For the week of December 2nd, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to Blu-ray. The film's predecessor, 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes, was a muscular summer blockbuster that, thanks to Rupert Wyatt's confident direction and Andy Serkis' phenomenal performance as genetically modified ape Caesar, provided far more nuance and human feeling than this genre usually offers, and so it really means something to say that Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is even better. Although Wyatt isn't helming this entry (he went on to direct the not-bad-looking Gambler remake), Let Me In and Cloverfield director Matt Reeves has assumed directing duties, and he enhances that lovely mix of intimate and epic that Wyatt established in the first film. From Dawn's opening sequence, a thrilling sequence where Caesar and his ape colony go hunting through the woods north of San Francisco (if Reeves wasn't at least a little inspired by Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans, I'd be very surprised), through a climatic ape showdown in the heart of the city, Reeves places the emphasis on his simian leads. Long stretches of the film play out with little-to-no dialogue, as Caesar talks to his family and advisors using sign language and facial expressions, and that aesthetic decision roots us in their lives so that when the human cast arrives (personified by Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Gary Oldman), we feel their presence as an intrusion in the same way the apes do. That the two sides erupt in bloody conflict is probably not a surprise, but Reeves and screenwriters Rick and Amanda Jaffa engineer a human-ape war that doesn't play out in conventionally "good" and "bad" terms. We sympathize the most with Serkis and Clarke - Clarke, filling in for James Franco, does an expert job at gradually revealing his admiration and respect for Caesar - but we also understand why Oldman's reluctant military leader doesn't trust the apes, or why Caesar's top lieutenant Koba (Toby Kebbell) is so quick to attack the humans. These are complex individuals with histories and old grudges, and this level of detail is something that, again, most summer blockbusters elide. This interpersonal dramas are so striking that, if anything, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes could stand to be a little longer. The backstories between Keri Russell and Gary Oldman's characters are a little too thinly sketched (Oldman, in particular, feels like the victim of some particularly ruthless editing decisions), and Judy Greer's Cornelia has almost nothing to do - unless they're saving her character to emerge in later Ape pictures, there's no reason why Reeves should have hired such a talented character actress and then abandoned her on the periphery. But these are small blimps in an otherwise sterling piece of work. The quality jump between Rise and Dawn is the same as from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight. As with Christopher Nolan's 2008 comic-book opus, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes impresses because it's a real movie and not just a carnival ride.
Jeffrey Kauffman noted in his Blu-ray review that "while the technical achievement of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes can't be overstated, what actually makes the film work perhaps even more than the spectacle is the human - and of course, ape - interest stories. While the character of Malcolm is a little generic (as, frankly, is Carver), there's enough tangential interest in Malcolm's family life, which includes wife Ellie (Keri Russell) and artist son Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who ends up developing a touching friendship with Maurice, to keep things from feeling too rote. The interplay between Caesar and Koba is especially visceral on the simian side of things, and the frightening 'evolution' of the apes taking control of more lethal weapons is especially well developed. If Dawn of the Planet of the Apes perhaps tries just a little too hard to set things up for what is an already announced third chapter, it's a forgivable effort simply because this chapter is so largely involving and intelligently scripted. Despite a few missteps, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes smartly reinvigorates the franchise, probably even more so than Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Hopefully this 'new, improved' set of ape adventures can avoid that law of diminishing returns that tended to plague the original series. Technology has finally caught up with the concept of Planet of the Apes, but the even better news is this is one science fiction spectacular that doesn't rely solely on wondrous state of the art special effects to achieve its impact."
