Blue Like Jazz
(Lionsgate)
Based on Donald Miller’s memoir,
this intermittently interesting drama dramatizes how a sheltered Texas Southern
Baptist deals with attending a Portland liberal college. Although much of what
happens is obvious (he sees that everyone’s a hypocrite, even his pious
mother), there’s a refreshing candor and lack of condescension and smugness: despite
their faults, everyone has redeemable features. The strong cast, director Steve
Taylor and cowriters Miller, Taylor and Ben Pearson don’t hit viewers over the
head with their clichés. The hi-def image is very good; extras include a commentary,
making-of featurette, deleted scenes and other featurette.
Full Metal Jacket
(Warners)
Stanley Kubrick’s penultimate
film—made a dozen years before his death in 1999—is a dense, personal chronicle
of young men being transformed into a military fighting machine. With Vietnam
as a backdrop, Kubrick shoots many unforgettable images of that disastrous war,
like Hue City and the Tet Offensive, but his main interest lies in the philosophical underpinnings of the psychological
damage the military apparatus inflicts. The first half’s clinical, detached
look at basic training is exploded by the second half, in which boot camp’s precision
degenerates into helter-skelter horrors on the battlefield. The Blu-ray image
is excellent; extras include a commentary, featurette and bonus DVD, an
hour-long documentary about the master’s voluminous research, Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes.
(Sony)
This sci-fi flick, set in the
year 2079, has a space prison colony being overrun by prisoners—and the president’s
daughter is a hostage. Enter a gnarly hero who must go in and save her. There’s
no wasting time on anything other than action sequences—which are well done—so,
by the time one thinks about the silliness of the premise, the movie’s over. It’s
co-directed by Stephen Saint Leger and James Mather (two people were needed to
helm this?), both disciples of Luc Besson, the empty-spectacle auteur, who is
one of the producers. The movie looks first-rate on Blu; extras include making-of
featurettes.
(Magnolia)
Kevin McDonald’s documentary about
late, great reggae superstar Bob Marley may have been produced by family and
friends of the singer, but this is no hagiography. Instead, over 145 minutes,
the measure of the man and artist (who died at age 36 in 1981 of cancer) is
taken, through interviews with wife Rita, girlfriend Cindy Breakspeare, members
of his band the Wailers and many others who knew him. With excellent vintage video
footage and photographs, along with audio interviews with the man himself, Marley is a hard-hitting, personal bio.
The image, while soft at times, has appropriate grain; extras include
additional interviews, MacDonald and Ziggy Marley’s commentary.
(Criterion)
The Dardenne brothers have become
the darlings of the international festival circuit over the past 15 years, even
if their recent films (The Son, The Kid
with a Bike) are pale imitations of their earlier gems; their first two
features are on Blu-ray thanks to the Criterion Collection. 1996’s La Promesse and 1999’s Rosetta are two sides of the same coin, seen
through their teenage protagonists’ eyes: the Dardennes present moral dilemmas
in the guise of simply plotted stories that emphasize character over action. Criterion’s
impeccable hi-def transfers highlight their gritty handheld camerawork; extras
include Dardenne interviews and new interviews with the films’ principal
actors.
(Kino)
Derek Jarman’s early films show painfully
slow growth. 1976’s Sebastiane, a
biopic of the crucified saint, is a first feature (co-directed with Paul
Humfress) whose ragged amateurishness shows, spoken Latin notwithstanding,
while 1979’s The Tempest is a draggy
Shakespeare adaptation with clever moments. Jarman was still finding his way; it
wasn’t until 1986’s Caravaggio that
he finally made a fully-formed feature. The 16mm prints of both films, upgraded
to Blu-ray, allow a minimal advance in graininess and sharpness; Tempest extras comprise three Jarman
short films.
Casa de mi Padre
(Lionsgate)
“From the gringos who brought you
Anchorman” is the tagline for this
inoffensive but insubstantial spoof that might have worked as a five-minute SNL
skit. Will Farrell gamely speaks Spanish, but being Mexican is beyond him; stellar
support comes from Gael Garcia Bernal and gorgeous Genesis Rodriguez, who
between this and Man on a Ledge starts
off her movie career with a bang. But the movie remains in a sort of suspended
animation between amiable parody and Farrell’s usual stoopid shtick. Extras
include a commentary, interview, making-of featurette, deleted scenes and music
video.
(CJ Entertainment)
These thrillers are examples of Korean
hit-or-miss genre flicks. Hindsight is
a too-clever evocation of the old “boy meets gal, gal turns out to be hired
killer” trope that was done better in Prizzi’s
Honor. The performers are game, but they’re sunk by a soggy script.
However, No Mercy is a tautly
chilling cop drama with incisively drawn characters that keep one watching,
even if it goes on for an overlong two hours. Extras include interviews and
featurettes.
(e one)
The distinctive hand-drawn
animation of French director Jacques-Remy Girerd highlights this environmentally
conscious feature that parallels the great films of Japanese anime master Hayao
Miyazaki. While not as profound or visually brilliant as Miyazaki’s Ponyo or Spirited Away, Mia has an offhand charm that make it watchable for
the entire family. It would have been nice to have the original French language
track; extras include a Girerd interview and making-of featurette.
(Cinema Libre)
Brian Malone’s documentary
attempts to even-handedly dissect our damaged political system, but like Jon
Stewart’s 2010 D.C. rally, it pretends that the right-wing noise machine and less
truculent left-wing side are equal, when they obviously aren’t. Still, there’s valuable
info and insight gleaned from talking heads on both sides of the aisle—including
former Senator Alan Simpson, who gets directly to the heart of today’s madness—and,
looking closely at footage from tea party rallies, it’s obvious that the right
is the harbinger of this mess; an impotent left is the reason why there’s a stalemate
instead of true progressive policies.
(Acorn)
The Nazi sinking of the British
passenger ship Laconia in 1942 is well-known in England but not here: but this superbly
scripted and directed thriller about what happened before, during and after one
of the most heinous actions of the war by either side should fill in the blanks
for interested viewers. Marvelous physical trappings notwithstanding (and unavoidable
soap opera qualities to the various stories), it’s the excellent acting by the
likes of Brian Cox, Lindsay Duncan and Franka Potente to bring a human dimension
to an epic survival tale. The lone extra is a half-hour doc about actual
survivors’ stories.
Jean Francaix: Wind Chamber Music
(BIS)
Belgian composer Jean Francaix
may have been a weird stickler about the pronunciation of his name (Fran-SEX,
believe it or not), but his attractive and immensely tuneful music belies his
offbeat personality. This disc of four of his wind chamber music works includes
two wind quintets, a wind quartet and a Divertissement, all supremely confident
and wonderfully beguiling. The Bergen Woodwind Quartet’s performances
underscore Francaix’s sonic richness.
(Supraphon)
To most, Czech operas comprise
Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and
Dvorak’s Rusalka. This 1980 recording
of another Smetana opera, this one based on Czech history, displays a wide-ranging musical
palette encompassing chorales, marches and Wagner-like heaviness. This Brno State Opera
performance, conducted by Vaclav Smetacek, is appropriately dramatic, and magnificent Czech singers like Vilem Pribyl, Vaclev
Zitek and Eva Depoltova powerfully convey its musical might.
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