For the week of July 8th, Magnolia Pictures is compiling both parts of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac into one volume (the two films are also available as separate Volume I and Volume II editions, though I can't imagine fans of the film getting one without the other). For a man who has always thrived on controversy, Nymphomaniac shows von Trier taking his yen for provocation to a whole new level. Over the course of four hours (more on this runtime later), the director examines Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a middle-aged woman whose life has unraveled in a series of increasingly graphic sexual encounters. Emphasize graphic: to heighten the already explicit sex scenes, von Trier hired porn actors to have intercourse on camera and then digitally superimposed their copulating genitals onto his main cast's bodies. As such, this may be the most prestigious "adult" film ever made – where else can you find people like Gainsbourg, Jamie Bell, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Uma Thurman, Connie Nielsen, Christian Slater, and Willem Dafoe engaged in such racy conduct? But sex is only a diversion, a Trojan Horse concealing a full-on excursion into von Trier's mind. For all its salacious material (and anyone looking to see what happens when a major filmmaker makes a legitimate work of pornography won't be disappointed), Nymphomaniac is but a framework for von Trier to ruminate on...everything, from his career, to the universe, mathematics, religion, fly-fishing, and the nature of man. It feels like a culmination of sorts, a commentary on von Trier's life from the Europe Trilogy (The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa), to the Dogme 95 flirtations of Breaking the Waves and Dogville, through his Depression pictures (Antichrist and Melancholia). The film's massive length makes sense in that context, as does its largely episodic nature, since it can cover more ground without needing to adhere to narrative conventions while using the picaresque format. As such, it's amazing that Nymphomaniac holds together at all, but that's all von Trier, from his precise control of tone (Nymphomaniac careens from legitimately hysterical to genuinely horrifying, and sometimes all in the same scene, as in Thurman's virtuoso cameo) to his facility with actors, of whom Gainsbourg and newcomer Stacy Martin are the standouts, delivering fearless performances as the old and young versions of Joe, respectively. Believe it or not, but as comprehensive as this work feels, especially within the context of von Trier's body of work, Magnolia's set might just be a placeholder. The director's preferred cut is over five hours long, and the film's distributors have suggested that longer version will make it to Blu-ray some time during the next year.
Of Nymphomaniac, Michael Reuben commented that "when von Trier was making The Idiots, he famously stripped on set to encourage his reluctant cast to do nude scenes; the finished film contains a few stray shots where the disrobed director can be seen in the background. Sixteen years later, it's tempting to say that the auteur still has no clothes, and I don't think von Trier would argue. Everything he has done, from the quickly abandoned Dogma 'vow of chastity,' to the eruptions of religious faith in The Kingdom and Breaking the Waves, to the provocation of titling a film Nymphomaniac that is about so many other things, has been marked by a showman's determination to remain unique among the crowd. Sometimes the effect is brilliant, like having the doors of perception opened so that, for a moment, you really do see things differently. At other times, though, von Trier creates the maddening sensation that you've been cornered by a lunatic who demands that you join him in his insanity. I put Nymphomaniac in the latter category, but judge for yourself."
