Summer Interlude (1951) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

July 11, 2012Posted in1950s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Coming of Age, Directors: Ingmar Bergman, Drama, Sweden, The Criterion Collection

Sommarlek
***½/**** Image A- Sound A- Extras D
starring Maj-Britt Nilsson, Birger Malmsten, Alf Kjelin, Annalisa Ericson
screenplay by Herbert Grevenius and Ingmar Bergman
directed by Ingmar Bergman 

Summerinterludecap
click any image to enlarge

by Bryant Frazer 1951's Summer Interlude offers a glimpse of Ingmar Bergman's later career in embryonic form. Maj-Britt Nilsson plays a sexy, precocious teenager in love, and if that doesn't sound very Bergman-esque to you, know that she also plays a wary, regretful dancer approaching the functional end of her career at the Stockholm Royal Opera. The story darts forwards and backwards in time as the dancer, Marie, recalls an ill-fated love affair on the Stockholm archipelago while considering the status of her current relationship, a tentative affair with a newspaper hack who doesn't deserve her.

Camelot (1967) (DigiBook) – Blu-ray Disc

July 9, 2012Posted in1960s, 2012, Adventure, Authors: Jefferson Robbins, Blu-ray Disc, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Musical, Romance

***/**** Image A- Sound A Extras B-
starring Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, David Hemmings
screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner, based on his play and The Once and Future King by T.H. White
directed by Joshua Logan

by Jefferson Robbins Joshua Logan's Camelot sucker-punched audiences, I suspect, and did so in slow-motion. Maybe the source musical, by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, did as well. Mention the legend of King Arthur and our first notions are of magic and righteous triumph; we forget the betrayal and Fall. The overall air of the film is stabs of paradise framed by battle and tears, with most of the misery encroaching from offstage. Yet when the King's dream finally dies, it dies viscerally. Find late in Camelot Arthur (Richard Harris) hiding from the collapse of his new social order in the wooded bower where he once studied with his vanished tutor Merlyn. He imagines soaring as a bird, as he did while Merlyn's pupil, but his spirit-animal is interrupted by a hunter. It's Mordred (David Hemmings), the fruit of Arthur's forgotten sins, and his entry with bow and arrow reasserts the brutality that will pull down the kingdom.

Blood Work (2002) – Blu-ray Disc

July 8, 2012Posted in2000s, 2012, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Clint Eastwood, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller

**/**** Image A Sound A- Extras C-
starring Clint Eastwood, Wanda De Jesús, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston
screenplay by Brian Helgeland, based on the novel by Michael Connelly
directed by Clint Eastwood

Bloodworkcap

by Walter Chaw You can figure out the pivotal clue in Blood Work if not by the title alone–which gives altogether too much away–then surely come the thirty-minute mark. You can deduce the identity of the murderer as soon as he saunters on screen, and you can predict the love story almost before it happens just by dint of the kind of movie that Blood Work is. The only thing you can't figure out is why Clint Eastwood, who sometimes makes interesting movies like Bird, A Perfect World, White Hunter, Black Heart, and Unforgiven, almost as often makes boring, predictable, prosaic movies like The Rookie (1990), Absolute Power, True Crime, and now Blood Work.

To Rome with Love (2012)

July 5, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Comedy, Drama, Italy, Music, Romance, Spain, Theatrical

**/****
starring Woody Allen, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz
written and directed by Woody Allen

Toromewithlove

by Angelo Muredda There's an odd moment early in To Rome with Love that makes you sit up and wonder if Woody Allen has made good on the promise shown by his surprisingly warm Midnight in Paris. Stumbling out of a movie theatre with his wife and another couple, regular schmo Leopoldo (Roberto Benigni) mounts a rousing defense of Saverio Costanzo's The Solitude of Prime Numbers, offering that its openness to human mystery makes it far superior to The King's Speech. I can't say I agree with him, but how nice to see such an idiosyncratic opinion voiced in earnest. That's a good sign, coming from a director whose characters often sound like variations on one another in his lesser works–but it's also a false one, when much of what follows plays out like a flat homage to omnibus city movies.

Savages (2012)

July 5, 2012Posted in2012, Action, Authors: Walter Chaw, Crime, Drama, Theatrical, Thriller

*/****
starring Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson, John Travolta
screenplay by Shane Salerno & Don Winslow & Oliver Stone, based on the novel by Winslow
directed by Oliver Stone 

Savages

by Walter Chaw Another disgusting piece of crap that Oliver Stone makes watchable and even fitfully interesting, Savages sees Stone returning to ground he already plowed in Salvador, his screenplay for Scarface, and arguably his best film in hindsight, the filthy U-Turn. One possible excuse for its foulness, in an ocean of possible excuses, is a cast headlined by Taylor Kitsch, the new Paul Walker; Aaron Johnson, the new Skeet Ulrich; and Blake Lively, the new…I don't know, Bridget Fonda? Another possible explanation is a godawful script by Don Winslow (author of the novel upon which the film is based), Shane Salerno, and Stone hissownself that opens with a ridiculously bad voiceover tease and ends with same, sandwiching in between a tale of blissed-out California marijuana kingpins Chon (Kitsch) and Ben (Johnson) vs. the Mexican cartel, led by Lado (the always amazing Benicio Del Toro) and Elena (Salma Hayek). Sound awful? It's awful. And it would have been even without an embarrassing John Travolta, wheedling and whinging through an entire performance as a corrupt DEA agent. With him, however, Savages at least has the benefit of occasionally elevating from entirely-useless to sometimes-whimsical camp artifact.

The Sweet Hereafter (1997) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD

July 1, 2012Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, DVD

Sweethereaftercap

****/**** Image B+ Sound A Extras B+
starring Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin, Peter Donaldson, Bruce Greenwood
screenplay by Atom Egoyan, based on the novel by Russell Banks
directed by Atom Egoyan

by Bryant Frazer For anyone left reeling by Atom Egoyan’s Exotica, with its sexualized miasma of grief and longing lingering in the mind, the very first shot of The Sweet Hereafter is vertigo-inducing. Once again, the camera tracks very slowly from left to right as the titles appear on screen–a signal, perhaps, that more human misery awaits. Egoyan eventually alights on a scene of tranquility, as a family of three–mother, father, child–sleeps on a bare wooden floor. Beyond the stylistic link to the opening of Egoyan’s previous film, I’m not sure what it is about this tableau that should be so disquieting. Partly it’s the slow, deliberate camera move that brought us here. Partly it’s the voyeuristic viewing opportunity. (Sleeping families are, of course, vulnerable, and the casual exposure of most of the woman’s breast puts the audience in the place of intruders spying on a private moment.) And partly it’s that the God’s-eye P.O.V. suggests the omnipotence and indifference of the universe at large when tragedy is the subject.

Deliverance (1972) [Deluxe Edition] – DVD/(DigiBook) – Blu-ray Disc

June 27, 2012Posted in****/****, 1970s, 2012, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, Thriller

****/****
DVD – Image B Sound C Extras B
BD – Image A- Sound A- Extras B+
starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, Ronny Cox
screenplay by James Dickey, based on his novel
directed by John Boorman

by Walter Chaw Deliverance is mesmerizing. Emerging fully formed from the rich, black loam of the best period of filmmaking definitely in the United States and possibly in the history of cinema, it pistons its roots unerringly into the darkest corners of our species’ memory. In the second-most memorable moment of the film (the one where kind-hearted city-slicker Drew (Ronny Cox) eases into a guitar/banjo duel with a local kid (Billy Redden)), Boorman dangles the possibility that there could be civility between the spoilers and the spoiled before retracting it for the remainder of the picture’s running time. If Boorman is our pre-eminent keeper of the Arthurian legend, it’s useful to wonder in this particular quest undertaken what are the dark spirits of the wood, and what is the grail? The final image of the piece, after all, suggests a corruption of the Excalibur iconography offered from some fathomless underneath. The essential Western phallus is perverted in Deliverance into the promise that the primal will never be repressed for long.

