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Film and the Arts
August '16 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 02 August 2016 14:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Confirmation
(HBO)
Although she is front and center as Anita Hill in this alternately rote and involving biopic about the controversial 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, Kerry Washington gives a generously understated performance that’s structured to emphatically not steal the show.
The rest of the cast—especially Greg Kinnear as Joe Biden and Wendell Pierce as Thomas himself—is also strong, despite Rick Famuyiwa’s routine direction. There’s a solid hi-def transfer; extras comprise cast interviews.
(Film Detective)
Francis Coppola’s directorial debut was this middling 1963 attempt at terror about a madman who begins murdering members of a family long mourning the premature death of a young daughter.
A scant 75 minutes, at least it doesn’t drag on too long, but in Coppola’s neophyte hands, it stumbles and bumbles its way to a not very startling conclusion. Even accomplished actors like Patrick Magee come off stilted in a film that’s of little interest except to die-hard Coppola fans. The hi-def transfer is good.
The Knick—Complete 2nd Season
(HBO/Cinemax)
The second season of this Steven Soderbergh-directed series about a drug-addicted doctor, his colleagues and patients in turn-of-the-last-century Manhattan consolidates its credentials as a persuasive and absorbing trip through Gotham’s checkered and always colorful history; acing the lead performances are Clive Owen, Bono’s daughter Eve Hewson, Andre Holland and Juliet Rylance.
All ten episodes are included; the visuals look splendid in hi-def, and extras include commentaries, featurettes and episode “post-ops.”
Marguerite
(Cohen Media)
In this fictionalized and Gallicized version of the true story of a rich dilettante who loved to sing in public even though she had no talent for it, Catherine Frot gives a delicious portrayal of a woman willing to remain clueless about her own manufactured reality because she loves being around art and artists.
Director Xavier Giannoli—whose marvelous debut film, 2003’s Eager Bodies, never got released here—keeps a sure but light touch in this often exhilarating study of seriocomic lunacy. The film looks excellent on Blu; extras are a Giannoli interview and deleted scenes.
Mother’s Day
(Universal)
Garry Marshall’s final directorial effort was another multi-character melodrama that stays strictly on the surface when it isn’t burrowing toward silliness and worse: Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Jason Sudekis are never able to rise above the stereotypes, cheap jokes and sentimentality that the movie wallows in.
Sad to say, Marshall made a lot of unimpressive movies, but his legacy as one of the great TV titans (Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley) remains. The film has an excellent hi-def transfer; extras are deleted scenes and a gag reel.
(Weinstein/Anchor Bay)
Director-writer John Carney already consolidated his music bona fides with his previous Once and Begin Again, both of which wedded insightful sequences of music-making with saccharine relationships, and his latest film follows suit. This story of teenagers in Dublin in 1985 has its indisputable charms, notably when Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as Conor meets and falls for adorably intelligent Raphina, played with impossible charm by Lucy Boynton.
But since there’s a lot of dross that one must wade through, Sing Street is of a piece with his earlier work. The film has a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras are a making-of featurette, Carney conversation and cast auditions.
To Have and Have Not
(Warner Archive)
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made their first screen appearance together in Howard Hawks’ loose 1944 adaptation of Earnest Hemingway’s novel, with a screenplay co-authored by William Faulkner. As an American amidst the French resistance on the island of Martinique during World War II,
Bogie is his usual strong but silent self, and Bacall—in her film debut—shows remarkable poise for a 19-year-old, glamorous, tough as nails and with a sultry singing voice. The hi-def transfer is superb; extras comprise a vintage featurette, vintage cartoon and Bogie-Bacall radio broadcast.
Tristan und Isolde
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Even though director Katharina Wagner’s staging at her great-grandfather Richard Wagner’s own shrine to his operas at Germany’s Bayreuth Festival is dramatically wobbly, the performers in what is essentially a two-character, four-hour romantic drama—tenor Stephen Gould and soprano Evelyn Herlitzus—are up to the task and, coupled with Christian Thielemann’s rigorous leading of the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, make this a musically vital performance.
Both hi-def visuals and audio are superb; extras comprise interviews with Gould and Thielemann. But it’s too bad that the director herself didn’t discuss her (and her great-grandfather’s) work.
