This week’s new DVD releases range from a very intimate story to a huge space tale.
• “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”: The film features a director in Patrick Hughes who has only two so-so feature films to his credit, a writer in Tom O’Connor who has only penned one produced movie script before and a pair of actors in Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson who love to improvise.
This isn’t a formula for failure, but really doesn’t suggest it’s a blueprint for a great success, either. What “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” ends up being is a film with some very high and desperately low moments that rises above standard action film fare because of the lethal acting weapon of Reynolds and Jackson.
• “Beach Rats”: Just as Eliza Hittman did with “It Felt Like Love” in 2013, the writer/director of the dreamlike “Beach Rats” shows the kind of confidence in her work that she doesn’t need neither manipulation nor distractions. Her style is to strip away anything that doesn’t support the truth of her characters. There a brutality and vulgarity to this approach Hittman uses to her advantage.
Hittman’s story revolves around Frankie (Harris Dickinson), a teenager from the Brooklyn area who’s void of any signs of ambition. The director slowly unfolds Frankie’s life while casually weaving in his attraction to Simone (Madeline Weinstein), a sexually aggressive party girl who has to battle with the attraction and rejection Frankie shows to her.
• “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”: Visually, French director Luc Besson’s “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” is tres magnifique. When it comes to the story, the film is what Pepe Le Pew would call a “le cinema avec grand stinker.”
“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” would be a perfect coffee table book. A massive tome of drawings and pictures would provide hours of entertainment. The script, even printed on a one-page pamphlet, would be mostly blank.
• “Crown Heights”: The film from director Matt Ruskin (“Booster”) is based on the true story of Colin Warner, a native of Trinidad living near Crown Heights, who was tried and convicted in 1980 for a murder he didn’t commit. It was only through the relentless efforts of his best friend to get the sentence overturned that Warner became a free man after more than two decades in prison.
Ruskin, who also wrote the script, does an excellent job taking the story from the arrest to the release.
