For the week of August 26th, Starz/Anchor Bay is bringing the fourth season of The Walking Dead to Blu-ray. While not perfect, the series' much praised third season helped address many of the problems that critics had with the show's first and second seasons: the action was better, the characterizations stronger, and, thanks to David Morrissey's fearsome portrayal of The Governor, the human stakes finally matched those of the zombie hordes. Much of that success is due to showrunner Glen Mazzara taking over for the third season...which makes it all the more heartbreaking to report that a) Mazzara left at the end of season three because of creative differences (reportedly similar to those that drove co-creator and first showrunner Frank Darabont from the show) and that b) his successor Scott Gimple has not continued the show's upward trajectory. Season four gets off to a promising start, beginning with an arc that sees a deadly flu virus destroying the fragile peace that Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) has managed to create at the prison sanctuary. It's scary, claustrophobic stuff, and it provides a great showcase for Scott Wilson's kindly veterinarian Hershel, who emerges as the moral and heroic center of the program. The problem is, after the thrilling resolution of that story, Gimple and his writers feint, and they leave the prison in order to (Mild spoilers to follow) return to a character that really should have ended his/her run at the finale of Season Three. The detour forces the heroes out of the prison, which is good, but it halts all forward momentum, which is not-so-good, and the show's second half plays out in a series of intermittently satisfying vignettes that follow the now-scattered survivors. Some of these are solid (anything with Norman Reedus' steely, pragmatic Daryl or Danai Gurira's complex badass Michonne), and some are not (Lincoln, who was so good in the show's third season, is just flailing here), but none of them ever cohere into a satisfying dramatic core (End mild spoilers). It all ends in a cliffhanger that, as with Season Three, should have been introduced earlier in the season to provide some kind of narrative spine but instead feels like a slight on the viewers. At this point, you're either with The Walking Dead or not, but the carelessness of Season Four makes it hard to even try and get on board, especially given the new crop of horror series that have bested The Walking Dead in terms of gory thrills (Guillermo Del Toro and Carlton Cuse's The Strain) and characterizations (John Logan's witty, literate Penny Dreadful).
Martin Liebman presented a far more favorable opinion in his Blu-ray review, writing that "The show is a punch to the gut, a quickly moving string of horrific images and more horrific thoughts. It's bold in its darkness, going well beyond what anyone could reasonably expect of it, totally unafraid to further devastate an already battered, bruised, and broken world. Season four holds many such devastating surprises...[and] is incredibly well-made - it's beautifully written; superbly acted; infinitely exciting; and amazingly photographed, scored, and edited - it serves as a constant reminder of the fragility of life and the need to embrace the good and hold on to it in the best of times, to build on that and store it in a mental, emotional, and spiritual lock box for those times when the world's worst comes crashing down. It shows the lengths that people will go to in order to protect what they love and defend those that need them the most, sometimes at the expense of the moral compass but in the name of what they deem right in the greater scheme of things. Arguably no other program on television is so balanced yet precise and perfect as this one in every area concern. It's truly an example of everything a television series can, and should, be."
The start-studded HBO movie The Normal Heart also gets a Blu-ray release this week. When it was released off-Broadway in 1985, Larry Kramer's play of the same name had a huge cultural charge. The decade offered very few "entertainments" that faced the AIDS crisis head-on, and fewer still that were as incendiary as The Normal Heart; Kramer scripted a two-fisted polemic about pissed-off reporter Ned Weeks (played in the movie by Mark Ruffalo) investigating this epidemic as it moved through the gay community, and Kramer's work eschewed subtlety and nuance in order to assault audiences, to make visceral the impact of HIV/AIDS. It was the right play for the right time, and that's the biggest problem with HBO's filmed iteration: while AIDS is still a serious global concern almost thirty years later, the political and clinical leaps made in HIV/AIDS research have resulted in a more informed populace, one that doesn't necessarily need the same wake-up call that viewers in the 1980s needed. For the film version, director Ryan Murphy – of Nip/Tuck, Glee, and American Horror Story fame – has given the film an assaultive visual style to try and compensate, but the strobing photography, fish-eye lenses, and jarring handheld camerawork only pull us further away from the material. That said, if Murphy's camera eye is a miscalculation, his work with actors redeems the picture. People forget that even when his TV shows tipple into excess, Murphy has always excelled at getting surprising performances out of actors, and the whole cast is across-the-board great, both from those you expect to excel (Ruffalo, Taylor Kitsch, Alfred Molina, and Julia Roberts as a dogged AIDS researcher) and from those you don't (White Collar's Matt Bomer shows depths left unexplored by that fluffy USA series, and The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons gives the best performance of his career as an acerbic activist friend of Ruffalo's). They restore that sense of urgency to The Normal Heart and make it a worthwhile endeavor.
