DVDs, 5/12.

By David Hudson on 05/12/2009

"For the most part," begins Dennis Lim in the Los Angeles Times, "Christian cinema, from the refined sublimity of Robert Bresson to the literal-minded gore of Mel Gibson, has been the province of believers. But in the case of 'Wise Blood,' John Huston's long-overlooked 1979 adaptation of a Flannery O'Connor novel, an interesting tension arises from the seeming contradiction of an atheist adapting a Christian allegory by a deeply Catholic writer - and doing it, so to speak, faithfully."

"Brad Dourif's performance as Hazel Motes is such an astonishing high-wire act that--as rarely happens with adaptations - his fevered, nearly bloodless little face and his fanatic, head-down speed walk permanently layer themselves, in our minds, onto the fictional character," writes Francine Prose in a piece posted in Criterion's Current. "When Dourif wanted to put more nuance into his portrayal of Hazel Motes, Huston informed him, correctly, that Hazel was a one-note guy. What O'Connor knew, and Huston found out, was that the one note was God."

Updates, 5/13: More from Aaron Hilis at GreenCine Daily: "It's about the powerlessness of existence, which is both as terrifying and absurd as that sounds." And more, too, from Bill Weber in Slant.

Related: Joyce Carol Oates in the New York Review of Books and Joy Williams in the New York Times on O'Connor and Brad Gooch's biography.

Jean-Luc Godard's "Une femme Mariée" is the subject of Glenn Kenny's "Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report" for The Auteurs' Notebook this week: "This film is an inexhaustible document. Since receiving the DVD of it - a beautiful transfer, each individual shot a miracle of detail - I think I've watched it in some form or another about seven times. Sometimes all the way through, other times in fragments, at least once - forgive the sacrilege, if you're inclined to think this sacreligious - as a form of ambient video. Each way, it is magnificent. Unimpeachable."

"A paradigmatic New York indie of the kind that cannot be accused of star-slumming or dependie bloat, Azazel Jacobs's 'Momma's Man' tells an incremental tale of modern regression, and as such it is patient and stinging," writes Michael Atkinson. Also reviewed here at IFC is "Of Time and the City," a "brisk, lyrical, swoony compilation of archival images devised as a 'city symphony' in the old style, saluting [Terence] Davies's hometown of Liverpool during the postwar decades."

Marilyn Ferdinand on "Johnny Got His Gun": "What moved me the most about this film, actually a partial memoir of [Dalton] Trumbo's own childhood (for example, the death of Joe's father was shot in the very house, the very room, and on the very bed where Trumbo's father actually died), was that it seemed to address his experiences with the blacklist. He was a living, thinking man who was silenced by politicians fighting a principle that was supposed to 'make the world safe for democracy,' as Joe's father says to him. This painful period underscored so many scenes in this film that it felt more like an autobiography than a film about war."

Josef Braun on "The Hit": "[B]esides helping us to rediscover a forgotten gem of 1980s British cinema, a movie that's smart, artful, strange, often gorgeous and entertaining enough to recommend to just about anyone, not to say brilliantly acted, Criterion's new DVD release is also a fascinating little piece in a larger cinematic lineage, pointing both backward and forward toward a number of history's more interesting movies that deal with the psychic geometries of death, assassination, secrets, and surrender." And Criterion's Current rounds up more reviews.

At FilmInFocus: "In part two of his five-part exploration of Jarmusch's use of music, Simon Reynolds looks at how the director follows the trail of local southern music to come up with a melodic mix in 'Down By Law.'"

"What was innovative about 'Dont Look Back' when it was released in 1967 remains so contemporarily, not only because we can now recognize its style as having infected both feature films and television, where hand-held cameras, natural light and locations and unobtrusive, minimal crew has come to connote 'reality,' but because so many of the rock documentaries of today can't match its stylistic invention." Michelle Orange. Related online viewing: "IFC and IFC.com are proud to present the first look at the new music video for Bob Dylan's new song 'Beyond Here Lies Nothin',' directed by Nash Edgerton and featuring Amanda Aardsma and Joel Stoffer."

ClassicFlix via Filmbo: "Kino has announced a September 1st release date for 'Gaumont Treasures: 1897 - 1913.' The 3 disc set will focus on Alice Guy, Louis Feuillade and Leonce Perret with each getting a disc devoted to them."

For the L Magazine, Andrew Schenker recommends Manoel de Oliveira's "I'm Going Home." Also, Cullen Gallagher a few titles just out from MGM and Warner Bros - as well as the fate of the video store.

Online listening tip. From Morning Edition: "It should be no surprise that with movies to her credit as varied as 'Any Given Sunday,' 'X-Men,' 'Pretty in Pink' and 'Bulworth,' movie producer Lauren Shuler Donner has her own eclectic mix when it comes to giving DVD recommendations."

Online viewing tip #1. The NYT's AO Scott on "The Graduate," "always timely, and perhaps never more so than now."

Online viewing tip #2. The trailer for "Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus." Out May 19. Via Ard Vijn at Twitch.

DVD roundups: Sean Axmaker, DVD Talk, Guru, Ambrose Heron, Mark Kermode (Observer), Noel Murray (Los Angeles Times), PopMatters, Slant and Michael Tully (Hammer to Nail)

[Photo: Detail from the cover for "Wise Blood," Criterion Collection, 1979]

Tags: Azazel Jacobs, Bob Dylan, Brad Dourif, DA Pennebaker, Dalton Trumbo, Flannery O'Connor, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim Jarmusch, John Huston, Manoel de Oliveira, Stephen Frears, Terence Davies