DVD Traffic Report: August 2007 Archives

Red Road (Tartan)

In a contemporary Glasgow where surveillance cameras seem to be trained on every square meter of public real estate, Jackie (Kate Dickie) is a CCTV operator -- she watches the cameras, looking for suspicious activity -- who turns stalker when she spies a recently released ex-con (Tony Curran) on one of her umpteen video screens. Director Andrea Arnold's feature debut is a subdued but tense character study placed in the framework of a thriller. The suspense is generated by the film's close scrutiny of Dickie herself: her previous relationship with the man is unclear, as is her ultimate motive in tracking him down at a dingy flat on Red Road. And Arnold makes something interesting out of the repeated transitions from public spaces, where urban interactions can be observed and preserved via videotape, to private ones where relations can turn dicier and more intense. The result is an engrossing study of ambiguity, and human lives frustrated by circumstance, that turns unexpectedly provocative -- and sexually explicit -- before beating a hasty retreat. The film feels more ordinary as it progresses, leaving behind the intriguing bank of video screens with its implications of Rear Window-style voyeurism, and eventually overexplaining itself. There's a deliberate indie-film cleverness to the psychology and a tidiness to the emotions that lessens the essential mystery at the heart of Jackie's behavior. Still, it's satisfyingly unsettling viewing.

Buy it from Amazon.com: Red Road

Dexter: The First Season (Showtime/Paramount)

Premium cable's answer to C.S.I. is this comic crime drama about a forensics expert at the Miami police department who moonlights as a serial killer. Dexter is a real crowd-pleaser, in large part because the show's writers have figured out how to walk a fine line between condemning Dexter's actions and making him thoroughy likable. His victims, you see, are already guilty of their own heinous crimes -- in many cases, Dexter just has to track them down before his colleagues actually get to them, or even realize what they're looking for. The central performance by Michael C. Hall is a make-or-break proposition, veering between hammy affability and high-strung sadism. If you don't appreciate Hall's smirky, snarky approach to the material, Dexter is a tough sell. But Dexter boasts a strong supporting cast as well as a glossy visual style (I interviewed the HD cinematographer, Romeo Tirone, last year for Film & Video), a propulsive story arc that'll push you easily from episode to episode, and a winning playfulness about fairly heavy psychological issues.

Buy it from Amazon.com: Dexter - The First Season

The Lives of Others (Sony)

The German film The Lives of Others is about the East German secret police, but it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to suggest certain parallels between the Stasi's eavesdropping and intimidation tactics and certain post-9/11 tendencies in the contemporary U.S. government. Writing for the White Plains Times earlier this year, I noted that "Ulrich Mühe plays Captain Wiesler, a surveillance and interrogation specialist with big eyes and a serious, perpetual glare.... [He] is terrific as the conflicted functionary who mounts a covert, one-man struggle against the orders he's meant to follow." (As it turns out, Mühe -- who also appeared as the father in Michael Haneke's Funny Games -- died last month of stomach cancer. He was 54.) I also complained then about writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's "mile-wide sentimental streak," but I've softened a bit on that count. This is really solid filmmaking, and it should translate well to DVD.

Buy it from Amazon.com: The Lives of Others