Salvaged: August (or so) 2018 Blu-ray Consumer Guide

So at the end of every year I rearrange my com­puter desktop. Folders for freel­ance work, SCR work, and more go on to an extern­al hard drive and are replaced on the desktop with folders for the cur­rent year. And one thing that had been on the desktop, out­side of any folder, more than half a year was a doc­u­ment titled “AUGUST 2018 BLU RAY CONSUMER GUIDE.” This is how it always works when I actu­ally man­age to fin­ish a Blu-Ray Consumer Guide. Last one was in May, and I did it for the tenth anniversary of the blog, mainly because it rep­res­en­ted the only type of writ­ing that I could­n’t find any­one to pay me for. (Not the ONLY kind, but you get my mean­ing.) Having pushed myself to get it done I thought, well that was­n’t so bad, and imme­di­ately set about doing anoth­er, and of course I got too busy and nev­er got it done. But I had still watched all the discs (in a peri­od that exten­ded well past August, mind you) and made notes, and there they sat, on my desktop. So I thought, January being a fairly fal­low work time, maybe I can draft them up into some­thing, so I did, although in many cases I am just present­ing the notes them­selves, as a glimpse into cer­tain habits of mind that some of you might find amus­ing. The sole ringer here is the review for The Comfort of Strangers, a disc I only watched last week. 

Equipment: Playstation 3, OPPO Sony KD50X690E dis­play, Pioneer Élite VSX-817 AV amplifier/receiver.

Au Hasard Balthazar (Criterion)

Notes: “Bresson delib­er­ately refuses to chase beauty in his com­pos­i­tions but beauty finds its way into them any­way. The shot of PK [Pierre Klosowski, ven­er­able author and broth­er of Balthus—ed.] get­ting a little water for the don­key. The black­ness of the bot­tom of the well. The black­ness of the con­tain­er of water.” — A+

 Avanti! (Koch Lorber)

Back when it came out in 1972 it was in some quar­ters dis­missed as old Billy Wilder try­ing to do one of his acid romances new-style, with cuss­ing and nud­ity and all. Now, the movie is itself old. The pacing of it really stands out: It’s Billy Wilder’s Slow Cinema. There are unex­pec­ted moments of lyr­i­cism here, also sourer-than-usual bits of miso­gyny and pro­jec­ted trans­pho­bia with the mustachioed-maid joke. An anom­aly and a curio. — A-

The Changeling (Severin)

Looks good and is a fab­ulous film, a well-paced and con­sist­ently scar­i­fy­ing haunted house mys­tery with a restrained and con­vin­cing George C. Scott lead per­form­ance. Lots of then late-model Fords get­ting involved in all man­ner of mis­haps, quite a time warp to my sub­urb­an teens.  —A

Combat Shock (Severin)

One Viet vet’s worst day ever on Staten Island; a very work­ing class New Yawk take on Eraserhead. Things I learned from the com­ment­ary: Director Buddy Giovinazzo stud­ied with  sem­in­al min­im­al­ist musi­cian and multi-media pion­eer Phill Niblock, who wrote him a “legit film­maker” note. Inspirational com­ment­ary sound­bite: “Eddie had a gall blad­der oper­a­tion” mean­ing cast mem­ber and future cult fig­ure Eddie Pepitone. —A

 The Comfort of Strangers (BFI Region B import)

I’ve long thought this Schrader’s most accom­plished dir­ect­ori­al effort (although there are quite a few gaps in my view­ing of his films) and with the excep­tion of the ana­chron­ist­ic and trendy camera-click-sound-effect freeze frames in some early scenes, this holds up spec­tac­u­larly and is nag­gingly creepy in the best way. The image qual­ity is par­tic­u­larly good in a nuanced way; the gor­geous detail doesn’t pop but instead insinu­ates. Among the extras is a typ­ic­ally spec­tac­u­lar Schrader com­ment­ary. Topics include degrees of queer in Rupert Everett’s per­form­ance and the way he instruc­ted Schrader to rein him in; uses of screen nud­ity back then (1990) versus today, and work­ing with screen­writer Harold Pinter. One admir­able thing about Schrader’s prac­tice is that he has a con­fid­ence that doesn’t register as entirely egot­ist­ic­al, and when he talks about Pinter he’s very mat­ter of fact, nev­er fan­boy­ing it in. One of the nif­ti­est fea­tures of the film is that its theme of the prox­im­ity of danger lead­ing to hot­ter sex, while a val­id one, is usu­ally depic­ted in cinema in  the most dumb and ham-handed way, and this pic­ture provides an excel­lent excep­tion to that. There are two oth­er audio tracks of Schrader here that I haven’t got­ten to but the primary com­ment­ary is aces. While he’s not an overtly sen­ti­ment­al man, the way he almost always refers to Natasha Richardson as “Tasha” tips me off that he misses her…as do all film lov­ers, really.  —A+

