In Francesco Trueba’s wistful drama—similar in story to the recent French film Renoir, about the last days of the French impressionist—a French sculptor’s late career gets a boost by an unexpected arrival: a nubile young model. 

 

Jean Rochefort’s sly, understated portrayal of an elderly artist whose entrenched ideas of art and life are unbalanced by a new girl is complemented by Aida Folch’s sultry muse; Italian screen siren Claudia Cardinale gives strong support as his sympathetic wife. Trueba’s unerring eye and Daniel Vilar’s luminous B&W photography are illuminated by an exemplary hi-def transfer. Lone extra is a short Trueba interview.

 

This mildly appealing comedy parodies Jane Austen fandom in the guise of Jane Hayes (always adorable Keri Russell), so smitten with her favorite author, her heroes and heroines that she leaves everything behind in America to visit England and live out her fantasy: it doesn’t go as planned, obviously. 

 

Diverting but incredibly lightweight, this trifle breezes by on Russell’s natural winningness; too bad it also relies on Jennifer Coolidge’s bull-in-a-china-shop persona. The Blu-ray looks very good; extras include a commentary and cast Q&A.

 

This biopic is, almost unavoidably, chintzy soap opera, even if director Oliver Hirschbiegel tries taking the high road and avoid the tabloid gutter. The problem is that Princess Di’s sad story is tabloid fodder no matter how you tell it. 

 

Naomi Watts gives an honorable performance even if she’s never quite able to show us the inside of Diana’s obviously tortured psyche. The hi-def transfer is fine; extras comprise cast/crew interviews and fashion booklet.

 

The last Disney feature made while Walt was still alive, this wondrous 1967 adaptation of Rudyard Kipling book about the orphan boy Mowgli is a rare instance in which everything—the dazzling animation, the immensely hummable songs, even the Disney-fying of Kipling’s dark story—coalesces into a family friendly classic. 

 

And on Blu-ray—in a terrific hi-def transfer—one of Disney’s true classics looks as good as ever. Extras include commentary, interviews, alternate ending and intros.

 

Annalynne McCord, as a vengeful girlfriend getting back at her man and best friend—who’ve been carrying on behind her back—gives an explosive performance that goes so gleefully over the top that director/cowriter Mark Jones or cowriter Sadie Katz’s crude revenge picture seems better than it is. 

 

Viva Bianca makes an appealing other woman, Billy Zane is a blank as the adulterer, but McCord gives her all and keeps things watchable even as it careens further into ludicrousness. The Blu-ray looks good.

 

The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet—an experimental novelist best known for his screenplay for Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad—are interesting more for their narrative games-playing than any psychological or dramatic coherence; 1966’s Expressand 1974’s Slidings are the first of his films to be released on Blu-ray. 

 

Although some find depth in them, mainly they are attractive-looking, self-referential larks helped by the presence of Jean-Louis Trintignant and the gorgeous actresses Marie-France Pisier, Olga Georges-Picot and Anicee Alvina. The hi-def transfers are splendid; extras are amusing Robbe-Grillet interviews.

 

Although this handsome production about the internecine 15^th century Wars of the Roses copies what distinguished series like The Tudorsand The Borgias—including plentiful sex and royal intrigue—it pales in comparison to those. 

 

An accomplished cast that includes Rebecca Ferguson, Amanda Hale and Janet McTeer works hard and often effectively, but often at the service of subpar storytelling: it’s a pity, considering the drama inherent in the source material. The hi-def images look spectacular; extras include behind the scenes and background featurettes.

 

The second season of this seminal evening soap opera’s reboot had to deal with the death of Larry Hagman, who created the venerable villain JR Ewing. 

 

But the writers wrangled an intriguing plot out of Hagman’s (and JR’s) death, and the result is an entertaining guilty pleasure, even if holdovers like Linda Gray and Patrick Duffy are better at this sort of thing than newcomers like Josh Henderson and Jesse Metcalfe. Extras include commentary, extended episode, deleted scenes, featurettes and Hagman/JR appreciation.

 

A beauty pageant in Kewanee, Illinois, which features young girls who have physical disabilities, was created by Miss Iowa 2008 Abbey Curran to allow those with special needs (like Curran) to be appreciated for themselves. 

 

Ron Davis’s heartwarming documentary gets up close and personal with Curran, several pageant contestants and those who love and support them; despite its laudable lack of sentimentality, it will bring a tear to the eye of anyone who sees it.

 

Stephen Frears’ docudrama about Muhammad Ali’s four-year battle to avoid going to Vietnam, which went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1971, matter-of-factly dramatizes how eight white justices (the lone black judge, Harry Blackmun, recused himself for non-racial reasons) dealt with this controversial and symbolic case. 

