New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/25/13

The best new release on Blu ray this week has to be the 1965 Beatles classic HELP! The Richard Lester-directed musical comedy starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Victor Spinetti (Spinetti, who passed away a year ago at age 82, also appeared in the Beatles’ first film 1964's A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, and their 1967 TV special Magical Mystery Tour), is available today in a single disc Blu ray edition (a new 2 disc DVD set also drops), which contains close to an hour’s worth of bonus material.

The digitally restored original film is joined by: “The Beatles in HELP!” (a 30-minute “Making of” documentary), “A Missing Scene” (a film outtake, featuring Wendy Richard), “The Restoration of HELP!,” “Memories of HELP!,” 1965 Theatrical Trailers (two original U.S. trailers and one original Spanish trailer), and 1965 U.S. Radio Spots. For more on HELP! read my review of a previous re-mastered edition of the film from November 7, 2007.

That’s the best, now for the rest headed by a couple of movies nobody, including me, went to see earlier this year: the Halle Berry thriller THE CALL, and the Steve Carrell/Jim Carrey comedy THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE, both out today in 2-disc Blu ray combo packs with UltraViolet, digital copies, etc (also out on single disc DVD sets).

THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE also features Steve Buscemi, and sadly one of the last performances on film of the great James Gandofini, who passed away last week at age 51. That alone may make it worth watching. Special Features include deleted scenes, alternate takes, Line-O-Rama whatnot, 8-minute “Making Movie Magic with David Copperfield” featurette, gag reel and something called “Steve Gray Uncut,” which has an in-character Jim Carrey starring in “The Best of The Brain Rapist.” You read that right.

THE CALL also comes packaged with a bunch of Special Features such as a commentary with cast and crew (including Director Brad Anderson, Berry, and writer Richard D'Ovidio, an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes, and 40 minutes of featurettes (“Emergency Procedures,” “Inside the Stunts,” “Michael Ecklund Audition Footage,” “Set Tour of the Call Center,” and “Set Tour of the Lair.”

A movie that didn’t come to my area (the Triangle area in N.C.) in its brief theatrical run, Juan Diego Solanas’ odd sci-fi flick UPSIDE DOWN, starring Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst, is out today in a 3D + 2D Blu-ray & DVD Combo, and a single disc DVD. It comes with a bevy of bonus stuff including a 25-min. “Making Of” featurette, storyboards, sketches, and deleted scenes.

Also out today: Pablo Larraín’s NO, starring Gael García Bernal, Patrick Wang’s IN THE FAMILY, Samuel Fullers’ 1969 cult classic SHARK!, starring Burt Reynolds, the Criterion Collection edition of Claude Lanzmann's acclaimed 9 1/2 hour Holocaust documentary SHOAH, and a couple of well regarded works by Jean-Luc Godard (1978's COMMENT ÇA VA? and 1987's KEEP YOUR RIGHT UP) get spiffy new Blu ray releases from Olive Films.

TV Series sets hitting the shelves: Masterpiece Mystery: Inspector Lewis Season Six, CSI: NY - The Final Season, MADtv Season Three, and Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids: The Complete Series (that’s all 8 seasons on 15 discs!).

More later…

The Epically Entertaining But Empty CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS
(Dirs. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, & Tom Tykwer, 2012)

Early on in this fantastical blend of seven scenarios, Tom Hanks, in probably the most ridiculous-looking get-up of all the characters he portrays here, plays a cockney gangster turned author who throws a snooty literary critic over a high-rise balcony to his death at a book release party because of a bad review.

It’s a funny gutsy scene, even though it’s so transparently saying ‘screw you haters! This is a big ass powerhouse of a cinematic experience that will throw you off a ledge whether you want to go with it or not!’

To its credit, especially with its bloated almost 3 hour running time, I did largely go with the flow. The Wachowskis, best known as the masterminds behind THE MATRIX trilogy, and Tykwer, best known for RUN LOLA RUN, have taken David Mitchell’s best-selling award-winning 2004 novel, and made it into a mega-movie for all genres.

It cuts back and forth through the various story-lines, sometimes with imagery morphing from likewise aesthetics in one shot into the other. With a cast including Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, and Doona Bae playing multiple roles in cut-up centuries-spanning sequences, the film takes a gaggle of genres - i.e. dystopian sci-fi, post-apocalyptic drama, ‘70s conspiracy thrillers, British comedy, historical mystery, etc. - and puts them into a grinder, and they all come together to form epic entertainment.

Some storylines work better than others, and often the big cosmic gist of it all, you know, that everything ever is connected and that little acts of kindness can ripple through time and affect the future, didn’t really gel like I believe they were intending, but the pure visual splendor, along with the larger-than-life personalities present, still worked wonders.

Possibly Broadbent’s bits were the most likable. Whether as a fuzzy codger of a composer conniving to take credit for a supposedly brilliant piece of music called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet,” actually written by a suicidal gay musician (Whishaw, no stranger to mixed-up mashes of movies as he was one of the Dylans in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE), or as a present day heavily-in-debt publisher who gets wrongly committed to a nursing home by his brother (Grant), Broadbent’s energy and comic timing made a bigger impression on me than anyone else.

That’s not to say that there are some fine stand-out performances, as Hanks pulls off all his parts with ace acting, Berry puts in her best work since MONSTER'S BALL, and newcomer Bae has an emotional glow to her that fits right into the film’s absorbingly colorful palette.

Often in CLOUD ATLAS, the actors and actresses are unrecognizable because of intense makeup transformations that their change races, genders, and ages. Mostly the effect works, but there are instances that may provoke unintentional laughs when, say, first seeing a heavily freckled Susan Sarandon as an aging Southern Belle, or a Berry as a Blonde German woman. There were a lot of gasps at the screening I saw at the end credits montage that revealed who played what character. One thing is for certain: this film will undoubtedly get an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.

