"Where Movie Critics Get A Taste Of Their Own Medicine"
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I will be perfectly frank and upfront with you regarding my two main DVD choices for this week. While I am generally able to maintain an objective distance to the films I choose to write about, I must confess that in regards to this week’s selections, that objectivity is nowhere to be found. I personally know both of the filmmakers involved and I have even contributed some material to one of the discs in question (though I must stress that I received no payment beyond a free copy of the DVD in question). Under normal circumstances, I would simply avoid writing about them entirely-there are, after all, plenty of discs out there to pick from. However, these are both pretty good movies and since they are both home-grown product released with a minimal amount of publicity, I figured that they deserved whatever meager attention I could throw their way. Feel free to completely disregard everything I say, but if you do, you will be missing a couple of intriguing, off-the-beaten-path films that are worth whatever effort you will undertake in order to find them.

Back in 1999, a colleague of mine suggested that I go to Chicago’s Music Box Theater (the best in the entire city) to check out the midnight premiere of "ACNE", a sci-fi/horror/comedy that was shot in the area by local filmmaker Rusty Nails. I went and was surprised to discover that, instead of just having a quiet premiere, Nails had basically staged a wild carnival outside the theater to promote the film-music, people in costume, the works. Things were equally wild inside as well and while the neighbors might not have taken too kindly to the activity, the audience clearly had a blast with both the atmosphere as well as the film.

A few months later, I formally met Nails when we both found ourselves in the hotel room of Troma Films head honcho Lloyd Kaufmann (you would be surprised how often such things occur in this racket). From then on, our paths have crossed from time to time at film festivals and other gatherings. When I was asked to help put together a festival in Springfield and was asked to recommend filmmakers to appear on a panel on independent filmmaking, I suggested him right off the bat. (He did come and basically took over the entire discussion.) He has also been the man behind the bi-annual Movieside Film Festival in Chicago, which has been surprising lucky in attracting top indie filmmakers to come and show their work; last winter’s installment brought Jim Jarmusch to town and the new edition, which runs May 14-16, will feature directors Jack Hill ("Switchblade Sisters" and "Foxy Brown") and George Romero ("Night of the Living Dead") as well as a screening of "ACNE", the film that started it all. (More disclosure-I will be appearing at the festival to conduct an interview with Jack Hill on the 14th and to discuss the impact of "Night of the Living Dead" on the 15th. More information on the fest can be found at www.movieside.com)

For those who cannot attend, "ACNE" has just been released on DVD through New Eye Films and even without the surrounding carnival, it still holds up as a pretty amusing film for genre buffs. As you may have guessed from the title, the film is about the ultimate bane of adolescence-the pimple. Specifically, it tells the story of a couple of teenage siblings, Franny and Zoe (nice Salinger riff) who grow enormous zits atop their heads after drinking oily water. As the pimple plague spreads, the duo, joined by others, try to uncover the cause of their affliction (while feeding it by rubbing butter and chocolate directly onto their heads) as the military closes in on them. If you can imagine a combination of the rough aesthetic style of "Night of the Living Dead", the body-horror imagery of early Cronenberg and the cheerfully disgusting humor of early John Waters, "ACNE" would be it; the film is funny, icky and, at only 60 minutes, it never overstays its welcome. Besides, it is nice to see an independent film that is more interested in showcasing a director’s personal obsessions than in serving as a show-offy calling card to attract major studio interest. My only complaint about the disc-although there are a few still photos, I wish there had been some actual footage of the initial premiere included.

"Chicago Filmmakers on the Chicago River" is a little more serious than "ACNE", but no less entertaining for it. Local filmmaker D.P. Carlson hit upon an ingenious idea; he would gather a variety of directors from around the area-including well-known names like Michael Mann, John Landis, Harold Ramis and Andrew Davis as well as independents like Heather McAdams, Tom Palazzolo and Jim Sikora-and interview them about their work and their relationships with the city while floating down the Chicago River. This documentary compiles the highlights of those interview sessions and captures the love that all involved have for the city as well as the love they have for their craft. Although the bigger names are likely to attract the most interest (Landis reveals that filmmaking in Chicago was largely nonexistent under Mayor Richard J. Daley because of his objection to an episode of "M Squad" which showed a Chicago cop taking a bribe), the relatively unknown people also have interesting tales to tell about their own struggles. Together, their stories make a case for Chicago as one of the great movie locales-an important reminder at a time when even a film called "Chicago" winds up filming in Toronto in order to save a few bucks.

The DVD for the film is jam-packed with bonus features as well. Besides the full film, it also contains a commentary track detailing the production, over an hour of deleted interviews and even features footage shot in 3-D (glasses are included in the package). There are also short biographies about the filmmakers covered written by a few local critics; I contributed the bios on Michael Dawson (a filmmaker who has also made a name for himself as a restorer of films as wide-ranging as Orson Welles’ "The Trial" and "Attack of the Giant Leeches") and John Landis (which is basically a requiem for "The Blues Brothers"-a film that holds a special place in the heart of anyone who grew up in Chicago when the production literally took over the city in 1979). The only flaw with the disc is an excessively cumbersome on-screen menu that is difficult to master at first; once you finally get the hang of it, though, the whole thing is smooth sailing.

ACNE: Written and directed by Rusty Nails. Starring Rusty Nails, Tracey Hayes, Jim Darley, Mary Luckritz and Timothy Hutchings. 2004. 68 minutes. Unrated. A New Eye Films release. $19.99. Available at www.neweyefilms.com

CHICAGO FIILMMAKERS ON THE CHICAGO RIVER: Directed by D.P. Carlson. Starring Andrew Davis, Roger Ebert, Stuart Gordon, John Landis, Michael Mann, Harold Ramis, Gene Siskel and Haskell Wexler. 2000. 80 minutes. Unrated. A Film Foetus release. $15.00. Available at www.filmfoetus.com.

THE ADVENTURES OF MA AND PA KETTLE: VOLUME 2 (Universal Home Video. $19.95): Kicking off an extraordinary (and expensive) week for fans of classic comedy is the latest collection of cornpone comedy capers involving the beloved hick couple (Percy Kilbride and Marjorie Main) getting involved in all sorts of wacky hi-jinks; the titles feature them "...at the Fair", "...on Vacation", "...at Home" and "...at Waikiki". Not exactly the most subtle and refined films that you will ever come across but the earnest goofiness of them is generally appealing, the emphasis on slapstick means that they have aged better than most comedies and Kilbride and Main were a very good, if underrated, comic team.

THE BEST OF ABBOTT & COSTELLO: VOLUME 2 (Universal Home Video. $24.95): As much of a bargain as the previous collection of Bud Abbott/Lou Costello vehicles released last winter-eight full-length films in one package-and this one even contains the immortal "Who’s on First?" routine. on "The Naughty Nineties". The other selections include "Hit the Ice", "In Society", "Here Come the Co-Ed’s", "Little Giant", "The Time of Their Lives", "Buck Privates Come Home" and "The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gulch". Although all are amusing, though the musical interludes do drag on after a while, the pick hit of this group is the delightful fantasy "The Time of Their Lives", an atypical fantasy in which Costello plays a Revolutionary War soldier who dies and is branded a coward-his ghost returns in modern times to convince Abbott to help him clear his name.

THE MARX BROTHERS COLLECTION (Warner Home Video. $59.95): Yeah, this set doesn’t contain any of their first five films, including the masterpiece "Duck Soup" (they are controlled by Universal, who briefly released them on long-out-of-prints DVDs through Image Entertainment). On the other hand, the set does contain seven films, including one unassailable classic ("A Night at the Opera"), two better than average comedies ("A Day at the Races" and "Go West"), three titles that may be weak by Marx standards but which are still funnier than most comedies ("Room Service", "At the Circus" and "A Night in Casablanca") and only one outright dog (the woeful "The Big Store"). If you are a Marx Brothers fan, you have probably already run out to purchase this set; for those who have somehow never seen one of their films before, be prepared to experience pure comedic bliss.

NO DOUBT-THE VIDEOS: 1992-2003 (Universal Music Video. $14.95): I could come up with some profound rationale for recommending this collection of videos by the hugely popular ska-rock band; the videos are stylishly done (I love the "I Want to Live" riff in "It’s My Life") and the tunes are as good as anything to emerge from the generally sorry world of pop music in the last decade. However, I would be avoiding the real reason for picking this disc up-lead singer Gwen Stefani is so freakin hot that it would be worth double the price to simply gawk at her for an hour.

ON THE ROAD WITH BOB HOPE AND BING CROSBY COLLECTION (Universal Home Video. $24.95): For many people of my generation, Bob Hope was simply the guy who read lame jokes off of cue cards on boring TV specials-few seemed to realize that, in his pre-TV days, he made some truly hysterical films. The best-known were the "Road" movies, a series of seven films in which he and Bing Crosby traveled the world (but never seemed to get off the Paramount back lot) to trade quips, sing songs, evade the bad guys by playing patty-cake or asking the writers for help, and stabbing each other in the back to win the love of Dorothy Lamour. This collection brings together four of those films; "The Road to Singapore", "The Road to Zanzibar", "The Road to Morocco" and "The Road to Utopia". Although "Morocco" is probably the best-known of the films (mostly because of the title song), the best of the bunch by far is the surreal "Utopia"-a nutty shaggy-dog tale that somehow lashes together such elements as a gold rush, talking animals, Robert Benchley and some of Hope’s funniest one-liners (trying to prove his toughness in a bar, he orders "a lemonade...and put it in a dirty glass!") into a story that plays like an entire year’s worth of "Bullwinkle" cartoons crammed into 80 minutes.

PETER PAN (2003) (Universal Home Video. $26.95): In one of the great recent injustices of American cinema, the ugly and schmaltzy "Cheaper By the Dozen" managed to delude enough people to rake in more than $100 million while "Peter Pan", a delightful and visionary adaptation of the classic story that was released on the same day, died an ugly death at the box-office. Hopefully, families won’t make the same mistake the second time and will give this stylish adaptation a much-deserved look. Even if you don’t have kids, it is still worth it for the colorful performances (including Jason Issacs as a great Captain Hook), spectacular sets and, in the person of Ludivine Sagnier, the sexiest Tinker Bell of all time.

THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video. $24.95): Many people missed this animated gem when it played on the art-house circuit and only first heard about it after the performance of its trippy theme song on the Oscars (where it was nominated for Best Original Song and Best Animated Feature). This is a delightful, visually stunning and emotionally thrilling film about a bicyclist who is kidnapped while racing the Tour de France-leading the rescue is his more-than-determined grandmother, his loyal dog and a retired vaudeville trio who go to extreme lengths to acquire their meals of frog’s legs. Don’t be put off by the fact that the film is in French-it is nearly dialogue-free and even the youngest kids (who should be as giddy over it as they are for any Disney film) will be able to follow along with no problem.

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.