Pick Of The Week: New
Magic Mike (Warner Bros.)
Just the existence of Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh’s male stripper movie, is cheering enough, given that the Gentleman’s Club-to-Chippendales ratio on film is approximately a billion to one. Despite Channing Tatum’s ascendency as a Hollywood star and the presence of charismatic beefcake Matthew McConaughey in support, Soderbergh only got $7 million to make the film—a clear sign that major studios will spend heedlessly to attract a male audience, but don’t trust that women will show up to movies that might appeal to them. $113.7 million later, Magic Mike is the sleeper hit of the summer, a funny and playful backstage (and onstage) look at a Tampa club that doubles as a stealth companion piece to Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, another movie about people selling their bodies in a down economy. The bad news about the DVD/BD? No Soderbergh commentary track.
Pick Of The Week: Retro
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Criterion)
“You don’t have to lay an egg to know what it tastes like,” film critic Pauline Kael once said, defending her profession. But Kael’s contemporary at The New Yorker, Penelope Gilliatt, laid a pretty good one with her script for 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, John Schlesinger’s forward-thinking follow-up to Midnight Cowboy. Chronicling the painful fallout from the love triangle involving a young artist (Murray Head) and the man (Peter Finch) and woman (Glenda Jackson) who love him, the film was far ahead of its time for its mature examination of polyamory and still looks great 40 years later. Schlesinger didn’t survive to contribute to this Criterion edition, but the features include an illustration of a 1975 audio interview. Full review to come next week.
Don’t Break The Seal
Tyler Perry’s Witness Protection (Lionsgate)
Eugene Levy and Denise Richards play husband and wife in Tyler Perry’s latest crapfest. That might sound strange on the surface, but it gets stranger: Richards would seem to be typecast as the gold-digging trophy wife to Levy’s rich corporate executive, but in fact she’s utterly devoted to this man 24 years her senior and they can presumably resume their vigorous sex lives in the viewer’s imagination once Levy’s legal troubles are over. The convoluted plot has Perry’s Madea character protecting Levy and his family from the mob after he agrees to testify against them in a money-laundering case. The featurettes on the DVD/BD are short and Madea-centric.