Brubaker
(1980/Fox Blu-ray)/Charlie Zone
(2011/Anchor Bay Blu-ray)/Desperate
Characters (1971)/King Of The
Gypsies (1978/Paramount/Legend DVDs)/Perfect Understanding (1932/Cohen Media
Group Blu-ray)/The Verdict (1982)/Viva Zapata! (1952/Fox Blu-rays)
Picture: B-/B-/C+/C+/C+/B/B Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+/C+/B-/B- Extras: C-/D/D/D/C+/B/C- Films: C+/C/C+/C-/C+/B/B-
Now for
some dramas, old and new…
Stuart
Rosenberg’s Brubaker (1980) is one
of Robert Redford’s odder hits, based on a true story to some extent, where he
plays the title character. He shows up
as a prisoner in a Arkansas State Penitentiary and after seeing how bad
conditions are, reveals himself as the new warden! Partly hard to believe, partly highly
unlikely, it makes sense to some extent someone would do this to see how bad
things are to cause reform. However,
despite some good scenes, ideas and moments, the film has ideological issues
including its progressive liberal look at serious issues later having its
spirit hijacked by the Reagan Cinema of the 1980s.
As it
stands, it is not a bad film, yet has also dated and we get some good
performances by a cast that also includes Yaphet Kotto, Murray Hamilton, Jane
Alexander, David Keith, Tim McIntyre, Val Avery, Everett McGill, Morgan Freeman
and M. Emmet Walsh. However, it’s call
for prison reform does not go far enough and is sometimes in the shadow of
Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. Still, it has a good script and is worth a
look despite its limits.
A trailer
is the only extra.
Michael
Melski’s Charlie Zone (2011) is a
gritty new motion picture from Canada that starts out with much promise as Glen
Gould plays a boxer hired for a quick buck (he thinks) to abduct and bring back
a young lady (Amanda Crew) who is addicted to drugs) and help her get back
home. However, doing this will be more
dangerous than he imagined, the set-up more complicated than it appears and
more than a few people are manipulating the situation.
The first
half of the 103 minutes is some of the best work I have seen out of Canada in a
while, but then, we get a torture porn scene that throws everything off, the
plot never recovers, then we get twists and other predictable moments mostly
absent from the first half that causes this promising work to work itself into
a corner it never recovers from. Despite
that disappointment, it is worth a look for its guts and realism, even as it
starts to fail both and for some actors we may be seeing much more of. If this is your kind of film, you’ll want to
see it even more.
There are
no extras.
Frank D.
Gilroy’s Desperate Characters (1971)
is a decent drama with passive comedy about a married couple (Shirley MacLaine
and Kenneth Mars) who live a simple, slightly dysfunctional life and throughout
the film, we meet nothing but the same such people, middle aged, unhappy with
living and not even knowing it. Not even
knowing what they want and does a fine job showing it.
Gilroy, a
capable journeyman director with an even more prolific writing career, adapted
the Paula Fox novel himself and it makes for a subtle, somewhat underrated film
helped greatly by fine acting turns including those of Sada Thompson, Gerald S.
O’Loughlin and a very young Carol Kane, but everyone is good here. There are a few very darkly funny moments too,
so it is worth a look despite some limits to it. It is somewhat memorable, but not a homerun.
There are
sadly no extras.
After his
hit remake of A Star Is Born in 1976
(see Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) Frank Pierson directed the problematic King Of The Gypsies (1978) which
desperately wanted to be another Godfather
for Paramount Pictures and they even hired Ingmar Bergman Director of
Photography Sven Nykvist, A.S.C., to shoot the film. It has a good look to it, but even the look
is too similar to Coppola’s films and Nykvist is not always associated with
Italian Neorealism.
A very
young Eric Roberts narrates the story from just before he was born, to how his
parents came together to how all the gypsies live and operate in the U.S. as
immigrants. Susan Sarandon is his
mother, Judd Hirsch a real so and so as his father, Sterling Hayden trying to
run everything by calling himself by the title of the film, Brooke Shields as
Roberts’ potential bride, plus we get turns by Annie Potts, Shelley Winters, Annette
O’Toole, Michael V. Gazzo (from guess what film), Danielle Brisebois, Matthew
Labyorteaux and an uncredited Patti LuPone, but even they cannot make this
work.
Most of
the actors had odd careers following this odd production, but Paramount and Dino De Laurentiis tried to
make it work. However, it is now just a
curio and not a very good film. Pierson moved
to TV for the rest of his career.
There are
no extras.
The
unexpected surprise here is Cyril Gardner’s Perfect Understanding, an early 1932 sound film issued by the great
people at the Cohen Media Group on Blu-ray.