Curse of the Cat People (Scream Factory)

The 2016 release of Cat People on Criterion made me hope that the entire Lewton run of RKO pic­tures would be on the label. Apparently that’s not to be. But Shout!/Scream Factory  are not tri­fling here. “Beauty” is the only note I had on this, so clearly I didn’t get to any of the extras. But I’d still call this essen­tial. —A

Designing Woman (Warner Archive)

John Alton shoot­ing in col­or Cinemascope is as much a recom­mend­a­tion for this Blu-ray as one would need I sup­pose. And this is a lovely disc; the mater­i­als from which it was trans­ferred look to have been pretty pristine, as there’s not a lot of wobble or col­or degen­er­a­tion in dis­solves.  The movie, accord­ing to my notes, is “weird as fuck.” Probably more for its per­spect­ive on gender rela­tions than its Husbands and Wives-proph­esy­ing device of fram­ing it as a quasi-documentary ret­ro­spect­ive on a romantic quandary. Bacall and Peck struck me as a very mis­matched couple. But what a sup­port­ing cast: Mickey Shaughnessy, Chuck Connors, Ed Platt, Alvy Moore. And that cli­mactic brawl. All that not­with­stand­ing, I think (and it’s pos­sible I’ve made this obser­va­tion before in the con­text of a dif­fer­ent pic­ture) this is the sort of out­put that com­pelled François Truffaut to call Vincente Minnelli “un esclave.”—A-

Female Trouble (Criterion)

Boy she’s really fix­ated on those cha-cha heels. This is one of those demon­stra­tions that no amount of digit­al scrub­bing can make a movie that pur­posely looks TERRIBLE look any less ter­rible, and that is how it should be. And yet by this point in his career (1974) John Waters (with Charles Ruggero) has suf­fi­cient edit­ing chops to pull off the scene in which Divine plays two char­ac­ters, one of whom rapes the oth­er. And yes, the skid mark on the Fruit of the Loom is there in spec­tac­u­lar HD. My favor­ite bits in this are with Edith Massey telling her son to “go nelly” and describ­ing the bore­dom and empti­ness of the het­ero­sexu­al life­style. The wide-ranging extras are enter­tain­ing, not least in that they fea­ture both the refined debon­air gar­rulous eld­er states­man Waters we know and love AND the  semi-surly, snotty, sunglassed, chainsmoking Waters on R. Couri Hay’s pub­lic access show from back in the day. —A

Frank and Eva (Cult Epics)

Hard to describe this 1973 Dutch coun­ter­cul­ture rela­tion­ship drama. Maybe to say it’s as if Crown International decided to do a homage to Bergman or some­thing. A prodi­giously drink­ing male con­stantly pranks his lovely female part­ner, includ­ing with fake sui­cide attempts, while relent­lessly pur­su­ing side interests includ­ing a pre-Emmanuelle Sylvia Kristal. Energetic if ulti­mately point­less, with lots of nud­ity on a not-at-all-bad-looking disc. —B-

Hilda Crane (Twilight Time)

Twilight Time’s devo­tion to Fox Cinemascope and films that fall out­side the pur­view of con­ven­tion­al  auteur-driven cinephil­ia has been open­ing my eyes for years now. This 1956 Phillip Dunne melo­drama (adap­ted from a Samson Raphaelson nov­el) can be com­men­ded as an excep­tion­al anti-Sirk example of the genre in that there’s no sub­text what­so­ever. The only “there” in the movie is the “there” there. Jean Simmons plays the title role, a double divor­cee crawl­ing back from New York to small town Winona,  her British accent a vic­tim of Midwestern small minded­ness. Hilda’s mom Judith Evelyn dis­dains how New Yorkers laugh at the sol­id vir­tues. But this Harper Valley doesn’t quite teem with hypo­crites, just old folks with ultra-hardened arter­ies who don’t want any­one to have a good time, exhib­it A being  cling­ing mom Mrs. Burns, who doesn’t want Hilda any­where near her good boy Guy Madison. “I live for noth­in’ but that boy,” she pro­claims in a REMARKABLE char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion from Evelyn Varden.

Jean Pierre Aumont phones in the great French lov­er bit, e.g., Hilda: “Get out and nev­er come back.” Jacques: “Varay well. I wish you lots of unhap­pi­ness. But I’m sure you’ll get it anyway.”

From notes: “UNDER THE PORTRAIT OF MOTHER best shot in the movie.”— B+

Let’s Make Love (Twilight Time) 

Notes: “ ‘A lively interest in bal­loons,’ are you fuck­ing kid­ding me?

All the gui­tar­ists in the Elvis par­ody are out of tune.

Dennis Hopper was right. [When he said to Cukor “we’re gonna bury you man” at some din­ner party recoun­ted in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.-ed.]

