A roundup of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Match Point, Keeping Mum, Breakfast at Tiffany's (Anniversary Ed.), The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, An Inconvenient Truth.

Match Point (Warner Bros, $29.95)
Like a sternly compliant lady-of-the-night, New York City belongs to everyone and it belongs to no one. Which means that while Woody Allen’s posture of courteous wit will forever claim her, his inability to play upkeep has finally forced him to seek out the lace girdles and waxen domesticity of upper-class London. Not that the move is a total surrender: The casting of Scarlett Johansson as an American wolf-among-sheep (Nola) is such a deliberate gesture that she can’t help but act as a thruline to nativity. What Allen exhibits in relation to his leading lady is less the sexual commandeership of Deitrich and Von Sternberg, and more the straight-up fetishization of Tashlin and Mansfield. But even then, he becomes the victim of his own reticence, unwilling to annoint Johansson with the full tilt of her peroxide legacy. In the end, she’s sidelined entirely: under the film’s shifting centre of gravity, her and Chloe (Emily Mortimer) become mere bookends of love and lust to Chris Wilton’s (Jonathan Rhys Meyer) protean wants. Any taint of misogyny, though, is obscured by the sheer anxiety driving Wilton; he may seem like an anomaly in terms of Allen’s male protagonists, but the glacial stare only hides the inhibition of endless possibility, and its implied need to act. Like Nola, he’s also an outsider, an Irish tennis pro feeding his way into London’s well-moneyed palm. In a fit for a philosophical subheading, Allen cakes the film with a half-assed maxim about life being an adjunct of luck, but Wilton’s existence revolves around the unconditional axis of his personality and looks. Each is the gatecard to a life spent either in luxurious complacence, or fervent hardship. And like any good American, he chooses the former. New to DVD. (optional English subtitles; no special features).—DL

Keeping Mum (Warner Bros, $29.95)
Keeping Mum is a black comedy staring Rowan Atkinson. That should almost tell you enough right there. Atkinson’s bumbling/prat shtick has failed to transcend to the big screen in a manner similar to fellow countrymen John Cleese (with his uptight/manic shtick) and Eric Idle (with his zany/wacky shtick). Atkinson should not really make movies, but fans of his more obvious work (Mr Bean, The Thin Blue Line) might find a charm in his role here as a semi-clueless vicar in a quaint village, out of touch with the reality of his family’s secrets. Maggie Smith and Kristin Scott Thomas offer fine work, particularly Thomas, frumping it up (or is that down?) as a wannabe-cuckolding, bored-to-tears vicar’s wife. Patrick Swayze adds to his Donnie Darko heat by playing a sleaze to the hilt. And there are some funny moments early on, all very tongue-in-cheek but simultaneously under-played. It soon grows slightly tired, and is best described as the sort of British film that mainstream America “gets” and therefore loves. There are worst things you could rent, especially if watching a DVD with the folks or in-laws. The usual extras are lined-up: outtakes, a commentary from the director, behind-the-scenes frolics and deleted scenes.—SS

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Paramount/RS, $24.95)
Consider this: romantic comedies wouldn’t be so intolerable if so many of them didn’t star Resse Witherspoon. She’s just one of a dozen odious substitutes for the bygone Hollywood dame – none of whom possess the grace or charm of an Audrey Hepburn. Now she was a lady. My favourite of her’s is the coltish Ariane in Love in the Afternoon; the plucky Reggie in Charade; or the fleeting fairytale of Princess Ann’s Roman Holiday. But you know her best as Holly Golighty – slithering from a taxicab, coffee and pastry in hand, ogling diamonds through the window of Tiffany and Co. At once classy, blithe, and effortlessly in vogue, hers is the story of a call girl who works the powder room at $50 a pop. Paul Varjek, her writer-neighbour, figures as much. But no matter – the way she wears that little black dress, the way she grasps that cigarette holder... even when she speaks in that ridiculous affected accent, he’s besotted. Played by George Peppard (who’d end up on The A-team), he’s the only dark patch on her radiance: with Bogart, Cooper and Peck as exes, these were shoes he could never realistically fill. Nonetheless, she invites him to one of those New York apartment soirées, with rumba music and socialites wall-to-wall, teeming with the same boho crowd seen mingling in Capote. The biopic certainly sheds new light: that country boy Truman turned queer man-about-town conceived Ms. Golightly as his tragic, not-so-fictional self. Unlike the novel though, romance prevails; Moon River swells, hearts melt, and it’s sealed with a rainy kiss. Rereleased in garish pink, this Anniversary Edition wields an audio commentary by producer Richard Shepherd, and various odes to the wafer-thin dame. (optional English subtitles; featurettes; trailer).—TW

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Tommy Lee Jones' first film as director may well be his second coming; for screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, it's clear on the evidence of Amores Perros and 21 Grams that he likes to do things in threes. Together, they've envisioned a robust Western for the 21st century, where cowboys are allowed the room to share, bond, and form strong lasting male relationships. The film's three burials refer to the death of Melquiades Estrada (Julio Cčsar), an illegal Mexican immigrant whose search for work ends with the generosity of Texan rancher Pete (Jones). Together, the two men become close friends, forging a mateship that is severed when Melquiades is shot dead by volatile border patrolman Mike (Barry Pepper). Incensed, Pete's revenge involves kidnapping the remorseful killer, exhuming Estrada's corpse, and transporting his body (all the while decomposing, much to our amusement) to a remote Mexican village where he wished to be buried – a desire to lay rest in the spiritual west that's as much about returning to roots as it is about escaping a frontier tainted by billboards, strip malls and never-ending television sets. In theatres now.—TW [Full Review]

An Inconvenient Truth
The truth of this film’s title is not a new fact: that the Earth is going to hell in a global-warming hand basket will not come as a surprise to many. The facts are presented to a small audience by Al Gore (yes, the one who lost to George W the first time round) in a PowerPoint presentation and... that’s pretty much the documentary. A lecture on global warming by a famously boring ex-politician doesn’t sound like much fun, and yet, for some reason, An Inconvenient Truth is fascinating. Gore concisely, entertainingly, grippingly, lays out the eco-disaster that the planet has embarked upon – none of which is news, but is reiterated in a way that frightens as much as it enlightens. This is a wholly didactic film whose one aim is to galvanise public support for Kyoto and other carbon-reducing measures. Gore meanwhile wields emotional simile without compunction – he likens his advance eco-warning to Churchill warning about the coming threat of Nazi Germany. Most sobering are the scenes of his 2000 election loss – what a terrible turn for the planet, if only he had won we may not be in this state. In theatres now.—IC [Full Review]

» Text by David Levinson, Simon Sweetman, Tim Wong and Ian Christopher.