Theater/VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week 

Sadly, Kate Winslet and Saiorse Ronan strike few sparks in this 19th-century love story that has to labor in the shadow of the much better French feature Portrait of a Lady on Fire, despite writer/director Francis Lee basing her drama on real-life paleontologist Mary Anning’s intense relationship with neglected wife Charlotte Murchison, shown in the film built on intellect as much as attraction.

 

 

Lee shows the physical nature of her protagonists’ relationship fairly explicitly—including their first encounter, which ends with an eye-rolling cut from Winslet going down on Ronan to the fossil they discovered—and the two game actresses go for broke…along with their body doubles. But it all adds up to very little, unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

Ikarie XB 1 

Czech director Jindřich Polák made this 1963 sci-fi drama, and if it’s a product of its genre and its era—low-budget special effects and a Fantastic Planet/Lost in Space-type robot, for example—its intelligence and seriousness anticipate, in broad strokes, Kubrick’s masterly 2001: A Space Odyssey five years later.

 

 

At a compact 87 minutes, Polák’s dazzling drama tidily depicts a futuristic journey to “the white planet,” and his imaginative direction never relies on clichés or standard sci-fi tropes.

 

 

 

 

 

Love, Weddings & Other Disasters 

In this cutesy rom-com that gets increasingly desperate as it goes along, various people meet cutely and either get together or don’t by the climactic wedding, which is as lazily put together as nearly everything elsem. Dennis Dugan directs unpersuasively, while his script is seemingly slapped together from every available cliché.

 

 

With the exception of Diane Keaton (as a blind woman) and Jeremy Irons, the cast is defeated by the mediocre material. Maggie Grace, despite her natural likability, plays a slightly annoying character, while Andrew Bachelor, playing the least believable character onscreen, can’t overcome his silly story arc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4K Release of the Week

Why director Peter Jackson turned Tolkien’s middle earth novel—a straightforward, unpretentious prequel to the more expansive Lord of the Rings trilogy—into a multi-part, lengthy film adaptation is a mystery.

 

 

There’s much to enjoy (notably the elaborate physical production), but the plot is dragged out beyond endurance and the characters aren’t satisfyingly fleshed out despite the nearly eight-hour running time (nine hours total in the extended editions). Whatever the reasons, it all looks fantastic in 4K, although none of the Blu-ray releases’ extras has been included.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

In the Hammer Studios’ stab at the infamous Mary Shelley story, Peter Cushing plays the eponymous doctor who brings inanimate material to life, only to see his creation go on a killing spree. This colorful 1957 adaptation has its moments—particularly in the scenes with Christopher Lee as the monster—but director Terence Fisher doesn’t do enough with such material for this to be a complete success.

 

 

Warner Archive’s two-disc edition presents three versions of the film in different aspect ratios: 1.85, 1.66 and—in the way many people first saw it on TV—1.33; extras are an audio commentary and five new interviews/featurettes about different aspects of the film.

 

 

 

 

 

Holiday Affair 

Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum are a nicely matched couple of sorts in this Christmas-set 1949 romance that hasn’t earned much status as a holiday classic—I personally had never seen it before—but it’s a heartwarming concoction all the same.

 

 

Too bad the cute kid playing Leigh’s young son, Gordon Gebert, is no actor; but there’s a refreshing realism to Don Hartman’s direction, despite his movie hinging on something as innocuous as a toy train set. There’s a splendid new hi-def transfer; lone extra is a 1950 radio version of the story with Mitchum and Laraine Day.

 

 

 

 

 

Raining in the Mountain 

A heist movie set in a monastery? Why not, says director King Hu, whose stylish 1979 adventure explores the machinations of a group of monks over an ancient and important scroll.

 

 

Imaginatively directed with astonishing visuals that take full advantage of the widescreen frame, Raining is a far superior precursor to such martial-arts hits as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, with its action sequences developed more organically, and bolstered by the presence of such stars as Hsu Feng (also memorable in Hu’s A Touch of Zen). The film looks spectacular on Blu; extras are a video essay on the film and an audio commentary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

This successful reboot of the classic detective series starring Jack Lord as McGarrett and James MacArthur as his partner Danno—and which showed the then new state as a crime-infested paradise—lasted ten seasons (the original lasted a dozen, from 1968 to 1980), with a younger, spirited cast led Alex O’Laughlin and Scott Caan.

 

 

This complete set comprises the show’s 240 episodes sprint all over the islands as the good guys earn their pay. Extras include two episodes of the original series and crossover episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles and the Magnum P.I. remake.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is best known for his shimmering vocal work, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, but in no way does that make him a one-hit wonder. In fact, he has made substantial contributions in genres from string quartets (he composed 17 of them) and concertos (he wrote pieces for piano, cello, violin, guitar, harp, and harmonica) to symphonies, of which he wrote 11. (They’re numbered from 1 to 12, but number 5 is missing, and may never have been composed.)

 

 

This valuable boxed set brings together an imposing cycle performed and recorded over several years by the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra under the steady baton of conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky: their intelligently performed survey moves from his early romantic-era symphonies 1 and 2 to his more Brazilian-inflected symphonies 3, 4 and 6 to his later masterworks, No. 10, an epic choral work, and the surging, exciting No. 12, a capstone on the composer's brilliant musical career.