It isn't Halloween yet, but in terms of the Blu-ray offerings for the week of September 17th, viewers can enjoy a generous helping of horror-movie fare. First up is Paramount's zombie epic World War Z, which is Brad Pitt and Marc Forster's loose adaptation of the cult Max Brooks novel. Production-wise, World War Z deserves mention alongside Casablanca, The African Queen, Heaven's Gate, Ishtar, Fitzcarraldo, Tootsie, Apocalypse Now, and Cleopatra; like those pictures, if anything could go wrong during World War Z's shooting schedule, it most certainly did. The budget spiraled out of control, primarily during the film's Jerusalem invasion sequence (a ten-minute-long action setpiece that cost far more than anyone anticipated, thanks to legions of extras and Forster's decision to shoot in real - and crumbling - Malta locations as opposed to a set), and the studio clashed with the crew over the impact of the zombie attacks (Pitt and Forster wanted as violent a movie as possible; Paramount wanted a PG-13). Furthermore, any production woes paled in comparison to a lengthy - and expensive - post-production session that saw the addition of at least three new screenwriters (Damon Lindelof, Drew Goddard, and Christopher McQuarrie helped alter and restructure the work that Matthew Michael Carnahan and J. Michael Straczynski started) and one new cinematographer (Pain & Gain's Ben Seresin, filling in for Academy Award-winner Robert Richardson) as a means of changing the film's problematic third act - the first cut saw Pitt's heroic U.N. investigator conscripted into service against the zombie hordes in Moscow while plotting his revenge against the slimy helicopter pilot (Matthew Fox, who's been reduced to a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo) who's manipulating his family back in the United States. The development process for World War Z is already the stuff of legend: one could easily imagine a Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse-style documentary dedicated to chronicling its many hardships.
All of those issues make the end result so much more surprising. If the early buzz carried the stink of death, the finished film is as confident and absorbing a summer blockbuster as I've seen in a long while. Unless you're looking, it's hard to see the production and post-production scars; we're as swept up in this global pandemic as Pitt's character is. Those words, "global pandemic," also contextualize and set apart this zombie story from other ones - think Contagion meets The Bourne Identity, and you'll be on the right track. While it isn't half as bloody as something like Dawn of the Dead or even The Walking Dead TV show (even in its unrated iteration, World War Z ranks as a soft R-rating, with fast cutting and CGI mayhem obscuring the worst carnage), World War Z deliberately spins its undead from rabid flesh-eaters to human bacteria. In their sheer, toppling numbers and unthinking instinct to multiply, the film's "zekes" resemble a virus rushing to overtake its host's cells. As such, the scope of this piece is massive, sending Pitt and his co-stars through devastated sections of Philadelphia, New Jersey, South Korea, and Israel (the Philadelphia and Israel sections are genuinely spectacular, despite whatever budgetary traumas they caused), and this size both connects World War Z to Max Brooks' original novel and distances it from a genre that is usually far more claustrophobic in nature. Better still, even though the movie works as a prime example of summer escapism, it never loses sight of its human protagonists. Surrounded by the likes of James Badge Dale, David Morse, Peter Capaldi, Moritz Bleibtreu, and newcomer Daniella Kertesz, Pitt gives an effortlessly appealing star performance, and his lived-in, understated relationship with on-screen wife Mireille Enos grounds his movie-star actions: the retooled ending, which swaps out the Moscow bombast for a far more intimate stalk-and-hide sequence in a Welsh W.H.O. building, is just as exciting as the bigger set-pieces because we care about Pitt, and his even-closer proximity to the monsters undercuts his ability to make it home alive.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman called the film "an adrenaline rush of a movie that creates a sense of panicked urgency and never relents. Though the film is at its absolute best in its opening act, the entirety of the production is one of a fast moving and wholly unbelievable spectacle of doom in an apocalyptic landscape that unfolds before the audience's very eyes. Director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace) paints the action vividly and brings it incessantly. If the picture isn't in motion, it's quickly building towards motion, and it's never motion for motion's sake. Instead, there's a kinetic energy that builds within the story as heroes survive and cities fall into rapid ruin, as a search for answers is hindered, though never halted, by disaster after disaster. There's never been a zombie movie like this before, one that's so fast, so chaotic, so threatening, so uncertain, so dangerous, so large in scope. It's as much about "how" and "why" and "what's the answer" as it is bites, attacks, gunfire, and hell almost literally spewing forth on the screen. Forster's ability to bring dramatic balance amidst the incessant chaos is the film's best asset. It's a true example of film as a roller coaster ride, this time into a world that decays as quickly as the camera can capture it and descends into the sort of madness that only the zombie genre can offer."
That said, as unexpectedly accomplished as World War Z is, it might not satisfy zombie-movie traditionalists, hence the importance of Scream Factory's new Day of the Dead Blu-ray. Day of the Dead contains all the touchstones of the genre: it keeps the narrative mostly confined to an underground bunker, its living characters are as threatening as its dead ones (Joe Pilato's histrionic work as the venal Captain Rhodes makes the character an iconic antagonist), its violence is splattery and inventive (Tom Savini pulls off some of his best-ever makeup effects, from a zombie reduced to a body with an exposed brain on top to a character ripped apart by undead ghouls...and screaming all the while), and it rests on a foundation of social commentary, in this case how military governments threaten to become violent and corrupt when left unchecked. Most importantly, Day of the Dead is a genuine horror effort from the filmmaker who defined the modern zombie thriller: George A. Romero. If Night of the Living Dead was his depiction of how the zombie nightmare began and Dawn of the Dead his exploration into the lengths mankind would go to preserve their standards of living in the middle of catastrophe, then Day of the Dead is his violent elegy to the genre, an admission that sometimes when the system breaks, no one can do anything to fix it. However, despite the film's overall nihilistic tone - and the biggest complaint leveled against Day of the Dead is that it isn't as exciting as Night or as funny as Dawn - Romero does give his heroes a glimmer of hope, the notion that no situation is so bad that you can't just walk away from it. That idea goes against the zombie film's apocalyptic worldview, and it gives Day of the Dead its idiosyncratic snap.
Jeffrey Kauffman reflected that "I have a feeling what may have created part of the misperception Day of the Dead sometimes engenders in viewers is the fact that it's part of a supposed trilogy, though as discussed above, the trilogy is all over the map from a tonal perspective. Night was a chilling but visceral romp through horror tropes, and Dawn was like a Keystone Cops movie with zombies instead of policeman. The sudden abrupt turn into character study in Day probably caught more than a few—even diehard Romero fans—completely off guard. Day is an ode to survival at any cost, and as such, it has fewer outright scares than the first film and certainly none of the comedy (despite the manic laughter of several supporting characters) of the second outing. Day of the Dead is therefore probably the hardest of the original three Dead films to outright 'enjoy,' but for my money, it's the most thoughtful of the bunch. That's right—I just called a zombie movie thoughtful."
In addition, Universal is streeting another riff on a classic horror property: the first season of Bates Motel, which imagines the teenaged beginnings of Psycho killer (any Talking Heads fans out there: you're welcome) Norman Bates. This is a prequel, and prequels come with their own form of occupational hazards - the biggest one being, we always know how the story ends - but Bates Motel has a secret weapon. For all its twists and spooky melodrama, the show stays focused on the unsettling relationship between Norman (The Art of Getting By's Freddie Highmore) and his mother Norma (the great Vera Farmiga). There's an uncomfortable, psychosexual tension in the interactions between Norman and Norma, but Highmore and Farmiga are too good to limit that connection to a physical one; Norman and Norma are everything to one another, and that complexity keeps their deeds balanced on a thin line between gothic camp and emotional realism. The show surrounding Highmore and Farmiga two doesn't match the caliber of their work, but it's still interesting TV, if only because it perfectly represents the sensibilities of its primary showrunners, Lost's Carlton Cuse and Friday Night Lights' Kerry Ehrin. Cuse brings along Lost's pulpy, inscrutable attitude towards plotting and mythology, while Ehrin brings her series' affinity for human interaction and keenly etched behaviors. These are two great tastes that don't always taste great together in Bates Motel, though watching them intermingle is always a unique experience.
