ON DVD

Anarchy, teen angst in video stores

Releases of 'Heathers,' 'Natural Born Killers,' and other DVDs is an ocassion for mixed resposne.

By John DeFore
SPECIAL TO AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Friday, July 04, 2008

Anarchy is rampant in video stores this month, always instigated by a lone wolf or two.

Take 1990's "Wild at Heart," 1993's "True Romance" and the 1992 import "Man Bites Dog," drain them of every ounce of likability and throw them in a blender of cinematic affectation. The muck you pour out will be pretty close to "Natural Born Killers," the 1994 film just released in an archival Blu-ray edition by Warner Bros.

Oliver Stone's bloody eye-jab isn't as shocking now as when it was released, but it remains a singularly unenjoyable movie — thanks in no small part to Juliette Lewis, who matches Stone's quasi-philosophical offenses (he thinks he's making a statement, but like antihero Mickey Knox, he doesn't know what it means) with repulsiveness on a more human scale. Woody Harrelson, playing the Clyde to her Bonnie, is less grating thanks to his detached take on the role, but even Mickey's grandiose culture-skewering soliloquies can't justify the existence of this mass-murdering duo. Say this for the new edition, though: high-definition does suit the extravagant range of film stocks, lighting effects and expressionistic gestures that Stone and cinematographer Robert Richardson employ relentlessly throughout.

More innocuous teenage trouble on New Release shelves ranges from the harmless "Charlie Bartlett" (which offers Robert Downey Jr. a less thankless role than the one he had in "Killers") to "War Games," in which a little innocent 28-baud hacking threatens to spark nuclear annihilation.

The keeper in this reissue pile is "Heathers," which in a "20th High School Reunion Edition" (it's a year early, given the film's 1989 release, and offers little that wasn't on the previous DVD) stands up pretty well compared to other '80s cult faves. Unlike "Natural Born Killers," this revenge fantasy has the sense to be ambivalent about endorsing wholesale slaughter of the Jock and Queen Bee caste — young Winona Ryder, fresh from "Beetle Juice," can go along with Christian Slater's campaign only up to a point.

It's also still funny, which is something you can't say about "Natural Born Killers" unless you're talking about Tommy Lee Jones' hyper-caricatured prison warden. Its mix of black comedy and high school satire tidily encapsulated in the line, "Dear Diary: My teen angst has a body count," the movie isn't deep but at least displays a credible empathy for the overweight or nerdy victims of popular-kid psychological warfare. (Incidentally, screenwriter Daniel Waters and star Winona Ryder reunited recently for "Sex and Death 101," now on disc after a brief theatrical run.)

The most enjoyable misanthropy of the moment, though, isn't perpetrated by kids and won't be familiar to many Americans: The British TV series "Black Books," just released in a three-disc set compiling its entire 18-episode run, is a comic discovery with special appeal for fans of the "Shaun of the Dead" gang. Dylan Moran, who played a dead-weight boyfriend in "Shaun," carries this series as a bookshop proprietor who can't be bothered to take customers' money; he tortures his one earnest employee Manny and chain smokes with best friend Fran while an assortment of "Shaun" and "Hot Fuzz" actors drop by for guest appearances. If you can get beyond the series' distracting laugh track (it took me two episodes or so to ignore it), it can be bitterly funny. See it before the Alamo Drafthouse's July 27 "Spaced" marathon if you want to be one of the cool kids.