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Category:    Home > Reviews > Gangster > Drama > Crime > Cable TV > Western > Professional > Mystery > Thriller > Spy > WWII > Con Artists > A > Animal Kingdom: The Complete First Season (2016/Warner Blu-ray Set)/Ride The High Country (1962/MGM)/36 Hours (1964/MGM/both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964/Gaumont

Animal Kingdom: The Complete First Season (2016/Warner Blu-ray Set)/Ride The High Country (1962/MGM)/36 Hours (1964/MGM/both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964/Gaumont/Olive Blu-ray)/The Mysterious Airman (1928 serial/Weiss Brothers Artcraft/Sprocket Vault DVD)



Picture: B/B/B/B/C+ Sound: B/C+/B-/C/C+ Extras: C/B-/C-/C-/B- Main Programs: C+/B-/C+/C+/B-



PLEASE NOTE: The Ride The High Country and 36 Hours Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the links below.



Here are thrillers with varying degrees of crime, mystery and even murder to know about...



Animal Kingdom: The Complete First Season (2016) is a Hollywood TV series remake of the hit Australian feature film crime family film that earned Jacki Weaver an Academy Award nomination, which I reviewed at this link...


http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10698/Animal+Kingdom+(2010/Sony+Blu-ray/Region+A


Warner Bros. has taken over the potential franchise from Sony, has landed Ellen Barkin in the lead role as the creepy mother whose too close to her sons for everyone's own good and set it in the too-obvious West Coast. A young man lands up with this ultimate dysfunctional crime family when his birth mother dies of a drug overdose, but the big house with all kinds of food, money and toys obviously is going to come with a big price.


The problem with the series is it forgets The Sopranos happened, tries way too hard, has too many obvious turns and cliches, plus a knack for getting too hip (Barkin's nickname is Smurf, the animated version of which Warner owns) and by the end of the 10 episodes, you've seen too much of this before in older, better shows. Maybe it might improve in its next season, but if not, this is one kingdom they'd better put up for sale.



Sam Peckinpah's Ride The High Country (1962) is the famed director's first full-fledged feature film where he started to have control of his work and certainly a favorite Western, one that even a non-fan of the genre like myself would tell you overcomes some cliches. Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea (older than his energetic Musical days) have to cover a gold shipment, one that will help them and what's left of their future. However, The West as they know it is starting to disappear, so they may have more to work out here than a mere hot opportunity job. Mariette Hartley shows up as the token gal badly treated en route to being married!


MGM was moving more towards such dramas versus their escapist Musicals and there are some good moments here as noted. Though there are also many dated and flat, flawed moments throughout, other moments seem like the beginning of the last leg of the modern Western (read Professional era that included Peckinpah's brilliant Wild Bunch) that would spell the last years of the genre in its original form ending in 1980. George Bassman's score and the attempt for the film to look more modern are a plus.



George Seaton's 36 Hours (1964) is an interesting attempt to create a psychological thriller with some suspense, yet try to tell some of the stories of some of the principals involved. Happening during what would be the final days of WWII, the Nazis are trying to figure out the Allies plans and kidnap a soldier (James Garner) to trick him into telling them the truth by setting up a fake 'American' hospital, convince him he's been in a car accident for more days than they've had him (when his secrets would be worthless to reveal allegedly) and use this to turn things around and win the war.


Eva Marie Saint is the woman in the middle of all this and at first, this works, but the screenplay by the Director starts to run into credibility issues and the Nazi's portrayal loses some credibility as the story takes too many twists and turns for its own good. Worth seeing for what does work, but some of this even becomes very unintentionally amusing and the end is ultimately unsatisfying. Rod Taylor also stars.



The anthology film The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964) originally offered 5 tales of con artistry in various locations around the globe including Claude Chabrol's "L'Homme qui vendit la Tour Eiffel" (with Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Pierre Cassel in France), Jean-Luc Godard's "Le Grand escroc" (with Jean Seberg and Charles Denner in Marrakech), Ugo Gregoretti's "La Feuille du Route" (set in Italy), Hiromichi Horikawa's "Les Cinq Bienfaiteurs de Fumiko" (set in Japan with Mie Hama from the Bond film You Only Live Twice) and Roman Polanski's "La Riviere de Diamants", but Polanski had his Nederlands segment dropped for some reason and this new Olive Blu-ray of the Gaumont Studio release is the shorter cut.


