Blu-ray Consumer Guide: September 2011

Call me para­noid, but I was begin­ning to get a little appre­hens­ive of a “is this a blog about movies, or a blog about slag­ging movie crit­ics?” back­lash, so I figured maybe I ought to snap to it with respect to get­ting this puppy pos­ted. Et voila. Enjoy. Equipment: Playstation 3 con­sole and Oppo BDP 83 were the play­ers, Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30 the dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV the amp.

UPDATE: A Note On Grades

“What are the grades for?” asks Some Dude on Twitter™. “Movie or trans­fer or both? It would be much more help­ful if you grade them sep­ar­ately, IMO.” Like I’m doing this to be “help­ful.” (Hey, wait a minute—why am I doing this?) I thought I had explained this in a pri­or column, but it looks like I did­n’t. The grades I assign rep­res­ent my assess­ment of the film’s present­a­tion as a Blu-ray disc. Obviously in my cap­sules I’ll get into my opinions/observations on the film itself, but giv­en my inclin­a­tions and the demands on my time, it’s pretty likely that I’m only gonna look at Blu-rays of films I already have some kind of interest in. Obviously (or maybe not) my interest in some­thing like Cobra is more along the lines of a cinema-historical arti­fact rather than as some­thing I per­son­ally enjoy/cherish, but you get the idea.It always used to drive me nuts, when I was run­ning the “Home Guide” at Première, when writers would try to use a DVD assign­ment as a pre­text to “craft” their own “review” of a film itself, and not treat the com­mod­ity in hand, that is, the tape or the DVD or the Blu-ray. And I believe this philo­sophy informs how I cre­ate this column. So there you have it. See also here. Although enter­tain­ing as the prose is it does­n’t really serve as much of an ana­logy to what’s going on here. And thank you for your support.

The Battle of Algiers (Criterion)

Not much to report here: what was an exem­plary pack­age in SD has been trans­posed to high-definition per­fectly. For some reas­on there are times I get off even more on a high-def rendi­tion of some­thing with this kind of pictori­al and cel­lu­loid rough­ness. Which is not to say that I cheer when that bomb goes off in the café, in case you were wor­ried about my mor­al state. —A+

The Big Lebowski (Universal)

A lot of the times this looks just jake, and I get off on the ultra-sheen of the bowl­ing alley scenes and dreams, but in cer­tain night scenes the DNR is too much and it’s a drag. Not fatal, but lousy, and in par­tic­u­lar really obvi­ous and obtrus­ive in the faces of The Dude and Walter dur­ing the drive-to-drop-the-ransom-money scene. A dis­ap­point­ment, then. I know the Coens are kind of dis­dain­ful of cer­tain aspect of home vid tech wonk­i­ness, but they might have thought to raise their voices here. Still. It’s Lebowski in high-def, what are you gonna do? Boycott? I mean, it’s a thought, but still. —B-

Cobra (Warner)

Wait, wasn’t Sylvester Stallone the biggest movie star in the world at the time this film was made? Then how come this looks about as slick as a William Lustig pic­ture of the time? So grainy it’s grimy, which is at least kind of apro­pos, giv­en it’s a pic­ture that its con­tem­por­ary crit­ics deemed as “unima­gin­ably degraded” (David Denby!) and “the foulest, greed­i­est, most anti-American movie in ages” (my pal John Powers!). Oh, and wait, here’s the explan­a­tion: it’s a co-production of Warner and…Golan/Globus! Seen with a quarter century’s hind­sight, it plays less like a Dirty Harry ante-upping than a failed Stallone grind­house con­des­cen­sion. Still, poor dir­ect­or George P. Cosmatos brings his outsider’s com­pet­ence and ESL straight face to the pro­ceed­ings, which give this thing its own, um, integ­rity. Moronic integ­rity. Particularly ris­ible are the script’s attempts at “iron­ic” humor, as when Stallone’s char­ac­ter “kids” a “goofy” sidekick: “You know what the trouble with you is? You’re too viol­ent.” Oh, the hil­ar­ity. The movie also gets bonus points for cast­ing Andy Robinson as a police depart­ment big­wig. It’s a good trans­fer, but I can only recom­mend as a lib­rary addi­tion to those who enjoy con­found­ing their friends with dis­plays of cine­mat­ic per­versity. —B

