Blu-ray Consumer Guide: Labor Day 2013 edition

Given how and when the last Blu-ray Consumer Guide came into
being, it may be that schedul­ing these to appear at ran­dom nation­al holidays
may be the way to go. 

Equipment:
Playstation 3 for domest­ic discs, OPPO BDP 83 for import discs, Panasonic Viera
TCP50S30 plasma dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.  

Blood and Sand (Fox)

This has been on my “to see” list since I read Tom Milne’s
pas­sion­ate and per­suas­ive mono­graph on Rouben Mamoulian, recently reprin­ted in
the BFI’s won­der­ful Silver series. It cites an art­icle by Mamoulian for
American Cinematographer in 1941, the year of this film’s mak­ing, in which the
dir­ect­or writes of how he delib­er­ately styled scenes in the movie after the
work of Spanish paint­ers: Murillo, Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Titian, Veronese,
Sorolla. The stric­tures of Technicolor in that year allowed Mamoulian
suf­fi­cient flex­ib­il­ity to achieve dazzling visu­al effects, and this high-def
trans­fer is simply breath­tak­ing in their repro­duc­tion. The fact that Rita
Hayworth and Linda Darnell are also dazzling visu­al effects in Technicolor is
also a major plus. As for the remainder of the movie, you know how some people
don’t really get Glenn Ford? I’m kind of like that with Tyrone Power. Oh well.
Doesn’t mat­ter. An amaz­ing pic­ture, and an abso­lutely appos­itely wonky
com­ment­ary (impor­ted by the stand­ard def issue) by cine­ma­to­graph­er Richard
Crudo who, among oth­er things, makes note of the scarcity of diffusion-wedge
use in con­tem­por­ary cinema. —A+ 

Body Double (Twilight
Time)

Not a guilty De Palma pleas­ure, but a com­plic­ated one, in my
case at least in part because my first New York girl­friend had a hor­rible date
with Craig Wasson a little while before she first met me. So I’m torn between
being grate­ful to him for being such a lun­at­ic ass that he made me look good,
and kind of think­ing he non­ethe­less was ask­ing for a smack in the chops. This
was clearly made from a less wonky HD mas­ter than that from which the
prob­lem­at­ic Twilight Time Blu of The Fury
was derived (I’ll be cov­er­ing the cor­rec­ted ren­der­ing of that pic­ture soon to
come from Arrow). It is a really beau­ti­fully detailed ver­sion, a little
dis­quiet­ingly so at points, as in the vis­ib­il­ity of Melanie Griffith’s lower
ribs in her top­less dan­cing scenes. Have a cheese­bur­ger, girl, it won’t kill
you! The dazzling parts remain dazzling, and there are plenty of them. The
silly parts remain silly, but I’ve developed affec­tion for them. — B+

Cleopatra (Fox)

Sure is pretty. As is not unusu­al, the movie is not as bad
as its detract­ors claim, or as good as its con­tem­por­ary cham­pi­ons trum­pet. Good
lord it is long. But hardly as unwatch­able as has some­times been threatened. I
recom­mend look­ing at it in 45-minute chunks. That way you’ll be all like “Hey!
Hume Cronyn!” and all that, but not have enough time to start feel­ing super-bad
for Elizabeth Taylor, who’s try­ing SO hard through­out. The trans­fer is so sharp
that there are sev­er­al scenes in which the lead­ing lady’s real-life tracheotomy
scar is PAINFULLY vis­ible. Was that the case on the big screens on which it
fam­ously flopped? I need to ask my mom. —A-

 The Driver (Twilight
Time)

