Day Of The Falcon (2012/Image Blu-ray)/The
Insider (1999/Touchstone/Disney Blu-ray)/Never Let Me Go (1953/Warner Archive DVD)/Nicholas & Alexandra (1971/Columbia/Sony/Twilight Time Limited
Edition Blu-ray)/One Night With The King
(2006/Fox Blu-ray)/A Royal Affair
(2012/Magnolia Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B-/C/B/C+/B- Sound: B-/B-/C+/B-/B-/B Extras: C/C+/C-/B-/C/C+ Films: C/B+/C/B-/C/C+
PLEASE NOTE: The Never Let Me Go DVD is only available from Warner Bros. from their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below, while the Nicholas & Alexandra Blu-ray is
limited to 3,000 copies from Twilight Time and is available exclusively at the
Screen Archives website which can also be reached at the link at the end of
this review.
Now for a
new set of releases that deal with history in various ways…
Jean-Jacques
Annaud has been a mixed filmmaker with favorites like Name Of The Rose and Enemy At The Gates, mixed works like The Lover (better in its uncut form) or Two Brothers and dated bits like The Bear and problematic films like Seven Years In Tibet. With Day Of the Falcon (2012), he takes on a
tale of conflict with two Middle Eastern/Islamic Kingdoms as a big U.S. oil
company arrives in the early 1900s to establish a new set of sources for oil,
but will have to wait to see the battle between rivals play itself out, some of
which they have no idea about.
Antonio
Banderas (in his best role in years) heads one of the families, keeping an
uneasy peace until it starts to crumble and the rival clan (including two
brothers) will start to find their way outside of the older agreement. With aspirations to be Lawrence Of Arabia (down to James Horner’s too-similar-at-times
score), Annaud co-wrote the screenplay with Spielberg veteran Menno Meyjes (The Color Purple, Empire Of The Sun, Indiana
Jones & The Last Crusade) making this an odd mix. A film that should be thorough, serious and
dramatic becomes like a never-say-Indiana-Jones romp in spirit with humor in
the wrong places and too many false notes for its own good.
The
locales and cast are not a problem here with fine turns by Tahar Rahim, Mark
Strong, Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed with money in the production and on the
screen including battle scenes that are not bad, if not great. Sometimes bad visual effects and unwise
editing choices kill suspense and the pace, but the biggest problem is simply
too many clichés, predictability and an obsession with sticking to a Classical
Holly wood Narrative that is very un-Arabian and is never convincing. If anything, this will go down as a big
curio, but also a disappointment,
Extras
include a 40-minutes Making Of
featurette, From Storyboard-To-Screen piece and featurette Transforming The Desert: The Visual Effects Of Day Of The Falcon.
Michael
Mann’s The Insider (1999) was not
the big commercial or critical success it should have been, telling the serious
story of how one man with a conscience (Russell Crowe in one of his greatest
performances) feels he needs to reveal the ugly truth behind what the so-called
tobacco companies are really selling versus what they pretend to be
selling. Their cancer-causing products
turn out to be less benign than they are letting on and as a scientist, Dr.
Jeffrey Wigand (who exists in real life) risks his family and future because he
cannot live the big lie anymore.
In this,
he lands up trying to get his word out (pre-Internet for that matter) and turns
to a powerful TV producer named Lowell Bergman (an ace performance by Al
Pacino) who is an uncompromised name at the highly rated CBS news magazine 60 Minutes. Wigand tries to connect and eventually a
dialogue is created, but the companies are watching Wigand, et al, and the
stakes start to get higher as the tobacco industry becomes concerned about
Wigand, starts threatening him and pulls other strings that might kill the
story before it gets out.
The
once-proud CBS is now more concerned with money, is in the middle of a possible
merger with Group W Westinghouse Broadcasting (which did eventually happen) and
start to put their legacy on the backburner at the worst possible time and it
is legacy that host & star Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer playing the
man as less principled than expected) is concerned with over telling the truth.
