Aftermath
(2018/Fox Blu-ray w/DVD)/Behold
A Pale Horse (1964*)/From
The Earth To The Moon
(1998 4K Remaster/HBO Blu-ray Set)/Furie
(2019/Well Go Blu-ray w/DVD)/Man
Who Found Himself
(1937/RKO/Warner Archive DVD)/10
North Frederick
(1958/*both Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-rays)
Picture:
B+ & B-/B-/B/A- & B-/C/B Sound: B+ & B-/C+/B/B &
C+/C+/B- Extras: B/C/C+/C/D/C Main Programs: C+/C+/B/B+/B-/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Behold
A Pale Rider
and 10
North Frederick
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time,
are limited to only 3,000 copies each and can be ordered while
supplies last, while The
Man Who Found Himself
DVD is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Next
up are a set of dramas with a difference...
The
Aftermath (2018) is an interesting period drama starring Kiera
Knightley that could translate well as a play as it does a feature
film. It also stars Alexander Skarsgard and Jason Clarke as two men
lusting after Knightley along with Kate Phillips, and Alexander
Scheer.
Set
in 1946, the film centers around Rachael Morgan (Knightley), whose
colonel husband (Jason Clarke) is charged with rebuilding war-ravaged
Hamburg, Germany. When she joins him there, she learns they will be
sharing their home with a German widower (Skarsgard) and his
daughter. As politics and sex enter the mix, the love triangle
thickens against this dark time in history.
Special
Features include:
Deleted
Scenes with optional commentary by Director, James Kent
VFX
Progressions with optional commentary by Director, James Kent
First
Look
Feature
Audio Commentary by Director James Kent
Gallery
The
Aftermath is nicely made but nothing really too special past a
first time viewing.
Fred
Zinnemann's
Behold
A Pale Horse
(1964) is one of those older Hollywood productions where at least one
actor is highly miscast as a character or real person that he or she
is absolutely NOT the same ethnicity of. Zapater is a guerrilla
fighter played by Gregory Peck, who may be good in the role, but
never convinces us he is from that part of the world. His nemesis is
played by Anthony Quinn, who is easier to believe in the role, so
that helps. Add Omar Sharif as a passive priest and the film (based
on a novel by the great filmmaker Emeric Pressburger of all people)
and the film seems to be trying for awards season.
The
opponents battled against each other during The Spanish Civil War and
now, two decades later, they finally meet again. This is not a
thriller, but somewhat of a character study and maybe it does not go
far enough (not enough screen time versus the book?) but seeing these
actors in a little-seen film that did not do well makes it worth a
look and note is was released as the three main actors were having
much critical and commercial success in their careers at the time.
It
starts out like a documentary and continues to be shot like one when
the actors arrive, which is one of the most impressive things about
it. Nothing glossy here in this black and white production, but it
is just uneven throughout (even without the Peck casting) and never
pays off. Still, it has a fine director and those interested should
give it a look.
Extras
include an illustrated booklet on the film including informative text
and essay by Mike Finnegan, while the disc adds only an Original
Theatrical Trailer.
Another
release that did a good job of blurring documentary and drama (though
this qualifies more as a docudrama than Horse
above does), From
The Earth To The Moon
(1998) was a huge hit mini-series for HBO, is still talked about and
remains an impressive work. With so many anniversaries about the
U.S. space program upon us and here as we post, HBO decided to go all
out to clean, upgrade and remaster the entire series in 4K (it was
shot on 35mm film) so they now offer it widescreen and have upgraded
the sound from its original Dolby Stereo with mono surrounds to
12-track Dolby Atmos from the original soundmasters.
With
multiple directors, Tom Hanks opens up each episode on camera to set
us up for each segment on how NASA had to take a giant leap forward
when President Kennedy saw the USSR making it to space first as a
call for the U.S. to go much further and go to the moon. This is
well written, well directed and impressive in how al the work from
different people on each show melds so well into one non-stop journey
into a vital history of the U.S. and humans overall.
