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Category:    Home > Reviews > Horror > Slasher > Torture Porn > Sweden > Heist > Comedy > Greed > Kidnapping > Espionage > Spy > Literature > Blood Runs Cold (2010/Gaiam Vivendi DVD)/The Brass Teapot (2012/Magnolia Blu-ray)/The Call (2013/Sony DVD)/The Human Factor (1979/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Terror On A Train (1952/MGM/Warner Archive DVD

Blood Runs Cold (2010/Gaiam Vivendi DVD)/The Brass Teapot (2012/Magnolia Blu-ray)/The Call (2013/Sony DVD)/The Human Factor (1979/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Terror On A Train (1952/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/23:59 (2012/Magnolia/MagNet Blu-ray)/World War Z: The Art Of The Film (2013/Script Book/Titan Books)

 

Picture: C/B-/C+/C+/C+/B-/X     Sound: C+/B-/C+/C/C/B-/X     Extras: C-/C/C-/D/C-/C/X     Main Programs: C-/C/C-/C+/C+/C-/(Book:) B-

 

 

PLEASE NOTE: The Human Factor and Terror On A Train are only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.

 

 

 

Here are a mixed bag of the latest genre releases…

 

 

Sonny Laguna’s Blood Runs Cold (2010) is yet another slasher thriller with some torture porn overtones, but the cast is more interesting than usual, while the splatter effects are phonier than usual.  Made cheaply in Sweden, the film is in English, but never fell just like another U.S. cheapy as a young female artist stays at a house rented by her manager and runs into an old flame, but everyone is about to get burned.

 

There is very little suspense and the makers overdue the violence, yet there was more potential for this one than I see the creators saw and as a result, sheer inexperience has ruined what could have been a nice surprise.

 

A Making Of featurette is the only extra.

 

 

Ramaa Mosley’s The Brass Teapot (2012) is a heist picture that is also a comedy, sometimes at least, about a couple (a very well matched Juno Temple and Michael Angarano) who find the title object and steal it from an antiques store when they should not.  Turns out it is magical, Jewish of origin and will give them all the money they want (yes, the object is built on some ugly stereotypes) so off they go on their wild adventure, though their antics will draw more attention than it should.

 

This includes everyone trying to steal it from them, two Hassidic Jewish “hitmen” (?!?) trying to recover it (Darren Aronofsky’s Pi has nothing to worry about) and what could have been a really good film thanks to the chemistry of its leads becomes a mess.  The result is a failure with few good moments.  I hope Temple and Angarano are paired together in a better project next time.

 

Extras include Prologue/Alternative Opening, Original Theatrical Trailer, Deleted Scenes, AXS TV segment on the film, Interview with Ramaa Mosley, Interview with Michael Angarano, Uncovering : The Brass Teapot featurette and a feature length audio commentary track with Director Ramaa and Executive Producer P. Jennifer Dana.

 

 

Brad Anderson’s The Call (2013) has Halle Berry as a 911 telephone operator receiving a kidnapping call from a female abductee (Abigail Breslin) whose kidnapper happens not o take her cell phone away from her.  I never bought the actual kidnapping and that leads to other issues here, including the unlikely bit about the kidnapper not taking the phone away and the result being that this is a “stuck-in-a” formula script with one difference:  Halle Berry is on the other end of the phone call, as these formula flicks often have someone calling someone else… somehow.

 

This becomes silly and unrealistic quickly, but is the WWE’s latest attempt to have a hit film and it did some business thanks to Miss Berry, but I was not impressed and the overall result is a goofy romp that thinks it is smarter than it is.  At least there is some talent here for a change.

 

Extras include Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes-able devices, while the disc adds a Making Of featurette entitled Emergency Procedure and feature length audio commentary track with the makers, Berry and Breslin.

 

 

Otto Preminger’s The Human Factor (1979) was his last feature film based on the Graham Greene novel about a family man and spy (Nicol Williamson) who is a double agent for the KGB during what turned out to be the latter years of the Cold War, though no one knew it at the time.  He has a great wife (model Iman in her acting debut) and is liked by his MI-5 (or MI-6) friends, but they start to find out that a leak is going on and being investigating and that is when things start to get interesting.

