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