To
its credit, it has amazing casting that has only gained in value and
impressiveness over the years including the underrated Stephen Root,
who plays mission control head Chris Craft, who just passed away as
we received this set. We also get Tim Daly, Lane Smith, Daniel
Hugh-Kelly, Rita Wilson, Cary Elwes, Robert John Burke, Chris Isaak,
Bryan Cranston, Ann Cusack, Tony Goldwyn, Clint Howard, John Carroll
Lynch, Ted Levine, Mason Adams, Dylan Baker, Bart Braverman. Adam
Baldwin, Gary Cole, Dave Foley, Mark Harmon, Ronny Cox, Sally Field,
Al Franken, Zeijlo Ivanek, Elizabeth Perkins, Jay Mohr, Diana
Scarwid, JoBeth Williams, Kevin Pollack, Ethan Philips, James
Rebhorn, Graham Yost, John Slatterly, Steve Zahn, Peter Scholari and
some narration by Blythe Danner.
That
is truly one of the great casts in all of TV mini-series history and
that is not even all the actors there. The teleplays a thorough, get
to the point, never waste time and always make for compelling
viewing. If anything, the series has appreciated in value and its
impact as relevant as ever. We hear The
Right Stuff,
the great feature film, is being remade as a mini-series too. I'll
be curious to see how that compares to this series and its own film.
Extras
include Digital Copy, a vintage Behind The Scenes featurette and a
new one of the trouble they went through to save, preserve, remaster
and reissue the series.
A
young girl is kidnapped off the streets by an illegal human
trafficking ring, but what they didn't count on was her mother, a
former/reformed gangster. Now hot on the trail she will stop at
nothing to find her daughter and bring vengeance to all who stand in
her way in Le-Van Kiet's Furie
(2019).
Hai
Phuong is a former gangster looking to start over life in the country
after giving birth to her daughter Mai, but even being a single
mother out of wedlock is not easy, she is still looked down by her
peers and her current job as debt collector isn't helping her to make
friends or get respect from her daughter either. But when Mai gets
kidnapped by an illegal human trafficking ring, Phuong is forced to
use her former skills to find and save her daughter.
She
follow the trail and returns to the city she left and finding no one
willing to help she goes to the police. There she learns that the
police already knows about the kidnappers but is currently observing
them and waiting to catch them all at once. Not willing to wait
Phuong almost single handily takes down the entire gang with her bare
hands, the police only showing up at the last minute saving Phuong
from a kill shot. Afterward, Phuong returns home with her daughter
with renewed respect and her daughter asks her to train her to fight
too.
Move
over Liam Neeson, it not only fathers who can fight gangsters, stop
an illegal human trafficking ring and rescue their daughter. This
was an action and violence packed movie and once again shows the most
dangerous place in the world is to be is between a mother and her
child. Extras include behind the scenes and trailers.
Lew
Landers'
The
Man Who Found Himself
(1937) tells the tough, brisk and more hard-hitting than expected
story of a young doctor (John Beal) whose father (Philip Houston) and
are very respectable, but he is unhappy with his father's efforts to
thwart his airplane flying and just about anything else deemed as not
fitting into the prestige, upper class, quiet way of life is looked
down on.
Taking
a trip from New York City to Philadelphia, he allows a married lady
friend to join him because she is heading there for a family
emergency and bad weather has grounded most flights. This turns out
to be a mistake that sends his life spiraling out of control
figuratively and literally. Leaving the big city, he tries to find
work as anything but a medical person and under another name, but
lands up with vagrants doing road work. That is until he is seen by
a friend all the way across the country, then the story takes more
twists.
For
running only 67 minutes, it is a remarkable work of narrative economy
and then, no less than a very young, energetic Joan Fontaine shows up
in one of her very first lead roles as a nurse who takes a liking to
our incognito man, not knowing what is really going on. She's
amazing here and steals many parts of the movie, but it has a good
cast, I had not seen it in eons and is a real gem (unintended laughs
included) worth going out of your way for.
There
are no extras.
Lastly,
we have Philip Dunne's 10 North
Frederick (1958) with
Gary Cooper as an unhappily wedded lawyer who is being pushed into
the politics of his small town in this melodrama that unexpectedly
finds him in the arms of a younger Suzy Parker, but all kinds of
family troubles and other entanglements await in this black and white
major release based on John O'Hara's novel.
