Diamonds
Of The Night
(1964/Criterion Blu-ray)/Oklahoma
Crude
(1973/Sony/Columbia*)/On
The Basis Of Sex
(2018/Universal Blu-ray)/Snake
Pit (1948/Fox/*both
Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-rays)/Vice
(2018/Fox Blu-ray w/DVD)
Picture:
B (DVD: C+) Sound: B-/B-/B/C+/B & C+ Extras: B/B/C/B/C+
Films: B-/B-/B/B-/B+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Oklahoma
Crude
and The
Snake Pit
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time,
are limited to only 3,000 copies each and can be ordered from the
links below.
This
great set of films involve important, mature, socially conscious
subject matter and are all more than worth your time, especially the
latest two, two of the best films of 2018.
We
start with the shortest film, but one that is key to the Czech New
Wave, Jan Nemec's Diamonds
Of The Night
(1964) tells the story of two young men (Ladislav Jansky, Antonin
Kumbera) running for their lives from what seems to be a group of
older, determined men trying to shoot and kill them. The scene looks
like they have escaped a Nazi Concentration Camp, but we soon learn
though that is true, it is even more stark and complex than that in
this tale of lost youth, genocide and older generations killing the
young.
From
there, we see the young men bounce between several scenarios, we get
flashbacks of the past (and near past) where they might have been
able to escape the cycle (figuratively and literally) of the jeopardy
they are in and challenges the viewer to both think and feel about
what they are seeing in a more complex way than one usually saw then
and still does not see enough now.
The
ending has been controversial because of its ambiguity and also
suggesting several possibilities (plus viewers and critics adding
their own because they are not paying full attention) though I have
an idea of what it adds up to, I cannot reveal it here without ruing
the movie or its challenges. On its 55th
Anniversary, this great restoration has been issued on Criterion
Blu-ray and though maybe some parts of the film could work better and
maybe it could have been a little longer, it is as important as it is
ambitious (the influences of Resnais, Eisenstein and Bunuel as
obvious as ever) and deserving of rediscovery. Any serious film fan
should see this new extras-loaded restoration ASAP!
Stanley
Kramer's Oklahoma
Crude
(1973) is the director's last major film of note and deals with
greed, hate, poverty and big oil money during the pre-WWI oil boom
happening across the U.S. after oil was discovered in Western
Pennsylvania. Faye Dunaway is a woman trying to find oil on her land
with the help of her aging father (John Mills) when a violent rep for
a big oil interest (Jack Palance) shows up to try to steal it all,
but she has recently met a man (George C. Scott) who may be able to
help defend her and get her money for her reserves if they are as
huge as they may potentially be.
From
there, the film (with some comedy of the time) takes some twists and
turns, but also is very brutal in accurately portraying the lives and
time of people of this period where the country was still recovering
from The Civil War and still build itself up against many odds. The
Industrial Revolution was picking up at this time too, but the script
settles on the characters and is able to deal well with class
division in an honest way.
As
has been the case since I first saw the film, it tends to have a few
down moments and its comedy and wallowing in a few parts holds it
back from greatness, but it has aged well enough and that makes it
worth your time to see. Note this is a limited edition Blu-ray
version, so serious film fans will want to grab a copy quickly.
Mimi
Leder's On
The Basis Of Sex
(2018) could have been a phony biopic about one of the most important
individual legal forces in the history of law, but the
underappreciated Leder pulls off a solid portrait of (now Justice)
Ruth Bader Ginsberg (brilliantly played by Felicity Jones) without
making her a saint or having one false moment of phoniness. Instead,
we get a character study with energy and some humor with this woman
who had to face all kinds of sexism and other fake limits to get to
where she is now, not knowing where things would take her. By the
time she has a chance to become a lawyer in an environment where
women were discouraged by everything, the counterculture has arrived
and she takes a case that has her defending a man, but could help her
and her husband Martin (Armie Hammer, rightly cast here) know could
help women in the long run.
At
first, I did not know if the film would work or drone on in
predictability, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how this
slowly builds up and the cast has such great chemistry, while the
film is always period-convincing. In most hands, this might have
landed up a TV movie disaster, but instead, we get one of 2018s very
best films. Sam Waterston, Kathy Bates, Justin Theroux and Jack
Reynor also star.
