Tokyo! via France and Korea

Cities are organic. They may have their origins as towns—trading posts or shipping ports or strategic fortresses—but they mutate and evolve as people gravitate to them seeking shelter from the wilderness. In the process, the town takes on a symbiotic life of its own, imperceptibly absorbing its inhabitants while shaping itself to accommodate its hosts.

That’s how towns morph into cities.

And that’s how people become one with their city, whether they like it or not.

Tokyo! is a triptych of diverse short films, each of which examines an aspect of the isolation that often accompanies individuals living in the midst of millions. The common thread uniting the films comprising Tokyo! is alienation, with the city itself serving as a canvas upon which the surreal sketches are played. Two of the stories are directed by Frenchmen, and the third by a South Korean, further enhancing the otherworldly feel of Tokyo!

In “Interior Design,” writer-director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) takes a Kafkaesque spin on finding one’s identity in the city. Loosely adapted from a Gabrielle Bell graphic novella, the story follows a young couple from the sticks trying to find their fortune in Tokyo. He’s an aspiring, if not very good, filmmaker, and she’s his unassuming but resourceful girlfriend. As he becomes more wrapped up in his importance as an artiste, she quietly tends to their day to day survival. As he becomes more self-important, she struggles to find her own voice, eventually morphing into a chair, literally. As terrifying as such a metamorphosis could be, she finds a new freedom as she explores her niche in society.

“Merde” is the contribution by director Leos Carax (The Lovers on the Bridge), and it’s part paean to Japanese kaiju films, part silent film comedy, and wholly disturbing. Merde (literally “shit” in French) is the titular character, gleefully portrayed by Denis Lavant, who rises from his subterranean home like some mad mime. At first, he’s a bothersome clown with a ridiculously curling beard and a chalky eye, snatching flowers and cigars from pedestrians, disrupting their routine before he disappears into the sewers. Deep within his lair, he happens upon an abandoned cache of hand grenades from the thirties, which he lobs at the citizenry when he next emerges above ground. Dubbed “the creature from the sewers” by the Japanese press, he’s put on trial for murder, and becomes a cause célèbre in the process.

“Shaking Tokyo” is an unsettlingly quiet film by South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho (The Host.) The main character here is a hikikomori, or urban shut-in, who’s lived with minimal human contact for over ten years. He survives on monthly checks from his father, delivered through the mail slot in his door, and apparently lives mostly on pizza delivered anonymously to his small but meticulously kept apartment. It’s lined with empty toilet paper rolls and pizza boxes, all neatly stacked as if to keep time of his solitude. His pastoral existence is abruptly disrupted by two concurrent events the delivery of his pizza by a lovely delivery girl and an earthquake. She passes out from the excitement and he’s forced to make contact with the outside world to revive her. He’s shaken by her, as well, and finally ventures into the outside world to find her. What he discovers, however, is that Tokyo has all retreated indoors to become a city of hikikomori.

Tokyo! is an act of synergy. Taken as individual films, the movie does little at first glance to portray Tokyo, the city, as a vibrant force of 21st century culture. Truth to tell, none of the three films portray Tokyo as anything more than a supporting, though omniscient, character in the lives of its citizenry. There are references to the city in all the stories—the horrors of housing in the city in “Interior Design,” xenophobia and the island’s denial of history (not to mention Godzilla references) in “Merde”, the constant threat of earthquakes on the island in “Shaking Tokyo”—but they’re only brush strokes in the larger canvas of Tokyo! Ultimately, the movie works because it’s greater than its parts. While all three episodes are complete unto themselves, they’re a bit self-conscious when taken alone. But viewed together, they become integral parts of a surreal tapestry. With elements of absurdism, science fiction and romance, Tokyo! manages to paint a portrait not so much of the city, but of the souls who go largely unnoticed until their hearts collide with the mindset of the megalopolis.

Tokyo! the DVD is unrated. It’s presented in widescreen, and Dolby 5.1, with a Dolby 2.0 option also available. Fittingly, it’s in Japanese, with English or French subtitles. Video transfer is flawless, and the subtitles are presented in a way that doesn’t distract the viewers attention from the visuals. Special features are sparse, consisting of “making of” featurettes of the individual films, and interviews with the directors, as well as the obligatory theatrical trailer.

