Blu-rays of the Week
Central Intelligence
(Warner Bros)
Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart team up for this latest “odd couple” comedy
about high school chums who get together 20 years later, one of them an
accountant and the other a CIA agent: craziness ensues. There are plenty of laughs,
even if much of the unrated cut’s two hours is spent spinning wheels
desperately looking for lots of cheap jokes (most of which it finds). Hart and Johnson
make a surprisingly potent team, but Jason Bateman is wasted as the school jerk
turned corporate jerk-off. The movie has a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras
include a gag reel, alternate scenes, and a commentary
(Arrow)
One of the leading lights of the Ozploitation movement, Australian director
Brian Trenchard-Smith made this 1996 horror parody with moments of gleeful
goriness alongside moments of gob smacking idiocy. You get what you came for,
in either case, and the whole thing is mindless (and occasionally sarcastic) fun.
The Arrow set includes a nicely-detailed hi-def transfer and a plethora of
extras: director’s commentary, Trenchard-Smith’s classic documentary The Stuntmen, and his 1978
public-service short Hospitals Don’t Burn
Down.
Dekalog
Director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s 1988 magnum opus—ten hour-long films for
Polish television in which he and cowriter Krzysztof Piesiewicz transformed the
ten Commandments into compelling modern parables—has writing, directing and
acting that coalesce into a true masterpiece. It’s too bad Kieslowski took the
metaphysical aspects of his filmmaking to their illogical extremes with his Three Colors trilogy, since Dekalog showed off a superior balance of
the physical and metaphysical. Criterion’s magnificent set includes fantastic
hi-def transfers of all 10 episodes—along with the features made from episodes
five and six, A Short Film about Killing and
A Short Film about Love—and extras
comprising many interviews with Kieslowski, Piesiewicz, several actors, three cinematographers
and an editor, along with Annette Insdorf’s appreciation and analysis of the
series.
(C Major)
Based on several Joni Mitchell songs both familiar and obscure, Jane
Grand-Maitre’s inventively choreographed ballet finds the danceable moves inside
these iconic tunes, and the Alberta Ballet Company gives them a thorough
workout that fellow Canadian Mitchell will surely appreciate. The hi-def audio
and video are excellent; extras include interviews with Mitchell, Grand-Maitre
and dancers from the company, along with Mitchell’s own video installation of
the set.
High Noon
Johnny Guitar
(Olive Signature)
For its new Blu-ray line, Olive’s Signature Series gives classic films new
releases comprising a hi-def transfer with new and illuminating extras. The
first titles are classic westerns. High
Noon (1952) is Fred Zinnemann’s tense and terse showdown starring Gary
Cooper, Lloyd Bridges and Grace Kelly, while Johnny Guitar (1954) is Nicholas Ray’s exciting showdown starring
Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden (in a rare romantic lead), Ernest Borgnine and
Mercedes McCambridge. Both films have glistening transfers and extras
comprising new interviews and featurettes; Johnny
also includes a commentary.
Jekyll & Hyde…together again
(Olive Films)
Jerry Belson’s bombastic 1982 parody of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic horror
tale overdoes the humor whether it’s Jekyll or Hyde onscreen (Mark Blankenfield
is a blank in both roles), even while he’s getting various nubile actresses—including
charmer Bess Armstrong—into compromising positions. Amazingly, it took four
writers to come up with this comic misfire. The Blu-ray transfer looks good, at
least.
Love Me or Leave Me
(Warner Archive)
In this grandly entertaining biopic set during the Roaring ‘20s (and the ‘30s),
Doris Day plays Ruth Etting, who went from small-time dancer to singing star
with the help of her gangster manager-turned-husband, Moe Snyder, played by James
Cagney with his usual blustery menace (for which he got a Best Actor Oscar
nomination). Day and Cagney make a formidably fractious pair, and Day sings a
bunch of hits ranging from “My Blue Heaven” to the title song. Charles Vidor’s
colorful Cinemascope music drama has a terrific hi-def transfer; extras
comprise vintage featurettes, a few starring the real Ruth Etting.
(Criterion)
Carol Reed’s exciting 1940 thriller, which owes much to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, is a rollercoaster
ride that takes on more urgency than usual since it’s ripped from then-current
headlines: Nazis kidnap an eminent Czech scientist and his daughter, while a
British spy pretends to be a Nazi officer while he’s trying to free them. Despite
arid stretches, Reed really picks up the pace for a humdinger of a climax at involving
cable cars at the Swiss border. Criterion’s Blu-ray contains its usual
excellent transfer and a discussion between two film scholars about Reed’s
film.
Othello
(Opus Arte)
For the latest Royal Shakespeare Company production of the Bard’s simmering
drama, director Iqbal Khan’s idea is to cast both Iago and Othello with black
actors—Lucian Msamati and Hugh Quarshie, respectively—to make secondary the
racial component of their adversarial relationship, even though it remains in
Shakespeare’s text. With lesser actors, it might not work, but both Msamati and
Quarshie hit the play’s high points—and Joanna Vanderham is a heartbreaking
Desdemona—so the conceit gets a fine dramatic workout. Hi-def video and audio
are first-rate; extras are Khan’s commentary and two featurettes.
(Criterion)
Kenzi Mizoguchi is one of Japan’s most revered directors, although I’d put
several masters—Ozu, Naruse, Kurosawa, Kobayashi, Imamura and Ichikawa—ahead of
him. Still, his greatest film is this intimate and absorbing 1939 portrait of a
kabuki actor’s strained, complicated relationships with his family and the
woman who loves him. It’s slow-moving but builds to an overwhelmingly emotional
climax. The usual stellar hi-def transfer from Criterion is missing: it’s
acceptable but sometimes subpar. The lone extra is an interview with reviewer
Phillip Lopate.
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