Blu-ray Consumer Guide: Special Holiday Gift Guide Edition, Installment #2 (Really!)

No, I can hardly believe it either, myself. Merry Christmas, no coal in your stock­ing, etc. 

Players: PS3 for domest­ics, OPPO BDP 83 for imports. Display: Panasonic Viera TC-P50S30. Amp: Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV. 

12 Angry Men (Criterion)

Despite now being some­thing resem­bling an old lib­er­al myself, I have nev­er quite warmed to this par­tic­u­lar chest­nut of tele-liberalism alchem­ized into cinema, and I sup­pose I nev­er really will. Still. Its very insist­ent earn­est­ness is some­what mol­li­fied by Sidney Lumet’s crafty dir­ec­tion and the ever-engaging spec­tacle of lotsa gruff-voiced men smoking and yelling and being irrit­able. The present­a­tion of the 1957 film is very hand­some, with fant­ast­ic gray-scale con­trasts and what you might call real meat-and-potatoes graini­ness. And the pack­age as a whole is plenty gen­er­ous, includ­ing a kinetescope-looking trans­fer of a kin­eto­scope of the ori­gin­al tele­vi­sion pro­gram.  I can’t ima­gine any fan of the film want­ing a whole lot more. —A+

Attack the Block (Sony)

This nifty and cheeky British of sci-fi and social com­ment­ary on race and the youf is an almost ideal Blu-ray exper­i­ence and a good way to exper­i­ence the pic­ture for the first time. The film, dir­ec­ted by com­ic poly­math (they’re prac­tic­ally a class in the U.K.) Joe Cornish, first makes a know­ing in-joke of the not-quite-lifelike aspect of its ini­tial ali­en. Keeping thins dark to mask its effects budget AND con­vin­cingly evoke a down-at-heels milieu, its scenes unfold under dif­fer­ent mono­chromes. And the Blu-ray repro­duces them and the details with nice sharp­ness. Gratifyingly atmo­spher­ic. —A

Branded to Kill/Tokyo Drifter (Criterion)

Wowsers. A one-two punch of ‘60s Japanese weird­ness from still-at-it eccent­ric Seijun Suzuki. Branded is an utterly lun­at­ic hit­man tale that became a leit­mot­if in Steven Erickson’s epic cine-novel Zeroville, a black-and-white sex-and-murder night­mare, while Drifter is an eye-popping candy-colored sort-of  music­al. With guns. Back in the day these films were suf­fi­ciently rare that their very exist­ences in watch­able video form were some­thing to be grate­ful for, so we didn’t bitch too much over qual­ity, which didn’t quite meet the stand­ard Criterion had set for itself. These new high-def discs based on recent res­tor­a­tions are pretty much per­fect, and jaw-droppingly great.  Even the imper­fect stuff is per­fect: all due respect to the mavens at DVD Beaver, it’s hard to fathom how they couldn’t grok that the blown out, nearly sol­ar­ized images of the b&w pro­logue to Drifter aren’t entirely delib­er­ate. As you get deep­er into Drifter, check out the exquis­ite powder-blue suit on the hero, and swoon. These upgrades feel almost like MORE THAN WE DESERVE!!! —A+

Captain America (Paramount)

I’m very taken with this movie but a little on the fence of the painterly-sometimes-leaning-to-cartoony (as opposed to comic-bookish) look of the CGI envir­on­ments and effects, which are repro­duced very accur­ately for high-def tele­vi­sion here. Also odd is the slight video noise in an early scene, in the dust kick­ing up in a German castle that those damn Nazis are over­run­ning. Odd. Maybe I’m nit­pick­ing. The rest of the present­a­tion is rock-solid and All-American. —A

The Clowns (Raro)

Fellini made his trib­ute to the cir­cus per­former for Italian tele­vi­sion, and it has a loose, cas­u­al but insist­ently affec­tion­ate tone that some find cloy­ing. On bal­ance I find the film almost as lov­able as it wants to be. What’s undeni­able here is the present­a­tion, which is clean as a whistle and bright as freshly-applied white­face under a brand-new spot­light. Really beau­ti­ful. The accom­pa­ny­ing book­let is anoth­er token of the care Raro put into this, its first Blu-ray present­a­tion. More, please. —A+

Design For Living (Criterion)

