For the week of May 26th, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing Seventh Son to Blu-ray. This fantasy epic arrived in theaters this past February on a wave of bad expectations and déjà vu, both of which were not mutually exclusive; attentive viewers might remember first seeing trailers for Seventh Son in late 2012, trailers that promised a February 2013 release date. Then February 2013 became October 2013. Then the film disappeared until 2015. Unless your movie is Army of Shadows or The Cabin in the Woods, that kind of delay portends a trainwreck of epic proportions, and unfortunately, Seventh Son doesn't disappoint. Ostensibly, the film is an adaptation of Joseph Delaney's YA novel The Spook's Apprentice, but it mostly ditches that book's dark charm and vivid fantasy descriptions for an overblown, undercooked CGI-adventure about a young man (Ben Barnes) who joins a grizzled knight (Jeff Bridges, terrible) in hunting an evil witch (Julianne Moore) with plans for world domination. Nothing about that synopsis is surprising or original, though that lack of originality isn't necessarily a dealbreaker: there are only so many stories to be told, so what matters is the spark and verve you bring to galvanize a familiar story (see also: Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, Universal's Bourne franchise, or Francis Ford Coppola's first two Godfather pictures). Seventh Son comes up short on both accounts, tossing frenetic, too-elastic action and character archetypes at audiences in the hope that, just maybe, it can bully people into having a good time, but unlike, say, Michael Bay's Transformers movies, it possesess neither the visual finesse nor the extreme thematic and social incoherence to accomplish those strongarm tactics. As such, the mind wanders: does A Royal Affair and Ex Machina star Alicia Vikander elide this movie from her CV? Isn't Djimon Hounsou tired of playing the B-plot villain in summer blockbusters (hello, Guardians of the Galaxy and Furious 7)? Do Bridges and Moore realize how far away they are from The Big Lebowski? Is Bridges going to keep making me resent his brilliant Rooster Cogburn character by recycling it through half-assed iterations like this and 2013's equally dire R.I.P.D.? I never thought anything would make me nostalgic for the lazy, sloppy charms of the also-delayed 47 Ronin, but such is life: it's always capable of surprising you.
Martin Liebman had a slightly more positive opinion of the film, though even he allowed that "perhaps the biggest drawback beyond the crude simplicity of the plot are lead performances. Both Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges seem disinterested in the film, probably because they recognize it as filler with no aspirations beyond, but there's a flatness to both performances at best and a sly hamminess to them at worst. Neither one injects much life into the characters beyond basic qualities that are less descriptive and more emotive; their characters seem built on look and cadence more so than inward depth. In fact, Bridges plays, essentially, the same character from another recent book-turned-film starring him, The Giver. Obvious time and place differences aside, Bridges in both films plays an aged man of some importance to the community who is charged with finding and training a replacement who can help him save a world in peril, both at the hands of powerful female figures. Ben Barnes, himself no stranger to the Fantasy genre considering his parts in the Narnia sequels Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is the film's best acting asset, not appearing so bored or reliant on excess as his counterparts but doing what he can to flesh out a stock zero-to-hero character by giving the part a bit more seriousness and thoroughness that fits in with the world around him."
From Starz/Anchor Bay Entertainment comes the Blu-ray release of Spike Lee's latest film, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. The film drew more attention for its financial history than for anything content-related; this was Spike's "Kickstarter concession," and his move towards crowdfunding cinema sharply divided viewers (some felt that Lee was exploiting fans for money he didn't need, while others - including Steven Soderbergh - saw his use of Kickstarter as a necessary stage in the world of contemporary independent filmmaking), although to be fair, it isn't a new Spike Lee Joint if it doesn't generate some controversy. And a true Spike Lee Joint this is - after his impersonal, studio-bowdlerized take on Oldboy (a mainstream misfire that Lee rebranded "A Spike Lee Film" in the main credits), Da Sweet Blood of Jesus feels like a messy but vital return to his roots, with a strong emphasis on messy. This gory, lurid tale is Lee's first foray into horror; he focuses on Dr. Hess Green (Stephen Tyrone Williams), an erudite anthropologist who, after being stabbed with a mystical African dagger, develops an insatiable thirst for human blood. Lee tried to downplay the film's genre leanings during the Kickstarter fund (he even stressed that this picture was not a remake of Blacula), but this reimagining of Bill Gunn's landmark indie chiller Ganja & Hess definitely fits comfortably into the vampire-movie canon, from Green's relationship with his Renfield-like assistant Seneschal (the invaluable Rami Malek, who gives this often painfully self-important venture some welcome doses of humor), to his increasingly disturbing obsession with the beautiful Ganja Hightower (Zaraah Abrahams), to the many instances of graphic bloodletting that mark his bloodlust (this might be the most violent film Lee has ever made, and that's saying something). However, Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is as much a product of Lee's febrile imagination as it is a postmodern commentary on the vampire mythos, and it's in this regard that the film most acutely fascinates/frustrates audiences. Hess isn't just killing people and drinking their blood - he's operating in a system of profound racial and economic inequality, and at times Da Sweet Blood of Jesus feels like a bloody gloss on The Great Gatsby, with Hess trying to reconcile his baser cravings alongside his moneyed Martha's Vineyard lifestyle (tellingly, Hess mostly goes after poor black women, leading to an alternatively incisive and horrifying scene where he goes to get a blood test after feeding on an HIV-infected prostitute). As always, Lee goes too far: he includes some wraparound scenes that unnecessarily turn Da Sweet Blood of Jesus into a stealth Red Hook Summer sequel (and also place it in the same universe as his acclaimed Do the Right Thing), and he indulges in some graphic sexuality that would feel more appropriate on late-night Cinemax. But for every misstep and indulgence - and there are many - he'll include some deranged stroke of genius, whether it's the brilliant opening "jookin" dance from street performer Lil Buck (backed by a gorgeous Bruce Hornsby composition) or the tentative, feral sense of self-loathing with which Ganja and Hess approach their cravings. Love him or hate him, but Lee makes Da Sweet Blood of Jesus feel nothing less than 100% essential to him, and we can't help but respond to that addiction.
Olive Films is serving up an interesting-but-flawed double-feature on Tuesday: 1983's Yellowbeard and 1989's Erik the Viking, and taken together, these two comedies help illustrate one particular facet of Life After Python. To wit: for many TV and comedy geeks, Monty Python's Flying Circus represents the apex of television sketch comedy. Even when the show turned in a stinker (and in fairness, the post-John Cleese episodes were not as strong as the episodes with his full participation), it remained a singular entity, the deranged brain trust of John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, and Terry Gilliam, and their instant admission to the Comedy Gods Hall of Fame. But all good things must end, and when the once-and-future Pythons struck out on their own, things got interesting; their post-Python oeuvre makes the case that they were never as brilliant separately as they were together. Sure, outliers do exist - the world is a much, much better place for having both Cleese's A Fish Called Wanda and Gilliam's Brazil - but the majority of the group's semi-solo projects resemble Yellowbeard and Erik the Viking. Both grew from Python-based architecture - Chapman developed Yellowbeard, while Erik the Viking was Jones' baby - both turned to satirizing high adventure stories - Chapman's title character in Yellowbeard is an infamous (if inept) pirate, and Tim Robbins' Erik, as his name suggests, comes from a long line of pillaging Vikings - and both are clear swing-and-misses. I'm reminded of the lesser Saturday Night Live films (think Coneheads or The Ladies Man) in the way Yellowbeard and Erik the Viking pare nicely absurdist setups (Yellowbeard is a pirate wanted for tax evasion, and Erik is a sensitive Viking who tires of rape and murder) with a host of talented actors (Yellowbeard: Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Peter Cook, Madeline Kahn, James Mason, Spike Milligan, Kenny Mars, Cheech & Chong, and David Freakin' Bowie; Erik the Viking: Robbins, Jones, Cleese, Mickey Rooney, Eartha Kitt, Antony Sher, Charles McKeown, and Jims Carter & Broadbent) in the hopes that those two factors alone will a movie make. Here's the thing - both Chapman and Jones haven't lost their sense of sketch comedy (each film has a handful of riotous sequences), but constructing an actual narrative is a far more challenging beast that coming up with six minutes of hilarity and then cutting to the next gag-based setpiece, and you can feel each movie straining to satisfy traditional storytelling demands (Erik the Viking fares slightly better - Jones is a more skilled craftsman that Yellowbeard director Mel Damski). So it goes, and so these two films go in the same pile as also-rans like Fierce Creatures, Jabberwocky, or Splitting Heirs.
Of Yellowbeard, Jeffrey Kauffman wrote that "perhaps part of the fault lies with director Mel Damski, who has since gone on to some notable television work (Psych), but who was in 1983 still relatively early in his career and perhaps not yet able to adequately tame what was probably an at times out of control cast. The main problem is simply one of writing, with gags falling flat far outnumbering those that land. Part of the strangely languid feeling of this film, despite a frenetic energy running through most of it, is due to some editing choices that seem determined to defeat punch lines. While the film is probably not quite as horrible as some of its famous co-stars (notably Cleese) have gone on record as stating, Yellowbeard, while occasionally amusing, is probably at best a wasted opportunity. The cast seems quite game, and in fact manages to be relatively winning most of the time, but there's just a kind of stagnant lethargy that overhangs so much of the ostensible comedy that Yellowbeard never completely finds its sea legs...Seen now with a bit of perspective, there are bits here that work, albeit fitfully. There just aren't nearly enough of them."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is bringing Rainer Werner Fassbender's The Merchant of Four Seasons to Blu-ray. The film - Fassbender's fifteenth in just seven years - helped to denote the start of his most creatively fecund period as a filmmaker; while he had been churning out features at a prodigious rate (and some, like The American Soldier and Beware of a Holy Whore, are really quite interesting, if more than a little unfocused), he took a more deliberate approach to The Merchant of Four Seasons, infusing it with an attention heretofore missing from his work. As such, it remains one of his most accessible pictures, a tragicomic character study of Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmüller), a fruit merchant who experiences one misfortune after another. On the surface, "accessible" seems like the last word fit for The Merchant of Four Seasons. Fassbender fractures the chronology, splices in bizarre asides, uses a relatively minor (in terms of importance) character (Hanna Schygulla, playing Hans beautiful sister) to guide our attentions, and makes Hans subject to sudden fits of violence and self-loathing, all of which don't exactly scream mainstream filmmaking. However, Fassbender makes sure that for all the chaos plaguing Hans' life, he remains sympathetic, and so we respond to him the same way we might respond to the Book of Job. In addition, Fassbender's filmmaking brio is so pronounced that he's able to sweep us along with the story's misery. For all his postmodern narrative tricks, Fassbender is drawing inspiration from the most unlikely of sources - the films of Douglas Sirk - and he approximates Sirk's emotional and aesthetic vibrancy in order to give The Merchant of Four Seasons' surrealism the pull of a great melodrama. Along with The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which came out the very same year (1972), The Merchant of Four Seasons signaled Fassbender as a screen visionary unafraid - or maybe just incapable - of doing anything by half measures. Like Spike Lee, he was a true auteur, and the cinema was the staging ground for his obsessions.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells Hans' story in a series of uneven episodes, each highlighting some sort of a failure. In one of them Hans is a police officer interrogating a beautiful prostitute who destroys his career. In another he disappoints his bourgeois family after he returns from the Foreign Legion (real heroes never do). And in another, before he beats his elegant wife, he is treated by his best friends like a big odd doll. Initially, these episodes create the impression that Hans is the classic German loser. His life has been a series of stupid mistakes and he fully deserves his misery. But the more time one spends with Hans, the more one begins to realize that he is a like a bird in a cage. Because he does not respect the conventional rules of the hypocritical society he lives in and does not meet the expectations of the people around him, his dreams are crushed and he is repeatedly punished. He frequently gets drunk to escape the maddening reality, but as time passes by he discovers that death is the only permanent way out of it. The Merchant of Four Seasons is very critical of post-war Germany and its social values. At times it looks deceivingly calm and quiet, like a Douglas Sirk film, but Fassbinder carefully and effectively exposes the ugliness of the system that is alienating and ultimately destroying people like Hans. The majority of the film feels tightly controlled, even overly sanitized. At times it seems like the various characters are fully aware that someone is closely monitoring their exchanges, their movements and reactions. All of this, however, is international - it is Fassbinder's way of highlighting and condemning the ridiculousness or a society in which the 'odd ones' are promptly identified and denied happiness."