March '12 Digital Week V

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 31 March 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Corman’s World
(Anchor Bay)
Alex Stapleton’s engaging documentary about the “King of the B Movies,” producer-director extraordinaire Roger Corman, is as straightforward and unpretentious as its subject, who made trashy fun like The Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip and Jackson County Jail.

Most remarkable about this affectionate paean is how beloved Corman is, as heartfelt reminiscences from Ron Howard and Joe Dante to Martin Scorsese and Jack Nicholson (at one point he breaks down, overcome by emotion) show. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray, even if the older film clips show their age; extras include extended interviews and “special messages” to Roger.

David Lean Directs Noel Coward
(Criterion)
This quartet of classics, combining the talents of renaissance man Coward and director Lean, are masterpieces in miniature that predate the gargantuan epics Lean is known for. In Which We Serve (1942) and This Happy Breed (1944) are world-class melodramas, Blithe Spirit (1945) a charming ghostly fantasy and Brief Encounter (1945) the ultimate tragic romance.

The films received British Film Institute restorations for Lean’s centenary and look sparkling; the Criterion Collection’s voluminous extras include a 1971 British TV Lean documentary, short making-of docs, interviews with Coward scholar Barry Day and a 1969 discussion between Coward and Richard Attenborough.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Warners)
Jonathan Safran Foer’s dizzying, unconventional Sept. 11 novel becomes an occasionally touching but mainly annoying melodrama by director Stephen Daldry. Despite good acting by Thomas Horn as the young hero and Max von Sydow in a thankless role as a mute widower who helps the kid find what his dad--killed in the terrorist attacks--left him, the movie is cloying and obnoxious rather than affecting and offbeat.

Daldry’s fairy-tale Manhattan is transferred to Blu-ray with its high gloss intact; extras include featurettes on the film’s making, Horn, von Sydow and tenth anniversary of Sept. 11.

In the Land of Blood and Honey
(Sony)
Rather than a vanity project, Angelina Jolie’s writing-directing debut is a tough, at times tentative drama set during the Bosnian war. Made from the female point of view, it’s unsurprising that the men are caricatures; Zana Marjanovic gives astonishing, emotionally and physically naked performance in Jolie’s insightful, psychologically penetrating portrait of people caught up in war’s horrors.

The film looks vivid and focused in hi-def; one can watch in either the original Balkan languages or in English. The extras are deleted scenes, making-of featurette and Jolie and actress Vanesa Glodjo Q&A.

A Night to Remember
(Criterion)
Roy Ward Baker’s modest but compelling account of the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage is far more satisfying than James Cameron’s overblown, inexplicably boring Oscar-dominating epic version of the same story. By keeping the tragedy on a human scale--something Cameron could never do even if he cared to--Baker has fashioned a memorable cinematic experience.

The 1958 black-and-white drama looks stunningly film-like in its grain on Blu-ray; the Criterion Collection extras include the 2006 documentary The Iceberg That Sank the Titanic, short 1962 and 1993 documentaries, a survivor interview and an audio commentary by Titanic experts.
 
Tannhauser
(Unitel Classica)
In Robert Carsen’s modern staging of Richard Wagner’s operatic fable, the subtext of suppressed sexuality--in the guises of sensual goddess Venus and virgin Elisabeth--is brought blatantly to the surface, subtlety be damned.

Luckily, Carsen’s cast puts its all into the characters, which helps arrest lingering silliness: Peter Seiffert’s Tannhauser is persuasively pitched between Beatrice Uria-Monzon’s vivacious Venus and Petra Maria Schnitzer’s endearing Elisabeth. Carsen’s contemporary interpretation is visually striking on Blu-ray, and Wagner’s enveloping music explodes out of the speakers.

Wizards
(Fox)
After pointed, political animation like Fritz the Cat, Ralph Bakshi made this strange, inert 1976 fantasy that seems, in retrospect, to be a run-through for his animated The Lord of the Rings two years later.

Wizards might not have hobbits and wizards, but this post-apocalyptic adventure has the same sense of dread as Tolkien’s Middle Earth. Bakshi’s unique style, combining traditional animation and drawn-over live-action footage, has a soft look on Blu-ray. Extras are Bakshi’s commentary and 30-minute career overview.

DVDs of the Week
Carnage
(Sony)
Yasmina Reza’s play God of Carnage is a trite but rip-roaring entertainment about two civilized New York City couples who hash out their sons’ differences and end up at each other’s throats…like the kids. On Broadway, James Gandolfini, Marsha Gay Harden, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis made Reza’s comedy explode.