Coeur Fidèle (Eureka!/MOC U.K. import, Region B locked)

Like Feuillade, Jean Epstein doesn’t get enough respect. Although at this late stage in the game, what would he DO with it if he got it, right? The French director’s remark­able 1923 romance is pre­cisely NOT the sort of thing that gets trot­ted out in garden-variety film appre­ci­ation courses and so on, and it’s in this par­tic­u­lar respect (among many oth­ers, but bear with me for a second) that out­fits such as Masters of Cinema do such import­ant work, work that really deserves/earns the cinema lover’s sup­port. In terms of imagery and what we can pro­ject as its influ­ence, this film is a MAJOR rev­el­a­tion, and its sheer phys­ic­al beauty—you can almost lit­er­ally see the sil­ver nitrate shin­ing in every beau­ti­fully digit­al­ized frame—is reas­on enough to own it. —A+

The Complete Jean Vigo (Criterion)

Regular read­ers of this blog may recall my telling of my child­hood love for Vigo, and how the P. Salles Gomes bio­graphy of the man was the first film book I ever bought. I remem­ber when I was ten hav­ing found a list­ing for a screen­ing of Zero For Conduct at some loc­al lib­rary and beg­ging my dad to take me to see it and then cry­ing like a baby when they didn’t show the film because the print nev­er showed or was too dam­aged, and they screened some fuck­ing French doc about wheat fields (or some­thing) instead. So you can maybe ima­gine my exhil­ar­a­tion at the fact that now the com­pete oeuvre exists on one handy-dandy high-def disc. The thing is, after watch­ing the work itself, I real­ize it’s not really all it’s cracked up to be…Nah, just kid­ding. Seriously, this is amaz­ing.  To think that 40 years ago these films were nearly impossible to see at all, par­tic­u­larly in gor­geous or even watch­able ver­sions. And here they are. Almost enough to make one a kind of optim­ist.  —A+

Cross of Iron (Optimum U.K. import, Region B locked)

This widely mis­un­der­stood late Peckinpah was potent bait for crit­ics who wanted to pur­sue the Bloody-Sam-is-a-fascist theme, because, you know, this pic­ture fea­tures sym­path­et­ic treat­ments of German sol­diers dur­ing World War II! It’s PRO NAZI! Of course it’s not, and in fact it’s so anti­war it’s prac­tic­ally paci­fist, except of course it’s viol­ent as hell. It’s also got moments that are strangely ener­vated, and Peckinpah’s really at his most Captain Obvious a lot of the time (that poor kid!), but, still. Never not watch­able and often mov­ing in spite of itself, it’s in a way less of a prob­lem piece than Straw Dogs. And this disc looks damn good, WAY bet­ter than any video ver­sion I’ve seen retain­ing a gritty but autum­nal palette. The digit­al­iz­a­tion involved in the transfer/restoration, how­ever, does make itself plain in some of the fog­gi­er scenes, where the mist has a dis­tinctly unfilm­like (but not dis­grace­fully artificial-looking) qual­ity to it. —B+

Damnation Alley (Shout Factory)

I was always fas­cin­ated by this pic­ture merely by dint of the fact that in ten short years, Dominique Sanda had gone from deb­ut­ing as a sui­cid­al beauty for discoverer-of-non-actors Robert Bresson in Une femme douce to cost­ar­ring with George Peppard and Jan Michael Vincent in this, un film de Jack Smight. Other Bresson stars that opted to remain in the film biz had even more bizarre career arcs, but Sanda’s was the most pub­licly con­spicu­ous for a while. Of course this pic­ture boasts oth­er cult charms, includ­ing sorta-painted-in pink/green hori­zons, or, as a title card puts it, “skies lur­id and angry.” Another way you can tell it’s after the apo­ca­lypse in the film is the way the synths take over the music score. It’s that kinda movie. And it’s brought to digit­al life very nicely, and with a lot of extras, in this edi­tion. Of course you under­stand that the attached let­ter grade best applies if you Like This Sort Of Thing.—A-

