For the week of January 28th, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing Ron Howard's Rush to Blu-ray. The pre-release hype pushed this Formula-1-racing drama as a completely different side of the Cinderella Man and Angels & Demons helmer. That statement is true about half the time. Working with Danny Boyle's regular DP Anthony Dod Mantle, Howard creates a 1970s milieu that is grittier and more adult than anything he's done since 1996's violent actioner Ransom. The jittery, smeary visuals match the excesses that rival competitors James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) encounter on their respective paths to racing success; while not as explicit as, say, Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, Rush has enough illegal drug use and nudity to suggest that Howard wouldn't mind discarding his (mostly) family-friendly image. However, on a script level, Rush follows the same exact template as Howard's Academy Award-winning biopics Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind. All three dutifully adhere to the three-act structure – in this case, 1) the rise of Hunt and Lauda, 2) how their personal foibles lay them low, and 3) their eventual success and moral redemption.
It's a hardy format, but it doesn't allow for many surprises, especially given screenwriter Peter Morgan's propensity for boiling down character detail and nuance into purely expositional terms, or his decision to movie-soften away some of the more interesting edges from Hunt and Lauda's lives (in real life, the two were good friends, while the movie paints them as mortal enemies until the third act). Still, as conventional as Rush is, Howard keeps it fast moving and reasonably engaging. His racing sequences are kinetic and intense (albeit not as realistic as John Frankenheimer's still-breathtaking races in Grand Prix), especially with Hans Zimmer's propulsive score behind them, and he gets great work from Hemsworth and Brühl. Hemsworth uses some of his Thor cockiness to counter-balance Hunt's more unpleasant characteristics – and if anyone needed proof he's a full-fledged movie-star, note the scene where Hunt "handles" a snotty reporter giving Lauda a hard time – while Brühl does wonders in a difficult part. The film's version of Lauda is clinical and detail-obsessed to a fault, yet without trying to make him sympathetic, Brühl subtly shifts our sympathies from Hunt to Lauda. It's a tricky, unpredictable performance in a movie that needs more of both qualities.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown found far fewer issues with Rush, calling it "a welcome departure [for Ron Howard]. It certainly isn't the first time Howard has brought a true story to the screen, nor is it far removed from the character-beholden biopic template he's used before. But there's an intensity, spontaneity, and viscerality on display here - on the track and off - that's decidedly un-Howard. The dynamic, multi-camera racing scenes are unlike any that have ever been filmed, and very little of the resulting high-speed, gut-check drama is attributable to CG wizardry. The performances are uniformly excellent; the product of a slick script, shrewd casting and raw talent. The production design oozes authenticity, from costuming to locations and sets, hair and makeup, on down. Above all, the story of James Hunt and Niki Lauda's 1976 Formula One season is a fascinating one, regardless of one's interest or disinterest in the sport; it's all so attuned to cinematic adaptation that it's almost difficult to accept how much of it actually happened. Rush is easily one of Howard's finest films as well as one of 2013's best."
From Paramount comes Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, and here's a fun fact: this slobby, crass comedy has more Academy Award nominations than Ryan Coogler's brilliant debut feature Fruitvale Station or Destin Daniel Cretton's masterful Short Term 12. Makeup artist Steve Prouty's efforts to turn 42-year-old Johnny Knoxville into an 86-year-old man scored Bad Grandpa a Best Makeup nomination, and in all fairness, Prouty's work is pretty stunning. Knoxville's prosthetic effects are convincing up close and in HD, and that verisimilitude is key to Bad Grandpa's success: the film's star gets away from some shocking, unscripted (hopefully…) gags because those around him cannot see Johnny Knoxville. Rather, they see Irving Zisman, a doddering, profane old man who takes his grandson (Jackson Nicoll) on a cross-country road trip. If you're a fan of Borat or Knoxville's own Jackass programs, chances are you'll enjoy this one, which mostly trades in on your enthusiasm for seeing Knoxville and Co. stage a series of ever-grosser pranks on those unsuspecting folks around them. That said, I did appreciate Bad Grandpa's attempts to concoct some semblance of a plot, meager as it might be – Knoxville and Nicoll take the growing affection between their characters seriously, meaning that this becomes the rare feel-good comedy that can pull off a sequence where an old man gets his genitals caught in a vending machine.
