Electric Shadow

Change of Pace for Chan

I really wish that Sony's recent release of Shinjuku Incident had been put on Blu-ray in addition to DVD. For those who complain about "Jackie Chan movies" as being hollow, lifeless bores...guess what? He agrees with you! He says in the lone featurette on the DVD that he does not want to just do action films. He knows he can fight. Everyone knows that. He's eager to show that he's an actor capable of doing the kung fu, and not the other way around. In the movie, Chan's character and his brother emigrate from China to Japan illegally. They get tangled up in a life of crime.
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Exploring the Unthinkable

The direct-to-video Unthinkable from a few weeks ago is actually rather good, with equally solid work from Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Sheen, and Carrie-Anne Moss. Moss and her FBI team (which includes Brandon Routh and Gil Bellows) accidentally raid the home of CIA operative "H" (Jackson), who is a specialist in "advanced interrogation techniques".
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Walking With Eli

The thing about Book of Eli is that it really requires some sort of receptiveness to the evangelical Christian narrative to work for any given viewer. Whether a Christian or not, it really requires some personal belief of a certain bent regarding sacrifice for a greater good beyond "do unto others...". As a post-apoccalyptic action movie, there are a couple of nice fight sequences and one-liners, but that's about it. I dug the desaturated look. Gary Oldman and Ray Stevenson are fun as teeth-gnashing baddies, and Denzel Washington is sufficiently oak-like as titular hero Eli.

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A Star Reborn


This stunning 8k scan of the fullest surviving version of A Star is Born (1954) is really gorgeous, and unlike titles like The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, North by Northwest, and Doctor Zhivago, it isn't generally considered one of the still-shining crown jewels in the WB library. This treatment makes a compelling case to remember it exists and give it a look.
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520: Everlasting Outlet for Creativity

I've never seen The Emigrants or The New Land, but I am interested in tracking them down now that I've seen director Jan Troell's Everlasting Moments (29 June, Criterion). The original Swedish title adds Maria Larsson's (referring to the real-life protagonist) at the front, which was presumably dropped due to international unfamiliarity with the best-selling book upon which the movie is based.

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519: Unassuming, Unpretentious Close-Up


There are those who would disagree with my use of "unpretentious" in the title of this article in reference to the film Close-Up. Either you believe in and go with the spontaneous spirit in this film, or you're actively working against your own enjoyment of many things. Yet others (or those same) would argue against "unassuming", claiming that to "get" the movie, you have to be into films from the Middle East, or just a pretentious prick. Such people are said pretentious pricks.
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Get Her to the Gugg

I didn't expect When in Rome to be particularly good, but it ended up being a perfect example of how Hollywood has lost its capacity for glamourous gloss. You look at movies like Three Coins in the Fountain or Roman Holiday, and you wonder how hard it really is to at least put a little spunk into this kind of story. A romantic comedy generally works best if you leave out most of the forced "comedy" and just let the romance flow.
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Cry for the Owls

The Cry of the Owl is a good example of where the DTV stigma comes from. A lousy, progressively worsening "thriller" based on a novel by a writing legend (Patricia Highsmith). Paddy Considine and Julia Stiles are plenty entertaining, just not in this movie.

 

 

A soon-to-be-divorced guy (Considine) moves to a new area, where he stumbles into stalking/peeking in on a woman who lives out in the woods (Stiles). He doesn't watch her get naked or anything, just preparing food and so on. The story doesn't so much twist regarding who is hunting and being hunted, but swerves a few times. I dug the angle of questioning who was being stalked (and consequently, who was doing the stalking), but it all just came out uneven and unnatural.

521: Connecting Train


Mystery Train lives in a whole different universe from movies like Crash and Babel. Those movies' use of intersecting narratives as a device is so calculated as to deflate any true suspense or engagement. Mystery Train preceded them both, and did it right all those years before. Dennis Lim's essay in the booklet agrees with me and the rest of the sane world on this point.

