Fail
Safe
(1964/Sony/Columbia/Criterion Blu-ray)/Harriet
(2019/Universal Blu-ray w/DVD)/Lighthouse
(2019/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/Melvin
and Howard
(1980/Uni/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/Pain
and Glory
(2019/Sony Blu-ray)/Piranhas
(2019/Music Box Blu-ray)
Picture:
B/B & C/B/B+/B/B Sound: B-/B & C+/B/B/B/B Extras:
B/B/C+/B/C+/C+ Films: B/B/C+/B/B-/C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Melvin
and Howard
Blu-ray is now only available from our friends at Twilight Time and
can be ordered from the links below.
As
awards season continues, we look at some impressive new films and a
few near-classics...
Sidney
Lumet's Fail
Safe
(1964) remains a great thriller that asks questions as relevant then
as now, so though some of the technology in the film is dated, the
questions asked applies to the ever-expanding tech world that
challenges us to think if we are allowing too much mindless surrender
to said technology. In it, U.S. bombers near the now-defunct Soviet
Union (aka USSR; Russia still has all these nuclear weapons) is armed
with nuclear missiles and accidentally gets an order to bomb Moscow,
the country's capitol, with them. Since the system the U.S. has is
supposed to have so many things built into it that this could never
happen accidentally, everything should be fine. Thus the title of
the film.
However,
turns out the system may have more flaws than anyone expected and
that leaves the President (Henry Fonda) scrambling for the worst. As
the film begins with a nightmare, we know we are in for trouble, then
comes the intellectual discussions led by an expert (Walter Matthau)
at a high class party and the script weaves its many vital questions
and ideas into the climax from there.
Often
referenced and imitated (from Colossus: The Forbin Project and
(to a much lesser extent) War Games) along with another
Columbia Picture made at the same time that they chose to promote
more strongly, Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Dr. Strangelove
(also reviewed on Criterion Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) the
saddest part is you can have to great films like this arrive at the
same time, but the actual problem of the planet being annihilated by
nuclear weapons remains and especially lately, much worse than ever.
The
supporting cast (you'll recognize more than a few of these great
actors, despite how young many of them they are here) is incredible,
Lumet is in great early form here helming the film as it builds more
and more tension and though it may not go all the way the way
Strangelove does on the subject, it has to NOT do that in
order for it to work so well in its own way. They are vital
flipsides to each other and are the kinds of films that transformed
Columbia into a major studio permanently. Its great we have such an
incredible new edition of the film. If you have never seen it or
want to see it again, this Blu-ray is the way to go!
Extras
includes a paper foldout (poster style) with tech info and an essay
by critic Bilge Ebiri, while the Blu-ray disc adds an excellent audio
commentary from 2000 featuring director Sidney Lumet, new interview
with film critic J. Hoberman on 1960s nuclear paranoia and Cold War
films and "Fail-Safe"
Revisited,
a short documentary from 2000 including interviews with Lumet,
screenwriter Walter Bernstein, and the amazing actor Dan O'Herlihy
(Robocop,
Robinson
Crusoe).
Kasi
Lemmon's
Harriet
(2019) is a long-overdue big screen telling of how Civil Rights
legend Harriet Tubman went from a slave to creating an underground
railroad to takes slaves from the South of the U.S. to the North and
even Canada before the Civil War took place. Cynthia Erivo is
remarkable in the title role, playing her most convincingly over
several decades of history, sick of broken promises, her family
broken up, people abused, mutilated & worse and the nightmare the
United States is.
Instead
of a formula biopic, this film is bolder, more honest and more
convincing and the fact that you have a female co-writer/director,
female producers and lead that can more than carry the film, it also
manages to escape some of the conventions of telling a slavery story
with exceptional character development and a female discourse we
rarely see in telling such stories. One of the year's most
underrated films along with After
The Wedding,
Harriet
is a must-see and another rare surprise this year. The film also
stars Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn, Vondie Curtis Hall, Vanessa Bell
Calloway and Janelle Monea.