Of Bad Grandpa, Martin Liebman wrote that the film "is a welcome and much-needed departure from the usual Jackass shenanigans. The rather stale formula that saw the crew simply partake in a series of preplanned events and tomfoolery is here replaced by a core structure, certainly a very loose core structure that's the epitome of a 'frame' in which the action may take place, but a core nonetheless that gives a bit of weight to the skits. The picture is comprised of 'spy cam' footage and more traditional shots captured, presumably, from some distance or somehow cloaked from the unsuspecting people, everyone from fast-food employees to lady's night strip club attendees. The humor is situational, not usually forced, and is comprised of absurd scenarios in which 'Grandpa' interacts with unwitting co-stars who, to their credit, often take it all in stride unless there's something seriously amiss, such as when 'Grandpa' openly steals from a grocery store or plows over a restaurant's oversized parking lot mascot. The movie is at its best when folks yuk it up with 'Grandpa' at the bingo hall or the hot dog stand, but it's side-splitting hilarious most everywhere. Wherever the action goes, hilarity always follows and the film never misses a beat. At the same time, the movie can be rather tasteless, and it has no qualms about exposing artificial penises and testicles for all the audience to see. There are plenty of fart and poop jokes, too, enough to really turn off most anyone whose mind isn't fully open to this brand of comedy. Yet these are but some sophomoric bumps in the road on the way to a refreshingly open comedy that really works. The true success comes not in joke specifics but rather how well Knoxville sells those jokes. He's fully convincing in everything he does, whether playing senile, hitting on every woman he meets, tossing around a 'dead body,' or blending up a margarita at the bingo hall. That Oscar-nomi[n]ated makeup helps sell the illusion and nobody is any the wiser for it."
Also arriving this week is the 3D rock documentary Metallica: Through the Never. It's an unusual experience; while much of the film plays out as a conventional filmed concert, director Nimród Antal (Predators, the underrated chiller Vacancy) breaks up the Metallica show with fictional interludes involving an eager roadie (Dane DeHaan) caught in an increasingly surreal chase through a ruined city. The sensation is a little jarring, and while the DeHaan subplot does reflect the spirit of Metallica's music, it never justifies its own existence, despite DeHaan's fine work and some striking, Escape from New York-esque visuals. Luckily, the concert is reason enough to go Through the Never. This might be the best 3D rock concert ever filmed, and Antal's swooping, aggressive visuals do an incredible job of immersing viewers in live cuts of songs like "Ride the Lightning," "For Whom the Bell Tolls," and "Fuel" without overwhelming them. I don't know if Through the Never will convert any Metallica neophytes, but that doesn't make its energy and flair any less impressive.
Finally, HBO Home Entertainment is bringing Treme: The Complete Fourth Season to Blu-ray. For those who stuck with the series in full, it's very easy to get misty over this final season of David Simon and Eric Overmyer's little-seen, under-loved drama, not least because there's so much less this time around; season four only has five episodes, and even though it's a small miracle that those exist (Simon essentially had to beg HBO to let him finish the series, and the shortened season was a necessary compromise), that reduced number feels inadequate, especially as a means for concluding the stories of Treme's sprawling, multicultural cast (the peerless ensemble includes Steve Zahn, Melissa Leo, David Morse, Rob Brown, Kim Dickens, Jon Seda, Khandi Alexander, and Simon's secret weapons – his old Wire cohorts Clarke Peters and Wendell Pierce). That said, Treme has always been explicitly about loss, particularly in the face of great trauma, and this season makes the yearnings of Simon and Overmyer's struggling New Orlineans so much more palpable than in previous years, which is saying something – the fallout from Hurricane Katrina continues to claim victims, in both emotional and physical ways. Ultimately, though, whatever pain Treme mines proves oddly hopeful, since it's the pain that springs from being tough enough to keep on trying, no matter what the outcome. In Treme, as in reality, life goes on, and maybe that's the great takeaway of season four. Audiences may have ignored this show during its initial run, but like The Wire, the series deserves to grow in stature. In its wry, messy, low-key way, it's one of the great contemporary TV shows.
Of the complete series, Kenneth Brown wrote that "Simon and Overmyer strip Treme of melodrama and convention with unnerving ease, cultivating authenticity where other showrunners might indulge in grand, cinematic flourishes. Each storyline and narrative through-thread is as wildly unpredictable as the next, often because the series' writers aren't bound to the tenants of television. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't. Sometimes relief comes when it's least expected, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes luck favors the bold, sometimes the sheer weight of the situation comes to bear on the events that unfold. Like the best stories, Tremetells itself. The writers' presence is never felt, even though the intricacies of their work is readily apparent. Dialogue never reeks of late-night writing room sessions, just the colloquial quirks and natural rhythms of the city and its residents. Celebration, death and heartache aren't plot points or, worse, plot twists; they're organic extensions of the lives laid before us. And it's in these hauntingly credible moments that Tremefinds its voice. The story may be slow-brewed to four-season perfection (even with a truncated, 5-episode fourth season), but every step of the journey, sudden footfall or long coming stride is an absorbing one. The arc of the series' first season may not fully reveal itself until the credits roll on the season finale, but with it comes a palpable sense of hope and uncertainty with which the people of New Orleans have become intimately familiar. By the time the series reaches its fourth season finale, these are people we know and love, and their plights are as close to ours as the plights of TV characters come."