The Movie:

How to Survive a Plague may have barely missed out on nabbing the Best Documentary Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards, but this chronicle of the early years of AIDS activists and their impact on public policy in treating the disease (saving untold lives in the process) is a solid, penetrating watch.

Through a mass of wobbly VHS footage of activist meetings and demonstrations, news footage, archival interviews and the occasional contemporary reflection, How to Survive a Plague ushers viewers through that tumultuous period in neatly organized, strictly chronological fashion. Sure, this unadorned method might seem like something of a cop-out, but the director understood that the footage in itself conveys enough power to basically carry the documentary. It certainly helps the film’s “you are there” mojo as we witness these activists evolve from a band of fierce, passionate yet disorganized Manhattanites into a force capable of AIDS policy-shaping on a global scale.

Beginning in 1987, with a graphic that ominously racks up the number of AIDS deaths, How to Survive a Plague opens in a fragmentary manner befitting the founding of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). One gets a healthy sense of the pent-up sense of alienation and anger which led to the organization, which grew out of outrage over the lack of action taken on a city, state and nationwide basis over the looming heath crisis caused by AIDS and HIV. While ACT UP’s membership originally consisted of mostly younger white gay men directly affected by the disease, its makeup grew as the disease spread and people became more aware of the group’s ballsy protest tactics.

How to Survive a Plague accurately gives a sense of history unfolding and mounting dread in recounting the dark 1988-92 period as AIDS casualties piled up (the disease had a nearly 100% fatality rate). There’s also a great sense of community as well, however, when each protest results in the small victory of moving forward. When the traditional big pharma system let them down, the ACT UP members educated themselves on alternative and/or black market medications – the members are even shown being primed on how to be arrested correctly and the correct way to deliver a perfectly timed sound bite to the media. The participants also admit some of their shortcomings (in pressuring the FDA to speed up availability of the faulty drug AZT, for instance), and the internal strife of the group is vividly shown when a splinter activist group, TAG, is founded in the early ’90s.

The film is peppered with latter-day comments from those who were active in that scene, from the activist playwright Larry Kramer to unsung people like the nurse who couldn’t stand by while hospitals were turning away the sick and dying. A few other notable activists emerge in the archival footage, as well – people like the firebrand PR exec-turned-outspoken activist Bob Rafsky, or the articulate, boyishly handsome Peter Staley (who is seen facing off on a late ’80s edition of CNN’s Crossfire against Tom Braden and a surprisingly compassionate Pat Buchanan, one of the film’s highlights). Director David France deliberately keeps the fate of these subjects uncertain, making the film as much a “did he survive or not” game as much as absorbing history telling.

How to Survive a Plague achieves its goals in a plain-spoken, relatively straightforward manner that is generally free of the motion graphics, re-creations, ironically placed pop music and other gimmickry currently (over-) done in documentary filmmaking. It tells a story that needed to be told, succinctly and with a lot of heart. If the film gets a bit too smug and self-congratulatory towards the end, the participants still come away earning our admiration. The lack of HIV education in today’s landscape is still a widespread problem, but at least it’s now a manageable condition to those who have it (and can afford the cocktail of drugs used to contain it). We have all the people in this film to thank for that.

The DVD:

Video:

How to Survive a Plague relies heavily on vintage ’80s-’90s video, but the mastering on this 1.85:1 widescreen presentation is agreeably done with sharp detail and nice levels of dark and light on the contemporary-shot segments. The older footage varies wildly in quality, which strangely enough adds a lot to the film’s vibe of history unfolding before your eyes.

Audio:

The sole audio option on How to Survive a Plague is a pleasantly mixed track with clear dialogue and smoothly integrated vintage audio. The 5.1 Surround mix doesn’t use the surrounding channels in a showy way, but it serves its purely informational purpose well. Optional subtitles are available on the DVD as well, in English SDH and Spanish.

Extras:

A group audio commentary with director David France and several ACT-UP members seen in the film – Heidi Dorow, Joy Episalla, Bob Lederer and Ron Medley – supplies a lot of details that were glossed over or deemed not important to the main feature. The track contains a few dead spots when everyone is absorbed in the film, but for the most part it’s an interesting listen. Also included are about 12 minutees of Deleted Scenes and a Theatrical Trailer.

