Blu-rays of the Week
(Warner Archive)
In John Sturges’ tense 1955 thriller clocking in at a perfectly paced 81
minutes, Spencer Tracy plays a wounded war vet whose arrival in a remote
western town sets off the locals in a spirited and ugly campaign to be rid of
him. The widescreen photography by William C. Melor is spectacular, Andre Previn’s
effective music matches the nerve-wracking mood, and although Tracy is too old
for the lead, it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing his role. There’s a superior
hi-def transfer; the lone extra is a commentary by film expert Dana Polan.
(Warner Archive)
The Battle of the Bulge—the final nail in the Nazi war machine’s coffin—was
still recent history when William A. Wellman’s searing 1949 dramatic recreation
was made, and it remarkably lacks both melodramatics and sentimentality (with barely
any music heard and patriotic marches left until the final credits). Despite
the constraints of its era, it remains a tough testament to war’s harshness and
the bravery of the men who fight. The B&W film looks luminous on Blu-ray;
extras comprise a vintage cartoon and vintage featurette.
Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!
(Olive)
One of the least inspired of Bob Hope’s vehicles, this weak 1966 comedy
concerns a desperate real-estate broker who lucks into prosperity when a
runaway Hollywood megastar stays at his lone property. Hope is game but looks lost,
Elke Sommer is beautifully befuddled as the screen queen, and Phyllis Diller
ridiculously wasted as Hope’s housekeeper in this frantic but dated attempt to
be “with-it.” There’s a fine hi-def transfer.
(Lionsgate)
Writer-director Zack Whedon’s crime drama is an exceedingly slow burn, as
our hero searches for his missing girlfriend who he soon discovers was not whom
he thought she was: liberally mixing in flashbacks, Whedon loses his way in a
mess of false leads and ends up strangling what might have been an interesting
mystery. Attractive lead performances by Aaron Paul and Annabelle Wallis somewhat
compensate. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include featurette and
commentary.
The Light Between Oceans
(Dreamworks/Touchstone)
Derek Cianfrance’s unapologetically grand, old-fashioned tragic romance from
M.L. Stedman’s novel about a lighthouse keeper, his wife and the baby that
improbably washes ashore in their remote location is greatly enhanced by luminous
widescreen compositions awash in natural light. Michael Fassbender and Alicia
Vikander are perfectly cast as the couple; Rachel Weisz does wonders with the underwritten
role as a widow who haunts them. On Blu-ray, Adam Arkapan’s photography comes
to ravishing life; extras are Cianfrance’s commentary and two featurettes.
(Lionsgate)
Nicolas Roeg’s inscrutable 1976 sci-fi story hasn’t aged well: if anything,
its visual dazzle has been further eclipsed by its thematic and narrative
incoherence, along with David Bowie’s zombie-like screen presence. On Blu-ray,
Tony Richmond’s creative camerawork remains the main focus; extras include an archival
Bowie interview (from French TV), featurette about the music, interviews with
Roeg, Richmond and actress Candy Clark (whose performance is the best in a film
that also wastes Rip Torn and Buck Henry), poster and 72-page booklet.
The Men’s Club
(Olive)
This frivolously sexist 1986 drama about a group of men whose whiny get-together
is followed by a night of debauchery in a brothel was adapted by Leonard
Michaels from his own book without much conviction: the movie is filled with
boring monologues, clichéd conservations and implausible relationships. Peter
Medak likewise directs without much distinction; amazingly, his next three
films would be top-notch: The Krays, Let
Him Have It and Romeo Is Bleeding.
Estimable actors—Roy Scheider, Harvey Keitel, Frank Langella, Richard Jordan,
David Dukes, Craig Wesson—are outclassed by the women, however badly written
their characters are: an uncredited Helen Shaver steals her lone scene, and
Penny Baker, Marilyn Jones and Gwen Welles run circles around their male counterparts.
There’s a good, grainy transfer.
(Olive)
Barely a feature at 67 minutes, Harold Young’s 1939 espionage drama fails
to wring suspense out of its flimsy plot of a plant worker accused of
sabotaging work done there, thereby causing the plant’s closure and deaths of
three test fliers. Wooden acting by Charley Grapewin, Gordon Oliver and Arleen
Whelan, along with stolid writing and even flimsier directing, relegates this
to the realm of the forgettable; with so many older films begging for hi-def
release, why put this out?
DVDs of the Week
The Free World
(IFC)
This downbeat drama, which strains for significance but ends up trumpeting
its own incoherence and thinness, follows a man just released from prison for
murders he didn’t commit: while working at a dog shelter, he befriends a
beaten-down wife, whom he helps flee when she kills her abusive policeman
husband. Typical of writer-director Jason Lew’s film is its bludgeoning insistence
that being out of his prison as is bad as being in, as well as equating our
protagonist with the canines he’s entrusted with. Boyd Holbrook and Elisabeth
Moss do what they can to make their characters believable, but are defeated in
the end.
(Omnibus/Film Movement)
What begins as an intriguing conceit—a multi-character study of dozens of
Queens neighbors, none of whom came to the aid of Kitty Genovese when she was brutally
(and fatally) attacked late one night in 1964—soon degenerates into an exploitive
mishmash of melodrama and fake climaxes, all of which come to a head during
that fateful evening. Writer-director Puk Grasten builds up “suspense” at the dying
woman’s expense, and providing little insight into his characters, whose problems
happened to come to a head at the exact time they could have helped a victim in
dire need.
CDs of the Week
Mstislav Rostropovich—Complete
Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon
One of the foremost cellists of the second half of the last century,
Russian Mstislav Rostropovich had a long and winding career that not only
encompassed the standard repertoire but also many modern composers who wrote
works that he championed. In addition to his characterful cello playing, he was
also an accomplished piano accompanist and a sensitive conductor, and this
superlative 37-CD boxed set of everything he recorded for Decca, Deutsche Grammophon
and Philips from 1950 to 2004 encompasses this renaissance musician’s oeuvre,
whether with his bow, at the keyboard or on the podium. There are recordings of
Vivaldi, Handel, Haydn and—lots of—Beethoven, especially the latter’s chamber
works; three equally graceful recordings over a period of 10 years of Schubert’s
sublime String Quintet; concertos by Schumann, Dvorak, and Brahms; and even two
full-length operas he conducted, Puccini’s Tosca
and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades.
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