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Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by McDonagh, Gleeson and Cheadle; a making-of featurette; deleted and extended scenes; and McDonagh's 2000 short film, The Second Death (starring Cunningham and Wilmot). Added bonus: the English-language subtitles, which allow US audiences to read the handful of lines they couldn't locate under those thick brogues.
Movie: ***1/2
HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994). After helming three low-budget gore flicks that rather quickly earned cult followings, New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson made his bid for the big time with Heavenly Creatures, a resounding success that, after his ill-advised stop in Hollywood for The Frighteners, led to him hitting the jackpot with The Lord of the Rings. Co-writing the script with wife and frequent collaborator Fran Walsh (the pair earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay), Jackson focuses on the true-life tale of a grisly murder that occurred in 1950s New Zealand, when two teenage girls, the frumpy and lower-class Pauline Parker and the extroverted and wealthy Juliet Hulme, ended up killing Pauline's mother. As Juliet and Pauline respectively, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey made their motion picture debuts — Winslet had already appeared in a few TV shows, but Lynskey was plucked straight out of a high school by the filmmakers searching for the perfect Pauline — and both are excellent, demonstrating how two seemingly opposite people could become the best of friends through their shared flights of fancy (Jackson's staging of their fantasies is spot-on) but could also turn dangerous when they feel their special kinship threatened by uncomprehending adults.
The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.
Movie: ***
HIGHER GROUND (2011). Based on the memoir by Carolyn S. Briggs (with the author sharing screenplay duties with Tim Metcalfe), Higher Ground is an honest and probing look at Christianity, a stance that makes it an anomaly in an industry that tends to paint all members of the faith as little more than Bible-thumping rednecks. Up in the Air Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga, here also making her directorial debut, plays Corinne Walker, part of a close-knit Protestant sect that also includes her husband Ethan (Joshua Leonard) and her best friend Annika (Dagmara Dominczyk). As a young child, Corinne listened to her minister when he insisted that she accept Jesus Christ into her heart, but as an adult, she has occasional doubts that aren't being addressed. She envies those around her who truly seem gripped by a holy spirit. She bristles when subtly reminded that it's the men who lead their group and that when she expresses her opinions, it sounds too much like she's "preaching." And she witnesses a tragedy that leaves her wondering just exactly how the result could be the will of God. While the film gently pokes fun at the community members' occasional closed-mindedness or outright naivety — one amusing scene finds the men dumbfoundedly listening to a cassette on how to pleasure their wives as God would desire — it never patronizes its characters nor paints them as one-dimensional foils (you would never see these people picketing soldiers' funerals). Instead, it chooses to show how their brand of automatic yet sincere acceptance might be what they need but isn't necessarily right for Corinne, who longs for a comfort she can't quite grasp, as if it were a blanket that's fallen just out of reach off a bed. Higher Ground grapples with weighty issues in a mature and pensive manner, reinstating a measure of faith in the way Hollywood's disciples are willing to tackle this thorny subject.
Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Farmiga, co-star Joshua Leonard and producer Renn Hawkey; a making-of featurette; and deleted scenes.
Movie: ***
MARGIN CALL (2011). This absorbing drama focuses on the first rumblings of the 2008 financial crisis, but unlike many movies based in the historical past, it doesn't go overboard in grand declarations or broad indictments or anything that trumpets a smug sense of 20/20 hindsight. Instead, debuting writer-director J.C. Chandor plays much of it low-key and close to the vest, so that the overwhelming feeling is one of nauseating inevitability, akin to watching a speeding car barreling toward that deer in the road and knowing there's no way the driver can stop in time. Focusing on a fictional Wall Street investment firm, the film details how bright greenhorn Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto, the new Star Trek's Spock) takes some data handed to him by a recently laid-off employee (Stanley Tucci) and quickly figures out that the bottom is about to fall out not just for the company but for the industry as a whole. This sets in motion a series of after-hours meetings in which company employees of all stripes, from the new kids on the block (Quinto and Penn Badgley) right up to ruthless CEO John Tuld (a chilling Jeremy Irons), work to save their company, forcing them to make some moral decisions along the way. Of course, given these sharks, morality doesn't come into play often, but it can be spotted here and there, particularly in the character of Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), a trading-floor honcho who's uneasy about his role in the whole mess. Compromised values seem to be the order of the day, since many of these characters find themselves tempering their ideals or opinions in order to simply survive on this eve of destruction. Eschewing the fairly straightforward characterizations (not to mention the slick stylistics and peacock posturing) seen in other like-minded films such as Wall Street and Boiler Room, Margin Call opts instead to show us that there are no heroes and villains, only villains and victims and poor souls weighing the merits of a Faustian bargain.