For the week of December 3rd, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing The Wolverine to Blu-ray. While by no means a box-office failure ($414 million grossed worldwide on top of a $120 million budget isn't too shabby), this solo Wolverine adventure still didn't perform as strongly as the rest of the X-Men series, and that's a shame. Not only was The Wolverine one of last summer's best blockbuster entertainments, but it also might the best of the X-Men movies (it's a close call between it and X2). Whereas most action spectaculars of its ilk go big early and often, The Wolverine is refreshingly spare, as an emotionally scarred Logan (Hugh Jackman, who brings the same level of credibility to this as he does to prestige pictures like Les Misérables and Prisoners) travels to Japan at the behest of dying billionaire Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi); the two have a history together, and Yashida wishes to give Logan the one thing he's never known: the gift of mortality. That nothing is as it seems should go without saying, but director James Mangold (replacing Darren Aronofsky) grounds the many double crosses and violent skirmishes in human emotion. Logan still can't process having to kill his beloved Jean Grey, and the pain he harbors makes him yearn for death in a very palpable sense. In interviews, Mangold has talked about the influence of Clint Eastwood's iconic Western The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the comparison feels apt. Both movies use the trappings of traditional genres to smuggle in darker meditations on loss, fate, and rage.
This is heavy stuff, and Mangold never lets the emotional arc disappear behind the action...until the last twenty minutes, that is, which jettisons the character building and paranoia in favor of too much CGI and Svetlana Khodchenkova's terrible Big Bad. Still, even when The Wolverine loses its way, it's better than the rancid X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and it makes one optimistic for what Mangold and Jackman will do next with the character. Note: the best way to watch The Wolverine is through the unrated Blu-ray edition. The unrated imprimatur actually means something this time - it turns The Wolverine into an R-rated feature through and through, with a fair deal of salty language and bloodier, more intense violence (Wolverine's battle against the ninjas is much extended, to particularly gory results). This unrated iteration never reaches the gruesome heights of, say, the Weapon X graphic novel (one wonders what how extreme the violence might have been had Aronofsky directed the film), but it helps to give Wolverine back the much of the edge that his four previous X-Men adventures lacked. It's certainly unfair that Fox made this superior version available on the 3D-version's Blu-ray set, yet in this case, the quality of the film outweighs the studio cash-grab.
Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that viewers should "Say goodbye to the cigar chomping, quipster Wolverine in The Wolverine. This is a much more tamped down enterprise, for better or worse. Action fans may come away from this film (in any of its versions) wondering if there was enough 'there' there, but the film, while patently odd at times, benefits from strong, sure performances and one incredibly visceral thrill ride on top of a speeding bullet train. The Wolverine may ultimately be seen as a kind of cinematic placeholder, a virtual calm (more or less, anyway) before what may be the storm of X-Men: Days of Future Past. That aspect may wear on some fans' patience, but the good news is it seems Logan is poised for battle once again by the end of this film."
Another summer success is the low-key dramedy Drinking Buddies, which hits Blu-ray courtesy of Magnolia Home Entertainment. Drinking Buddies has the distinction of being the best, least repellant movie from filmmaker Joe Swanberg. Swanberg is one of mumblecore's founding fathers, and while he deserves some credit for shaping this DIY film-movement (if nothing else, he helped put Greta Gerwig on the map), his actual contributions have been, by and large, slack and more-than-a-little sexually exploitative (see Kissing on the Mouth or Hannah Takes the Stairs for proof). Not so with Drinking Buddies, which for 90% of its runtime is an uncommonly insightful and funny look at relationships in the millennial age. The titular drinking buddies are craft brewery co-workers Luke and Kate (Jake Johnson and Olivia Wilde, who's just wonderful here, even if she's about a thousand times more beautiful than anyone who's ever worked in a brewery), who edge towards a relationship with one another during a weekend vacation with their current significant others (Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston). As in his previous films, Swanberg concocts performance scenarios and lets his actors improvise through them, but because Wilde, Johnson, Kendrick, and Livingston are so good together, their interactions have the snap and flare of good theater as opposed to unrehearsed acting exercises. The biggest issue with the film is that Swanberg does such a great job of setting up these personal and romantic conflicts, and just as they start building to a head, the movie just stops, a good ten or fifteen minutes away from anything resembling a satisfying dramatic conclusion. I get what Swanberg's up to - he cites wanting to honor the unpredictability and inconclusiveness of life - but there's a big difference between an ambiguous ending and no ending, and Drinking Buddies' finale falls in the latter camp.