I believe this is the first time Lubitsch’s beloved Paris, Paramount has seen the light of Blu-ray, and it’s an aus­pi­cious stepping-out. The 1933 romantic comedy—alternate title How To Avoid Saying “Menage a Trois” For 91 Minutes—looks very lovely and sil­very and nitrate-like here. All I could ask for is a scene fea­tur­ing Miriam Hopkins in skim­pi­er cloth­ing. I guess we’ve got the Eclipse Lubitsch Musicals box for that. But those aren’t Blu-rays. Damn it all.—A+

Destroy All Monsters (Tokyo Shock)

The first thing this disc does right is be Destroy All Monsters on Blu-ray. The second is that it includes the ori­gin­al Japanese-language soundtrack too. The English dub IS fun­ni­er, to wit: “The mon­sters look cute when you look at them from THIS angle!” and  “I’m at the moon base. This phone call [pause] costs a lot.” The pic­ture itself is a little on the soft side. The col­ors are great, and the flames in the explo­sions look real good, the mark of com­pet­ent Enthusiastic and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary, too. —A

Detective Dee And The Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Indomina)

The latest U.S. release from Hong Kong action geni­us Tsui Hark is an object les­son in How Asian Genre Directors LOVE Their CGI Environments. The elab­or­ate out-of-thin-air set­tings for this peri­od fantasy/mystery are pretty incred­ible and bald-faced in their overt arti­fi­ci­al­ity, and yet, rather than bug­ging me the way  sim­il­ar back­drops did in Captain America, I found them glor­i­ous. Maybe I AM a snob, and I’ll for­give for­eign film­makers any­thing. I like to think that Tsui’s enthu­si­ast­ic embrace of arti­fi­ci­al­ity helped win me over. In any event, this is a beau­ti­ful present­a­tion, espe­cially at its least “real” look­ing (check out the mol­ten liquid at the film’s cli­max).  Also, a talk­ing deer that’s a lot more pleas­ant than the fox in Antichrist. The film itself is a lot of fun too. —A

Frankenhooker (Synapse)

Frank Henenlotter’s rel­at­ively blithe  1990 Frankenstein vari­ant, in which a blue-collar mad hob­by­ist revives his dead sweetie from the body parts of exploded hook­ers (no, it doesn’t really make ANY sense), is not quite Re-Animator but it’s lots of good skeevy cult fun any­way. And the Blu-ray looks excel­lent, although the film is admit­tedly not a tri­umph of lens­ing (Henenlotter cops to have shot a lot of it solo, sans DP, on account of…labor prob­lems and such). So let’s say it looks excel­lent in its grungy way. Lead act­ress Patty Mullen remains one of the most game scream queens, and she looks well to this day, as one of the extras show. The com­ment­ary reveals Henenlotter as some­what more of an earn­est fel­low than you might have expec­ted. I’m glad to own this disc, and you prob­ably know already wheth­er you’ll be as well. —A

Giorgio Morodor Presents Metropolis (Kino Lorber)

In one of the oddest wrinkles in film pre­ser­va­tion his­tory, back in the mid-80s fab­ulously well-off Teutonic hit­maker Giorgio Moroder backed a res­tor­a­tion of Lang’s clas­sic and copy­righted it and put his own song soundtrack over it. This added yet anoth­er level of inco­her­ent bom­bast to the ever-eccentric work, not to men­tion some new design over­lays (check out that nightclub sign). For a while it was the only game in town; I remem­ber see­ing a live score per­form­ance by the Alloy Orchestra that used a print of this ver­sion. In terms of its brev­ity and tint­ing and stuff it’s an inter­est­ing vari­ant. As for the song score, well, it’s a far cry from Morodor’s com­pos­ing peak (that would be “I Feel Love,” and I bet you knew I would say that)  but it’s still pretty dis­tinct­ive. Too dis­tinct­ive, some might say. It’s kind of amus­ing how even the most ostens­ibly iden­ti­fi­able voices (Jon Anderson! Billy Squier!) have the dis­tinc­tion of their own pipes sub­sumed by Morodor’s synth-and-processor heavy pro­duc­tion value. It’s like he’s an AUTEUR or some­thing!?  (Wonder what Mike Reno’s Loverboy band­mates did while Mike Reno sang over a drum machine…) Some call it redund­ant, I call it a curio that’s kind of a time cap­sule squared. —A

Going Places (Kino Lorber)

