Film
Quirky Indie ‘Restless’ has Quirkier Video Release
Completed in 2010, Gus Van Sant’s “Restless” premiered at Cannes in May 2011 (opening the “Un Certain Regard” portion), and finally opened last September in the U.S., running for three months in extremely limited release (one to 126 theatres) to widely mixed reviews and poor box office. Last week Sony released it in a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack including a peculiarly intriguing bonus feature.
Soderbergh Makes Bourne-Again Revenge Thriller
Frustratingly coy and belligerently reductivist, Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire” cooks up a story that plays to the strengths of mixed martial artist/American Gladiator Gina Carano. Parallel to the employment of Sasha Grey in “The Girlfriend Experience,” Soderbergh’s selection of Carano in the lead role laces his movie with a sense of expectation based on the occupational history of the performer. And while Carano’s abilities to scissor-lock her thighs around the necks of her hapless adversaries invites a certain measure of respect, the actor is devoid of the necessary skills to suggest any spark of self-reflection (talk of significant post-production voice replacement doesn’t help). Instead, Carano’s deadly agent, Mallory Kane, glides perpetually forward like the doll-eyed shark in “Jaws,” efficiently devouring anything unlucky enough to cross her path.
Wigged Out: Streep Does Thatcher in “The Iron Lady”
Waterlogged with the worst clichés of the biopic, not even a committed act of Meryl Streep’s vaunted mimicry can buoy “The Iron Lady.” Skittering over the highlights of Margaret Thatcher’s political career without ever stopping to take intellectual stock of the historical details that undoubtedly required tremendous thought, concentration, and collaboration, Phyllida Lloyd’s film is much like Thatcher’s well-known coiffure: artificially volumized to appear fuller than it really is.
British Blu-rays Encapsulate 1960s Issues that Remain Today
Two late-1960s movies widely dismissed as trashy genre films when initially released have since gained greatly in critical esteem. Their naturalistic approaches make them stand up quite well today while other films of the era that made the rounds of drive-ins and Grindhouses usually look badly dated. Barbet Schroeder’s “More”(1969) and Michael Reeves’ “Witchfinder General” (1968) both came out on region-free Blu-rays in England last fall, in director’s cut versions that finally let modern audiences re-evaluate them.
Hugo
For nearly most of his career, Martin Scorsese made films about gangsters, violence, and people who have no hope of redemption. However, he’s also known for promoting the preservation of film for all future generations. With this latest film, Scorsese manages to convey his message of preserving cinema, without the use of violence. Not only that, he manages to find a way to convey said message, via 3-D.
Limited Editions: Film Rarities Reach Blu-ray
“Twilight Time,” a new video subsidiary of movie soundtrack specialists Screen Archives Entertainment, has recently started licensing off-beat and often obscure older films from Columbia and 20th Century Fox. They’ve selected titles with a certain critical, director, star, or genre appeal that the studios have little or no interest in bothering with, and bring them to Blu-ray in editions of only 3,000 units, available exclusively from them for three years, and not in any stores
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