Bellflower (2011/Oscilloscope Blu-ray w/DVD)/Gia (1998 Cable Telefilm/HBO Blu-ray)/Little Senegal (2011/Cinema Libre DVD)/Main Street (2009/Magnolia DVD)/Water For Elephants (2011/Fox Blu-ray)
Picture: B-
& C+/C+/B-/C+/B & C Sound: B
& B-/B/C+/C+/B & B- Extras: C+/D/D/C/C Films: C+/C+/B-/C+/C
Here are
a recent group of dramas that did not necessarily work, but were usually
ambitious.
Evan
Glodell’s Bellflower (2011) is the kind of film you
really want to see work because it is so different and has some good things
going for it. Starting out as a comedy
of sorts about relationships, the two male leads (Glodell and Tyler Dawson)
love to blow things up and have built a Mad
Max-inspired car named Medusa to boot, but Woodrow (Glodell) is about to
have relationship complications that will make all that fun less relevant and
has much going for it. The casting,
including the addition of Jessie Wiseman and Rebekah Brandes as the friends who
start to split over Woodrow are convincing as is the rest of the cast.
However,
after getting so much to work here, the script takes a turn that hurts the
whole film in the latter half that drops this from a very professional indie
drama to bad film school experimentation in trying to reflect Woodrow’s
problems and issues resulting from things going bad when they do and I was very
disappointed because they came so close to possibly a minor classic of indie
feature production. Unfortunately, it
turns wrong and that’s it, though there is more than enough here to give this
one a good look. Extras include a
Trailer, Outtakes, a Behind The Scenes featurette and Medusa Rundown showing
off the car.
New to
Blu-ray is Michael Cristopher’s Gia (1998),
the older cable TV movie that helped put Angelina Jolie on the map as the
fashion model of the title who had died of AIDS at a young age as part of an
abusive, ugly fall from grace just as her career was taking off. This Unrated edition has some good moments
and Jolie steals every scene she is in, but the film has a bad, ill-advised MTV
approach where in place of much-needed character study, exposition and
additional detail, we get hit records one too many times, dating this very
badly. Mercedes Ruehl and Faye Dunaway
have good acting turns, but that is not enough to overcome the dated
approach. There are no extras.
Rachid
Bouchareb’s Little Senegal (2011) is
the big surprise here this time, a drama set in New York City about an older
man named Alloune (Sotigui Kouyate in a really good performance) taking up a
simple job in the community of the title, learning about life there and
learning more about himself and his people who were taken away from his African
village two centuries ago, many of whom settled there eventually. He looks for his specific relatives, but
increasingly finds himself in the middle of several conflicts that are as
revealing as they are painful and the film has constant surprises throughout.
It never
makes “the big statement” and might not have wanted too, but it has more than
enough going for it that it is worth going out of your way for. I just wish it had been a little longer and
given us a little more on the supporting characters. Still a fine work, it deserves more attention
and I hope it gets discovered by a wider audience. There are no extras.
John
Doyle’s Main Street (2009) is an ambitious
attempt to update and deliver a film version of Horton Foote’s book about a
small town in transition. Those
expecting To Kill A Mockingbird or
even Tender Mercies will be a bit
disappointed, but this is a very well cast film and I liked the chemistry of
the actors along with the locations.
Colin Firth is a corporate representative who rents a warehouse from
Ellen Burstyn, a widow who is alone and may have to sell her house; one she has
lived in all her life. She has support
from a relative (Patricia Clarkson) who becomes concerned with her when they
find out the warehouse is being used for the temporary storage of toxic waste!
A local
police officer (a nice turn by Orlando Bloom) studying to be a lawyer is also
suspicious, but he also has to deal with the fact that the woman he loves
(Amber Tamblyn) is possibly engaged to another man she works with.
Even if
the film is not always great, it moves along nicely and was a real pleasure to
watch. The actors integrate into the
narrative as if they had always been playing these roles and Burstyn in
particular is effective. It too is worth
a look. Extras include a Trailer, Behind
The Scenes featurette and Deleted Scenes.
Last and
least is the latest dud from one-time Music Video director Francis Lawrence,
Water For Elephants (2011), set at a circus in
flashback as we get told the story by Hal Holbrook visiting the circus today
(or what’s left of it) his life story on how
he was once involved and wow, is it corny, melodramatic and
predictable. Robert Pattinson tries to
play him as a young man and sometimes is not bad in the role, but the “play the
violins” by-the-numbers script is a loser from the get go. Resse Witherspoon makes her way onto the most
overpaid actors list turning it another flat performance and Christopher Waltz
is bad again as her “I will not let go” husband.
Yawn! Extras include Digital Copy for PC and PC
portable devices, four featurettes and (believe it or not) a feature length
audio commentary track.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Bellflower
is an HD shoot and has been stylized to look good, but it has limits in detail
and depth that are even more apparent on the anamorphically enhanced DVD also
included. It is watchable, but sometimes
is also overstylized. The 1080p 1.78 X 1
digital High Definition image transfer on Gia
looks like an older HD master and the black and white moments are especially
weak and grainy making this the weakest of the Blu-rays. The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on
Senegal is not bad at all
looking more consistent than Gia and
having more definition and detail than most indie DVDs we have seen
lately. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35
X 1 image on Main
is also pleasant to look at, but is weaker and softer overall. That leaves the 1080p 2.35 X 1 AVC @ 27.5
MBPS digital High Definition image on the Blu-ray of Water the best performer
on the list, though its anamorphically enhanced DVD is much weaker than
expected.
All three
Blu-rays have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes and they are pretty
good throughout, though Gia can show
its age at times, it still has a consistent soundfield. The DVDs of Bellflower, Water and Main all have Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes, but Main is more
dialogue-based and therefore weaker. Senegal
is left with a Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix that can compete with Main, but has
some limits due to its budget.
- Nicholas Sheffo