Almost Forgotten, A Film that's a Privilege to View

You can’t be a prophet in your own village. At least, that’s the way the Hungarian proverb goes. But what if your village is the world stage and your words are more pronouncements on contemporary society than dire warnings for a future that may or may not happen? You might want to ask Peter Watkins about that.

When his film Privilege was released in 1967, it was almost universally savaged by British critics. They called it “hysterical,” “flailing”, “juvenile,” “a hopscotch of film and television”—and those were some of the more reserved comments. Critics in America, by and large were a bit kinder in their assessments of the film, hailing it as “uncompromising,” “crisp,” and even “brilliant.” Looking back at it over forty years later, critics on both sides of the Atlantic all were right. And they all were wrong.

What makes Privilege fascinating after all this time is how eerily close its scenario has become to the everyday workings of media manipulation in our contemporary culture. Released in 1967, and postulating a near future of 1970, Privilege was more a symbolic representation of what Watkins saw as the current state of society than anything resembling social science fiction. At its most simplistic, the film chronicles the rise and fall of Steven Shorter, the most successful pop star in Britain’s history. Shorter (Paul Jones, former lead singer of Manfred Mann), caught up in his own PR, is more puppet to the combined forces of the media, government and church, than he is an actual personality. He’s devoid of any independent thought, shifting his persona according to the whims of his handlers, transforming from cathartic victim of society to pitchman for the benefits of apple consumption to an advocate of utter conformity. It’s only when his government-hired portraitist Vanessa Richie (Jean Shrimpton) gradually becomes his lover that he begins to question his complicity in media manipulation.

Privilege was one of the earliest “mockumentaries,” and its distributor, Universal, as well as the press, both in the UK and the US, really didn’t know what to make of it. Watkins’ previous work, The War Game, had already been banned by the BBC, and on this, his feature film debut, the British press of the time marched in lockstep with the conservative government, ridiculing the film in the most minute detail. American marketing, not surprisingly, capitalized on its youth appeal, and sensationalized the film’s more subtle commentary.




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In actuality, Privilege was neither sensationalistic or naïve. Nor was it Orwellian, as some have claimed. It’s really about sacrificing one’s individuality at any cost for that proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, and the consequences of such a choice. In the process, it turned out to be prophetic. In our contemporary society, fame is fleeting, manufactured largely by gossip and scandal. That’s our cathartic release. We live vociferously through the travails and transformations of our Star of the Moment. In that regard, Privilege emerges as profoundly prophetic. With Privilege, Watkins foresaw the self-mutilation of acts like Iggy and the Stooges, and the anarchic posturings of the Sex Pistols. Shorter’s handlers can easily be viewed as a prototype for Malcolm McClaren, or for that matter, any number of contemporary political campaign managers.

Perhaps because it was so spot on in its observations about the collusion of media and government, Privilege languished for decades as a cult oddity, turning up here and there on late night TV movies, with not a pristine print available anywhere, even to Watkins himself. Finally, with New Yorker Films digitally restored DVD release of the film, Privilege is available to a new, more savvy audience. It’s not a splashy package, presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio an delivererd in mono sound. Besides a bio of Watkins, the only bonus feature on the disc is the 1961 CBC documentary short “Lonely Boy,” about then 19-year old pop sensation Paul Anka. Besides being an award-winning film in its own right, “Lonely Boy” served as something of a blueprint in the making of Privilege, and illustrates how even in 1961, stars were molded, not born. The real bonus feature of the Privilege DVD is the accompanying booklet that offers commentary from Watkins and others about the controversy and the significance of the film.

Granted, Privilege is far from a perfect film. Watkins’ cinema verite approach sometimes overshadows his storytelling. But its significance lies in the fact that it puts all the ballyhoo surrounding stardom in its proper place, and forces the viewer the viewer to realize we’re all co-conspirators in media manipulation.