Anatole
Litvak's Snake
Pit
(1948) is over 80 years old, but some of what it is saying about
mental illness is as relevant now (unfortunately) as it was when it
first arrived in movie theaters, with Olivia de Havilland delivering
one of her most important performances. We originally reviewed the
DVD version many years ago at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1476/Snake+Pit
Though
some things about the film have dated and a few things do not work,
the re-stigmatization of depression and other aspects of mental
illness (several separate essays) make the more important parts of
this film as important as ever, especially when such things are used
to hurt, oppress and even destroy lives that need help and support
instead. The conditions of mental hospitals and the care available
has been getting slowly sabotaged and slowly eroded despite
breakthroughs since the 1980s. Bad HMOs and bad politicians are two
of the biggest reasons, but that's for another movie. Though this is
a limited edition, its arrival on Blu-ray could never be soon enough.
Finally
we have Adam McKay's Vice
(2018) whose ad campaign has confused some people and despite many
award nominations, did not do as well initially as it should have in
movie theaters. Now it is on home video and this Fox Blu-ray/DVD
edition is the best way to see it for now. Maybe it was held back a
bit by Disney's purchase of Fox, but it turns out to be pretty much
the best film of 2018 and one everybody
should see.
Christian
Bale, in one of his greatest performances (and that says something)
plays Dick Cheney, the controversial political and business figure
who came out of his drunken, dead-end past to become one of the most
powerful Republican politicians of all time (we find out more than he
should have) as he becomes part of a small pool of members of the
party who start trying to rebuild the party after the double
disasters that were and always will be Vietnam and Watergate.
Those
in the political know will feel there is name-dropping off the bat,
but it is even smarter and more complex than that as simple ideas
even the inner circle feels might not work starts to work. Of
course, this means breaking the law constantly going for broke and
not caring about the country or what anyone thinks starting with The
Iran-Contra Affair and many a stolen election.
However,
we have to also see Cheney the drunk, his wife (Amy Adams, so good in
all eras of Lynn Cheney) tells him to shape up or else. He does,
unfortunately for the nation, and takes advantage of anything he can,
any opportunity and slowly, builds into a behemoth that no one
expected and amazingly, not enough understand or realize. He
eventually works for the infamous resources company Halliburton and
that will help carry him into his peak of work.
Strangely,
the film is also a comedy with some satire, different and maybe
awkward to many who are not used to comedy in such serious matters or
in a new configuration as the script attempts. Maybe it could have
been more effective and worked even better if some different choices
were made, but it still
works well enough to make what it is saying and telling us effective
and vitally important enough for us to understand what has happened
and to be honest, is still
happening.
The
late Robert Philip Kolker, author of A
Cinema Of Loneliness
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) sited Arthur
Penn as one of American Cinema's most important filmmakers and one as
concerned with the truth about the country as any of them, then added
Oliver Stone to the Penn chapter as picking up where Penn left off.
Between U-Turn,
some commercial ventures and other non-political or unsuccessfully
political releases (the Wall Street sequel comes to mind), Stone's
position telling those stories has eroded or he just become bored or
ran out of things to say (his W
movie about George W. Bush the rare exception) so it is fair to say
McCay has taken over that space in his own way with this and The
Big Short.
It will be up to McCay to continue making these kinds of films or
not, so we'll see, but he does them well.
Of
course, some films (like W)
have already been made about the same people, so the cast of this
film is all the more remarkable with Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush,
Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, Eddie Marsan as Paul Wolfowitz,
LisaGay Hamilton as Condoleezza Rice, Tyler Perry as Colin Powell and
Joseph Beck as Karl Rove. The film always has surprises that makes
it even more watchable and its boldness to always tell the truth
about what happened and how it ruined the country (especially after
9/11) and twisted it to where we are now is amazing. Bale's Cheney
is outright terrifying in the end, so close to life and makes this
film way ahead of its time.
I
hope the audience catches up with it ASAP because the sooner they do,
the better, e3specially because this just may be a classic!
Now
for the great playback news. All the films look great, as good as
they possibly can in the regular Blu-ray format with the older films
in terrific shape and the new ones looking great along with them.
The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Diamonds
can show the age of the materials used, but the restoration is
intended to not 'over-clean' the image and keep its character,
derived from the original 35mm negative in a solid 4K scan. It has
rich video black and true video white that still remains stark and
effective. The PCM 2.0 Mono is off of the original analog 35mm
optical negative soundmaster and sounds as good as it can for a
production of its age and budget, so the combination is as authentic
as it is effective.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Crude
also looks fine, shot in real 35mm anamorphic Panavision by Robert
Surtees, A.S.C. (Ben
Hur,
The
Last Picture Show,
The
Graduate)
who manages to give us great wide vistas at the same time we get
claustrophobic shots that show how trapped by poverty, greed and
trouble the characters are. The lab work was does by both MetroColor
and Technicolor, but Metro apparently issued all the U.S. 35mm
prints, though maybe Technicolor made U.K. prints? Either way, the
work holds up and this is very, very well restored. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound mix shows its age
with some distortion in small places, but is as good as it can be
here otherwise.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Basis
was shot on Arri Alexa HD cameras and is easily one last year's very
best HD shoots with fine color, period grading that is convincing and
effective and a smoothness we usually only see in photochemical film
productions. Lighting is more complex than it looks and you will be
impressed too. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is well recorded and mixed,
complementing the image well.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Snake
Pit
can also show the age of the materials used, but it looked better
than many similar films on DVD years ago and though we can see more
small flaws in the film, there are more demo shots and overall
improvements in detail and depth that it outdoes its long-ago DVD
counterpart with no problem in being like a new film print. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 lossless mix is the same simple stereo
upgrade from the DVD, but better and better than the DTS-MA Mono also
here by a small margin.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 AVC @ 30.5 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer
can on Vice
is shot on several photochemical formats in Kodak's ever-amazing
Vision3 series color negative film stocks, in 35mm, 16mm (Super 16mm)
and 8mm (including Super 8) making it 0one of the most compelling and
visually complex films of 2018. I love that the underrated Todd-AO
35mm anamorphic lenses were used as well with Super 35 format.
Cheers to Director
of Photography Grieg Fraser (Zero
Dark Thirty,
Killing
Them Softly,
Rogue
One: A Star Wars Story)
proves once again that he is easily one of the best DPs around and
now one of the most underrated. The anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1
image on the DVD can barely reveal how good and effective this all
is, so I can only wait for a 4K edition. The DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 5.1 lossless soundmix is also more complex than it would seem
on the Blu-ray. (The DVD's lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 version loses too
much of the fine detail for me, but that's what its got). Anyone
with a serious home theater set-up will be pleasantly surprised.
Extras
include the Movies Anywhere digital copy on Basis
and Vice,
while Crude
and Snake
Pit
have nicely illustrated booklet on their respective films including
informative text and yet more excellent, underrated essays by the
great film scholar Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-rays add Isolated Music
Scores. Crude
also offers an excellent feature length audio commentary track by
film scholars Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo, while Snake
Pit
repeats the many DVD extras including four
Movietone News segments, one of which is silent, trailers for this
and other Fox Classics on DVD, a stills gallery and an outstanding
audio commentary by well-read and researched film historian and
writer Aubrey Solomon that everyone should hear.
Basis
adds three featurettes (A
Supreme Team: Making On
The Basis Of Sex,
Legacy
of Justice
and Martin
and Ruth: A Loving Partnership),
while Vice
adds Gaming
The System: The Making Of Vice,
The
Music of Power,
a Stills
Gallery
and Deleted Scenes.
Diamonds
includes a quality paper foldout on the film with informative text
and an essay by film critic Michael Atkinson, while the Blu-ray disc
adds an interview from 2009 with director Jan Nemec, A
Loaf of Bread:
Nemec's 1960 student thesis film, based on a short story by Arnost
Lustig in a nice HD transfer, Arnost
Lustig Through the Eyes of Jan Nemec,
a short documentary on Lustig from 1993, a new interview with film
programmer Irena Kovarova and a new video essay on the film's
stylistic influences by scholar James Quandt.
You
can order
the Oklahoma
Crude
and The
Snake Pit
limited edition Blu-rays, buy them while supplies last at these
links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo