If I had a nickel for every time someone recommended James Bridges' The Paper Chase to me, I'd be Rich Uncle Pennybags. I therefore plead guilty to having imposed great expectations on that film long before the DVD arrived, but my decision to hold benighted Paper Chase fans accountable for this rather than my own impressionability and open-mindedness is what led to the creation of this column, which I hope will become semi-regular here at FILM FREAK CENTRAL. Meanwhile, the viewing public pinned an unwarranted scarlet letter to Steven Soderbergh's Solaris, but there's still hope that the film's unenviable reputation will not precede it to the video store come the end of July. (We received the DVD for review much earlier than anticipated.)

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OVERRATED: The Paper Chase (1973) - ** (out of four)
DVD - Image: A+, Sound: B, Extras: B

Hot on the heels of Love Story and A Separate Peace came The Paper Chase, a film that seems to have had considerable sway over the tone of more recent entries in the academia genre, such as Dead Poets Society and The Emperor's Club (which pays direct homage in christening a character Bell and the casting of Edward Herrmann). Set in Harvard Law School, its crisp, wintry backdrops and precise character delineations (the know-it-all, the basket-case, etc.) are by now overfamiliar, but leaving the unavoidable aside, The Paper Chase is sort of charmless. An uncouth sensibility both in the writing and in the performances informs the film's protagonistic threesome, and unless you're rooting for them--for our hero, Hart (Timothy Bottoms), in particular--they serve no dramatic purpose: The Paper Chase is, after all, about Hart's struggle (nay, desire) to rise like yeast to the top of the class taught by the uncompromising Professor Kingsfield (John Houseman). The Paper Chase won Houseman an Academy Award for standing behind a lectern and being supercilious John Houseman, nothing more, nothing less--going in with prior knowledge of his Oscar results in the same dismay that Beatrice Straight's Best Supporting Actress performance elicits while watching Network.

Bottoms has a Gabe Kaplan hair/moustache combo that renders him immediately unsympathetic (he's studying for the bar, and you'd never want someone this shaggy representing you, even in 1973 terms), and his rube-like unselfconsciousness gives you the urge to sock him every time he opens his mouth. Bottoms is not to blame, though, for a device that might work on the page (The Paper Chase is based on John Jay Osborn, Jr.'s novel) but is crazily inept on screen whereby Hart's love interest Susan (Lindsay "The Bionic Woman" Wagner) is bereft of dialogue until several scenes into her arc; in her silent reaction to Hart's constant yammering, Bridges is planting the seeds of an ironic twist, yet in so doing, he postpones our investment in their affair as we sit there slack-jawed that Susan's not so much as bothering to try to squeeze a word in edgewise. When her East Coast hauteur kicks in and she suddenly becomes Ali McGraw, it improves the film somewhat, but it also strips it of any chance for unity. A common flaw in the work of James Bridges (The China Syndrome, Urban Cowboy, Bright Lights, Big City) is the mishandling of male-female relations; whether it's coincidence that Bridges is gay, it doesn't help that his favourite theme appears to be heterosexual flings.

Fox DVD presents The Paper Chase in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that has little to apologize for: this could well be the finest a seventies picture has ever looked on the format. Bridges borrowed Gordon Willis from Alan J. Pakula and uses him to similarly stark effect; the digital rendering of their efforts feels to the eyes like silk to the skin. Its velvety visuals are really the most successful element of The Paper Chase, and I noticed and appreciated the way the pivotal classroom gets smaller--more intimate--as the film progresses via a few well-chosen angles. Although the disc's stereo remix is on the inaudible side, it responds well to boosts in volume. The DVD's supplementary offerings include trailers for The Paper Chase, Brubaker, High Crimes, and The Verdict and a commentary from co-producer Robert C. Thompson indexed by subject. (Annoyingly, you can't cherry-pick the topics with ease because pressing "return" doesn't lead you directly back to the commentary sub-menu.) Thompson speaks with an authority that suggests his memory of events thirty years old is reliable; best is his recollection of the test-screening phase, during which Fox attempted to change the film's title to All the Bright Young Men and add an inappropriate song to the picture. I'd sooner give Thompson's yakker another listen than watch The Paper Chase again. Running Time 112 minutes Aspect Ratio(s) 2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced; Languages English Stereo, English Mono, French Mono, Spanish Mono; CC Yes; Subtitles English, French, Spanish; DVD-9; Region One; Fox

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UNDERRATED: Solaris (2002) - ***1/2 (out of four)
DVD - Image: A, Sound: A-, Extras: B+

"I'm haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong."