 

Richard Attenborough, John Gielgud, Robert Morley and Derek Jacobi make the agency group totally believable and the film has some good moments, but even before old Cold war ideas dated the film, it was slow moving and not always effective.  It was one of MGM’s last stand-alone films before the MGM/UA merger and MGM had already allowed United Artists to distribute their few films per year in theaters back in 1976, but the studio was more concerned with promoting the James Bond film Moonraker (which was a huge hit) and the rest of their slate as the men who rebuilt the studio since the 1950s had been pushed out by then-corporate owner Transamerica.

 

Still, the film has some nice moments and good acting turns, so it is worth a look, but Preminger had no had a hit in years, burned too many bridges and this would be his last cinematic word.

 

There are no extras.

 

 

Ted Tetzlaff’s Terror On A Train (1952) is a British thriller with some Hollywood aspects (MGM made the film) in which local authorities have discovered that a train carrying a bunch of nautical ocean mines (the size of small cars) may be booby trapped and will set off an explosion that would take out a small British town.  They turn to a UXB expert played by Glenn Ford, who is having marital problems, but goes to the site where the train cars have been left and starts to go through each bomb to make sure it is not rigged.

 

There is some suspense here, some interesting acting moments, some interesting action sequences and some suspense, but the film can also be flat and inconsistent, though I still liked the parts that worked and it is lensed by the great Freddie Young (Lawrence Of Arabia, You Only Live Twice) who makes it even more interesting than it would otherwise be.  This is also worth a look at least once, even if it is not a classic.  At least they were trying to make it work and it holds up well for being 61 years old and counting.

 

A trailer is the only extra.

 

 

Gilbert Chan’s 23:59 (2012) is a Korean thriller (sort of) that offers us a haunted military barracks of a training camp, but the mix of bad clichés, bad visual effects and little suspense undermines any potential here and if you are looking for The Shining meets Full Metal Jacket (a dumb combination to attempt at any rate), you will not find it here.  The title refers to the near witching hour in which all the gruesome events happen, but not to anything exciting, original or effective.

 

Acting is not bad, but this becomes thin and even a little silly quickly, though there might be a better thriller here… somewhere.  Too bad, because this had at least a little potential.

 

Extras include BD Live interactive functions, a Making Of featurette and Original Theatrical Trailers.

 

 

And finally we have World War Z: The Art Of The Film (2013), which is simply a high-quality near coffee table book sized reproduction of the screenplay of the Brad Pitt epic zombie film (another overly digital apocalyptic big budget release) that dumps the scene numbers and adds a bunch of illustrations and vague notes.  The paper and images are very well reproduced and this is meant to be a collector’s item for fans of the film, especially if reshoots resulted in more differences between the film and this book.

 

The screenplay was written by Michael Carnahan and Drew Goddard & Damon Lindelot based on the Max Brooks novel, with some people liking the film and others feeling it is too much like Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (reviewed elsewhere on this site) with too much money.  Either way, it was opening well at the box office as we posted this and is a book that will even impress non-fans of the film.

 

 

As expected, the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Teapot and 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on 23:59 are the visual champs here, though both also have degraded images and styling that holds them back visually.  Not too far behind are the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Call and Factor and 1.33 X 1 black and white image on Train, which are decent transfers from decent sources, but softer and not without their flaws, though Call actually adds flaws unnecessarily.  That leaves the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Cold being particularly degraded-looking and shot on Canon HD cameras at an alleged 2K rate.  You would never know it from what we see here as it is the weakest release on the list.

 

Both Teapot and 23:59 have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes that are the sonic winners here, but the soundfields in both cases are lacking consistency and can even be towards the front speakers, so they both disappoint a bit, even when the sound kicks in.  The lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Call and Cold are the next best set here, but they have the same soundfield issues, but are weaker.  That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Factor and Train being weaker and more limited than expected with more distortion throughout and both also sound a little second-generation, so be careful of volume levels and switching.

 

 

To order The Human Factor and Terror On A Train, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

 

http://www.warnerarchive.com/

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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