Besides the horror options, a number of strong dramas hit Blu-ray this week. The final film (allegedly) from Erin Brockovich and Out of Sight auteur Steven Soderbergh, the HBO telefilm Behind the Candelabra finds the director reuniting with his Traffic and The Informant leading men Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in order to tell the story of Liberace and Scott Thorson. The two fell in love late in Liberace's life, and their union exposed Thorson to the realities of the Hollywood lifestyle, but make no mistake: Behind the Candelabra is no seedy showbiz tell-all. As played by Douglas, Liberace is flawed but warm and deeply loving, and Damon gives Thorson a host of ugly resentments that surface once his relationship to Liberace begins to crumble. In short, theirs is not atypical of many failed romantic partnerships, and it's refreshing how normal Soderbergh treats this couple that, on first glimpse, seems anything but. It's also nice how funny Behind the Candelabra is. Douglas creates a Liberace that is as ridiculous as he is sweet, and Soderbergh mines the world around him for rich comedy, including Cheyenne Jackson's resentful former lover, Dan Aykroyd's long-suffering agent, and Rob Lowe's hilariously retouched plastic surgeon.
Michael Reuben reflected on how "fueled by powerhouse performances and a lovingly detailed production design (with, apparently, the full support of the Liberace Foundation), Behind the Candelabra is a portrait of a uniquely gifted entertainer from the perspective of someone who was never once fooled by the public pretense - but that doesn't make it an 'inside story.' The man Thorson meets has been a superstar for years. No one attains that level of success without creating multiple masks to hide behind, and Liberace had more to hide than most. His preference for young, impressionable men (Thorson was sixteen when they met) can be seen not just as an aesthetic preference but as self-protective. Their lack of experience made youngsters like Thorson less inclined to question the great man's whims. Thorson may have drawn closer to the candelabra than most. Whether he truly got behind the scenes, or was able to comprehend what he saw there if he did, is a different matter."
Next up is another docudrama, Lionsgate's release of The Bling Ring. The Bling Ring might represent an even more unbelievable case of "the truth is stranger than fiction" than Behind the Candelabra; it centers on the group of Southern California teenagers who became infamous after they were apprehended for robbing the mansions of celebrities, including Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom, Brian Austin Green, Megan Fox, and Lindsay Lohan. Other filmmakers might play this material for low comedy and/or Hollywood satire, seeing as how during their trial hearings, these teens dominated the spotlight more than the people they robbed, but director Sofia Coppola isn't really interested in treading water similar to her own Lost in Translation and Somewhere. With The Bling Ring, her intentions are twofold: she wants to capture the visceral thrill of the robberies (and thanks to the cinematography of Christopher Blauvelt and the late Harris Savides, the illicit moments have a hypnotic thrill), and she wants to examine what kind of affluent, secure young person decides to become a burglar. Coppola's protagonists aren't outwardly broken; they're disaffected rich kids looking for a kick, and their criminal activities allow Coppola to ask all sorts of salient questions about contemporary morality and millennial angst, both of which receive ambivalent shadings through Emma Watson's main character. As Nicki Moore, the de facto leader of the gang, Watson gives her best performance: it's a complex, frighteningly empty portrait of a girl grown way too old way too fast.