Michael Reuben wrote that "When The Normal Heart first premiered, its conclusion played as a call to action against a threat that was still only vaguely understood. The ending has subtler shadings today, almost thirty years later. Though AIDS remains a potent (and worldwide) threat, the virus has been isolated, and the disease can be held at bay, though not cured, with drug therapy. Ned Weeks cannot foresee any of this as he sits at his alma mater, Yale University, watching the dancing male couples who have invited him to participate in a Gay Weekend that would have been unimaginable during Ned's student years. In the midst of his anger and grief, he glimpses the future that we know is coming (the scene is one of many added for the film). Still, The Normal Heart never loses sight of what was lost. Perhaps its finest expression occurs in a eulogy delivered by Tommy Boatwright, during which Jim Parsons demonstrates his extraordinary ability to dominate the screen by doing less, letting the words and the situation speak for themselves. As Tommy attempts to give voice to the pent-up anger, fear and frustration of the mourners, he describes his private ritual for dealing with the almost daily news of another death. Tommy's ritual involves a rolodex card, and it supplies director Murphy with a simple but eloquent image to which he will return several times before the film ends, each time with greater impact."
From Warner Home Entertainment comes the Adam Sandler comedy Blended. Minus the raunchy, enjoyably crass That's My Boy, Sandler has been aggressively courting the family-friendly crowd to diminishing results (see also Grown Ups 1 and 2, Hotel Transylvania, and Jack and Jill), but Blended inspired some confidence through the presence of Drew Barrymore; Barrymore co-starred in two of Sandler's best-ever movies, The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, and in those, she brought out the best in Sandler's patented man-child persona. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Blended. Like the Grown Ups pictures and Just Go With It, Blended feels like a thinly veiled effort from Sandler and Co. to get the viewing populace to subsidize their summer vacation, in this case an all-expense-paid trip to South Africa. The plot, as it were, follows Sandler and Barrymore's single parents as they bring their respective families to an African retreat: predictably, hijinks ensue, though at a lazy, self-absorbed amble. Why Sandler can't seem to operate on the level of his Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore anymore is a shame (I'd even take Little Nicky or Anger Management quality at this point), but to his credit, no one seems terribly enthused in the rote material, save for a couple of scene-stealing cameos from Kevin Nealon and the great Terry Crews. Many critics have called Blended racist because of how it trivializes African cultures and morays by portraying them as the backdrop for wacky family cliches and toilet humor, but those claims are wildly exaggerating the problem. At the end of the day, Blended doesn't work because it just isn't funny, and for a comedy, there's no greater sin.
Finally, Criterion is bringing Shôhei Imamura's Vengeance Is Mine to Blu-ray. This psychological thriller is one of the finest cinematic glimpses into a psychopathic mind. Ken Ogata (of Mishima fame) stars as a middle-aged, attractive man with dangerously unstable impulses, and Imamura offers an unblinking account of a few bloodsoaked days in his life. It isn't that the film is especially violent - though when Imamura does show Ogata "at work," the results are stomach-churning - but rather that it maintains a flat, even tone that only highlights the horror. Ogata's placid face makes a perfect blank canvas that barely registers the severity of his actions, and he wisely underplays scenes that other actors might try and make a meal of; a late confrontation between Ogata and a woman who loves him (unwisely) is chilling in its understated menace. At times, the tone recalls Richard Brooks' film adaptation of In Cold Blood, and as a procedural, the film is just as masterful. However, what lingers is Imamura's subtle criticism of Japanese culture. Through his jaundiced picture of a serial killer at work, Imamura argues that Japanese culture, in its rigorous social and religious customs, creates an environment of repression and subservience that encourage the actions of Ogata's maniac. Vengeance Is Mine is frightening in its human insights, and as potent an explication of a diseased mind as Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that the film "is a raw, at times uncomfortable to watch film about moral degradation. For some serial killers the act of killing is an intimate ritual of sorts, a way of achieving pleasure which alcohol, sex, or drugs cannot deliver. For the serial killer in Vengeance is Mine the act of killing equates an extreme form of anger suppression. The film does not make it clear, however, what the anger (or the vengeance implied in its title) is for. Enokizu's inexorable desire to hurt those he becomes close with is puzzling to say the least. He is a smart but not strikingly intelligent man whose past clearly does not offer any clues as to why he has become a monster...Director Imamura knew many people who lived lives similar to the ones the various characters in his film have. Once a happy black marketer who bought illicit liquor and cigarettes from American soldiers and then sold them for profit, Imamura spent a great deal of time amongst homeless loners, prostitutes, thieves, and crooks who taught him a lot more about life in post-war Japan than his university professors did. Naturally, Imamura felt attracted to them and their world. Vengeance is Mine is a product of his fascination with the dark side of Japanese society."