Dead Man (Miramax/Echo Bridge)

I was all set to make this film a kind of object les­son in the dif­fer­ence between black-and-white films in the post-color 20^th cen­tury and black-and-white films in the peri­od when such was the norm (c.f. the below-reviewed Orpheus) and dis­cuss the sharp, detailed pic­ture with a more smoothed-out gray scale when I encountered a nasty digit­al glitch only a minute or so into the movie. As you will see in the illus­tra­tion, a snap­shot of my dis­play. At which point I went and exchanged the disc, and got a second disc that had the same glitch at the same point. Which leads me to sus­pect that glitch is on the mas­ter, and that someone at Echo Bridge isn’t doing his or her job. I’m look­ing into the mat­ter but in the mean­time I cer­tainly can’t recom­mend.—D+

Dressed to Kill (MGM/UA)

Really looks pretty great over­all; as someone who saw this thing in theat­ers one or two times too many when it was first released, I can attest that the some­times creamy, some­times grainy look is pretty much what we got back then, and that it’s entirely appro­pri­ate to the mater­i­al at all times. The sole extra of note, the bril­liantly titled doc “The Making of a Thriller,” is not in HD. But it hardly mat­ters; this can be acquired at very good prices on line and else­where and if you’re a fan of the film (and why not? It’s got some bravura movie­mak­ing in it!) it def­in­itely war­rants a place in your lib­rary.—A

Essential Killing (Artificial Eye U.K. import, Region B locked, region free)

Excellent image, from the desert caves of the open­ing to the blue/white snow of deep­est Europe in winter where most of the rest of the film. Jerzy Skolimowski’s latest film is a tough, terse, blunt but not unem­path­et­ic thing; a small-scaled mas­ter­piece of such grabbing imme­di­acy that it’s prac­tic­ally a sin that it’s got­ten next to noth­ing with respect to U.S. dis­tri­bu­tion at the time of this writ­ing. Of course it helps if you can for­get that the lead act­or is Vincent Gallo. Who’s quite good actu­ally, but still Vincent Gallo. Given this Blu-ray is the best way you can see the film as of this point, I feel like maybe you ought to. See it this way, I mean. If you’ve got a region-free Blu-ray play­er. (Correction: ini­tially flagged it as region-locked, it will in fact play on any Blu-ray play­er world­wide.)—A

The Exterminator (Synapse)

The com­ment­ary track for the digit­iz­a­tion of this grind­house clas­sic begins with producer/director James Glickenhaus trash­ing the film’s review­ers,  so you know it’s gonna be good. Overall this is a very sol­id present­a­tion of a very visu­ally flat film. A ter­rif­ic test case for the not-quite etern­al ques­tion “is this Blu-ray really neces­sary?” My answer: Why the hell not. Scummy crim­in­als, sense­less may­hem, Christopher George, and dia­logue along the lines of , well actu­ally what fol­lows is a pre­cise quote: “That ‘nig­ger’ was my best friend, you mother­fuck­er.” Awesome. Later, dur­ing an out­door cab­aret scene, Glickenhaus notes, “Here’s old Stan Getz, that’s pretty neat.” He then com­plains that crit­ics didn’t “get” that this was a Getz cameo and then, barely paus­ing for breath, allows that the Getz bit is “a throwaway.” Told you it was a good com­ment­ary. The Getz factor also makes it an exem­plary half for a double fea­ture with the new Warner Archive issue of Get Yourself A College Girl. —A

Fast Times At Ridgemont High (Universal)

Ohmigod the ugly mall light­ing! You can tell it’s meant to be ugly mall light­ing because the sun-lit scenes—oh, and you know which one I mean, really—are beau­ti­ful and dappled and have good, um, reds and, um, flesh tones, and all that. Seriously, over­all a good sharp image for a gen­er­ally foursquare visu­al piece (ah those reverse-angled cafet­er­ia setups with the shal­low focus…) . Movie’s still real good for the most part, prac­tic­ally a clas­sic. Is it too old for “the new can­on” or whatever the heck it is? —A

The Funhouse (Arrow U.K. Import, region-free)