Final Thoughts:

David France’s acclaimed documentary How to Survive a Plague recounts the rise of activist group ACT-UP during the darkest days of the AIDS crisis in New York City. Heavy on archival clips and told in a refreshingly straightforward manner, the film serves as a dignified pedestal to the men and women who passionately fought for recognition and better treatment for those with AIDS. Recommended.

Matt Hinrichs is a designer, artist and sometime writer who lives in sunny (and usually too hot) Phoenix, Arizona. Among his loves are oranges, going barefoot and blonde 1930s movie comedienne Joyce Compton. Since 2000, he has been scribbling away at Pop Culture weblog Scrubbles.net. One can also follow him on Twitter @4colorcowboy.

The Movie:

Bret McCormick was a pretty prolific producer and director of low budget B-movies starting in the late eighties and stretching well into the late nineties. Along the way, he’s worked with notable performers such as Jeffrey Combs (in Cyberstalker) and Richard Harrison (in Highway To Hell) but oddly enough one of the movies that he’s best known for is the 1996 film Repligator, featuring top billed stars Brinke Stevens and Gunnar Hansen. Now, through the magic of DVD, this legitimately screwy entry in the annals of B-moviedom can now be enjoyed time and time again, without the need to rewind when you’re done!

So yeah, what the Hell is Repligator all about, anyway That’s a very good question, let’s try to answer that. When the movie begins, Dr. Goodbody (Brinke Stevens) is conducting an experiment that allows her to see the fantasies of a soldier she’s connected some wires to on a screen. Not surprisingly, he’s imagining her naked, and then imaging her taking him to bed to join up with her and her friend. From there, Stevens is more or less out of the picture and we meet a fat, bald scientist who, along with his female assistant (who sports a mole that would make Motorhead’s Lemmy blush), has designed a device called the Replicator. What this does is transport matter from one place to antoher, it doesn’t actually replicate anything, but regardless they have this device and they test it out for top brass military man Colonel Sanders. When they put poor Private Libo through the machine, however, he comes out a horny red headed female who can’t keep her hands off of the many men around her.

When this happens, Sanders is annoyed and he takes the project from the fat bald scientist and gives it to a thinner scientist with a beard and an effeminate male assistant. They try to Replicator again on the assistant and then on the previous assistant with the mole – she comes out hotter than ever in black lingerie and he comes out a brunette with giant fake knockers, now completely turned on by the bearded guy. From here, the females who have experienced the Replicator start to enjoy sexual pleasure and their primitive orgasms turn them into alligators that actually look more like dinosaurs. These alligators that look like dinosaurs bite people and those people turn into zombies – thankfully Gunnar Hansen is around, if only for a gratuitous cameo that adds nothing to the plot. But hey, he’s got X-Ray glasses, so that’s kind of cool.

Repligator is horrible but if you’ve read this far then you probably figured that out on your own by this point. There is some enjoyment to be had here, so long as you go in with the right expectations and in the right frame of mind. This isn’t a movie made for the serious cineaste, but rather for those who enjoy the simple things bad, low budget movies can and so often do provide instead of any sort of artistic merit: cheap lingerie, fake boobs, real boobs, dinosaur alligator face masks, zombies (), horrible optical effects, bad science, characters with horrible names like Dr. Goodbody and Colonel Sanders, and bad, trashy jokes galore. Nobody involved in this project was taking it seriously, that much is obvious, so there’s no need for anyone else to take it seriously either – because once you do that, the movie becomes an endurance test.

So yeah, go into this cinematic turd knowing full well how truly turdy it is and it’s hard to get too upset by it. Sure, none of it makes any sense and the script seems to be made up on the fly seemingly with the only intention of showing off some kind of cool dinosaur masks that are not alligator masks, but hey, it’s Repligator. Seriously, what do you expect Just look at the cover, that pretty much tells you exactly what you’re in for.

The DVD:

Video:

Repligator was shot on 8mm and then, we can guess, transferred to tape and edited, so this DVD image is probably about as good as it’s going to get. For the most part the picture is stable – noticed only one tape roll during playback and it was very quick – offering pretty good color and okay looking black levels. There are no compression issues to note and the picture is clean. Detail is nothing to write home about but given the origins and source material here, it’s not bad. This is not an amazing transfer by any stretch but it is perfectly watchable.

Sound:

The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is on par with the video in that it’s not anything to write home about but it gets the job done. There are a few spots where dialogue is a little bit muffled, but the levels are generally balanced well. Hiss and distortion is never really an issue, though not so surprisingly things lean a bit towards the flat side. There are no alternate language options or subtitles provided.