That’s missing from Roman Polanski’s reenactment: Jodie Foster outclasses a miscast John C. Reilly, shrill Kate Winslet and weirdly out-of-place Christoph Waltz. By beginning with the boys, Polanski wrongly erases ambiguity; by moving his camera around shrewdly in tight spaces, he also reveals the material’s shallowness. Extras include cast interviews, Reilly/Waltz Q&A.

A Dangerous Method
(Sony)
At 99 minutes, David Cronenberg’s study of the professional relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud--based on Christopher Hampton’s talkily literate play--comes across as Psychoanalysis 101.

Still, with terrific acting by Michael Fassbinder (Jung), an unrecognizable Viggo Mortensen (Freud) and a no-holds-barred Kiera Knightley (Jung’s patient-turned-lover Sabine), this is Cronenberg’s most entertaining movie in ages, even with moments (a close-up of post-sex blood on the sheets) where it’s obvious that one of cinema’s least subtle directors is at work. No matter: these people’s sexuality is on the surface anyway. Extras are Cronenberg’s commentary, interview and making-of featurette.

I, Claudius
(Acorn)
Robert Graves’s classic novels about debauchery and ambition in ancient Rome became high-class television viewing in 1976, as a plethora of top British actors and actresses (Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips, John Hurt and Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, Margaret Tyzack) sink their teeth into those leading Rome through its rise and fall.

Director Herbert Wise smartly marshals this expressive epic through 11-plus hours, every minute riveting. Extras include extended episodes; I, Claudius: A Television Epic, a feature-length documentary; The Epic That Never Was, a vintage documentary about the failed 1937 film adaptation; a Jacobi interview; and stars and director’s favorite scenes.

Red Persimmons
(Icarus)
This 2001 film--ostensibly about workers in a Japanese village who grow, pick, dry and peel the bright-colored title fruit but really about the dying out of traditional ways of life--was begun by director Shinsuke Ogawa and finished after his death by Peng Xizolian.

The eye-opening footage, which looks seamless, is both invigorating and depressing, since its delicate imagery may be the last we see of such human invention. A bonus feature, A Visit to Ogawa Productions, is a 60-minute documentary of directors Ogawa and Nagisa Oshima discussing their careers and work together.

The Women on the 6th Floor
(Strand)
In this frivolous, far-fetched farce from director Philippe Le Guay, the always resourceful actor Fabrice Luchini makes us believe that a respectable middle-aged stockbroker would fall head over heels for his lovely young Spanish maid (the delectable Natalia Verbeke) under the not-so-watchful eye of his preoccupied wife (Sandrine Kiberlain).

Though he is asked to do many foolish things that are both comic and melodramatic, Luchini never falters, making the movie far funnier (and even romantic) than it has any right to be.

CDs of the Week
Schnittke: 12 Penitential Pslams
(Hanssler Classic)
Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke wrote 12 Penitential Psalms for unaccompanied, mixed chorus for the 1000th anniversary of Russia’s Christianization in 1988. This exceptionally dense work showcases Schnittke’s genius for using simple means to create complex, otherworldly sound worlds.

1972’s four-minute Voices of Nature, which concludes the disc, is a mournful, minimalist ode; the Stuttgart Vocal Ensemble is in fine form throughout.

Weinberg: Complete Piano Works 1
(Grand Piano)
Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg (who died in 1996) has been rediscovered recently, on CDs and even a DVD/Blu-ray of his mesmerizing opera The Passenger. His piano music, played persuasively by Allison Brewster Franzetti, runs the gamut from a Satie-esque Lullaby to the unabashedly dissonant Sonata No. 1.

His second sonata has a Romantic-era feel, as do the early Two Mazurkas from 1933, while another Sonata--a 1978 revisiting of a 1951 piece--seamlessly blends his mid-period and later styles.

Movie Review: "Rampart" Retreads

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 26 March 2012 15:20

Written by Renzo Adler

Rampart
directed by Oren Moverman
starring Woody Harrelson

Both a hard-boiled cop drama and a bizarre piece of nostalgia for LA circa 1990s, Woody Harrelson's latest film, Rampart, again displays a darker side of the former Cheers bartender. That's not to say Harrelson hasn't done some majorly dark roles before -- witness his star turn in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (written by Quentin Tarentino).

As Officer Brown, Harrelson plays a good-ol-boy cop and hardened Vietnam vet that was previously embroiled in scandal because he may or may not have killed a serial date-rapist in an act of vigilantism.  Now he is again under scrutiny after savagely beating a driver that rammed into Brown’s vehicle. He lives with two sisters [who] (played by Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon) that he fathered a child from each of, which we learn about in an adorable bit of exposition where the youngest daughter ask if she’s inbred [fix].

