DVD Chronicle: Headhunters, and: Wings, and: Lawrence of Arabia, and: A Separation, and: La Culpa, and: Certified Copy, and: Footnote, and: The Tall T, and: The Pirates! Band of Misfits (review)

A recent radio broadcast of the BBC’s Film Programme—more about this in a moment—featured an interview with Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, the husband-and-wife team who directed Little Miss Sunshine in 2005 and who brought out a new comedy in 2012, Ruby Sparks. In the course of the interview Faris said casually, as if stating the obvious, that Little Miss Sunshine appeared at the moment “when DVDs died.” My own view is that this handy device for delivering media content is going to be around for a while yet, not flourishing perhaps but at least surviving as one option among the many we now enjoy for seeing screen works. If “enjoy” is the word: with multiplied options come technological complexities, pricing questions, difficult choices. Blu-Ray? Regular DVD? Instant play? Video on Demand? Video on Demand rented or purchased? (All the options are available for Little Miss Sunshine, a funny movie which you should certainly watch or watch again; I have not yet seen Ruby Sparks.) In any case old-fashioned DVDs are still being produced, sold in stores or online, mailed out to Netflix subscribers, and in this Chronicle I will recommend new releases that seem particularly worth obtaining and watching.

But first, about The Film Programme. This is a weekly production of BBC Radio 4, a lively thirty minutes of news about film and interviews with filmmakers; Francine Stock is the articulate and knowledgeable presenter. I’m happy to report that all the broadcasts are downloadable as free pod-casts (http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/film) and are a welcome resource for anyone who wants to know more about films—classic films as well as current releases, since the program often takes a retrospective view of its subject. You might be especially on the alert for commentaries by Neil Brand, an expert on film music who often illustrates points by playing on a studio piano. Listen, for instance, to his perceptive commentary on recycled film music in the broadcast for September 27, 2012. The same program includes an interview with the young French-Arab actor Tahar Rahim, star of A Prophet, a superb prison drama which I discussed in an earlier Chronicle.

It’s to The Film Programme that I owe my awareness of Headhunters. Morten Tyldum directed this crime thriller from Norway, a 2011 adaptation of a novel by Jo Nesbø. I saw the film on Amazon instant video; it’s available on DVD and Blu-Ray as well. Headhunters is about a gentleman art thief named Roger, a type who fifty years ago and in Hollywood would have been played by Cary Grant or David Niven. Roger’s cover is his job as an executive headhunter—hence the film’s title, though more sinister implications, about literal kinds of hunting, emerge in due course. Negotiating with business clients in an Oslo skyscraper, or breaking into somebody else’s living room, taking artwork down from the wall, razoring it from the frame and replacing it with a reproduction, Roger is resolutely suave. But confronted with a criminal much more violent than himself, he becomes desperate (as Cary Grant and David Niven never did), then as bodies begin piling up, he turns almost feral, scuttling from one hiding place...