If, amid the post-election fug of Great British doomsaying, it would be of some consolation to focus on the soured American Dream instead, this week’s DVD release slate has your back. Two terrific films take on the corruptive influence of capitalism and the creeping defeat of self-made success in not-quite-modern America.
In Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher (Entertainment One, 15), the will to win and deference to team spirit that are the pillars of many a rousing sports movie here take an acrid, corruptive turn. This story of Olympic gold medallists Mark and Dave Schultz, brothers whose bond was insidiously exploited by sociopathic billionaire and self-styled wrestling guru John du Pont, has a blunt, psychologically jarring ending that many of us already know; if it were fiction, you’d say it hardly made sense. Miller isn’t interested in unpicking the precise motivations behind the crime in question. Rather, this slate-skied mood piece is concerned with building the kind of oppressive atmosphere between discordant male egos that makes any fallout seem possible.
As the Schultz brothers work under du Pont’s clammy guidance, their respective ambitions give way to those of their master; once seduced by Du Pont, the younger, more bullish Mark leaves behind all sense of self in his attempt to escape. It’s a desperately sad tale, exquisitely performed by its three leads – Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo may have been Oscar-nominated for the wry, lizardy mania and weary decency they bring to Du Pont and the elder Schultz respectively, but Channing Tatum deserved to join them: his lunkish charisma has never been used (and perversely stifled) to more touching effect.
While we’re handing out retrospective best actor nods, add Oscar Isaac to the list: from Drive to Inside Llewyn Davis to Ex Machina, the Guatemalan-American heartthrob has been on a run of form that could stand against prime Pacino. He’s never been better, however, than he is in JC Chandor’s crisp, queasy New York crime drama A Most Violent Year (Icon, 15), playing Abel Morales, a first-generation immigrant oil entrepreneur seeking to expand his business empire by any means necessary in gunshot-riddled Brooklyn. Clad in vintage Armani suiting (the year in question is 1981) that fits him like a snake’s easily shed skin, Isaac doesn’t do standard-issue villainy.
Like a less grandiose Michael Corleone, there’s a soulful, striving quality to his misdeeds that has you cautiously on his side – the side you can see, at least. He has a perfectly slinky partner in crime, too, in Jessica Chastain, who plays Isaac’s ruthless wife as Lady Macbeth by way of Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface. Together, their internal ugliness could hardly be given a more alluring sheen. The same goes for the film’s own curdled, autumnal beauty; it’s dazzlingly shot by Bradford Young in colours you somehow feel had been consigned to a basement for 30 years. Chandor, who also made Margin Call and All Is Lost, improves with each film; he wears his Sidney Lumet aspirations a little self-consciously here, but he’s not far off his target.
You’d expect an all-star Disney musical to be the week’s light relief after those two, but Into the Woods (Disney, PG) is a pretty dun, glum affair in its own right. Stephen Sondheim’s original stage show repurposed a patchwork of popular fairytales with adult-targeted metaphors for moral threat and sexual discovery – in a sense returning them to their Grimm origins. That subtext has, unsurprisingly, been largely scrapped by the Mouse House’s sunnier fairytale merchants, but the show’s mossy, claustrophobic air of foreboding has been retained. The result is an oddly stiff compromise, issuing solemn warnings to a family audience about nothing in particular, and directed by former choreographer Rob Marshall with a rare minimum of shake and shimmy. Still, it’s performed with gusto, particularly by James Corden and the delightful Emily Blunt, who give much-need breath and bounce to Sondheim’s tricksy melodies – which are among his most ornate, but far from his most immediate.
Moving on to someone else who was keen to cram as many syllables into his characters’ mouths as possible, the late Robert Altman is the focus of Ron Mann’s pleasingly chewy documentary tribute Altman (Soda, 15). The film doesn’t seek to offer a fresh critical appraisal of Altman’s inconsistent, often brilliant career, but it’s a full-blooded appreciation, with a rich selection of clips that compels revisits to the most and least illuminated corners of his oeuvre alike. And the decision to let Altman himself dominate the narration from beyond the grave is a witty one; he can be as curt and blunt as his films are chatty.
Altman’s work certainly gave the eternally vinegary Lily Tomlin sharper things to say than Grace and Frankie, the latest original series from the dauntingly prolific Netflix stable– and a mild disappointment by their enviable standards. Casting Tomlin and Jane Fonda as the reluctantly united ex-wives of two recently out-and-proud law partners was an inspired gambit, and their zesty chemistry alone gives the show some vim. But it’s surprisingly dated in tone and format: co-creator Marta Kauffman was behind Friends, and is still working in a network sitcom register when the material and its medium call for a little more danger. Or, failing that, Dolly Parton completing the Nine to Five reunion in future seasons.
