DVD Review: SNOW ANGELS

Written and Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Olivia Thirlby and Amy Sedaris


Louise Parkinson: It’s easy to block out the things that upset us. It’s what most people do.

By now we’ve all seen the movie already. It’s a small town with people with small lives. They’re not like you and I. They have quirks that set them apart. And while we meet them and are introduced to all their idiosyncrasies, something happens in this small town that no one is prepared to deal with. Before you know it, you’re taken back in time to see everything that led up to this moment. Yes, we’ve all already seen this movie but though it presents itself as exactly this movie, SNOW ANGELS is not this movie whatsoever. Sure it follows that simple approach but thanks to delicate, subtle performances and a soft, sensitive direction from David Gordon Green, SNOW ANGELS is at times as precious as the image the title conjures.


Green has had an impressive year. SNOW ANGELS first debuted at the 2007 Sundance film festival but only found its way to theatres this past winter to an art house audience that embraced it for many weeks. He followed that success with the widely popular stoner comedy, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. Though they are nothing at all alike on the surface, they do share at least one similarity if you look a little deeper. Green breathes a certain peace into his films. Whether his characters are fumbling through their crappy lives or getting lost in their own zaniness, they are given the space to allow what needs to happen to happen. In SNOW ANGELS, Green, who also wrote the screenplay, gives us a mixed bag of characters who have all been involved with each other in some form or another and are all trying to follow the straight and narrow. The trouble is that while some are trying to do their best, others give into a destruction that affects all around them.


Now available to rent or own, SNOW ANGELS makes for a very pensive and somewhat melancholy evening in. Green is still light and playful though so while it does get bleak, it never loses hope. I would sooner go with rent then own in this case though as the DVD contains no special features at all outside of scene and audio selections. For such a thoughtful film, some insight could have been put into the package. Still, the unique interaction SNOW ANGELS has with our hearts and minds is a profound one to be had.

FILM


DVD

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

Written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, Danny McBride and Rosie Perez


Private Miller: I feel like a slice of butter melting all over a big ol’ pile of flapjacks … yeah.

I’m pretty sure my mother always told me that smoking pot was bad for you. She’s my mother so, naturally, I always believed her. Now, I’m not so sure though. She couldn’t possibly have seen PINEAPPLE EXPRESS before making this assertion. If she had, then she would know that smoking only leads to hilarity and kinship. At least that is one of the many valuable life lessons I learned while watching the latest Seth Rogen vehicle to come off the Judd Apatow assembly line. I also learned that paranoia can be a very good thing, that friends who smoke together stay together and that James Franco actually has a drastically different side to his usual stoic, dry presence. I think most importantly though, I learned that stoner movies, when they’re done right like this one, don’t require the audience to smoke up heavily beforehand in order to have a good time. Albeit, I’m sure a whole other kind of good time would be had if you did.


You could see this movie as an opportunity for Rogen to push his pot smoking agenda onto unsuspecting youths that think of his as some sort of demi-God after last year’s one-two punch, KNOCKED UP and SUPERBAD, or you could just drop the act and enjoy the trip. Besides, smoking is hardly over glorified in this film. Every time Rogen, as Dale Denton, a crafty process server, lights up, he finds himself in a whole heap of trouble. He makes stupid mistakes that lead to his deeper and deeper into despair. And while watching Rogen alone is certainly entertaining, watching him get goofy with a buddy is even better. The buddy here is the unexpected Franco. Franco plays Saul Silver, the drug dealer to Dale’s drug doer. Get these two in a forest and give them a little herbal amusement and there is no telling how stupid they will get and how far out in space their minds will go. There is one sure thing though, weed brings these two together and their lives are better for it.


Thank goodness these two have each other because they could never endure what they need to go through all alone. Saul sells Dale some of his highest-grade bud, called pineapple express. It’s so rare, so exclusive, that after Dale witness a homicide and dumps his roach at the scene, he believes that it can be tracked back to him. Saul must then get involved as he is the sole distributor of pineapple express and therefore the whole thing can be traced back to him. In order to get out of their unfortunate bind, the two must go to the source and get the bad guys, including a feisty Rosie Perez as a crooked cop, before the bad guys, and gals, get them. Many a stoner has inhaled and embarked on zany adventures before these two but how many find themselves in high speed car chases or live-or-die bang-up’s or even fleeing scenes of explosive proportions? Well, I can’t say actually but I can say that none have been this funny in what feels like a very long time (what feels even longer if you actually are stoned).


Dale and Saul are the new stoner buddies, the new Harold & Kumar, if you will. They are accidental action heroes whose pot smoking both gets them in and out of trouble. Unlike the punks responsible for the most recent Harold & Kumar disaster, the people behind PINEAPPLE EXPRESS are actually interested in making a solid film, one with an engaging story and consistent character development. Director David Gordon Green (SNOW ANGELS) knows that just because his characters are stoned out of their heads 99% of the time does not mean his audience will be necessarily. The audience might want to shut off and have a great time, either naturally or enhanced naturally, and that does not mean that you don’t actually have to try. When I want to shut off, I like to be around good people and let the laughs roll. Watching PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is like hanging out with the guys and I already want to hang out with these guys again next weekend.