Add the
many side stories here and this film is as relevant as ever, as corporations
have become more extreme in covering up problems with their product, as more
media mergers have happened and as network news has become more and more of a
joke. This is about history untold and
not told enough, very effectively, honestly, darkly and even brutally, standing
as one of the greatest films any of its participants ever made. A gem in the Touchstone/Disney catalog, its
Blu-ray release is long overdue and I was stunned at how effective and powerful
the film remained. It has not been
rediscovered as I had hoped, but I expect this great Blu-ray edition will help
that cause. If you have never seen this
film, it is a must-see for all serious film fans. If you saw it and have not watched it lately,
you should go out of your way to see it again because it really is that good.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary track with Al Pacino and Russell
Crowe, Production Featurette and Inside A
Scene clip.
Delmer
Daves’ Never Let Me Go (1953) is
part of a cycle of anti-Soviet Union films that started to get produced by Hollywood as WWII ended and the USSR
became the new rival to the USA. Made by MGM, this political extrapolation of Ninotchka (1939, also an MGM film, but
a romantic comedy) has Clark Gable as the American and Gene Tierney as the
Russian Ballerina who fall in love with each other, if only that cold evil
empire would just get out of the “damn” way.
This film
wears it politics on its sleeve as all these films did and like most of the
films in this cycle, that is the idea.
It is unabashed propaganda down to Gable’s constant voice over
narrative. Add to the fact that this was
a British MGM production (Kenneth More, Bernard Miles and Richard Haydn show
up) and you have a unique entry in the cycle worth a look including its
unintentional laughs. Glad to see it on
DVD finally.
The
Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.
After Planet Of The Apes (1968) and Patton (1970), Director Franklin J.
Schaffner took on an even richer film with Nicholas
& Alexandra (1971) based on Robert K. Massie’s thoroughly researched
work about the final months of the last Royal Czars of Russia before the
Communist Revolution’s murderous, bloody takeover. Michael Jayston is the Czar Nicholas and
Janet Suzman is Alexandra as a couple who is happy, but has some issues and she
is not helping matters by trusting the inane and insane Rasputin (A pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker in a very
effective performance) while all ignore the signs that their empire is
increasingly vulnerable to the new Marxist movement.
The duo
is likable and we get to know them the long way (this runs 189 minutes) as we
go behind closed doors and this is convincing for the most part, though some of
this is overly long and other parts may not be as effective as hoped for, but
it is a sprawling, ambitious, top rate production Columbia Pictures hoped would
be another critical and commercial success in the (yep) Lawrence Of Arabia mode down to having its producer Sam Spiegel on
board.
The film
is also a big British production and for the most part, holds up very well as
one of the last of the great pre-Barry
Lyndon costume epics (that Kubrick film set a new high standard for these
films) and James Goldman’s screenplay has plenty of subtle, effective moments
that make this a exercise in pure cinema and great, grand filmmaking. Despite its length, it is very much worth
your time and I am very happy to see it come out on Blu-ray, even if it is in a
Twilight Time Limited Edition.
The film
also has a great supporting cast including Michael Redgrave, Ian Holm, Brian
Cox, Jack Hawkins, Curt Jurgens, Eric Porter and Lawrence Olivier. Another serious piece of filmmaking, it is a
must0see for all persons serious about cinema.
Extras
include another nicely illustrated booklet on the film from Twilight Time including
informative text and another solid Julie Kirgo essay on the film, while the
Blu-ray adds the Original Theatrical Trailer, three vintage featurettes on the
film (Royal Daughters, Changing Faces, The Royal Touch) and the Richard Rodney Bennett isolated music
score in stereo.
Our final
film that aspires to Lawrence Of Arabia
is Michael O. Sajbel’s One Night With
The King (2006) is a Biblical epic of sorts involving how Hadassah (Tiffany
DuPont) becomes Esther, Queen of Persia and the desired of King Xerxes (now
action star Luke Goss) except that she is Jewish and even becoming Queen might
not save her from begin killed. The film
also had a decent budget (if not extraordinary) and also has some great supporting
turns by John Rhys-Davies, Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole, but it also has many
of the same issues that Day Of the
Falcon has.