DVD of the Week
In Country
(Warner Archive)
Norman Jewison made this earnest, occasionally treacly 1989 melodrama about a Vietnam vet whose teenage niece wants to know about the father she lost over there when she was too young to remember him: it ends with a powerful visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Bruce Willis gives a sympathetic performance as the uncle, but stealing the film—par for the course during her too-brief career—is Emily Lloyd as the niece. Lloyd disappeared far too soon, but her remarkably authentic, true-to-life portrayals always elevated whatever she was in, including this scattershot but touching drama.
July '16 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 26 July 2016 12:57
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Barbershop—The Next Cut
(Warner Bros)
For much of its running time, this quite belated sequel has very little happening: its shaggy-dog plot strands allow its characters to often just sit around and talk to, at and through one another.
The funniest moments include those conversations, as the zingers fly, the insults are generated and the cast simply goes with the flow. Standouts in the cast for their witty asides are Cedric the Entertainer, Anthony Anderson and Eve. There’s a quite good Blu-ray transfer; extras include a featurette, deleted scenes and a gag reel.
(Lionsgate)
John Travolta—nearly unrecognizable under what looks to be a mash-up of make-up and plastic surgery—plays a pseudo-Charles Bronson in this sub-Death Wish revenge flick about a man who tracks down the killers of his wife (poor Rebecca DeMornay), who was offed in front of him.
The plot gives nobody a chance to do anything resembling acting, and the clichéd story beats, which are hit every step of the way, keep this from even becoming a guilty pleasure. The hi-def transfer looks decent; lone extra is a director and writer commentary.
Outatime
(Virgil Films)
The souped-up DeLorean that was the centerpiece of the beloved Back to the Future trilogy is also front and center of Steve Concotelli’s engaging documentary that recounts how it’s being restored to its pride of place among the most famous movie memorabilia.
It seems that saving a relic from a 30-year-old fantasy film isn’t worth the slavish attention the car receives, but I’m obviously an outlier: I enjoyed the original but hated the two sequels. The hi-def transfer is fine; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes.
The Outsider
Hoodlum
(Olive Films)
1980’s The Outsider is director-writer Tony Luraschi’s involving drama about the IRA, with a largely unknown cast underpinning its straightforward exploration of how an Irish-American celebrity finds himself transformed into propaganda when he returns to Ireland.
In 1997’s Hoodlum, Laurence Fishburne adroitly plays real-life gangster Bumpy Johnson and the 1920s Harlem mobster scene. Bill Duke’s colorful production includes an array of stars, from Tim Roth as Dutch Schultz and Andy Garcia as Lucky Luciano to Vanessa Williams as Johnson’s sexy moll. Both films’ solid hi-def transfers have sparkling grain.
A Perfect Day
(IFC)
Set in the war-torn former Yugoslavia in 1995, this drama about a group of war-zone rescuer workers has a lot of strong moments of insight mixed with charcoal black comedy while it shows (for the millionth time) the absurdity of war.
But director Fernando Leon de Aranda never brings its tonal shifts into some kind of coherence, all but stranding a game cast led by Benicio del Toro, Tim Robbins, Olga Kurylenko and Melanie Thierry. The film looks fine on Blu; extras are interviews and making-of featurettes.
The Perfect Match
(Lionsgate)
Alone among his friends, Charlie remains the same skirt chaser he’s been since high school, earning derision and envy from all around him: when he meets the magnetic Eva, he begins a full-blown romantic relationship that threatens to destroy his rep.
This mildly amusing rom-com is greatly helped by its two stars, Terrence J and Cassie Ventura, who persuasively and charmingly play Charlie and Eva. It’s too bad that the supporting cast, especially poor Paula Patton, is pretty much wasted. The hi-def transfer is solid; extras are featurettes and a commentary.
The Ratings Game
(Olive Films)
Danny DeVito’s feature directorial debut was this satiric 1984 movie (the first made for Showtime) in which he stars as a desperate man intent on making it in Hollywood. There are few original ideas but good laughs from a solid supporting cast including DeVito’s future wife Rhea Perlman, Gerrit Graham, Kevin McCarthy and George Wendt.
