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DVD extras include audio commentary by Shanley; a making-of piece; an interview session with the four principals; a discussion of Howard Shore's score; and a piece on the real-life nuns who Shanley interviewed before making the movie.
Movie: ***
Extras: ***
MARLEY & ME (2008). Even given my status as a big dog lover (and whether you take that to mean a big lover of dogs or a lover of big dogs, either interpretation works), the notion of spending two hours watching puppies frolic during the course of Marley & Me initially seemed like a pretty one-note way to spend a matinee. Welcome, then, to one of last winter's most pleasant surprises (and a major box office hit), as this family film proves to be far more thematically rich than most expected. Working under director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada), major-league screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Get Shorty) and middle-league screenwriter Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) adapted John Grogan's fact-based novel about his family's pet, a Labrador retriever named Marley. Both journalists, John (Owen Wilson) and wife Jennifer (Jennifer Aniston) agree that Marley is "the world's worst dog," given his penchant for always getting into trouble. But thankfully, the movie doesn't devolve into a series of comic scenes revolving around leg humpings and yard droppings. Instead, as John and Jennifer add some children to the equation, it becomes a clear-eyed look at the difficulties in raising a family, all the more so when there's a lumbering beast driving everyone mad. Ultimately, though, the film makes a point that every dog owner – indeed, every pet owner – long ago took as gospel: A family doesn't begin and end with merely its two-legged members. Alternately sweet, sad and sentimental, Marley & Me represents cinema as dog's best friend.
DVD extras in the single-disc edition consist of five deleted scenes and a gag reel. A two-disc "Bad Dog" edition is also available.
Movie: ***
Extras: **
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008). I'm not sure how a film in which a small boy gets blinded by someone deliberately pouring hot liquid onto his eyeballs while he's unconscious ends up being hyped as the "feel-good" movie of the year, but that's the story with Slumdog Millionaire, the sleeper hit that ended up winning eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture). The modern-day sequences find lanky, likable Jamal (Dev Patel) working his way through the questions on India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Jamal has coped with poverty all of his life, and it's his unlikely ascension that has the entire nation rooting for him. But Jamal isn't doing this for money; he's doing it for the love of beautiful Latika (Freida Pinto), who, as we see in ample flashbacks, grew up on the streets alongside Jamal and his hotheaded brother Salim (Madhur Mittal). Initially, the movie's structure is ingenious in how it feeds on incidents from Jamal's past to allow him to get the right answers on the TV game show, in effect suggesting that what's most important in this life is what we learn firsthand. As for the sequences revolving around the characters' rough childhoods, they're refreshingly raw and uncompromising, a cross between Charles Dickens and City of God. It's a shame, then, that director Danny Boyle and scripter Simon Beaufoy toss aside all innovation in order to bind the final half-hour into a straightjacket of rigid formula plotting. The boy-finds-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-tries-to-save-girl angle is flaccid enough, although it's the arc involving bad bro Salim that's especially groan-worthy. Still, three-quarters of a stellar movie is nothing to sneer at, meaning that most of those who take a chance on the film will come away feeling like a million bucks.
DVD extras include audio commentary by Boyle and Patel; separate audio commentary by Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson; 12 deleted scenes; and a 23-minute making-of piece.
Movie: ***
Extras: **1/2
THE SPIRIT (2008). If looks could kill, The Spirit, an adaptation of Will Eisner's seminal comic strip, would eliminate every viewer who feeds it into the DVD player. Its eye-popping visual template mirrors that of Sin City, with its graphic stylistics lending a crisp, cool look to its tale of a masked hero who has returned from the grave to fight the evildoers who threaten the city he loves. But in this case, eye candy is hardly enough to compensate for the rest of this 10-ton turkey that fails on every other conceivable level. Eisner's comic legacy deserved far better than this wretched camp outing, a film in which every jokey, self-aware remark lands with the force of an atomic bomb laying waste to a sand castle. The plot finds The Spirit (dull-as-dirt Gabriel Macht) facing off against his perennial nemesis The Octopus (Samuel L. Jackson), a madman who's intent on acquiring a potion that will render him immortal. Jackson, whose performance might have been the worst of 2008 (and remember, I saw Mike Myers in The Love Guru), has already guaranteed that his name will live forever in the annals of grotesque overacting. His demeaning turn here is embarrassing, with writer-director Frank Miller accommodating him via some horrendous dialogue and situations. Jackson even gets to dress up like a Nazi officer in one scene – why, I couldn't tell you. In their first battle, The Octopus smashes a toilet over The Spirit's head, laughs maniacally, and declares, "Toilets are always funny!" This movie would know: It clearly deserves to be flushed down one.