But rather than spending time with his family, Brown usually goes to bars and picks up women while escaping from the brutish realities (or delusions) that the world is out to get him [fix].

Over time he struggles to redeem himself as an officer and father, while sinking further into an abyss of drinking, womanizing, hatred and paranoia. Harrelson’s Brown combines confident swagger and deep-seated bitterness with a childish rage.  

There are times when Brown’s deterioration really feels palpable.  There is a scene where Brown is talking to his daughter Helen (Brie Larson), who is now embracing counter-culture and despises her father, and he asks her if she remembers a song they made up together when she was little.  We’re left wondering if this is a man whose family has shunned him, or if he is really delusional enough to be constructing memories.  

Shot in a faux-verite style, the film at first feeds into the theme of watching and being watched. But after a while you feel dizzy and want to tell the camera operator to sit down and stay still. A film can be gritty and doc-like without perpetually shaking camera action.  

Based on LA Confidential scribe James Ellroy's novel [name], Rampart feels like it harbors too many of the clichés and motifs from a hard-boiled fiction writer. While not necessarily bad, Rampart offers few surprises or much of anything new.  Training Day’s hard hitting LA, Falling Down’s modern disillusionment, All the President’s Men conspiracy theories, are all mashed together with an after-taste of Rolling Thunder’s jaded Vietnam vets. 

The strength of the co-stars varies. Steve Buscemi plays slimy politician, but is seen so briefly that the performance feels more like a cameo than a complete character study. Sigourney Weaver’s part as an LAPD administrator is played with a certain vigor that makes her scenes stand-out. Ned Beatty plays a retired cop that Brown confides in and does the part with a giddy malice and disdain for the new and confusing world around him.

Rampart is ultimately about a deeply flawed man’s deteriorating in the face of an un-sympathetic society. The film builds on Brown’s downward spiral but takes the easy way out with an ending that leaves too much unresolved. Whether you feel sympathy or despise him, the film at least makes you feel something for Brown in some way. 

It’s a good film for those looking to see familiar locales from LA crime dramas, but doesn’t offer much in the way of anything new.

March '12 Digital Week IV

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 26 March 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
B-52s with the Wild Crowd
(Eagle Rock)
The biggest band from Athens, Georgia, pre-REM, reunited last year for this raucous 90-minute 34th anniversary hometown concert. With performances of its biggest hits and most durable songs--like “Roam,” “Love Shack” and of course “Private Idaho” and “Rock Lobster”--the quartet, which comprises Kate Pierson, Cindy Wilson, Fred Schneider and Keith Strickland, shows it’s still in peak form.

The HD cameras and audio are excellent; a lengthy interview with the band is the lone extra.

A Lonely Place to Die
(IFC)
This ludicrous horror film has a premise in questionable taste--hikers find a scared little girl and are picked off one by one by snipers paid to kidnap her--and simply sets up the innocent victims as ducks in a shooting gallery without attempting to garner any legitimate suspense from their plight.

It’s well-made, and has razor-sharp editing, but your mileage may vary on how much gratuitous violence can make you enjoy it. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray.

Lost Keaton
(Kino)
While nowhere near the sustained level of hilarity of his early silent shorts and classic features, the 16 Buster Keaton shorts collected on these two discs from the sound era (mid-1930s) have their moments, notably when Buster’s physical comedy genius is allowed to run riot, i.e., during disc one’s opener, The Gold Ghost.

Keaton is on less firm ground with dialogue and interacting with the other stiff performers. But when he’s on--infrequently as he is here--he’s still unbeatable. The hi-def transfer enhances these beat-up prints, but at least they’re watchable.

The Muppets
(Disney)
Jason Segal is not my idea of a leading man or talented scriptwriter--so his fingerprints all over the new Muppets movie is cause for concern. The plot and jokes are so simplistic that one yearns for the lamest episodes of The Muppet Show.

And if the humans other than Segal and a too-perky Amy Adams--there are appearances by Chris Cooper, Rashida Jones and Jack Black, and, if you don’t blink, James Carville and Dave Grohl, among others--make the most of the silliness, the Muppets themselves are rarely amusing, for once. It all looks good on Blu-ray; extras are featurettes, deleted scenes and commentary.

Roadie
(Magnolia)
Director Michael Cuesta explores the lives of people on society’s fringes again in this familiar drama in which Jimmy--long-time Blue Oyster Cult employee--returns to Queens and pretends to be a successful songwriter and producer.

