The DVD Forum

The Gladiators (New Yorker Films, $29.95)

The Kubrickian premise of Peter Watkins' futuristic film concerns the International Peace Games, military games modeled after the gladiatorial matches of ancient Rome and broadcast on television. The purpose is to subvert mankind's naturally destructive impulse and channel it into a highly controlled environment where both sides, the Western Team and the Communist Team, will get their share of blood. However, this fascinating premise doesn't ever deliver. The quasi-love story that develops between members of the opposing teams is treated far too superficially. The film is in a smattering of Swedish, English, French, and Chinese, and Watkins tries his hardest to disconcert by hurling surreal and grizzly surprises at the viewer. Viewed alongside Watkins' other works, this earlier attempt from the socially conscious mockumentarian is surprisingly naive and even incoherent. While no doubt jolting and unnerving, the film lacks the incendiary and immediate tone of Punishment Park and the pensive, meditative quality of Edvard Munch.

Werckmeister Harmonies (Facets, $29.95)

Bela Tarr's 2000 feature film, Werckmeister Harmonies, is an incredibly stylized work that feels both ancient and timeless and has a uniquely meditative pace and dreamlike quality. The loose narrative concerns an isolated town somewhere in Hungary and a traveling circus that arrives with a dead whale and a mysterious figure known simply as "the prince," who incites the townsfolk to violence. We see the film mostly through the lens of a central character, Valuska, a poetic simpleton who is fascinated with the orbiting of the heavenly bodies. As the film develops at its own unhurried pace, violence of an apocalyptic order erupts on the screen: here are many scenes of extraordinary power, captured in wide and luminous black and white. The cinematography, coupled with Tarr's delicate application of light and music, is especially effective. The result is the type of heightened aesthetic experience that Tarr so consciously denies the viewer in his film Family Nest. While decidedly not light entertainment, Werckmeister Harmonies is an indelible film that rewards close viewing.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Criterion, $39.95)

This tale of an amoral would-be aristocrat who kills off the members of his distant family to inherit a dukedom is the most savage comedy to come out of Britain's Ealing Studios. It also ranks with The Ruling Class as one of the most wicked attacks on the British aristocracy. Dennis Price stars as the charming rogue, and Alec Guinness as the eight members of the D'Ascoyne family who stand in the way of Price's fortune. Despite superlative performances from the two leading men and an infinitely clever script, the supporting performances are rather wooden and laughable. But this hardly factors in calculating the film's diabolical fun. The film's acid bite doesn't wear off easily, and the irony is so pervasive that one positively shudders to think it was made in 1949. Criterion's two-disc set presents the film in a stunning new transfer. Extra features include the alternative American ending that was added to comply with production code regulations that crime shouldn't be seen to pay off. The history of Ealing Studios is entertainingly chronicled in a BBC program on the second disc.