Three Great Scripts, Two to Five Discs

Margot at the Wedding
Lord, I'd hate to meet Noah Baumbach's family. It's possible, of course, that they're perfectly lovely people, worlds removed from the walking psychological time bombs that populate his films, but that would make Baumbach the greatest screenwriter of his generation, an honor I'm not ready to bestow on the co-writer of The Life Aquatic. Margot At The Wedding, a worthy spiritual sequel to his excruciatingly perceptive commercial/psychiatric breakthrough The Squid And The Whale, again examines the dynamics of familial dysfunction, but on a far more bothersome level than the affected quirk typical of similar American indies; Baumbach's voice as a filmmaker has by now clearly emerged through his ruthless examination of the thoughts and feelings we do our best to hide from the people we love, but slip out nonetheless.

Whereas Squid centered on the emotional and intellectual angst of a teen facing his parents' divorce, Margot At The Wedding focuses instead on the adult product of such psychological sabotage, a failed mother and wife who retreats to her own high horse on the eve of her estranged sister's wedding. As character studies go, few in recent memory have been as penetrative as Nicole Kidman's manipulative, desolate Margot, and Baumbach meets his performers halfway with a visual flatness that's nearly as ugly as the emotions in play but naturalistic in a way that serves the material.

The overall result is less striking than The Squid And The Whale, but only because he seems to be striving to make his characters here as real as their feelings; that the film isn't showy makes it that much more subversive and leaves us afraid of what Noah Baumbach might strip from our minds and hearts next time around.

Charlie Wilson's War
Most everyone has had the displeasure of seeing a favorite book neutered and mismanaged on the road to the silver screen, and George Crile's superlative nonfiction yarn Charlie Wilson's War shouldn't be an exception to that rule: The story of Texas Congressman Charlie Wilson's successful efforts to covertly arm Afghanis against their Soviet oppressors is terrific material, but the sequence of events is convoluted and tangled as only real life can tangle them.

It's that much more miraculous, then, that Aaron Sorkin's adaptation is not only reverent but indeed a nearly perfect model of how such daunting material can play effortlessly onscreen. Sorkin (redeeming himself after the dreadful Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip) makes every choice with precision and wit, freely molding Crile's details into a characteristically snappy, streamlined script that does the book's larger-than-life characters and story full justice without bending under the weight of adaptation. It helps, of course, that Sorkin's script attracted veteran subversive Mike Nichols (confidently continuing a career resurgence here) and the unexpected comedy team of Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman, all of whom are almost unfairly suited for the material.

Charlie Wilson's War could have easily been a misfire, but the talent and professionalism at hand make for one of the most satisfying (and refreshingly adult) mainstream efforts of the year.

Juno
Months of hype and counter-hype in the wake of Sundance steeled me against Juno's inevitable Indie Cutesiness, and in some respects, it doesn't disappoint; Diablo Cody's much-lauded script takes occasional detours into affected sass and cringe-worthy pop namedropping, and director Jason Reitman shows no more facility for the material here than on his smug misfire Thank You For Smoking, relying instead on a sloppy autopilot that lazily mimics genre touchstones. Luckily, though, Cody's work is more than strong enough overall to lead Reitman by the ear through an undeniably worthy crowd pleaser, notable not only for its uniformly fine performances (Ellen Page lives up to every bit of praise) but also the sincere emotional intelligence that makes them possible.

Blade Runner: The Final Cut
It's hard to look at Ridley Scott's future noir masterpiece with an objective eye; in the quarter-century since its middling original release, the film has become a cultural icon beyond the cinema, extending its influences everywhere from graphic design to the very lens with which we dare look into our society's future. No matter, though, because the nature of Blade Runner itself is almost specifically subjective, begging questions from the subtextual ethical politics of the Replicants to the famous ambiguity of Deckard's own nature.

This malleability is directly reinforced by Warner Brothers' staggering new DVD reissue of the film, which in its most expansive form (the sets range from two to five discs), features no less than five separate cuts of the film, including the cautiously, tastefully re-jiggered “Final Cut” and the little-seen workprint version, a stark contrast with the practically disavowed (though instructive in this context) theatrical cut.

And in case the five separate versions aren't enough for you, two entire discs are dedicated to additional supplementary material (including scenes not included in any cut) centered on the engrossing three-and-a-half-hour making-of doc Dangerous Days. Whew!

For those on a budget, the two-disc version contains both the Final Cut and the documentary, and that's almost enough, especially since the Final Cut stands confidently as the definitive Blade Runner, looking and sounding better (especially on Blu-Ray, woot) than it ever has, and every bit as good as it deserves.