Flowers
(2014/Music Box DVD)/The
Looking Glass (2015/First
Run DVD)/Meadowland
(2015/Cinedigm DVD)/Moonlighting
(1982/B2MP Blu-ray w/DVD)/Nights
With Theodore (2012
French Telefilm/Film Movement DVD)
Picture:
C/C/C+/B & C+/C Sound: C+/C+/C+/C+/C Extras: B-/C/C-/B/D
Films: B/C/C/B/C+
Here's
an interesting set of new dramas you should know about...
Jon
Garano & Jose Mari Goenaga's Flowers
(2014) is a very smart, pleasant surprise working on a higher level
than most films today involving a married woman named Ane starts
getting bouquets of flowers every Thursday by someone unknown, no
card ever included in any of the deliveries. This does not make her
likable husband happy and when they investigate, even the flower shop
cannot identify the customer doing the weekly buy. When she looses
her gift necklace her husband gave her recently while at work, there
is a possibility we might find out the identity of the admirer.
However,
we get a counterplot of a married man who is not having the best
marriage himself and whose wife and mother do not get along at all.
This makes him unhappy and his job keeps him that way. Soon, a twist
will bring this and much more together in this extended character
study with more energy than we've seen in such a drama in a while
that asks and sometimes answers all kinds of questions about love,
happiness, joy, family and death that impressed me al the way for its
97 minutes. This one could have gone on longer as far as I was
concerned, but this gem from Spain was one I had heard about and it
is nice all the hype was correct about it. That is all too rare
these days. Go out of your way for this one.
A
Making Of featurette, filmmaker Q&A from the L.A. Premiere and
San Sebastian Film Festival press conference for the film are the
extras.
John
Hancock's The Looking
Glass (2015) is a
drama/comedy with some potential as a young a young lady (Grace
Tarnov) has to deal with the awful loss of her mother and moves in
with her grandmother (Dorothy Tristan), who used to be an actress.
They have a good relationship, but the situation is ever-depressing,
yet maybe Julie (Tarnov) can find a new way to express herself
through the arts and performing. Can it bring other answers as well?
This
has its moments in 110 minutes, but some scenes are cut and directed
awkwardly, some solutions seem too pat and I did not buy it overall
when all was said and done despite how promising it started. Hancock
(Bang The Drum Slowly)
can certainly handle complex drama, but a new approach would have
helped this stand out better because the leads make sense. So I was
a little disappointed,
Extended
Scenes, Deleted Scenes, unfinished Hancock ''Town
That Made A Movie'' film
and ''Alice Variations''
performance are the extras.
Reed
Morano's Meadowland
(2015) has the always watchable Olivia Wilde as a mother who loses
her son, though her husband (Luke Wilson) tries to help, she is
devastated in a way she cannot be reached. I will preface this by
saying this is all well-acted and has some nice moments, but the
child-in-jeopardy part is early, predictable and the film never
totally recovers from what is becoming too common a cliché of these
dramas. It is trivializing child exploitation with so many films
making this a cycle.
She
starts to care for a child who is picked on and alone, but also has
to deal with other emotional issues in what becomes a series of the
return of the repressed. Unfortunately, the script and makers do not
do enough with its 95 minutes to really make this work, stand out or
really deliver something more or different. Elisabeth Moss, Giovanni
Ribisi, John Leguizamo and Kevin Corrigan are a plus among a solid
supporting cast, yet I was disappointed; especially considering the
subject matter.
A
Behind The Scenes featurette is the only extra.
Jerzy
Skolimowski's Moonlighting
(1982) will become a curio soon because it is the first lead feature
film role for Jeremy Irons, about to reach a new audience as the new
Alfred The Butler in Batman
Vs. Superman, but the
award-winning actor has been doing great work for years and this Cold
War drama is the kind of smart drama that has aged well, serves as a
time capsule and is worth seeing or revisiting, if you were lucky
enough to see it in first release in theaters or on home video...
granted you heard of it.
Lead
worker/boss Nowak (Irons) and three friends leave Poland for the U.K.
under the false pretense that they are visiting, but they are really
rebuilding an apartment there for their boss that will save him a
fortune by using their labor, but will make them a fortune because
the reduced rate will still be plenty for all four of them. It is a
rocky road and the neighbors are either eccentric, nebby or just
mean. They stay the course, but things do not always go smoothly and
being this is the late 1970s/early 1980s, the Solidarity movement
kicks in causing a crackdown and they are suddenly cut off from their
home country!
Irons
narrates and is excellent throughout, never boring with each idea
expressed as relevant as Malcolm McDowell's Alex in Kubrick's A
Clockwork Orange
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) telling us things going on we might
not get, his personal feelings, the gravity of certain situations
(including ones only the Cold War would present) and a sense of dread
mixed with possibilities of freedom that creates irony throughout the
film. The cast is great, though I found his ideas for survival by
conning places to get money and resources a little too easy when they
start to run out of money, but it is otherwise a remarkable
independent production that has aged well and is worth going out of
your way for to see. Nice to see this gem on Blu-ray.
Extras
include a bonus audio commentary track with Irons, Isolated Music
Score by Stanley Myers (Cimino's The
Deer Hunter)
with a then-unknown Hans Zimmer credited for his electronic music!,
Original Theatrical Trailer and paper foldout with new essay by Ewa
Mazierska on the film and much more. You can also read more about
Skolimowski's remarkable film Deep
End
at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11108/Deep+End+(1970/BFI+Blu-ray+(Region+Free)+Du
Sebastien
Betbeder's Nights With
Theodore (2012) is a good
idea for a film that only runs about an hour, but should have been
longer and made into a theatrical film, but this French telefilm is
very watchable as a couple (Pio Marmai, Agathe Bonitzer) meet, become
instantly attracted to each other and get very involved very quickly
to a backdrop of the historical French locale they hide in and engage
with each other. This includes some beautiful moments and even
archive footage inclusion that actually works.
However,
though I enjoyed the whole thing, it is just too short and could have
used another 20 to 30 minutes to really be developed and work.
Still, as it stands, its worth a look.
There
are no extras.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the
Moonlighting
Blu-ray may show the age of the materials used, but this is far
superior a transfer to the few previous releases of the film to the
point that I could not remember how weak the transfer was, but it was
bad. This is the feature film debut of the great Director
of Photography Tony Pierce-Roberts (later with Merchant-Ivory) and is
impresses more than expected throughout with some nice shots and a
smart use of color. It also comes with an anamorphically enhanced
DVD, the same form as all the DVDs in this review.
That
DVD ties the 2.35 X 1 image on Meadowland,
but the 2.35 X 1 image on Flowers
(as well shot as it is) and the 1.78 X 1 image on Glass
and Theodore
are softer throughout than I would have liked.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on the Moonlighting
Blu-ray is not much better
than the same on the DVD version, yet the sound can still compete
with most of the
lossy Dolby Digital sound mixes here, including the 5.1 mixes on
Flowers
and Meadowland
and 2.0 Stereo on Glass,
bit the
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on the TV production Nights
is the weak one of the bunch just too soft and low for its own good.
Be careful of high volume playback and volume switching in this case.
-
Nicholas Sheffo