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The top disc releases of the year, part 1
For a dying medium, the disc market continues to release a robust slate of superb DVDs and Blu-rays, classic and contemporary both.
Here is my annual round-up of the Best of 2012, a small compendium of lists: for disc debuts, Blu-ray releases, TV on disc and manufacture on demand. There is a lot of good stuff out there. Here's my perfectly subjective picks for the great stuff, with points for heroic efforts and creative archival additions.
Disc Debuts
1. "Lonesome" (Criterion), completed just as sound technology came to the movies, is one of the last great silent films. Or should I say, mostly silent. Finished just as "The Jazz Singer" kicked off the rush to talkies, it was revised just before release with the addition of three sound dialogue sequences. While these soundie sequences tend to stick out, being static and somewhat awkward, they are brief and a little endearing, a unique gimmick in the midst of a turbulent changeover. "Lonesome" is much more than a gimmick, however. It's a gem of an intimate romance right out of the late-silent film culture of "Sunrise," "The Crowd," "People on Sunday" and others. Directed by Hungarian émigré Paul Fejos, it is delicate and sweet, playful and creative, and cinematically inventive without showboating.
If you've never heard of Paul Fejos, that's likely because his films simply haven't been available in any form in the home video era. Which makes Criterion's release not just a debut but a rescue. In addition to a beautifully mastered edition of "Lonesome" from the restored duplicate negative, the set presents two bonus Fejos classics from the same era: his 1927 "The Last Performance" with Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin (with a new score by Donald Sosin) and a reconstructed sound version of Fejos' 1929 musical "Broadway," for which Fejos had a massive camera crane built. That's in addition to archival interviews and other superb supplements. This is 2012's true gift of cinema, presented on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion. (Full review here)
2. "Wings" (Paramount) - Clara Bow took top billing in the 1927 film that won the very first Academy Award for Best Picture, but the real star of this World War I drama is the amazing aerial spectacle: the dogfights in the sky over the battlefields. Paramount's restoration of the film (for the studio's 100th anniversary) is more lavish and extensive than I have ever seen for a silent film, a sharp, shimmering digital master of a landmark done out of respect for film history more than any hope of profit. Damaged sequences were repaired or replaced and missing shots and scenes restored from prints culled from archives around the world, and then repaired and corrected with months of digital restoration, and set of a new recording of the original score with sound effects created the old fashioned way by Oscar-winner Ben Burtt. It's the kind of thing studios routinely do for commercial classics like "Casablanca" or "The Wizard of Oz," but rarely for something like this. Blu-ray and DVD. (Full review here)
3. "World on a Wire" (Criterion), made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1973 for German television, was for years one of the only films by the director that simply didn't get screened or made available on home video. We just assumed that it was a lesser production, as suggested by the little attention it received in English language studies of Fassbinder. We assumed wrong. The first film to explore virtual reality, with no special effects to speak of mind you (you might say that Fassbinder suggests his levels of reality and identity with mirrors), it creates a near future out of modern architecture (some of it still under construction), gangster-movie fashions, futuristic bric-a-brac, and more glass and mirrors than a carnival funhouse, giving it the visual density of Fassbinder's theatrical films. And even at 3 ½ hours, this film races with action, ideas, and a paranoid anxiety that nothing is as it seems. Blu-ray and DVD. (Full review here)
4. "Margaret" (Fox), the much delayed and debated second feature from director / screenwriter / playwright Kenneth Lonergan, was shot in 2005. After six years of legal wrangles and creative fights, a 150-minute cut was released in a few cities in 2011, and then it practically disappeared. Even after a brief return in 2012, most people didn't have a chance to see the film until its home video release. A powerful, provocative, ambitious drama set in the shadow of September 11, 2001, it's a marvelously messy film about the messiness of emotions and people and relationships. An even messier version can be found in the "Extended Cut," the version that Lonergan originally fought to get released and is available as a bonus DVD on the Blu-ray release of the 150-minute theatrical cut. (Full review here)
5. "David Lean Directs Noël Coward" (Criterion) features beautifully mastered editions of the first four features directed by David Lean -- "In Which We Serve" (1942), "This Happy Breed" (1944), "Blithe Spirit" (1945), and "Brief Encounter" (1945) -- all of them made in partnership with author/producer Noël Coward. Officially, David Lean is second-billed to Coward in the director credit for "In Which We Serve" and takes solo credit for the subsequent films, but is clearly the man behind the camera in all of them. Lean is clearly a talent to be reckoned with from the first film, but seeing him develop over the four films, find his strengths, and then produce his first genuine masterpiece ("Brief Encounter") is quite an experience. Blu-ray and DVD. (Full review here)
