DVDs, 2/2.

Pedro Almodóvar has an interesting career arc. He started out as a sort of Spanish John Waters and evolved into Douglas Sirk (by way of Fassbinder). In his early films, mothers were a particular focus of anxiety and aggression, while his more recent films, such as Volver, are fit enough to bring your mother to.

Now, thanks to Sony Pictures, you can own most of Almodóvar's mature work, gathered in Viva Pedro: The Almodóvar Collection, a box set of eight of his films (Matador [1986], Law of Desire [1987], Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown [1988], The Flower of My Secret [1995], Live Flesh [1997], All About My Mother [1999], Talk to Her [2002] and Bad Education [2004], plus a disc of extras).

At DVD Talk, Stuart Galbraith IV plunged into the whole giddy, flamboyant array, concluding that "nearly every film is exceptionally good." Galbraith points out that the "set is being advertised on Amazon with an R rating, but includes NC-17 versions of Law of Desire, Matador and Bad Education." Galbraith focuses on an often ignored aspect of Almodóvar's work, which is that "these pictures are consistently surprising in the way Almodóvar structures his screenplays (thankfully, he seems never to have heard of Syd Field) which, despite their constant references to Sirk, All About Eve, film noir, 'Moon River,' A Streetcar Named Desire, Johnny Guitar, etc., keep the viewer off-balance."

The DVD Beaver, as is his wont, focuses on the transfers, concluding that the box set "is an excellent package. All the DVDs are progressively transferred, 16X9 enhanced and look exceptionally good," specifying that "four of the DVDs (Live Flesh, Bad Education, Talk to Her and The Flower of My Secret) appear to be duplicates of the existing Region 1 releases (extras too) with Bad Education being the NC-17 (not visually censored) cut. All About My Mother and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown are different than the previously released individual discs," while, "Matador and Law of Desire are seeing their first light of day - digitally speaking - in Region 1," before complaining that seven of the films "have ghastly yellow subtitles in optional French or English."

Missy Schwartz at Entertainment Weekly reveals that the "Spanish auteur has a thing for revisiting themes," noting by way of illustration that a scene in The Flower of My Secret features "a novelist, played by Marisa Paredes, [who] discusses her next book: A young girl kills her father after he tries to rape her; her mother then buries the body in the freezer of a neighbor's restaurant. Sound familiar? It should. It's the plot of Almodóvar's latest film, the Oscar-nominated Volver."

And speaking of Entertainment Weekly, Ken Tucker reviews another recent box set, a "Signature Collection" from Warner Home Video that gathers together six of Robert Mitchum's films (Angel Face, Macao [1952], Home From the Hill, The Sundowners [1960], The Good Guys and the Bad Guys [1969] and The Yakuza [1974]). It's an uneven box, almost more notable for the auteurs it collects than for Mitchum's work. Tucker calls the collection a "lumpy pile of movies" and an "extras-light hodgepodge" that "shouldn't be mistaken for a gathering of Mitchum's best work," but unexpectedly singles out The Sundowners as "an excellent oddity on Mitchum's résumé in which he manages a not-absurd Australian accent as a Down Under homesteader."

As noted the other day, Dave Kehr at the New York Times focuses on Vincente Minnelli's Home From the Hill. He deems it "a superb example of Minnelli's method," adding that there are "no arias here, but the film is organized into operatic climaxes: great emotional outpourings, centered on traumatic events."

A theme that runs through most of the internet reviews of the set is that Mitchum, despite his casualness, really did care about acting. And this is the point that Fernando F Croce makes at Slant. "Robert Mitchum," he avers, "is the greatest Hollywood actor to ever pretend not to give a shit about acting." Croce's findings are that the set is a "pretty solid job across the board. The nicely preserved black-and-whites of Macao and Angel Face retain their director's visual flourishes, while The Sundowners and Home from the Hill gain from cleaned-up, anamorphic widescreen presentations; colors in both The Good Guys and the Bad Guys and The Yakuza are a little on the dim side. The mono sound could be more expansive, but it's clear throughout." One of Mitchum's most notable lines is, "Baby, I don't care," from Out of the Past, from which Croce divagates, with the correction, "But you do, Bob, and this set proves it."

Related: "What were the Academy members thinking when they snubbed Volver in so many areas?" wonders Nathaniel R. "This is a moving, textured and funny drama."

Posted by dwhudson at February 2, 2007 5:37 AM