The Coalition (2012/Magnoila Blu-ray)/The
Cyclist (2012)/Fast Girls
(2012/Image DVDs)/Freaky Deaky
(2011/E1 DVD)/High Road To China
(1983/Umbrella Region B 50i Import Blu-ray)/High Rolling [In A Hot Corvette] (1977/Umbrella Region 4 PAL Import
DVD)/Playing For Keeps (2011/Sony
Blu-ray)/Small Apartments (2012/Sony
DVD)
Picture:
B-/C+/C/C+/C/B-/C+/C+ Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+/B-/C+/B/C+ Extras: C+/C-/C/C-/C-/C+/C/C- Films: C/C/C+/C/C-/C+/C/C-
PLEASE NOTE: The High Road To China Blu-ray is marked as
a Region B disc and only plays back on 50kHz (not a U.S. standard) HDTVs, High Rolling is a Region 4 PAL DVD and with only play on machines
capable of handling them. Both can be
ordered from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment at the website address provided
at the end of the review. The rest are U.S. releases.
The
following mix of comedy/dramas have action of some sort in most cases and more
in common at times than expected…
We start
with a tale of male/female relationships with athletic men and one of whom
drives around in an expensive Ferrari and involves professional athletes. Actually, that describes two of the films,
neither of which were that good, but we’ll look at them first.
Monica
Mingo’s The Coalition (2012) has
African American men in football after hours juggling various women, but we get
to know the women at least as much in this “who’s plying who” comedy that is
rarely funny, a bit formulaic, more talk than action and being directed by a
women leans towards their stories. There
are a few good moments here and Jackée Harris shows up in a supporting role too
briefly, but the positive, prog4ressive portrayal of young African American
professionals is not sufficient in itself to make for these 100 minutes to
really work.
Whether a
female discourse has been truly established is also in question because this is
too much of what we have seen before, including in the increasingly productive
market of African American-cast dramas.
At least this one is not a Hip Hop/Gangsta or Tyler Perry clone, but it
should have been so much more.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track with Director Mingo, Executive
Producer Terrell Suggs and Producer Rich Volin, Blooper Reel, Alternative
Ending, two interview featurettes that take us behind the scenes and Baltimore
Screening Q&A with Audience Interviews.
Gabriele
Muccino’s Playing For Keeps (2011) has
more money, a name cast and lands up being just as thin and predictable as
Gerard Butler plays a former soccer player (the sport called football overseas)
who was very popular and is now in flux in his life. Hew is good with kids and juggling several
women including his ex-wife (Jessica Biel) and some other women (Uma Thurman
and Catherine Zeta-Jones) of interest.
He also is at odds with the coach of the rival children’s soccer team he
coaches (Dennis Quaid, who is the one with the Ferrari versus Butler’s old Alfa
Romeo) and the script is trite, silly, dumb and never funny, especially when it
tries to be funny.
The
actors are not given much to do and that leaves the audience with nothing much
to watch. Butler in particular keeps picking duds and
this is the latest one. He’d better stop
settling for work below his talents or he’ll be seeing the big screen much less
in the future and he is better than that.
Two
behind-the-scenes featurettes and Deleted Scenes are the only extras.
Yet
another sports tale, John Lawrence’s The
Cyclist (2012) has a bike messenger (K.C. Clyde) wanting to be a pro bike
racer and can ride, but his life and some choices have not helped him, but he
now might have the chance as a competition is coming to his local town in
Utah. He also turns to an old friend
whose wife does not want her husband going back to riding and here too we get
every cliché and predictable turn imaginable.
Unfortunately, the serious ones become unintentionally funny because we
can see them coming.
No doubt
the makers were trying to make something work and the cast is likable, but this
never adds up and I thought the recent Morgan
(about a gay man left without the ability to walk, trying to compete again and
maybe getting involved in a new relationship; reviewed elsewhere on this site)
was a more realistic look at the biking world, even by default.
Deleted
Scenes are the only extra, but little here would have improved this one.
Regan
Hall’s Fast Girls (2012) is a
British production about four women who have talents to run track, but they
will not all get along at first and must face international competition as
well. It has some of the same issues as
the previous three films in portraying the sports world loosely and
incidentally, but despite its own predictability, there are better performances
here, the cast has more chemistry and we get a little more character study of
the four ladies who run.
There is
some minor racial tension in the screenplay, but it is handled very well and
all the young actors here are so good, we will likely be seeing them again in
more projects soon enough. Of course,
the title is a trick one, sounding sexist or like this might be a “gals get
wild” affair, but this is more ambitious and energetic than those other sports
works and if you are interested, you’ll want to give this one a look.
A
multi-part behind-the-scenes featurette is the only extra.
Charles
Matthau’s Freaky Deaky (2011) is
based on the Elmore Leonard novel, but as in the case of past adaptations, this
one is not as successful as the best ones.
A former bomb squad cop (Billy Burke) has to deal with a drug dealer
dealing with being set up with a pressurized bomb, but it will be much more as
he has to deal with and juggle a bunch of shady characters in what looks mostly
like the 1970s but is never totally so and even cannot make up its mind totally
if it is.
The idea
is that it thinks it is so witty, no one will notice, but in yet another
attempt to hijack the Tarantino style, all backfires and despite some wacky
moments that work and an offbeat cast that includes Crispin Glover, Christian
Slater, Michal Jai White and Andy Dick, it just cannot achieve what it thinks
it is achieving. I wondered if Matthau
was also trying to do something like a retro twist on some of Donen’s Charade (1963), but it is never that
clever or witty either.
A Making Of featurette is the only extra.
Brian G.
Hutton’s High Road To China (1983)
was one of the many attempts to imitate and make money off of the surprise
success of Spielberg’s Raiders Of The
Lost Ark (1981) with the added fact that they landed that film’s originally
intended lead, Tom Selleck who could not get away from other work to do Raiders. Paired here with Bess Armstrong, playing a
socialite that has to find her missing father (Wilford Brimley) (guess where?),
off they go into their adventure.
Unfortunately,
the screenplay can only imitate the vaguest aspects of Raiders and despite a savvy journeyman director (Hutton also helmed
Kelly’s Heroes and Where Eagles Dare), this one does not
have the edge, maturity or rawness of those films nor is it intended to. Not even Robert Morley, Jack Weston and Brian
Blessed can save this from its hideously shallow screenplay or lack of energy
that even the John Barry score seems to be in conflict with. Lame!
A trailer
is the only extra.
Much
better is Igor Adzins’ High Rolling [In
A Hot Corvette] (1977, the bracketed title extension is what the U.S.
distributor added hoping to sell it like a U.S. bandit/chase film) Has
Australian brawler Alby (Grigor Taylor) and Long Island would-be cowboy Texas
(Joseph Bottoms, sounding more like a Five
Easy Pieces Jack Nicholson than he should) womanizing, partying and having
a good time down under, they get picked up by a Corvette owner (John Clayton)
who actually has the nerve to hit on them.
They steal his car, but the reason he had the nerve is because he is a
dangerous drug dealer.
If this
were an American production, esp. since the 1980s, we would get a tired,
clichéd set of scenes where people would be beaten and worse and the film would
no longer be a comedy. However, this
stays a comedy and is further enhanced by the women cast from Judy Davis in her
first major role as a counterculture hitchhiker to Wendy Hughes and Sandra
McGregor as the singers (their performance of Donna Summer’s Love To Love You Baby is a hoot) makes
this much more than your usual chase film.
The biggest problem is that it is simply too short, but it is
entertaining and offers some fun differences from most of the fun films from
that 1970s movie cycle that peaked (and ended) with the 1980s and Burt
Reynolds’ Smokie & The Bandit
films.
Australian
band Sherbet, best known for their 1975 international hit Howzat, turn in some fun music for this movie including the title
song and though none of it quite sticks with you like that hit or Sky High by Jigsaw from The Man From Hong Kong (1975, reviewed
elsewhere on this site), it is good music.
Like Spilt Enz, those two bands should have had far more commercial and
critical success in the U.S.,
so that is another plus for this film.
Roger Ward also stars.
Extras
include stills set to the title song, the Original Theatrical Trailer,
Interviews featurette with Director Auzins & Robin Copping and Brian
Trenchard-Smith’s short anti-venereal disease film The Love Epidemic (1975) that is dated, pre-AIDS, sometimes
unintentionally funny and more graphic than one might expect, but worth seeing.
Jonas
Akerlund’s Small Apartments (2012) is
the Music Video Director’s third feature film and possibly his worst as trying
to be funny, gross, gritty, witty and offbeat, but failing at virtually every
turn way too self amused by itself and the worst entry on the list.
Matt
Lucas is an unwell loaner with no friends, a brother in a mental hospital (he
likely should be there too) and dreams of leaving the U.S. to be a horn player
who girls will like in Switzerland. The
jokes never work, the script is repetitive and dumb, star turns by Juno Temple,
Billy Crystal, James Caan, James Marsden, Amanda Plummer, Peter Stormare, Dolph
Lundgren, Rosie Perez and even Johnny Knoxville are pointless and almost
everything that can go wrong here does.
Early on,
Franklin Franklin (Lucas (and yes, that is the character’s name)) accidentally
kills his landlord, but the film makes some odd mistakes that are unintended,
this becomes borderline smug all the way and is a remarkable failure overall. There is no real risk-taking, though Akerlund
seems to think so. I do not fault the
actors who wanted to work with a director who has made some good Music Videos
(though it took a while for him to get as good as he has been recently with Moby
(The James Bond Theme for Tomorrow Never Dies), Madonna (Ray Of Light, Music, Jump and
especially American Life), The
Prodigy (Smack My Bitch Up) and Lady
Gaga (Telephone w/Beyoncé, Paparazzi) showing he is as hit and miss
in his day job since 1993 (20 years and counting) as anything.
There is
no excuse for this to be such a mess, but it is and if it were not for the
actors trying, it would be a total disaster instead of nearly so. Skip it!!!
A
behind-the-scenes featurette and goofy “bong” bit are the only extras.
The three
Blu-rays here should deliver the best performance of the eight releases
covered, but that is not the case. The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on The Coalition Blu-ray and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 PAL
image on the High Rolling DVD are
the picture champs here with the most consistent color, richest look and
smoothest playback overall despite the former being an HD shoot with some
motion blur and other flaws, while the latter is a 36 year-old Australian 35mm
film in far better shape than we could have asked for an one that would likely
look even better in its own Blu-ray.
The
1080i/50kHz 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on High Road is from an awful, awfully soft HD master produced by the
owners of the film with reddish overtones, too much softness and an aged look
that makes the bad color timing on the recent Raider Of The Lost Ark Blu-ray (unreviewed, but beware!) look
almost normal. I don’t know what the
owners were thinking, but this film never looked great, but they made it
worse! This is not the image intended by
Director of Photography Ronnie Taylor, B.S.C. and looks like an old DVD at
times.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Keeps
is a new HD shoot by the very talented Director of Photography Peter Menzies,
Jr., A.S.C., but he has mixed some analog-like and actual analog video and
equally low def digital with the new HD shoot and that would not be bad, except
that detail is purposely styled to have slight breakup on the fine detail
throughout making this one of the most bizarre Blu-rays of a new release I have
seen in a while. Why choose this
approach? It is strange, annoying and
distracting throughout and that is not considering motion blur and other minor
depth issues that make this look cheap.
No wonder it did not do well theatrically.
That
means the remaining anamorphically enhanced DVDs can more than compete with the
lesser Blu-rays, including the 1.85 X 1 images on Deaky and Apartments
despite their stylized approaches and the 2.35 X 1 image on Cyclist which is just a little weak all
around. Sadly, the anamorphically
enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Fast Girls
is as soft as anything here despite not being badly shot. I don’t know why it is so soft, but maybe a
Blu-ray of this HD shoot will confirm the issues in this case.
As for
sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Keeps is the sonic champ here and far superior to its image, with a
consistent soundfield, well recorded audio for the most part and no major
surround highlights either, but a professional job all around. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix
on Coalition has some good aural
moments, but the mix is towards the front speakers too often and also has some
location audio with issues, but it is steady otherwise and the DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 2.0 Mono on China is
able to hold its won with it down to the music score by the late, great John
Barry, though I wish a stereophonic isolated music score track was included
because the music is one of the only reasons anyone talks about this film
anymore.
That
leaves the DVDs with lossy Dolby Digital sound, all with 5.1 mixes that are on
the weak side and do not have many good surrounds, save the 2.0 Mono on High Rolling with its Sherbet songs
holding up better than you might think.
As noted above, you can order the import versions of the High Road To China Blu-ray and High Rolling DVD exclusively from
Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
- Nicholas Sheffo