A good, sol­id high-def trans­fer of a movie that didn’t
inspire all that rap­tur­ous a recep­tion when it came out but now plays perfectly
all the way down the line. Inspired by Melville, clearly, but to my mind even
more per­fectly dis­tilled than Melville’s own Le Samourai, in which one can detect a whiff of affectation
com­prom­ising his attempt to wed Les enfants ter­ribles to Le doulos. Writer/director Walter Hill achieved a kind of per­fec­tion here,
par­tic­u­larly with his depic­tion of the bru­tal­ity of the story’s crim­in­al world.
The movie is note­worthy for its pre­pon­der­ance of chase sequences, many of them
set at night, and all of them are rendered nicely here. The
green­ish hue dis­cerned in the DVD Beaver review was not quite as notice­able on
my display’s set­tings, but where it was most present, as in O’Neal and Adjani’s
exchanged-glance-on-the-modernist walk­way, it wasn’t inap­pos­ite. Extras are
typ­ic­ally min­im­al, which I usu­ally don’t much care about but in this case I’m
VERY curi­ous about the mak­ings of this movie, spe­cific­ally Hill’s influ­ences in
the writ­ing, and this disc tells me NOTHING about those things, so I’m
with­hold­ing the “plus” from my grade. That’ll show ‘em. —A

The File on Thelma Jordan (Olive)

This unusu­ally dis­curs­ive 1950 noir mis­matches Barbara
Stanwyck against Wendell Corey. With Robert Siodmak at the dir­ect­ori­al helm,
one might expect some primo oddness, but the movie is frus­trat­ingly dif­fuse as
it plods to an admit­tedly bizarre finale. The Olive Blu is an unextraordinary
trans­fer of a not-great (scratches, wobbly con­trast in places, etc.) source.
For Siodmak com­plet­ists only. —B-

 The Fog (Scream
Factory)

Silly snobby me turned up my nose at this thing when it
first came out in 1980, because it wasn’t “scary” enough. It’s still not
par­tic­u­larly scary but good lord is it a beau­ti­fully craf­ted film, a complete
pleas­ure to watch from shot to shot, start to fin­ish. This Blu-ray hon­ors that,
far more than the Optimum issue released in the U.K. in 2008. It’s an example of
the “good things come to those who wait” eth­os of Blu-ray col­lect­ing. Although
five years ago Scream Factory didn’t exist. How was I to know? Anyway, this is
a gor­geous thing with ter­rif­ic extras and some­thing you’ll want to watch pretty
often; there’s some­thing kind of classic-movie-appealing about the way it plays
with camp­fire ghost-story con­ven­tions that makes it apt for, you know,
Halloween quad­ruple fea­tures and such. —A+

Heaven’s Gate
(Criterion)

Still a prob­lem movie, in that it wants grandeur, and
largely achieves bloat. Also, the director’s cut doesn’t have my favor­ite line
in the movie, which is “That man is a friend of the President of the United
States.” (So Kristofferson’s char­ac­ter observes of a guy who’s moon­ing him from
across a bat­tle­field if I recall cor­rectly.) Other por­tions of the extant
dia­logue are sloppy: one doesn’t admit to “black­balling” someone, seriously.
I’m still fond of the line “Sure as hell isn’t con­veni­ent,” though. I’m
ram­bling here. As far as the movie’s con­cerned, here are more com­plaints; No
char­ac­ters, just good act­ors look­ing tra­gic; over­long expos­it­ory scenes;
numb­ingly obvi­ous polit­ic­al and mor­al points scored with relentless
ham-handedness. The homage to Dr. Zhivago
with Waterston in fur hat on train is pretty funny though. And there are some
“stir­ring” moments and a fair amount of pro­tean film­mak­ing. I’m glad this
exists, I think the treat­ment is in many respects deserved, but don’t feel bad
about your­self if you don’t fall in love with it. —B-

Help! (Apple)
Remarkably beau­ti­ful, in every respect. It’s one of those movie’s that’s
dir­ec­ted with such sim­ul­tan­eous free­dom and assur­ance that the flow of the
innov­a­tions is kind of mov­ing in and of itself. This is par­tic­u­larly true in
the music­al sequences, which in their way are as sub­lime as any­thing Busby
Berkeley ever con­cocted. Richard Lester doesn’t much care if he pushes the
aper­ture so the grain gets to Pennebaker levels, and he is wise not to care;
his com­mand of focus and col­or are what gives him the con­fid­ence to experiment,
impro­vise. He happened to be work­ing with artists of a sim­il­ar bent, who were
maybe a little tired of being put through com­edy paces by this point but looked
good and per­formed gamely. Wrote good songs for the pic­ture, too. —
A+

Keep Your Right Up
(Olive)

In the late-Godard-aspect-ratio war, Olive puts its foot
down at an unam­bigu­ous a 1.33 for this 1987 fea­ture, a slight, light picture
that extra­pol­ates from the Woody Alien film edit­ing scenes of King Lear and the string quar­tet rehears­al sequences in Hail
Mary First Name: Carmen. Featuring Godard in a lead role, sorta chan­nel­ing Peter Sellers as
Chauncey Gardener and some unspe­cified Buster Keaton char­ac­ter simultaneously.
Doesn’t do a bad job, either. The movie as a whole has an almost antiseptic
look; unlike the mad­den­ingly dark Detective or the multi-hued Nouvelle Vague
this is bright and flat…rather like a TV com­mer­cial advert­ising the end days of
cinema as Godard knew it. No extras, no choice about the sub­titles, ‘cause
they’re burned in; in oth­er words, the usual
gift-horse-you-ought-not-look-in-the-mouth from Olive. For Godard completists
only. —B+

Kentucky Fried Movie  (Shout! Factory)

The food-oil-as-fuel joke in this movie has ACTUALLY COME
TRUE, people. Other than that: This movie STILL looks ter­rible. As in super
low-rent; the mater­i­als used were likely at their best, and they were
trans­ferred well. Actually, for cel­lu­loid nuts, the grind­house crudity of much
of the lens­ing has its own appeal, and giv­en the pas­tiches involved in a lot of
the takeoffs, the cruddy look is pur­pose­ful in a lot of instances. The first
time I saw this 1977 movie I didn’t quite get it all. The second time, with a
can­nabis assist, I laughed harder than I had at any oth­er movie. This time
around, I thought it was pretty funny. Not quite sure I can pro­nounce it an
immor­tal com­edy on that basis. I still like it though. —B+

Lifeforce (Scream
Factory)

The Showgirls of
horror/sci-fi movies! Once con­sidered louche and ris­ible, what with its Steve
Railsback post-Helter Skelter/Stunt
Man cuh-razy astro­naut and con­stantly nude
space vam­pire Matilda May, it now plays pretty damn well, a gonzo Hammer
pic­ture with all the exploit­a­tion ele­ments taken to their logic­al ‘80s extreme.
The movie’s 70MM status wasn’t too played up at the time of its release but
damn, on this GREAT look­ing disc the fisheye widescreen vis­tas look especially
great. Terrific extras too. Unmissable. —A+

The Only Game In Town
(Twilight Time)

I was look­ing for an auteur­ist lost cause to champion…and I
didn’t find it here, alas. George Stevens’ last film is drab and life­less, with
decent indi­vidu­al moments (Warren Beatty’s stalk into the casino after he gets
his money off of Elizabeth Taylor) lost in a fog of the­at­ric­al speechifying,
dubi­ous sexu­al chem­istry, and cul­tur­al desert-wandering (you’d nev­er guess this
was a 1970 movie). The Blu-ray has a mixed look that mostly matches the movie’s
life­less­ness. Every now and then, on some com­ment thread or anoth­er, the
per­petu­ally dis­sat­is­fied and tetchy cinephile who calls him­self Lex G goes on a
rant about how 1.85 is a com­plete pussy aspect ratio. I do not agree with him,
but if I had to take his side on the debate team, I’d make this movie Exhibit
A. Stevens, who had done superb work in both CinemaScope and1.66 in the past
seems utterly lost in the fram­ing depart­ment here. And the cine­ma­to­graph­er is
Henri Dacae, for heaven’s sake. — B-

Possession (Second
Sight region B U.K. import)

This movie is so great for a num­ber of reas­ons, one of which
is that is starts off at a pitch of emo­tion­al hys­teria that most dra­mas take an
hour or two or six to build to, and then it goes CRAZIER from there. The
dis­tri­bu­tion and home video his­tory of the 1981 Andrzej Zulawski is long and
stor­ied and per­haps even more insane than the movie itself. Hell, I didn’t even
know this pic­ture was in 1.66 until the excel­lent Second Sight Blu-ray, which
gets my unqual­i­fied recom­mend­a­tion. Zulawski, pre­dict­ably, does fab­ulously in
the audio com­ment­ary, reveal­ing that the movie was ini­tially a pro­ject for Paramount
(!!!) and recount­ing a din­ner he had with Gulf and Western head Charles
Bludhorn at which Bludhorn asks Zulawski “What is this movie about” and
Zulawski responds  “It’s about a
woman who fucks an octopus” and Bludhorn delightedly asks him when he starts
shoot­ing. And it gets bet­ter from there. —A+