Extras:

Outside of static menus and chapter selection we get two supplements, the first of which is a four minute interview with director Bret McCormick who notes that Roger Corman was the inspiration for this movie and who talks about where the idea for the film came from. The second supplement is a six minute featurette that is made up of some behind the scenes information and some quick cast and crew interviews. This isn’t a jam packed special edition but honestly ,the fact that there are any supplements included for a movie this obscure is kind of amazing in and of itself.

Final Thoughts:

For better or worse, Repligator lives again. Brain fryingly horrible in every possible way, it’s hard not to laugh along with this one. With that said, it takes a certain kind of movie fan to properly enjoy this one, this is not a film for the masses or one to be taken in the least bit seriously. It’s bizarre, it’s poorly acted, it’s devoid of logic and it is more or less a complete waste of time. So we can’t really recommend it in the traditional sense, but at the same time we can’t hate on it enough to say skip it. So, with the dilemma in mind, rent it. Decide for yourself where you stand on this one, but do it without investing a lot of money until you know for sure that you need Repligator in your life.

Ian lives in NYC with his wife where he writes for DVD Talk, runs Rock! Shock! Pop!. He likes NYC a lot, even if it is expensive and loud.

THE PROGRAM

Earlier this year I proclaimed a match between Daniel Bryan and CM Punk at Over the Limit to be the best match of 2012 in WWE. I still stand by that proclamation, but now, only slightly. I can’t say I’d have ever guessed a six-man TLC match featuring a hoss who some might call the modern day second coming of Goldberg to be one of the strongest offerings in a year of pro-wrestling, but expectations are to be defied and even better, “TLC 2012” emerges as one of the better minor pay-per-view events of the year; even with the original Main Event scrapped due to injury.

The event has its fair share of mediocrity, with the opening tag team bout between Team Rhodes Scholars and a combo of Rey Mysterio and Sin Cara tedious, even at less than ten minutes, being only slightly better than an equally long Intercontinental bout between Kofi Kingston and Wade Barrett. Sadly, as usual, the time-filling Divas match is three-minutes best skipped over. However, that is the extend of pay-per-view matches that would be mediocre on TV.

Antonio Cesaro facing R-Truth is a short match, but both men give it 100%, with Cesaro showing why he’s future main event material yet again. The penultimate match, a six-man tag of The Mix, Alberto Del Rio and The Brooklyn Brawler vs. 3MB is nothing technically accomplished, coming together at the last minute after a mid-event segment involving The Miz and 3MB, but the nostalgia factor and conclusion, all due to the inclusion of perennial jobber and hometown favorite, The Brooklyn Brawler will make the most jaded fan smile. However, the real goods come in three specific matches.

The Big Show and Sheamus lock up in a real brutal chairs match for the World Heavyweight Belt; it’s every bit the definition of a brawl and the size of both men give the stakes a subtle enhancement. The conclusion manages to defy definition, capturing sheer brutality with a visual sight gag that will be remembered for a long time. Despite his age, Big Show can still entertain a crowd and will forever be a foreboding presence and Sheamus sells this convincingly while still establishing dominance. The other match between Dolph Ziggler and John Cena was thrown together following an injury by CM Punk; what should have been a ladder match for the WWE Title turns into a ladder match for Ziggler’s Money in the Bank briefcase. Any knowledgeable fan knows the outcome beforehand and on paper the match has no meaning, but Ziggler and Cena entertain the crowd to the limit and justifiably Ziggler gains some further credibility in the process.

The highlight of the disc and easily the second best match of 2012, is the six-man TLC match between Team Hell No (Kane and Daniel Bryan) with Ryback and The Shield (Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, and Seth Rollins). The Shield has been a much-needed boost to the WWE main event storyline and all three men bring down the house in their debut, showing a level of team cooperation we haven’t seen in years. Their opponents are crowd pleasers and all get a chance to shine, even if the end result is The Shield going over, proving their dominance and place in the WWE. The match is just shy of 25-minutes, but it never drags, balancing some technical wrestling at times (mainly stuff involving Daniel Bryan) with team synergy and good old-fashioned brawling. There are some excitement inducing spots that make both sides come out looking great and the bottom line is, the fans got their moneys worth from this match alone; the rest of the very solid evening is sheer icing on the cake.

THE DVD

The Video

The 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer sports brilliant, rich color reproduction of the event itself. Detail levels are not as strong as something sourced from a modern HD broadcast should be, possibly due to some minor compression artifacts that seems to be the standard for WWE DVD releases (it’s much better than a few years back).

