Lethal Weapon Collection – Blu-ray Disc

August 12, 2012Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Lethalweapon2cap

LETHAL WEAPON (1987)
**/**** Image B- Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey, Tom Atkins
screenplay by Shane Black
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 2 (1989)
**½/**** Image B Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Joss Ackland
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 3 (1992)
ZERO STARS/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam and Jeffrey Boam (sic) & Robert Mark Kamen
directed by Richard Donner

LETHAL WEAPON 4 (1998)
*/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D
starring Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo
screenplay by Channing Gibson
directed by Richard Donner

by Walter Chaw It’s tough to convey exactly how fresh Lethal Weapon seemed in 1987. The leap that Woody Boyd’s girlfriend–half-naked in frilly bloomers–takes off a high-rise in the early going, the character of unstable police sergeant Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson, before we knew he wasn’t acting), even the buddying up of Riggs with “too old for this shit” partner Murtaugh (Danny Glover), were smart and groundbreaking. I must’ve watched this movie thirty times in those halcyon days when VHS made stuff like this and porn middle-class pursuits to be pursued in private. Lethal Weapon holds for me, still, this gritty, dirty allure: sexy, violent, nihilistic–like the first time a kid truly reads the Old Testament.

Outland (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

August 6, 2012Posted in1980s, 2012, Action, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Sci-Fi, Thriller, UK, Western

Outlandcap1

***/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B-
starring Sean Connery, Peter Boyle, Frances Sternhagen, James B. Sikking
written and directed by Peter Hyams

by Jefferson Robbins Has anybody looked at Alan “Laddie” Ladd Jr. as an auteur of U.S. film’s late-’70s/early-’80s science-fiction renaissance? By definition, the auteur theory addresses directors, but producer-execs are inevitably part of a film’s genome–at their worst, barriers to a film’s artistic ambitions, at their best, enablers of daring visions, and often rescuers or champions of interesting failures. Ladd, of course, famously midwifed and defended Star Wars (later Star Wars: Episode IV- A New Hope) while he was president of Fox, and the studio went on to shepherd Alien to theatres during his tenure.1 His production firm, The Ladd Company, sent forth Blade Runner, the first film to put a Philip K. Dick concept on the screen in addition to being very much its own, deeply influential beast. Some unifiers among these films include introductory crawls or intertitles, situating the audience in a far future or faraway galaxy; grimy or rusty milieux, painting the SF frontier as a sumptuous scrap pile; deep attention to class, with starcraft piloted by hardworking space jockeys in trucker caps; and, as it was pointed out to me on Facebook the other day, a reliance on established fantasy/SF artists (H.R. Giger, Ron Cobb, Moebius) to carry out much of the production design. Building a world costs money, and Ladd signed the checks.2

My Life as a Dog (1985) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

June 12, 2012Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Drama, Sweden, The Criterion Collection

Mitt liv som hund
**½/**** Image A- Sound B+ Extras B
starring Anton Glanzelius, Tomas von Brömssen, Anki Lidén, Melinda Kinnaman
screenplay by Lasse Hallström & Reidar Jönsson & Brasse Brännström & Per Berglund, based on the novel by Reidar Jönsson
directed by Lasse Hallström

by Angelo Muredda Before Oscar powerbrokers Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein entrusted their yearly contenders to can't-fail Stephen Daldry, there was Lasse Hallström. A three-time Academy award nominee whose Chocolat is still roundly (and somewhat unfairly, given the company of trash like Crash) dismissed as one of the most undeserving Best Picture nominees of recent years, Hallström best encapsulates the notion, popular in Oscar-watching circles, of the "fifth nominee": the uncelebrated contender who presumably just made the cut. Consecutive star-studded nonstarters like The Shipping News and An Unfinished Life–which, lest we forget, quasi-romantically paired a maimed Morgan Freeman with the existentially-troubled bear who gored him–have dimmed his reputation considerably since then, but Hallström has nevertheless assured himself a strange place in American filmmaking (not least because he is Swedish) as simultaneously one of the most-awarded and least-loved directors of the Miramax era of upmarket indies.