The Producers (Shout
Factory)

This label is unos­ten­ta­tiously turn­ing into pop culture’s
answer to The Criterion Collection. Mel Brooks’ debut fea­ture is as sloppy a
piece of tech­nic­al work as you can get and still be a Great Film, but it is
nev­er­the­less delight­ful to be able to see it in some­thing resem­bling the glory
with which Avco-Embassy presen­ted it in 1969. A single extra that wasn’t on the
MGM stand­ard def disc is the only addi­tion to the disc array. But the Drew
Friedman cov­er art is an abso­lutely mar­velous extra in and of itself. —A+

 Safety Last
(Criterion)

The 2005 box set The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection was a
labor of love, and that was evid­ent through­out, but cer­tain tech­nic­al hurdles
didn’t get fully addressed. The image on the fea­tures and shorts, while clear,
had a lot of comb­ing arti­facts. That’s gen­er­ally a thing endem­ic to an
inter­laced tele­vi­sion pic­ture, which, in the new HD era, ought not exist any
more. The Criterion issue of  Lloyd’s
best-known and per­haps best-loved film is in fact a 1080i (for interlaced)
trans­fer, but nev­er­the­less rids us of the comb­ing prob­lem, and presents a
delight­ful, pristine image that rep­res­ents the best way to appre­ci­ate the
per­former and gagman’s sunny 
can-do dis­pos­i­tion and ath­let­ic slap­stick prowess. This retains most of
the extras from the 2005 box (includ­ing an informed com­ment­ary featuring
Leonard Maltin) and adds three shorts and a twenty-minute doc­u­ment­ary featuring
writer John Bengtson, who also con­trib­utes com­ment­ary to the shorts. One hopes
more Lloyd of this qual­ity turns up in high-def. —A 

Seconds (Criterion)

Sometimes one gets the feel­ing that John Frankenheimer
enjoyed work­ing in black-and-white more than he did with col­or. Or maybe it’s just
that it shows more; I can’t really fig­ure wheth­er his black-and-white movies
are more genu­inely visu­ally express­ive than his col­or ones or if
black-and-white brought out his osten­ta­tiously arty side. In films wherein the
sub­ject is a kind of madness—this, The Manchurian Candidate—it doesn’t mat­ter. And it espe­cially doesn’t matter
here, where the cine­ma­to­graph­er is James Wong Howe, whose sens­it­iv­ity and
mas­tery more than redeem what would else­where be severely over­de­termined use of
the fish-eye lens. Not that such hell-visions per­spect­ives are not apt to this
hor­rif­ic, grim fable about the deni­al of death and aging. The 1.78 image here
is gor­geous, grainy, with blacks so sol­id you could swal­low them, or they could
swal­low you. I have to look through my old Video Watchdogs to fig­ure out what
ver­sion of the grape-stomping orgy made it into the the­at­ric­al release; this
may blow my the­ory about Blow Up
being the first stu­dio pic­ture to fea­ture full-frontal nud­ity (Seconds came out
sev­er­al months before the Antonioni). I dis­cuss this pic­ture in a bit more
detail here. Upgraded from “A” for mak­ing Jeffrey Wells unhappy. — A+

The Servant (Studio
Canal region B U.K. import)

Man, this is cer­tainly the best look­ing ver­sion of the first
Losey/Pinter col­lab­or­a­tion I’ve ever seen, so much so that through­out I kind of
wondered if it was too per­fect. Little if any dam­age with respect to film
mater­i­als shows. The black-and-white image is very smooth, with not much in the
way of grain. But everything also has a filmic integ­rity: not much in the way
of irrit­at­ing digit­al arti­facts show up either. A thor­oughly cred­ible, nearly
breath­tak­ing present­a­tion of a movie of supreme creep­i­ness and multiple
ambi­gu­ities, with a lot more going on in its odd little world than mere role
reversal. Master gui­tar­ist Davy Graham is now fully vis­ible and appre­ciable in
his bit part as a pub muso. The extras are volu­min­ous, not all are in the
greatest of shape, but the seg­ment of the arts tele­vi­sion pro­gram Camera 3 on
the first New York Film Festival, fea­tur­ing Losey and Adolph Mekas, is
aston­ish­ing. —A+ 

