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 Dreamgirls
The two-disc “Showstopper Edition” of Dreamgirls—last
year’s hit film of the Broadway musical about a trio
of female singers who replace their zaftig powerhouse vocalist
with a more conventionally pretty backup singer to achieve
mainstream success—hardly needs a recommendation to
the readers of this magazine. Suffice it to say that director
Bill Condon has made the rare musical in which the songs
actually further the story—viewers are always at a
different place at the end of the musical number. His well-chosen
cast includes Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Anika Noni
Rose and Eddie Murphy (in a career best performance), but
this film utterly belongs to Jennifer Hudson, who with two
showstoppers, "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going" and “I
Am Changing,” announces her arrival as—fingers
crossed—the next iconic female entertainer. Hudson
owns every scene she’s in and won myriad awards for
her turn as the self-destructive Miss Effie White. Extras:
Disc one offers a dozen deleted and extended musical sequences,
plus the video for Beyoncé’s single “Listen.” Disc
two offers a comprehensive feature-length documentary that
very thoroughly follows the course of Dreamgirls—from
Condon getting the greenlight from David Geffen (who owned
the film rights) to its New York premiere—and is nearly
as entertaining as Dreamgirls itself. Beyonce’s full-scale
screen test for the Diana Ross-esque Deena is included, as
is Anika Noni Rose’s powerful audition with her character
Lorell’s big fuck-you number, “Ain’t No
Party,” which, much to the chagrin of fans of the stage
version, wasn’t shot for the film. —Jeremy Kinser
The Investigator
This wrenching British drama, shot for Channel 4 and based
on a true story, follows the career of Caroline Meagher,
a rising staff sergeant in the Royal Military Police in
the late 1980s. When Caroline accepts a choice assignment
doing plain clothes detective work with the Special Investigative
Branch, she learns that her mission is to root out and
interrogate suspected lesbians from the military. Her commitment
to her career and country soon becomes a challenge as she
discovers the truth about her own sexual orientation. As
the witch hunts and inhumane investigations continue, Meagher
must hide her relationships, living a double life to survive
her job.
Helen Baxendale (best known as Ross’ British fiancée
on Friends) plays Sgt. Meagher with an incredible depth and
humanity. Her choices elevate the material while staying
true to the integrity and strength of the character. High
production values, spot-on casting and a solid script make
this program a standout production. Extras: None. —Lindsay Marsak
Little Children
If all suburban dads looked like Patrick Wilson, I’d
wager that many a gay man would pack up his Prada and his
Gucci, get out of his gay ghetto and head straight for smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-nowhere
suburbia. Sarah (Kate Winslet) finds herself trapped in one
such eerily “normal” town where all the over-protective,
sexually repressed and appropriately bored housewives gossip
about everything from one neighbor’s garden to the
handsome stranger they see at the playground. On an innocent
dare, Sarah strikes up a conversation with the enigmatic
Adam (Wilson), and the spark is lit. From this moment on
neither of their lives will ever be the same. This may sound
like a pretty standard set-up for a flick about adultery,
but Children offers so much more than a one-note narrative,
and the performances raise the bar far beyond anything you
might find predictable. Extras: None. —Wally
King
Pan’s Labyrinth
The Spanish Civil War gets the Guillermo del Toro treatment
in his brilliant and beautiful-but-violent Pan's Labyrinth.
We are taken on a fantastic journey between the worlds
of fairy tale and real life with young, fatherless Ophelia
(Ivana Baquero) as our tour guide. Seamlessly melding these
two worlds, we see the horrors of war through Ophelia’s
eyes as well as the far-off fairy tale land she sees as
her escape from the war itself and the fascist dictator
her mother has newly married. But don’t be fooled,
Pan’s is a fairy tale in the boldest tradition of
Grimm Brothers-scary, not the Disney-dreamland school of
rainbows, cute and cuddly. At home you can really get lost
in the gorgeous, Oscar-winning cinematography and the film’s
full range of emotions without having to worry too much
about the subtitles. Extras: The special two-disc set is
full of super-cool extras (including a director's commentary,
storyboard session and diary) that really let you into
del Toro’s head. —W.K.
Melrose Place
“Mondays are a bitch.” Or so said the Melrose
Place ads that ran during the heyday of the 90210 spin-off.
And Season 2, a vast departure from the benign pool parties
and mindnumbingly dull drama of the first season, really
dials up the bitch factor. The season begins with the sharp-tongued
ice queen Amanda Woodward (Heather Locklear) moving in to
4616 Melrose Place, after her rich daddy buys her the hottest
apartment building in the city. Throw in Jane’s scheming
li’l sis Sydney (Laura Leighton), a vicious divorce
between Michael (Thomas Calabro) and Jane (Josie Bissett),
the burgeoning alcoholic Allison (Courtney Thorne-Smith)
getting stalked by a crazy ex and the openly gay Matt (Doug
Savant) marrying a Russian doctor to help secure her citizenship,
and you can’t help but understand why the primetime
soap was the guilty pleasure of the ‘90s. Bonus Features:
Fans will be disappointed with the paltry offering of video
clips and character bios. —John Hobbs
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