For the week of August 13th, Warner Home Entertainment is distributing the Paramount classic Shane on Blu-ray. Along with A Place in the Sun and Giant, Shane stands as the most iconic film of director George Stevens' career; it's a tough, evocative picture about a former gunslinger (Alan Ladd) who finds himself returning to his violent ways when he becomes the de factor protector of a struggling family (Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, and Brandon De Wilde). What makes Shane such a great Western - and a fundamental piece of the cinematic DNA behind movies like Open Range, Pale Rider, and this summer's The Wolverine - is the mythic grace Stevens affords the genre. Shane is the archetypal frontier hero, hired assassin Jack Wilson (the great Jack Palance) is his psychotic mirror, and their conflict plays out again stunning Wyoming backdrops (captured by DP Loyal Griggs, who won an Academy Award for his work here). But as good and as representative a Western as Shane is, it's the unexpected details that stick. For all the character's virtues, Ladd gives Shane genuine mystery - in his dealings with Wilson's cronies, Ladd suggests a menace that scares him a little, and he and Arthur share a charged emotional bond despite the presence of her husband (Heflin). As the 1998 thriller The Negotiator so memorably referenced, you never quite know the state of things in Shane, and that unpredictability has continued to endure.
In his Blu-ray review, Michael Reuben notes that "Shane has so many memorable scenes that it would consume too many pages to discuss them all. One element of its unique visual design is worth noting, however, which is the decision by Stevens and cinematographer Loyal Griggs...to use long lenses and include the Grand Teton mountains in the background of outdoor shots wherever possible. Anyone who doubts that the Academy ratio of 1.37:1 can't be used for an 'epic' feel should study Shane's framing. When Joe Starrett and the homesteaders complain that there's no law in this remote valley, you believe them, because Stevens continually shows you their isolation in this beautiful but desolate landscape far from civilization, where their only hope arrives in the unexpected shape of a soft-spoken man in a buckskin jacket."
The other big catalog title on Tuesday is Disney's "Nearly 35th Anniversary Edition" of The Muppet Movie. Jim Henson's beloved puppet creations have made quite the resurgence in recent years, what with 2011's hit comedy The Muppets and its upcoming sequel Muppets Most Wanted, but in many ways, this 1979 family-favorite remains the best of the bunch. On one hand, it is a perfect children's story, following Kermit the Frog and his Muppets pals as they travel across the United States in search of fame and fortune, all while evading the clutches of a frog-hungry, fast-food kingpin (the late Charles Durning). However, The Muppet Movie also provides so much amusement for adults. From top to toe, the film adopts a winningly meta approach to narrative - Kermit's journey is a thinly veiled proxy for Henson's own pursuit of his dreams, and the characters all know they're in a movie, going so far as to consult the actual screenplay when the on-screen events get too hairy - and the screenplay by Jack Burns and Jerry Juhl keeps the gags hurtling along. Best of all are Paul Williams and Kenny Ascher's Academy Award-nominated musical contributions and the hilariously overstuffed cameo appearances, which include Mel Brooks, Orson Welles, Dom DeLuise, James Coburn, Telly Savalas, Richard Pryor, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Elliott Gould, Madeline Kahn, Cloris Leachman, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy, and Steve Martin, whose "Sarcastic Waiter" remains a Muppet Movie highlight no matter what age you are.
Kenneth Brown wrote that "to...really any complaint about the essence of a Muppets production, movie or series, I say this: every Muppet maniac worth his salt should scream, 'yeah, so what!?' The Muppet Movie isn't for everyone, so let's dispense with that. No movie is, least of all one about a rusty bus full of puppets banding together to make it big in Hollywood. If you didn't already love Henson's zany progeny, this certainly won't be the film that spurs a dramatic conversion. The genius of the Muppets, though, has been, is and always will be its rejection of neat-n-tidy convention - often despite its family friendly nature and off-the-wall lunacy - and the big ol' heart every Muppet movie, for better or worse, richer or poorer, pins proudly on its sleeve. You won't find coldness or cynicism here, which is just fine by this lifelong fan. The day either one is allowed to step on the Muppet stage is the day I tip my hat, say 'thanks for all the good times,' and exit the theater. The Muppet Movie...is a fantastic time at the movies, and it holds up... even when it doesn't."
From the Criterion Collection this week is another vintage favorite, the twisty psychological drama Seconds. The film tells the story of Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph), an aging banker who discovers a way to remake himself into the man he's always wanted to be (Rock Hudson, in the performance of a lifetime), only to discover that his newfound vitality comes at a hideous price. Seconds came courtesy of John Frankenheimer, who was certainly no slouch when it came to the paranoid thriller - his Seven Days in May and the original Manchurian Candidate remain two of the genre's most venerated examples - but Seconds might outpace them both. Working alongside Sweet Smell of Success cinematographer James Wong Howe, Frankenheimer creates a virtual hall of mirrors; reality warps and bends for Randolph and Hudson, until the very fabric of the film itself becomes an unstable illusion. At times, it feels like Frankenheimer has created a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone, so pervasive and unsettling is Seconds' attitude toward the American psyche. One of the landmark features of the 1960s.
