Full transparency: all Blu-rays reviewed were provided by GKIDS, Kino Lorber, and Criterion.
Another month is upon us and with it brings more of those sweet, sweet discs. I’m talkin Blu gold, baby! However, it also brings some changes. Me and the powers-that-be have decided to integrate these reviews into the A Place for Film podcast so that both the reading and listening audiences can stay informed about the home media that comes down the pipeline each month. I hope those who listen to the podcast can find some things of interest over here at the blog and those who read the blog can experience some of the fun and joy Elizabeth Roell and I try to bring to the podcast each week.
Synergy isn’t the only new thing about the column. GKIDS has joined us this month with what was very nearly my “Pick of the Month,” On Gaku: Our Sound, a wild, funny, and inspiring labor of love about outsider art. We also have Kino Lorber bringing Ang Lee’s 2007 erotic political thriller Lust, Caution to Blu-ray for the first time stateside with its full NC-17 cut intact. Also from Kino Lorber: Sam Peckinpah’s bleak and grimy revenge Western, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Criterion rounds out the month with a Blu-ray release from one of our greatest living humanist filmmakers, Mike Leigh’s Secrets and Lies.
Every month I’m blown away with the quality of what these distributors put out and I hope you’ll tune in and listen to me go on and on about what makes each of these films worth your time and, if you’re lucky enough to have it, money.
Also out this month…
If you are curious about some films that I still enjoyed or found interesting enough to make them worth a look, may I recommend:
Most people probably know Marty Feldman for his role as Igor in Young Frankenstein and MAYBE Silent Movie. What you may not know is that Feldman had a couple of writer/director credits under his belt not long after these. In 1977, he gave the world The Last Remake of Beau Geste, a historical comedy about a stolen family heirloom, and then three years later he wrote and directed a satire about religion in America called In God We Tru$t, a broad comedy about the hypocrisy, greed, and ludicrous nature of worship interacting commerce. Starring Louise Lasser (Requiem for a Dream, Happiness, Frankenhooker), fellow Mel Brooks alum Peter Boyle, and the first starring role of the legendary Andy Kaufman — as well as a wild cameo by another Brooks collaborator, Richard Pryor — it’s a movie that doesn’t shy away from its cynical broad streak (as so many ’70s satire are wont to do) but it also has sweet spots highlighting how the meek and wretches of society can come together and find their own salvation within each other. No matter how “ugly” the leads are, Christianity in America comes out looking even uglier.
In God We Tru$t is available from Kino Lorber.
Speaking of the ’70s, “revisionist Westerns” were all the rage, and among the most popular subjects from the period to be mythologized and torn down in equal measure sits Doc Holliday. Portrayed by dozens of actors through film and television for the better part of a century — but if you asked anyone over the age of like, 27, they’d probably tell you they’re most familiar with Val Kilmer’s amusing take in Tombstone — it’s a figure and a setting that has many elements and characters to play around with. In writer and noted columnist Pete Hamill and director Frank Perry’s 1971 film Doc, they make him the man who never sold out and looked for some semblance of happiness in his dying days (Doc Holliday suffered from tuberculosis) while Wyatt Earp has turned from a man who seeks true justice into another politician vying for power. It’s a movie about two friends who’ve grown apart with added realism to events that have been put on the same pedestal as giant comic-book events. Stacy Keach really shines in this and plays Doc Holliday as a no-nonsense man who struggles with his own emotions but still wants to find some love with his lady, Katie Elder (played by the legendary Faye Dunaway). Do not sleep on Doc.
Available from Kino Lorber.
It’s funny coming to a movie from the negative reputation of its remake. I had only ever heard of L’emmerdeur, known stateside as A Pain in the Ass, as the original film to the remake of Billy Wilder’s final film, Buddy Buddy, a film that Quentin Tarantino cites as one of the reasons he wants to retire after his 10th film and a film that Billy Wilder himself isn’t the most pleased about (“If I met all my old pictures in a crowd, personified, there are some that would make me happy and proud, and I would embrace them … but Buddy Buddy I’d try to ignore.”). But A Pain in the Ass is luckily a good time. It’s a comedy of errors centered around a hitman (Lino Ventura) trying to fill a contract at a hotel while his comically depressed next-door neighbor (Jacques Brel) tries to kill himself. For the hitman, this draws attention to his side of the hotel which makes his job much harder. He takes it upon himself to keep Brel happy and healthy until he can finish his job. That’s not what happens, unfortunately, and what ensues is a distinctly French comedy about a man being annoyed into an unlikely friendship and dealing with the frustrating hurdles of just trying to commit some contract murder. I know how it is.
While not my favorite movie this month, I think it’s very much something I’d tell people to check out if they needed some off-the-beaten-path farce in their life. A Pain in the Ass is available from Kino Lorber.
If you want to talk about the pedigrees of films that I knew about before I’d even seen a still image, then the 1985 film Runaway Train is one I had been dying to see. With direction by Andrei Konchalovsky (best known for Tango and Cash), a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa (yes, that one), and distribution by Cannon Films, to quote the holy text of our ages, “Baby, you got a stew goin’.” Starring Eric “too many credits to list” Roberts, Rebecca DeMornay of Risky Business fame, and Jon Voight at his most ghoulish (more ghoulish than even Anaconda I’d say), it’s about two convicts escaping prison in the icy wasteland of Alaska onto a train with a conductor, unbeknownst to them, who has died of a heart attack, sending the train careening on a near unstoppable path of destruction.
To put it bluntly: it rips. It’s the exact type of Cannon Films action and grit you’d want out of a movie called Runaway Train. However, while I don’t know how much of Kurosawa’s screenplay made it into the actual film — Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel, and Edward Bunker are the credited screenwriters — there are things about the movie that feel like his influence. Jon Voight is a convict who’s become a folk hero to his fellow prisoners after two failed escape attempts and a three-year stint in solitary confinement, slowly battling both his own redemption and the sadistic prison warden (John P. Ryan) hot on his trail. There’s something beautiful about the story of a man who has no reason to look out for anybody but himself, and while it’s not the ultimate focal point of the movie, it’s certainly a plus. Of all the discs that didn’t quite make the highest recommendation cut, I’d definitely put Runaway Train at the top.
Available from Kino Lorber.
David Carter is a film lover and a menace. He plays jazz from time to time but asks you not to hold that against him. His taste in movies bounces from Speed Racer to The Holy Mountain and everything in between.