Good acting buoys creepy H2O
“Grizzly Man”
•••1/2
Self-styled naturalist and bear protector Timothy Treadwell camped for 13 year in a remote spot on the Alaska peninsula until, at the end of the 13th summer, he – along with his girlfriend – was killed and partially eaten by a grizzly bear. This documentary by German filmmaker Werner Herzog combines original interviews of a number of fascinating characters with footage that Treadwell himself shot. And if Herzog never does actually answer whether Treadwell got careless, or if his luck simply ran out, he does make the questions interesting to watch. And he pays tribute to Treadwell’s own talents as a naturalist videographer. Includes Herzog interview, feature on the film’s music. (1:43; rated R for language)
“The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”
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Documentary filmmaker Judy Irving uses her camera to follow Mark Bittner, a mostly homeless musician who has adopted the flock of wild parrots that haunts his San Francisco neighborhood. Bittner becomes almost a Johnny-Sunflower-seed protector of the birds until he is forced to leave them behind. Irving’s success is that she manages to make several of the animals into memorable characters in their own right. Includes features on the origin of the flock, an update, Bittner home movies and deleted scenes. (1:23; rated G)
“Into the Blue”
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Young hardbodies (Paul Walker, Jessica Alba) are tempted to exploit a drug cache to fund their hunt for a legendary lost treasure ship, but … any plot points get lost in the lovingly long shots of the barely clad sliding smoothly through the blue, uh, sea. The acting, overall, is putrid except for Josh Brolin as a bad guy and Scott Caan, who at time seems to channel his father James, as a slick-talking lawyer. Includes commentary by director John Stockwell, making-of featurette, screen tests, deleted scenes. (1:50; PG-13 for intense sequences of action violence, drug material, sexual content, language)
“Undiscovered”
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Boy (Steven Strait) meets girl (Pell James) for a nanosecond, they are parted but then they run into each other a while later when he is on the verge of rock-‘n’-roll stardom and she the supermodel big time. This time around, though, each has too much baggage. Question is: Can true love find its way to a pair of marginally talented L.A. hangers on? Another question: Will you retain enough interest to make it to the end to find out? Includes making-of featurette, commentary by director Meiert Avis, deleted scenes and four music videos, including one by Ashlee Simpson. (1:43; rated PG-13 for sexual material including dialogue, partial nudity, language, drug content)
“2046”
•1/2
Chinese director Wong Kar Wai “expands” on his 2000 film “In the Mood for Love,” following the experiences of a womanizing writer (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) and the various women he loves and leaves (Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi). The whole thing is an overly long, incomprehensible bit of navel gazing about a character who is not so much uninteresting as unlikable. Includes interviews with director Wong, Leung Chiu Wai and Zhang, making-of featurette, deleted scenes. (2:08; rated R for sexual content)