Again,
the battle scenes do not work so well down to the editing and the script is a
mixed bag and in both cases, the religious angles are treated as secondary
(which is not the same as trivialized) and that does not help, but this film
(unlike Falcon) has the added burden
of trying to overcome the legacy of the dead Biblical Epic genre, so it becomes
muddled very early on. Unless you get
wild with the genre one way (Scorsese’s Last
Temptation Of Christ) or the other (Mel Gibson’s The Passion Of the Christ), you simply cannot make a dent in this
kind of storytelling anymore and despite their best efforts, King succumbs to this. For Biblical fans only.
The only
extra is a feature length audio commentary track by Co-Producer Matthew Crouch,
Co-Producer Richard Cook and Co-Editor Stephan Blinn.
Finally
we have Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair
(2012) which tells the true story of the at least slightly mad King Christian
VII (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard) takes up with and marries the beautiful Caroline
Mathilde (Alicia Vikander) but it is not the marriage that it could be because
she is not as conformist as the higher-ups would like her to be and in a
censorship, oppression-based Denmark, said insiders are increasingly interested
in making the King into a puppet.
Soon,
those around the King decides he needs a doctor and convince Johann Friedrich
Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen of Casino
Royale and the new Hannibal Lecter TV series) to take the job. However, he is more liberal and
science-minded than the new Queen, knows literature more thoroughly and
eventually becomes a threat to those trying to stage a coup all along.
Though
this costume drama also has some flat moments, it is tighter and more to the
point at 137 minutes and the performances are terrific all around, as well as
the costumes, production design, locations and all around look and fell of the
piece. It comes across as more authentic
than any of the other costumers on this list except maybe Nicholas & Alexandra, but this one is a bit more
naturalistic. I just felt we could have
used some more details on the politics and people (not seen enough for our own
good) to really flush out the era, times and stakes here. Otherwise, this is pretty good filmmaking and
with Mikkelsen’s star about to rise again, will become a curio that will not
disappoint.
Extras
include a nice interactive Royal Family
Tree section, Original Theatrical Trailer, text Portraits & Biographies
and on-camera Interviews with Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Arcel and Alicia Vikander
on the filming of the real life story.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on all five Blu-rays are about
as good as they are going to get for their respective films, save King which is only presented here in an
older HD master and at a mere AVC @ 19.5 MBPS.
Shot on 35mm film in the Super 35mm format. Visual effects have also dated a bit. Alexandra
just passes Falcon, Insider and Royal (also an all 35mm film shoot) as the best playback performer
here, including many shots that show how great the dye-transfer, three-strip
Technicolor prints of the film must have looked, though some shots still show
their age. Director of Photography Freddie
Young, B.S.C. (Lawrence Of Arabia, You Only Live Twice) uses the very
widescreen frame to its fullest extent and shot this is real anamorphic 35mm
Panavision. Falcon and King want
badly to look like Lawrence,
but cannot match it, especially with Falcon
using Super 35mm format and some HD shooting in a mix that has limited color. Insider
is the second-best transfer here since the HD master is in good shape and this
captures the intended darkness of the film’s look, even if this cuts into
fidelity.
Director
of Photography Dante Spinotti, A.S.C., A.I.C., makes this a rich visual
experience throughout that is constantly enhancing the narrative as it engulfs
us into its world. Spinotti has been
Mann’s DP since Manhunter (1986,
reviewed elsewhere on this site) and though they worked on later projects, this
is their last great collaboration to date and has as much impact as it ever
had.
The 1.33
X 1 black and white image on Never is
a little softer than I would have liked and though the film has a good look,
this could look better, even for DVD.
All the
Blu-rays here have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes, save Alexandra with a DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 1.0 Mono mix (a good copy of the six-channel magnetic sound master for 70mm
British Blow-ups of the film was not available at this time (Universal’s Silent Running shares the same issue),
the mono track here is surprisingly strong) with Affair (with its Danish/English dialogue mix) being the surprise
sonic champ. It may be dialogue-based,
but it has a very consistent soundfield, is warm, very well recorded and all
elements are integrated well throughout.
Falcon, Insider and King can be
a bit more towards the front speakers than I would have liked, though in the
case of Insider, it at least makes
narrative sense. The lossy Dolby Digital
2.0 Mono on Never is not bad for its
age.
To order Never Let Me Go, go to this link for it
and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
As well, Nicholas & Alexandra can be ordered
while supplies last along with many other Twilight Time titles at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo