These Films About Human Nature Are Antidote To Special-Effects Deluge

As we approach the summer movie season, at a time when special effects are as omnipresent as spilled drinks at Saturday matinees, the atmosphere of feel-good cinema is almost overwhelming.

This week’s major video releases are a perfect cure.

Anyone suffering from terminal cuteness is bound to be affected by films that range in theme from the suffocation of arranged marriage to the biting dynamics of modern race relations, from the violence resorted to by life’s losers to the violence resorted to by life’s psychopathic losers.

For the yin to moviedom’s summer-oriented yang, check out the following movies on video (and, no, we haven’t included “Wrestlemania 13” in the bunch):

The Portrait of a Lady

***

This uneven if intriguing adaptation of Henry James’ novel stars Nicole Kidman as an American woman being courted by a lineup of eligible bachelors before she is taken in hand by Barbara Hershey. The result is a life lesson that is as painful as it is illuminating. Director Jane Campion (“The Piano”) seems to be trying to remake James’ novel into a feminist statement, but her point gets lost. One reason for this is a confusing, if affecting, performance by Kidman; another is the unaccountable casting of John Malkovich as a nefarious suitor (besides being an irritatingly mannered actor, Malkovich plays a character whose sleaziness should be obvious even to the self-absorbed Kidman). The acting by the rest of the cast, including Hershey, Richard E. Grant and especially Martin Donovan, is fine. But most mesmerizing is the cinematography of Stuart Dryburgh, who puts us in the world of late-18th-century Europe as well as if he’d merely turned back the clock and ushered us in. Rated PG-13

Get on the Bus

**-1/2

There’s nothing wrong with Spike Lee’s movies that a bit of restraint can’t cure. This film, a comedy-drama revolving around 1995’s Million Man March on Washington, D.C., centers on a simple conceit: We learn the stories of a dozen or so men as they bus to the march from Los Angeles. There is much to admire here, especially the acting of Charles S. Dutton and Andre Braugher, and many of the often-heated conversations tackle the troubling issues facing all of America, but especially black America. The trouble is that Lee, one of the most self-reverential directors working today, can’t help but fill up the frames with one visual gimmick after another - video footage, images so washed-out that they appear to be lab mishaps, irritating quick cuts and medium-distance scenes that don’t capture a needed sense of intimacy. Further, it’s difficult to believe that all the issues addressed here - gang-banging, gay relations, adultery, dads-on issues, alcoholism, anti-semitism, Clarence Thomas-type politicism, just to name a few - would come up in the company of any group of men on any several-day road trip. “Get On the Bus” has a staged feel that, simply stated, undercuts its otherwise essential importance. Rated R

Blood and Wine

**-1/2

It’s likely that Bob Rafelson never was considered an A-list director. But he once managed to make the occasional biting, if bizarre, movie whose main attraction was its blend of originality and alienation (see “Five Easy Pieces,” 1970). In this latest neo-noir, he teams with “Five Easy Pieces” star Jack Nicholson to explore the world of dashed dreams, greed and violence in contemporary Florida.

Nicholson stars as a philandering wineseller (he’s married to Judy Davis) who is having an affair with Jennifer Lopez. Barely interested in his wife (and Davis, at her shrewish best, helps us to see why), he seems even less interested in raising her son (Steven Dorff). But all of them, and tough guy Michael Caine besides, get involved in a jewelry scam that - what else? - goes awry with drastic consequences.

The settings are authentically sweaty, and the performers are fun to watch. But the storyline that Rafelson follows heads off into the darkness and never once looks back. Rated R

The Funeral

**

When the youngest of three mobster brothers is shot to death, the other two struggle to cope with their grief. Elder brother Ray (Christopher Walken) takes charge and attempts to find the killer even as he manages family business and oversees funeral arrangements. Middle brother Chez (Christopher Penn) rages to the point of psychopathy. Meanwhile, the family’s women (Annabella Sciorra, Isabella Rossellini) react in various ways, from calm acceptance to outright wailing. Ferrara, who probed the depths of human behavior in his film, “Bad Lieutenant,” tells his story in an unstuck-in-time manner, he flashes from the present to the past, back to the present and then to the far past, back to the present and so on. The result is a complex, often confusing, look at human relations that are rife with half-truths, frustrated desires and secret obsessions. There is some lightness in Ferrara’s world, but it typically has the life span of a birthday candle. Rated R

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEW TO VIEW Now available: “Blood and Wine” (20th Century Fox), “The Evening Star” (Paramount), “The Funeral” (Evergreen), “Get On the Bus” (Columbia TriStar), “The Portrait of a Lady” (Polygram), “Wrestlemania 13” (Coliseum). Available Tuesday: “Dead Man’s Walk” (TBA), “Meet Wally Sparks” (Trimark), “Ransom” (Buena Vista), “Zeus and Roxanne” (HBO).