Sony Home Entertainment is bringing The Raid 2 to Blu-ray. The first Raid was one of the new decade's most ferocious action pictures. Whatever narrative shortcomings and cop-movie clichés it had simply did not matter because director Gareth Evans' staging of the many gory fight scenes was so propulsive and visceral. The Raid 2 finds Evans looking to up his game in both action and content; if nothing else, this is a markedly more ambitious venture. Whereas The Raid limited itself to a restricted time-frame and setting (a group of cops led a raid on a criminal's apartment complex over the course of a few hours), the new film expands outwards, forcing protagonist Rama (Iko Uwais) into a complicated undercover operation in an attempt to bring down an Indonesian crime syndicate. As the operation drags on, involving more and more colorful criminal and police characters (including Jule Estelle's "Hammer Girl," who gets all the best fight scenes) and putting Rama in ever greater danger, we realize that The Raid 2 wants nothing less than to be The Departed of martial-arts epics. That's a pretty tall order, and Evans certainly deserves recognition for his elevated aims, as well as for his action sequences – these have gotten longer and more technically complex than the already long and technically complex skirmishes in The Raid (most mind-boggling: the shootout-fight between particpinats in two moving cars that Evans captures in unbroken, terrifying camera takes). Ultimately, though, The Raid 2 can't handle the sprawl. The scenes of cop-criminal intrigue just aren't as compelling as the action beats (to say they don't come close to approach the profane spark of William Monahan's Departed script is an understatement), and at a runtime of 150 minutes (as opposed to the original Raid's 101 minutes), The Raid 2 unnecessarily elongates the filler in between its admittedly electric carnage setpieces. It's a misfire, but it's a noble and exciting one. Note: This version of The Raid 2 is the slightly censored domestic cut as opposed to the bloodier international edition.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that the film's "lack of dramatic creativity doesn't allow the film to stretch its legs in those many moments when the fisticuffs and firearms are set aside in favor of all of those other elements in play. Yet the filmmakers know that many fans will buy tickets only in anticipation of the expected parade of violence, and Evans and company don't disappoint. In that arena, The Raid 2 proves bigger and better than its predecessor, building on the foundation established in the first and pushing limits in this second installment. The Raid 2 showcases some of the most brutal and relentless violence ever captured on film, the type that would probably make Quentin Tarantino happy (and it even introduces a character in 'Hammer Girl' that would feel right at home in one of his red-washed epics). The Raid 2's dark interior and darker façade only accentuate the violence's purpose and production. The film features not only copious amounts of blood, but choreography equal to the bloodshed. It's a reference reel of make-believe violence sold as reality, from fists to hammers and from edged weapons to firearms doing their thing to fragile flesh. While the film's pacing and lengthy interludes between its violence may give the impression that this sequel is somehow less violent than its predecessor, rest assured that when people get angry, there's absolutely no lack of precision, hard, and sometimes difficult to watch action."
Also from Sony is the spirited documentary Jodorowsky's Dune. Alongside Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon and Orson Welles' Don Quixote projects, filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's proposed take on the iconic Frank Herbert sci-fi novel is one of the great never-completed Hollywood epics; the El Topo director wanted to use Herbert's source material as a vehicle for his own deeply personal obsessions (Jodorowsky claimed he was going to replicate what it was like being on LSD for those who'd never experienced the drug), and he spent over $2 million in pre-production experiments before his producers shelved the project. What Jodorowsky's Dune does best is to convey the fullest sense of this unfilmed work, speaking with many people involved with the film and relaying their stories of Jodorowsky's plans, which included a cast led by Salvador Dalí and Orson Welles, effects by H. R. Giger and Jean "Mœbius" Giraud, and scoring from Pink Floyd and Tangerine Dream. Not all of the talking-head interviews work - the stuff from the contemporary critics and commentators is variable at best, and Devin Faraci's fawning, hyperbolic commentary is particularly egregious - but the biggest gift of Jodorowsky's Dune is Jodorowsky. At eighty-five years old, he's still a spirited raconteur, and his excitement over the Dune that could have been is palpable (his story of how he secured Welles' involvement is hilarious). And maybe more than a little foolhardy: even if his planned version hadn't been stripped for parts (producer Dino De Laurentiis eventually secured David Lynch for the much maligned 1984 film adaptation, and many of Giger, Giraud, and Dan O'Bannon's design ideas ended up making it into Ridley Scott's Alien), what Jodorowsky describes is so expansive and audacious that it's unlikely it could have ever been made, even if all the stars had aligned in his fortune. Jodorowsky's Dune suggests that this film could only have been a dream, but in Jodorowsky's telling of it, somehow that dream is enough.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that " film's finest moments - which, really, is the entire thing, both directly and indirectly - is understanding and appreciating Jodorowsky's passion for cinema and almost literally feeling it radiating off of him, out of the screen, and into the very essence of his audience, particularly if that audience already has at least its own personal inkling towards the greater magic the cinema medium has to offer. Jodorowsky's fire for his unmade film is topped by that for cinema itself. He sees cinema - the avenues of opportunity it opens - as celluloid nourishment for the body which in turn serves as a facilitator for the opening of the mind and leads one on a journey towards shaping and/or discovering the very essence of his or her soul. Jordorowsky represents everything that's missing from so many movies today. He's a man who sees the value of film not for the number of tickets it moves, the merchandise sold, and the bottom line on the bank account but for the character it builds, the depth it's capable of exploring, the detail with which it leads audiences on a journey, the purpose it can so precisely demonstrate, and the soul it rewards to the persistent, who discover their centers with or through a work of motion art."