6. "Jean Grémillon During the Occupation (Eclipse Series 34)" (Criterion) casts a welcome spotlight on the work of a French director little known outside of France, notably a trio of films he directed during the German occupation that are considered his best work: "Remorques" (1941) starring Jean Gabin, "Lumière d’été" (1943), and "Le ciel est à vous" (1944). Let the rediscovery begin. DVD only. (Full review here)
7. "A Trip to the Moon: Limited Edition" (Flicker Alley) features the home video debut of the painstakingly restored color version of the landmark George Méliès fantasy short, perhaps the most famous film made before "The Birth of a Nation" and (in the words of film historian and archivist Serge Bromberg) "the first international hit in motion picture history." Accompanying the short is a documentary on the film, its legacy, and its restoration. Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. (Full review here)
8. "Columbia Pictures Film Noir Classics Volume III" (TCM Vault Collection), a collaboration between Sony Picture and Martin Scorsese's The Film Foundation, uses the term "classic" loosely – the five films in this collection are not the celebrated stand-outs of the genre – but that said, this box contains some minor gems polished out of low budget productions, notably the Gothic-flavored "My Name Is Julia Ross" (1945), the bare-knuckle gangster noir "The Mob" (1951), and the anxious pulp noir thriller "The Burglar" (1957) with Dan Duryea and Jayne Mansfield. DVD only. (Full review here)
9. "The Story Of Film: An Odyssey" (Music Box) – Mark Cousins takes an unconventional, expansive, and almost exhaustive approach to the history of cinema, from the first moving images to modern movies, that emphasizes innovation, expression, and the cross-cultural fertilization of ideas spanning the entire globe. The 15-hour series acknowledges the business and culture of movies, but celebrates the art above all. DVD only. (Full review here)
10. "The Dark Knight Rises" (Warner), the culmination of Christopher Nolan's trilogy of high-minded comic book superhero action spectacles by way of pop-art social commentary, doesn't want for ambition. It's a big canvas with big (if vague) ideas, big metaphors, and outsized performances. And a big disc presentation too: the Blu-ray combo pack features hours of supplements on the film and the series as a whole. (Full review here)
Honorable mentions:
Historical: "This Is Cinerama" (Flicker Alley) is neither documentary nor drama. It's a pageant, a showcase, an immersive experience that launched Cinerama -- the first high definition theater format -- with a roar. This disc is more historical record than immersive experience, but wow, what a production, from the film itself to the exhaustive supplements. Blu-ray and DVD combo pack. (Full review here)
Classic: "Swamp Water" (Twilight Time), Jean Renoir's first American feature, isn't ranked among his best films, perhaps because its never been available on home video for reevaluation. Twilight Time's superb Blu-ray release (it's still not on DVD) shows just what a beautiful film it is, not simple for Renoir's generosity of character and complexity of community and family relationships, but for the magnificent cinematography as well, both on location and in the studio. (Full review here)
Cult: "When Horror Came To Shochiku (Eclipse Series 37)" (Criterion) collects a quartet of late 1960s sci-fi/horror oddities from the Japanese film studio Shochiku, which jumped into the genre late and produced insane movies on threadbare budgets and incoherent scripts. The mutant masterpiece of this collection is the bleak, bizarre "Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell" (1968), an astonishing journey to hell on Earth that makes the case for mankind as beyond redemption. DVD. (Full review here)
Art House Epic: "Mysteries of Lisbon" (Music Box), Raul Ruiz's elegant, nearly 4 ½-hour drama, is a film of labyrinthine storytelling and cinematic weaves of character and narrative across time and space, a work of exquisite elegance and magnificent insight into human nature and the contradictions that define us. Ruiz died just after the film's international release, so this presentation (which also includes interviews with Ruiz and others) serves as a fine tribute to the director. Blu-ray and DVD. (Full review here)
Art House Essential: "Certified Copy" (Criterion), Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami's first film made outside of Iran, is a sublime drama of art, love, and the life of a marriage in one day. Both a delicate romance and a complex portrait, you could describe it as the cinematic equivalent of a Picasso cubist portrait, presenting multiple experiences along the timeline of a relationship in a single day. It gets the Criterion treatment in its home video debut. Blu-ray and DVD. (Full review here)
Art House Essential: "The Turin Horse" (Music Box), Bela Tarr's hypnotic two-and-a-half hour trip to a life of desolation on the edge of the end of the world is nothing if not demanding, but it's the kind of cinematic experience that is increasingly harder to find. Home video may never do justice to the experience of being immersed in the texture of the film in a darkened theater (and frankly a lot of cinemas fail as well), but the superbly-produced Blu-ray from Music Box is as close as you'll come. And the fact that it's on Blu-ray at all proves that the disc is far from dead.
Click here for Videodrone's Best Blu-ray Releases, Best TV on Disc, and Best MOD Releases and Notable Achievements for 2012
| Tags: | blu-rayWeek in review |
We reveal one of the witches to you so you can partake in the hunt
Stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton are the brother and sister team seeking to avenge their parents’ deaths as they face evil greater than anything they’ve seen before. The digital release of the unrated cut of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” is now available so you can watch the adventure unfold before your eyes! To celebrate MSN Movies is partnering with Paramount Pictures so you can be a part of the witch hunt.
The first person to find all six witch images and uncover the secret URL will win an iPad mini with digital versions of the theatrical and unrated cut of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.” You also have a chance to win a trip to the premiere of “World War Z” the latest film starring Brad Pitt.
Follow and take part in the official “Hansel & Gretel” witch hunt by going to this Twitter and Facebook handle.
"Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" digital release is available now and the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack is available starting June 11.
For all you hunters out there, here is the first of six witches that will be revealed!
Soderbergh's intelligent take on a familiar genre reminds us how much we'll miss his touch
Steven Soderbergh says that "Side Effects" (Universal) is his last theatrical feature before retirement (he doesn't count his upcoming made-for-HBO film "Behind the Candelabra"). The modestly scaled but satisfying thriller reminds us just how much we'll miss his take presence on the big screen.
What begins as a medical drama of wonder drugs and pharmaceutical conspiracy turns into a sly psychological thriller, with Jude Law as a committed psychiatrist and Rooney Mara as a troubled patient with a coldly calculating soul. Law prescribes a new, experimental drug to combat her depression and anxiety attacks (recommended by fellow therapist Catherine Zeta-Jones, all very controlled and steely), Mara ends up killing her husband (Channing Tatum) in a sleepwalking nightmare, and the more he looks into the suppressed side effects of the drug, the more suspicions are raised about the whole situation. Meanwhile the film's observation on how cozy the medical profession is with the pharmaceutical industry, and how her murder trial is intertwined with big business and medical malpractice, puts a whole new angle on the stakes of the murder trial.
"Side Effects" is less twisty in retrospect than it appears as the drama unfolds moment to moment. Like so many of Soderbergh's films, it turns on human nature, perception, and expectations, which Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns play with to great effect. As Law's ambitious, seemingly sincere, and possibly paranoid psychiatrist says, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Fittingly the entire last act rests on that simple observation.
Soderbergh has been bringing a sharp intelligence and a strong understanding of character to his films throughout his career, but beginning with "Out of Sight," he's been playing increasingly with genre films and pulp stories and making clever, intriguing, surprising films of them. (I cover many of them in a survey of Soderbergh's career for MSN Movies here.) He doesn't refashion the stories so much as hone in on their reason for being and focus on those aspects, pulling character out of types and fashioning human stories out of plots. "Side Effects" is like Soderbergh's take on the Joe Esterhaus thrillers of the nineties, only smarter, more clinically-focused (as Soderbergh is wont to do), and without the ice picks. For all the twists, this is a thriller that turns on character.
MSN film critic James Rocchi proclaims it "a nice farewell: fun and smart, with cutting satire and blunt shocks. In fact, looking at the shooting and story of "Side Effects," it's almost perfect."
Blu-ray and DVD, with featurettes and the two fictional pharmaceutical commercials seen the films. The Blu-ray also includes a bonus DVD, digital copy of the film for portable media players, and UltraViolet digital copy for download and instant streaming.
| Tags: | Reviews |
Enter to win a Blu-ray collection of the great gangster movies, classic and contemporary
Warner Bros. created the modern gangster movie in the early thirties, when they were the kings of high-energy, street-smart filmmaking. The genre remained dear to the studio throughout its history.
They pay tribute the best of their gangster films, yesterday and today, with two Blu-ray box sets: "Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Classics" (Warner) and "Ultimate Gangsters Collection: Contemporary" (Warner). Both debut on Tuesday, May 21.
Bing: 'Ultimate Gangster Collection' Blu-ray
To celebrate the release, MSN and Warner Home Video are giving away a gift set of both volumes: nine films in two sets.
"Classics" offers the respective Blu-ray debuts of four landmark gangster movies -- "Little Caesar" (1931) with Edward G. Robinson, "The Public Enemy" (1931) with James Cagney, "The Petrified Forest" (1936) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, and the incendiary "White Heat" (1949) with Cagney -- plus a bonus DVD with the documentary "Public Enemies: The Golden Age of the Gangster Film."
"Contemporary" collects five films that have previously been released on Blu-ray, including three by Martin Scorsese -- "Mean Streets" (1973), Oscar-nominates "Goodfellas" (1990), and Oscar-winning "The Departed" (2006) -- plus Brian DePalma's "The Untouchables" (1987) with Kevin Costner and Robert DeNiro and Michael Mann's "Heat" (1995) with DeNiro and Al Pacino.
See a clip for "Heat" below.
Enter to win by following these steps:
1. Like MSN Movies on Facebook and Twitter
2. Tweet and comment the following message: I want to win the @MSNMovies #ULTIMATEGANGSTERS giveaway!
3. Email msnmovies@hotmail.com with the following message: I want to win @MSNMovies # ULTIMATEGANGSTERS giveaway!
4. Stay in touch with MSN Movies Facebook to see if you’ve been selected as the winner
Entries are accepted until Monday, May 27. Good luck, MSN Movies fans!
In the meantime, enjoy a clip from "Heat."
And much more in Videodrone's first monthly round-up of documentary and non-fiction releases
"Mel Brooks: Make a Noise" (Shout! Factory), the new profile of the legendary writer / director / actor / producer / all around funnyman from filmmaker Robert Trachtenberg, premieres on the PBS arts showcase "American Masters" on Monday, May 20, and debuts on DVD the next day. "A raconteur of the first order, Brooks is also gifted with near-total recall, and a wit that hasn’t ebbed with the passage of time," writes Variety TV critic Brian Lowry. "In Robert Trachtenberg’s film, Brooks concedes every bad review is like “a knife through your heart.” In savoring this valentine, that organ and every other can rest easy."
Shout! Factory has been doing right by Brooks, with its deluxe five-disc set "The Incredible Mel Brooks" (featuring some other standout documentaries and specials on Brooks) released in 2012. This joins the ongoing tribute, and the disc features bonus segments filmed for but not included in the documentary.
"Citizen Hearst" (HBO) profiles William Randolph Hearst, the legendary media mogul and yellow journalist, and the empire that continues on in his wake. "Sometimes "Citizen Hearst" feels as breezy and electric as the newsreels Hearst pioneered," observes Village Voice film critic Alan Scherstuhl, "other times it feels like the video they'll make you watch during orientation on your first day at 300 West 57th." Leslie Iwerks directs and William H. Macy narrates. DVD, with 30 minutes of bonus footage and the "Heart Castle" episodes of the A&E series "America's Castles."
Theatrical:
"Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters" (Zeitgeist) profiles the acclaimed photographer as he worked on his magnum opus, a collection of massive prints he called "Beneath the Roses." "For those unfamiliar with Crewdson’s oeuvre, the docu serves as a delicious eye-opener, while for fans it furnishes an unprecedented look at his long-secret methods, utilizing crews and budgets suitable for independent features, by which his eerily frozen moments of Americana come into being," writes Variety film critic Ronnie Scheib. The DVD includes deleted scenes, bonus interviews, and a Q&A at a screening at LACMA with director Ben Shapiro, Crewdson, and writer Jonathan Lethem.
"Last Summer Won't Happen" (Icarus) is a 1968 portrait of the East Village culture after the summer of love, with Abbie Hoffman, Paul Kassner, and Phil Ochs (among others) commenting on the political changes in the counter culture movement. Peter Gessner and Tom Hurwitz direct, and the disc features the bonus 1966 short "Time of the Locust" from Gessner and new interviews with the filmmakers. DVD.
