The Bang Bang Club (2010/E1 DVD)/Christopher Columbus (1949/VCI DVD)/The Cider House Rules (1999/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/The Conspirator (2010/Lionsgate Blu-ray + DVD)/Last Exit To Brooklyn (1989/Summit Blu-ray)/Master Harold & The Boys (2010/Image Blu-ray)/Skateland (2011/Fox Blu-ray)

 

Picture: C+/C/B-/B & C/B-/B-/B-     Sound: C+/C+/B-/B & B-/B/B-/B-     Extras: C+/C-/B/C/C/C-/C-     Films: C+/C/B/C/C+/C/C+

 

 

Here are a mix of new dramas, including some you might know.

 

Steven Silver’s The Bang Bang Club (2010) tells the true story of photojournalists risking their lives to tell a story of genocide as Apartheid in South Africa comes to a bloody end.  Ryan Phillippe, Malin Akerman and Taylor Kitsch co-star in this drama that has its moments, but like the anti-Apartheid cycle of the 1980s is too slanted in a direction that does not deal with the actual Black South African struggle.  However, the acting is good, Kitsch does his best work yet and the film is worth a look just the same.  Extras include a slideshow, Deleted Scenes, Making-of featurette, Kgosi Mongake Interviews Cast & Crew and feature length audio commentary by Director Silver.

 

Lonny Price’s Master Harold & The Boys (2010) takes place in the middle of the Apartheid era and is based on a stage play by Athol Fugard, but this film version is simply too stagy as Ving Rhames is one of two men working for a white family whose father/husband is an alcoholic ruining his life and theirs.  They are great friends to Harold (Freddie Highmore) who cannot take the pressure of his dysfunctional family (his mother is an enabler of her husband) who takes it out on the men who support him the most.  Well acted, it is all too predictable and save its odd ending, does even less to add to the cannon of films on the subject.  A trailer is the only extra.

 

The 1949 British production of Christopher Columbus by Director David Macdonald is one of the most naïve versions of the story.  Even with the great Fredric March in the title role, this is a corny, laughable telling of the historic figure as a “great guy”, not very Italian and is as genocide-free as possible and not just because of censorship restrictions of the time.  It is at least amusing, but not that good, though it does make a fun curio and was a major Technicolor production in its time.  The only extra is a Photo Gallery.

 

Lasse Hallstrom’s The Cider House Rules (1999) is as relevant as ever as Michael Caine plays a doctor at an orphanage who is secretly performing safe abortions when they are still illegal, making sure the women are not killed in back-alley procedures, but this is about much more.  Tobey Maguire is the unadopted child who grows up to work with the doctor and becomes his friend and the film becomes a character study of the people and the times they live in.  Caine won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award and John Irving won the Best Screenplay Academy Award (and gave a great, pro-choice speech that rocked the awards ceremony) and rightly so.  This is also as strong a film as Hallstrom ever made and surprisingly so.  Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo, an unfunny Paul Rudd, Jane Alexander, Kathy Baker, Kieran Culkin, Kate Nelligan and Heavy D also star.  Extras include Deleted Scenes, Theatrical Trailer, Making Of An American Classic featurette and feature length audio commentary by Hallstrom, Irving and Producer Richard N. Gladstein.

 

Robert Redford’s The Conspirator (2010) is an ambitious attempt to tell a new side of the results of the Assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and is intended to launch a series of educational films, but despite actors like James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Kevin Klein, Colin Meaney, Tom Wilkinson, Danny Huston, Evan Rachel Wood and Justin Long, this becomes boggled down in talk and moves too slow, becoming more boring than it ever should have.  It might be worth a look for some, but I recommend you be very awake if you are going to see it.  Extras include Bonusview interactivity exclusive to the Blu-ray version, while both versions include a Theatrical Trailers & TV Spots, Photo Gallery, Redford feature length audio commentary track, and 13 featurettes.

 

I always thought Uli Edel’s Last Exit To Brooklyn (1989) was overrated despite being a competent film by pulling off what it did under low budget circumstances, predictable and problematic despite some feel of the 1950s Brooklyn location from the novel.  The storylines are not multiple, but just happen to be connected to each other.  Worst of all, despite its “realism”, the film (no matter the content of the book) is about how anyone who is not heterosexual or a strong male (or totally submits to said culture) is someone who must pay a price for not fitting in and this film obnoxiously wallows in that ideology instead of being about it or having ironic distance from it.  Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang (proving my point by not being listed on the front of the Blu-ray case despite being the male lead), Burt Young, Jerry Orbach, Peter Dobson, Alexis Arquette, Ricky Lake and once-promising Stephen Baldwin (suddenly listed as the male lead!) co-star.  Extras include a feature length audio commentary by Director Edel and a Making Of featurette.

Anthony Burns’ Skateland (2011) is a mixed period teen drama about a group of small town teens growing up in Texas.  It is the early 1980s, though it is more like the late 1970s (the 1980s did not reach Texas yet?) as some people have to make an early choice as to what to do with their lives or be stuck in a small town with no future.  Shiloh Fernandez is the older brother who should go to college, but has some loyalty to the community venue of the title, struggling to stay open.  He is good, as are the rest of the cast including Ashley Greene (Twilight), but the film still seems confused about it period, never totally feels like it and actually tries to (intended or not) make the late 1970s into the 1980s hurting the overall result.  The use of music is part of the problem.  At least some if it is watchable.  Deleted Scenes are the only extra.

 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Conspirator Blu-ray is easily the best-looking of all the discs here despite some restyling choices, which are thankfully minor, further dramatized by how poor and soft the separately sold, anamorphically enhanced DVD is.  The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition images on House, Harold and (AVC @ 21 MBPS) Skateland are not as good with House being an older HD master and the rest being styled down to their disadvantage.   The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Brooklyn is also stylized down form the way it was originally shot.  When you add the age of the print and film, it also suffers in detail and color range, though some depth shots are not bad.  The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Bang is softer yet being a lower def format and some styling is the cause, but the 1.33 X 1 color image on the Columbus DVD is the older-looking, too soft (despite some restoration) and VCI could easily outdo this one with a Blu-ray.

 

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes are offered on all five Blu-rays, but the sonic winners are Conspirator and surprisingly Brooklyn with a well thought out mix for a low-budget film.  House does not fare as well fro being an older soundmaster, while Harold and Skateland (despite the music on the latter) are dialogue-based and more towards the front channels than I would have liked.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Bang is weaker still in part because that is a lossy format, but the Conspirator DVD sis even weaker, down there with the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the 1949 Columbus DVD.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo