
Conclave
(2024/Focus/Universal Blu-ray)/Conflict
(1945*)/Journey
Into Fear
(1943/RKO/*both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/North
By Northwest 4K
(1959/MGM/Warner 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray)/Nine
Queens
(2000/Sony Blu-ray)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B+* Picture: B-/B/B/X/B Sound: B/B-/B-/B/B-
Extras: C/C+/B-/B/C- Films: C/B-/B-/B+/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Conflict
and Journey
Into Fear
Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Now
for a group of smart thrillers, including a few classic and a new
entry...
Edward
Berger's Conclave
(2024) is a thriller set at The Vatican during the time that the
Church has to select a new Pope. Ralph Fiennes is the cardinal
chosen to head up the process, but suddenly, strange things start to
happen that smack of criminality, conspiracy and a rot within the
hallowed halls of the very religion he also placed his faith in that
he will be challenged like never before to see
this through.
Unfortunately,
we get to suffer more of his pain than expected because this thing
runs about three hours, is not that good, is everything we have seen
before (think the subplot of Godfather
III)
and I barely bought any of it, even while struggling to stay awake
through it. Even without the many real life scandals the Church has
had, just dealing with the content within this film, this is dull
quickly if it was a different religion or something fictitious.
Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow are part of the
supporting cast, but even they cannot save this from collapsing on
itself. For the very, very curious only.
Extras
include Digital Movie Code, while the disc adds...
SEQUESTERED:
INSIDE CONCLAVE: Enter the mysterious world of CONCLAVE with the
cast and filmmakers for a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to
raise the curtain on one of the most secretive and secluded
processes in the world.
and
FEATURE COMMENTARY WITH DIRECTOR EDWARD BERGER: Commentary with
director Edward Berger.
The
next two thrillers are underrated gems that have been out of
circulation for way too long and it is great that Warner Archive has
saved, restored and reissued them. Curtis Bernhardt's
Conflict
(1945) gives us a married Humphrey Bogart, sick of his wife after
five years and more interested in her younger sister, he kills his
wife!
But
despite being thorough in how he kills her, making her drive to their
remote second home and giving her directions that sets a trap for
which she will drive accidentally to her death, he is suddenly not
certain she is dead. Is she actually taunting him because she
survived and is keeping it a secret to get back at him? Is he just
imagining some things and taking a few coincidences too seriously?
Is she a ghost back from the dead, out to kill him and send him to
hell?
Alexis
Smith and Rose Hobart are the sisters, Sydney Greenstreet, usually a
villain, but later brilliant as radio's Nero Wolfe, is the
investigator looking into what exactly happened and the rest of the
solid cast includes Charles Drake, Grant Mitchell, Ann Shoemaker,
Pat(rick) O'Moore and Ed(win) Stanley are the kinds of actors you
would see in these films all the time and though they were not hugely
successful, were always consistently good and made good films even
better.
Bogart
did not want to do the film until Jack Warner pushed him into it, but
when all is said and done, it is one of Bogart's most underrated gems
and all involved are in great form. That is why all serious film
fans, especially of mystery and suspense, will want to catch Conflict
or catch it again. Now fully restored, it is a good time at the
movie.
Extras
include two 1945 Warner live action shorts: Peeks
At Hollywood
and Are
Animals Actors?,
9/11/45 audio radio drama version of the film with Bogart, two 1945
Warner animated cartoon classic shorts: Life
With Feathers
and Trap
Happy Porky
(all four shorts are in HD) and an Original Theatrical Trailer.
Norman
Foster's Journey
Into Fear
(1943) is the other gem with the Mercury Theater back in action with
this international thriller as Joseph Cotten plays an engineer
helping the Allies during WWII and pursued by the Axis, Nazis and
Gestapo thinking if they get him or simply kill him, it will set back
the Allies' war efforts on a technical level. In Turkey, he has
apparently been identified, so he has to flee, but instead of taking
a train or airplane, the head of the Turkish Secret Police (Orson
Welles) has him take a passenger ship to be safer.
Unfortunately,
the killers are still onto him. From there, the screenplay (which
Cotten co-wrote from the Eric Ambler novel) gets more and more
suspenseful, concluding in a really memorable and clever climax that
I always liked and was thrilled held up as well as it did. This
version is the one closest to what the filmmakers originally
intended.
Also
making this work so well is the great cast that includes Agnes
Moorehead, Dolores Del Rio, Ruth Warrick, Everett Sloane, Frank
Readick, Richard Bennett, Hans Conreid, Jack Durant, Eustace Wyatt
and others who keep things interesting. Great work and my only
complaint is that I wish it were longer!
Extras
include three excellent, classic Orson Welles' Mercury Theater radio
drama versions of three classics: Dracula
(7/11/1938,) Treasure
Island
(7/18/1938) and A
Tale Of Two Cities
(7/25/1938) and all are considered masterworks of the medium and hold
up incredibly well. Smart, great move to include them here with
lossless DTS-MA 2.0 Mono sound!
Alfred
Hitchcock's
North By Northwest 4K
(1959) is the latest gem from the Master of Suspense to get the Ultra
High Definition treatment and for the most part, it is another
remarkable restoration. Here's what I had to say about this
masterwork when I covered the previous Blu-ray edition at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/9171/North+By+Northwest+-+50th+Anniver
So
having said what I said about the film then, I wanted to add a few
things 15 years after that last release. We have seen few thrillers
or chase films that are either this classy, smart or funny since the
last time I reviewed it. When Hitchcock and his team made it, they
were working on a higher level than most have in the genres covered.
It has little touches most still miss but at least perceive and with
a finesse and class we rarely see in any kind of film anymore.
Recently,
I heard (unconfirmed) that a major filmmaker I really like was not a
fan of the film, implying it was average-ish and somehow oppressed
and compromised by the 1950s confining filmmaking style. Instead, I
would argue that the film is excellent as a straight out thriller,
but especially since Hitchcock knew he had done some of this before,
he wanted and needed to add a layer or two of more goods to go with
what already worked. James Stewart was originally going to be the
lead, but their falling out over Vertigo
killed that, leaving Cary Grant one of the only other living actors
of the time who could have taken over and boy, did he!
Grant
once again shows off his brilliant comedic skills (Bringing
Up Baby)
with his romantic panache (Hitchcock's To
Catch a Thief,
also just issued in a 4K restoration) with his thriller and action
star capacities he already showed off in two other Hitchcock
classics: Suspicion
and Notorious.
Ernest Lehman's screenplay is very well-rounded and from the opening
with Saul Bass' brilliant opening credits, the film is off and
running and never stops until its amazing conclusion. That is a lot
for anyone to juggle, but Hitchcock is one of the only filmmakers in
history who could have pulled it off and make it work on all levels
and more than ever, North
By Northwest
does. Now, one of the most imitated, referenced and enduring of all
such thrillers, its great it has received a new all-out restoration
that is pretty good for the most part, but more on that below.
Extras
include Digital Movie Code, while the disc adds an archival feature
length audio commentary track with screenwriter Ernest Lehman
North
By Northwest:
Cinematography, Score & The Art Of The Edit
featurette (23 minutes; BRAND NEW!)
Destination
Hitchcock: The Making of North
By Northwest
archival making of (39 minutes)
The
Master's Touch: Hitchcock's Signature Style
featurette (57 minutes)
North
By Northwest:
One For The Ages
archival featurette with William Friedkin, Guillermo Del Toro and
more (25 minutes)
and
A
Guided Tour with Alfred Hitchcock
look at the film's locations (3 minutes).
An
extra or two from past versions of the film are not here, which has
made some fans unhappy, but that's most of them to date and I cannot
strongly enough recommend this classic!
Fabian
Bielinsky's Nine
Queens
(2000, from Argentina) is our final release to look at, a now sort of
old-fashioned heist thriller from the late analog era where the
valuable item everyone is going for is a sheet of very valuable
postage stamps, the title object. Two lowbrow con artists (Ricardo
Darin, Gaston Pauls) meet in the middle of separate cons that force
them to cross paths and they barely escape from either begin caught
and arrested or maybe killed. Soon, an older conman wants them to
help him with a special sale.
He
asks them to handle the title sheet of mint-condition stamps, but the
ones they are handling are actually forgeries, yet they are so good,
some equally corrupt entities would also love to get their hands on
them, so madness ensues and that includes a few fight and action
sequences. A quarter-century later, stamps do not have the buzz
value they used to, yet there are many worth serious money, even
after the big crash way back in 1980 that ruined the market for
decades afterwards.
Cheers
also to the cast, directing style, energy, look, pace and locations
we do not see enough of. I can see why people still talk about the
film and though there might be a few minor moments where it is off or
a little predictable, it is well done and all serious fans of the
genres the film represents will definitely want to give it a good
look.
The
only extra is the Original Theatrical Trailer.
Now
for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 1.85 X 1, HDR (10;
Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on North
By Northwest 4K
is from a new 13K scan (both halves of the VistaVision frame scanned
at 6.5K) and in most cases, it is superior to all previous transfers
*save a few items to note. One, the green-backgrounded MGM logo
should be a little more emerald green. Two, the phone in the lobby
of the hotel should be a little more gold like a real gold bar.
Three, the scene in the woods with the nearly-straight, bare tress is
a little off, likely an issue with the negative that was too late to
fix, but they have done their best to fix it.
Then
there is four, an early key scene with a flaw no one has caught yet.
The villains get Thornhill (Grant) very drunk, putting him into a
fancy Mercedes-Benz convertible and sitting him in the driver's seat,
sending him off to his death over the rocky hillside into the waters
below. Before another twist, we are supposed to see the danger he is
in with an almost Vertigo-like
shot where we can see the depth (Thornhill's point of view, very
clear to the audience) to spell out the trouble ahead. The rest of
the sequence looks fine, but that first shot is ruined and it ruins
the impact and what Hitchcock intended. You can see it on all past
video versions.
Otherwise, this looks as good as a fresh, dye-transfer, three-strip
Technicolor print and impresses throughout otherwise. Just wish this
were also in Dolby Vision, but maybe next time.
The
sound is here in a new, lossless Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1
mixdown for older systems) that is the best the film ever has or will
sound with all the elements at their best including Bernard Hermann's
brilliant music score, plus a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono
lossless mix from the original theatrical monophonic elements (the
film was never issued in Perspecta Sound apparently like several of
Hitchcock's films and some other non-Paramount VistaVision releases)
that fans and purists will be very happy with. I preferred the
Atmos, which just opens everything up and matches the
larger-than-life visuals and Hitchcock style. Many will watch the
film twice, one with each soundtrack, but its all well done.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Conclave
has a slight softness that is more because of the transfer than the
style the makers visually chose for the film, though consistent.
Maybe a 4K version would clear this up, while the
lossless Dolby TrueHD 7.1 fares better and has a consistent
soundfield. That is not bad considering this is often a quiet,
dialogue-based film. The combination is passable, but nothing
unforgettable either.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfers on Conflict
and Journey
Into Fear
can show the age of the materials used in minor places, but these
transfers are far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the
film and come from solid new scans of the original camera materials.
They both look great and have their own great visual styles that just
make them better. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on both films are as
good as they will ever sound, from the surviving optical theatrical
monophonic sound elements for the films and continues the winning
streak of Warner Archive's great restoration and preservation work.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Nine
Queens
may have some small flaws in brief spats, but this
looks good down to some really good color, while the Spanish DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.0 lossless mix shows its sonic limits, as well as
limits of the budget and technology used here. Remastered as well as
possible for this release, this is as good as this film will ever
sound and the combination we get here is fine.
To
order the Conflict
and/or Journey
Into Fear
Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them and many more great
web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo