DVD Releases for the Week of May 19, 2009

Thanks to a pretty high-profile Hollywood release this week dealing with a coup against Hitler, there are plenty of WWII/Nazi classics coming to disk. One is a German documentary from 1979, Top Secret Trials of the Third Reich (Geheime Reichssache) dealing with the trials against Hitler’s would-be assassinators. The other is a previously unreleased Fritz Lang film about a British hunter who has the opportunity to kill Hitler. Man Hunt (1941) should be worth it for cinephiles and Lang completionists.

Valkyrie
“A pretty high-profile Hollywood release” would happen to be director Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the short (good casting) eye-patched Nazi officer who attempted to overthrow Hitler. The film’s English cast also includes Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson, all strong actors who must don a German accent for their role. The choice of English voice-actors has always been rather irksome to me, especially considering the best and most affecting movies about the German side of WWII have been in German: Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (Der Untergang), Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl: The Final Days and Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot. Regardless, Singer seems to make no indication that this film is meant to be anything other than a wartime Hollywood action/thriller, so to compare may be pretentious.

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Crips and Bloods: Made in America
If you haven’t had enough death and blood from mid-century, you may want to check out this documentary about contemporary urban violence in Los Angeles. Early festival reports are saying this is one of the top documentaries of last year, and a warning sign to citizens of LA and urban centers around North America that gang-related violence is increasing. Filmmaker Stacy Peralta interviewed many of the major members of the Crips and Bloods in order to get their personal stories, as well as an overall view of the development of the gangs over the last twenty years.

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Serveuses demandées
Another piece of local cinema comes out this week. This is the story of an immigrant Brazilian girl whose visa has expired. Rather than risk being deported, she becomes a stripper to gain cash - where no questions are asked as long as you are young and attractive. There she meets many other young women like herself, illegal immigrants relegated to working in the sex industry, and one in particular: a young Québecois girl with whom she begins an amorous friendship. The film also stars Colm Feore  playing (surprise, surprise) an RCMP officer, and Anne Dorval, as one of the girl’s mothers. Although Dorval’s IMDb profile simply lists her as “the French Canadian voice of Sharon Stone and Lucy Liu”, she is quickly gaining quite a filmography, as she also stars in the upcoming Cannes release, J’ai tué ma mère.

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Other Releases
Driven to Kill
Eden Log
Fanboys
Friends of Eddie Coyle, The
Girl on a Motorcycle
Mes amis, mes amours
My Bloody Valentine 3D
Outlander
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 
Pigs, Pimps & Prostitutes: 3 Films by Shohei Imamura 
Town That Was, The
Yonkers Joe