Being John Malkovich (1999) [The Criterion Collection] – Blu-ray Disc

June 25, 2012Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Charlie Kaufman, Comedy, Drama, Esoterica, FFC Must-Own, The Criterion Collection

Beingjohnmalkovichcap1

****/**** Image A Sound A Extras B-
starring John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, John Malkovich
screenplay by Charlie Kaufman
directed by Spike Jonze

by Walter Chaw The moment you realize that Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich is more than just another ultra-high-concept indie calling-card is right at the end, when all that quirk reveals itself as bleak, desperate, lonesome. It’s the first time most of us conceptualized the idea of Charlie Kaufman, in fact–the moment that any follow-up became a cause célèbre. It’s silly, really, to bother trying to synopsize the film, but for the uninitiated, it’s about a failed puppeteer’s discovery of a portal behind a file cabinet on the low-ceilinged floor of an office designed for the dwarf wife of a sea captain. (“Curs-ed t’ing,” he calls her.) The portal leads, of course, to the inside of John Malkovich’s skull for around fifteen minutes before expelling the interloper to the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. Looking here, it’s possible to begin to trace Kaufman’s auteur obsessions with interiors, with language (in a job interview hinged on malaproprisms and miscommunications), with doubling, identity, surrealism, systems of belief, and, sneakily, science-fiction. What’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, after all, but a fairly extraordinary SF piece that just happens to be one of the best movies about love ever made?

Exotica (1994) – Combo Blu-ray + DVD

June 24, 2012Posted in****/****, 1990s, 2012, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Directors: Atom Egoyan, Drama, DVD, Esoterica, Mystery

Exoticacap

****/**** Image B Sound B+ Extras C
starring Bruce Greenwood, Mia Kirshner, Don McKellar, Elias Koteas
written and directed by Atom Egoyan

by Bryant Frazer When Exotica debuted at Cannes in 1994, Atom Egoyan had already earned a reputation for curious, low-key explorations of memory and alienation. His Family Viewing, Speaking Parts, and The Adjuster leaned on video as a kind of metaphor showing how relationships become dependent on individual frames of reference that each move in only one direction–how one person’s blank tape is another’s cherished memory, or how one person’s pornographic display is another’s lifeline. Exotica represented Egoyan’s commercial breakthrough in part because he found an enticing venue for those observations. It’s one of the most fundamentally despairing movies that I know, and yet there is in the precision of its craft, the bravery of its conception, and the depth of its empathy something fundamentally uplifting.

The Woman in the Fifth (2012)

June 13, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Drama, France, Mystery, Poland, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

La femme du Vème
*½/****
starring Ethan Hawke, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joanna Kulig, Samir Guesmi
screenplay by Pawel Pawlikowski, based on Douglas Kennedy's novel
directed by Pawel Pawlikowski

Womaninthefifth

by Angelo Muredda Midway through Pawel Pawlikowski's The Woman in the Fifth, Romanian femme fatale Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas) tells glum American writer Tom (Ethan Hawke) not to worry about his writer's block. "You have the makings of a serious work now," she reassures him: "A broken life, down-and-out in Paris." Intended as a key to the film, a hint that we aren't watching real events at all but rather their translation into an American's grim European masterwork, this exchange does nothing so much as outline the limits of Pawlikowski's imagination. His first feature since 2004's unsettling My Summer of Love, this is an odd misstep, the kind of bad movie that can only be made with the purest of intentions. I don't doubt that Pawlikowski, working from a thriller by American writer Douglas Kennedy, believes in this idea that good novels are born of wretched experiences–that being a disgraced literature professor and stalled artist shaking down phantoms in run-down Paris gives you a direct line to authenticity. But it's the sort of half-baked conceit that defines countless shallow genre texts shooting for arthouse credibility, the hallmark of a Secret Window knockoff that begs to be taken as seriously as a good Paul Auster novel.

