Blu-rays of the Week
Aerosmith—Rock for the Rising Sun
(Eagle Rock)
After the devastating 2011 earthquake/tsunami,
Aerosmith performed a highly charged concert for an arena filled with thankful Japanese
fans. With the band at its onstage best, interspersed among a selection of its most
enduring songs—surprisingly but satisfyingly heavy on its vintage ‘70s era, not
the pop-hit laden ‘90s—are glimpse of the members touring Japan and seeing what
their fans have endured. But the 90 blistering minutes of rock where Steven Tyler,
Joe Perry and company are in sync show that Aerosmith is anything but washed up.
The Blu-ray image is good, the sound even better; two bonus performances are
extras (although why not simply include them in the film?).
Babette’s Feast
(Criterion)
Gabriel Axel’s masterly adaptation
of Isak Dinesen’s short story (1988 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner) remains an insightful,
profound film about the triumph of body over soul. As the French cook who makes
a sumptuous multi-course meal for her pious bosses, two sisters in a small
Danish town, Stephane Audran is perfection; Axel’s subtle, simple directorial
style is another masterstroke, and of course the food looks delicious. The
Blu-ray image looks amazing; extras include Axel and Audran interviews and Karen Blixen—Storyteller, a Dinesen
documentary portrait.
Greystoke—The Legend of Tarzan,
Lord of the Apes
(Warner Archive)
After the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire, director Hugh Hudson
made a few financial and critical flops: although 1985’s Revolution with Al Pacino was embarrassingly bad, his 1984 Tarzan
adaptation was a serious attempt to make a realistic drama about the mythical
king of the apes. Beautifully shot and edited, with incredibly lifelike
performances by men and women in ape costumes, the movie unfortunately never
reaches dramatic or tragic heights, however intelligently done. The Blu-ray
image looks decent; Hudson and producer Garth Thomas’s informative commentary
is the lone extra.
(Music Box)
This impressively mounted
procedural about two pedophile murders committed 23 years apart nevertheless
commits errors of judgment, omission and commission. Director Baran bo Odar
steadily but blatantly crosscuts among detectives, killers, victims and
parents, but never reaches any sort of satisfying climax, despite the
brilliance of individual sequences and his large cast: the melodramatic way things
are wrapped up is too tidy. The hi-def image looks immaculate; extras include
Odar’s earlier short Quietsch, his
accomplished student feature Under the
Sun and cast interviews.
Trance
(Fox)
Danny Boyle makes movies that are
easy to hate, with their hyperkinetic imagery, wall-to-wall pulse-pounding
music and plots that make scant sense. If Trance
is not as glib as Oscar winner Slumdog
Millionaire, neither does it have a credible real-life story like 127 Hours. Watching criminals outfox one
another for a stolen Goya painting isn’t as good a time as Boyle thinks; the best
performance, by Rosario Dawson, is unsurprisingly overshadowed by her too-brief
seconds of full frontal nudity, seen in glorious hi-def (the rest of the movie also
looks great on Blu-ray). Extras include a 60-minute making-of, 16 minutes of
deleted scenes and interviews.
(Fox)
It’s hard to believe that this
stiffly acted, ludicrously plotted attempt at horror was made by the same
Francis Coppola who won Oscars for The
Godfather 40 years ago. There’s nothing sadder than a has-been trying to keep
current: this trashy vampire/ghost story would only be risible starring Kristen
Stewart, but as directed by Coppola and enacted by a sleepwalking Val Kilmer
and always-crazed Bruce Dern, it’s pretty insipid. The Blu-ray image is
eye-popping; the lone extra is Gia Coppola’s making-of documentary.
Welcome to the Punch
(IFC)
Kinetic action dominates director
Eran Creevy’s strangely compelling cop-action flick, with James McAvoy a
perfect anti-hero whose playing both sides results in the deaths of his partner
and boss, along with nearly everyone else. What begins as a straightforward
procedural soon takes a weird turn into a flashy shoot-‘em-up, as machine guns
are emptied into bodies left and right. The acting—by McAvoy, Andrea
Riseborough, Peter Mullan, Mark Strong and David Morrissey—helps greatly. The
Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include interviews and making-of featurette.
Arcadia
(Film Movement)
In writer-director Olivia Silver’s
low-key drama, John Hawkes plays a dad who drives his three kids cross-country to
a new life in California: he doesn’t tell his daughters (16 and 12) and son (9)
that their mom had a nervous breakdown. There’s so much wise observation that
when the truth is shredded—a scene at the Grand Canyon rings especially
false—it makes a shambles of what’s otherwise a superbly acted (Hawkes and the
child performers, Ryan Simpkins, Ty Simpkins and Kendall Toole, are equally
masterly) and intensely quiet character study. The disc’s extra, short film Little Canyon, is Silver’s own run-through
for what became Arcadia.
Bidder 70
(First Run)
The insanity of our government continuing
to bow down to big business interests at the public’s expense was enough for activist
Tim DeChristopher, who disrupted a sale of public land for private development:
that he went to prison for two years to highlight the issue is a remarkably
selfless act. Beth and George Gage’s enraging documentary shows that civil
disobedience is about all we have left in a society where the largest
corporations have the rights of individuals without any drawbacks, while our
current president doesn’t seem interested in reining in these egregious abuses.
(Warner Archive)
If you forgot what a stunner
Raquel Welch was and why she was the quintessential screen sexpot, look no
further than this routine 1972 drama about a roller derby queen whose personal
life is a shambles. Welch was never the greatest actress, but there’s not much
depth to Thomas Rickman and Calvin Clements’ script or Jerrold Freedman’s
direction, so that she’s sympathetic as the shallow heroine is nothing to
sneeze at. She can also roller skate well, so there’s that!
London—The Modern Babylon
(Cinedigm)
Julien Temple’s collage history tour
of London takes in the British capital’s sights and sounds through vintage
footage, speeches, songs and clips from movies and other media. While it
doesn’t have the staying power of Terrence Davies’ intensely personal foray
into the same territory, Of Time and the
City, Temple provides a succinct overview of London’s “life,” with clever
use of tunes from the likes of David Bowie and the Sex Pistols. A Temple
interview is the lone extra.
(Artsploitation)
In this alternately ponderous and
intriguing sci-fi flick, Lithuanian director Kristina Buozyte follows a man who
aids a comatose young woman by locking psyches with her: in an adult twist on The Twilight Zone, they become intimate and
he starts losing his grip on his marriage in the physical world. Buozyte has a
dazzling eye—helped, no doubt, by her creative director and co-screenwriter,
Bruno Samper—but her imagery is out of Tarkovsky by way of Kubrick, and the
longer her film goes on, the less dazzling and more pretentious it becomes.
Still, she remains impressively in control, as do her actors (particularly
Jurga Jutaite, who plays the sleeping young woman with awesome physicality). Buozyte’s
first film, The Collectress, and an interview
are extras.
CD of the Week
Schubert—Complete Works for Violin and
Piano
(Hyperion)
Franz Schubert, despite his early
death at age 31, had different composing periods: he was just beginning his
mature period—comprising his three last piano sonatas, the String Quintet and
final string quartet—when he died in 1828. Among those towering final works is
the C major Fantasy for violin and piano, the greatest of the seven attractive violin-piano
works on this wonderful two-disc set. Violinist Alina Ibragimova and pianist
Cedric Tiberghien’s youthful enthusiasm fits the young Schubert’s joyful four
violin sonatas and B minor Rondo; but they only scratch the surface of the
depths of the Fantasy, however beautiful they make it sound.
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