Ah, an early work from block­buster pro­du­cer Mace Neufeld! And hey, remem­ber Elizabeth Berridge? Boy, that’s cute, barely ten-year-old baby broth­er accost­ing his abso­lutely not-faking-it naked sis­ter in the shower with a plastic dag­ger in the shower. Boy, the stuff you could get away with in the ‘80s. I took this Tobe Hooper item as a sample of Texas Chainsaw lite when I saw it in its 1981 the­at­ric­al release, and I haven’t thought of it since, but watch­ing it recently in this stel­lar Arrow present­a­tion gave me a real “they don’t make ‘em like that any­more” feel­ing. While not as depraved as cor­res­pond­ing Euro fare, it’s genu­inely nasty rather than wink­ingly nasty, and kinda cas­u­ally so, which makes a big dif­fer­ence. And here Tobe’s got a budget, and a crane, and ana­morph­ic lenses, and he tries (and fails) to rep­lic­ate the effect of that simple but killer under-the-porch-swing track­ing shot from TCM. Like I said, he doesn’t, but it’s still a hand­some little piece of work, about 39 minutes in, and the trans­fer is so spe­cif­ic you can track the focus anom­alies cre­ated by the ana­morph­ic lens in tan­dem with the mov­ing cam­era. Whoo, and addi­tion­ally, hoo. In oth­er telling-detail related moments, the line of spittle hanging from lip of  that guy’s Frankenstein mask. Disgusting, and right­fully so. —A+

Orpheus (Criterion)

Very, very nice. Aside from being, you know, a clas­sic and trans­port­ive film (eat it, ’49!)  this is a beau­ti­fully presen­ted per­tin­ent example of film tex­ture of a cer­tain age. The black-and-white tex­tures have a kind of plastic solid­ity that the film stock of Dead Man simply doesn’t recre­ate, and here of course it’s com­bined with light and décor and makeup and effects cre­at­ing this seduct­ive but admit­tedly now ana­chron­ist­ic (by a cer­tain per­spect­ive, at least) arti­fi­ci­al­ity. Amaze your friends! Or at least the friends who might not find it bor­ing. I’m sure you can divert one or two be dir­ect­ing them to the shot here that was used as a Smiths single cov­er shot. —A+

Paul (Universal)

Full dis­clos­ure: I’m friendly with this film’s dir­ect­or, Greg Mottola, and cor­di­ally acquain­ted with one of its cost­ars. So, you know, take my endorse­ment of this film as a know­ing, lively, albeit, yes, kind of vul­gar delight with whatever grain of salt you believe the above know­ledge requires of you. In a bit of inside know­ledge that’s likely to be no sur­prise to any­one, Greg found the post-production pro­cess, wherein an entirely visu­ally digit­al ali­en had to be seam­lessly blen­ded into the action, a hugely chal­len­ging part of the film­mak­ing pro­cess, and I think it was pulled off beau­ti­fully and it looks great in the digit­al high-def realm too. As digit­al is now an integ­ral part of the pro­cess, the oth­er good news here is that the film looks very much like it did in its the­at­ric­al present­a­tion, which is very crisp and col­or­ful. The real loc­a­tions of the American West were clearly shot with a lot of love and appre­ci­ation. Lovely. —A

Pigs and Battleships/Stolen Desire (Eureka!/MOC U.K. import, Region B locked)

Whoa. This double dose of early Imamura is a pretty damn near flaw­less. The stun­ning, roil­ing 1961 Pigs and Battleships is the star of this set (Stolen Desire, the maestro’s debut fea­ture, is very sol­id but com­par­at­ively con­strained).  Some occa­sion­al print dam­age appears but over­all it’s an incred­ibly stun­ning widescreen black-and-white image. The film is replete with amaz­ing shots of long dur­a­tion, such as an over­head crane fol­low­ing the film’s heroine walk­ing with a group of friends while feck­less hero Kinta fol­lows par­al­lel and eaves­drops on their con­ver­sa­tion unseen from the oth­er side of a fence. And of course the climax…well, ser­i­ously, a must-own, and anoth­er argu­ment why an invest­ment in a region-free Blu play­er would be worth it JUST for the sake of Eureka!/MOC releases in the format. —A+