The Allure of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes

Nobody lives in the present—it can’t be done. By he time we perceive a moment, it’s already the past, leaving us to plot our next miniscule future. In fact, the present is the only abstract in our concept of time, no matter how we try to dismiss the future as unknown. If the present exists at all, it’s only as an asterisk to remind us of the moments we’ve experienced before we plunge headfirst into the next moment. As much as we like to think we walk down a path that leads to that resolution we knew we deserved, we’re always trying to catch up.

See, time isn’t a river that we raft through, and it’s not a quantum field. For humans, it’s more like a mist that shrouds us, breaking only in moments of lucidity or regret. What we were and what we are cohabit the same space, playfully sparring to determine who we are, and who we will ultimately be. The British mini-series Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, newly released on DVD by Acorn Media, and based on the 1956 novel by Angus Means, brilliantly explores time as a series of decisions and their consequences. In the process, it skewers the hypocrisy of several cherished social mores.

Gerald Middleton (Richard Johnson) is the central character of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, an aging historian of stiff upper lip demeanor haunted by the errors of his past. In 1912, he was witness to the celebrated unearthing of a pagan fertility idol at an archeological dig, buried with an early Christian bishop. It wasn’t long after that he discovered that overly endowed figure may have been a fake, planted there by the son of the expedition’s leader. And somewhere around that time, he began an affair with Dolly (Tara Fitzgerald) the fiancée of the roguish son (portrayed by a young, pre-Bond Daniel Craig.)

Forty some-odd years later, time has changed everything. Middleton married, not to his true love, Dolly, but to a shrewish Danish woman, Inge (Elizabeth Spriggs) whose seemingly frivolous eccentricities mask her dominating nature. Despite her frigid sexuality, they managed to spawn three offspring, all of whom go through their lives blissfully unaware of the little disasters they perpetrate. Gerald and Inge divorced eventually, but remained entangled in each other’s lives.

Time changed everything. Time changed nothing. All that time, Middleton kept the secret of the phallic symbol to himself, and kept his love for Dolly close to his heart. Now he wants to somehow rectify his past, and change his life for the unknown better, once and for all. The problem is, his past and present keep colliding, altering his future at every turn.

Andrew Davies did a remarkable job of adapting the Means novel, deftly moving the characters from one time frame to the other, using Middleton’s anguished memories as a framing device to tie it all together. In the process, Anglo-Saxon Attitudes deflates pomposities that are inherent not only in British society, but globally as well. It’s satire in its most potent form, exposing our follies so quietly we only realize it in retrospect. It’s not the sort of satire to make you giggle, but it will make you smile in places. It’s no wonder that the miniseries garnered a BFTA “Best Serial Drama” award in 1992.

The DVD is presented in its original 1.33:1 format, and is a beauty to watch. The video reproduction is crisp, and the sound separation is flawless. There aren’t a lot of bonus features—filmographies of the principals and biographies of Means and Davies are about it, but they illustrate what a stellar production it was. Anglo-Saxon Attitudes has a running time of 229 minutes, and is presented on two discs. Oh, it also features a small appearance by a 16-year old Kate Winslet, in one of her earliest roles.

Anglo-Saxon Attitudes, despite its pastoral pace (or perhaps because of it), remains an engrossing piece of drama that illustrates how lives unfold haphazardly, and reach their climactic moments largely unnoticed.

A Future Unwritten, Illuminated in Word and Song

Every person’s life if full of little moments that become seminal only in retrospect. We simply aren’t wired to process the significance of a moment as it happens. Often, we go to our deaths only vaguely aware of the moments and people who shaped our identities, leaving it to acquaintances we left behind to define us.

In Julian Temple’s documentary, The Future Is Unwritten, it’s largely left to the acquaintances and notable fans of Joe Strummer to define him. Strummer, lead singer, rhythm guitarist and unofficial head honcho of the Clash, had already left this mortal coil, having died in his sleep 21 December 2002. Even at that, his presence is felt throughout the film, as he largely narrates the history of his too-short life. Far from being a gimmick, his narration—culled from his 1990’s BBC radio program and various interviews through the years—adds an extra dimension to his turbulent and enigmatic life.