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.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

May 29, 2012Posted in2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Comedy, Directors: Wes Anderson, Drama, Romance, Theatrical

***½/****
starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand
screenplay by Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola
directed by Wes Anderson

Moonrisekingdom

by Angelo Muredda In his post-mortem of the 65th Cannes Film Festival, over which he presided as jury president, Nanni Moretti complained that a number of Competition filmmakers seemed "more in love with their style than with their characters." Whether Moretti had festival opener and Competition entry Moonrise Kingdom in mind is debatable, but this is the kind of criticism Wes Anderson has faced throughout his career. Moonrise Kingdom won't win many holdouts over to Anderson's corner: Those who think he's spent the last 16 years building dollhouses may snicker from the first sequence, where the camera laterally tracks through an actual dollhouse of a set to find a mid-1960s family sequestered in tiny rooms, parsing their magazines and adventure novels. Those baffled by The Darjeeling Limited's juxtaposition of Kinks songs with snippets of Merchant-Ivory and Satyajit Ray scores may also scoff as the camera tracks past a battery-operated record player pushing out Benjamin Britten's "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra," an educational piece narrated by a disembodied voice that neatly introduces "all the separate parts of the orchestra." As if to facilitate a no-hard-feelings exit for the unenthused, Anderson telegraphs his aesthetic from the overture.

Turn Me On, Goddammit (2011)

May 17, 2012Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Comedy, Drama, Norway, Romance, Teen

Få meg på, for faen
(a.k.a. Turn Me On, Dammit!)
***/****
starring Helen Bergsholm, Malin Bjørhovde, Henriette Steenstrup, Beate Støfring
screenplay by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen, based on the novel by Olaug Nilssen
directed by Jannicke Systad Jacobsen

Turnmeondammitcap

by Angelo Muredda Turn Me On, Goddammit opens with a provocation worthy of its title. Our introduction to fifteen-year-old Alma (Helene Bergsholm) finds her on the kitchen floor, masturbating to a phone-sex line (she's a preferred caller and sort-of friend to operator Stig (Per Kjerstad)) while her dog watches with interest. That's some hook, but Jannicke Systad Jacobsen's first dramatic feature after a string of documentaries is at its best when it bypasses this kind of frontal assault and plays to Jacobsen's strengths, namely her delicate touch with nonprofessional actors and sharp distillation of the gender politics of small-town life. While the film nicely delineates its washed-out setting of Skoddeheimen, a remote mountain village in Norway whose welcome sign kids unfailingly raise a middle-finger to on the bus ride home from school, Jacobsen's real boon is to capture a spectrum of teens' sexual attitudes within a hermetically-sealed but still fairly typical environment. While that might make Turn Me On, Goddammit sound like a dry sociological tome, Jacobsen and Bergsholm, in her debut, are adept at making Alma not a blank Norwegian Everygirl but someone who's credibly starting to cultivate her sexual proclivities in a hostile space.

The Grey (2012) – Blu-ray + DVD

May 14, 2012Posted in2012, Action, Adventure, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Authors: Bill Chambers, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, DVD, Thriller

**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C+
starring Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, James Badge Dale
screenplay by Joe Carnahan & Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, based on Jeffers's short story "Ghost Walker"
directed by Joe Carnahan

Greycap1

by Angelo Muredda The teaser for Joe Carnahan's The Grey closes with Liam Neeson MacGyver-ing a wolf-punching power glove out of mini-liquor bottles. It's a great hook, and easily the best trailer of the year. It's also kind of a lie. To be fair, Carnahan's latest–after the dreadful one-two (wolfless) punch of Smokin' Aces and The A-Team–is a career-saving return to form, although Narc was hardly epic stuff. Adapted from a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, The Grey ambitiously aspires to be a Jack London-esque exploration of ruffians fighting for their lives against an unmoved wilderness; tonally, it sits somewhere between the gritty naturalism of "To Build a Fire" and the bros-only philosophical seminar of The Sea-Wolf. Carnahan brings an admirable seriousness to this task and invests his band of rogues with some nice human touches, but there's a dopiness to this material that doesn't always pass muster. Watching The Grey's arctic powwows between protagonist Ottway (Neeson) and his sad burly men, I was most reminded not of endangered-man potboilers but of The Breakfast Club, which similarly gathers a group of rejects around the high-school equivalent of a makeshift fire for some prime bonding. Slogging through these men's tales of woe isn't exactly detention, but eventually it does start to feel like homework.