TV:
"Witness: A World in Conflict Through a Lens" (HBO), a four-part series from producer Michael Mann and director David Frankham, follows three combat photojournalists through some of the most dangerous places in the world. Not war zones per se, but regions rife with drug trafficking, poverty, gangs, and corruption in Mexico, Brazil, Libya, and South Sudan. The series was produced for HBO, one of the few networks that still invests in investigative journalism and social and political documentary filmmaker. DVD. Review at The Hollywood Reporter.
The six-part "Marley Africa Road Trip" (Arc) follows brothers Ziggy, Riohan, and Robbie Marley on a motorcycle road tour across Africa, with stops along the way for concerts. Director David Alexanian previously shot the motorcycle road trips of Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor. DVD.
| Tags: | documentaryReviews |
'3:10 to Yuma' and 'Jubal' get the Criterion treatment
"Jubal" (Criterion)
"3:10 to Yuma" (Criterion)
Delmer Daves was a Hollywood pro with a long career and an impressive filmography. He established himself as a screenwriter with a series of light comedies and romantic melodramas (including the original 1939 "Love Affair") before stepping behind the camera with the World War II adventure "Destination Tokyo." Like most directors of his era, he moved easily between all genres – war pictures, romances, melodrama, and a few noir-inflected dramas (notably "The Red House" and "Dark Passage"), but he proved his affinity for the western from his very first effort in the genre, the 1950 classic "Broken Arrow." Along with his fine eye for imagery, Daves brought a psychological dimension and an adult sensibility to his westerns. In his best films, his characters had relationships and emotions that came out of real life.
Criterion's stamp on two of his most interesting westerns may help bring a little more attention to the director. "Jubal" (Criterion) is the first of three westerns Daves made with actor Glenn Ford, already a seasoned western presence by 1956. Here he's an itinerate cowhand and a wary loner hired by rancher Ernest Borgnine, a garrulous, generous guy who becomes both father figure and best friend to the emotionally bottled up cowhand. It's been called "Othello" on the range, with Rod Steiger as the bitter ranch hand playing Iago to Borgnine's Othello, but the Desdemona of this piece is no innocent victim but a dark, exotic beauty (she's Canadian, apparently to explain away Valerie French's accent) in a stifling marriage to the sincere but crude and boisterous cattleman. Young and deeply disenchanted, she sets her eyes on the simple, stoic cowboy.
This is less a Shakespeare western than a Hollywood melodrama in chaps and Daves was a seasoned hand at both genres. He favors suspense to action and violence, tightening the tension until Steiger (himself spurned by French) finally pushes his boss over the edge and the cycle of violence begins. Even then, the violence is brief and abrupt and Daves leaves the most brutal assault offscreen. Noah Beery Jr. and John Dierkes offer easy-going support as Ford's friendly bunkmates and fellow cowhands and Charles Bronson takes a small but key role as a plain-speaking cowhand whose loyalty to Ford's Jubal is unshakable even when Steiger turns the town against him. Daves brings out Bronson's easy-going humor and understated style, a side so rarely tapped by other directors.
The sprawling, dazzling, ambitious epic gets a second life on home video
"Cloud Atlas" (Warner) wants nothing for ambition. Jumping between six distinctive stories in six different eras, with a cast that plays different (yet connected) parts in the various storyline, it's at once literal and evasive, a film that wears its heart on its beautifully stitched sleeve and its meaning in its design and yet finds so many facets in which to mirror its ideas throughout its incarnations. Which it does for almost three hours, in stories that span centuries, from the slave trade of the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic culture centuries into the future.
Lana and Andy Wachowski ("The Matrix" trilogy) collaborate with Tom Tykwer ("Run Lola Run" and "Perfume"), adapting David Mitchell's novel together and splitting the directing duties. They all seem to be on the same page here, charting both the best and worst in mankind through the ages and into the future. The continuity of character throughout can be comic (see Hugo Weaving as the eternal thug through ages, as if Agent Smith escaped the Matrix to infect history) and glaringly obvious (Hugh Grant as tyranny with the face of authority), and of all people Tom Hanks stumbles through some of the clumsiest caricatures ever foisted upon a star-studded production, but it's clever enough to keep you dancing through the changes. And at its best, "Cloud Atlas" is sprawling, inventive, ambitious, naïve, and thrilling. The momentum never lets up and sometimes it alone is all that keeps you moving through the weave of stories, but it can be enough. The images are dazzling and the transitions witty, sometime turning on a line, sometimes an image, sometimes it's not clear at all what the trigger is until later. But obvious or not, it’s all connected. Check out MSN's exclusive "Cloud Atlas" infographic for more on the different stories, characters, and time periods, and the connections between them.