If you think about a big female star producing her own film and hiring
Lawrence Olivier to be her co-star, you would usually think of Marilyn Monroe on
The Prince & The Showgirl (1957),
which Olivier also directed, but silent screen legend Gloria Swanson was
rightly serious about making the transition to sound and made this a star
vehicle for her and anyone in it.
It was
her only film made in England,
but it did not help her continue her career, yet it is a very well made,
interesting, if uneven film that is mostly a comedy, but starts with her
singing as if it was a musical and develops several very serious side stories
that would hardly qualify as comedy.
She is a
rich woman who starts to fall for Oliver’s character, so they decide they
should get married, but there is something non-committal about them and this
becomes the root of all the problems (and potential controversies) that
follow. Written under another name by a
then-unknown Michael Powell, the film may be trying to do more than it should,
but ahs some interesting moments, sometimes plays like a Paramount high society
comedy of the 1920s and 1930s and shows us why Swanson was a star and if this
had done better, probably would have made even more early sound films, et al.
I like
many of its subtle touches and it has some memorable stand-alone moments, but
it never adds up as a total feature. It
is also easy to miss some subtle things within the film from gestures between
characters to other items including Swanson’s character going around filming
silent movies on a 16mm camera, something only rich people could afford at the
time. The film is 90 years old, but has
some fine moments and shows how the British Film Industry was slowly on the
rise.
As it
stands, it is a curio of a film with a mostly unknown cast that
Extras
include two Mack Sennett sound short films (Husband’s Reunion and Dream
Stuff, about 20 minutes each) and a nicely illustrated booklet with
limited text.
Sidney
Lumet’s The Verdict (1982) has
finally come to Blu-ray and we covered the DVD edition at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5851/The+Hustler+(1959/Fox+Blu-ray+++D
This is
an improved version over that disc and has all of its extras. It is also the best film on this list as Paul
Newman plays an alcoholic lawyer who takes on the establishment in an almost
impossible-to-win case, but it is a deep character study and Blu-ray brings
this out even better.
Finally
we have Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata!
(1952) based on the John Steinbeck film with Marlon Brando in the title role as
the great revolutionary and Anthony Quinn stealing many scenes from everyone
winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The politics were a hot topic for any film,
especially one from Hollywood, but the film handles the material well and when
you add Jean Simmons, Joseph Wiseman, Alan Reed and the solid cast here, the
films holds up very well for its age.
Kazan was on a roll and the film was ahead of its time in
several ways, plus the irony will always remain of the material, Kazan and his dealings
with the House Of Un-American Activities, the Hollywood witch-hunts of the
1950s. That helps make it a historic
film of its own, with Steinbeck writing the script and Darryl F. Zanuck backing
it as producer. Glad to see this one on
Blu-ray.
A trailer
is the only extras.
The 1080p
1.85 X 1 AVC @ 32 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Brubaker is not bad, but the print can
show its age, though it is shot to be gritty and a little dark; it never
overplays its hand. It never overplays
its hand in this regard. The 1080p 1.78
X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Charlie Zone is darker and grittier in an honest way, but
definition and detail from the HD shoot holds the detail and depth back a bit,
but it gets as realistic results as Brubaker.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the Paramount/Legend Blu-rays of Characters and Gypsies may not play as strongly, but they are A-level camera work
films and Characters was even issued
in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor 35mm prints which you can see well
reproduced for standard definition here.
Both should get Blu-ray releases later.
The 1080p
1.33 X 1 black and white AVC @ 24 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on
Viva and 1080p 1.85 X 1 color AVC @ 24
MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Verdict are the best playback performers on the list with fine
prints transferred very well throughout only showing slight signs of wear or
age. Here, Fox has done their back
catalog justice.
That
leaves the 1080p 1.33 X 1 black and white image on Perfect being the oldest film here by far, having as mix of amazing
shots and other that show wear, the age of the film, damage that needs further
repair and some darker scenes that have crushed video Black. However, the better shots (including
montages, daylight scenes and nighttime shots of Piccadilly Square are remarkable and even
demo-worthy. Being this is real black
and white with true silver content helps.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless upgrade mixes for Brubaker and Verdict are
not bad and show their age and even towards the front speakers, but are among
the best audio on the list, joined by the surprisingly competent DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 2.0 Mono on Viva, so Fox wins the sonic presentations here. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 on Charlie Zone
should have been the sonic champ on the list, but there are dialogue recording
and mixing issues, so it gets held back more than expected.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the DVDs are as good as the sound will get on those
films, but they are clean enough and just fine for what they are. The PCM 2.0 Mono on Perfect has some dialogue issues that could be fixed and a few that
might not be fixable, but subtitles would have been nice. Otherwise, this is what to expect from film
audio of this age and vintage.
- Nicholas Sheffo