Svet Atanasov's Blu-ray review called Seconds "an unorthodox study of morality in America. There are two major character transformations in it that are linked to different perceptions about success and happiness and the price one may have to pay for them. As the film progresses, Frankenheimer carefully forces the viewer to ponder whether the two are related or simply misunderstood. The film is very dark and very intense...[with] the look of the film...essential for its success. Cinematographer James Wong Howe shot select sequences with a hand-held camera and many of them greatly enhance the sense of paranoia that permeates the film...Randolph and Hudson are both terrific. The latter truly looks like a man on the verge of a serious nervous breakdown."
Even with all the vintage titles, this week still plays host to some more contemporary fare, and one of the most notable features is the drama What Maisie Knew. The film's directors are Scott McGehee and David Siegel, who, with only five full-length pictures to their names, have managed to establish themselves as idiosyncratic talents keen to disrupt genre filmmaking's traditional "rules," whether it's deconstructing racial identity in the thriller Suture, adding sexual ambiguity and Oedipal strife to the neo-noir The Deep End, or having the protagonists dictate the story path they'll be taking in 2009's mostly improvised Uncertainty. So it goes with What Maisie Knew, which finds McGehee and Siegel updating Henry James' landmark novel to the present-day. James broke barriers with his realistic and sensitive depiction of how a vicious custody battle impacts the title character, and McGehee and Siegel employ the same psychological realism and tact despite the shift away from the nineteenth century. Though their hearts lie - as James' did - with young Maisie (a wonderful turn from young Onata Aprile), they afford her dueling parents the same care; despite their often selfish behaviors, Julianne Moore's aging rocker and Steve Coogan's distant art dealer aren't bad people - they just never really considered the implications of having a child, and that miscalculation ripples through the other characters (including Alexander Skarsgård and Joanna Vanderham as Moore and Coogan's new paramours, and one of the film's great pleasures is how unexpectedly capable and loving these supposedly "dim" rebound partners turn out to be) like a virus. What Maisie Knew is a small, intimately realized film, but, in its own way, it's just as gripping as Seconds or Shane.
Martin Liebman used his Blu-ray review to ruminate on how "it's difficult to gather emotions into words after watching a movie like What Maisie Knew. Feelings of disgust, anger, frustration, and even fear cloud every scene like an impenetrable layer of the worst humanity has to offer. The movie doesn't so much look into it, though. Rather, it gazes out of it, and from the viewpoint of a child, no less. That unique perspective only enhances the feeling in unease that permeates the film and shapes it into an uncomfortable but unique and impossibly difficult picture about the ugly realities of a worst-case-scenario divorce in which a child finds herself a chess piece in a game in which the parents wound one another without care for Maisie's well being. What's worse are all the phony character emotions that are only meant to further Maisie's positioning on the board, not create a true, loving environment for a child who desperately needs one, even if that environment is spread between two households. As the parents attempt to lay on the loving words that seem to come from hate and spite for one another rather than from the heart and soul for the child, little Maisie's life becomes more uncertain but, at the same time, her understanding of just how terrible are the truths of her reality comes into focus. It's a heartbreaking movie that's hard to watch but so well done that it's impossible to turn away."
Finally, HBO Home Entertainment has scheduled Girls: The Complete Second Season for Tuesday. The brainchild of Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up) and Tiny Furniture auteur Lena Dunham, Girls has become one of HBO's most controversial television programs in only two short seasons. This comedy pushes back against the Sex and the City template - like that landmark HBO series, Girls centers on four female friends trying to navigate the social and sexual terrain of New York City - to devastating, often uncomfortable degrees. But while the first season paid enough lip service to that Sex and the City format to look like a particularly hard-edged parody, Season Two splinters any such connections through ever more experimental means. Dunham keeps her core quartet (herself, Jemima Kirke, Alison Williams, and Zosia Mamet) emotionally and physically separated for much of the season in order to chart the effects of that alienation (Kirke gets married to a man she doesn't love, Williams becomes a gadfly to a beyond-pretentious artist, Mamet explores monogamy with an older slacker, and Dunham falls prey to a horrifying OCD relapse), and the episodes themselves assiduously avoid anything resembling narrative formula. Dunham and the Girls writing staff will jettison the title "girls" to spend time with Alex Karpovsky's deadpan Ray or Adam Driver's often inexplicable Adam (it's ironic that, in a show ostensibly about women, Driver gives the breakout performance), and they even interrupt the entire season for Episode 5's "One Man's Trash," which acts as an impressionistic short film showcasing Dunham and guest star Patrick Wilson. If Season Two isn't as assured as Season One, its highs rank alongside the best of the 2013 television lineup, and Dunham's commitment to expand what her show can be is often breathtaking.
Michael Reuben highlighted the series' shifting nature, how "anyone who still insists on identifying Lena Dunham with the character she plays should take note that, when Hannah is handed a golden opportunity to shine as a writer in Season Two, she crumbles under the pressure. Dunham, by contrast, rose to the challenge when HBO came calling. She has continued writing, producing, directing and starring in Girls for millions of people to watch and react to, even as many of those reactions have been sharply critical and often brutally personal. Hannah may be Dunham's nightmare version of herself (as I suspect Apatow's loser comic heroes frequently are for him), but that doesn't mean anything beyond the usual observation that writers typically start from something personal. Both Dunham and Apatow like to keep people guessing, and by the conclusion of Season Two, Girls had veered sharply from the season's relentlessly downbeat tone into something else entirely. It's something that won't last, but it brought the season's dramatic arc and its larger world into a kind of focus, if only for a moment."