Boy, remem­ber when Bertrand Blier was a scan­dal­ously con­tro­ver­sial dir­ect­or? Maybe you don’t, unless you’re of a cer­tain age, so thor­oughly has his work been for­got­ten (and gone out of print). This 1974 pic­ture about a couple of long-haired lay­abouts wan­der­ing around screw­ing and steal­ing and get­ting shot at put Blier on the map in American art­houses, and it’s still bra­cing in its non­chal­ant atti­tude towards its crass prot­ag­on­ists. One of whom is a young Gerard Depardieu, and many of you won’t BELIEVE how attract­ive once was! Really, check it out—he’s got a jawline here. While nev­er really noted for its pictori­al beauty, this is a sur­pris­ingly hand­some present­a­tion; there’s a bit of video noise here and there, and some shots have a degen­er­ated look, like they’re from a 16mm source (the final bits of the duo’s train adven­ture, in which they cadge breast milk from the now-grown-up little girl from Forbidden Games, no, really), but for the most part its bet­ter than OK (those blotchy male shoulders dur­ing the plen­ti­ful sex scenes are plenty blotchy). Then there’s the notice­ably poor rear-projection in some of the night-driving scenes. But why carp. As a cinephile who enjoys grap­pling with the twisty, oft-disagreeable Blier, I’m delighted with this and hope it bodes well for the future Blu-ray release of per­verse French obscur­it­ies. Like, how about Corneau’s ’79 Serie Noire,  fea­tur­ing this film’s cost­ar Patrick Dewaere? No? Aw, come on…—A-

Harakiri (Criterion)

Damn. this black-and-white widescreen pic­ture from 1962, the story of a former samurai and his non-commission of the tit­u­lar face-saving act, looks fab­ulous; check out the detail on the robes worn by the char­ac­ters. Also, the walls of the houses have a lot of gray scale vari­ation but no video noise; it’s all really impress­ive. Those con­cerned about con­tent should be advised that dir­ect­or Masaki Kobayashi is a film­maker so thor­oughly earn­est and dir­ect that he makes Kurosawa look like a Lubitschean iron­ist by com­par­is­on. Just so you know. This is a crack­ing, pas­sion­ately told story in any case and schol­ar Donald Richie makes a com­pel­ling brief for it in his video intro­duc­tion to the film. —A

The Hollywood Knights (Image)

Buyer beware: this seems a Blu-ray in more or less name only. That is, it really looks like crap, like maybe a straight rip from the standard-def DVD released in 2000. And this doesn’t even have the Floyd Mutrux com­ment­ary from that ver­sion. Fans of Newbomb Turk, sorry to dash your hopes. My wife: “Wow, that Lawrence of Arabia song is a real thing? I thought you just made that up.” —D

Horror Express (Severin)

Not the most dis­tin­guished Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing pair­ing but a cheesily enjoy­able one, espe­cially if you like train movies. I LOVE train movies. Anyway. A scratchy Spanish language-titled print seems the source for the disc; after the cred­its sequence , things clean up con­sid­er­ably. Pretty excel­lent col­or val­ues through­out, although actu­al vari­ation of foot­age, in terms of sat­ur­a­tion and sharp­ness, is kind of inter­est­ing if you’re watch­ing with an eye to that sort of thing. Also, it’s in 1.66, which I’m also devel­op­ing a thing for. —B+

House By The Cemetery (Blue Underground)

Another dis­gust­ing Lucio Fulci hor­ror, which is made more dis­gust­ing, as is not uncustomary, by dint of fea­tur­ing child act­ors. Not as crass as New York Ripper, not as exuber­ant as Zombie, not as, um, ground­break­ing as City of the Living Dead, so, maybe about the level of The Beyond. I’m so glad my cinema assess­ment powers have been honed to the point that I’m able to make these dis­tinc­tions. Anyway, an excel­lent rep­res­ent­a­tion of the film. —A

The Lady Vanishes (Criterion)

Whoa. Look at that open­ing shot, with the mod­el of the train sta­tion and the toy car and all that.  He’d try the same thing with Psycho, and have to use dis­solves just like he does here. And if he were alive to day he’d be try­ing some­thing sim­il­ar with CGI instead of models/dissolves. Anyway, this is a really super gor­geous upgrade of the ori­gin­al standard-def release. Get it. —A+

Pulp Fiction (Miramax/Lions Gate)

At first I thought this looked a little bright; the back­light­ing of Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer is this­close to look­ing blown out. But then it hit me: it’s per­fect. The bright­ness, which is mod­u­lated with­in the frame with­in the scene, jibes beau­ti­fully with the neon lur­id pop art of the film’s, erm,  con­cep­tu­al con­tinu­ity. Really bril­liant. —A+

Quatermass and the Pit (Optimum, Region‑B locked U.K. import)