Extras
include Digital Copy, while the discs add a solid feature length
audio commentary track by director Lemmons, Deleted Scenes and two
Making Of featurettes: Her
Story
and Becoming
Harriet.
Robert
Eggers' The
Lighthouse
(2019) takes place in the 1890s with the title locale somewhere in
New England as an older keeper (Willem Dafoe) brings along a young
man (Robert Pattinson) to help him out and keep the place going so
ships will not wreck and people will not get killed. However, the
old man can be a jerk and worse, while his new assistant is not
prepared for the isolationism and other things it takes to keep
things in top shape.
Try
to reference classic art and poetry, plus some classic photography
and cinematography, the film has some impressive moments, but also
gets too self-indulgent and even a bit goofy in not being able to
concentrate on full character development or making a larger
statement it never gets to make. Cheers to the actors for all their
hard work, but the director cannot get over his horror genre past
(The
VVitch was
not favorite recent such film) and that holds back an otherwise
interesting film worth at least5 a look.
Extras
include Digital Copy, while the disc adds a feature length audio
commentary track by Eggers, Deleted Scenes and Making Of featurette
The
Lighthouse: A Dark & Stormy Tale.
A
film from the late director Jonathan Demme (Silence
of the Lambs),
Melvin
and Howard
(1980) is an unusual tale of a young struggling man who ends up
helping out a stranger in the desert one night... who just so happens
to be the eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes. Amidst the man's
problems with his crazy wife (a very young Mary Steenburgen in an
unusual role for her), and trying to raise his kids, he later
inherits a fortunate from Hughes as a payment for his kind deed.
Will he get any money? Can he find more happiness?
The
film stars Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards, Pamela Reed, Dabney Coleman,
Michael J. Pollard, Gloria Grahame, Jack Kehoe, Charles Napier, and
John Glover.
Special
Features:
Isolated
Music & Effects Track
Audio
Commentary with Director Jonathan Demme and Production Designer Toby
Rafelson
Original
Theatrical Trailer
and
a Collectible Insert Booklet with an essay by film scholar Julie
Kirgo
I
enjoyed Melvin
and Howard
for its off beat sense of humor and some of its believe or not
weirdness. Plus the performances and direction all around are pretty
solid.
Pedro
Almodovar's Pain
and Glory
(2019) tells the story of a filmmaker (Antonio Banderas in a fine
performance) who is suffering from multiple physical healthy issues
and some emotional ones as a big film of his that was also a bad
experience has suddenly been restored and saved, then is making the
rounds of various film festivals as some kind of classic. This
includes making peace with someone he made the film with, but we get
plenty of flashbacks to his childhood and they are of mixed
experiences (Penelope Cruz plays his mother in these sequences)
showing a childhood that was somewhat problematic.
Shades
of Fellini, it also deals with his sexuality at a young age, not
realizing he might be gay while being oppressed by his local Catholic
church, choir and school. Apparently, Almodovar has made an at least
semi-autobiographical film that is open about homosexuality if not
fixated on it. The film is not bad, but nothing shocking or
surprising either, or one that works very well on the whole, yet he
is an artist with something to always say, so it has its moments.
Extras
include a Q&A with Director Almodovar, Banderas, Composer Albert
Iglesias and Producer Agustin Almodovar, an Original Theatrical
Trailer and featurette Pedro
Almodovar: In His Own Words.
And
finally, we have Claudio Giovannesi's Piranhas
(2019) about a group of 15-year-olds in Naples' Santia neighborhood
wanting to get into making big money quick and the only way is to
become criminals themselves, but it will not be that easy by a
longshot and their romanticizing of the pop culture equivalent of
being a gangster, et al makes them al the more naïve. Thus, things
will not go as they hope or we expect.