Amadeus: Director’s Cut (1984/2002) – [Two-Disc Special Edition] DVD + [DigiBook] Blu-ray Disc

May 23, 2012Posted in1980s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Biopic, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Musical

Peter Shaffer's Amadeus: Director's Cut
***/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
BD – Image B Sound A Extras A
starring F. Murray Abraham, Tom Hulce, Elizabeth Berridge, Simon Callow
screenplay by Peter Shaffer, based on his play
directed by Milos Forman

Amadeusdvdcap

by Walter Chaw Bringing the highbrow to the status-hungry middle in the same way as those "Bach's Greatest Hits" collections and the awful faux-llies of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Milos Forman's bawdy, jittery adaptation of Peter Shaffer's fanciful play "Amadeus" is not so much about Mozart as it is about genius and its burden on the mediocre. Mozart (Tom Hulce) is an adolescent boor touched by the hand of God; Emperor Joseph's (Jeffrey Jones) court composer Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) becomes obsessed and desperately jealous of Mozart's gift, leading him to the madhouse and confessions of murder. Amadeus works because of Forman's gift for the seedy (and portraying asylums–he directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, after all) and because of Abraham's deeply-felt performance.

Uncle Buck (1989) – Blu-ray Disc

April 21, 2012Posted in1980s, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, John Hughes

***½/**** | Image B Sound B-
starring John Candy, Amy Madigan, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macaulay Culkin
written and directed by John Hughes

by Bill Chambers It’s not John Hughes’s best film, but Uncle Buck could be his funniest, as well as his saddest. Saddest for many reasons, some of which are beyond the movie’s control. John Hughes is gone, John Candy’s gone, Macaulay Culkin’s innocence is gone; because of its place on the precipice of Hughes’s ’90s decline, revisiting Uncle Buck has long been a bittersweet prospect, but now that it’s definitively the last good John Hughes film, it’s taken on the funereal feeling of old home movies starring dead relatives. Still, the sadness isn’t entirely from without. There is in this movie a raging pathos that begins with the pariahdom of the title character and continues through a motif that finds some lost soul standing in long-shot beneath an archway (forming a makeshift picture frame), gazing uncomprehendingly at someone else, the very portrait of quiet suffering. Buck’s on the receiving end of one of these pitiful stares at least once, when the movie’s putative love interest, Chanice (Amy Madigan), walks in on him dancing with a neighbour lady (Laurie Metcalf). The song on the soundtrack is “Laugh Laugh,” The Beau Brummels‘ spiteful “I told you so” to a woman who chose the wrong man, and as Chanice’s heartbreak wafts through the air, lead singer Sal Valentino, sounding suddenly compassionate, croons, “Lonely… Oh, so lonely…”1

Conquest (1983); Contraband (1980); Zombie (1979) – DVDs|Zombie (1979) [2-Disc Ultimate Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

March 15, 2012Posted in1970s, 1980s, 2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Spain, Zombie

CONQUEST
½*/**** Image D+ Sound C
starring Fabio Testi, Marcel Bozzuffi, Ivana Monti, Guido Alberti
screenplay by Ettore Sanzo and Gianni de Chiara
directed by Lucio Fulci

Luca il contrabbandiere
**/**** Image B Sound B
starring Fabio Testi, Marcel Bozzuffi, Ivana Monti, Guido Alberti
screenplay by Ettore Sanzo and Gianni de Chiara
directed by Lucio Fulci

by Walter Chaw There's something decidedly uncinematic about the films of Lucio Fulci (excepting Don't Torture a Duckling and Four of the Apocalypse, which actually sort of rock). If not for his fascination with gore effects and his propensity for casting irritating children in irritating children parts, it'd be hard to find anything to separate his work from the grindhouse ghetto of, say, Jess Franco. As it is, the stilted claims at auteurism (he's known as the master of eye violence, mainly for a few juicy bits from The Beyond and Zombie) do more, perhaps, to relegate his work to a sort of camp gulag: the Siberia of legitimate cinema, where adolescent tools congregate for midnight showings armed with irony and a crippling baggage of disdain and contempt. I liked "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and believed that I liked it because I was sophisticated; in time, you realize that you like it because you're an officious prick who sort of gets off on mocking movies. I think a lot of people would argue that this is the role of the film critic, but I'd offer that a critic–a good one–loves film so much that he or she is offended when a movie is terrible. There's no real joy in defiling altars, particularly when they're your own.