The plot line is very pre-code.

JOE BESSER

Quine’s ‘among the beat­niks’ or who­ever they were treat­ment in Bell Book and Candle was better.

‘I’ve nev­er been so humi­li­ated in my life’  you said it.”  Not a bad-looking disc, though.—B

Lifeforce (Shout! Factory)

Generally I’m a little skep­tic­al about re-remasterings, but this new ver­sion of the 1985 Tobe Hooper clas­sic, the best Hammer movie Hammer nev­er made while at the same time kind of wholly and irre­fut­ably a Cannon film, is a worth­while invest­ment for the wise people who love it as I do. From notes: “ It DOES look a little bet­ter. There’s more defin­i­tion on the FX Halley’s Comet looks bet­ter. Oh yeah it looks HELLA bet­ter.”— A+

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (ClassicFlix)

Notes: “Super nifty movie little movie, clas­sic­al in dir­ec­tion and out­look. Claude Rains is fab­ulous, one of his greatest per­form­ances. Truculent and weaselly wimpy with­in a single breath. and it looks great. No extras.”  —A-

Midnight Cowboy (Criterion)

I’m only going to say this once about 1960s and 1970s and some­times even 1980s films get­ting scanned/transferred/mastered for HD with what some would call a bias toward teal in the col­or cor­rec­tion: it’s always all about how the movies looks in motion. And in motion, this Blu-ray looks abso­lutely won­der­ful. The over­all col­or val­ues are superb—check out Joe Buck’s mom’s pink dress in the beauty salon flash­back shot. Green  seems a dom­in­ant col­or in the film’s palette any­way. Also note­worthy, more and more each year, is the loc­a­tion shoot­ing: look, it’s the last gasp of Hubert’s Museum. The 1991-recorded com­ment­ary from Schlesinger is  very good and made me miss Supreme Macaroni all over again. “Little too snazzily cut,” he says of one sequence, and yes, you could say that. Audio mix is fab­ulous.  From notes: “This is A LOT OF MOVIE MAKING (b&w, film with­in film, light­ing, quick cut­ting)”—A+

My Sister Eileen (Twilight Time) 

Notes: “Charming and bright. The dance between Fosse and what’s‑his-nut is great. Sexism aside, the con­geni­al sym­path­ies of Quine and Edwards are prac­tic­ally palp­able. Lovely trans­fer. It feels like a movie every­one had a good time on.”—A

Queen of Outer Space (Warner Archive)

Notes: “The most undemand­ing movie ever made, maybe. Fond and unex­pec­tedly sweet commentary.”—A

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Twilight Time)

This fea­tures Jane Russell as a barely-disguised pros­ti­tute thrown out of San Francisco for being a barely dis­guised pros­ti­tute and going to Hawaii and dying her hair red and becom­ing a barely dis­guised pros­ti­tute who get real estate invest­ment tips from semi-Hemingwayesque author Richard Egan. It all goes pretty well until Pearl Harbor. Raoul Walsh dir­ec­ted. Agnes Morehead plays a barely dis­guised madam. CinemaScope, Deluxe Color, 1956.

Notes: “Vivid.” —A

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (Warner Archive)

From notes:  “A tri­umph of MISE EN SCENE. Catchy tunes.  A lot to chew on for Jordan Peterson.”—A

Two Weeks in Another Town (Warner Archive)

Notes: “Timeless clas­sic in a crisp trans­fer. These are mean mean people. ‘Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha’ ‘Toby Dammit’ “—A

Under Capricorn (Kino Lorber) 

Kat Ellinger’s com­ment­ary is fact-filled and inter­est­ing, and her notes on Hitchcock’s treat­ment of class are enga­ging. But I gotta dis­agree with her when she says this rel­at­ive obscur­ity from 1949 doesn’t LOOK like a Hitchcock film. This was Hitchcock’s second col­or film (the first was Rope) and his first peri­od piece in some time (since Jamaica Inn ten years before), so maybe that’s where she’s com­ing from, but…the film lan­guage is very much Hitchcock’s. I also think she’s off base with her semi-constant dis­par­age­ment of Hitchcock’s use of Bergman, that he “takes a great star and he kills her off” and then her note that Hitchcock’s insist­ence on long takes was “per­haps unne­ces­sary.” Yeah, Hitch, why didn’t you try get­ting some COVERAGE, little indul­gent there, ya think? But I’m not gonna kid myself. Ehringer is the future: with film crit­ics a gen­er­a­tion or two young­er than myself, the thing with Hitchcock from now on is gonna be three parts slag­ging for every one part praise. And that’s if we are lucky. The disc looks GOOD, but giv­en this is the only sub­stant­ive col­lab­or­a­tion between Hitchcock and Jack Cardiff it’s not quite what I had hoped for. —A-