It’s all a far cry from DeVito’s more daring efforts The Wars of the Roses and Hoffa, but still has its intermittent moments. The film looks acceptable but soft in hi-def; extras are four DeVito-directed shorts, deleted scenes and a featurette.
Silk Stockings
(Warner Archive)
The teaming of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse is what most distinguishes Rouben Mamoulian’s classy 1957 adaptation of the Broadway musical about a possible Cold War thaw between an American in Paris (Astaire) and a Russian envoy (Charisse).
The splendid widescreen compositions maximize the extraordinariness of Astaire’s and Charisse’s dancing, and Cole Porter’s tunes are equally memorable. The Blu-ray transfer is good, if not sparkling; extras are a vintage featurette and two musical shorts.
DVDs of the Week
Born to Be Blue
(IFC)
Anchored by Ethan Hawke’s bravura performance as Chet Baker, the jazz trumpeter whose career was constantly being interrupted by his drug addiction (of which he died in 1988 at age 58), director-writer Robert Budreau has made a fascinating impressionistic look at a musical artist’s career.
There’s an equally great supporting portrayal by British actress Carmen Ejogo as the woman in Baker’s life; their splendid scenes both together and apart make this fictionalized biopic a must-watch. Extras are deleted scenes and a making-of.
Five Days One Summer
(Warner Archive)
Director Fred Zinnemann—who won Best Director Oscars for From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons—ended his career with this turgidly melodramatic 1982 entry starring an embarrassed-looking Sean Connery as an older man in love with a much younger woman, who soon becomes interested in a much younger man.
Although Zinnemann lived another 15 years, the scathing reviews for this swore him off directing. The Swiss Alps are enchanting, but the acting by a blank-eyed Betsy Brantley and wooden Lambert Wilson is anything but.
The Last Diamond
(Cohen Media)
In this diverting if implausible heist picture, the always beguiling Berenice Bejo charms as a woman who stupidly allows a stranger into her life without the slightest bit of questioning that he may not be whom he seems.
Director Eric Barbier tries too hard to make this lighthearted—think Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief—but, although Bejo easily equals Grace Kelly’s elegance, Yves Attal is certainly no Cary Grant. Extras comprise interviews with Bejo, Attal and Barbier and a short making-of featurette.
July '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 19 July 2016 12:50
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Belladonna of Sadness
(Cinelicious)
This 1973 animated classic by renowned anime director Eiichi Yamamoto tells a terrifying tale of revenge that’s also quite erotic: its brilliantly drawn sequences of intimacy—as often as not violent as they are sexual—are reminiscent of artists like Klimt, but with an irresistibly singular style all their own.
Despite its relative obscurity, this is a towering work, coincidentally made the same year as another, quite different animated masterpiece: Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet. The new hi-def transfer is spellbinding; extras are new interviews with Yamamoto, art director Kuni Fukai and composer Masahiko Satoh, all of whom contribute mightily to the film’s success.
(Arrow)
Despite a fearless performance by Kathleen Turner as a fashion designer by day who becomes uninhibited hooker China Blue by night, Ken Russell’s 1984 adult escapade is notable for producer Barry Sandler’s laughable script and a dull John Laughlin as the married father who falls for Turner.
Even as Anthony Perkins’ bravura turn as a hypocritical preacher falls by the wayside, Turner’s sheer bravery keeps one watching. The hi-def transfer is excellent; two cuts of the film—the director’s cut is five minutes longer—are included, as are a commentary by Russell and Sandler, interviews with Sandler and composer Rick Wakeman, deleted scenes and music video.
The Daughter of Dawn
(Milestone)
A true historical artifact, this 1920 silent feature—directed by Norbert Myles and comprising a cast of real-life American Indians photographed in Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains—was recently discovered and beautifully restored.
David Yeagley’s dramatic music helps overcome the stilted story and performances, but the history shown in the film remains manifest. Milestone’s Blu-ray has a sparkling transfer; extras are eight short featurettes on the film’s background and importance.
(Universal)
This new Syfy network series—based on an elaborate fantasy novel by Lev Grossman—combines razzle-dazzle and sleight of hand with conventional campus drama, taking too long to achieve an entertaining balance.
But the fresh and charming cast—particularly the three main actresses Stella Maeve, Olivia Taylor Dudley and Jade Tailor—makes sitting through the scattered longueurs worthwhile. The hi-def transfer is phenomenal; extras comprise deleted scenes, a gag reel and making-of featurette.
Muriel
(Criterion)
One of Alain Resnais’ most fluid and subtle explorations of time, memory and forgetting, this 1963 masterpiece has a brilliant script by Jean Cayrol, extraordinary acting by Delphine Seyrig as a woman who remembers little of the past and Jean-Baptiste Thierrée as her stepson haunted by memories from the Algerian war, and a brittle and atmospheric modernist score by Hans Werner Henze.
But most of all, it has Resnais’s attention to the minutiae of mise-en-scene, making this cinema in its purest, most potent form. Criterion’s hi-def transfer is remarkable in its details and look; extras comprise vintage interviews with Seyrig and Henze, new interview with Resnais expert François Thomas and an excerpt from the 1980 documentary Une approche d’Alain Resnais, révolutionnaire discret.
Return of the Killer Tomatoes
(Arrow)
The second batch of playful, fast-paced gangster “Nikkatsu” films from mid-60s Japan—Tokyo Mighty Guy, Danger Pays and Murder Unincorporated—concentrates on stars Jo Shishido and Akira Kobayashi, who make their way through these flicks with glee and panache. Conversely, 1988’s sequel Return of the Killer Tomatoes is an in-joke that can’t rise above its ineptitude even with handsome young George Clooney and lovely young Karen M. Waldron on hand.
The hi-def transfers are sharp and clean; Nikkatsu extras comprise featurettes on Shishido and Kobayashi, and Tomatoes extras include an interview with star Anthony Starke and commentary with writer-director John De Bello.
DVDs of the Week
Bridgend
(KimStim)
This haunting feature, based on a true story of a Welsh town where dozens of teen suicides were recorded over several years, manages to be metaphysical without losing its grip on its unsettling reality.
Director Jeppe Ronde's moody, subtly scary exploration of the unique dynamic among teenagers in a small village is seen through the intelligent eyes of Sara (portrayed by the winningly natural Hannah Murray), whose father is a police inspector charged with investigating mysterious deaths among the local teens.
(Sundance Selects)
Based on a script by Jean Gruault—who originally wrote it for Francois Truffaut—this alternately troubling and frustrating drama about incest (based on two characters from French literature) was directed by Julie Donzelli, who tries to replicate what Truffaut may have made this film into—simultaneously lighthearted and tragic—into something only fitfully satisfying.
The acting is not the problem: Anais Demoustier especially gives a noble performance of depth, feeling, sorrow, sexuality and unbridled goodness. But Donzelli is unable to make all the various strands and tonal shifts cohere, leaving the movie (and us) in a muddle.
July '16 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 12 July 2016 11:49
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Adderall Diaries
The Green Room
(A24/Lionsgate)
Stephen Elliott’s book The Adderall Diaries makes a bumpy transition to film: novice writer-director Pamela Romanowsky can’t balance the varied strands of her protagonist’s life—abusive childhood, difficult adulthood, creative block—with James Franco, Amber Heard, Ed Harris, Cynthia Nixon and Christian Slater left adrift as a result.
The effective claustrophobic thriller Green Room is too single-minded to transcend its genre: no one cares who lives or dies among those at a remote Oregon rock club. The killings—bludgeonings, shootings, slicing-and-dicings and pit-bull maulings—become numbing after awhile, and writer-director Jeremy Saulnier badly errs with one of the lamest final dialogue exchanges ever. Both films have first-rate hi-def transfers; Adderall extras are deleted scenes, making-of featurette and Romanowsky’s commentary, and Room extras are Saulnier’s commentary and making-of featurette.
Slasher—Complete 1st Season
(Shout Factory)
If originality means little, then enjoy this derivative but creepy Canadian horror series (shown on the Chiller network), which begins with the ultraviolent murders of a husband and his pregnant wife by a hooded Halloween hoodlum, then jumps ahead to follow their grown daughter who—and why not?—moves into the house where they were killed.