Fittingly, the narrative approach of The Future Is Unwritten is in itself enigmatic and non-linear. Utilizing family home movies (dating from Strummer’s early childhood, when he was just wee John Mellor), archival footage from the times that shaped his life, animation based on his cartoon drawings, and live Clash footage, Temple’s film comes across as more a rich collage than a biography. The end result is a portrait of a Joe Strummer who was not merely the “punk rock warlord” he fancied himself to be. That was only one facet of Strummer’s personality, the one he most often let his public see. He was a lot more complicated than that.

Temple, whose previous films include the Sex Pistols documentary The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, paints Strummer as a conflicted soul here. He was ruthless in his pursuit of being a rock star, tossing his mates the 101ers to the curb when he was given the opportunity to join the upstart band the Clash. Once he went punk, he played the role to the hilt, and infused it with a political agenda not seen before in the idiom. That’s not to take anything away from Clash mates Mick Jones or Paul Simonon—they were the musical backbone of the band—but it was Strummer who guided the band into a new phase of rock music. And for a time they lived up to their self-proclaimed hype of being the only band that mattered.

Success took its toll, as it is want to do in rock. After releasing London Calling, arguably the single most important album of the 1980’s, and following it up with the audacious Sandinista!, the Clash released Combat Rock. It was a dancehall and MTV hit, pushing the Clash into the top 40. It also heralded the end of the Clash, with the band splintering, and Joe Strummer retreating into a period of seclusion.

The Future Is Unwritten recalls all those glory days, as well as Strummer’s “wilderness years” before finally showing his reemergence in his final few years with his final band the Mescaleros. It’s compelling stuff, made all the more so by its campfire framing device, in which various people, mostly celebrities, none identified, offer personal remembrances of Strummer. It’s an impressive cast, including Bono, Martin Scorcese, Red Hot Chili Peppers Flea and Anthony Kiedis, Johnny Depp, John Cusack and Matt Dillon, as well as the people who knew and worked with Strummer through the years. It’s all done at night, outside, sitting around bonfires, and has the aura of a wake.

The Future Is Unwritten is by no means a glossy celebration of Joe Strummer’s life—it looks at him warts and all, and what we see is a man who tested himself and those around him. I guess he was the punk warlord, after all.

The DVD release offers few extras, but what few it does offer are priceless, particularly the bonfire interviews that didn’t make it to the final cut. It’s presented in a 1:33:1 ratio, and (oddly) Dolby 2.0. I would recommend picking up the soundtrack CD to fully appreciate the power of the music that really is an integral part of the story.

The Clash was one of the most important rock bands of all time. Joe Strummer was at their core, and he was fundamental in the fabric of all rock that was to follow the Clash. The future may be unwritten, but the embers of the past write its prologue.

Perception of the Doors

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It’s easy to make a case that the Doors were one of the greatest bands in the history of rock. They were, after all, one of the first bands to top the charts by exploring the darker side of the flower power generation. It’s an equally simple matter to claim the Doors as the godfathers of pretension in rock. It takes a bit more than leather pants and concho belts to signal a death knoll to love power.

The one thing that can’t be argued is that the Doors’ eponymously titled debut remains, over forty years after its release, one of the most auspicious debuts in the annals of rock. As part of its continuing series, Classic Albums: The Doors explores the making of the album, as seen mostly through the memories of the survivors of those sessions. It’s equal parts retrospective and a fond remembrance, as seen primarily through the reminiscences of Ray Manzarek, Robbie Krieger and John Densmore, as well as recording engineer/ Bruce Botnick.

Love them or hate them, when their debut was released in January 1967, there was no band quite like the Doors. The members were educated—film school refugees (Morrison and Manzarek) and accomplished music theorists (Krieger and Densmore) who, consciously or not, would rewrite the rules of rock. They weren’t really interested in teen angst or Utopian visions of love—the Doors looked at what lay beyond those paths, and explored the more shadowy aspects of a world in the midst of a cultural revolution.