If that quote from last year's remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (actually, it's the accurate thing to call it a fresh adaptation of Stanislaw Lem's source novel) fails to send shivers up your spine, either in or out of context, then Solaris is not for you. It's the kind of line that can explain away a movie's financial failure, since the people who go to the cinema in numbers crave car chases bracketed by bunnies and blue skies, and if I seem testy or presumptuous, consider the stultifying amount of e-mail I receive that begins or closes with "movies are entertainment (italics hardly mine)"--the implication of which has never been just that cinema is escapism, but that it's not allowed to aspire to heights greater than distraction. The debate has always lacked the full participation of my opponents: I attend their movies in addition to my own; they judge mine sight-unseen.

As for Solaris specifically, it raises the issue of mortality; unless cushioned in the pretext of "love means never having to say you're sorry," people don't want to think about death--in particular, the expiration of a loved one--at the movies. Not unless "widowhood" is made this romantic notion to get Meg Ryan swooning at the thought of supplanting the dead woman inside conspicuous picture frames. Which is overlooking the philosophy of Solaris, a film--wherein shattered psychiatrist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) ventures on a reconnaissance mission to a space-station that's orbiting a mysterious planet capable of resurrecting his late, suicidal wife (Natascha McElhone)--that aims in its portrait of regret to comfort and hearten. (In fairness, some were heard to condemn the film on the grounds that it 'rips off' Event Horizon and Sphere, even though Lem's book predates both of those pictures by several years.) On the one hand, it's a tale cautioning against self-absorption, but on the other, it attributes same to the human condition; Soderbergh has streamlined Lem's text and Tarkovsky's indulgent reading of it for a less obscured route to the audience's soul. No film this acutely self-aware has fallen victim to unjust contempt so widespread since Last Action Hero--in truth, it's Soderbergh's first beautiful film, fulfilling the pockets of resplendence found in Kafka and Traffic. Click here to read Walter Chaw's theatrical review.

Presented on DVD by Fox in a sublime 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer, Solaris was shot by Soderbergh's favourite cinematographer (i.e. his pseudonymous alter ego Peter Andrews) and couldn't be more handsomely preserved here. The film is short (98 minutes) and the disc is relatively light on special features, leaving the compressionists plenty of leeway. (Unfortunately, the final fade-out succumbs to banding.) Cliff Martinez's score induces tears as heard in the Dolby Digital 5.1 mix, but there is slight clipping in the upper registers; also, I wonder if a DTS track would've enhanced the detail of Solaris' spare sound design. Producer James Cameron joins Soderbergh for a commentary track that belongs on the must-listen list of film lovers everywhere: endlessly complimentary and complementary, Cameron grills Soderbergh for information regarding the film's first cut (a version Soderbergh intends to make public if Solaris achieves cult status), re-shoots, homages to Klute, and so on.

Soderbergh owns up to incidental metaphors and mocks the film's deliberate nature ("That was our action sequence," he remarks of a shot of Clooney scaling a ladder), and there is a tantalizing discussion of an alternate docking episode featuring Pink Floyd music. This is Cameron's second commentary in as many months (after the one he recorded with William Wisher for the T2: Extreme DVD)--let's hope it's not his last. The DVD also contains two prefab making-of specials--HBO's "Inside Solaris" (13 mins.) and the peppier "Solaris: Behind the Planet" (18 mins.)--that share interview footage; the latter is the stronger doc for expanding its depth of coverage to encompass the sets and special effects. Soderbergh's shooting script is presented in its entirety as a still gallery (note that several passages of dialogue were filled in on set); teaser and theatrical trailers for Solaris plus trailers for Le Divorce and Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (bearing a past-due "coming June 6^th" tag) round out the platter. Running Time 98 minutes Aspect Ratio(s) 2.35:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced; Languages English DD 5.1, French Dolby Surround, Spanish Dolby Surround; CC Yes; Subtitles English, Spanish; DVD-9; Region One; Fox