By John Thomason
Greenberg (Universal)
Release date: July 13
Standard list price: $18.49
If I were Roger Greenberg – the literate, perpetually disgruntled protagonist in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg – I would definitely be hand-writing a letter to Universal right about now that would go something like this:
Dear Universal Home Entertainment, Eager to discover more about the motion picture featuring myself, I recently purchased your newly released digital video disc of Greenberg. But upon accessing the supplemental materials on the disc, I soon learned that the so-called “special” features were not special at all. Your DVD misleadingly advertises three featurettes on the back of its snap-case, withholding the vital information that the featurettes in question barely total two minutes each – and most of those miniscule durations are taken up by recycled clips from the film. Shame on you, Universal, for squandering an opportunity to provide in-depth analysis of this Criterion-worthy film in favor of lazily repackaging promotional fluff in the guise of three bonus features. Barring a dramatic change in your DVD production line, this will be the last Universal title I add to my collection!
Sincerely,
Roger Greenberg
But I’m not Roger Greenberg. Suffice it to say that the bonus features on Universal’s Greenberg disc are indeed pithy, generic and worthless, but the movie is worth owning no matter how bare-bones the DVD.
As the film’s irascible anti-hero, Greenberg (Ben Stiller) always has something worth complaining about, from the proliferation of horn honks in Manhattan to the leg room of his airplane seat, to the bland music piped through Starbucks’ speakers. Rather than let life’s little annoyances go, as most of us would, Greenberg writes letters to every person or company that has wronged him.
Like many characters portrayed by Larry David and Woody Allen before him, Greenberg is a privileged New York nebbish who may often be doing the right thing in principle, but his form and presentation are way off-base. As with Jeff Daniels’ pompous professor in Baumbach’s previous success The Squid and the Whale, I found myself agreeing with most of Greenberg’s observations while disparaging his woeful, elitist negativism. Walking a thin tightrope between enviably intelligent and disturbingly tactless, he’s a three-dimensional character more complex than those who dismiss him as simply an unlikable misanthrope, and Baumbach and Stiller deserve enormous credit for crafting this fascinating dichotomy.
When we’re introduced to Greenberg, he’s in a state of deliberate stasis. A former musician from a band he personally dissolved at the apex of its commercial breakthrough, Greeberg has just been released from a mental institution (his condition is never revealed, but depression, bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder are top candidates, not to mention crippling anhedonia), and he’s about to turn 41. Rather than confront aging with existentialist soul-searching (as Allen has done), Greenberg is postponing adulthood, maturity and the normalcy of midlife by “trying to do nothing for a while.” The opportunity to housesit in Los Angeles during his wealthy brother’s vacation in Vietnam provides Greenberg the chance to do just that.
Between meeting old friends from the band, building a doghouse for his brother’s pooch and, of course, mailing complaint letters, Greenberg begins to stumble through a relationship with his brother’s personal assistant Florence (mumblecore queen Greta Gerwig in a star-making turn), a beacon of life-changing joy next to Greenberg’s inherent dourness.
Equal turns authentically dramatic and wryly comic (To a guest at a party, Greenberg describes his life as “Middling – Leonard Maltin would give me two-and-a-half stars”), Greenberg is both an untraditional romantic comedy and an intimate homage to character-driven ’70s cinema whose depth and insights are large as its potential audience is small. Here’s hoping it has a strong cult afterlife.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (First Run Features)
Release date: July 20
SLP: $20.99
You know Daniel Ellsberg as the policy wonk who worked under Robert McNamara in the lead-up to the Vietnam War and later released the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page secret history of the war, to the media and the U.S. Congress, risking imprisonment to discredit a dishonest war machine. This documentary by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith profiles Ellsberg before, during and after his pivotal security breach, focusing especially on his transformations from hawkish employee of the Defense Department to outspoken leftist gallivanting with anti-war radicals such as Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. It’s obvious where Ehrlich and Goldsmith stand in this interesting but hagiographic portrait – Ellsberg himself narrates about half the movie, and an advertisement for his website and blog are included in the bonus features. Still, the history contained in the film is especially relevant to our extreme political climate, when those who don’t subscribe to one party’s dogma are ostracized as traitors by the other side and when the media are more content to cover fluffy non-stories than speak truth to power. The Most Dangerous Man in America is a reminder that dissent is patriotic – and that the media’s job is to question government, not echo its talking points.
Barking Dogs Never Bite (Magnolia)
Release date: July 20
SLP: $24.49
The first feature by popular South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho contains none of the delightfully schlocky self-consciousness of his B-movie throwback The Host, nor any of the psychological complexity of his recent The Mother. Instead, this overambitious genre mash-up meanders into thematic and aesthetic oblivion, and it takes a trying 110 minutes to do so. Barking Dogs Never Bite is essentially about an unlikable, part-time college lecturer whose murder of a yapping dog in his apartment complex leads to a series of canine-related calamities and threatens his plans to become a fully paid professor. There’s also some overwrought nonsense about a dog-eating basement dweller, a haunted boiler room and a pet-loving bookkeeper who longs to thwart a high-profile criminal and thus make it on public television. The film is every bit as disjointed as it sounds. Barking Dogs Never Bite is also available in Magnolia’s three-disc Bong Joon-ho Collection (SLP $46.49), packaged alongside The Host and The Mother.
Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XVIII (Shout! Factory)
Release date: July 13
SLP: $39.49
The latest installment in the never-ending quartets of Mystery Science Theater episodes features four new ones to DVD. The box set includes the Season Two entry Lost Continent, a schlocky adventure picture about a group of scientists who land on a continent populated by dinosaurs; Season Four’s Crash of the Moons, a hilariously nonsensical sci-fi yarn; Season Six’s The Beast of Yucca Flats, a silly scientist-turned-beast monster movie whose episode is perhaps more notable for the preceding short Money Talks, about a kid who gains financial advice from a poorly bewigged Benjamin Franklin; and Jack Frost, an antique Russian Cinderella story whose title character doesn’t even appear until the end of the film. Special features include new introductions by MST3K cast members Frank Conniff and Kevin Murphy and a “Look Back at The Beast of Yucca Flats.” Sounds like hours of varied, sardonic fun from the world’s best riffers.
Editor’s note: This story has been edited after posting to correct a factual error and incorrect image.