Like Parker Posey, Francis McDormand, Julianne Moore and Patricia Clarkson before her, Hope Davis finally has emerged from near anonymity as an actress Hollywood no longer can ignore. Blond, lithe and pretty, she plays plain and melancholy as well as anyone in or out of the independent-film ghetto, and proved it last year with wonderfully nuanced performances in About Schmidt, American Splendor and The Secret Life of Dentists.
But then, the New Jersey native has been turning in terrific work for at least 10 years now, in such low-budget pictures as The Daytrippers, The Myth of Fingerprints, Next Stop Wonderland, Mumford, Arlington Road and Joe Gould's Secret. Already this year, several critics groups have named Davis best actress for her performances, jointly and separately, in Splendor and Dentists, which are now out on video.
Directed by Alan Rudolph, Davis and Campbell Scott play Dana and David Hurst, a pair of otherwise unremarkable dentists united in marriage and business. She's better at her craft than he is, but this has little to do with the crisis that erupts in their lives when Dana is caught in an indiscretion.
As David struggles to come to grips with what may or may not be a marriage-threatening situation, he's simultaneously being hounded by the spectral presence of the patient from hell. Denis Leary is a master at playing wise-asses, and his portrayal of the trumpet-playing anti-dentite is as caustic as you'd expect. Adding to this toxic cocktail is a trio of messy and demanding daughters you wouldn't wish on Martha Stewart.
In its complexity and texture, Dentists is exactly the kind of movie that studio executives are convinced the Great Unwashed won't pay $10 to see. Rudolph's work has always fallen into this category, though, and it hasn't stopped him from producing relationship dramas intended for intelligent and mature adults.
Sadly, despite all the critical acclaim it garnered, American Splendor did only $2.3 million more business at the box office than Dentists. This disappointingly low turnout can be attributed in large part to the fact that the graphic-novelist, world-class vinyl collector and G-4 file clerk on whom the film was based is the human equivalent of a root canal. Indeed, Harvey Pekar has raised the bar on misanthropic behavior to record heights.
That said, American Splendor—precisely adapted from Pekar's illustrated memoirs—is among the most imaginatively conceived and thoroughly entertaining biopics I can remember. That's because the great character actor Paul Giamatti perfectly nails all of Pekar's many quirks and idiosyncrasies, while letting the man's deeply buried humanity reveal itself. Davis, too, perfectly embodies Pekar's equally eccentric fan-turned-girlfriend, Joyce. Together, they may be a walking-talking museum of neuroses, but Harvey and Joyce represent a decidedly American couple, as do David and Dana Hurst.
Some guys have all the luck
Nancy Meyers' Something's Gotta Give continues to prove there's an audience in America for romances featuring men and especially women of that Certain Age. The French have no such problem, as Claude Lelouch makes abundantly clear in his latest intricately woven saga of intersecting lives, And Now … Ladies and Gentlemen. In it, Jeremy Irons plays a crafty jewel thief and master of disguise drifting as uncertainly through life as the racing boat that goes off course and delivers him to an unplanned date with destiny. After leaving one enchanting woman (Alessandra Martines) behind in France, he discovers another beauty in Morocco (French singer Patricia Kaas), who coincidentally is enduring the same blackouts and memory loss he's experiencing. Ladies and Gentlemen may be too gooey for some American tastes, but it looks great and oozes true romance.
Curiouser and curiouser
Initially released on DVD in 2000, Disney's Alice in Wonderland returns in a generous two-disc package designed especially for kids and those grown-ups who didn't purchase the original strictly for its hallucinogenic properties. This edition includes such diversions as a Virtual Wonderland Party; an animated short with Mickey Mouse, Thru the Mirror; a never-before-heard song, I'm Odd; several documentaries and featurettes; and other deleted material. Terrific stuff, but don't forget the 1966 BBC version of the same story, also newly available on DVD.
But Corvette Summer was funny
If nothing else, Mark Hamill's mockumentary Comic Book: The Movie effectively describes how difficult it is to combine the art of non-fiction filmmaking with laugh-out-loud comedy. It's something Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy accomplished in A Mighty Wind, Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, but Hamill only touches the surface of it in this send-up of comic-book conventions and overzealous fans. The former Luke Skywalker plays a superhero aficionado hired to direct a documentary about legendary characters Commander Courage and Liberty Ladd. Largely shot at an actual ComiCon, Hamill does a decent enough job satirizing the geeks, but is less successful in coming up with a compelling narrative. Still, comic collectors should enjoy it.