A delicious Jill Hennessey is an old flame building her own music career and Bobby Cannavale paints a warm, funny portrait of a loser with dreams of grandeur, but Ron Eldard is a wanly unconvincing Jimmy, preventing the movie from reaching its modest aims. The image is very good; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.

The Sitter
(Fox)
If you thought American comedies couldn’t become cruder or more infantile than The Hangover or Bridesmaids, this will prove you wrong. Watching Jonah Hill in anything (even Moneyball) is not my idea of a good time, and watching his one-note persona alongside a trio of irritating kids he’s babysitting--which of course goes horribly, unfunnily awry--is the least fun imaginable.

That charming actresses like Ari Graynor and Kylie Bunbury got mixed up in this mess is depressing. The Blu-ray looks decent enough; the usual extras comprise deleted scenes, alternate ending, featurettes and a gag reel.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
(Universal)
John Le Carre’s methodical Cold War spy thriller was brilliantly adapted for British TV in 1979 with Alec Guinness as a peerless George Smiley, which had the luxury of leisurely lingering over the convoluted plot and relationships.

Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation has much to recommend it--great locales, superlative acting by Gary Oldman (Smiley), Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt, Colin Firth, et al, in subordinate roles--but tailoring Tailor to two hours is both too much and far too little. The Blu-ray image is superior; extras include cast/director interviews and an Oldman/Alfredson commentary.

The War Room
(Criterion)
D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’ impressive fly-on-the-wall documentary about the 1992 Clinton campaign both opened eyes to down-and-dirty American politics and made stars of Clinton’s campaign managers, James Carville and George Stephanopoulos, polar opposites visually and temperamentally.

The original 16mm footage looks sharper in its upgrade to hi-def; the Criterion Collection’s typically packed Blu-ray edition includes new interviews with several principals and 2008’s retrospective, Return of the War Room.

DVDs of the Week
In the Garden of Sounds, Little Girl, Monsenor
(First Run)
This trio of typically intriguing First Run titles is led by In the Garden of Sounds, Nicola Bellucci’s fascinating documentary about a man who lost his sight to an hereditary disease and who gives “sound therapy” to disabled children.

Little Girl, from directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel, unsentimentally shows a group of hard-scrabble circus people who must care for an abandoned baby; and the clear-eyed Monsenor is a hard-hitting documentary about the life and violent death of Oscar Romero, the heroic archbishop who was murdered trying to help the less fortunate in El Salvador in 1980.

Mister Rogers and Me
(PBS)
Cristofer Wagner’s personal documentary presents his own story about Fred Rogers, one of the most popular--and easily satirized--television personalities in the medium’s history.

This engaging portrait earnestly shows how Rogers’ self-effacing and honest approach not only benefited millions of children (and their parents) for decades, but was exactly how the man lived his life off-camera as well. Extras include a commentary, Q&A, interviews.

Moses and Aaron
(New Yorker)
Arnold Schoenberg’s lone opera--intense (but problematic) musically--is dramatically stiff, so the decision of Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet to keep their 1975 film visually static is a smart one. The actors’ lip-synching doesn’t mesh with their arch performances, but strangely, that disconnect contextualizes a problematic 20th century opera telling an ancient story.

It’s not an enervating experience, but it is an audacious one. The lone extra is the directors’ minimalist adaptation of Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Film Scene.

Out
(Acorn)
The grit and grime of London’s inner city are the stars of this 1978 British TV mini-series, which stars an impressive Tom Bell as a jailbird who returns to his old stomping grounds after eight years up the river and finds it both the same and irrevocably changed.

Skillfully written by Trevor Preston and directed by Jim Goddard, this five-hour drama memorably evokes the seediness of criminals without romanticizing them, and features a stunning turn by Brian Cox as a deadly mob boss. Extras include audio commentaries.

Sidewalls
(IFC)
Director Gustavo Taretto’s romantic comedy is too clever by half: by bypassing his charismatic stars--Javier Drolas and the Pilar Lopez de Ayala--for amusingly droll but cloying segments, Taretto overwhelms the humanity at the heart of his machinery.

But thanks to his two stars--especially Ayala, a spectacular and little-seen actress who, in a just world, would be more popular than Penelope Cruz--the movie is watchable, even if it skimps on depth or insight.

Snow White: A Deadly Summer
(Lionsgate)
This tame, PG-13 thriller dangles its tantalizing premise--troubled teen may or may not be targeted by her evil stepmother--in front of viewers but offers little payoff aside from a twist ending. The actors can’t do much with a well-worn storyline, and Shanley Caswell, in the lead role, isn’t allowed to do much more than look cute.

Teenagers--the obvious audience for this--will also be unimpressed with a routine, mostly unscary horror film. The lone extra is an audio commentary.