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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Comedy > Lesbian > Suicide > Drugs > Germany > Injury > Relationships > Suburbs > Family > Romance > Cla > Happy End (2014/Wolfe DVD)/Kelly & Cal (2013/MPI/IFC DVD)/Last Weekend (2013/MPI/Sundance Selects DVD)/Why Be Good? (1929/First National/Warner Archive DVD)

Happy End (2014/Wolfe DVD)/Kelly & Cal (2013/MPI/IFC DVD)/Last Weekend (2013/MPI/Sundance Selects DVD)/Why Be Good? (1929/First National/Warner Archive DVD)



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



PLEASE NOTE: The Why Be Good? DVD is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.



Here are some light comedy/dramas that have their moments....



Petra Clever's Happy End (2014) is a German drama that starts out well enough with Sinka Melina Gierke as a law student who is looking for a personal life and gets involved with a younger woman (Verena Wustkamp) working at a home of elderly persons where they can get care and live their final years, etc., in peace as said student takes a part-time job there. For knowing the law, she keeps breaking it (spiking food with drugs, for instance), but the younger woman is getting sick of her father's conformist wishes and when a woman dies there and is cremated, they take the ashes and go on the run!


That includes the dead woman's son going after them, but this is where the script foes from realistic to silly, all the males figures around become cardboard, slightly stereotypical and unreal in their unsympatheticness and all fails to recover (including the sudden twist) at the end of what started as an ambitious 86 minutes. This needed more time to develop and to stay on track, but it did not and that's a shame.


A trailer for this and a few other Wolfe releases are the only extras.



Jen McGowan's Kelly & Cal (2013) also has some of the same elements oddly as a married woman (Juliette Lewis) starts getting the attention of a teenager (Jonny Weston in a memorable turn) playing a neighbor who recently had an injury that put him into a wheelchair. At first, it seems fun, starting early on when she snaps at him when he starts talking to her unannounced over a fence. With her husband (Josh Hopkins) busier than usual at work, they start to become better friends... and maybe more, which might not be a good idea.


Lewis pulls off the changes she needs to show dealing with her newborn and not adjusting to the suburbs well, while the script and directing are not bad, but more could have been squeezed out of the good ideas and good cast here in 100 minutes (down to a slightly underused Cybill Shepherd) though I liked much of this. A few moments ring flat or nearly false, but it is worth a good look and offers a smart film to talk about. Not bad.


Extras include a Behind The Scenes/Making Of featurette clip and Original Theatrical Trailer.



Tom Dolby & Tom Williams' Last Weekend (2013) is just as ambitious and is one of the few co-directed projects of late that I thought actually worked when co-directors usually make of a lazier, more flawed work. Patricia Clarkson is a mother holding a family homecoming for her children, but is not telling them that she might sell the longtime family home. As she suppresses this (along with Chris Mulkey holding his own as her husband), they arrive and bring friends. One (Zachary Booth) is openly gay and brings his boyfriend, while the other (Joseph Cross) brings his girlfriend and hides the fact that he just got axed from the company he works for for accidentally losing them $30 Million in a computer transaction!


Class politics and family secrets haunt most of the people here in this well thought-out script well cast and directed, a film that runs 94 minutes and could have afforded 2+ hours for all the good ideas and players so well cast here. Judith Light also shows up as a semi-nebby neighbor who is intrigued by rumors shes heard of a sale and a female media star whose one of Clarkson's son's guests, adding to how interesting this is to watch. This is my favorite entry on the list.


Extras include a feature length audio commentary track by the co-directors, Behind The Scenes/Making Of, Original Theatrical Trailer and Deleted Scenes.



The final surprise on the list is William A. Seiter's Why Be Good? (1929), which also lands up dealing with class division, even if it adds some virgin/whore complex. Colleen Moore is a flapper trying to have fun in the Jazz Age and can dance. Guys like her, but she's careful. Things take an interesting turn when one young man (Neil Hamilton, a major lead actor of the period later known for his turn as Commissioner Gordon on the 1960s Batman TV series) and her start to get interested in each other. His big secret: he is the son of the rich man who owns the powerful, successful skyscraper and department store within it, which he just started co-running.


This is a later silent film, but you'd hardly fell that with all the great use of sound effects and music throughout, not to mention the money on the screen. Moore is star quality and it is a huge shame we did not see more of her after this one, while the relationship between her, the rich boyfriend and his father might (with all the Art Deco around as well) remind one of Lang's Metropolis (1926, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) on some level, but it holds its own well on its own for the drama with some comedy it is and it worth going out of your way for.


There are sadly no extras.



The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on End and Cal, anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Weekend and black and white 1.33 X 1 image on Good tend to all be on the soft side, though Good has the excuse of being 85 years old (shot in 35mm film, of course) with all four productions having a consistent look and all likely looking better if we could see them on Blu-ray. End has some haloing and aliasing errors, while Good has some scratches and debris. They were all remarkably still just watchable enough despite their limits, thanks in part to better sound in all cases, with Cal and Weekend in lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 that is on the quiet, laid back side with only occasional surrounds, End also in that mix, plus a better lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo sound as its 5.1 is too compressed and Why is a silent film, so the sound is music and sound effects throughout that are in surprisingly good shape.



To order the Why Be Good? Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases:


https://www.warnerarchive.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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