Editor’s note: Lisa Kennedy and Michael Booth look at two films about women that stumbled at the box office but deserve a second look now that they are available on DVD.
When so few people bother to see a movie you loved, you can shrug it off or try again.
“North Country” deserves that second chance. It’s often painful to watch, but it’s a moving and necessary look at how people treat each other when habit, ignorance and desperation build to toxic levels.
I can’t say the DVD will prove popular, despite Charlize Theron’s well-deserved nomination for best actress and Frances McDormand’s for best supporting actress. “North Country” had its chances, with an October opening in more than 2,500 theaters. But even the critics who lauded it, as I did, noted how gritty and unpleasant it could be to sit through.
Theron’s star presence and the growing reputation of director Niki Caro meant nothing at the box office; “North Country” stopped at about $18 million, far below its cost.
Theron is one very good reason to pick up the video. Her first Academy Award, for playing a murderer in “Monster,” looks easy by comparison. It’s much harder to play a northern Minnesota single mom clawing her way up to the lower middle-class. Less showy than Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich,” Theron embodies an imperfect woman with modest dreams, without making her character seem shallow.
Theron’s Josey Aimes takes a “man’s job” at an iron mine to support her kids; she and a handful of female colleagues are immediately and continually harassed by the male workers. She eventually files a lawsuit, which becomes the first class-action sexual harassment case in the nation.
The story was based on a real Minnesota iron worker. Some critics have attacked the liberties Caro took in compressing the story and dramatizing courtroom scenes. Others said the final-act court drama is too trite.
My take – and some of these scenes have stuck with me ever since – was that “North Country” tells a wrenching story of a battle between genders and between generations. The hatreds expressed in “North Country” are more than balanced by Caro’s deeply held humanity.
-Michael Booth
Genre gets an update
“When I read (the) wonderful script,” director Curtis Hanson says in one of the featurettes included on the recently released “In Her Shoes” DVD, “I saw the possibility of doing the sort of film that was once a staple of Hollywood and is now rare.” Exactly.
The surprise was that when Hanson’s bittersweet-sweet sis comedy opened last fall, it was one of a handful of fine features that came from the big studios. It was not brought to us by the indie filmmakers or those protean indie distributors that use the muscle of the majors to work minor miracles like many of this year’s best picture nominees.
Yet from “Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story” (out on DVD, March 21) to “North Country,” entertaining features from the folks we complain never make them went largely ignored. More dismaying: Many of these gems are smartly updated versions of that Golden Age staple called the “women’s picture.”
“In Her Shoes” stars Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as sisters Maggie and Rose Feller. Older sis Rose is on the partner track at a Philadelphia law firm. Maggie parties, struggles (barely) to find a job and lands on Rose’s couch one time too many. When Maggie goes too far, Rose cuts her off.
Adapted by Susannah Grant from Jennifer Weiner’s novel, “In Her Shoes” tells the story of sisters who must part ways to have the slightest chance of coming together again. Along the road to possible reconciliation, the movie lands gently on the thorny topics of mental illness, aging, and ethnic and family identity.
Shirley MacLaine is wise but not wisecracking as Ella Hirsch, mother of Rose and Maggie’s dead mom.
Maggie heads to Florida and this grandmother she never knew.
In a “retirement community for active seniors,” she takes a job at a health clinic. What an insightful and incandescent turn Norman Lloyd gives as the blind teacher who helps Maggie discover her potential. In fact, “In Her Shoes” features some of the least condescending yet amusing scenes of senior moments onscreen.
If you’re looking for authentic big-screen pleasures, step into “In Her Shoes.”
-Lisa Kennedy
NEW ON DVD
The Weather Man *** 1/2 Nicolas Cage plays a Chicago weatherman about to break into the big time with a national network. But his home life is falling apart, with struggles involving an ailing father, an angry ex-wife and needy children. Successfully walks the fine line between tragedy and comedy, and deserves to be seen. R; 98 minutes. (Michael Booth)
Domino * 1/2 Tony Scott’s crystal-meth rush of a film flashes forward, hurtles backward and even jukes sideways. Written with too many fast-moving parts – and too few touching ones – “Domino” takes license with the story of Domino Harvey, a real-life model-turned-bounty hunter who died last year of a drug overdose. It’s the tale of how the daughter of a famous actor dad and a model mom made a new family with fellow bondsmen Ed Mosbey (Mickey Rourke) and Choco (Edgar Ramirez). R; 120 minutes (Lisa Kennedy)
Rent ** 1/2 While it has many affecting moments, director Chris Columbus’ “Rent” too often falls betwixt and between the odd intimacy of theater and the glorious bigness of film. How is it that something as artificial as musical theater can shake us to our core, while the power of film’s immediacy leaves us cold? Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award-winning, East Village denizens Mimi and Roger, Tom and Angel, Maureen, Joanne and Mark are still here, battling drug addiction, real-estate greed and AIDS. PG-13; 128 minutes (Lisa Kennedy)
Blood and Wine ** 1/2 This movie has a stunning cast, and you’ve probably never seen it. Directed by Bob Rafelson (“Five Easy Pieces”), the 1996 film puts together an ensemble including Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine, Judy Davis and a young Jennifer Lopez just before she broke out in “Selena” and “Out of Sight.” The noirish story focuses on a wine merchant (Nicholson) who teams up with a tubercular career crook (Caine) to steal a multimillion-dollar necklace. The film has its moments, but it’s no one’s best work.Yet this long-delayed DVD gives you a chance you’ll probably never have again to see this crew all in one place. R; 98 minutes (Edward P. Smith)