Sony Home Entertainment is bringing Justified: The Complete Fifth Season to Blu-ray. For four years, this contemporary Western has established itself as one of television's finest programs; taking inspiration from the late, great Elmore Leonard's laconic U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), Justified has, at its best, struck an uncanny balance between procedural thrills and wry comedy. Season 5, it seemed, would continue the trend, with showrunner Graham Yost announcing that he would be putting Raylan's regular whipping boy Dewey Crowe (Damon Herriman) at the forefront as a sudden windfall of federal money would both bring Dewey sudden fortune as well as attract the attentions of his far more brutal cousin Darryl (Michael Rapaport). Yet the end result falls mostly flat, and for the first time, Yost's unerring sense of narrative and plotting eludes him. Season 5 has a number of interesting setups - how Raylan dallies with an unscrupulous social worker (Amy Smart) to avoid taking care of his new daughter; his boss covertly investigating (Nick Searcy) Raylan's involvement in the death of a venal mob boss; the various criminal machinations of Raylan's childhood friend-criminal nemesis Boyd Crowder (Walt Goggins); and the terrifying prison experience of Boyd's love Ava (Joelle Carter - but all of these elements mostly feel like wheel-spinning. They never connect together in a meaningful fashion: many subplots go nowhere (Boyd's feud with a local undertaker, or his ill-fated trip to Mexico, or Raylan's pursuit of a low-level conman, or the show's inability to integrate Jere Burns' Wynn Duffy in a meaningful fashion), and the show evinces a particularly dispiriting trend in its fifth season to substitute graphic violence for meaningful character development. Whenever anyone's threatening to get interesting, Yost and Co. kill them off in a hail of gunfire, a move that offers short-term entertainment but depletes the long-terms satisfaction (that said, Raylan's showdown with Darryl's idiot brother is one of Justified's classic moments, even if it does strongly reference one of the best scenes from Out of Sight). Worst of all is Rapaport's unconvincing, hammy turn as the evilest of all the Crowe's - for all his bluster, Darryl comes off as whiny and petulant, not menacing. Now, the old Justified magic appears periodically. Eric Roberts, Alicia Witt, and Mud's Jacob Lofland turn in great guest appearances, and if the last two episodes are any indication, Season 6 is going to close out the series on a high note. But so much of what precedes the season finale feels like place-setting, as if Yost and his writing staff were taking a victory lap after the sustained, season-long mystery that was Season 4. That previous year ranks with Season 2 as Justified's finest hour, so maybe any follow-up would feel anemic by comparison, but Season 5 is the first - and hopefully last - time the proceedings have felt so uninspired. My theory is that any TV show will suffer when its writing staff ends up splitting its duties with another show (see also: how Friday Night Lights suffered when its staff started migrating over to Parenthood, just as The Office declined when Parks and Recreation started to get good), and given that Yost devoted more time last year to the much improved second season of The Americans, it's possible that Justified dropped a couple of priority notches. Here the thing, though: Justified is so close to be Pantheon Television that the quality dip registers so much more powerfully - here's hoping Yost can right the course next year.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman evinced a very different opinion, writing that "season five additionally solidifies the program as one of the best technically produced in the industry. It's a rare example of everything working in perfect harmony, from writing to cinematography, from acting to direction. The program is beautifully framed in every scene, naturally flowing and effortlessly lifelike. Shadow and perspective present the audience with a tangible, but at the same time naturally transparent, sense of place and person. The show feels intimate even as it sprawls in terms of location (at least when it takes the characters beyond their Kentucky confines) but also in terms of its characters. Even with so much evolution and so many dynamics, it's easy to follow but never afraid of diving as deeply as necessary into morally murky territory and turning as dark as required to best define a moment and evolve the story. There's equal bits of inward character evolution and outward progressing forces that influence one another and consistently alter the show's dynamics, presenting the viewer with a familiar but ever-changing landscape wherein anything can happen, and frequently does, but without ever coming across as forced or otherwise phony. It's a believably real world inhabited by imperfect characters who benefit from terrific actors in career-defining roles, whether Olyphant completely melting into Raylan even beyond the trademark attire, Goggins finding an uncanny ability to evolve as a villain, or here in season five Michael Rapaport stepping in out of nowhere to dominate the program through a tremendous full-season effort. Justified really does have it all, and it capitalizes on every top-notch component"
