DVDs, 7/11.

It's a typical DVD Tuesday, with a disparate group of about 40 Region 1 DVDs and, in the course of the week, several more R2 discs, amounting to a mix of nostalgic Hollywood revivals, double dipping reissues, TV shows, offbeat art films and recent multiplex fare hitting the shelves. And yet, as nearly always, it's the releases from the Criterion Collection that are met with the most anticipation.

At Ain't It Cool News, Moriarty first notes that Yi Yi has got a "great cover for a great film" and, in defiance of the site's reputation for fan boy priorities, he calls the film itself "a masterpiece of minimalism." Cemile Kavountzis of Entertainment Weekly finds Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (to give its full title) to be "a moving reflection on the everyday snapshots, both literally and metaphorically, that capture life's sometimes blurred three-dimensional complexity." And David Cornelius at DVD Talk says that Yi Yi "is a patient movie, and it shares its patience with its characters." Cornelius also finds the transfer a "stunning improvement" over the Winstar disc.

The other Criterion release of the day is Koko, a Talking Gorilla, Barbet Schroeder's documentary about the signing ape. Dawn Taylor at the DVD Journal judges that it "suffers a bit from that lack of documentary intent" yet concludes that the film remains "fascinating." For Gary W Tooze at DVDBeaver, Koko "sheds light on the ongoing ethical and philosophical debates over the individual rights of animals and brings us face-to-face with an amazing gorilla caught in the middle." DVDBeaver also offers, as always, lavish screen captures with which to evaluate the transfer.

Both The Matador and The Libertine have received a great deal of attention lately. JJB at the DVD Journal found that The Matador "delicately traces the intersection between two disparate worlds," while an unnamed reviewer at CurrentFilm.com appreciates that it is "the first movie I've seen in a while that feels too short."

Mike Russell at DVD Journal warns that The Libertine "is the sort of movie you hate to hate, because (a) it actually has artistic ambitions, and (b) it stars everyone's favorite bowl of thinking-man's ham salad, Johnny Depp," but in the end finds the film a stagey account of an ultimately unlikable man. Tooze at DVDBeaver notes that "the cast is good, but something didn't gel in the manner it was intended methinks." Gabriel Powers at DVDActive is harshest: "Boring would be the easiest way to describe The Libertine, pretentious would be another apt adjective, as would ineffective, melodramatic, and unnecessary."

On the international front, DVDActive's Scott McKenzie brings some insight into Michael Haneke and his work via the R2 British release of the controversial Funny Games:

[Haneke's theme is] the deconstruction of the bourgeois family unit. He takes a group of people with apparently happy lives and throws them into a situation where they must act out of character so we can see how they will react. In this case, the family home is invaded and they have nowhere to run. Haneke takes it to another level by almost invading the home himself. I got the feeling that Paul, the more intelligent of the boys, is the personification of the director, with his knowing glances to the camera and ability to manipulate the proceedings.

Finally, you'd expect reviews of Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, a film seemingly built for revilement, would attract a few amusingly cutting put-downs. Instead, many scribes seemed to like it. The "funniest comedy of 2006 was sadly mis-marketed as a thriller," begins Dawn Taylor at the DVD Journal before going on to backhandedly praise the film while reviling it:

Despite working overtime to be all about sex, Basic Instinct 2 is a blazingly inhuman movie, never letting us forget for a moment that we're watching made-up characters being paraded around in ridiculous, unbelievable ways, from Catherine's collection of phallic lighters that look like architectural landmarks to the way [David] Thewlis's cop, despite finding curare in the dead guy's system and a fistful of drug-laced hypodermic needles in Catherine's river-plunged car, can't come up with a solid reason to charge her with anything.

The anonymous reviewer at CurrentFilm.com cuts to the chase by pointing out that the "unrated edition offers another 2 minutes of racy footage."

Posted by dwhudson at July 11, 2006 6:15 AM