Scarface (Universal)

Goddamn this is shiny, in that too shiny way that people com­plain about. No, it is NOT the best-looking ver­sion of the DePalma film ever. The DNR takes the sweat on the faces of the boat­lift people and glues it to them so that they look like wax fig­ures. If that’s your idea of enhance­ment, you’re wel­come to it. Plus there are a lot of arti­facts. Haloes,  black edges shim­mers, all that kind of stuff. I usu­ally go easy on tak­ing issue with oth­er people’s per­cep­tions, but ser­i­ously, if you can’t see the prob­lems here I worry you might not have eyes. On the plus side, the com­pres­sion is well done over­all. (See the bon­fires in the riot scenes early on, if you can tear your eyes away from the hil­ari­ous evid­ence that DePalma is the most inef­fec­tu­al dir­ect­or of extras EVER.) I don’t know if it’s a mat­ter of one being able to get used to any­thing, or what, but the afore­men­tioned prob­lems dif­fuse, or at least are easi­er to take, as the film goes on. It winds up watch­able. And it could have—should have—been more than that. —B-

Straw Dogs (MGM/UA)

This is one visu­ally WEIRD film, right from the get go, where the chil­dren play­ing around the stone church look to be shot in forced per­spect­ive, so the build­ings almost seem to be being dwarfed by them. And on it goes. Gray, gray gray. And then that dull, almost moon-like, autum­nal sun. And then the ultra-violent cli­max, shot almost entirely in near dark, Peckinpah and cine­ma­to­graph­er John Coquillon really push­ing the film stock.  Really, it’s almost as dar­ing visu­ally as it is, um, them­at­ic­ally, and a lot more suc­cess­fully so too. This Blu-ray is not blow-you-away sharp, but very sol­id. And a real rep­res­ent­a­tion of what the film­makers GOT, for bet­ter of worse, tons of grain and all.—A

The Superman Movie Collection (Warner)

A pretty awe­some one-stop-shopping pack­age of sorts, fea­tur­ing superb HD ren­der­ings of the Salkind films, the Singer reboot, etc.  The authen­ti­city proof is in the pud­ding: you get more of the flushed ‘80s flesh tones I’ve been noti­cing on Blu-rays of films from that peri­od on Lester’s Superman II. And dishy com­ment­ar­ies. Featuring odd semi-Zen pro­nounce­ments such as “This is the sort of thing that is funny, but at the same time not funny.” Rather irrit­at­ing, though, that many of the gen­er­ous and well-chosen extras, such as the Fleischer Supes car­toons, are NOT presen­ted in HD. Grrr. They still look pretty good though. Still. Grrr. —B+

Tenebre (Arrow)

What is UP with this? Really. While the Arrow Blus of Inferno and Crystal Plumage Phenomena looked super ter­rif­ic (cor­rec­tion; the Plumage to get is the U.S. Blue Underground issue, which goes against the Storaro Directive and presents the image in full 2.35), this, Four Flies, and in part Deep Red have these grain/speckling issues that detract severely from one’s enjoy­ment of the Argento baroque. One actu­ally thinks of Jeffrey Wells’ myth­ic­al mos­qui­toes, if they had all flown through a shower of white paint pri­or to show­ing up on screen. My old Japanese laser disc had a solider grain struc­ture than this. As with Dead Man, this is a case that requires fur­ther research that I might need a while to suc­cess­fully con­clude. In the mean­time:—C

Vera Cruz (MGM/UA)

The title type at the begin­ning shows the film’s age in the way that it will (the pic­ture was pro­duced in 1954), as in those reds are a little blurred in the sat­ur­a­tion, to coin a phrase. Soon things settle in nicely. Enjoy the unusu­al 2.00 aspect ratio. It’s a bright clean pic­ture albeit with what seems a lot of sharp­ness vari­ation with respect to long shots versus medi­um close-ups, but not QUITE as dra­mat­ic as what you’ll see in The Big Country, reviewed last month. A lot of vari­ation from long shot to medi­um clos­eup. Really nice over­all. Neat film, too. A Western with mis­matched prot­ag­on­ists that’s also kind of a road movie and/or cham­ber drama in dis­guise, fea­tur­ing double crosses galore. Quintessential Aldrich, in its way—pessimistic but sim­ul­tan­eously filled with a near-perverse good cheer. Highly recom­men­ded. —A