The Japanese rock tourists, the widow, the sister, the ex-girlfriend, the brother, the ex-boyfriend, the barber, the accomplice, and the hotel clerks all behave like human beings in something closely resembling the real world. To name all the actors would be tremendously boring, but I'll note a couple of things: Youki Kudoh has since done a lot of work, where she was basically unknown here, and many musician friends know this movie because Joe Strummer from The Clash is in it. The city of Memphis is the slow-moving, decomposing beast covered in kudzu that these various organisms inhabit, for whatever length of time. The final product of this layover between various points of departure stands as one of the prime examples of what "independent cinema" really means, or rather, what it meant.

We've spent all the hard cash and borrowed debt that words like "indie" once had. Five years ago, when I started this column, I declared war on the word "quirky", which, until today, I wasn't aware that Jarmusch held in similar contempt. When you find yourself using that meme, ask "what am I really trying to say?" before cursing yourself with the connotations of one who calls the eclectic "quirky", or the emotionally complex "dark". Today's Criterion Blu-ray/DVD release of Mystery Train filled a notable hole in my Jim Jarmusch viewing history. I was first introduced to him by Ghost Dog, which I found to be at once both beautifully spare and fresh. In my teens, it represented a freedom from convention that I yearned for in homogenized suburban Texas. Throughout the rest of high school, college, and the years since, I've made my way through as much of his earlier stuff as I've been able. I'm going to hit the last two that I haven't seen (Permanent Vacation and Stranger Than Paradise) once I've finished off my series on Ozu (sometime in July). It's convenient that they're both bundled in Criterion's Paradise DVD release. Since receiving my review copy, I've both watched the feature and listened to the Q&A With Jim (over an hour in length, he answers written-in questions) twice. I borrowed a friend's MGM DVD of Train to compare the transfers, and the previous edition is a joke. I couldn't disagree more with anyone who decries the few number of extra portions included. Anyone who thinks that a Criterion edition has to have a commentary track is either new to this game, doesn't know much, or both. The mini-doc crash course on Memphis and retrospective look at the locations in the present day runs under 20 minutes, but is dense with critical detailing. An excerpt of I Put a Spell on Me, the 2001 doc on Screamin' Jay Hawkins. The reason they specifically pulled that bit was twofold: to contextualize the info that was relevant to this movie, but also (I'm speculating here) because the full license cost would have been more prohibitive. Behind-the-scenes snaps of unspecified origin (I may be misremembering that) and photos taken by on-set photographer Masayoshi Sukita complete our journey. This release is another sterling example of how in the age of multiple studio bankruptcies and fire sales, Criterion knows how to make a feast out of simple, spare ingredients. Not too much, not too little, but just right.

The hotel that serves as the intersection point for the three narrative threads no longer exists. It was demolished a year after the movie was made. In its place is now an outdoor music stage. Most (if not all) of the other locations have survived in almost identical condition, as if Memphis itself lives on an island outside of time. I realize that Criterion now has all of Jarmusch's pre-1995 feature output, which is a goddamned great thing. On that note, I know there are more people than just me who would buy a box set of Dead Man, Year of the Horse, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, Coffee & Cigarettes, Broken Flowers, and The Limits of Control. It would go on my top shelf, next to Ozu. Mystery Train sets you back $30 on Blu-ray, but as a bonus, you might just see Elvis' ghost.
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Blackerer is Better

 

 

David Cross is one of the best comedians working today. He meets all the requirements: says what people think but are too cowardly to say, writes his own material, and keeps things fresh. He's difficult to pidgeonhole, or anything-hole for that matter. He has a strong aversion to organized religion, Republicans, and big business. Many, including David himself, would say that those three are kinda the same thing. They would be correct. Cross' newest standup special, Bigger and Blackerer, is fantastic. It's so fantastic that I won't spoil a single of his jokes, or that would ruin you as a paying customer like prom night ruins teenagers' expectations about true love. Amzon's got the DVD for $13.99, though the album version has content missing here and vice versa.

Pow!

I saw Isaac Florentine's Undisputed III: Redemption last night, and while it is exactly what it appears to be (a prison fighting tournament movie), it's in a class all its own. I wouldn't call it fight porn, but it is the result of letting guys who really know staged combat and choreography run the show.

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Master of His Destiny

Earlier this year, we saw the release of the mammoth 35-movie, 35-DVD Clint: 35 Years boxset. The last two weeks have seen a flood of Eastwood-starring and -directed movies hit Blu-ray, some in mini-collections. If I were laid up in a hospital for a few weeks, it'd be a great time to wheel in an HDTV and a pile of Blu-rays and get to know his filmography better. I watched Invictus and the new Extended Cut of Richard Schickel's career retrospective piece The Eastwood Factor in the same afternoon recently.
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Please, Accept the Mystery

I missed out on the movie blogger lovefest on this movie last summer, catching it the other night on DVD and loving it instantly. It is the opposite of the general implication of "a comedy sketch at feature length". The leads are all still "gee shucks" boy detectives at age eighteen. They live in enough of a different reality that they could be considered criminally insane.

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This Summer, Buckles...Will...Swash

Last weekend, Iron Man 2 beat Robin Hood on the latter's opening weekend, with neither claiming the dollar advantage of 3D screens. It would seem that word of mouth and brand value didn't propel people to the 55th or so retelling of the outlaw story. Maybe if they'd gone in the fundamentally different direction of the original Nottingham script, it would have been a bigger deal. If you want to see the same general story retold in a way you haven't seen before, you have better options on DVD.

Just last week, Sony issued four catalog Robin Hood titles on DVD that I hadn't seen before. Two of them are "next generation" sequels starring someone as Robin Hood's son, and the others are new permutations of the standard Hood tale. Read on and add to your Netflix queue as appropriate.

 

 

The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1947)
Coming scant years after the end of WWII, Cornel Wilde plays Robin Hood's son Robert, who teams up with good ol' dad to prevent a reign of tyranny. THe Regent of England (William of Pembroke) locks up the boy King and tries to swipe the throne for himself. Beautifully-shot by the same Cinematographer as The Adventures of Robin Hood (Tony Gaudio), Bandit looks great in Academy ratio Technicolor.

 

 

Prince of Thieves (1948)
Costner's movie swiped its title from this flick, which stars Jon Hall, the same guy who played Ali Baba in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, as Robin Hood. This one was done as a reworking of the traditional Robin Hood myth, and only runs 72 minutes. Shot in Cinecolor instead of Technicolor, darker scenes early in the movie look like they were colorized from black and white with a dash of acid. I don't mean that as a bad thing.

 

 

Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950)
Another "son of" Robin Hood tale, I never thought I'd see a "Hood" movie directed by the same guy who made THEM! (Gordon Douglas), but here it is. Rogues was Alan Hale Sr.'s final film appearance, which was also his third time playing Little John over a span of 28 years. Hale's first go was opposite Douglas Fairbanks and his second was in the iconic and much-beloved Michael Curtiz-directed Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn.

 

 

Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)
Some people only need the incentive of seeing Peter Cushing play the Sheriff of Nottingham to get them. Add in the director of Hammer Films' Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher), and you seal the deal. Richard Greene, who played Hood throughout the 50's on TV, plays him on the big screen for the first time here.

Of the four "Hood" movies released on disc recently, this is the only one in 2.35:1 MegaScope widescreen, and it looks wonderful. Combine solid visuals with a story involving an assassination plot against the Archbishop of Canterbury, and this one's more irresistible than the rest. Oliver Reed and Desmond Llewelyn appear in a couple parts early in their careers.

All four titles are $9 from Amazon and can be ordered by clicking on the accompanying screenshot.

Clever Valentine's Day-related Title

I give a pass to sappy rom-coms that actually try, rather than cobble together a pseudo-ripoff of something that's already successful. Valentine's Day is full of people I like in other movies, and a director that seems like a helluva nice guy to work with, but the movie doesn't know what it wants to be.
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Return to Darkness

It's frequently tossed aside that Martin Campbell directed the now-classic original BBC miniseries version in addition to the recent feature version of Edge of Darkness. In one of the "focus point" featurettes included on last week's Blu-ray, Campbell mentions that the only guy who would have made a movie work was Mel Gibson, and he does, for the most part.
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