Heather Noel and I weren't expecting it to turn out this way, but the new-to-DVD titles we chose to review on this week's DVD Afternoon podcast—Tom McCarthy's wrestling dramedy Win Win and the Romanian crime procedural Police, Adjective—got us talking as much about our critical standards and the difficulties of reviewing movies designed for audiences at two very different kinds of film festivals as about our opinions of the strengths and weaknesses of the movies themselves. With Win Win, we found ourselves facing a warm, comforting, well-acted film, in many ways the perfect, quintessential Sundance dramedy and a film we had no doubt that the millions of people who liked Little Miss Sunshine would enjoy as well—and wondering whether it was nevertheless too safe and unchallenging to technically count as a "good" movie. And with Police, Adjective, we found ourselves at the opposite end of the spectrum, watching a slow-moving foreign film that deliberately sets out to test its audiences' patience and confound its expectations of a police thriller—and wondering if its glacial pace and intellectual dialogue perhaps boil down to a different kind of pandering, to a different, more rarefied sort of audience.
Anyhow, Heather and I had quite a stimulating conversation—and I haven't even mentioned Heather's mini-review of Brian De Palma's early countercultural comedy Greetings, or my report on my new Tumblr blog, The Cinematic Jokebook, or our traditional rundown of the week's other most noteworthy new DVDs and Blu-Rays. Hey, I even threw in a good John Vanderslice song between segments for good measure.
Here's how it all breaks down:
0:00 — Intro/Greetings/The Cinematic Jokebook
14:10 — The Lucksmiths, "I Started A Joke"
15:11 — Win Win
30:02 — Gene McDaniels, "Walk With A Winner"
31:07 — Police, Adjective
44:28 — John Vanderslice, "Romanian Names"
45:14 — Other noteworthy new DVDs and Blu-Rays/Outro
NOTES
• Here's the website for The Cinematic Jokebook. Please send me any suggestions you might have!
• The Louis Malle film Heather couldn't remember the name of in the final segment is Place de la République (1974). It's available as part of the box set The Documentaries of Louis Malle, which Criterion released through its Eclipse imprint.
• Here's a scene from Greetings. Wow, seeing that overhead shot of the paperback rack in that bookstore provided an unexpected instant hit of nostalgia... I don't think they colour the outer edges of the pages in paperbacks anymore, do they?
• And here's the strange and beautiful swimming scene from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. I simply cannot wait to re-watch this film on Blu-Ray.
You can subscribe to DVD Afternoon through iTunes, or you can download this week's episode directly by clicking here.
And if you'd like to comment on the show, respond to our reviews, or suggest other movies for Heather and me to talk about on the air, you can reach us at dvdafternoon [at] gmail [dot] com. Next week, we'll be reviewing Everything Must Go, an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story starring Will Ferrell in a rare non-comedic role; and Susanne Bier's melodrama In a Better World, which won this year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. If you've seen either of those films and want to send us your thoughts about them, or if you'd like to add to our discussion of Win Win or Police, Adjective, we'd love to hear your thoughts (and possibly read them on-air).
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