The
upside of this is that it is a melodrama that is a cut above a
'woman's film' or soap opera as they were usually called since it
does not wallow in its events quite as much as soapers did (and still
do), so its still long 102 minutes taking place in a small town
somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania drags, but not as much as it might.
Cast performances by Geraldine Fitzgerald, Tom Tully, Ray
Strictland, John Emery, Philip Ober, Linda Watkins, Barbara Nichols
and Stuart Whitman keep it more interesting, but even they cannot
save it from what it is and trying to be.
With
TV soap operas a new reality, this might have been an attempt to
upgrade the genre for theaters to save it and still have it be a
money maker, but it was only a transitional work at best and soap
opera movies simply transmuted as the genre became big on daytime TV
and feature films soon had a freedom the then small screen did not.
At least this looks good and is worth a look for those curio and
interested.
Extras
include an illustrated booklet on the film including informative text
and essay by Mike Finnegan, while the disc adds only an Isolated
Music Score.
Now
for playback quality. The
Aftermath is presented in
1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with a widescreen aspect ratio
of 1.85:1 and audio tracks in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless
and lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 foreign language tracks. This combo pack
also comes with an anamorphically enhanced standard definition DVD
with the same widescreen specs and a lesser lossy Dolby Digital 5.1
mix. The film is beautifully photographed and captures the period
setting well. You can tell a lot of money was put into this
production. A digital copy
is also included.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Horse is a new HD master and looks good in its
attempt to recreate the documentary look it chooses, but this means
that sometimes, detail is lost in the Video Black area. Otherwise,
this is very impressive throughout.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Earth is a
brand new 4K scan form the original 35mm negative, shot soft matte
1.33 X 1 at the time because TV had not gone totally widescreen yet.
Some fans and purists will not be happy or used to the wider image,
but IO think it looks really good and is as correct as the older
block style frame. Color, detail and depth are as good as intended
for its period look down to the color and looks as good as it can in
this format. Visual effects using models in its original release
were deemed too weak for HD (maybe they lacked detail or were gone),
so new HD recreations are in their place and are not bad. Can't wait
to see a 4K version.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Furie
is an HD shoot that manages to be gritty and surprisingly authentic,
though not to be mistaken for film. This should be one of Well Go's
next 4K candidates and color is consistent. You would not know this
from the anamorphically enhanced DVD with lossy Dolby Digital 5.1
also included in the set.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on North rarely shows the age of the 35mm real
anamorphic Panavision shoot that makes this one of the rare
monochrome scope films and this new HD master is about as good as the
film is going to get in the format, even looking glossy,
The
1.33 X 1 black and white image on Man is a rough print of a
film that is shot well and looks good throughout, even when they
cheat with location footage in an early montage sequence (printing
buildings backwards does not mean we cannot read what they say) and
it is a film that deserves a full restoration. The lossy Dolby
Digital 2.0 Mono has background noise, but sounds good for its age.
Then
when it comes to sound, Earth has been upgraded from old Dolby
analog A-type (stereo with mono surrounds) noise reduction to
lossless Dolby Atmos 12-track sound and that kicks in when it needs
to and presents the many dialogue-based moments as well as possible.
This follows Westworld and Game Of Thrones as HBO
series on Blu-ray getting this treatment and is a welcome upgrade.
Furie
is also sounding really good in its Vietnamese DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 7.1 lossless mix (better than the English DTS-MA 5.1 dub mix)
that is very well thought out and impressive with its consistent
soundfield. Horse
and North
both offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes, but
Horse
sounds more aged than North
and this is likely due to budget and style of filmmaking. It is
probably the best either will sound, though the isolated lossless
DTS-MA score for North
is impressive and sounds a bit better than the film itself.
To
order Behold
A Pale Rider and
10
North Frederick
limited edition Blu-rays, buy them while supplies last at these
links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
and
to order The
Man Who Found Himself
Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for them and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.wbshop.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo, Ricky Chiang (Furie)
and James
Lockhart (Aftermath)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