Michael Reuben's Blu-ray review noted that "Writer/director Joe Swanberg's film Drinking Buddies left me with a lot of thoughts, but one of them was how useless the term 'mumblecore' cinema has become. The so-called 'godfather' of the movement, Andrew Bujalski, has denied both that it exists and that he makes "mumblecore" films. On the commentary track for Drinking Buddies, Swanberg says that he was trying to make the kind of low-budget drama that the studios used to make in the Sixties and Seventies, citing Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) as a direct inspiration. Europeans filmmakers still make low-budget, character-driven films, and no one feels the need to relegate them to a box with a dismissive label (although I suppose that, for some, just calling them 'European' may be enough). Fish Tank and Weekend, just to name two recent examples from the U.K., could just as easily qualify as "mumblecore" as Drinking Buddies. And yes, I deliberately chose two films from the Criterion Collection; that's the point...Drinking Buddies was the most elaborately planned of Swanberg's films to date, because it is set in the world of 'craft beer' brewing and much of it was shot in a functioning brewery, whose staff served as extras. Filming had to be coordinated with the brewery's operations, so that the crew had to know the scene's action in detail, even if the actors were inventing the dialogue on the spot. The result was a kind of focused, edgy energy that contributes immeasurably to Swanberg's tale of two couples who find themselves at crossroads in their relationships."
Also from Fox is The Simpsons: The Sixteenth Season. When discussing The Simpsons, traditional wisdom dictates that the most important topic isn't its sterling vocal cast, its number of Emmys (twenty-seven, to be exact), or its standing as the longest running TV sitcom ever produced (twenty-five seasons and counting); instead, the go-to dialogue finds people arguing over when The Simpsons lost its edge. Everyone gives the (very) rough first two seasons a pass while rightfully holding up Seasons Three through Eight as exemplars of television comedy, in terms of both laughs per minute and measurable impact on pop culture. After Season Eight (which includes the time-capsule episodes "You Only Move Twice," "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show," and "Homer's Enemy"), however, fans tend to split along season lines, with varying opinions on which season represents the beginning of the decline. Season Sixteen falls right in the middle of the debate: some viewers thought it represented a return to classic Simpsons form, while others saw it relying more heavily on hot-button issues and pop culture in an effort to compete with shows like Family Guy or South Park. In some ways, both schools of thought are correct. Episodes like "There's Something About Marrying" and "The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star" feel calculated to provoke, but then you have "Thank God, It's Doomsday" and "Don't Fear the Roofer," both of which balance character and comedy in quintessentially Simpsons fashion. The Simpsons might not be what it once was, but on its own terms, it's still solid entertainment. These Blu-ray sets are so good that you wish Fox would spend some more time dipping into the program's television history - here's to more Simpsons on Blu-ray, and faster, to boot.
Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that "The show has frankly fallen largely off the cultural radar as it has trundled into its third (third!) decade of broadcasting history, but it still occasionally makes news - its recent gigantic syndication sale was huge entertainment industry news, and on a much sadder note, the death of Marcia Wallace, the unmistakable voice of Bart's teacher and (eventually) Ned's wife Edna Krabappel made headlines in even mainstream news outlets. The Simpsons may indeed have lost some of its cultural mojo, but the show continues to be a prime example of character driven comedy, and as this sixteenth season proves, the show can still tap into the 'current' zeitgeist with often alarming acuity, and sometimes even amazing prescience. The Simpsons continues to mine an astounding array of voice talent—in fact, is there any other animated show that could command the involvement of such disparate talents as Thomas Pynchon, Stephen Hawking and (just for good measure) 50 Cent and Gary Busey? Usually when a critic throws around an epithet like 'it's more of the same,' it's an unabashed insult, but in the case of The Simpsons, it's actually a compliment - and a rather wondrous one at that, given the show's duration. While there's nothing new under the Springfield sun in this sixteenth season, and indeed at least a few episodes seem like partial retreads of those from previous seasons, there is a generally excellent consistency in the writing, which continues to provide choice comedic nuggets for all of the central cast as well as the revolving door of fantastic supporting characters and the usual assortment of (often rather odd) guest stars."
