November '17 Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week 

Afterimage

(Film Movement)

The great Polish director Andrzej Wajda's last film—completed before his death last year at age 90—is not up to hi many masterpieces, but it is an impassioned and probing study of Polish modernist painter Władysław Strzemiński. Bogusław Linda gives a bravura performance, and if Wajda dips into melodrama at times, his film is still a worthy epitaph. It looks superb on Blu-ray, there’s a film professor Stuart Liebman commentary, and there’s Wajda on Wajda, an in-depth interview before the master’s death in which he discusses his best and most important films, from his 1955 debut A Generation to his remarkably fertile final decade. Most impressive is that many clips from his classics are in HD, boding well for future releases.

Atomic Blonde

(Universal)

Charlize Theron is in rare form as a secret agent who kicks ass and takes names without a cape or anything resembling superhero paraphernalia in this loud, overlong but enjoyable action flick set in Cold War Berlin. The story makes absolutely no sense, but Theron is having so much fun as the sleek, sexy and extraordinarily lethal assassin that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to have a few sequels. The film looks splendid on Blu-ray; extras include director David Leitch commentary, deleted and extended scenes, and several featurettes.

J.D.’s Revenge 

(Arrow)

This weirdly wacky 1973 thriller—part of the ‘70s Blaxploitation movement—concerns a young man who, after being hypnotized, is invaded by the spirit of a killer who murdered his girlfriend decades earlier. The energy of the cast overcomes the absolute insanity (not to mention inanity) of the script, making this the very definition of “guilty pleasure” for those so inclined. There’s a decent hi-def transfer; extras include The Killing Floor, a retrospective featurette on the film with interviews; and an audio interview with actor David McKnight.

Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait

(Cohen Media)

Director Pappi Corsicato presents one of the contemporary art world’s biggest names, in all his personal and professional glory, by interviewing wives, daughters, friends, colleagues and admirers (among them Al Pacino and Willem Dafoe), along with the man himself. Corsicato makes canny use of Schnabel’s own archive of home movies and photos, along with footage of his most recent works. But by saving Schnabel’s greatest achievement—his 2007 film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination—for last, Corsicato shows his subject’s artistic seriousness matches his self-promotion. The hi-def transfer is excellent.

Sissi Collection

(Film Movement Classics)

In the 1950s, a youthful and glamorous Romy Schneider played Austrian Princess Elisabeth (“Sissi”) in a series of colorful if dramatically cardboard films that got by on their leading lady’s star quality: Sissi (1955), Sissi: The Young Empress (1956), and Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (1957), as well as 1954’s Victoria in Dover, in which Schneider played Queen Victoria as a young princess. Along with these four films in both their original 1.33:1 ratio and widescreen versions on four Blu-ray discs, the set also contains a DVD with the English-dubbed Forever My Love, a condensed version of the Sissi films, and two featurettes.

Summer of ’42 

Scarecrow

(Warner Archive)

1971’s Summer of ’42 was one of the most beloved movies of its time, not least because of Michel Legrand’s sentimental piano theme, which matches this teary but affecting look at the end of innocence, with winsomely beautiful Jennifer O’Neill the perfect fantasy woman for the horny but confused teen played by Gary Grimes. Co-winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow is a bumpy road movie that chronicles the lasting friendship between two drifters—on the plus side, this scattershot character study has powerhouse performances by Gene Hackman and Al Pacino. Both films have solid hi-def transfers; Scarecrow’s lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Zoology

(Arrow Academy)

Ivan I. Tverdovsky’s bizarre drama is an allegory, a fable, a cautionary tale: but of what? A middle-aged zoo functionary sprouts a fleshy tail which only accentuates her distance from everybody—from relentlessly mocking co-workers to an overbearing, religious mother—except, improbably, the handsome young radiologist who took X-rays of her new growth. Natalya Pavlenkova’s emotionally naked portrayal of the heroine is the main reason to see Tverdovsky’s film, which stumbles as it attempts to be simultaneously realistic and fantastical. It looks great on Blu; extras are interviews with actor Dmitry Groshev and Tverdovsky enthusiast Peter Hames.

DVDs of the Week
Indiscretion

(MPI)

Mira Sorvino—where has she been?—shines as the wife of a New Orleans politician with a nubile teenage daughter who has a short affair with a sexy sculptor, only to be at the mercy of his crazed wrath when she breaks it off. This latest variation of Fatal Attraction reverses genders and tosses in the daughter falling for the heartsick maniac for good measure; but Sorvino acts the hell out of it, even during the last reels’ risible reversals and reveals while the entire movie goes off the rails. The lone extra is an audio commentary.

The Settlers 

(Film Movement)

Writer-director Shimon Dotan’s potent examination of Jewish settlements doesn’t pretend to be the most scrupulously evenhanded documentary, but it does provide necessary historical and political context for this seemingly untenable but at the same time unfixable situation. Interviews with Israelis who’ve chosen to live there—including some who are virulently anti-Palestinian—are balanced by glimpses of Palestinians whose own existence has been upset by the encroaching settlements.