15 Years of Movie Reviews

HPR began its 16th year last week, and this weekend is marking the occasion with a musical celebration in downtown Fargo. It’s hard to believe that it was 15 years ago I read of plans to start a new biweekly newspaper in Grand Forks, and asked Ian Swanson if he happened to have a film critic already lined up. I had just seen Oliver Stone’s astounding “Natural Born Killers,” which had opened on August 26th, and I had impulsively written up a review the next day. That review made it into the premiere issue of the High Plains Reader, and I’ve had something in every issue ever since.

A decade and a half later, HPR is well-established enough that I now occasionally receive “screener” DVDs of films to review before they open in local theatres or shortly before their home video release. The former is the case with the limited-release indie “Humpday,” which premiered at Sundance last January, began a limited theatrical run in July and opens this Friday at the Fargo Theatre.

The rapid advances in video technology and shifting of theatrical and home video marketing strategy over the past 15 years also make it worthwhile to write regularly on home video releases as a parallel entertainment option to commercial theatres. Now people can not only re-examine films some time after their theatrical runs but also see them under conditions virtually equal to — and possibly superior to — their local theatrical presentation.

It was the perfect excuse to revisit “Natural Born Killers” in its Blu-ray incarnation last Friday. The original theatrical version came to Blu-ray just over a year ago, and the two-minute longer unrated director’s cut is scheduled to come out next month. My 1994 HPR review can be read on line at tinyurl.com/HPR-Greg1 and my reaction to the film, seeing it again after 15 years, is essentially the same. If anything, what is arguably Stone’s best movie seems even more timely now than it did in 1994.

When it came out, the extremeness of its violence and its portrait of tabloid journalism — especially its parody of a dysfunctional family TV sitcom — seemed outrageously over the top, yet in 15 years television has nearly approached the extremes the film depicted, and recent horror cinema often surpasses them.

The R-rated cut that made it to theatres shocked numerous viewers and critics by pushing the edge of screen violence, confusing them with its experimental editing, unusual photographic techniques and stylized performances. Many simply could not accept Stone’s audacious black comedy (much like Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” nearly a quarter-century earlier) as the bitterly ironic, if not sadly prophetic, satire that it is. The unrated cut, now on DVD and soon to be on Blu-ray, is even more intense in both its violence and the bitterness of its satire.

The DVD of “Natural Born Killers” lets viewers experience Stone’s disjointed editing and the general feeling of the film, and is currently the only way to see the uncut version. On Blu-ray the drastically improved image resolution preserves the radical shifts in appearance that could be seen in the theatre when Stone cuts between super-crisp 35mm color or black and white film stock and 16mm or Super 8 film (color or black and white) or videotape footage. The frequent changes in grain and sharpness are barely noticeable on a standard DVD, yet this is one of the film’s most obvious stylistic techniques on a 35mm film print, and it can again be appreciated on Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray disc has a powerful soundtrack remastered in Dolby TrueHD, and a good selection of bonus features (though all in standard-definition and unfortunately missing a good behind-the-scenes documentary that was on the DVD). Warner Brothers’ “digibook” Blu-ray includes a worthwhile director’s commentary, an interesting Charlie Rose interview with Stone and several additional scenes plus an alternate ending (all introduced by Stone with the reasons he cut them out).

“Natural Born Killers” on Blu-ray:

Movie: A / Video: A+ / Audio: A / Extras: B+

“Humpday” is a low-budget independent feature shot on digital video that pushes traditional boundaries in different ways. Writer-producer-director and actress Lynn Shelton had her cast collaborate on fleshing out the characters in her high-concept plot idea: In drunken enthusiasm at a house party, two macho best-buddies impulsively decide they should enter an amateur porn movie contest and star themselves having sex with each other — even though they are both straight and one is happily married.

Shelton’s film is a talkative exploration of friendship, relationships, self-fulfillment and sexual identity that is alternately insightful, crude, sensitive and amusing. Shelton has stated, “The dramatic tension and squeamish humor in ‘Humpday’ comes from the fact that as wild and open as they would like themselves to be, the two main characters are so heavily invested in being straight that when they push the boundaries of their heterosexuality, it shakes them to the very core.”

Actors often improvised scenes within the tightly prepared framework of their characters and the plot incidents, with two often hand-held cameras running from different angles and little in the way of supplementary lighting. This gives the film a naturalistic and spontaneous, almost documentary-like feeling, accentuated by frequent long takes, jump cuts, limited camera setups and voiceover dialogue as the camera explores details of the setting.

Although the pacing often drags, the strong performances of Mark Duplass as Ben, Joshua Leonard as his old college roommate Andrew and Alycia Delmore as Ben’s wife Anna keep the viewer invested in the characters enough to want to see what will happen next. The first half of the picture quickly sets up relationships, then builds up apprehension in both the characters and the audience to a possibly embarrassing degree. The second half injects much more comedy into the situation while managing to maintain its tension until the end.

“Humpday” is probably not a movie for everybody, but is a comedy-drama worth seeing for the realism of its characters and for those who like the documentary-style approach to narrative drama.

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