Deep Red (1975) + Inferno (1980) – Blu-ray Discs

October 31, 2011Posted in****/****, 1970s, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Directors: Dario Argento, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Italy, Mystery, Thriller

Profondo rosso
****/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, Clara Calamai
screenplay by Dario Argento and Bernardino Zapponi
directed by Dario Argento

INFERNO
***/**** Image A- Sound B Extras D
starring Eleonora Giorgi, Gabriele Lavia, Veronica Lazar, Leopoldo Mastelloni
written and directed by Dario Argento

Mustown

DEEP RED

by Walter Chaw Deep Red is a transitional film from the middle of Dario Argento's most creative period, one that sees the Italian Hitchcock (better: the Italian De Palma) building surreal temples on Hitchcock's meticulous foundations before abandoning them–disastrously and without explanation–following the release of 1982's Tenebre. With little scholarship on Argento that's current and/or comprehensive, and with the director himself seldom asked about his steep decline, what's left is this notion that Argento wanted to escape the Hitchcock-derivative label (only to return to it after the spark had fled or, more likely, proved illusory all along), or that he wanted a psychic divorce from De Palma, whose career Argento's paralleled for a while in theme and execution. Whatever happened eventually, Argento in 1975 seemed to be casting about for a new direction. He'd just completed his "animal" trilogy of gialli (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Cat O' Nine Tails, Four Flies on Grey Velvet) and nursed a belief that the genre had, if not run its course entirely, at least run its course for him. He dabbled in a failed period piece (Five Days in Milan), the function of which appears to be to demonstrate that Argento is no Sergio Leone (though to be fair, almost no one is Sergio Leone), and he contributed to a portmanteau for Italian television–a format to which he'd one day return with buddy George Romero and Two Evil Eyes.

The Wes Craven Horror Collection – DVD

October 26, 2011Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Comedy, DVD, Horror, Satire, Thriller, Wes Craven

THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW (1988)
**½/**** Image B Sound B+
starring Bill Pullman, Cathy Tyson, Zakes Mokae, Paul Winfield
screenplay by Richard Maxwell and A.R. Simoun, based on the book by Wade Davis
directed by Wes Craven

SHOCKER (1989)
**/**** Image B- Sound B-
starring Michael Murphy, Peter Berg, Cami Cooper, Mitch Pileggi
written and directed by Wes Craven

THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (1991)
***/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Brandon Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer
written and directed by Wes Craven

Serpentrainbowcap

by Jefferson Robbins The three late-'80s/early-'90s films gathered in Universal's DVD set "The Wes Craven Horror Collection" are far from the director's best, but they show him gathering his powers for the satirical play of the Scream franchise. It's as if Craven careened into the ditch a few times trying to talk about Big Topics before finally deciding that what he was best suited to talk about was slasher movies. That's not to say these pre-emptive excursions have no value, it's just that he had to scout the territory thoroughly before drawing a definitive map. He had to shed some dependencies, too–most notably, given his legacy from A Nightmare on Elm Street, his fondness for dreams as an interface with horror.

Rain Man (1988) – Blu-ray Disc

October 5, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Alex Jackson, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Disability, Drama, Tom Cruise

****/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras B+
starring Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Valeria Golino, Jerry Molen
screenplay by Ronald Bass and Barry Morrow
directed by Barry Levinson

by Alex Jackson From its opening shot of a Cadillac craned across the smoggy Los Angeles skyline as The Belle Stars‘ iconic cover of “Iko Iko” plays on the soundtrack, Barry Levinson’s Rain Man announces itself as one of the very best films of the 1980s. The ultimate high-concept movie, it has a fashionably icy Adrian Lynne/Michael Mann/Ridley Scott aesthetic that’s semi-parodied by way of an absurdist, non-sequitur twist. Pauline Kael called Rain Man “a piece of wet kitsch” while paradoxically impugning its “lifelessness.” In terms of content, it certainly sounds like sugary glurge, but as rendered in the emotionally-detached lexicon of ’80s advertising, all the irony, all the junkiness, has been bled out. The film equates Yuppie materialism with autism, and in a subtle, underhanded way, this humanizes the alien while undermining the film’s own pretension. Once we see this hip disengagement in terms of pathology, we’re no longer attracted and/or repulsed by it.

Scarface (1983) [Limited Edition] – Blu-ray Disc

September 26, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Al Pacino, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Crime, Directors: Brian De Palma, Gangster

Scarface1

***/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras B
starring Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Loggia
screenplay by Oliver Stone
directed by Brian DePalma

by Bryant Frazer One of the most powerful moments in Scarface is the culmination of a violent, perfectly judged sequence of events crafted for maximum impact by screenwriter Oliver Stone and staged with ferocious efficiency by director Brian De Palma. It takes place at the end of a night when Al Pacino's Cuban gangster, a feisty little hard-on named Tony Montana, has survived an attempt on his life that left him with a bullet in his shoulder. He has overseen the execution of his boss, who was behind the hit. He has shot dead a corrupt cop who was extorting his cash and favours. And he has just been upstairs to collect from between satin sheets his boss's woman, a sleek blonde dressed in white who is his prize. The camera zooms out from a medium close-up on Pacino's face as, still bleeding, arm in a sling, exhaustion writ large across his face, Tony Montana peers through 20-foot-tall glass windows, staring dumbly into a Giorgio Moroder sunrise as an advertising blimp floats over the water, its pithy slogan an empty promise of greatness yet to come: "The World Is Yours…."

The Fox and the Hound (1981) [25th Anniversary] + The Little Mermaid (1989) [Platinum Edition] – DVDs|The Fox and the Hound/The Fox and the Hound II (2006) [2 Movie Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

August 22, 2011Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2011, Adventure, Animation, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Disney, Drama, DVD, Family, Musical, Romance, ZERO STARS

THE FOX AND THE HOUND
***½/**** Image C- Sound B Extras C
uncredited screenplay, based on the novel by Daniel P. Mannix
directed by Art Stevens, Ted Berman, Richard Rich

THE LITTLE MERMAID
*½/**** Image B- Sound C Extras A
written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements

by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. With The Fox and the Hound and The Little Mermaid bookending an especially turbulent decade for a studio mortally locked in a struggle to reconcile its animation pedigree with its crass commercial instincts, the former has come to be regarded in the Disney mythology as the Good Friday to the latter’s Easter Sunday. It’s therefore fitting that the two films they most emulate are 1942’s Bambi and 1950’s Cinderella, respectively, as the Forties marked the last time the Mouse House was on the brink of foreclosure. (The Fox and the Hound goes so far as to recycle cels from Bambi.) Much like The Little Mermaid represented a somewhat cynical reboot of the fairytale default, so, too, was Cinderella a glorified salvage operation following the money-/audience-hemorrhaging pro bono work Uncle Walt did on behalf of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. Alas, the Good Friday and Easter Sunday analogy applies to not just Disney’s phoenix-like resurrection but also the tonal and moral disparity between the two pictures: one is the sad truth; the other is wishful thinking.

Better Off Dead (1985) – Blu-ray Disc

August 1, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Christmas, Comedy, Teen

Better Off Dead…
***/**** Image B- Sound C-
starring John Cusack, David Ogden Stiers, Diane Franklin, Kim Darby
written and directed by Savage Steve Holland

by Jefferson Robbins Better Off Dead… probably wouldn't have outlasted its peers among cheaply-made '80s teen comedies minus three crucial factors. There's John Cusack's extraordinary Everyguy deadpan: He reacts to absurdity without visibly reacting, a still pivot for the scene around him and the best possible audience surrogate for a vehicle like this. There's writer-director Savage Steve Holland's visual wit, rooted in classic cartoons and well-abetted by editor Alan Balsam (Revenge of the Nerds). And finally, there's Holland's clearly-demonstrated understanding of what it's like to be a teenage male–collapsing in the face of spurned love, so immersed in one's own fantasies and neuroses that everyone, even relatives and close friends, seems a grotesque. This internal state gets externalized in Better Off Dead…, as no matter where Cusack's Lane Meyer goes, he's confronted with such bizarre contortions of humanity that he might as well be an astronaut among aliens.

The Thing (1982) – Blu-ray Disc

July 14, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: John Carpenter, FFC Must-Own, Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi

John Carpenter's The Thing
****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B+
starring Kurt Russell, Wilford Brimley, T.K. Carter, David Clennon
screenplay by Bill Lancaster, based on the story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, Jr.
directed by John Carpenter

Mustownby Walter Chaw I remember the sick fascination I felt staring at the cardboard standee for John Carpenter's The Thing (hereafter The Thing) in the lobby of the now-flattened two-house cinema where I had gone to see E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial that dewy summer of my ninth year. It was opening weekend for the Carpenter flick, but the line around the building was for the second week of Spielberg's very own My Friend Flicka, and I was one of the millions of children guilty of flocking away from a movie that promised to make you feel like shit in favour of one that promised to make you cry. I would be afraid to see The Thing and the same year's Blade Runner until at least five years down the road when, during a particularly bad flu, I asked my mom to rent them both from a local video store (also gone–the city of my mind is ever more populous now, year-on-year), figuring that in my fever haze I would be insulated from the horrors that had grown around them in my head. Besides, as a wizened vet of 14, I had survived The Fly, Aliens, RoboCop, and Hellbound: Hellraiser II at the Union Square 6 (also gone), so what horrors could these musty relics hold for me?

