Confession
Of Murder (2012/Well Go
USA Blu-ray)/Death Do Us
Part (2012/Anchor Bay
DVD)/Escape From Tomorrow
(2013/Cinedigm Blu-ray)/Locker
13 (2013/Arc DVD)/Ripper
Street: Season Two
(2013/BBC Blu-ray set)/Sleep,
My Love (1948/Olive
Blu-ray)/Snake &
Mongoo$e (2013/Anchor
Bay/Starz Blu-ray)
Picture:
B/C/C+/C/B-/B-/B- Sound: B/C+/B-/C+/B-/C+/B- Extras:
C/C-/C-/C-/C/D/C Main Programs: C/C-/D/C/C+/C+/B-
These
action thrillers usually sound better than they turned out to be...
Jung
Byung-Gil's Confession
Of Murder
(2012) is set in Korea with initially a good idea in which a serial
killer torments a police detective starting with a shocking
encounter, but just when this might take off as a real solid
thriller, a dumb premise. The killer has been writing a book he
plans to make money off of and we are supposed to believe a statute
of limitations means if he is free long enough, he'll get away with
all
the murders. Even based on that logic, this still cannot stop itself
from eventually becoming silly.
The
actors, marital arts fights, chases and stunt sequences are therefore
what the film needs to coast on and as well done as all that can be,
it is just too much a comedown from what the initial set-up was and
cannot or make up for such a gigantic gap of disappointment. Those
interested in it for its bells and whistles and as a genre piece will
likely want to see it once, but it falls through quickly.
A
trailer, Behind The Scenes clip and a few interview clips are the
extras.
Nicholas
Humphries' Death
Do Us Part
(2012) has a married couple unwisely talked into going to a remote
cabin where all hell eventually breaks loose (guess they skipped all
the bad torture porn films in such locales in recent years) and we
suffer as much as any of them. The cast if unknowns is not bad,
actually, but the script has the characters as flat non-thinkers who
never think much out and 15 minutes after they arrive, the limited
plotting collapses and never recovers.
A
Behind
The Scenes featurette is the only extra.
Randy
Moore's Escape
From Tomorrow
(2013) is the big, goofy, idiotic dud on this list playing like a
strange would-be sci-fi tale that wants to be a tale of a Disney gone
wrong by portraying one of its theme parks as a place where people
are brainwashed and sometimes killed. Shot secretly without the
actual Disney company knowing it, the makers are smug enough to think
they are making some big statement bashing the company (did a Disney
rival secretly fund this one?) but being so shallow and silly about
it, this becomes one big nothing quickly.
Of
course, there have been great films about a dark side to Disney's
amusement parks (among others with animatronic people, characters and
the like) like Westworld
(1973) and the original Stepford
Wives
(1974), but this wreck couldn't begin to even come close. Even the
failed Beyond
Westworld
TV series seems like Twin
Peaks
as compared to this hideous, cynical, dirty trick of a release.
The
alleged plot is a man takes his family to one of the Mouse House's
parks and everything eventually goes wrong. One of the extras tries
to spin this as an artistic mediation on the changes from the old
version of the park to one now that is somehow lesser, but that was a
full-of-it take and angle too. This is one of the worst releases of
the year, the last few years and that it is a Best buy exclusive
makes it seem as smart as the pay-per-view DIVX DVD dud that killed
it rival, Circuit City. Avoid
this one at all costs!!!
A
trailer, two audio commentary tracks, Poster Gallery and Making Of
featurette are the extras.
Five
directors are credited to Locker
13
(2013) which sports a solid cast including Rick Schroder, Jon Gries,
Tatyana Ali, Curtis Armstrong and Jon Polito, crosscutting between
stories about a boxer (Schroder) aging (he hardly looks old) trying
to have one more money-making victory, a hitman with client problems,
a guy desperate to join a secret society and the owner and user of
the title object with his own secrets to hide.
The
problems include that this wants to be a never-say-anthology
anthology film, lacks focus and coordination and wastes more than a
few opportunities throughout. Part of it is a shame since they have
a tone that works as a hook throughout, but we never get a real
payoff.
A
trailer is the only extra.
Ripper
Street: Season Two
(2013) has made it to a sophomore season due to raves and fanfare
from viewers and critics like ours who covered the debut season at
this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/12118/Ripper+Street+(2012/BBC+Blu-ray
Yet,
the expensive show is struggling and it is not for lack of ambition
or effort. Why? From someone who is not as impressed, it may be
more graphic than your usual police procedural (taking advantage of
its past time period to some extent) but it is actually not dark
enough, different enough or bold enough, which was my encounter with
both seasons including mere eight episodes here. In addition, this
takes place after the Ripper killings and that in itself seems a bit
anticlimactic.