The Bodyguard (1992) – Special Edition DVD + Blu-ray Disc

May 2, 2012Posted in1990s, 2012, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Music, Romance, Thriller

**/****
DVD – Image B Sound A Extras C
BLU-RAY – Image B+ Sound A Extras C
starring Kevin Costner, Whitney Houston, Gary Kemp, Bill Cobbs
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Mick Jackson

Bodyguardcap
by Walter Chaw Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston have a conversation about Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (whose title means "The Bodyguard") in the middle of Mick Jackson's hilarious camp artifact The Bodyguard, the one where Costner plays a barely-vocal lunk and Houston plays a singer-turned-actress with severe personality flaws. And that little chat, occupying a minute-and-a-half or so of screentime, encapsulates everything that's priceless about this flick: It's stupid, embarrassing, and watered-down, but it's also surreal, queer, and hermetically sealed in a rhinestone-studded mason jar. Have no fear, though, as that revelatory discussion of one of the great films in world cinema segues in record time into a heartfelt rumination on the lyrics of a Dolly Parton song, and then into a courtship ritual involving a big samurai sword and a piece of silk. Is Kevin going to sheathe his blue steel in Whitney's purple scarf? Ah, the decadent ribaldry! What could it all mean?

Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954) – Blu-ray Disc

May 1, 2012Posted in1950s, 2012, Action, Authors: Bryant Frazer, Blu-ray Disc, Drama

Demetriuscap

**½/**** Image C+ Sound B+ Extras B
starring Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Debra Paget
screenplay by Philip Dunne, based on characters from the novel The Robe by Lloyd C. Douglas
directed by Delmer Daves

by Bryant Frazer Add Demetrius and the Gladiators to that shortlist of Hollywood sequels that are actually better than their predecessor. This is a continuation of the story of The Robe–that most turgid of Biblical epics, known to film students the world over (and for this reason only) as the first Cinemascope release. The title of the earlier film refers to a red garment worn by Jesus as he was taken to his crucifixion. The discarded robe catalyzes the conversion to Christianity of Roman soldier Marcellus Gallio (played in the earlier film by Richard Burton), who was last seen being frog-marched to martyrdom on the orders of nutty Roman emperor Caligula (Jay Robinson). The sequel picks up the story of Marcellus's former slave, Demetrius, again played by Victor Mature, as he becomes the robe's caretaker.

Shame (2011) – Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy

April 26, 2012Posted in****/****, 2011, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Canada, Drama, DVD, FFC Must-Own, UK

Mustown****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D+
starring Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Baharie
screenplay by Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan
directed by Steve McQueen

Shamecap1

by Walter Chaw Brandon is a cipher from beginning to end, and while that’s usually a detriment, in Steve McQueen’s extraordinary, gruelling Shame, it’s key to why the whole thing works. Even better is that Brandon, a widely-presumed sex addict (to my mind, the film works better without a pop diagnosis), is played by Michael Fassbender, he of the matinee-idol looks and piercing green eyes. It’s interesting that what he plays best is ambiguity (next up: a robot in Prometheus), an unknowable quality that inspired McQueen’s previous installation piece, Hunger, making the lonesome protest of hunger-striker Bobby Sands into a holy mystery, a relic unknowable and his English bull tormentors Romans with spears knowing not what they do. No less ecclesiastical, Shame is a feature-length indulgence and scourging, making it fair to wonder if McQueen’s aim isn’t to assail each of the Deadly Sins in due course–his own septet on glowing, adjoined celluloid panels. It’s a great explanation of the title, and makes me wonder if the next one won’t be “Avarice.” Anyway, the film only works because Fassbender is beautiful. Ugly guys don’t get to be ashamed of sex.

