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