From Anchor Bay and Starz Home Entertainment comes the long-delayed slasher movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. The debut feature of The Wackness and 50/50 writer/director Jonathan Levine, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane should have hit theaters in 2006 or 2007; the film's near-subterranean shelving came from an unholy convergence of bad luck, which began with the failure of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse (it made the Weinstein Company doubt the marketability of a theatrically distributed horror movie) and continued through at least one potential studio going under before being able to distribute the film. Even with all that misfortune, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane has screened infrequently around the world, garnering - as the similarly stuck-in-distribution-limbo The Cabin in the Woods did - a reputation as an uncommonly intelligent and scary horror venture. That praise is and isn't true. For its first three-quarters, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is a violent, unpleasant slasher about a group of teens hunted on a remote Texas ranch. It's scary, sure, but only because Levine is so good at staging and shooting his kills. With the exception of Amber Heard's title character, we don't care about anyone here who's facing violent death. The men are, at best, misogynist horndogs and, at worst, potential date-rapists, and the women are promiscuous ninnies who spend way too much time trying to appeal to these horrible males. We don't just want to protect Mandy Lane from the killer butchering those around her: we want her to steer clear of the sexually bullying louts she calls her "friends." The parade of grotesques continues until...well, to say too much more would count as spoilers. Let's just say that Levine knows exactly how awful the people surrounding Mandy are, and he uses our aversion towards them to craft a surprisingly progressive, feminist deconstruction of the slasher picture. It isn't as inventive and witty as Cabin in the Woods, but like that great Joss Whedon/Drew Goddard horror-sci-fi-comedy, it adds something vital to the genre.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman noted that "On first glance, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane would appear to be little more than a mindless slasher with its roots in the late-1970s/early-1980s fare that ushered in a decade's worth of repetitive teen slayings in cinemas and an onslaught of low-budget video throwaways that even today still hold firm on the weekly release calendar. Director Jonathan Levine (Warm Bodies) trudges through a gloomy, borderline nonsensical Horror ride replete with singleminded characters imbibing plenty of booze and angling for a taste of the opposite sex. There's the usual 'travel to a secluded place,' 'away from civilization' schtick to help make the killings a little more reasonable and believable. Generators come in need of repair (conveniently leading a character to death), phone lines go dead (more deaths inevitably result), and so on and so forth. The middle stretch is particularly dull as characters are offed in, admittedly, somewhat creative fashion under the cover of darkness. Despite a very real sense of throwback genre polish to the film, it's enough to make horror fans give up not so much in disgust but certainly in despair, lamenting another wasted opportunity for something beyond the horror norm. The final act serves as a saving grace. The film's nighttime nightmare gives way to bright, sunny daylight for the final round of mayhem. Where most horror films use the cover of night to shroud the identity of the killer and create a more claustrophobic, inescapable, fundamentally frightening environment, the presence of daylight actually brings about a heightened sense of terror, a feeling of inescapability even under optimal conditions. Then there's the movie's major twisty reveal, and a fairly welcome one at that. The film effectively masks its true intentions and produces a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise dull film."
