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Category:    Home > Reviews > Romance > Drama > Comedy > Mumblecore > Civil War > Greeks > Australia > Gay > Art > Mystery > Children > Pakist > Barefoot (2013/Lionsgate DVD)/Copperhead (2013/Warner Blu-ray)/Head On (1998/Umbrella Region Free Import Blu-ray)/The Time Being (2012/Tribeca Film/Cinedigm DVD)/These Birds Walk (2014/Oscilloscope DV

Barefoot (2013/Lionsgate DVD)/Copperhead (2013/Warner Blu-ray)/Head On (1998/Umbrella Region Free Import Blu-ray)/The Time Being (2012/Tribeca Film/Cinedigm DVD)/These Birds Walk (2014/Oscilloscope DVD)


Picture: C/B-/B-/C+/C Sound: C+/B/C+/C/C+ Extras: D/D/C+/C/C+ Films: C/C-/C+/B-/C



PLEASE NOTE: The Head On Import Region Free Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Umbrella Entertainment and can be ordered from the link below.



Here is an odd new set of dramas that you should know about...



Andrew Fleming's Barefoot (2013) has Evan Rachel Wood and Scott Speedman as two persons on the outs (she is introverted and his family has cast him as a black sheep) who might be compatible, but it is hard to tell, so the screenplay goes out of its way to make things a little quirky, but that never feels authentic. Treat Williams and JK Simmons have good supporting turns here, but this never rings as true as the makers would have us believe.


As well, the leads never totally have the chemistry you might expect, though this being from the mumblecore subgenre of romantic films where chemistry and speaking coherently are not requirements for narrative storytelling, could that be intended? Either way, those factors and a lack of focus or original ideas stops this one fropm working. I even liked the leads.


There are no extras, though I give them points for having Michael Penn do the score.



Ron Maxwell's Copperhead (2013) is the director's very belated third (and we hope final) film about the Civil War that began with the Gettysburg TV mini-seires that became a cut into a theatrical film release, followed by its overbloated, boring, and all too long sequel Gods & Generals. Almost as boring as its predecessor, this drama has us looking at the lives of those good Southerners who happened to be on the wrong side of the war, but the script lands up trivializing it all with tons of clichés.


Even wackier, it starts up a romance subplot with a young man (Casey Thomas Brown) that his father (Billy Campbell) seems to disapprove of a bit, but that changes later when he signs up to fight, leaving a narrative gap when that should not have been the focus of this production to begin with. The Civil War is in the background (don't even think Gone With The Wind), Peter Fonda shows up and is not in enough scenes and don't expect any serious ballte footage. What we have here is basicalluy a TV movie with little point. Maxwell handled youth and youths much better decades ago in his underrated Little Darlings, but that director is nowhere to be found here.


There are no extras.



Ana Kokkinos' Head On (1998) is from Australia and deals with a Greek family who has immigrated to the great country Down Under, but the twist is that late-teen Ari (a bold performance by Alex Dimitriades) is in conflict with his father, is actually gay and is out to hve as much wreckless sex as anything with no future in sight. This ioncludes well-hanlded scenes where he has sexual encounters (most very high risk) and intoxicates himself often, yet we can sympathize with him and he is one of the more likable people here.


Not that anyone is a villain, as even the fatehr is just portrayed as old-fashioned, angry and stuffy with formula expectations like having him marry a nice greek gal. The script never dewlls on the obvioius to its credit, we also have a transvestite (Paul Capsis) as a main character and archive footage is often used to show the Greek experience of immigation and as symbol for hopes of a better life. Ari even upsets his mother with talk about going back, but whether he is serious about that or able to concentrate on anything else is not likely. My one complaint with the film is that its ending is pat and flat after all it says, does and shows. Otherwise, it is a minor classic of Australian cinema and worth going out of your way for if you are interested.


Extras include a Behind The Scenes Photo Gallery, PAL Video Paul Capsis Music Video, PAL Video Head On - Six Years On featurette (will only play on Blu-ray players than can handle PAL format video) and the Original Theatrical Trailer.



Nenad Cicin-Sain's The Time Being (2012) is the niceest surprise of the bunch with the underrated Wes Bentley as an artist, painter and family man who is not seeing his career go where it ought to and works other jobs until he gets a break. It might come from an old rich man (the ever solid Frank Langella) who just bought one of his paintings and wants to hire him to do some work, but when the assignment is to abstractly videotape soemthing, he is suspicious it is a dead end until he is reminded how much money he'll make... the kind that will not totally take him off of his artistic course, he hopes.


From there, the script becoimes a characetr study of the men, art and the world we inhabit with some nice surprises and a few teists and turns for a change that make this film's ambitions work more often than we see these days in independent production. A gem that works pretty wellmost oif the time to the end, I very much recommend it for those who like serious motion pictures with intelligence.


A director interview is sadly the only extra.



The Omar Mullick/Bassam Tariq drama These Birds Walk (2014) starts with the problem of having two directors who yes-men each other too much, making any points outside of showing the lives of the people in this story in a documentary rawness during the course of the scripted narrative about how orphaned and/or youths of limited resources fall through the big cracks of a society like that in Karachi, Pakistan because the government does not provide enough (or efficient enough) a safety net for them and thus, their future.


The other character focused on is an ambulance driver who sometimes has to choose between shuttling around these lost children and dead bodies. This only runs 71 minutes and is not able to finish much of what it starts, nor does it add as much new as one would have hoped considering we have seen so many dramas and documentaries on the subject from places all over the world, including the USA itself. Still, it has a few memorable moments just the same, but focus it lacks.


Extras includes a feature length audio commentary track by the co-directors, Deleted Scenes and the Original Theatrical Trailer.



In the image department, the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Head On (shot on 35mm film and here in a rough print) and the 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Copperhead (shot on HD in a sometimes uneven manner) tie for first place in playback quality with their own issues and limits, yet it does not make them hard to atch and Head On has definition and color to its advantage over all on this list. The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Being ranks second place for a good-looking digital shoot where the director and Director of Photography Mihai Malaimare, Jr. (who has been Francis Coppola's DP for a while recently) pull off a smart-looking picture that would very likely look better on a Blu-ray which it deserves.


That leaves the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Barefoot and anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Birds softer, weaker and lacking than I would have liked to see them, but Blu-ray versions might help them a bit.


In the sound department, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Copperhead is the surprising sonic champ here despite its sometimes dialogue-based nature. It is well recorded and mixed with a consistent soundfield that will not disappoint fans of Gettysburg and Gods & Generals. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Head On shows the age of the recording and its low budget, so the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on Barefoot and Birds can compete, even in their weakness. However, it is most unfortunate the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 on Being is very weak throughout and the lossy Dolby 2.0 Stereo version is no better. I don't know what happened, but it needs to be corrected if a Blu-ray is ever issued. The soundfield is a real problem.



You can order the Head On Umbrella import Blu-ray by going to this link:


http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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