Plenty.

Gross Anatomy (1989); Betsy’s Wedding (1990); The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag (1992) – Blu-ray Discs

June 29, 2011Posted in1980s, 1990s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Japan, Mystery, Romance

GROSS ANATOMY
**½/**** Image C Sound D+
starring Matthew Modine, Daphne Zuniga, Christine Lahti, Todd Field
screenplay by Ron Nyswaner and Mark Spragg
directed by Thom Eberhardt

BETSY'S WEDDING
***/**** Image C Sound D+
starring Alan Alda, Joey Bishop, Madeline Kahn, Molly Ringwald
written and directed by Alan Alda

THE GUN IN BETTY LOU'S HANDBAG
**/**** Image C Sound D+
starring Penelope Ann Miller, Eric Thal, William Forsythe, Alfre Woodard
screenplay by Grace Cary Bickley
directed by Allan Moyle

by Jefferson Robbins To sample three Blu-ray editions fresh out from discount distributor Mill Creek Entertainment, you'd think film comedy in the late 1980s and early '90s was at a tipping point. Or, at least, you'd think this of Touchstone, the Disney sub-studio behind Gross Anatomy, Betsy's Wedding, and The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag. All three films seem swamped by the decade shift, caught between John Hughes's early-'80s youth revolution and the hardening of romcom formulas that would come to pass after 1990's Pretty Woman (also a Touchstone product). One of the three films, in fact, barely qualifies as a comedy, although it was surely marketed as such. The sense one gets watching them today is of opportunities missed, of storytelling approaches gently meshed together when they should've been gleefully mashed, and of an aversion to risk above all.

The Mission (1986) – Blu-ray Disc

June 13, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, France, Palme d'Or Winner, UK

***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras B
starring Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, Ray McAnally, Aidan Quinn
screenplay by Robert Bolt
directed by Roland Joffé

by Jefferson Robbins Career arcs fascinate and depress me. The Mission finds Roland Joffé at his early peak on just his second movie, making what amounts to a $25 million art film starring one of America’s best-known actors. Did Joffé change beyond this point, or did he refuse to change while the ecosystem altered around him? A bit of both, I suspect, after Fat Man and Little Boy and The Scarlet Letter. These epics went unembraced, and Oscars or no, the financiers weren’t always going to settle for contemplative examinations of people caught in the turning of historical tides. Yet that’s where Joffé was at his best–and maybe he couldn’t get beyond it. Spalding Gray had him pegged early on: “Leave it to a Brit to tell you your own history,” he advised in Swimming to Cambodia. Sure enough, as in The Killing Fields, Joffé’s The Mission examines pangs of conscience at a critical moment of political, religious, and cultural upheaval.

Legend (1986) [Ultimate Edition] – DVD + Blu-ray Disc

May 23, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Ridley Scott, DVD, Fantasy, Romance, Tom Cruise, UK

Director's Cut ***/****
DVD – Image B+ Sound B+ Extras A+
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras A
Theatrical Cut **/****
DVD – Image B- Sound B+ Extras A+
BD – Image B- Sound A- Extras A
starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent
screenplay by William Hjortsberg
directed by Ridley Scott

Legendcap1

by Bill Chambers The American theatrical release of Legend is more impressionistic than the Director's Cut of the film that accompanies it on DVD–because it's the hollowed-out carcass of a complete cinematic experience. It's this gorgeous, dainty thing that hints at something beyond the horizon, lacking not colour but texture, which is in abundance in Scott's latest rendition of the picture. As a child, I watched Legend over and over again, never liking it but always dazzled by it and hoping, perhaps, that repeat viewings would help me to see what isn't there. There is fire and ice yet no warmth and no chill in the U.S. Legend. (I imagine the European cut is little different at five minutes more.) Ridley Scott's exclusive-to-DVD re-edit of Legend contains approximately twenty minutes' worth of heretofore-unseen footage and restores Jerry Goldsmith's lyrical score, and with no pun intended, it's fantastic.