Warner Home Entertainment is double-dipping its Academy Award-winning Argo in a new extended cut. The third feature film directed by Ben Affleck, this intense docudrama has already doubled-down on the accolades given to his Gone Baby Gone and The Town, winning Oscars for Best Picture (Affleck, Grant Heslov, and George Clooney), Best Adapted Screenplay (Chris Terrio), and Best Film Editing (William Goldenberg) and cementing Affleck's career renaissance as an accomplished actor/director. It makes sense, too; both Gone Baby Gone and The Town were immensely enjoyable pictures, but Argo shows Affleck sporting a newfound ease and storytelling maturity. In depicting the CIA's attempts to rescue six Americans trapped in Iran during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, Affleck blends all sorts of seemingly disparate tones - political thriller, heist picture, Hollywood satire - into a compelling mainstream entertainment. If Affleck keeps this streak going, he could become one of the great actor/directors - I can see him eventually combining Clint Eastwood's gravitas with Sydney Pollack's populist leanings. The only blemish on the film might be this new extended version, which unnecessarily distends an otherwise drum-tight drama. Affleck has had previous success lengthening his works - though slightly overlong, the restored scenes in The Town add local color and nuance to a fun-if-formulaic crime melodrama - but little of the new material in Argo heightens the material. Mostly, we get scenes dramatizing Affleck's CIA exfiltrator's strained relationship with his wife (Orange Is the New Black's Taylor Schilling) that are well-acted but distract from the life-or-death situation in Iran. The beats concerning Affleck's family were the least compelling parts of the theatrical cut, but he and Goldenberg wisely kept them to a minimum. Here, they don't sink Argo (the extended version is only ten minutes longer), but they don't help it.
Even while acknowledging the new version isn't an improvement, Kenneth Brown's Blu-ray review takes the time to reinforce how skilled Argo is, how "with quiet, slowburn intensity, Argo cranks up the heat, notch by notch, with unnerving poise and precision. Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio (working from Mendez's own books and writings, among other sources) meld ensemble performance and calculated pacing to nail-biting ends, transforming an already harrowing escape story into a powerful drama brimming with terrific turns from a terrific cast. Affleck only makes one negligible misstep as an actor - the indulgent, warmly lit half-smile he brandishes near Argo's close; a third-act staple shot in even his bleakest of films - and one questionable decision as a director - the down-to-the-wire takeoff, complete with back-room interrogations, the simultaneous off-site discovery of the true identities of the movie crew, gunmen rushing to stop a flight and military vehicles pursuing a plane, all of which is, ironically, a bit too Hollywood for the film Affleck is making. Otherwise, the Man Without Fear delivers in front of the camera and behind, and any suggestion to the contrary has more to do with the small but prevailing disbelief that Affleck's past cinematic sins (Gigli, Surviving Christmas, Reindeer Games, et al) are just that: a thing of the past."
Fox Home Entertainment offers up two more selections from its "Studio Classics" program with releases of Desk Set and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir; the synchronicity is fitting, considering that these are both spirited (and that term is literal in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir's case) romances from Hollywood's Golden Age. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is the far more sober-minded of the two, as Gene Tierney (Laura) plays a lonely widow who becomes attracted to the ghost of a charismatic sea captain (Rex Harrison, My Fair Lady). This central relationship helped inspire such popular contemporary dramas like Truly, Madly, Deeply and Ghost (though it was Harrison's second ghostly love affair, the first being 1945's Blithe Spirit), but it's a far deeper, more profound feature than its imitators - director Joseph Mankiewicz and screenwriter Philip Dunne allow for the suggestion that the ghost is a figment of Tierney's imagination, her representation of the perfect masculine demeanor without any messy physical complications (personified by George Sanders' caddish suitor). By comparison, Desk Set strikes a far more jovial (though no less engaging) tone. It's a screwball comedy starring two of the genre's brightest stars: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. She's a network television researcher, he's the inventor charged with modernizing her department, and they verbally spar and joust until they fall head-over-heels for one another. Ostensibly, Desk Set is a satire of the divide between human and artificial intelligence, but its most salient points were broad in 1957 and are even less relevant now (the film's view of technology is dated, to say the least). Why this film works - works remarkably well, in fact - is entirely due to the sparkling chemistry that Hepburn and Tracy share. Romantic partners in real life as well as on-screen, Tracy and Hepburn had a prickly, winning rapport together, and Desk Set (the eighth of their nine movies together) shows them operating with the precision of skilled vaudevillians.