Love this movie, but didn’t expect much from a Blu-ray. It’s a won­der­ful idea, spooky as hell, but unabashedly achieved on the cheap. So I’m delighted to report the Blu-ray looks VERY nice; vivid, bright, crisp, all adding to the imme­di­acy of the idea it’s selling. The aggreg­ate is that the effects at the end, while still not very con­vin­cing, are nev­er­the­less very con­vin­cing. All hail the cast and its con­vic­tion, dir­ect­or Roy Ward Baker and his storytelling chops. And the demons. EXTREMELY impress­ive over­all. And in FABULOUS 1.66, yet.—A+

Red Sonja (Optimum Region‑B locked UK import)

Arnold says this is his worst film and that he threatens to pun­ish his chil­dren by for­cing them to watch it if they’ve been unruly. I won­der if he means all his chil­dren, or just…OH! Somebody stop me. Also, as an assessor of his own cine­mat­ic work, Schwarzenegger would make a great Governor. OH! But ser­i­ously, folks, this isn’t THAT bad; it’s dir­ec­ted by Richard Fleischer, after all. But truth to tell, it’s no Follow Me Quietly, either. It’s inter­est­ing to see Brigitte Nielsen before she morph­ed into Ted Cassidy with con­crete breasts and a fright wig, so there’s that. And the Blu-ray image here is pretty impress­ive, I must say. Much pretty scenery AND indi­vidu­ally dis­cern­able candle flames in the hun­dreds! Recommends to those who get a kick out of Dino  deLaurentiis’ “not the bore worms!” mode. —A-

Rushmore (Criterion)

A read­er asked why I didn’t rate this last time. Well, we had just watched the standard-def ver­sion in July, so we were fresh on the film. Not to be blasé, but we didn’t expect a sur­prise from the Blu-ray upgrade, which is a high-def reboot of the same extras pack­age as the ori­gin­al. Looked a it recently and, as I would have pre­dicted, it’s beau­ti­ful. Incredibly crisp, a delight to the eye, an essen­tial lib­rary edition/addition. —A+

Sherlock Holmes (Kino Lorber)

Honest, if this didn’t fea­ture John Barrymore in the title role nobody would much care about it and it would merely demon­strate that per­func­tory adapt­a­tions of Conan Doyle are prac­tic­ally a cine­mat­ic staple. But this DOES have Barrymore, in his pro­file prime, in the title. And Leo G. Carroll Roland Young, bless him, as Watson. This is not much in the way of a rev­el­at­ory improve­ment from the ori­gin­al DVD. Clarity is boos­ted, but scratches and jumps from the source mater­i­al remain.  And the film is still kind of not great. But worth­while for curio value. —B+

Taking Off (Park Circus Region B locked UK import)

Milos Forman’s first U.S.-shot film is an amaz­ing and beau­ti­ful and ter­ribly sad and funny pic­ture, and he’d nev­er make anoth­er as loose or free again. It also fea­tures, for what it’s worth, Kathy Bates as you’ve nev­er seen her before and will nev­er see her again, either. This Blu-ray appears to have been trans­ferred from a recent res­tor­a­tion. Given Universal’s gen­er­al dis­pos­i­tion toward its cata­log, the fact that this res­tor­a­tion happened at all is a mir­acle on the loaves-and-fishes scale. In any event the pic­ture qual­ity is stag­ger­ing early-70s grit and grain and light. The skin tones are won­der­ful, and when the action ven­tures out into broad spring­time day­light about 33 minutes in, well, you believe all the myth­ic hype you’ve heard about film stock back in the day. I hope for some kind of domest­ic release of this iter­a­tion of the film, which is won­der­ful enough that I don’t want to spoil it just yet, but I con­sider this an essen­tial item along the lines of Deep End, so if you have the equip­ment I sug­gest you just go ahead and spring for this, I guar­an­tee you won’t be sorry. —A+

Terri (Fox)

