Baby, Secret Of The Lost Legend (1985)/Miami
Rhapsody (1995)/The War At Home
(1996/Touchstone/Disney/Mill Creek Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B-/C+ Sound: B-/B-/C+ Extras: D Films: C/D/C-
Now for
three more Mill Creek Blu-ray releases from the Touchstone/Disney catalog:
Hoping
for an E.T. type hit, Disney
seriously backed Bill L. Norton’s Baby,
Secret Of The Lost Legend (1985) hoping it would be an out-of-nowhere feel
good hit as William Katt and Sean Young (an odder combination now than then)
arte a good couple who care about nature and animals in the middle of the wild
doing science work when they discover the head of operations (Patrick McGoohan
(Danger Man, The Prisoner) collection a paycheck as a simple boo-hiss villain)
has other plans when they are tracking down what might be a few smaller
dinosaurs that have survived all these centuries.
We know
he is a bad guy when he knifes someone to death to get a secret file, which
epitomizes the oversimplification this would-be family film intended to serve
up and hope it would get the same crowd.
That did not work. At least the
creature work is not digital and Jerry Goldsmith tried to enhance this film
with a good score, but even he could not save it. This is sure to become a curio, though.
Except for
The Devil Wears Prada, David Frankel
has been more miss than hit as a director and Miami Rhapsody (1995) is one of those big misses as the film
shamelessly imitates Woody Allen (down to casting Mia Farrow) and goes on and
on and on and on with little point except to be cute and cutesy, it
thinks. Antonio Banderas, Sarah Jessica
Parker, Paul Mazursky, Carla Gugino, Naomi Campbell and Kevin Pollack make for
an interesting cast, but nothing memorable results.
Emilio
Estevez directs and stars in The War At
Home (1996), a film in which he plays a young man back from the Vietnam fiasco
with major post traumatic street syndrome problems and little support. Martin Sheen and Kathy Bates are his parents
and this is based on a stage play, yet it does not go anywhere much despite its
ambitions and serious subject matter saying nothing new and even ignoring the
major problems with that conflict so many films have done a better job
handling.
Before Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now, most of the films on the subject were of the “he’s
coming home” type and this never feels like its period either. Still, they at least tried to make a good
film about something and that is too rare these days. Kimberly Williams, Carla Gugino and Lane
Smith also star.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Baby was shot in a Super 35 variant simply known as Super
Techniscope, but I was surprised that this looked as good as it did, with very
limited softness and motion blur despite showing its age a bit. Color is very consistent and though this is
not perfect, you can easily image this material being blown-up into 70mm
prints. The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High
Definition image transfer on Miami is also
decent, showing the city looking good, but still also showing its age. That leaved the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High
Definition image transfer on War
softer than the others despite being the newest shoot and my copy even had some
macroblocking a few minutes in.
All are
again miscredited as Dolby Digital 2.0 sound mixes when they all offer DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) lossless soundtracks, but while Miami and War were
issued as 5.1 digital sound films theatrically, they are only here in DTS-MA
2.0 Stereo with Miami only having some Pro Logic type-surrounds. Baby
actually features a 4.0 DTS-MA lossless mix reflecting the 70mm blow-up sound,
which shows some sonic limits, but is interesting at times. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