The Woman in Black (2012) + The Innkeepers (2011)|The Innkeepers – Blu-ray Disc

April 23, 2012Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Bill Chambers, Authors: Walter Chaw, Blu-ray Disc, Drama, Horror, Theatrical, Thriller, UK

THE WOMAN IN BLACK
*/****
starring Daniel Radcliffe, Ciarán Hinds, Janet McTeer, Liz White
screenplay by Jane Goldman
directed by James Watkins

THE INNKEEPERS
***½/**** | Image A- Sound A Extras B
starring Sara Paxton, Pat Healy, Kelly McGillis, George Riddle
written and directed by Ti West

by Walter Chaw A beautifully-outfitted, brilliantly-designed Victorian jack-in-the-box, James Watkins's The Woman in Black will likely be remembered, if it's remembered at all, as Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter commencement (given that no one saw December Boys). Alas, it squanders a pretty nice, 'Tim Burton Sleepy Hollow' set-up in bumfuck England for a solid hour of crap jumping out of shadows. Popping up from behind bushes is startling, but it isn't art (it's not even clever), and at the end of the day, it's only really entertaining if you or your date is a sixteen-year-old girl. Carrying the Hammer imprint and boasting production design so good that long stretches of the film are devoted to looking at it, the piece only ever honours its legacy and appearance with the brutality with which it handles its dead children and a delirious dinner scene in which a grief-besotted lady (Janet McTeer) treats her little dogs like babies and carves something on her dinner table whilst possessed of a hilarious fit. The rest of it is garbage.

Rebecca (1940) – Blu-ray Disc

April 21, 2012Posted in****/****, 1940s, 2012, Authors: Walter Chaw, Best Picture (Academy Awards), Blu-ray Disc, Directors: Alfred Hitchcock, Drama

Rebeccacap3

****/**** Image B+ Sound B+ Extras C+
starring Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson
screenplay by Robert E. Sherwood and Joan Harrison;
adaptation by Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan, based on the novel by Daphne Du Maurier
directed by Alfred Hitchcock

by Walter Chaw

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
–“The Idea of Order at Key West,” Wallace Stevens

Let’s take a moment to talk about water.

The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

April 17, 2012Posted in2011, 2012, Authors: Angelo Muredda, Drama, Theatrical, UK

***½/****
starring Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston, Simon Russell Beale
screenplay by Terence Davies, based on the play by Terence Rattigan
directed by Terence Davies

DeepblueseaIn Of Time and the City, Terence Davies's self-described love song and eulogy for his native Liverpool, the director halts his psycho-geographic walking-tour of old haunts at one point to pay backhanded tribute to the Merseybeat movement. With the meteoric rise of The Beatles, he pronounces in sulky baritone, the well-crafted love songs on which he was weaned became, overnight, as antiquated as curling tongs. Yet just as abruptly as pop turned beat, the young Davies went another way: "I discovered Mahler," he drawls, "and responded completely to his every overwrought note." Davies's studiously unfashionable gravitation to the Romantic, largely for its affinities with the torch songs he so recently mourned, finds apt expression in his sixth feature, a beautifully overripe adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1952 play The Deep Blue Sea. Like its source, the film chronicles the misfortunes of Hester (Rachel Weisz), a judge's wife in postwar London who leaves her cerebral older spouse, William (Simon Russell Beale), for sexual fulfilment with wastrel Royal Air Force pilot Freddie (Tom Hiddleston), and subsequently finds herself unloved and in limbo. Only a recent convert to such reckless emotional indulgence, Hester, when we meet her, is very much the Mahler sort. Despite its apparent distance from more clearly autobiographical films like Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, then, Davies is an ideal steward for this material–every bit as attentive to matters of exquisite sadness as his protagonist.