Of course it’s completely absurd, but the ongoing series of murders soon takes on a Seven vibe that’s enough to keep it on track. The visuals look quite good on Blu; lone extra is an on-set featurette.
Suture
(Arrow)
Writer-director duo David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s 1993 debut is a snail’s-paced, self-satisfied homage to/rip-off of superior movies about paranoia and identity like The Manchurian Candidate and The Face of Another.
Despite professional actors like Dennis Haysbert and Mel Harris and Greg Gardiner’s tangy B&W photography, the overall vibe is of an efficient amateurishness. It does look authentically grainy on Blu; extras comprise directors’ commentary with fan Steven Soderbergh, new making-of featurette, deleted scenes and the duo’s first short, Birds Past.
The Swinging Cheerleaders
(Arrow)
Jack Hill’s 1974 softcore drive-in movie gets the T&A part right, thanks to a trio of gregarious leads: Rainbeaux Smith, Colleen Camp and Rosanne Katon before becoming a Playboy Playmate, which makes the stiffly acted story of uncovered campus corruption on the gridiron expendable.
The film has been nicely restored in hi-def; extras comprise a new Hill commentary and interview, 2012 post-screening Q&A with Camp, Katon and Hill, and additional archival interviews.
The Unsinkable Molly Brown
(Warner Archive)
Lumbering for 135 minutes, this 1964 adaptation of the Broadway musical by the man behind the classic The Music Man falters in nearly every way; even Debbie Reynolds’ portrait of a woman who is never beaten down is outsized and generic at the same time, despite a Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Meredith Willson’s songs are as forgettably similar as his Music Man tunes were true classics; at least director Charles Walters uses the beautiful Colorado scenery to good effect. The film (shot in Panavision) looks terrific on Blu; lone extra is a featurette.
Van Gogh
(Cohen Film Collection)
In Maurice Pialat’s superlative 1991 biopic, actor Jacques Dutronc is mesmerizingly understated as the Dutch painter living out his final days in obscurity and mental instability in northwestern France. Pialat displays with utmost artistry and no artifice the uniqueness of artistic creation; one of Pialat’s greatest films, this masterpiece will haunt the viewer for days afterward.
The film’s incredibly rich colors and shadings are preserved on Blu; voluminous extras comprise interviews and over an hour’s worth of deleted scenes, although inexplicably missing are Pialat’s early Van Gogh short and an interview with Pialat himself (both included on the superior European release).
DVDs of the Week
My Golden Days
(Magnolia)
French director Arnaud Desplechin’s captivating and complex comic drama is a two-hour memory piece about the main character of his 1996 masterpiece My Sex Life (or How I Got into an Argument) and his adventures as a young man. It feels, if anything, too short: to breathe more, it needs another 30 minutes or so to flesh out every characterization, relationship, storyline.
Still, this wonderfully, generously Dickensian view of life in all its permutations has energy, insight, and the unbeatable Mathieu Amalric at his harried best. So why isn’t this often-dazzling, visually stimulating film on Blu-ray? Extras comprise a Desplechin interview, casting session and featurette on the actors.
The Preppie Connection
(IFC)
Dramatizing the true story of a group of affluent college students who rely on a working-class interloper to smuggle cocaine directly from Colombia for their parties during the greed-is-good Reagan ‘80s, director/co-writer Joseph Castelo has fashioned an interesting cautionary tale of excess and privilege that remains relevant today.
Thomas Mann is a mite obvious as the local preppie who doubles as the buyer, while Lucy Fry convincingly plays the unattainable beauty who falls for him. Extras are commentaries by Mann and Castelo and behind the scenes featurette.
The Silence of Mark Rothko
The Next Big Thing
(Icarus)
Marjoleine Boonstra’s Silence succinctly recounts the career and art of Mark Rothko through interviews with experts, glimpses at his monumental paintings and works that influenced him, and even the appearance of his son Christopher, who reads from his father’s own writings about art.
Frank van den Engel’s Next Big Thing amusingly (and sometimes bemusedly) shows how the contemporary art scene has become entirely cost-driven, with ultra-rich collectors making sure that, when they pony up millions of dollars for artworks, it’s worth it to their bottom line.
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