Classic Albums: The Doors touches on that mystique, but doesn’t waste a lot of time dwelling on it. Instead, it focuses mostly on the process of making the album. Much of it is anecdotal, of course, largely paced by the perpetually animated Manzarek, who often comes across with a Vegas veneer with his reminisces about the band’s origins. Botnick balances that vaguely schmaltzy exuberance with an engineer’s love of how the songs broke down technically.

Densmore and Krieger provide the greatest insights into how the band achieved its unique sound. Between the two of them, they managed to meld blues, bossa nova, flamenco guitar and funk in a single riff. With Manzarek, whose keyboard bass and soul and jazz inclinations cemented the Doors’ sound, they emerged as a band that sounded lie no other.

Despite all that, it’s impossible to discuss the Doors without placing Jim Morrison in the center of the context—not just of the album, but of the shift in American culture as a whole. The spectre of the Vietnam war would fragment the hippie movement, and Morrison’s lyrics, while not overtly political, reflected the gnawing restlessness of American society at the time. The Doors weren’t about love and peace so much as they were about inner turmoil.

The people involved in the album recognize that, as do such current personalities as Perry Ferrell and Henry Rollins, who provide a contemporary take on the legacy of the Doors. Sadly, aging Beat poet Michael McClure’s recitations of “Break On Through” only serve to diminish the impact of the song. His attempt to elevate the lyrics to the level of high poetry come off more as a Steve Allen routine than serious dissemination of the work.

All in all, Classic Albums: The Doors is an erstwhile addition to a series that is in itself proving to be an important chronicler of important pop music. As with the rest of the series, the Doors entry sidesteps hype in favor of focusing on how the album came to be, and what makes it an enduring classic. In the Doors’ case, this DVD focuses not on the decline and fall of a seminal band, but on the efforts that made them a seminal band. It’s objective reportage, laced with live footage and outtakes (notably the evolution of “Moonlight Ride”). Itdoesn’t shed any new light on the Doors mythos, but it does open a new perspective on the band. It’s been over forty years since The Doors was released, yet it remains a major influence on music today. By anybody’s standards, that constitutes a “classic” album.

Chancer, Series Two: Dodgy Dealings In Crumbling Casinos

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Because it features megalomaniacs, it’s compared to Dallas. Because it’s set in a lavish setting whose populace is frequently adorned with jewels and tuxedos, it’s compared to Dynasty. And because it has a lovely ghost as a recurring character, it’s compared to Twin Peaks. That’s what happens when publicists are left to their own devices. Truth of the matter is Chancer, Series Two may employ those elements in weaving its tale, but it bears little resemblance to any of the aforementioned series.

Admittedly, much of Chancer, Series Two revolves around nefarious business dealings and double crosses. And none of the characters are particularly likeable. It all plays out in a chess game of rival casinos and child custody dealings, with all the characters playing pawns to the other characters’ machinations. Derek Love (a very young Clive Owen, in what many consider his breakout role) is at the center of it all—either orchestrating his own scams, or defusing the scams of his adversaries. It all gets very complicated, since adversaries in one episode often become allies in the next, only to revert to their own schemes next time around.

Something of a sequel to Series One, this series opens with Derek, who called himself “Stephen Crane” in the first series, being released from prison for fraud. He’s determined to reconcile with Joanna (Susanna Harker), who’s just given birth to a son. That doesn’t work out too well, since she dies at the end of the first episode. But since she was so important to him-- his obsession, even—she’s never from his thoughts, or his conscience, as the case may be. She makes frequent appearances throughout Series Two, as a ghost who appears to Derek in his darker moments. That would be the only connection to Twin Peaks, and even that is stretching it. She serves more as his inner voice, a beacon who guides him on the path he must take to make things right.