MSN film critic Glenn Kenny isn't as taken with the film as I was. Though he calls it "the most sprawlingly ambitious ostensibly mainstream motion picture I've seen in years," he admits that "the filmmaking itself, while incredibly advanced on a technological level, is kind of mind-numbingly literal." Filling in the leads and key supporting roles across the stories are Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Ben Whishaw, and James D'Arcy.
Blu-ray and DVD, with the featurette "A Film Like No Other," an overview that plays more like a promotional featurette than a behind-the-scenes piece. The Blu-ray features six additional featurettes, plus a bonus DVD and UltraViolet digital copy for download and instant streaming. Also On Demand
Enter to win a Blu-ray combo pack from MSN and Warner Home Video, and see a clip from the Blu-ray with Tom Hanks discussing his multi-dimensional character.
For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for week of May 14
Videodrone's take on the biggest, best, coolest and culty-ist releases of the week
New Releases:
"Cloud Atlas" (Warner), the sprawling, dazzling, ambitious collaboration between "Matrix" makers Lana and Andy Wachowski and Germany's Tom Tykwer weaves together the six distinctive stories in six different eras with a cast that reappears throughout the timelines. At once literal and evasive, this is a film that wears its heart on its beautifully stitched sleeve and its meaning in its design and yet finds so many facets in which to mirror its ideas throughout its incarnations. It failed to connect with audiences on its initial release, but gets a second chance on home video, where its 170-minute length may not be such an issue. Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand. Videodrone's review is here.
Check out MSN's exclusive "Cloud Atlas" infographic and enter to win a Blu-ray combo pack from MSN and Warner Home Video.
"A Glimpse Inside the Mind Of Charles Swan III" (Lionsgate), the first feature from Roman Coppola since "CQ" more than a decade ago, stars Charlie Sheen as a hedonistic, ego-fueled graphic artist facing an early-life crisis. Blu-ray and DVD, also at Redbox.
"Frankie Go Boom" (Universal), a comedy about sibling rivalry and practical joking gone awry starring Charlie Hunnam and Chris O'Dowd "possesses a surprisingly sweet heart," recommends MSN film critic Kat Murphy. Blu-ray and DVD
Plus: the latest reboot of the landmark horror film titled simply "Texas Chainsaw" (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, On Demand and at Redbox) and the historical epic "Back to 1942" (Well Go, Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand) from China.
Most releases are also available as digital download and VOD via iTunes, Amazon, and other web retailers and video services.
Browse the complete New Release Rack here
TV on Disc:
The central conflict of "Dexter: The Seventh Season" (Paramount), Showtime's blackly-comic series about TV's favorite serial-killer hero, isn't with another killer. This season Dexter's (Michael C. Hall) adoptive sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), who happens to be a police detective, discovers his secret and has to come to terms with the fact that her brother is the killer she's been hunting all these seasons. Family secrets can be so divisive. Blu-ray and DVD. Videodrone's review is here.
"The Bletchley Circle" (PBS) is a self-contained British mystery mini-series set in 1950s London, but it could easily launch a continuing series based on the strength of its characters, a quartet of women who were code breakers during World War II, and its setting. Blu-ray and DVD. Reviewed on Videodrone here.
"Liz and Dick" (eOne, DVD) is the Lifetime original movie starring Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor and Grant Bowler as Richard Burton and "Dance Academy: Season One" (Flatiron, DVD) is the Australian teen drama about first-year students at a ballet school in Sydney that debuted stateside on TeenNick.
Flip through the TV on Disc Channel Guide here
Cool and Classic:
Two pair of smart adult westerns from director Delmer Daves get the Criterion treatment: the original "3:10 to Yuma" (Criterion) with Glenn Ford as a cunning outlaw and Van Heflin as the farmer who takes him to prison, and "Jubal" (Criterion), a reworking of "Othello" on a frontier ranch with Ford, Ernest Borgnine, and Rod Steiger. Both on Blu-ray and DVD with minimal supplements. Reviewed on Videodrone here.
"French Masterworks: Russian Émigrés in Paris 1923-1928" (Flicker Alley) presents of the DVD debut of five silent classics from Film Albatros, a French studio founded by Russian artists: "The Burning Crucible," "Kean," "The Late Mathias Pascal," and two director by Jacques Feyder, "Gribiche" and 'The New Gentlemen." Videodrone's review is here.
"The Henry Fonda Film Collection" (Fox) collects ten features from 1939 to 1958, including "Drums Along the Mohawk" (1939), "The Grapes of Wrath" (1941), and "My Darling Clementine" (1946). DVD
More Hal Hartley comes back to disc, including his feature debut "The Unbelievable Truth" (Olive, Blu-ray and DVD) and the double feature "The Book of Life / The Girl from Monday" (Olive, DVD). Reviewed on Videodrone here.
John Stahl's noir-tinged Technicolor melodrama "Leave Her to Heaven" (Twilight Time) debuts on Blu-ray.
The MOD Movies round-up this week looks at a selection of films by the great directors debuting on disc through manufacture-on-demand.
All of the Cool and Classic here
New on Netflix Instant:
Horror films take top honors on Netflix new releases, from "House at the End of the Street" (2012) with newly-anointed Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence to the Norwegian Nazi zombie film "Dead Snow" (2009) to Ben Wheatley's "Kill List" (2011), a hitman thriller that swerves into a jangly horror film.
For fans of extreme cinema, here are a couple that will shake up even the hardiest souls: Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" (2009) with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg and Gaspar Noe's violent "Irreversible" (2002). Much lighter is the action comedy "Hit & Run" (2012) with Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell and the Bollywood musical "Lagaan" (2001).
Plenty of classics have also recently arrived, including the 1941 swashbuckler "The Corsican Brothers" (1941) and a number of film noirs and dramas with darker edges, like "Raw Deal" (1948), "99 River Street" (1953), and "The Gun Runners" (1958).
Browse more Instant offerings here
New On Demand:
"Cloud Atlas" arrives On Demand same day as disc, as does the horror reboot "Texas Chainsaw" and the Chinese historical drama "Back to 1942."
Arriving days after theatrical debuts (and long before disc) are Ben Wheatley's black comedy "Sightseers" and the action film "Java Heat" with Kellan Lutz and Mickey Rourke.
Available Friday, same day as theatrical release, are the thriller "Black Rock" with Kate Bosworth and Lake Bell, Kim Ki-Duk's "Pieta" from South Korea, and the documentary "Hating Breitbart."
Available from Redbox this week:
"A Glimpse Inside the Mind Of Charles Swan III" (Lionsgate, DVD), a comedy starring Charlie Sheen as a hedonistic graphic designer in the seventies, and the "Texas Chainsaw" (Lionsgate, Blu-ray and DVD) topline the new arrivals in the kiosks this week.
| Tags: | Week in review |
Plus Lars von Trier's 'Antichrist,' the original 'The Corsican Brothers,' classic film noir and more
Horror films take top honors in the Netflix new releases this week.
Newly-anointed Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence takes a detour into horror in "House at the End of the Street" (2012), playing the new girl in a neighborhood where a grisly crime wiped out an entire family except for the enigmatic teenage son. Ill-advised curiosity ensues. In words of MSN film critic Glenn Kenny, "originality, or lack thereof, isn't really the movie's problem. Execution is."
"Dead Snow" (2009) – There's blood on the snow when Nazi zombies rise from the powder of the Norwegian Alps to feed on the flesh vacationing innocents in this dryly hilarious horror comedy. Writer/director Tommy Wirkola gives it a macabre sense of splatter humor a la "Evil Dead 2" (complete with zombie hunters armed with chainsaws and other deep woods implements of destruction) without self-conscious wisecracking of the genre, and accomplishes it all with a crisp professionalism.
"Kill List" (2011) is a British hit-man thriller that swerves into a jangly horror film. Directed by Ben Wheatley ("Down Terrace"), the film is "harrowing, inventive, disturbing and shudderingly brisk," in the words of MSN film critic Glenn Kenny. It's also pretty darn dark and very unsettling as it takes viewers down unexpected alleys.
For fans of extreme cinema, here are a couple that will shake up even the hardiest souls. Lars von Trier's "Antichrist" (2009) with Willen Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg is a harrowing portrait of marriage and mourning as a morass of anger, suspicion and power in a diseased world, a vision both beautiful and sour, serious and seriously screwed up. Gaspar Noe's violent "Irreversible" uses the cinema as an assault weapon to tell the story of a loving couple (Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel) destroyed by a random rape and the rage-fueled revenge, in reverse: a fever-induced nightmare reimagining of “Memento.”
On the lighter side is "Lagaan" (2001), a sweeping epic-length Bollywood musical that spins romantic triangles, solidarity through teamwork, and simple melodramatic clashes of good and evil into explosions of color, song, and happy endings and climaxes with a three day long cricket match (!) between arrogant British colonial rulers and a scruffy team of underdogs in 19th century India.
Dax Shepard writes, co-directs, and stars in "Hit & Run" (Universal), and action comedy with Kristen Bell, Kristen Chenoweth, and Tom Arnold. MSN film critic Glenn Kenny calls it "one of the summer's most enjoyable surprises, a consistently disarming romantic comedy…"
For non-fiction fans, there is "Brooklyn Castle" (2012), about the championship chess team from an impoverished inner-city junior high school (arriving before disc) and Jonathan Caouette's "Walk Away Renee" (2012), centered on the director's road trip to move his mentally ill mother from Texas to New York.
Instant TV:
Disney's "TRON: Uprising – Season 1," the animated spin-off of the recent big screen reboot, and "American Dad!: Season 7" and "Bob's Burgers: Season 2" from Seth McFarlane's Sunday night animation block are the newest seasons to arrive.
Classic adventures:
The lively swashbuckler "The Corsican Brothers" (1941) stars Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in the dual roles of Lucien and Mario Franchi, twin brothers who were conjoined at birth but raised apart. The first sound film adaptation of the Alexander Dumas novel, handsomely directed by Gregory Ratoff and described as a "free adaptation of the novel" in the credits, is very much a spirited swashbuckler and dark romance, with Fairbanks playing the gypsy-raised Lucien as a devil-may-care bandit prince and the society-raised Mario as a gentleman rogue with a gift for swards and romance.
"Kit Carson" (Hen's Tooth), starring Jon Hall and Dana Andrews, is an old-fashioned western with great landscapes and a marvelous supporting turn by Ward Bond.
Film Noir and other dark dramas:
"Raw Deal" (1948), a B-movie crime thriller from Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton, is a haunting revenge noir built around a prison break and punctuated by brutal explosions of violence. Alton’s moody, fog-bound visuals and Claire Trevor’s melancholy narration create a tough edged noir suffused with doomed romanticism.
"99 River Street" (1953) is from Phil Karlson, to my mind the toughest of the film noir directors, and star John Payne, who plays a taxi driver set up to take the fall for a jewel robbery. Karlson gives this brawny noir a shot of theatrical flair and makes it one of the great urban noirs of the anonymous city, filled with shadows and shady characters and a long shot second chance. Read my full review here.
"The Gun Runners" (1958), Don Siegel's low-budget remake of "To Have and Have Not," is a stock thriller premise brought to life with clever screenwriting, deftly turned characters, a terrific supporting cast and delightfully sexy rapport and physical intimacy between Audie Murphy (talking the Bogart role) and Patricia Owens, who plays his wife. A longer review is here.
More dark dramas and crime movies from the fifties: "The Killer is Loose" (1956) with Joseph Cotten as a police detective and Wendell Corey as an escaped convict out for revenge; "Monkey on My Back" (1957) with Cameron Mitchell as a pro boxer with a morphine addiction; and "Crime of Passion" (1957) with Barbara Stanwyck breaking the law to advance the career of her homicide detective husband (Sterling Hayden).
Previous Netflix Instant recommendations here.
For more releases, see Hot Tips and Top Picks: DVDs, Blu-rays and streaming video for week of May 14
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about the blogger
Sean Axmaker is MSN's DVD columnist and the editor of Parallax View. He writes for Turner Classic Movies Online and his work has appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, Senses of Cinema, Asian Cult Cinema, Psychotronic Video and "The Scarecrow Video Guide."
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