Not having seen these for a long time, I wondered what my reaction would be to the characters trying to pull off something beneficial and seeing if it would backfire or not. Though this is the best I've ever seen this and I like the talent involved, it remains a mixed bag, odder still via Polanski's absent segment. Still, it is worth a look for what does work and at least a one-time must-see for serious film fans. Just don't go into it with high expectations despite the big names.



Last but definitely not least is the pleasant surprise of Henry Revier's The Mysterious Airman, a silent 1928 adventure serial that was aimed more at adults than the child audience they would start to be aimed at by the mid-1930s as sound arrived. An airplane manufacturer has invented key technology that will make flying easier than ever, but a mysterious Pilot X who can really fly an plane with exceptional skill, is out to steal their technology and destroy the company if he can. Why, the serial's title cards keep asking?


This independent production was produced by the Weiss Brothers Artcraft Pictures and they do give it their all from some fun twists, great action, unintentionally funny acting, visual effects that can be a howler despite not being much worse than most of the bad CGI digital visual effects we are subjected to weekly and a fun cast up to the spirit of the work here to make this fun and energetic. NOTE that the first reel of one of the last chapters is missing because the film print they had degraded too badly, but that does not hurt the presentation too much.


The airplane footage is impressive even by today's standards as well as how good this often looks throughout. Cheers to Sprocket Vault for saving this little gem and getting out on a DVD, and with extras yet. I did not know any of the actors, but they even have chemistry as this reminds us how much fun silent filmmaking could really be. Go out of your way for this one!




The 1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Kingdom is not bad for a HDTV shoot, if lacking some of the richness and depth of its feature film version, choosing some cliched editing and shots more often than it should. Otherwise, it is professional, competent and consistent, yet it could have been more.


The remaining Blu-rays are all shot on 35mm film in real anamorphic scope formats, all here in 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer presentations. Ride (in MetroColor and older CinemaScope) is our only color presentation and with the oldest lenses has the most soft spots and flaws, but that is the way it was shot and turned out. I doubt it could look much better than it does here and has been restored as much as possible. The other two films are in real black & white, with Hours shot in Panavision and the segments of Swindlers shot in the underrated Franscope format some filmmakers often preferred at the time (no less than Raoul Coutard and Tonino Delli Colli are among the DPs here), including Godard who participated here. Like Ride, they have their moments where they can show the age of the materials used (some shots a tad too dark, others slightly lighter than they should be), but these transfers too are far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film we've seen on home video. And as always, there is something special about a black and white scope film.


That leaves us with the 1.33 X 1 monochrome image on Airman is bookended in an anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 frame via an HD transfer from the only surviving 35mm nitrate print of the serial, which is sometimes black and white, but often tinted. I have to say the tinting looks really good, some of the best I have ever seen on a silent film, plus the reels have survived in remarkable shape with impressive detail more than you might expect. This could have demo moments on a Blu-ray release, but will surprise on DVD just the same.


As for sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Animal is going to sound the best being the only new recording here, well mixed and presented as it is, but the rest of the Blu-ray films are here in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes that vary. Ride has the best sound, though one would wish it were stereo, Hours is second best, though not as clear as you might expect a film that age to be (Ride and Hours sounded better sonically on their limited edition soundtracks we reviewed elsewhere on this site a while ago, though Ride is out of print) and Swindlers is more compressed than expected (maybe because of dubbing and or that this is a print missing the Polanski segment, making it second-generation somehow) so be careful of volume switching and high playback levels on this one.


The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Airman is simple, but well-played and recorded piano music, much newer than the film being viewed, but its not bad sonically or artistically. I just wish an alternate track with more off-kilter music was also included.


Extras include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and other cyber iTunes capable devices on Kingdom, while the Blu-ray adds six Making Of featurettes and Deleted Scenes. Hours and Swindlers offer Original Theatrical Trailers, while Ride offers a feature length audio commentary track by film and Peckinpah experts Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons & David Weddle, plus featurette A Justified Life: Sam Peckinpah & the High Country. Airman also has an audio commentary track across all its chapters by the informative Richard M. Roberts (beware of spoilers!),Original Lobby Card/Poster Gallery, New York Censor Board file and the 1928 silent short Flying Cadets, which runs just over a half-hour.



To order either of the Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


http://www.wbshop.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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