For the week of March 17th, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing Ridley Scott's Biblical adventure Exodus: Gods and Kings to Blu-ray. A massive retelling of the Moses story, the film lets Scott play in the familiar sandbox of his great modern epics Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, and certainly, on an aesthetic-only level, Exodus: Gods and Kings is just as impressive as those features. Scott remains one of the great cinema maximalists, so great is his ease with widescreen vistas and hundreds of extras and CGI flash, and his work here is no exception: if you could watch Exodus: Gods and Kings as a silent movie designed to showcase Scott's facility for using Dariusz Wolski's beautiful cinematography and Alberto Iglesias' percussive score, you might convince yourself it's not just one of the director's major works but a triumph on par with D.W. Griffith's Intolerance or David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Here's the thing, though - Exodus: Gods and Kings isn't a silent movie, and every time his characters talk, we're back in the dispiriting territory of Scott's Robin Hood misfire or the theatrical cut of 1492: Conquest of Paradise. Minus his underrated 2013 thriller The Counselor, Scott hasn't gone into production with a solid script since 2007's crime hit American Gangster, and Exodus: Gods and Kings suffers from the same kind of screenwriting malady that plagued Robin Hood and Prometheus: in all three instances, Scott has tried to Frankenstein together a number of vastly different drafts in order to consolidate all his ambitions into one movie. For Robin Hood, he tried to reconcile Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris' postmodern Robin Hood take with Brian Helgeland's far more conventional hero's journey; for Prometheus, he did the opposite, getting Lost's Damon Lindelof to strip out the Alien franchise elements from Jon Spaihts' Alien prequel; and here, he combines the work of writers like Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, and Steven Zaillian in an effort to give viewers a different twist on the Ten Commandments story. Problem is, each film is a textbook example of Too Many Cooks, and Exodus: Gods and Kings might be Scott's least successful attempt at script wrangling. The film is all over the place from a narrative perspective. For a little while, it plays like a glossy update of the swords-and-sandals genre, casting the struggle between adopted brothers-turned-mortal enemies Moses (Christian Bale) and Ramses (Joel Edgerton) into a Ben-Hur for the twenty-first century. However, then it decides it wants to be a more nuanced and ambiguous look at religious phenomena, as Scott and Bale suggest that Moses' relationship with God (represented by young actor Isaac Andrews) could be a delusion brought on by significant brain trauma. That's an interesting idea - and one more in line with Martin Scorsese's great The Last Temptation of Christ - except Scott can't follow that thread all the way through, jettisoning it for a series of CGI-assisted plagues and supernatural marvels that offer definitive proof of the divine. At times, Exodus: Gods and Kings plays as deadly serious - at other times, it's high camp, thanks to Edgerton's deliriously OTT villain turn (that said, Edgerton still manages to give the most engaging performance in the film even under all the bellowing and David Bowie-eye makeup - he's a damn sight more entertaining than Bale's poor-me hero). As per usual, Scott has hinted at the existence of a four-hour director's cut, and it's possible that a longer version of Exodus could help triage some of these whiplash shifts or flesh out the work of the mostly wasted supporting cast (why even bring in people like John Turturro, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Ben Kingsley, and Aaron Paul and give them almost nothing to do or say?), but this two-and-a-half-hour iteration is a mess, slouching from scene to scene with little regard towards coherence and theme. A genuine disappointment from a true cinematic visionary.
Jeffrey Kauffman called the film "beset by some peculiar performance choices, as well as some stunt casting that will pull most viewers squarely out of the historical milieu. In the first of those aforementioned issues, Joel Edgerton offers a mumbly Method take on Ramesses that might have been done by someone of James Dean's sensibilities back in the days of good old Cecil B. DeMille. In the second category, when people like Sigourney Weaver (no, really, Sigourney Weaver) traipse through the film (as Pharoah John Turturro's wife) with little to offer other than differing (and patently odd) headdresses, the typical reaction will probably be stifled snickering and rolled eyes, despite what may have been Scott's purely honorable intentions in offering his former collaborator a chance to dress up and get paid for it. The film offers suitably grand, CGI laden, sequences for big set pieces like the parting of the Red Sea and (at least some of) the plagues that beset Egypt, but it often fails to really connect on an intimate level, despite halting attempts to deliver more 'human interest' via Moses' contentious relationship with Zipporah (Maria Valverde). Occasionally, supporting performances like Aaron Paul's Joshua manage to crack through Scott's overwhelming visual style to deliver something approaching genuine emotion. It's been a really interesting last year or so for the so-called Biblical Epic, with Aronofsky's completely peculiar but often quite compelling take on Noah and now this somewhat more stolid but occasionally audacious 'reboot' of the Moses story. A lot of people have been going on record stating that love it or loathe it, the Aronofsky film at least offered something rather radically different from the DeMille days of yore. The ironic thing about this is that Scott may have reinvigorated the DeMille ethos in more ways than one. His Exodus: Gods and Kings is certainly relatively more traditional, despite some occasional lapses into whimsy, but it also recreates a certain glossy sheen that tended to be part and parcel of Biblical Epics back in the 1950s and 1960s. That sheen is almost always fascinating to look at it, but it also acts as a lacquer keeping the characters and the audience separated by an emotionless if shiny veneer."
This week also sees a number of family-oriented pictures hit Blu-ray, most notably DreamWorks' Penguins of Madagascar and Sony's glossy Annie remake. Of the two, Penguins of Madagascar is the least offensive. This animated comedy gives the penguins from the Madagascar franchise their own spin-off: here, Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (Conrad Vernon), and Private (Christopher Knights) find themselves conscripted by a debonair gray wolf (Benedict Cumberbatch) to help stop a deranged octopus (John Malkovich, naturally) who wants to strike back at the world's penguin population. As far as DreamWorks Animated fare goes, it's no How to Train Your Dragon 2 - it's a frenzied mélange of pop culture references and liberal "homages" to the James Bond series and Despicable Me 2 - but at just over ninety minutes long, Penguins of Madagascar is done before it overstays its welcome and doesn't take itself too seriously, thanks to some genuinely goofy voice work from the likes of Cumberbatch, Ken Jeong, Peter Stormare, Werner Herzog (yep!), and especially Malkovich. That's something, I suppose. Too bad the same can't be said for the latest Annie iteration. This new Annie is a misfire on all counts, a toneless, labored, and unfunny musical comedy that wastes the talents of its absurdly overqualified cast and is likely to squander any goodwill left over from fans of the previous Little Orphan Annie comic strip, stage production, and 1982 film version. Problem one is its insistence on being "hip"; the film makes so many shameless concessions to the millennial crowd - playing up the presence of producer Jay-Z, turning Daddy Warbucks into Jamie Foxx's cell-phone kingpin Will Stacks, and making Cameron Diaz's villainous foster mother a disgruntled former member of C&C Music Factory - that it's practically the Poochie of contemporary screen musicals. Still, the film's overt 21st-Century makeover wouldn't be that big a problem if it worked reasonably well as a movie, but Annie 2014 comes up short in that regard. If we don't buy the father-daughter relationship between tireless orphan Annie (Beasts of the Southern Wild's Quvenzhané Wallis) and Stacks' irascible-but-kind-hearted billionaire, the whole thing falls apart, and unfortunately Wallis and Foxx have no chemistry. They spend the whole movie acting furiously at one another. To compensate, director Will Gluck tries throwing in a lot of flash, from glistening widescreen shots of New York City to energetic appearances from the likes of Rose Byrne, Bobby Cannavale, Patricia Clarkson, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Michael J. Fox, and Rihanna, but he should have spent more time on the musical numbers, which dice the actors' physical performances into mush and rely on way-too-obvious auto-tuning. That said, it's hard to throw all the blame at Gluck. As poor a fit for this material as he is, he's a hired gun given the unenviable task of completing someone else's would-be vanity project. The new Annie began its existence when Will and Jada Pinkett Smith decided they wanted to give their daughter Willow her own movie blockbuster, but it can't even do shameless nepotism right - Quvenzhané Wallis got the part after Willow decided she wasn't interested (her parents did stay on as producers, presumably to pick up the glory for the film's inevitable Best Picture nomination...oh, wait). It's a hard-knock life, indeed.
Martin Liebman wrote that "Annie's best moments are few and far between, and even the bright little light that is Quvenzhané Wallis can't save the movie from being slowly devoured by the ever-growing void of its own soullessness. While the picture maintains the core basics of the original - Annie's search for her parents while in de facto captivity, her time with a wealthy benefactor, a ruse to steal her away for a quick cash-grab - one cannot help but find the movie otherwise devoid of purpose, a slowly paced, processed, dishonest, tries-too-hard, characterless film built on manufactured vitality and hanging on by the strings of the basic thematic charm and the upbeat music that support the story. Even when the film should soar - for instance when Annie dazzles a crowd with an impromptu song at a bigwig dinner for Mr. Stacks in which he suddenly realizes the kind of person, not prop, he has before him - Annie simply feels like its going through the paces, at best feigning tenderness and the burgeoning bond between Annie and Stacks. The movie simply never resonates with the kind of powerful, tangible, tugging-at-the-heartstrings sincerity and spirit of the 1982 film. It most certainly tries, and this updated version does have its heart in the right place, yet it lacks the organic development and flow necessary to tell the story, feeling instead like a patchwork movie that wrenches in its emotion rather than naturally builds to it."
From Paramount Home Entertainment comes the comedy Top Five. The film is Chris Rock's third feature where he pulls triple-duty as a filmmaker - he's the writer, director, and star - and given how dire Head Of State and I Think I Love My Wife are, you could be forgiven for wanting to skip his latest effort. Truth be told, the previews weren't terribly inspiring; they sold Top Five as an obvious and loud farce about bordering-on-has-been movie star Andre Allen (Rock) falling for a New York Times journalist (the great Rosario Dawson) assigned to spend a day interviewing him. On first glance, this is safe territory for Rock, and that's not even taking into consideration the ego-trip of casting someone as luminous as Dawson as his onscreen love interest. But the reality of Top Five is a lot more engaging - and a whole lot shrewder - that the press materials might suggest, thanks to what is a fairly brutal act of self-analysis on Rock's part. The more we see of Allen, the closer he resembles Rock himself. Both men got famous working as excoriating stand-up comics; both men held on to their fame through a series of increasingly safe studio efforts (for Allen, it's the fictional Hammy the Bear franchise; for Rock, I'll direct you to Exhibit A); and both men seem mired in the struggle to balance cultural relevance with artistic satisfaction. Allen has staked his fortune on an appalling drama called Uprize, but for Rock, it's this film. As enjoyable as Top Five is - and it is a genuine trip, from Manuel Alberto Claro's gorgeous NYC-area photography, to the ?uestlove-and-Jay-Z/Kanye West-curated soundtrack, to the comedy all-star supporting cast that includes Tracy Morgan, Sherri Shepherd, Kevin Hart, J.B. Smoove, Jay Pharoah, Michael Che, Cedric the Entertainer, Leslie Jones, plus wonderful appearances from Whoopi Goldberg, Adam Sandler, and Jerry Seinfeld - Rock uses the conceit of the Dawson character to tear apart Allen, and, by proxy, himself. Over the course of one day, Allen comes clean about his life and career, flashing back to painful/funny moments surrounding the cult of his celebrity or his pre-sobriety days, and while the end result brings him closer to his inner artist, the way there is lined with miseries large and small. To riff off something Allen's character says at one point in the five, Top Five seems like it could be a Tyler Perry movie, but then it turns into Stardust Memories. That's not to say that all of this material works. The bits featuring Allen's Kim Kardashian-esque fiancée (Gabrielle Union) feel like they're one to two extra scenes away from presenting the character as an actual human being as opposed to a stereotypical shrew, and I don't know what Rock was thinking when he included the uncomfortable, homophobic subplot about Dawson's closeted boyfriend (a very game Anders Holm): both of these sections are thinly sketched in ways inconsistent with the rest of Top Five's wry attention to detail. Yet even with those missteps, Rock manages to make something that lingers after you see it - it's funny and insightful in equal measures, and easily the best film Rock's ever been associated with. Well on its way to becoming a minor classic.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that "Top Five doesn't really reach its full potential until late in the game, but it makes the otherwise scattered and, frankly, occasionally irritating first two-thirds necessary, meaningful, and suddenly contextually interesting. The movie may be a rare example where it will work better on a second viewing, allowing the viewer to absorb every little bit and line in a greater context of what's to come rather than take it all on face value the first time, essentially yielding two unique experiences that both add up to a satisfying final film. Chris Rock's triple duty doesn't dilute the film. His work on either end of the camera impresses considering the relative ease and simplicity with which he tells the story on one side and the complexity through which he shapes it on the other. While his direction is tight and easy, framing the story rather than pushing it, the performance proves substantially more multilayered and impressive. He finds a nearly constant humorous vibe, both overtly and covertly in everything from the raunchiest sex scenes to the most intimate story-shaping exchanges with co-star Rosario Dawson. Rock maintains character throughout but shows a smart, capable evolution, even if that evolution is partly shaped through flashbacks and partly through personal rediscovery. Still, his portrayal of a complex character proves accessible and smart, even if, again, it takes the entire movie, and arguably a second watch, to truly appreciate all of the details. Dawson is excellent in the support role as a character who is in some ways a reflection of Rock's Andre and who has a few surprises up her sleeve, surprises which she masks remarkably well."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is upgrading Robert Montgomery's 1947 film noir Ride the Pink Horse for Blu-ray. A former comedic and romantic leading man of the 1930s and early 1940s, Montgomery reinvented himself into a noir antihero during the last phase of his career, first directing himself in a first-person POV adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake and then moving on to direct and star in this 1947 thriller, which is even stranger and more offbeat. Montgomery stars in Ride the Pink Horse as Lucky Gagin, a WWII veteran who travels to San Pablo, New Mexico, for reasons both mysterious and foreboding; for a long time, all we know is that Gagin intends on making life very difficult for mobster Frank Hugo (Fred Clark), and Montgomery revels in using Gagin's lack of backstory as a hard, cutting tool. There's a little bit of Lee Marvin's Walker here, with Montgomery keeping Gagin at such a low, brutal simmer (Russell Metty's remarkably fluid camerawork follows Gagin with the attention given to, say, the leads in a Bresson picture, and at one point, Gagin punches a guy so hard in the stomach that he knocks him out) that we're unsure if he's any better than the scoundrels he's pursuing. Ultimately, Montgomery and screenwriters Ben Hecht & Charles Lederer (who were responsible for Howard Hawks' great His Girl Friday script) give up the ghost in terms of Gagin's motivations, and the reveal turns the film into something both more conventional and more idiosyncratic than what preceded it. Learning what Gagin wants what he wants certainly humanizes the character into something more palatable for audiences at the time (he's not a total rotter like Touch of Evil's Hank Quinlan or an avenging specter like Marvin's Point Blank hero), but it also immerses him in a culture unfamiliar in most Hollywood features, save for many Anthony Mann's gritty, brilliant noir favorite Border Incident. On one of the Blu-ray's special features, author and film scholar Imogen Sara Smith contextualizes Ride the Pink Horse as a special kind of noir that exists outside of the Big City and, in doing so, implicitly criticizes the urban decay of post-war industrialization and modernity. As Gagin plots his revenge, he becomes more immersed in the U.S.-Mexico border culture of San Pablo - a culture personified by Wanda Hendrix's clairvoyant Pila and Thomas Gomez's genial carousel operator Pancho - and his exposure to a life outside the stereotypes of 1940s norms ultimately redeems him. That shift ends the picture in a place outside the realm of true noir, where the antihero falls victim to his own obsessions, but it also gives Ride the Pink Horse a humanist bent missing from established noir masterpieces like Double Indemnity or Out of the Past. While not a definitive noir example, Ride the Pink Horse still merits attention, especially from fans and students of the genre.
Svet Atanasov's Blu-ray review notes that the movie "is a strange hybrid of a film. Its visual style and attitude certainly make it easy to describe as film noir, but its social awareness and specifically the types of contrasts that it focuses on suggest that its genre identity is a lot more complex. There are two key clashes in the film. The first and obvious one is between the cynical GI and [Hugo]...These are men who know each other well and understand that by the time the fiesta is over one of them will be declared a winner. What remains to be seen is only whether the loser will die or be cheated and forced to leave the town with his tail between his legs. The second clash is between two very different cultures - that of the gringos and that of the locals. There are fascinating contrasts between them that are effectively enhanced by Hecht and Lederer's excellent script. When the GI first enters the town, his cockiness and seemingly endless cynical remarks make him almost impossible to like. But the man feels comfortable in his skin, and the more he interacts with the people around him, the clearer it becomes why - his ignorance and sense of superiority are deeply ingrained. The carousel owner and the beautiful girl could not be any more different. They are poor but sincere, curious but respectable. The novel's finale is apparently different, but the film is still very effective."