Simon Killer
(Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

Some may blanche that the “Masters of Cinema” imprim­at­ur is
going on the second fea­ture of an American film­maker who’s part of a production
col­lect­ive made up of what the afore­men­tioned Wells would call “bear­dos” (see
also William Holden in Billy Wilder’s Fedora). Let’s get some per­spect­ive here. This isn’t the first contemporary
pic­ture that the label has released. See also The World, Mad Detective, Tokyo Sonata. And while
I myself am not 100 per­cent sold on this expli­cit por­trait of a very ugly young
American get­ting up to bad beha­vi­or in Paris, it is a largely effective
con­struc­tion (although dir­ect­or Antonio Campos is a little too hide­bound in his
belief that the slow back-and-forth cam­era pan is a really inter­est­ing way to
con­note that some­thing sin­is­ter is hap­pen­ing beneath what’s play­ing out on the
screen). The excel­lent disc is an object les­son in get­ting a great home-digital
pro­ject from a digit­al source, a pro­cess that is not as auto­mat­ic as a lot of
people assume it is. The extras include a per­suas­ive essay by Karina Longworth
and a com­ic doc­u­ment­ary short in which the film­maker and star of the picture
are inter­viewed in tan­dem with their moth­ers, and which ought to be avoided by
view­ers who are already super-skeptical about bear­dos in movie­mak­ing. —B+

Tabu
(Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

I shall make a con­fes­sion here: this 1931 pic­ture is
prob­ably my least favor­ite Murnau. Yes, it’s stag­ger­ingly visu­ally beautiful,
yes, its final moments of grim implacab­il­ity are among the most sub­lime cinema
has offered at any time and in any con­text. But, not to get all holy left­ist or
any­thing, its per­spect­ive neces­sar­ily is entrenched in Western paternalism,
which turns out to be more of a stum­bling block for me than Sunrise’s sex­ism. I think this is a genu­ine prob­lem for the
movie, object­ively, just as the sex­ism in Sunrise is. (City Girl remains the most start­lingly “pro­gress­ive” extant film of Murnau’s
late peri­od. The MOC Blu-ray of that puppy is pretty awe­some too.)  On the oth­er hand,  it’s still effect­ively just a prejudice
on my part because this is still an indis­pens­able movie and it looks wonderful
here (although man oh man is the 1.19 aspect ratio SEVERE) and the extras,
which include an enthu­si­ast­ic and inform­at­ive com­ment­ary by crit­ic Brad Stevens
and his­tor­i­an R. Dixon Smith, are superb. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking
for­ward to the Nosferatu Blu-ray
from this label. —A+

 The Tarnished Angels
(Eureka!/Masters of Cinema region B U.K. import)

I didn’t expect to be watch­ing this again so soon after I
wrote a bit about Sirk and Faulkner for the blog, but the MOC Blu-ray seemed
to land at my door mere moments after it was announced, and My Lovely Wife was
inter­ested in see­ing it, so… Anyway, watch­ing the movie with anoth­er per­son and
with a dif­fer­ent dis­cip­line in place, what struck me this time around was how
the mater­i­al was both hemmed in and made strange through the film’s mar­riage of
con­veni­ence to con­ven­tions of ‘50s melo­drama, par­tic­u­larly with respect to
Dorothy Malone’s per­form­ance. Interesting, though, that Robert Middleton plays
the ostens­ible heavy Matt Ord right down the middle; you could almost mistake
him for one more lonely guy in this movie of lonely guys. The whole movie is
more or less con­tained in the shock moment when the Mardi Gras parti­er masked
as Death bursts in to Hudson and Malone’s reflect­ive drink­ing; a shot I
some­times see in my mind in gar­ish col­or. Angels is of course CinemaScope black
and white, beau­ti­ful here. The extras are both schol­arly and nifty and include
unex­pec­ted treats such as a video inter­view with William Schallert and a
con­tem­por­ary art­icle about the shoot­ing of the aer­i­al sequences from Air
Progress magazine. —A+