Jeffrey Kauffman's Blu-ray review noted that "while Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring is awfully light on some motivating factors - probably intentionally so - one thing it gets undeniably right is how so many youths are so fascinated by celebrity that they'll do virtually anything to achieve it - or at least experience it vicariously. Coppola's film is a slightly fictionalized account of the infamous gaggle of Los Angeles high school kids who managed to burgle a rather unlikely amount of celebrity homes over the course of several months in 2008 and 2009. This is actually the second version of this story, one which bears the same title as a Lifetime television movie which premiered in 2011...Coppola's effort is bigger and glossier than the telefilm (and boasts a couple of star cameos as well as location footage at Paris Hilton's real Beverly Hills mansion), [but] this big screen version has a few of the same problems as the small screen version, including a lack of real character analysis and a somewhat formless structure that never really totally delves into some of the subtext of what's really going on with these kids. That actually seems to be Coppola's intent here, though—at least to a to a degree—for this is a film centered on surface rather than what lies beneath, on kids who like the shiny baubles that indicate a successful celebrity life but who are content to merely purloin them rather than actually work to earn them."
Fox Searchlight's The East is the latest film from filmmaker Brit Marling, and it might be her strongest feature yet. After her debut picture, the provocative if tonally and thematically mushy sci-fi drama Another Earth, Marling graduated to the chilling thriller Sound of My Voice, which played like Martha Marcy May Marlene meets All the President's Men. With The East, Marling has married the more visceral dramatic tension of Sound of My Voice to a palpable social conscience; Marling stars as a former intelligence agent-turned-corporate spy who begins investigating the titular eco-activism group on suspicions of terrorist activities, only to become ever more sympathetic to The East's potentially dangerous ambitions. The East's greatest strength is how it muddies our own allegiances. Marling's higher-ups (represented by an almost vampiric Patricia Clarkson) are cold and bloodless, but they haven't done anything wrong, while The East's members (including Ellen Page and a great Alexander Skarsgård) are charming, compassionate, and possibly psychotic. It's almost a shame when Marling and director Zal Batmanglij overplay their political agenda in the last act - without getting too spoilery, let's just say that Marling and Batmanglij are not fans of Big Business - but the film is so good and so tense up to that point that it still maintains our interests.
Finally, the Criterion Collection is offering an HD upgrade of Slacker. Richard Linklater is one of the patron saints of American independent filmmaking (and with the rapturously received release of his Before Midnight, Linklater has proved he's still a viable creative force in indie cinema), and Slacker is his breakthrough feature, a witty, discursive look at people...talking. Linklater's actors talk about their hometown of Austin, Texas; they talk about love; they talk about death; they talk about everything; and Slacker's great strength is that we never grow bored of the discourse. That's Linklater's gift as a filmmaker, and it's one that has inspired people like Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino - Linklater is fascinated with language, with the rhythms of speech, and he makes that fascination palpable for us. It's a skill Linklater has cultivated throughout his long career: every movie he's made, no matter how aimless (Dazed and Confused, Bernie) or esoteric (Waking Life, A Scanner Darkly) or mainstream (The Newton Boys, School of Rock), pivots on the power of the spoken word. The budgets and stars may have gotten bigger, but at the core of his oeuvre is this shaggy little gem.
Svet Atanasov praised the film, how the characters "co-exist in an unusual harmony. They mingle, but as soon as they figure out their identities they head in opposite directions. Each group is convinced that the other is too odd, simply impossible to engage in a meaningful conversation. The film is structured as a collage of overlapping vignettes. In each vignette Linklater observes from afar different individuals from the second group who share their thoughts and ideas and then introduce a new group of individuals with similar views. Occasionally the tone of the discussions changes, but the casual flow of the 'story' remains the same. What is said in these discussions is unimportant. The idea here is to give the viewer a good sense of the time and atmosphere that have inspired them. To be perfectly clear, the entire film essentially provides a snapshot of American life without any sugarcoating or any biased social commentary. Shot on 16mm with a very small budget, Slacker looks appropriately raw. However, the transitions from one sequence to another are surprisingly well done. Indeed, the exact timing (and specifically the beginning and ending of each sequence) and positioning of the camera are of utmost importance."