evil as the Holocaust can put artists in a terrible bind, because any approach other than direct and austere risks tastelessness—and even then, there are limits on representation. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List studiously avoids coloring outside the lines, but what remains remarkable about the film is the complexity with which it renders its characters, from the German industrialist (Liam Neeson) who doesn’t come about courage and self-sacrifice easily to the savage Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who’s not the cardboard sadist he might have been. The features on this 20th anniversary edition are not terribly generous—Spielberg never does commentaries, for one—but it does include a feature length “Voices From The List” documentary and information on the USC Shoah Foundation.
Don’t Break The Seal