Unfortunately,
this is more predictable than I expected still and the film has
ambitions of being the next Gomorrah
(see our Criterion Blu-ray coverage elsewhere on this site), but
despite the energy, good cast and ambition, it cannot even come close
because it has nothing much new to add and too many scenes I simply
did not buy. With that said, the Gangster genre has been wearing
thin for a while anyhow, so unless you're thinking Sopranos
or Scorsese, you can see how most such films (and TV shows for that
matter, Gomorrah
was turned in to a TV show too) fall behind with little new room to
move in and even less ground to break. That leaves it a curio you
might like, but most will be disappointed.
Extras
include a press conference with the cast and crew at Berlinale, a
Making Of featurette and on-camera interview with Writer Roberto
Saviano.
As
for playback performance, everything here looks as good as it could
in the Blu-ray format, starting with a 1080p 1.85 X 1 black &
white digital High Definition image transfer of Fail
Safe
that is a new 4K transfer that only shows the age of the materials
used in expected ways. Lumet used negative footage versions of all
the stock footage used throughout, a brilliant move. This is far
superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film and worthy
of the best clips and 35mm print I saw of the film years ago. Sony
scanned the film from its original 35mm camera negative that still
survives and the PCM lossless Mono here comes from the original
optical mono master, so expect a presentation closer to Dr.
Strangelove
(also on Criterion Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) than ever before,
including demo shots to rival anything covered here.
Harriet
is presented in 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer
from its excellent HD shoot lensed by the genius Director of
Photography John Toll, A.S.C., known for hits like Legends
Of The Fall,
Braveheart,
Almost
Famous,
The
Thin Red Line,
The
Last Samurai
and Gone
Baby Gone
in some of his best work in years. Though some of the cameras were
6K, the film was finished in 2K for some reason, yet it is one of the
most naturalistic HD shoots of the last few years and is consistently
so. Issued in theaters in 12-track Dolby Atmos, we get a DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 7.1 lossless mixdown that is fine, but I could
imagine a few details we might be missing. The anamorphically
enhanced .2.35 X 1 image on the included DVD is much softer than I
would have liked and the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 is passable, but too
far away from the original soundmaster to be taken too seriously.
The
Lighthouse
is here in a 1080p 1.20 X 1 black & white digital High Definition
image transfer that is supposed to look much older than a brand new
film. If you've seen the opening of the first Daniel Craig/James
Bond film Casino
Royale
(see the 4K version elsewhere on this site), then you will remember
it too was in black and white, show on Kodak's ever-great Double-X
35mm negative with great grey scale and detail. To make that same
film stock look old, besides shooting in a silent-film shaped frame,
the makers used old lenses from about 100 years ago on the camera
while shooting the panchromatic film, but then, they took one more
step and added a filter that cut off the film's range, making it look
more like limited Orthochromatic film. It takes much light to get
the film to register like some David Lynch films, but they succeeded,
thus, receiving an Academy Award nomination for best cinematography.
Jarin Blaschke is the Director of Photography here.
Looking
as good as anything here just about, Melvin
and Howard
is presented in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray with a 1.85:1
widescreen aspect ratio and an English 1.0 DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
lossless mix, both of which are presented nicely here. The film
hasn't aged very much and Twilight Time (via Universal) has done a
nice job with the color timing and have created an overall clean HD
look here.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on Pain
& Glory
is handled by Director of Photography Jose Luis Alcaine, A.E.C.,
delivering solid color, depth and character in this HD shoot that
works just fine and has some character. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is dialogue-based with some
music and a good soundfield overall.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Piranhas
also gets into the locales of the film with some good camera work in
this HD shoot, but we get a few cliches because it is trying (too?)
hard to be a genre film too. I'll be curious to see more work from
Director of Photography Daniel Cipri to compare.
To
order the Melvin
and Howard
limited edition Blu-rays, buy it and other great exclusives while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo and James
Lockhart (Melvin)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/