Blu-rays of the Week
(Film Movement)
Although he’s made memorable dramas about family bonds (Still Walking; Like Father Like Son), Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda comes up
short with his latest about Ryota, a writer and gambler behind on support
payments for his son. As always, Kore-eda has enormous sympathy or every
character, and Hiroshi Abe’s sensitive portrayal beautifully balances Ryota’s
irresponsibility with half-hearted attempts to mend fences, letting us root for
him even as he keeps screwing up. But Kore-eda’s insight into tempestuous
family relationships is only intermittent, despite wonderful moments scattered
throughout, especially in the final rainstorm scenes. The hi-def transfer is excellent;
extras are a 75-minute making-of documentary and a short film, The Last Dream, by directors Noemie
Nakai and Carmen Kobayashi.
Beatrice et Benedict
(Opus Arte)
French director Laurent Pally’s amusing 2016 production of Hector Berlioz’s
charming opera based on Shakespeare’s Much
Ado About Nothing juggles with, but doesn’t puncture, either the Bard or
the composer, and the result is an unalloyed delight. As the eponymous haters-turned-lovers,
American Paul Appleby and French soprano Stephanie d’Oustrac are perfect
together and apart, while Sophie Karthauser provides winsome support as the aptly-named
Hero. Hi-def video and audio are superb; lone extra is a backstage featurette.
Everything, Everything
I know, I know: I’m not the target audience for this treacly adaptation of
a YA novel by Nicola Yoon. But even teens and pre-teens surely see the
contrivance and melodrama of a plot about a teenage girl stuck in her house
since she was a baby due to a damaged auto-immune system who finds love—and freedom—when
the new cute boy next door notices her. Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson are good
and Anika Noni Rose as the over-protective mom is superb, but the movie never
breaks out of its cutesy trajectory from the first frame. The film looks quite
good on Blu; extras are deleted scenes and featurettes.
Freebie and the Bean
(Warner Archive)
Richard Rush—who went on to direct the dazzling 1980 feature The Stunt Man—helmed this ramshackle,
politically incorrect but eminently watchable comic drama about a couple of
borderline-inept detectives who fight each other more than they track down criminals.
James Caan and Alan Arkin are at the top of their game, while Rush dazzlingly
uses San Francisco locations for several daring car chases all the more
impressive for their authenticity, unlike fake, CGI-laden sequences proliferating
today. Warner Archive’s hi-def transfer is first-rate.
The Zodiac Killer
Low-budget doesn’t begin to describe the Z-movie specs of Tom Hanson’s 1971
drama that ineptly but earnestly tries to dramatize the horrifying drama of the
infamous murderer that terrorized the Bay Area: amateurish acting, distaff
writing and non-existent directing all sink it. The Blu-ray—which shows off a
messy surviving print in hi-def—also includes an equally risible feature, Another Son of Sam (1977), director’s
commentary and retrospective interviews.
DVDs of the Week
The Summer of All My Parents
Louise on the Shore
(First Run)
In one-named director Diasteme’s intimate character study, The Summer of All My Parents, teenage
sisters—one 17, the other 14—must deal with their own (and their sister’s) sexual
confusion and their divorced parents’ new lives; a superlative cast led by two
remarkable young actresses as the sisters, Luna Lou and Alma Jodorowsky hits
all the right marks. Louise on the Shore,
Jean-Francois Lagionie’s inventive animated film, about a 70-ish woman who
finds herself alone after a freak storm at her usual vacation spot strands her,
is filled with spare, lovely touches (including a talking dog companion) that
make this far more than a mere kids’ flick.
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