The Ward (Arc Entertainment)

Answer the ques­tion, John Carpenter: Did you shoot this ana­morph­ic­ally, for real? Alas, the maes­tro does not answer the ques­tion in his ami­able, cas­u­al (but not quite as gonzo as the stuff he used to out­put with his old buddy Kurt Russell) com­ment­ary for this disc, which has male star Jared Harris sit­ting in with the dir­ect­or. This admir­ably craf­ted comeback film from Carpenter gets a very sol­id Blu-ray ren­der­ing, look­ing, as so many con­tem­por­ary high-def discs do, like a chip off the old digit­al inter­me­di­ary.  The dif­fu­sion of the light in the final shot of the shower sequence is one of the dead giveaways that this ain’t the sum­mer of cel­lu­loid no more, but as J.C. says on that audio track, albeit in anoth­er con­text, “You can’t worry about older movies.” If you liked this picture—and I did—this is worth your time. —A-

Went the Day Well? (Optimum, region‑B locked U.K. import)

I have an elab­or­ate the­ory about how this sort-of altern­ate his­tory fantasy of Britain in World War II is both a refut­a­tion AND a con­firm­a­tion of all the snarly things Godard said about British war­time film in his Histoires, but I guess this isn’t the place for that. So I’ll just say that this crack­ling Cavalcanti piece, from a Graham Greene story, still works like mad as a yarn and a thrill­er, and looks great here. Good grain, a min­im­ally scratched source, a par­tic­u­larly rich gray scale. A trans­fer from the 2010 res­tor­a­tion, one pre­sumes. Not much in terms of extras, e.g., a BBC Radio 3 audio essay on the film. If you know the film, you know you want it. If you only know its legend, well, I bet you won’t be dis­ap­poin­ted if you make the invest­ment. —A

Win/Win (Fox)

Strong image, again prob­ably straight from the digit­al inter; good detail, and again, not very FILMIC. On the very plus side, the dark parts of the image (and many of the film’s scenes take place in dimly lit liv­ing rooms and such, it’s that kind of cine­mat­ic enter­tain­ment) have no noise. As in, none. So if you like your indie comedy-dramas very clean at home, this is the way to go. Seriously, I found this one of the bet­ter films of its ilk this year, so I’m glad to have this ver­sion. —A

Women In Cages Collection (Shout! Factory)

Ooh, three Roger-Corman-produced women-in-prison films from the ‘70s in one con­veni­ent pack­age. Which to watch first? Well, as help­ful Roger points out, “Playing the ‘new fish’ in pris­on [in The Big Bird Cage] is the gor­geous Anitra Ford of The Price Is Right.” “New fish,” that’s clas­sic. What we learn from watch­ing Big Doll House and Big Bird Cage is that Jack Hill was pretty much Corman’s answer to Edgar G. Ulmer. Great basic but hardly unstyl­ish or unstyl­ized film­mak­ing in cheap-ass set­tings and situ­ations. Gets pretty excit­ing in the out­doors, too. Hill’s com­ment­ary notes how Coppola des­troyed some of the beau­ti­ful Bird Cage Philippines loc­a­tions for Apocalypse Now, and Jack sounds a little ticked off about it. The third film, Women in Cages, is not dir­ec­ted by Hill, and looks the crap­pi­est of the three, has sound sync prob­lems, etc. As a res­ult though it con­veys some­thing like a more AUTHENTIC 42^nd Street feel, again, if you Like That Sort Of Thing.—A

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Kino Lorber)

A quite gor­geous, warmly colored ren­der­ing of a rather…well, meh film. Something you could prob­ably watch with your mom, except for Sophia Loren’s striptease scene, ay cara­mba. So watch Sunflower with your mom instead, and save this for a cold lonely winter night or some­thing. —B

NEXT MONTH: Kane! Ben-Hur! Dumbo! Chabrol! Eisenstein! Edwards! Keaton! Altman! And more! It’s gonna be legendary!