The Audio

The Dolby Digital English 5.1 audio is a solid, albeit non-mind-blowing experience. Commentary is front and center, but never mixed to overpower the sounds of the arena, nor do the mics focused on the in-ring action feel off-balance. A few matches in, and the sound isn’t as immersive as being live (simply due to the constant commentary), but there’s nothing to detract from the experience. A Spanish 5.1 track is also included.

The Extras

The lone extra is an interview with Dolph Ziggler conducted by Matt Striker.

Final Thoughts

I still wouldn’t put it anywhere near Attitude Era levels of quality, but “TLC 2012” is one of the best minor pay-per-view events of last year. Even in the face of a replacement, meaningless (from the storyline) main event, there’s something for everyone here and the balance of quality matches is greatly appreciated. Come for the big six-man tag and enjoy the rest while you’re at it. Highly Recommended.

Classic stop-motion Christmas fun, SpongeBob style. Nickelodeon has released SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!, the 2012 stop-motion special that’s set to air on CBS on November 23rd, 2012, the day after Thanksgiving. I’m sure there’s some kind of marketing logic to releasing this rather elaborate, funny little special on DVD weeks before it airs on network television, but it escapes me (early jump on Christmas buying? Promo for the network airing? Promo for games and toy tie-ins?). Luckily, SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! is on par with your better-than-average SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, with the seasonal background and particularly the sensational real (not computer-faked) stop-motion work here making this a must-buy for some lucky kid this Christmas. Fun extras help make SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! a cinch, you Grinch.

Patchy the Pirate (voice talent of Tom Kenny), hijacking a Christmas mail truck, hosts and narrates this SpongeBob Christmas special. While SpongeBob SquarePants (voice talent of Tom Kenny) greets a new Christmas morning with a song (Santa’s Eyes), Plankton (voice talent of Mr. Lawrence) has a much less benign plan to ring in the New Year. Plankton has discovered a new element, Jerktonium, which he plans on feeding into his Jerk Maker 9000, a combination fruitcake oven/shooter, lacing the delectable cakes with Jt, which should cause everyone to become a jerk. That way, by simple process of elimination, Plankton and his previous year’s evil deeds won’t look so bad, and Santa will have to bring him some presents…instead of the coal Plankton always gets in his stocking. There’s only one problem: the Jerk Maker 9000 doesn’t seem to work. Plankton shot SpongeBob with several laced fruitcakes, but he remained as sunny and kind as always, prompting Plankton to give SpongeBob the keys to the 9000 in disgust. Naturally, clueless SpongeBob carries out Plankton’s plan anyway, turning the whole of Bikini Bottom into a chaotic, rioting jerk-fest, so Plankton has to turn to Plan B: MechaSpongeBob, a clanking metal robot ready to destroy Christmas.

 An affectionate take-off on all those beloved Rankin/Bass Christmas stop-motion TV specials, filtered through the silly/sick humor of SpongeBob SquarePants, SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! is a welcome return to form for those fans of the Nickelodeon toon series who lament the sometimes scattershot feel of the last few seasons. I’ve written way too many reviews for SpongeBob DVDs (you can read those here), so I won’t go into any background on the show’s aesthetics or format, but I must write that I was more than a little apprehensive when it came to sitting down to review this entry (since so many of these new Christmas TV specials, quite frankly, stink)…and more than pleasantly surprised at how well SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! came off.

 Like any SpongeBob toon, SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! has its share of expected juvenile silliness; throwaway jokes that are so stupid they make the kids groan and laugh at the same time. When Patchy pilots that mail truck down the icy road and hollers, “There’s a fork in the road!”, that’s exactly what pops his tire and sends him hilariously spinning out of control: a three-tined fork (the stop-motion effect here is beautiful). And when completely brainless Patrick (voice talent of Bill Fagerbakke) wants to set a trap for Santa Claus to keep Christmas going all year long, you can be assured that Patrick will fall into his own snare. Those kinds of childish-but-funny gags are de rigueur for SpongeBob…as are the sly, smart, deadpan jabs that still make this 15-year-old toon adult-friendly viewing. Critically, SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!‘s central gag―fruit cake is so hateful a Christmas tradition it literally turns people into jerks―is clever enough (“Hot from the oven and full of lovin!” Plankton booms), topped by the hilarious transformation of the poisoned fruitcake victims, their heads momentarily dazzled by a furious whirl of Christmas lights, accompanied by a loud Bronx cheer.