Nor is Chancer a take on American soaps—it’s much too convoluted for that. Sure, there are villains galore, played mostly as caricatures, at least for the first half of the series. There’s the oily, sadistic Tom Franklyn (Peter Vaughan), dearly deceased Jo’s father, who uses his grandson as a weapon in his manipulations, mostly revolving around squelching any competition to his casino. Jimmy Blake (Leslie Philips) is his reluctant foil, all English ennui and winsome platitudes. Anna (Louise Lombard) a petty thief with a “dodgy past” complicates matters between the two when it’s revealed that she’s Jimmy’s daughter, and that Tom thinks she was responsible for Jo’s death. She wasn’t, of course, but it makes for a good thread. On a lesser, and certainly less villainous, level, is Piers Garfield-Weld (Simon Shepherd), desperate to save his estate and claim his presumed son, whom is being held by Tom Franklyn. Of course, he joins forces with Derek (the aforementioned Clive Owen) to save his estate via the casino route.

Yeah, it’s a wee bit convoluted. It’s also devilishly delicious, in a veddy, veddy English fashion. The first half of the series dances delicately between the campy and the sinister, always with a deft wink and a nod to its American prime time soapy predecessors. It’s more episodic than serial, though. There’s very little straightforward in Chancer, which is fitting, given its themes of double crosses and sundry back stabbings. Clive Owen’s character acts as both an instigator and lynchpin to the various schemes to topple Tom Franklyn, while saving Piers’ estate.

Things take a much darker tone in the final three episodes, when paternity tests prove that Dex is the father of Jo’s son. (That’s not really a spoiler—it was screamingly apparent from episode one, and explained his motives.) It all comes to a crashing and unexpected end when Dex has to choose between his future with Anna and his past, and responsibilities, with the ghost of Jo.

While Series Two is abbreviated, with only seven episodes, reportedly because Owen wanted to pursue other acting interests, it doesn’t feel rushed. Writers Guy Andrews and Simon Burke impeccably pace the story with measured doses of neo-noir and dark humor throughout its 350 minutes. There’s no hint of tension on the set—only in the story itself. The actors all play their characters with melodramatic relish to the very end. The final result is a story that ends on a satisfying, if ambiguous, note.

There are no extras on the seven disc set, outside of filmographies and bios of the cast. The video transfer is adequate, but not outstanding, and it’s presented in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, as it was originally shot.While it would have been nice to have a few extras, Chancer, Series Two is an outstanding example of British television in the early nineties, weaving subtle social commentary into a plot that’s always engaging.

Next. Please.

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Speculative fiction writer Philip K. Dick was the mad genius of the genre, pioneering the concept of “inner space” as a storytelling device. The mind was his alien planet, and it was often more unsettling than the environs usually associated with science fiction. It’s no wonder that he’s become a cause celebre since his death in 1982, due in no small part to the success of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. Based on Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it managed to more or less translate his challenges to rigid concepts of reality, and remains one of the greatest films of all time.

The good news is that Blade Runner introduced Dick’s works to a potentially wider audience. The bad news is that subsequent films based on his work usually have little to do with the source material. Next is a case in point. Purportedly based on Dick’s short story “The Golden Man,” Next is actually a poorly conceived action thriller that has absolutely nothing to do with Dick’s original story. That’s not entirely true—in both versions, the protagonist is named Cris, and in both versions, Cris has precognitive powers, but that’s it. Well, there is that mater of golden skin. In the story Cris has golden skin that gives him the ability to seduce others of the opposite sex, and in the movie, Cris (Nicholas Cage) wears a cheap yellow leather jacket, which may explain why Liz (Jessica Biel) is inexplicably drawn to him.

In Next, Nicholas Cage portrays Cris Johnson who, under the stage name of Frank Cadillac, uses his ability to see two minutes into the future (but only where it directly affects him) to do a low rent magic act and supplement his income with low stakes gambling. But he’s haunted by visions of a woman (Jessica Biel) who, for some unexplained reason enables him to see further into the future, but only where it concerns the two of them. So far, so good. Romantic tales have been structured around lesser premises. Still, it raises questions of plausibility.

Plausibility isn’t a major concern of this movie, however. A Russian nuclear device has gone missing, and the FBI has no other way to track it down except to abduct Cris and force him to use his abilities to recover the device before it falls into the wrong hands. The wrong hands in this case are a group of Eurotrash terrorists with no discernible motive or affiliation. It’s not the sort of plot that makes for analysis. In fact, it’s not the sort of plot that holds itself up for anything resembling logic. That would only get in the way of the action.