Finally, Warner Home Enterainment is issuing an HD upgrade for John Boorman's 1967 thriller Point Blank. The film was the second picture (after Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 postmodern romp Made in U.S.A.) to bring a variation of Richard Stark's literary antihero Parker to the big screen, thus popularizing a trend that continues to endure. Whether he meant it or not, Stark (a pseudonym for the crime-fiction impresario Donald Westlake) created an infinitely mutable screen character; a brutal career criminal whose sole focus is whatever job he's working, Parker has been many things for many filmmakers, galvanizing everything from terse noir capers (The Outfit), snappy star vehicles (Mel Gibson's Payback), and dimwitted action programmers (last year's disappointing Parker, which cast Jason Statham as a more physically imposing but less psychologically ruthless version of Parker). However, none of these films are as bracing as Point Blank, which retains its power to unnerve audiences. Point Blank takes inspiration from The Hunter, the most streamlined and violent Parker adventure: after his partner (John Vernon) and wife (Sharon Acker) betray and leave Parker (called "Walker" in Point Blank and played by the great Lee Marvin) for dead, he goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and he won't stop tearing up the Los Angeles criminal syndicate until a) he gets back the money his double-crossers took from him and b) he kills everything who had a hand in the betrayal. That's about it, story-wise, but Boorman uses this lean framework to craft - of all things! - an elliptical, highly impressionistic art film. Boorman lets scenes double-back on one another in the editing; he plays with sound and camera speed; he captures Walker's journey in sterile, ultra-widescreen compositions that alienate him from L.A.'s urban sprawl; and he lets the supernatural slowly infect the proceedings with the implication that Walker never survived the initial attack on his person, that he's a vengeful ghost looking for karmic retribution. The effect is not unlike wandering through a particularly disorienting dream and as such, Point Blank probably has more in common with the works of David Lynch or Michelangelo Antonioni than it does with your garden-variety B-movie noir. In its own experimental way, Point Blank is as important to 1960s cinema as L'Avventura, Bonnie and Clyde, or Breathless, especially in how it helped define the American New Wave, and it continues to inform contemporary filmmakers. Clint Eastwood's chilling anti-Westerns Pale Rider and High Plains Drifter borrowed heavily from the notion of Walker as an avenging angel, and Steven Soderbergh's classic The Limey pays homage to both Point Blank's view of '60s subculture as well as its fractured editing. A great, great movie.
Michael Reuben's Blu-ray review noted that "Lee Marvin brought Point Blank to Boorman because he wanted to play Walker, and they worked together on developing both the character and his story, but it was Marvin who bucked the usual tendency of actors to expand their parts and instead cut many of Walker's lines, making him a perpetual cipher. Having been double-crossed once, Walker now treats every situation as a setup, and he is always right, because his very existence is an anomaly that Reese and the Organization must eliminate. His removal is assigned to an unnamed assassin played by James B. Sikking (who would play a similar role for Peter Hyams in Narrow Margin). What will Walker do with $93,000 if he ever obtains it? He no longer has ties to anyone or anything. His entire being has been devoted to delivering vengeance. As Chris tells him at one point, he might as well have died on Alcatraz. The same fracturing of time with which Point Blank opened recurs throughout the film, as current events are interrupted by memories, parallel events or cross-cuts. There are moments when Boorman and his editor, Henry Berman (Grand Prix), deliberately make the viewer uncertain about Walker's location in space and time (as Boorman would later joke, the studio executives thought he needed a psychiatrist). The disorientation continues right down to the film's ambiguous ending, which may prompt some to throw up their hands but will inspire others to immediately restart the film from the beginning. Marvin's Walker is one of the greatest examples in cinema of the famous adage that less is more. The less he tells you, the more elusive he becomes - and the more you want to know who he is and what's he's thinking."