 But plenty of other jokes and gags keep the pace up here―something that doesn’t always happen in these later SpongeBob special episodes. Plankton’s “Naughty Deeds” list has “littering” at number one, followed by “world domination,” “puppy taunting,” “‘mispelling’ words,” and “neglect grooming.” A SpongeBob trademark, the bystanders throwaway gag, has Frankie wishing Johnnie a ‘Merry Christmas,’ before he whips an iceball in his face. Patchy steals a mail truck and trusses up the postal worker (“I gave Mr. Mailman the day off!” he offers as we briefly see the frightened worker gagged in the back). Starving Patchy sees Potty as a plate of buffalo wings (starving Potty sees Patchy’s head as a birdseed cone), before he hallucinates meeting with Santa (it’s actually a vicious polar bear, salting Patchy). No Christmas TV special would be complete without Santa (voice talent of John Goodman), so when he shows up, he’s right out of the sick SpongeBob playbook: possibly the grossest kids’ movie Santa ever, with a bald head covered in liver spots, rubbery, grouper balloon lips, and baggy, goggling eyes that look like hard-boiled eggs. Santa’s no hero saving the day here, either; when the marauding tin SpongeBob breathes fire like MechaGodzilla, Santa is the first to deadpan, “I’m outta here,” before he skedaddles. Best of all, the makers of SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! deliver all of these funny situations in first-rate puppet stop-motion, getting the Rankin/Bass look down pat (they even drop in some cell animation-looking snow effect that’s R/B letter-perfect). In the included bonus featurette detailing SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!‘s production, they don’t specify how long this animation took (the parade sequence is especially good, as SpongeBob walks by transforming jerks), but it’s nice to see such an elaborate effort backed up by a steady stream of jokes worthy of the process.

 The DVD:

The Video:
Beautiful. The anamorphically-enhanced, 1.78:1 widescreen transfer for SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! is digital perfection: bright, vibrant colors; a razor-sharp image, and absolutely no compression issues whatsoever.

The Audio:
Same for the Dolby Digital 5.1 stereo audio mix, which has discreet separation effects, and crystal clarity (and a healthy recording level). English close-captions are available.

The Extras:
First, there’s a behind-the-scenes featurette of the making of SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!, where the crew discusses the thinking that went behind the decision to utilize stop-motion, as well as the technical problems encountered. It runs 7:19. Next, you can run a full animatic of the special alongside the finished product (fun for animation buffs). Next, two of the featured songs, Santa’s Eyes and Hot Fruitcake can be accessed via MP3, and finally, a Yule Log loop is available (I love the old-timey animation of it…but couldn’t someone have put a good 10 or 15 minutes worth of music on it, instead of the same 45-second loop? It defeats the whole purpose of the gag, and it ticked off the kids fast…unless that was the point).

Final Thoughts:
I don’t know if SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! will become the TV classic watched year after year that the production teams hopes it will be…but it’s good enough for right now. Plenty of funny gags and beautiful stop-motion animation add up to a Christmas winner here. I’m highly recommending SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas!.

Paul Mavis is an internationally published film and television historian, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, and the author of The Espionage Filmography.

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THE MOVIE:

The Vertical Ray of the Sun, the 2000 drama from Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung (Norwegian Wood), is an artfully conceived, beautifully realized cinematic poem, a story of life that could be compared to Wong Kar-Wai or Hou Hsiao-hsien, both masters of the blithe rhythms that Hung so effortlessly dances to. Yet, The Vertical Ray of the Sun is also very much representative of a singular voice, of a tone that indicates the artist’s assurance of his own perceptions and his willingness to trust his instincts.

The film is the story of three sisters: Suong (Nhu Quyn Nguyen, The Chinese Botanist’s Daughter), the eldest, a mother and cafe owner, who is married to a photographer; Khanh (Le Khanh) is in the middle, the wife of a writer, secretly a mother-to-be; and Lien (Tran Nu Yên-Khê, Cyclo), the baby, ostensibly the film’s star, a student of life, a girl in the state of becoming. Lien lives with her half-brother, Hai (Quang Hai Ngo), who was born on the same day as her, though the hour is unknown, meaning there is no older or younger here, they are almost a single being. Lien and Hai are close, possibly too close, living like lovers yet without the lovemaking. Lien crawls into his bed every night when she gets cold; Hai pretends to be annoyed. The Vertical Ray of the Sun‘s narrative shifts are punctuated by lovely, languorous scenes of this girl and boy waking up in the morning, leisurely attending to their routine, buoyed by the sounds of the Velvet Underground and Arab Strap. To complete the triumvirate of artistic men, Hai is a film actor. He and Lien playfully practice a scene he will shoot later that night, two lovers silently parting.

