Intermission: Less-hyped films make great home-video rentals

Jim Wunderle owns Wunderle Sound Services and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.

Many times smaller, less-hyped films however critically acclaimed they may be tend to pass over medium-sized markets such as ours.

Thank heavens for the home video market. While one has to wait several months for feature films to make it to the video stores, at least they finally do become available.

Two such films, both of which made numerous "Top 10" lists last year, have recently been released on DVD and VHS and are well worth a look.

Pieces of April'

There are a number of great movies that have food as a main theme. I love a good food movie. And I like a movie filled with great dialogue. I also enjoy characters who put the "f-u-n" in "dysfunctional." Clocking in at about 90 minutes is a plus as well. "Pieces of April" has all of these qualities, as well as some fine performances from its ensemble cast. TV's "Dawson's Creek" sweetheart Katie Holmes takes on the quirky title character and wears the role like a finely fitted dress or in April's case a perfect melange of thrift-store fashion.

April lives in a seedy apartment building in New York City with her boyfriend Bobby. Her family lives several hours away. Dad is crazy about April. Little sister a straight-A over achiever has no use for her and thinks she's weird. Her little brother is sort of in his own world of teen enlightenment and angst.

Then there's mom. Joy Burns (Patricia Clarkson) has never felt close to April, her first born, and has never tried to hide it. Joy is dying of cancer and this may be her last Thanksgiving. April desperately wants to obtain a feeling of family. Even though she's never cooked a real meal in her life, she invites the entire clan to her apartment for a feast she plans on preparing herself. Dad, ever the optimistic peacemaker, cheerily drives the family to their appointment with holiday destiny.

The film cuts between the Burns' car ride and April trying to get her Thanksgiving dinner prepared on time. Both settings provide a lot of hilarious moments and Clarkson steals the show in the car trip scenes. Her biting, sometimes cynical, remarks make us laugh in spite of ourselves and the scene where she smokes medical marijuana (she gets back in the car and starts listening to rap) isn't over the top but is riotously funny.

Meanwhile, April's stove is broken, and she takes her uncooked bird from apartment to apartment looking for someone who will let her use an oven. The many neighbors she encounters help or hinder in hilarious fashion.

The movie is darkly humorous throughout, but I have to admit that in the end, my wife and I were wiping away tears brought about by an unabashedly emotional finale.

21 Grams'

No, this isn't a film about drugs. The title refers to the amount of mass a person loses at the moment of death. Some say it's the weight of the soul.

Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu scored a hit with his debut feature, the beautiful if sometimes brutal "Amores Perros." It featured three intertwining stories, as does his latest effort. Like his previous film, "21 Grams" is told in fractured chronological order. It, however, is much more fractured than "Amores Perros" and not since "Memento" have I seen such a unique narrative style. It adds power and weight to this very gripping tragic drama.

We jump forward and backward in time and in and out of the three main characters' lives. At first we believe they are connected by a single event, but as the film progresses, the tangents come together in an ever-tightening circle. We soon discover there are more ties between them than we first suspected and every connection brings its own devastating implications.

All three characters are victims of a tragedy that weighs on each heavily enough to press that 21 grams right out of their bodies.

It's sometimes hard to tell where we are in the timeline, and the film demands a second (or third) viewing to be fully absorbed.

Sean Penn won a best actor Oscar for his work in "Mystic River," but could have just as easily won for the work he does here. Both Naomi Watts and Benicio Del Toro were nominated for their roles, and while neither took home a statue, their nominations were well-deserved.

"21 Grams" is a painfully great film and a textbook example of the power of the medium.