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THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2010


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NewDVDs OF NOTE


THE OFFICE: SEASON 6 Unrated, $59.98


The basics: Last season had its highs and lows, but this release won’t disappoint true “Office” fans. Season 7, Steve Carell’s last season on the show, begins Sept. 23. The lowdown: Season 6 features a handful of strong episodes, namely “Niagara,” “Scott’s Tots,” “Secret Santa” and “The Delivery,” but loses steam in the second half when Dunder Mifflin is sold and Kathy Bates comes in as the new CEO. The extras: Commentary on select episodes (the wedding episode tidbits are particularly fun); de- leted scenes from each episode; and a long bloop- er reel that is just as entertaining as you might imagine (don’t miss the outtakes of Kevin sitting on Michael’s lap). Other special features include a for- gettable digital short and an episode of another NBC show, “Parks and Recreation.”


PRIME SUSPECT: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION Unrated, $124.99


ACORN MEDIA


Helen Mirren, left, with Laura Greenwood, plays a detective in “Prime Suspect.”


6 from previous page


cop. In the film’s opening minutes, he and his small-m friend are shown severing the heads of three drug-cartel goons with a sin- gle sweeping stroke. The event sets the tone for the rest of the movie, whose vio- lence is so absurdly over the top as to be comical. The movie, co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and his longtime editor, Ethan Maniquis, is one big, fat comic book. It’s better all around if you can laugh at it, as- suming you’re able to see humor in such se- quences as the one in which Machete dis- embowels a man and uses his intestines to rappel down a building. Other bits that get a giggle are the casting of action-icon Steven Seagal as a Mexican drug lord and Robert De Niro as a xenophobic U.S. senator whose assassination Machete is framed for, set- ting the bloody, ridiculous plot in motion. (R, 104 minutes) In English and some Spanish with subtitles. Contains lavish violence, ob- scenity, nudity, sensuality and drug content. Area theaters.


BBBMAO’S LAST DANCER


About 30 minutes into this film, an older teacher, suspected of anti-Communist sym- pathies, slips his student a wooden box and instructs him to conceal it. It’s a videocas- sette, and once the contraband film plays, the students are awed by a black-and-white clip of Mikhail Baryshnikov. An unusual hy- brid, the film is part ballerina chick-flick and part post-Communist drama. It’s also a true story. In the early 1980s, a landmark cul- tural exchange allowed Chinese dancer Li Cunxin to spend a year at the Houston Bal- let. He fell in love with an 18-year-old stu- dent and secretly married her two nights before his scheduled departure. Many films have portrayed the rigors of ballet training, but none will make viewers wince quite like “Mao’s Last Dancer” as they witness Li’s history as flashbacks. (PG, 117 minutes) Con- tains nothing objectionable. Area theaters. — Rebecca J. Ritzel


BBMESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT


Early in the film, French criminal Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel) is seduced by the wealth and pseudo-glamour of ’50s-era French gangster life. Later Mesrine and his lover, Jeanne Schneider (Cécile de France), team up to rob banks, kidnap an elderly mil- lionaire and cruise the back roads of Ameri- ca. Then there’s the effectively tense se- quence of Mesrine’s scheme to bust himself and his fellow inmates out of jail. It’s a nail- biter, with a climax paced so perfectly by di- rector Jean-François Richet that it makes us root , without reservation, for a con artist, thief and murderer to squeeze his way through a barbed-wire fence toward free- dom. And yet, even as we relish the mo- ment, we simultaneously can’t help but think, “Didn’t something kind of similar hap- pen in ‘The Shawshank Redemption’? Or wait . . . was that an episode of ‘Prison Break’?” (R, 113 minutes) In French with Eng-


ON WASHINGTONPOST.COM/DVDS More DVD reviews and information.


The basics: Helen Mirren is Detective Chief In- spector Jane Tennison in this award-winning BBC series that ran on PBS. This is the first time all sev- en sets have been offered in one collection. The lowdown: This show introduced American au- diences to Mirren, who is a joy to watch as the complex Tennison. As one of the producers sums it up in a making-of featurette, “The mantra is, if in doubt, cut to Helen.” The extras: This is a pricey set, and the two mak- ing-of featurettes have appeared on past individual releases and tread much the same ground. But if you don’t own any of the DVDs, this is a good op- portunity to have the full collection.


— Amy Hitt


lish subtitles. Contains strong, brutal vio- lence, sexual content and language. At Land- mark’s Bethesda Row and Landmark’s E Street Cinema.


BBMESRINE: PUBLIC ENEMY NO. 1 — M.O.


This film, the second half of a two-part French drama, begins with a shot of the pro- tagonist’s bullet-riddled body slumped over the wheel of his car. Based on real events, the “Mesrine” films tell the story of notori- ous gangster Jacques Mesrine, who was gunned down by police in 1979 after a nearly two-decade career of brazen bank robberies, kidnappings, killings and prison breaks. Taken together, both films run more than four hours and include more than a few crime-movie cliches, beyond the foreshad- owing of the story’s unhappy ending. Lead actor Vincent Cassel’s volatile screen pres- ence as Mesrine — sexy one minute, terrify- ing the next — is worth the price of admis- sion, not to mention a sore rump. Unfortu- nately, even an actor that charismatic is unable to shed much light on Mesrine’s dark soul. He remains something of a cipher, even after four-plus hours. (R, 134 minutes) In French with English subtitles. Contains strong violence, obscenity, nudity and sex scenes. Area theaters.


BB1⁄2 NANNY MCPHEE RETURNS


Emma Thompson reprises her 2005 role as the title character, a strict old bag, who looks more Roald Dahl than Mary Poppins. Her appearance is startling: Along with some spectacularly hairy moles, Nanny McPhee touts a bulbous nose, a unibrow and one colossal front tooth. But her physi- cal disarray is balanced by her supernatural ability to clean up a chaotic scene. Such is the plight of Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllen-


— Jen Chaney


haal), a quirky, loving mother who tries to protect her children from the horrors of World War II. To complicate matters, her scheming brother-in-law wants her to sell her half of the family farm so he can pay off gambling debts, and her hoity-toity niece and nephew are visiting from London. As expected, the Green children are at odds with their spoiled big-city counterparts. One slam of Nanny McPhee’s cane and the kids are abusing themselves instead of one another. (PG, 108 minutes) Contains rude hu- mor, some language and mild thematic ele- ments. Area theaters.


BB1⁄2 THE OTHER GUYS — M.O.


Steve Coogan brings a squirrelly charm to the role of David Ershon, a Bernie Madoff- style bad guy whose financial chicanery is the focus of the investigation in this com- edy about a pair of wildly mismatched cops, played by Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell. As Allen Gamble, an embarrassingly neb- bishy police accountant, Ferrell is the geeky yin to Wahlberg’s hyper-macho yang, repre- sented by Terry Hoitz, a disgraced former hot shot who has been exiled to desk duty after an accidental shooting. Gamble is Hoitz’s punishment. And we’re the ones who reap the rewards. The title itself pre- sents Gamble and Hoitz as alternatives to even bigger jerks, played by Dwayne John- son and Samuel L. Jackson. As supercops Danson and Highsmith, they’re what Gam- ble and Hoitz aspire to become, even after the film dispenses with the flashy, high- wire duo in a gloriously ignominious — and hilarious — end. (PG-13, 107 minutes) Con- tains pervasive crude language, sexual humor, brief sensuality, gunplay, vehicular mayhem and assorted comedic violence. Area theaters. — M.O.


BBBSALT — S.M.


“Salt,” a ludicrous but somehow credible spy thriller starring Angelina Jolie, delivers a swift, super-charged kick in the pants. Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, who may or may not be a Russian mole in the CIA. When a defector blows her cover — or does he? — Salt takes it on the move, leading her fellow agents (played by Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejio- for) on a breakneck chase from Washington to New York and finally down to the White House, where she blows through squads of Secret Service. With its plot involving Rus- sian sleeper spies and assassinations, it has all the makings of a sleek, even au courant political thriller on par with such greats as “Three Days of the Condor” and “The Man- churian Candidate.” But all the preposter- ous demolition-derby action puts it squarely in the “Die Hard” camp: It’s popcorn pulp that collided with a far more sober and crafty grown-up movie. (PG-13, 90 minutes) Contains intense sequences of violence and ac- tion. Area theaters.


B1⁄2 SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD


Based on a graphic novel, this hyper-kinetic pop-culture pastiche stars Michael Cera as the title character, a 22-year-old Lothario and would-be rocker who meets the girl of his dreams, then sets out to defeat her sev- en exes to gain her love. Love, actually, has little to do with it in a story populated by progressively snarkier, self-involved charac- ters. Stripped of his doe-eyed looks and in- die-nerd style, Pilgrim is actually a selfish jerk; Ramona V. Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) isn’t much warmer, looking on with a blase shrug as her suitor risks life and limb on in her behalf. The two are surround- ed by a posse of equally snarly, eye-rolling hipsters. The story and characters of the film are negligible. But fans of the novel aren’t likely to care, reserving their most passionate interest for how director Edgar Wright has brought their precious antihero to the screen. (PG, 108 minutes) Contains stylized violence, sexual content, profanity and drug references. Area theaters.


BBBSHREK FOREVER AFTER SUZANNE TENNER


“Takers” stars, from left, Paul Walker, Tip “T.I.” Harris, Michael Ealy, Hayden Christensen and Idris Elba as dysfunctional criminals.


The Shrek we meet at the start of this film is a shell of an ogre: mean and green on the outside, but all mellow yellow inside. In an attempt to get back some of his mojo, Shrek (voice of Mike Myers) makes a deal with Rumpelstiltskin (Walt Dohrn) for 24 hours in his old life. In return, Rumpelstilts- kin gets to take a day from Shrek’s life. Rumpelstiltskin picks the day Shrek was born, meaning that, while Shrek now finds himself in a world of responsibility, it’s also a world in which all the good he’s done has had no effect. He didn’t rescue his wife, Fio- na (Cameron Diaz). Rumpelstiltskin is now king and the kingdom a police state run by witches who hunt down ogres. Fiona is the leader of the ogre resistance movement. Fortunately, there’s an escape clause: If he and Fiona share “true love’s kiss,” Shrek gets his life back. All he has to do is make


DUE TUESDAY


Queen Latifah in Just Wright; Jake Gyllenhaal in The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; and Amanda Seyfried in Letters to Juliet.


“Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (with Zachary Gordon, above)


1 “The Back-Up Plan” “Repo Men” “Cop Out” — A.H. “Death at a Funeral”


2 3 4 5


SOURCE: Redbox, for the week ended Sept. 5.


TOP


What Washington is watching


5


— A.H.


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