Of Desk Set, Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that the film, "while perhaps expectedly predictable, is often spry and enjoyable, and it has a number of witticisms delivered effortlessly by Hepburn - whose Bunny is something of a walking computer herself - as well as by Bunny's staff, which includes Peg (Joan Blondell in her traditional blowsy mode), Sylvia (Dina Merrill) and Ruthie (Sue Randall). The film is actually rather forward looking in its depiction of technology replacing human beings, though of course in this case, the technology ends up being fraught with problems (like firing everybody in the place), and is certainly no match for the inherent smarts of Bunny. The film is a wonderful example of mid- to late-fifties design, with the huge CinemaScope frame filled with the Bauhaus inspired look of the 'modern office' with it sleek lines and clean angles, which contrasts nicely with Bunny's cozy, almost Victorian looking, apartment. But it's the repartee between Hepburn and Tracy for which Desk Set has earned its reputation. The two are simply incredibly real in their interactions—there's no pretense, no 'indicating,' nothing other than two people (who are obviously crazy about each other from the first time they set eyes on each other) fighting their way to true love."
Jeffrey called The Ghost and Mrs. Muir a "career hig[h] for both Tierney and Harrison, though perhaps surprisingly, neither was nominated for an Academy Award for their efforts (the film's sole Oscar nomination was for Charles Lang's cinematography, something that's even more shocking when one considers the fact that this film features what is generally considered to be one of Bernard Herrmann's greatest scores). The film came rather early in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's filmography as a director, but already Mankiewicz shows himself to be an effortless master in crafting an almost palpable mood, as well as firmly guiding performances—in this instance in a decidedly whimsical formulation—into a cohesive, emotionally touching experience. The story takes at least a couple of unexpected turns, first with Gregg's self chosen exile back into whatever realm from whence he had come, and then, much later, with an incredibly beautiful denouement which brings a whole new (opposite and ironic) meaning to that old adage 'till death do us part.' The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is certainly one of the most unusual, and just as certainly one of the most heartfelt, love stories in the annals of film."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is bringing one of the great American films to Blu-ray: Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic triumph Nashville. Nashville represents Altman firing at the peak of his considerable gifts. His biggest strength has always been with characters, and that's what the picture offers in spades: as twenty-four very different people interact over a busy week in Nashville, Tennessee, Altman manages to craft a gently satirical panoply of politics and entertainment. For Altman, politicians and celebrities are all selling the same thing - themselves - and he lets his cast wend through that realization. Despite the many narrative strands, nothing feels out of place, thanks to the director's skillful handling of a brilliant ensemble (including, but not limited to, Ned Beatty, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Gwen Welles, Barbara Harris, Robert DoQui, Henry Gibson, Barbara Baxley, Ronee Blakely, Karen Black, Shelley Duvall, Jeff Goldblum, Keenan Wynn, Geraldine Chaplin, Allen Garfield, Michael Murphy, Scott Glenn, Cristina Raines, and Bert Remsen), his revolutionary multi-channel sound mix, and a roving, almost vérité camera-style that seems to happen by chance upon the film's most cinematic plot developments. It's controlled chaos at its finest, and as immersive a narrative space as contemporary cinema has ever offered. Altman never stopped making great movies - before his death in 2006, he hit audiences with such late-stage masterworks as The Player, Short Cuts, Gosford Park, and A Prairie Home Companion - but there's something about Nashville that feels like a perfect summation of his filmmaking power; if it's not his best film, it's certainly his most iconic.
Svet Atanasov noted that "At first Altman observes the activities from afar. His camera moves freely through the groups of people and quickly jumps from one location to another. Then the camera gradually comes closer and spends more time following parts of random conversations. After various characters are introduced, you will slowly be able to identify the most important ones. Pay close attention to their attitudes and manners, not the events they are a part of or the order in which these events are presented...Political overtones emerge during the second half of the film. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is frequently brought up, party loyalty is addressed, and past and present voting trends are discussed. But Altman does not use any of the subjects to formulate and endorse a political message. The focus of attention is strictly on the diversity of views and reactions, the manner in which opinions are formed, promoted and manipulated. Nashville has a lot to say about America and the System that makes it what it is - a nation of fascinating contrasts. It was completed in 1975, but I cannot think of another film, more recent or from the same era, that captures better the essence of living in America. Indeed, the clothes, the hairstyles and the music might have changed, but the contradictions, the tensions, the ambitions and dreams are still the same as those witnessed in Nashville."