As much as I was awed by what the Wachowskis and Tykwer put up on the screen, there was a bit of emptiness to the lavish proceedings that was hard to escape. Like in a conversation where you realize that somebody is only pretending to say something deep and meaningful when they really don’t have any new insight to share. Still, the ‘it’s all a show’ mentality makes for some spectacular movies, even if they are the equivalent of big junk food feasts.

Like many of those unhealthy feasts, CLOUD ATLAS is crammed full of empty calories, but that’s probably what makes it so undeniably delicious.

More later...

A Few New DVD Review Blurbs

Since the Full Frame Documentary Film Fest in Durham is starting today, I thought we’d kick off these blurbs with a highly recommended new release documentary DVD: 

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS

(Dir. Andrew Jarecki, 2003)

At first, Andrew Jarecki’s debut documentary comes across like a modern reality-TV influenced update of Kurasawa's RASHOMON, but then it unfolds into something completely different to quote a beloved British comedy troop who themselves are quoted in this fascinating film.

Concerning a Long Island family getting torn apart when accusations of child molestation are directed at the patriarch, formally respected teacher Arnold Friedman, this film uses tons of home movie footage and video mostly shot by son David Friedman. It's an endlessly involving myriad of allegations and defenses that lingers long after the film is over.

The DVD's second disc is full of just as involving bonus material, most interestingly the featurette “Altercation at New York Premiere” and the short “Just A Clown,” which was Jarecki’s original film about clowns hired for children's parties. It was while making that film, that Jarecki came across David Freidman - one of New York's most popular clowns for children's parties - and learning the Friedman family's intriguing yet confusing story. 

CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS can be seen as an alternate AN AMERICAN FAMILY (the pioneering 1973 PBS reality series about the Loud Family) with a much darker truth within.

GOTHIKA (Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 2003) 

For Christ's sake, when is this trend of thrillers in which a supernatural force guides somebody to solving a murder going to freakin' end? Halle Berry heads a great cast (Charles Dutton, Robert Downey Jr, John Carroll Lynch) through a movie nightmare of psycho gibberish. To get the plot, if you could actually call it that, straight - Berry is a prison psychiatrist who wakes up after an automobile accident to find she's accused of murdering her husband and that she's jailed in the same prison she worked at. 

Berry can only remember flashes of imagery surrounding her accident and has no idea what really happened at the scene of the crime. Flashes of imagery and screeched dialogue are the only things I remember after viewing this badly named maze of contrivances. Now, the MONSTER'S BALL Oscar winner is a very talented actress, and a gorgeous woman, so it's easy to get somewhat caught up in this silliness for a bit, but in the end you'll hardly feel this is time spent well.

The darkness of the prison does little to shadow obvious plot points coming, the murky jarring music (sounding a bit like the staccato whale sounds in STAR TREK IV) tells us when we are supposed to be scared or at least pay more attention and when it's stated in the first 10 minutes that the security center's electrical system is faulty with the lights occasionally going out, I don't know anyone anywhere that would not consider that a extremely contrived convenience. 

GOTHIKA is bad as you'd think Limp Bizcuit covering the Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" would be, and that's featured on the soundtrack.

SHATTERED GLASS (Dir. Billy Ray, 2003)

In the true story of New Republic writer Stephen Glass, who had fabricated much information and sometimes entire articles back in the '90s, Hayden Christiansen proves that he actually can act. No joke, Christiansen is way more convincing as a sniveling whiny man-child caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar than a Jedi in 2 (soon to be 3) misguided STAR WARS prequels.

Peter Sarsgaard as Glass's harried editor is the voice of reason in this tale, despite the fact that he barely says anything until the storm really starts a-brewing. When Glass's fraud is found out by way of sources who were quoted proven to be fake, reports of committees holding conferences exposed as false, and a website a non-existent software company is suspected of being created after the fact, true human nature also comes out of hiding.

Although there's great work by the cast (including Steve Zahn and Rosario Dawson as webzine reporters who investigate Glass's work), the story really is the star here, and what a star it is. Funny how a movie about lies is actually one of the most accurate "true stories" to get an run (albeit limited) on the silver screen. Go figure.

Dr. SEUSS' THE CAT IN THE HAT (Dir. Bo Welch, 2003) 

You've probably heard this was awful, but it's far worse than you could possibly imagine. Mike Myers brings nothing new to the the famous Dr. Suess character;  he just shows up with his ratty bag of over used tricks. 

Obviously, this is a cash-in after the success of the Jim Carrey GRINCH movie which was bad as well but still superior to this catastrophe. Pun intended. 

I'm not going to go into the plot or tell you about production values or how painful it is to see talented actors like Alec Baldwin and Sean Hayes humiliated in this brightly colored crap. I'm just going to give you this example of the humor in this movie:

Conrad: (jumping up and down on the couch) It's like being in a circus! 

Cat in the Hat: Yeah, but without those tortured animals or drunken clowns that have hepatitis! 

And that's one of the better one liners. The only good news I have to report here is 1. It's only 78 minutes long. 2. Because it was a massive flop (budget : $109 million. US box office gross: $38 million) it is unlikely we will have to suffer further lame ive action film forays into the work of Dr. Suess. 3. Uh, I guess there's only 2 good things to report. 

As pointless as the Paris Hilton cameo (I mean who in the target audience would that mean anything to?) this is definitely a contender for a list of worse children's movies ever. Do yourself a favor take the kids to a circus. The tortured animals and drunk clowns with hepatitis will surely provide more wit and entertainment than anything under this hat.

More later...