Like Aaron Katz and Jeff Nichols, two oth­er young­ish male American dir­ect­ors of recent vin­tage I admire, Azezal Jacobs infuses his work with an acute appre­ci­ation of his shoot­ing envir­on­ments. The par­tic­u­lar qual­ity of the California sun gave the dead­pan anomie of The GoodTimes Kid a real charge, and Jacobs really bur­rowed in to the pur­pose­fully, neur­ot­ic­ally cramped spaces of his real-life par­ents’ shad­owy lower Manhattan loft for Momma’s Man. Terri finds Jacobs back in Southern California, Pasadena for heaven’s sake. A decidedly inap­pos­ite, it would seem, envir­on­ment for his hero, a hard-to-like yet easy-to-feel-bad-for self-described “mon­ster” of an over­weight adoles­cent. This is a typ­ic­ally unusu­al film for Jacobs, unspar­ing but com­pas­sion­ate, and the look of it—Terri is altern­ately framed by big open skies, whited-out insti­tu­tion­al spaces,  and shad­owy cramped domest­ic interiors—does a good deal of its work. Looks like…an Azazel Jacobs pic­ture! —A

Tora! Tora! Tora! (Fox)

Looks pretty hot.  Good sound. Is it really as long and bor­ing as I’m told it is, or  as I might remem­ber it as being from when I was a kid? Or: How bad can it be? Richard Fleischer dir­ec­ted it! Again: It’s no Follow Me Quietly. But: How bad can it be? Kinji Fukasaku dir­ec­ted the Japanese seg­ments. Well, it’s no Yakuza Papers. From what I could tell when I could man­age to remain engaged, this has aged into one of those WWII films you’re glad to have around, to remind you that you once lived in a world where, oh, I don’t know, n+1 didn’t exist, or some­thing. Still. The damn thing IS  pretty unima­gin­at­ive in its expos­i­tion, e.g., ”Our meet­ings so far have been unpro­duct­ive. He brings me pro­pos­als, I offer com­prom­ises. He brings me coun­ter­pro­pos­als, and so on.” Nice book­let though. And it DOES look good; even the stock foot­age seems like it’s been upgraded, although of course that’s not pos­sible. —B+

The Tree of Life (Fox)

I think the edit­ing rhythms get more familiar/parse bet­ter on repeated view­ings, hon­est I do. And the voi­ceovers seem more…No? Not buy­ing? All right, be that way, but ser­i­ously. I do very much love this film and I’m actu­ally glad this Blu-ray is the the­at­ric­al cut and I don’t care if they nev­er release a six-hour ver­sion because as far as I’m con­cerned THIS is The Tree of Life and it’s just fine. And this is a really beau­ti­ful Blu-ray of it, and the title card at the begin­ning, a more polite ver­sion of the open­ing of The Last Waltz, is advice worth heed­ing: the sur­round soundtrack is spec­tac­u­lar, room-shaking, the Wagner on the upcom­ing Melancholia disc, whenev­er that hap­pens, will be hard-pressed to do bet­ter. —A+

Trois Couleurs (Three Colors) Trilogy (Criterion)

This has exis­ted in such thor­oughly indif­fer­ent DVD trans­fers for so damn long that the first and maybe most apt reac­tion to their Criterion-ization is a sigh of relief. Getting down to brass tacks, the real­ity of the new thing is again a mir­acle, albeit in a less spectacular/sensationalist register than the mir­acle of the Suzukis. To wit: Blue. Boy, this film has some of the best hos­pit­al cor­ridor shots since the second Magnificent Obsession! Of all the films, this seems to have the most shifts in col­or value/approach. Looks as if  for some com­plex com­bin­a­tions of shal­low focus and close-up there were some fil­ters used…this is all stabbing in the light, as it were, but I’d ima­gine that this film posed the biggest chal­lenge to the transfer/post team, and they did an excel­lent job. White is gray­er, din­gi­er, exem­plary cold winter-cum-Eastern European light, fant­ast­ic­ally chilly. Red  is gor­geous, the key sequence, when Trintignant says “the light is beau­ti­ful,” about 35 minutes in, sums the look up. Essential cinema in an essen­tial package—I haven’t plumbed all the extras yet but they’re plen­ti­ful and sens­it­ive. —A+

Way Down East (Kino Lorber)

I haven’t been in the mood to look too hard at the much-bruited Birth of a Nation, because that’s a film I really have to beat myself into deal­ing with. This, one of my favor­ite Griffiths, is much easi­er. Like The Charterhouse of Parma, it’s a sur­pris­ing mas­ter­piece of expan­ded and com­pressed time. I’ll get into that else­where, I sup­pose. Maybe when I do my doc­tor­ate. In any event, this Blu-ray is from the same MOMA res­tor­a­tion of the 1920 film, and it’s just won­der­ful, with great tints that the Blu-ray really boosts into a realm of tran­scend­ent cine­mat­ic beauty. And the res­cue on the ice cli­max still thrills like noth­ing else, nearly 100 years later. Beautiful! —A+