Blu-rays of the Week
Argo
(Warners)
Director-star Ben Affleck
dramatizes the so-strange-it-must-be-true story of U.S. embassy workers in
Tehran during the 1979-80 hostage crisis holed up in the Canadian ambassador’s
house while the CIA concocted an elaborate rescue plan. This is solid Hollywood
moviemaking: Affleck smartly surrounds himself with top-notch actors and films
it straightforwardly. The tension remains even though we know the outcome: it’s
just too bad that Affleck can’t resist adding a phony “skin of their teeth”
climax. On Blu-ray, it looks superb; extras include Affleck and writer Chris
Terrio’s commentary, several featurettes and a documentary about the hostages on
the 25th anniversary of their rescue.
(Sony)
Despite her enormously warm
presence, Rashida Jones is defeated in this irritating comedy of a couple that
can’t let go despite knowing they should split up. Jones’ costar Andy Samberg’s
one-note presence drags the movie down to a sophomoric level whenever he’s
onscreen. But Jones is also to blame, since she co-wrote the script with McCormack:
the writer lets the actress down. In addition, the delightful Ari Graynor (who
plays Jones’ best friend) also deserves better. The Blu-ray image is decent;
extras include commentaries, deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Tribeca)
A lone samurai warrior arrives at
his lord’s estate hoping for an honorable death in this latest retelling of the
epic swashbuckler immortalized in 1962 by master director Masaki Kobayashi. For
this unnecessary remake, director Takashi Miike makes it all very stylish and
lush—the original was in black and white, while this version is in vivid
color—but not particularly compelling. Needless to say, the splashy visuals
look amazing on Blu-ray, but since Kobayashi’s classic is available on Blu-ray
from Criterion, this is an expandable release. The lone extra is Geoffrey
Gilmore’s brief discussion of the film.
(MPI)
Writer-director Guillaume Canet’s
heavy-handed French Big Chill is a protracted
tale of friends who gather at a beach house while one of them is in the ICU seriously
injured from a motorcycle accident. The movie keeps stopping dead with scenes
that do nothing to further our interest in the characters, who reek of
self-indulgence and insufferability for 2-1/2 hours. Marion Cotillard, always
intense, cements her rep as cinema’s best crier, while she and good actors like
Francois Cluzet and Gilles Lelouche have only stick figures to play. The movie has
a warm sheen in hi-def; extras include featurettes.
(Fox)
In Ben Lewin’s comic drama, John
Hawkes is fantastic as Mark O’Brien, a man who’s spent most of his life in an
iron lung, and who wants a sexual encounter—so he calls a sex therapist, played
with astonishing tenderness by Helen Hunt, the rare American actress at ease
with plentiful nudity. Lewin’s light touch is perfect for such adult subject
matter and ordinary protagonist, but it’s his actors—save William Macy, too Macy-ish
as Mark’s father confessor of sorts—who save the day. The Blu-ray image is
immaculate; extras include featurettes and interviews.
Diana Vreeland—The Eye Has to
Travel
(e one)
Diana Vreeland—a leading fashionista long before that term gained
currency—edited Vogue and transformed
the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s moribund Costume Institute into something special.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s otherwise pedestrian documentary of a terrific
subject at least includes wonderful archival footage of the woman herself,
along with discussions on her career and legacy by Marisa Berenson, Twiggy, Calvin
Klein and others. Extras include additional interviews.
(First Run)
The world of high fashion
modeling is shown in all its smarmy non-glory in David Redmon and Ashley
Sabin’s tough documentary portrait. Unblinking cameras follow 13-year-old Siberian
Nadya—who goes to Japan for her big break, unable to understand the language—and
Ashley, a former model who selects newbies to (possibly) become famous in Japan.
Not that it’s revelatory, but seeing how these innocent girls are treated in an
industry that spits them out daily is disturbing to watch. Extras comprise
deleted scenes.
(Warners)
The final season of the popular TV
series about the young and beautiful on Manhattan’s Upper East Side is a
lively, amusingly superficial chronicle of the one percent spending its time
insulated from the rest of the world. Still, one could do worse than watch the great
Margaret Colin at her snarky best, and the vivacious Leighton Meester and Blake
Lively are not to be taken lightly either. Extras include on-set featurettes
and a gag reel.
(First Run)
In his first feature in several years,
master documentarian Ross McElwee again trains his camera on himself—this time,
he also returns to Europe to look up a long-ago girlfriend and deals with the
difficulties his adult son has separating the virtual and real worlds. As
always, McElwee manages to find humor amidst heartbreak and insightfully
analyzes the very mediums he uses: photography, film and digital are parsed to reveal
their importance to one’s past, present and even future.
(Impulse)
These triple X movies are considered
the height of “artistic porn” in the early 1980s; but although Fred Lincoln—the
nominal director—was able to keep the camera focused on the correct body parts
throughout, he’s no Radley Metzger or Gerard Damiano, to name two better
purveyors of erotica. The hardcore scenes are intact—so beware to anyone
unfamiliar with these movies—but so are the flimsy storylines: nowadays, the “gonzo”
shooting style has done away with pointless “plots.” The lone noteworthy
achievement is the genuine beauty of Loni Sanders in Same Time.
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