Still
the effort, ambition and a decent cast is here and fans will likely
enjoy this season to enough of an extent, though starting from the
beginning is probably best in this case. It just does not do enough
to really work for me and the mixed ratings on both sides of the
Atlantic show I am not alone.
The
bonus featurette Beneath
Ripper Street
is the only extra.
Douglas
Sirk's Sleep,
My Love
(1948) is a real Film Noir from a director later known for his
deceptively dreamy and dream-like melodramas, with dark undertones
many missed. Here, Claudette Colbert is a wife who is not doing well
or feeling well, but her husband (Don Ameche) is actually planning on
leaving her, getting rid of her, getting her money and worse as he
seduces a younger, demanding, sexy woman (Hazel Brooks). The film
has some good moments, good actors and interesting set-ups, but with
limits.
Robert
Cummings is the police detective who falls for Colbert and starts
trying to figure out what is going on, even when it puts him in
jeopardy, but Keye Luke (who plays a newlywed man who is friends with
Colbert) becomes a clone of his Number One Son role in the original
Fox Charlie Chan films making this conform to certain formulaic
conventions that run against the boldness of real Noirs. Raymond
Burr and George Coulouris are a plus and I like the look of the film,
but it is not great, yet worth a look for all serious film fans.
There
are sadly no extras.
Wayne
Holloway's Snake
& Mongoo$e
(2013) might sound like and even look a bit like Ron Howard's recent
race car film Rush,
but it is no cheap clone of anything as we get a fine telling of the
story of the two men who became racing stars by putting drag racing
on the map in a professional way that made it a big moneymaker for
good. Jesse Williams is Don Prudhomme (aka Snake) and Richard Blake
is Tom McEwen (aka Mongoose) who become friendly competitors as they
look for ways to build their names in doing what they love the most.
A
few breaks eventually come their way, especially when Mattel sponsors
both of them and wants to tie them into their Hot Wheels die cast car
line as a way to boost sales the way Barbie dolls were making a mint
for them for young girls. It works and soon, they are breaking
racing records and more, but the smart script makes this a dual
biopic of the men and their lives, is on the money about how they
helped build the sport and how their legacies helped make 1970s pop
culture as great as it was, even after they parted ways with Mattel.
I
was very surprised and impressed by what we get here, from the
melding of several formats (see below), the casting, acting, pacing
and respect for the actual racing history in detail that too many
sloppy such productions might have skipped or lightly brushed off.
Despite being mostly an HD shoot, it is amazing how much this feels
like the years it takes place in. The film stands on its own very
well, is an underrated little gem that more people should see and if
you like car films like Rush, Grand Prix or Le Mans,
you should put this on top of your list of the next feature films to
see. Tim Blake Nelson and Noah Wylie also star in great roles here.
A
featurette is sadly the only extra.
Of
all the Blu-rays we get there, the HD-shot 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital
High Definition image transfer on Murder
is king with usually fine detail, depth and color throughout for a
digital camera-originated feature film, but this is more typical of
Korean cinema than most others including that of U.S. productions.
Still, the 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers on
Ripper
(an all-HD show) and Snake
(which mixes in great vintage color film with its HD shoot very well,
but some analog video and a few odd shots hold it back), plus 35mm
black & white shot 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image
transfer on
Sleep
(despite a sometimes problematic print with damage and dirt that can
show the age of the materials used) tie for second place for playback
looking decent, if not as consistently so as we would like.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Escape
is the poorest of the Blu-rays with its color-gutted shooting taking
color HD footage and trying to turn it into black and white, only to
have kit be ultra-phony monochrome that still retains a bad grey
scale that always reminds you it is a color source. It is as
obnoxious as its content.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on the two DVDs sadly tie for
last place looking weak, too soft for their own good and sometimes
hard to watch, but both would benefit from Blu-ray releases,
especially Locker
13.
The
sound situation is almost similar with the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix on Murder
the sonically superior presentation with great sound design, sound
recording, sound mixing and a solid soundfield throughout. The Dolby
TrueHD 5.1 on Snake
is dialogue-based at times, has its share of
added sounds for the vintage footage and some vintage mono audio, but
they bring it all together nicely more than you might expect them to,
tied for second place by the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
mix on Ripper
and Escape,
the latter of which was held back by its secret shooting.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 lossless Mono on Sleep
and lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on the DVDs tie for last place for fidelity,
with the former just showing the age of its recording and the latter
two simply having weak soundfields if that.
-
Nicholas Sheffo