It is a moment that will be repeated further down the line, when Lien has a tough talk with a legitimate suitor, and it’s one of many such redos. The Vertical Ray of the Sun is a film that is full of echoes and overlapping, parallel experiences. Actions reverberate, and similar instances emerge in the ripples, crossing over one another until the connections and cohesions create a perfect whole. The script is built from an occasio where the sisters gather to prepare a memorial for their dead mother, a woman whom they have recently discovered had a secret love buried deep in her past. Their desire to know about her becomes our gateway to know about them, an invitation to peer into their secret lives. Is Suon as happily married as people imagine, or does she have a lost romance like her mother Will Khanh’s husband (Manh Cuong Tran) succumb to temptation like the protagonist of his novel How will this all affect Lien, who reverberates with desire, but who hasn’t the practical knowledge to do anything about it In the role, Tran Nu Yên-Khê is both innocent and seductive, absorbing experience but also radiating it. She is like a tuning fork reacting to all emotional stimulus, while being careful to give up what she feels herself. Yên-Khê is mesmerizing to watch, as complex as her sisters, yet without the externalized drama.

I am somehow not surprised to discover that cinematographer Ping Bin Lee (a.k.a. Mark Lee), one of the cameraman on In The Mood for Love and also Hou Hsiao-hsien’s cinematographer on Three Times and Flight of the Red Balloon, among others, is the man behind the lens here. His photography is gorgeous, like Edward Hopper painting with neon pens. It was by no accident, then, that I had flashbacks to Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung waiting out a rainstorm while watching Yên-Khê and Ngo do the same. There is a shared tradition connecting the films by all of these filmmakers. Lien could just as easily be a stand-in for Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo (shot by Lee, as well), a young woman both out of her time and very present in it.

Of course, all this beauty would be useless if channeled into disparate melodies and aimless improvisation. The remarkable thing about The Vertical Ray of the Sun, where it derives its considerable impact, is how Hung pulls it all together. The girls who were brought closer by their mother’s covert passions are further bonded by their own passions, and specifically by their desire to create new life themselves, to continue the tradition of mother and daughter (or son). It’s in the shared, alleviating moment when pregnancies, both actual and imagined, are revealed that we see all three women for their different facets, how they represent roots of the same tree, growing from the same source, yet divergent, emblematic of the possibilities inherent in all things. No matter how differently they may travel, their paths are still wending their way through the same soil. And so it is that a cycle passes, a year turns, and the next phase begins.

THE DVD

Video:
The Sony Choice Collection, the studio’s manufacture-on-demand label, brings The Vertical Ray of the Sun to DVD as a color, widescreen transfer. The image quality is average. Lines and edges tend to be soft, but the colors are warm and lovely and there are no blemishes on the screen. Honestly, I like this movie way more than The Scent of Green Papaya, Tran Anh Hung’s most popular film, which I previously reviewed on Blu-Ray, and find it sad that it can’t get the same kind of love and attention paid to this. I’d watch this again a million times more than I’d watch Green Papaya.

Sound:
The 5.1 original language soundtrack is surprisingly good, with lots of ambient effects that create a realistic atmosphere that moves gently throughout the room. There are no dropouts or glitches. The subtitles are yellow and, though easy to read, slightly pixilated. I should note, I hate it when movies like The Vertical Ray of the Sun don’t translate the songs that characters sing onscreen, somehow assuming they aren’t integral to the film’s plot.

Extras:
Just a trailer.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Highly Recommended. This turn-of-the-century effort from Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung is a moving story of three sisters at different stages of life, struggling with their relationships and the harsh lessons of age. Beautifully shot and lyrically composed, The Vertical Ray of the Sun is a film that is all about feeling, about human connections and the way we touch each other’s lives, both to the good and bad. Led by three remarkable actresses, the film weaves multiple stories together, letting each influence and comment on the others. It’s a lovely piece of cinema.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joëlle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent project is the comedy series Spell Checkers, again with Jones and artist Nicolas Hitori de. Follow Rich’s blog at Confessions123.com.