 

Frears smartly shows the real Ali in interwoven film clips, and the story itself is reenacted persuasively by the likes of Frank Langella, Christopher Plummer, Harris Yulin and Fritz Weaver. It’s not earthshattering but shows us an important piece of our recent history.

 

K2 mountain has attracted fearless mountain climbers precisely because it’s so dangerous to conquer—and this impressively mounted documentary explores how and why some survived (or didn’t) a particularly trying climb in 2008: 18 climbers reached the summit but only 7 survived to tell their stories. 

 

Director Nick Ryan and writer Mark Monroe inventively juggle archival footage, emotional interviews and even hair-raising reenactments—that last is always a dicey proposition—to create a profound, even moving exploration of why certain people risk their own (and others’) lives for a thrill.

 

Famous for his hugely popular Roman orchestral tone poems—The Fountains of Rome, The Pines of Rome and the Roman Festivals—Italian composer Ottorino Respighi also composed attractive chamber music, and this disc displays the melodic gracefulness that Respighi had in his bones. 

 

His two youthful sonatas and six pieces for violin and piano, all sheerly pleasurable works, are performed by violinist Fabio Paggioro and pianist Massimiliano Ferrati with finesse and muscle.

 

In the world of playwright Thomas Bradshaw, perversions lurk just beneath the dullness of quotidian life, like David Lynch’s specious Blue Velvet. But, as in Lynch’s film, there are scant insights, along with tedious reenactments of perversions that don't resonate and, even more damagingly, don't penetrate—in either sense.

 

Bradshaw’s latest, Intimacy, outdoes his previous play, Burning, by upping the ante; the earlier play preoccupied itself with anal sex, while Intimacy encompasses that and much more: vomiting, defecation, flatulence, two ejaculations, and sexual activities from self-stimulation to frottage, or dry humping, are all in a wisp of a plot linking three suburban families and pornography.

 

Matthew—a smart 17-year-old whose dad James grieves his wife’s death in a car accident by finding religion—spies on his hot next-door neighbor, 18-year-old high school senior and porn actress Janet. While her mother Pat knows about (and approves of) her activities, her father Jerry (despite his liberal attitudes) doesn’t know, at least until James shows him a magazine she’s in, which freaks him out. Meanwhile, Matthew begins hooking up with virginal schoolmate Sarah—whose bisexual father Fred works as a handyman at James’ house—and they start having sex without any penetration.

 

Bradshaw renders these relationships cartoonishly, especially at the end, when the play completely drops the pretense of any kind of reality (or surreality) and collapses under the combined weight of the playwright’s desperation and crudeness. The first act sets up the linkings among the characters, building climactically to Matthew’s decision to make a porn film and not only have Janet star but also, improbably, his dad (who’s funding it), her parents and Sarah’s dad. The second act pretty much comprises the scenes making up said porn film—titled, apparently without any irony, Intimacy—with a tacked-on coda that provides a tacky happy ending for its newly liberated and paired-off characters.

 

Perhaps Bradshaw felt that his play would work better by foregoing attempts at insight or psychological consistency, since he caricatures his septet of characters mercilessly. What we end up with is a septet speaking in banalities when not spouting platitudes, and given to ill-considered outbursts as when Pat ticks off what Janet calls “abstract statistics” about gun ownership: why would she have so much knowledge at her fingertips? Bradshaw never makes it a plausible part of her being, instead using it to get cheap laughs from a knowing liberal audience.

 

Then there are the many facile, easy ironies, like Pat discussing feminism while cleaning the toilet after Jerry has her look at his latest defecation because he thinks he might be physically ill, or when Jerry talks about porn and James starts in with a heartfelt prayer. Such toothless reminders that there’s never plumbing of any depths show that tactlessness and unsubtlety are the rule, which some audience members clearly appreciate: there are laughs galore for even the laziest piece of dialogue or dredged-up bit of plotting.

 

Not helping matters is how flatly, even indifferently enacted this all is by performers asked to literally bare themselves onstage—physically far more than psychologically. Even the incredibly brave (if foolhardy) Ella Dershowitz’s Janet, who walks around in the altogether, has her entirely bare body the subject of her dad’s Freudian fantasy as she keeps mentioning her “shaved pussy”: although we see the body part in question, the character herself isn’t laid bare in any meaningful way. And Scott Elliott’s smooth direction relies too much on visual "shocks" like snippets of actual porn shown on TV (including a clip of Deep Throat) and various bodily fluids flying everywhere.

 

In sum, Intimacy—though wallowing in scatology, obscenity, racism and pornography—remains, plentiful nudity notwithstanding, disappointingly impersonal—and skin deep.