New Releases On Blu Ray & DVD: 6/25/13

The best new release on Blu ray this week has to be the 1965 Beatles classic HELP! The Richard Lester-directed musical comedy starring John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Victor Spinetti (Spinetti, who passed away a year ago at age 82, also appeared in the Beatles’ first film 1964's A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, and their 1967 TV special Magical Mystery Tour), is available today in a single disc Blu ray edition (a new 2 disc DVD set also drops), which contains close to an hour’s worth of bonus material.

The digitally restored original film is joined by: “The Beatles in HELP!” (a 30-minute “Making of” documentary), “A Missing Scene” (a film outtake, featuring Wendy Richard), “The Restoration of HELP!,” “Memories of HELP!,” 1965 Theatrical Trailers (two original U.S. trailers and one original Spanish trailer), and 1965 U.S. Radio Spots. For more on HELP! read my review of a previous re-mastered edition of the film from November 7, 2007.

That’s the best, now for the rest headed by a couple of movies nobody, including me, went to see earlier this year: the Halle Berry thriller THE CALL, and the Steve Carrell/Jim Carrey comedy THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE, both out today in 2-disc Blu ray combo packs with UltraViolet, digital copies, etc (also out on single disc DVD sets).

THE INCREDIBLE BURT WONDERSTONE also features Steve Buscemi, and sadly one of the last performances on film of the great James Gandofini, who passed away last week at age 51. That alone may make it worth watching. Special Features include deleted scenes, alternate takes, Line-O-Rama whatnot, 8-minute “Making Movie Magic with David Copperfield” featurette, gag reel and something called “Steve Gray Uncut,” which has an in-character Jim Carrey starring in “The Best of The Brain Rapist.” You read that right.

THE CALL also comes packaged with a bunch of Special Features such as a commentary with cast and crew (including Director Brad Anderson, Berry, and writer Richard D'Ovidio, an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes, and 40 minutes of featurettes (“Emergency Procedures,” “Inside the Stunts,” “Michael Ecklund Audition Footage,” “Set Tour of the Call Center,” and “Set Tour of the Lair.”

A movie that didn’t come to my area (the Triangle area in N.C.) in its brief theatrical run, Juan Diego Solanas’ odd sci-fi flick UPSIDE DOWN, starring Jim Sturgess and Kirsten Dunst, is out today in a 3D + 2D Blu-ray & DVD Combo, and a single disc DVD. It comes with a bevy of bonus stuff including a 25-min. “Making Of” featurette, storyboards, sketches, and deleted scenes.

Also out today: Pablo Larraín’s NO, starring Gael García Bernal, Patrick Wang’s IN THE FAMILY, Samuel Fullers’ 1969 cult classic SHARK!, starring Burt Reynolds, the Criterion Collection edition of Claude Lanzmann's acclaimed 9 1/2 hour Holocaust documentary SHOAH, and a couple of well regarded works by Jean-Luc Godard (1978's COMMENT ÇA VA? and 1987's KEEP YOUR RIGHT UP) get spiffy new Blu ray releases from Olive Films.

TV Series sets hitting the shelves: Masterpiece Mystery: Inspector Lewis Season Six, CSI: NY - The Final Season, MADtv Season Three, and Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids: The Complete Series (that’s all 8 seasons on 15 discs!).

More later…

The Epically Entertaining But Empty CLOUD ATLAS

CLOUD ATLAS

(Dirs. Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, & Tom Tykwer, 2012)

Early on in this fantastical blend of seven scenarios, Tom Hanks, in probably the most ridiculous-looking get-up of all the characters he portrays here, plays a cockney gangster turned author who throws a snooty literary critic over a high-rise balcony to his death at a book release party because of a bad review.

It’s a funny gutsy scene, even though it’s so transparently saying ‘screw you haters! This is a big ass powerhouse of a cinematic experience that will throw you off a ledge whether you want to go with it or not!’

To its credit, especially with its bloated almost 3 hour running time, I did largely go with the flow. The Wachowskis, best known as the masterminds behind THE MATRIX trilogy, and Tykwer, best known for RUN LOLA RUN, have taken David Mitchell’s best-selling award-winning 2004 novel, and made it into a mega-movie for all genres.

It cuts back and forth through the various story-lines, sometimes with imagery morphing from likewise aesthetics in one shot into the other. With a cast including Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Ben Whishaw, Jim Sturgess, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, and Doona Bae playing multiple roles in cut-up centuries-spanning sequences, the film takes a gaggle of genres - i.e. dystopian sci-fi, post-apocalyptic drama, ‘70s conspiracy thrillers, British comedy, historical mystery, etc. - and puts them into a grinder, and they all come together to form epic entertainment.

Some storylines work better than others, and often the big cosmic gist of it all, you know, that everything ever is connected and that little acts of kindness can ripple through time and affect the future, didn’t really gel like I believe they were intending, but the pure visual splendor, along with the larger-than-life personalities present, still worked wonders.

Possibly Broadbent’s bits were the most likable. Whether as a fuzzy codger of a composer conniving to take credit for a supposedly brilliant piece of music called “The Cloud Atlas Sextet,” actually written by a suicidal gay musician (Whishaw, no stranger to mixed-up mashes of movies as he was one of the Dylans in Todd Haynes’ I’M NOT THERE), or as a present day heavily-in-debt publisher who gets wrongly committed to a nursing home by his brother (Grant), Broadbent’s energy and comic timing made a bigger impression on me than anyone else.

That’s not to say that there are some fine stand-out performances, as Hanks pulls off all his parts with ace acting, Berry puts in her best work since MONSTER'S BALL, and newcomer Bae has an emotional glow to her that fits right into the film’s absorbingly colorful palette.

Often in CLOUD ATLAS, the actors and actresses are unrecognizable because of intense makeup transformations that their change races, genders, and ages. Mostly the effect works, but there are instances that may provoke unintentional laughs when, say, first seeing a heavily freckled Susan Sarandon as an aging Southern Belle, or a Berry as a Blonde German woman. There were a lot of gasps at the screening I saw at the end credits montage that revealed who played what character. One thing is for certain: this film will undoubtedly get an Oscar nomination for Best Makeup.

As much as I was awed by what the Wachowskis and Tykwer put up on the screen, there was a bit of emptiness to the lavish proceedings that was hard to escape. Like in a conversation where you realize that somebody is only pretending to say something deep and meaningful when they really don’t have any new insight to share. Still, the ‘it’s all a show’ mentality makes for some spectacular movies, even if they are the equivalent of big junk food feasts.

Like many of those unhealthy feasts, CLOUD ATLAS is crammed full of empty calories, but that’s probably what makes it so undeniably delicious.

More later...