Excalibur (1981) – Blu-ray Disc

May 4, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Adventure, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Fantasy, Romance, UK

½*/**** Image B Sound D+ Extras C+
starring Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Nicol Williamson
screenplay by Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman, adapted from Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur by Pallenberg
directed by John Boorman

by Walter Chaw Anyone with an answer for what the good fuck is going on in John Boorman’s Excalibur is the forgiving sort who already has a working conversation with the Arthur mythos–who’s already read T.H. White or, at the minimum, watched The Sword in the Stone. Maybe said scholar was also a fan of Winston Churchill and likes to think that the great British PM was the very reincarnation of the 1st-century figure; maybe in a fit of frustration at the film, WIKIPEDIA was consulted. But most likely, the person who finds not only coherence in but also affection for Excalibur was nine or ten when they first saw it, enjoyed the tits and swordplay, didn’t notice the acting and the screenplay and the green light “special effect,” and was probably just as happy with any other contemporary fantasy that provided the same (Ladyhawke, Clash of the Titans, Legend, Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer). Really, the picture Excalibur most resembles is legendary stinker Krull (which likewise features an embarrassed-looking Liam Neeson in a tiny secondary role), complete with deplorable special effects, identical central plot, incomprehensible execution, and from-outer-space choices everywhere else. It probably shouldn’t be as big a surprise as it seems, given that Boorman has been obsessed with, and essentially retelling, the Arthur myth for the bulk of his career and, at the point at which Excalibur was made, had been working on the project in some form for nearly two decades. The film meant the world to him–and that romance with it appears to have drowned out the warnings of his better nature.

Blow Out (1981) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

May 3, 2011Posted in****/****, 1980s, 2011, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Brian De Palma, Espionage, FFC Must-Own, The Criterion Collection, Thriller

Blowoutcap2

****/**** Image A Sound A- Extras B+
starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz
written and directed by Brian De Palma

Mustownby Bryant Frazer Blow Out begins with a broadly visual joke, nearly four minutes long, about filmmaking. It ends with a second joke on the same subject, this one more complex, pointed, and black as tar. Over the course of the narrative, the material has turned rancid, so discoloured and malodorous that it’s hardly funny. That’s because, between the two grand gestures that bookend the film, writer-director Brian De Palma has traced a hero’s journey from idealism and optimism to disillusionment and despair. If cynicism were a superhero franchise, Blow Out would be its origin story.

The Verdict (1982) [Collector’s Edition] – DVD

April 28, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Directors: Sidney Lumet, Drama, DVD, Mystery

***½/**** Image A- Sound B Extras B+
starring Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason
screenplay by David Mamet, based on the novel by Barry Reed
directed by Sidney Lumet

by Jefferson Robbins It's never clear if disgraced lawyer Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is a practicing Catholic, as are so many of the souls around him in a grey, hopeless Boston–but there's a crucifix on his office wall, and he sure has the posture down. Note how many times in Sidney Lumet's legal drama Newman is caught posed in the final stage of genuflection, Roman brow in profile, knuckle touched to lips. He's skipped making the sign of the cross and gone straight to kissing a nonexistent rosary. His is a corroded soul, though in David Mamet's screenplay construction, at least he knows it's corroded. Chasing any lawsuit that will end in a payday, Galvin lies right to the faces of dozens of people. In this, he's no better than his opponents in court, save that they lie through the proxy instruments of forgery and coached testimony, keeping their hands clean. They sail through the system frictionlessly, while Galvin feels himself dying a little each time–unless it's in the service of something greater. In his wanderings, windowpanes and desk fans cast the impression of a cross over him.

Maniac (1980) [30th Anniversary Edition] + Vigilante (1983) – Blu-ray Discs

April 13, 2011Posted in1980s, 2011, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Blue Underground, Crime, Drama, Horror, Revenge, Thriller

MANIAC
**/**** Image B+ Sound B Extras A+
starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro
screenplay by C.A. Rosenberg and Joe Spinell
directed by William Lustig

VIGILANTE
*½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras B
starring Robert Forster, Fred Williamson, Richard Bright, Woody Strode
screenplay by Richard Vetere
directed by William Lustig

by Walter Chaw William Lustig reduces exploitation cinema to the filthy stepchild of Sams Peckinpah and Fuller: one part animal logic, one part tabloid paranoia. He wallows in impulse, and his sensibility is 42nd Street grindhouse through and through, from kitchen-sink production values to disjointed vignette presentations to a generally lawless indulgence towards atrocity. If Lustig's pictures have achieved a kind of cult lustre, credit his ability to alternate action sequences with B-legends showcases. It would be a mistake to attribute more to Lustig's pictures than workmanlike efficiency as applied to formula prurience, though there's something to be said for knock-off garbage done with a lack of pretension–done, in fact, with a distinct, naïve childishness that doesn't quite get down there with Jess Franco or Herschell Gordon Lewis (nor up there with Mario Bava or Dario Argento), but manages a little interest despite itself now and again, probably by (who cares?) accident.