From Sony Home Entertainment comes the political drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. While director Frank Capra had certainly enjoyed a string of successes prior to this 1939 classic - his version of You Can't Take It with You still remains the definitive movie version of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's play, and he won a Best Director Oscar for his work on It Happened One Night in 1934 - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington established the "Capraesque" style that would define his entire career: warm, idealistic, bordering-on-corny, but deeply humane. In its broad strokes, Mr. Smith isn't that different from Capra's great Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, with its story of a naive small-town gentleman (Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds; Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith) getting involved in the hustle and bustle of the big city (Capra trades in the high-society gloss of Manhattan in Mr. Deeds for the politics of Washington D.C. in Mr. Smith), but whereas Mr. Deeds was slight, if charmingly so, Mr. Deeds benefits from the weight of its D.C. backdrop. That's not to say that the film is especially "political" - far from it. The party affiliations of the characters are either vague or undefined, and the central conflict that Stewart's Senator Jefferson Smith finds himself debating wouldn't have felt topical to audiences in 1939 (it's a corrupt land grab that threatens to build a dam on - gasp! - the space for a proposed boys' camp). It's a fantasy, really, a charming romantic comedy that finds Smith emerging as the one honest man in all of Washington as he woos a cynical reporter (Jean Arthur, who's just as instrumental to this film's success as Stewart is), and it's as loosely tethered to democratic politics as Casablanca was to World War II. And that's where Capra's genius comes into play. Capra believes in Big Themes, that America is a great country, that its people deserve the best, and that they have an inalienable right to a fair and just legislative body. As unrealistic as the plot of the film might be, Capra gives it the full weight of his convictions, and it feels emotionally truthful, if not intellectually so. By the now famous conclusion, an extended filibuster that finds a desperate but driven Smith making one last rhetorical stand against his political opponents, Capra has us hook, line, and sinker. We feel like we're watching a new, great American myth take form, one that not only says, "And justice for all," but believes it to the core. An American masterwork and, along with It's a Wonderful Life, the crowning achievement in Capra's very distinguished body of work.
Finally, Fox is also bringing The Strain: The Complete First Season to Blu-ray this week. Created by Guillermo Del Toro and Lost's Carlton Cuse, The Strain adapts Del Toro and Chuck Hogan's trilogy of horror novels about a mysterious biological pandemic that turns people into vampiric monsters. For the first third of The Strain's inaugural year, the narrative is dumb but propulsive; protagonist Eph Goodweather (Corey Stoll, in a bad wig and with little of the subtlety of his doomed House of Cards character) and his CDC team (Sean Astin and a grating Mia Maestro) make one rookie mistake after another in trying to contain the virus, but Del Toro builds suspense expertly, and the gore is plentiful (the vampires look like even more disgusting versions of Del Toro's Reaper vamps from Blade II), so we can forgive the lapses in judgment or the sub-literate dialogue. However, right around the time that a conveniently timed eclipse allows the vampire menace to take root, the proceedings grind to a halt, and the sense of fun all-but vanishes. What we're dealing with here is a clear case of Hobbit syndrome. To wit: the first book in Del Toro and Hogan's Strain series is a quick read (its four-hundred-some pages fly by), yet Season One runs a punishing thirteen episodes long. If Cuse and Del Toro wanted to make good use of that time, they'd have to reinvent large chunks of the source material, but for the most part, they don't, which means much of the midsection of this first season plods along. The section in the book where the vampire disease begins to spread through New York's populace, for example, runs no more than fifty pages, but we get at least five episodes in television format, all of which play out in repetitive format: random civilian gets infected, gets sick, turns into a monster, tries to kill entire family (and sometimes succeeds). This material is well made - Del Toro's close involvement with the show's day-to-day creative endeavors means that we get a number of cracking setpieces (an early vampire attack scored to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" is a real highlight) - but we'd get the point with half as much of it, and the constant digressions to cannon fodder characters mean that we don't get to spend enough time with the characters we do like (Kevin Durand's wry pest killer or David Bradley's canny Van Helsing proxy, whose chemistry with Richard Sammel's vampire broker is the best thing in this very flawed show). The Strain should be a three-to-four-hour miniseries, although, in fairness, the next two books have more action than the first one, so maybe Del Toro and Cuse will make better use of their time. Fingers crossed, because right now, this show is so beneath them. Where's Buffy the Vampire Slayer when you need her...?