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As an action flick, Next isn’t too bad, in a videogame sort of way. Actually, it’s structured much like a videogame, with every plot development serving to get the protagonist to the next level of play. As a result, romance falls by the wayside, along with international intrigue, lame attempts at social commentary and essentially everything else that has to do with life as we know it. As a trade-off, we’re treated to Rube Goldberg-style landslides, replete with water tanks, SUVs, boulders and sundry debris cascading upon the heroes. We also get an iron-jawed Julianne Moore in an embarrassing action figure performance as the single-minded FBI agent. We get exlosions, bad guys shot from sniper precipices—hell, we even get a nuclear explosion.

What we don’t get is logic, or even an apology for all the whys the movie never addresses. Instead, we find at the end that the entire “plot” of the movie was just another possible outcome. It’s a cheat to be sure, but not surprising. Considering Next went through at least three complete rewrites and various script doctors, it’s a wonder it made it to the screen at all.

As a standard DVD, Next is an alright purchase. The video quality is excellent and the Dolby 5.1 sound is separated seamlessly. The special features are pretty standard fare, consisting of behind the scenes promo films, a feature on the CGI SFX and a pointless interview with Jessica Biel.

There’s nothing really memorable about Next. Like Cris, we see it all coming long before it happens.

Neverwas Is a Film of Might Have Beens

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It rarely bodes well for a movie when the studio skips the theatres altogether in favor of a straight to DVD release. It’s even more perplexing when such a movie boasts a cast the likes of Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellen, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and William Hurt. With such a stellar ensemble, it stands to reason the project would garner at least attention, if not respect.

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Neverwas, by writer and first-time director Joshua Michael Stern, valiantly attempts to be a meaningful, uplifting film. Unfortunately, what emerges instead is a movie desperately trying to find its identity. Eckhart plays Zach Riley, a supposedly brilliant Yale researcher who convinces the director of Mill Wood psychiatric hospital (Hurt) to hire him as a staff psychiatrist, a position for which he’s vastly overqualified. Unbeknownst to the Hurt character (since background checks apparently aren’t done at this hospital), Zach’s deceased father (Nolte), an acclaimed novelist best known for the children’s fantasy “Neverwas,” had been a patient there shortly before his suicide. Conveniently enough, Zach encounters a delusional schizophrenic named Cedric (McKellen) during a group session. Cedric insists that Zach is the long-lost savior of Neverwas, which Cedric insists is a very real place, an enchanted land of which he is king.

The problem with Neverwas is everything falls far too neatly into place, without ever engaging the viewer in the story. Zach’s love interest (Britanny Murphy) is conveniently introduced as a childhood friend who’s been enamored of “Neverwas” all these years. Jessica Lange, as Zach’s alcoholic mother, serves only as a bridge between his past and his current state. Sadly, both characters are drawn so broadly that they serve as little more than buoys to keep the plodding story afloat. Only Nolte, seen only in gauzy black and white flashbacks, lends credibility to the premise as the tortured, drug-addled writer of “Neverwas.”

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Other movies have blurred the lines between fantasy and reality much more deftly — The Fisher King and Finding Neverland come to mind. But where those films coupled a sense of wonder with an empathy for the mentally ill, Neverwas skirts those facets in favor of sugar-coated melodrama. As a consequence, its potential metaphors are discarded, leaving only a shell of a story rife with obvious clichés. What we’re left with is a film that has the aura of a made for Lifetime TV movie. Even its climax is contrived so as to provide a happy, if ill-advised ending.

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Neverwas, with its tagline of “Every fairy tale needs its hero,” held the promise of allegory, and indeed, it could have been. Had Stern focused his story rather than let it slip into pandering, and had the actors involved not called in their performances, and had they perhaps not gone with light and airy cinematography against a droning Philip Glass soundtrack, it might have been a movie that spoke to the human condition. The opposite happened, though, leaving Neverwas as a film more about might have beens than it ever intended.