Teorema/Theorem (BFI Region
B U.K. import)

One of Pasolini’s drollest pro­voca­tions and one of Terence
Stamp’s most blithely enig­mat­ic per­form­ances. There are very few extras, but
one gets the feel­ing that the movie doesn’t want any explic­a­tion bey­ond itself,
such is its magis­teri­ally serene per­versity. Nifty Morricone score too, you
could almost swear the title theme was taken off a Freddie Redd record, but it
wasn’t! (Per Nick Wrigley’s tip, it’s actu­ally Ted Curson, not that you’d know from any god­damn cred­its. Morricone’s ver­sat­ile but not THAT ver­sat­ile.) Watch on a loop until it tells you what to do with YOUR complacent
bour­geois life. —A

Things To Come
(Criterion)

I was get­ting all set to do a Very Important Comparison of a
British issued Blu-ray and a Ray-Harryhausen-overseen Blu (on a double feature
with She) of this eccent­ric futurist
fable when along comes the announce­ment of a Criterion ver­sion. And once the
Criterion ver­sion showed up in my mail­box, my sus­pi­cions were kind of
con­firmed: this renders the British disc…well, as it hap­pens, not quite
irrel­ev­ant. Criterion’s ren­der­ing sac­ri­fices a barely dis­cern­able smidge of
sharp­ness in the interest of smooth­ing out the pic­ture for a more internally
con­sist­ent view­ing exper­i­ence, while the 2012 Network issue opts for getting
top detail out of a scratched-up source. I’ll be kind to the late great Ray and
just leave his present­a­tion out of the con­ver­sa­tion. Anyway, my pref­er­ence is
for the Criterion. I’m not sat­is­fied by the black levels on either rendering.
Some will bitch about the grain, there’s a very good deal of it. Until a
full-scale res­tor­a­tion is per­formed, and that’s not a mat­ter of when but rather
a very big if, this is as good as we are likely to get. And what a weird ass
movie, with all those haughty guys in togas at the end. Yet as William Cameron
Menzies dir­ect­ori­al efforts go, this is on the rel­at­ively sober side (check out
The Maze if you ever can; see
also Chandu The Magician, twice a
year is optim­um). —A

Twixt (Fox)

You want per­son­al film­mak­ing from an estab­lished old master?
Well, like it or not, it doesn’t get any more per­son­al that Francis Coppola’s
digitally-shot, occa­sion­ally in 3D (although the disc I’m review­ing doesn’t
have that option) sort-of genre movie in which still-bloated but highly game
Val Kilmer plays a dis­sol­ute hacky hor­ror nov­el­ist stuck in a zero-bookstore town
(his sign­ing is at the hard­ware empori­um) sucked in to a twisty tale of
bohemi­ans and murder and vam­pires and ghosts. The first gonzo fris­son is that the wife Kilmer argues about money with over
Skype is Kilmer’s actu­al ex-wife Joanna Whaley. Then Ben Chaplin shows up as
the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, to give Kilmer’s char­ac­ter some writ­ing advice.
Then Alden Ehrenreich turns up in a hybrid of his role in Tetro and Mickey Rourke’s role in Rumble Fish. Then it becomes plain that a lot of the movie is
about Coppola’s guilt over his son Gian Carlo’s 1986 death in a boating
acci­dent. Coppola demon­strates enough detach­ment to have a sense of humor about
the mani­fest­a­tion of that guilt (and the scenes of Kilmer doing improv
impres­sions to exor­cise his writer’s block are a stitch) but there’s nothing
funny about the com­plex sense of loss the movie evokes through vari­ous horror
tropes, some more hoary than oth­ers. A sumptuous-looking trans­fer of a digital
source, its only extra is a charm­ingly open making-of doc by Gia Coppola, the
daugh­ter Gian-Carlo nev­er knew and Francis’ grand­daugh­ter, who has since the
2010 shoot­ing of the film made anoth­er fea­ture, Palo Alto. —B+