For the week of August 11th, Cinemax and HBO Home Entertainment are bringing the first season of The Knick to Blu-ray. The first Serious drama from the Cinemax network, The Knick follows the lives of those working at the titular hotel in turn-of-the-twentieth-century New York. While this series is a fairly conventional soap opera (we get lots of intrigue about the dire financial straits of the Knickerbocker, as well as the various romantic and professional permutations that the hospital staff form), it pivots on the conflict between the Knick's brilliant, drug-addicted chief surgeon John Thackery (Clive Owen) and new assistant chief Algernon Edwards (André Holland); despite Edwards' innovations in medical sciences, his skin color immediately sets him apart from the other doctors at the hospital, with Thackery shunning Edwards almost instantly on the grounds that his hiring constitutes some kind of prototypical form of Affirmative Action. And it's on that level that The Knick first begins to distinguish itself. Few contemporary television shows confront race with as much brutal honesty as this one does - I was reminded of The Wire and its unvarnished approach to racial tensions - and the show's 1900-set milieu further compounds its political and social ambitions. At times, the Herculean torments foisted upon Edwards seem almost comically outdated (a subplot finds Edwards taking on other African Americans in bare-knuckle fistfights in order to work out his frustrations) until we get to the first season's highpoint, "Get the Rope," where an instance of racially motivated violence explodes into a city-wide riot, and all of a sudden 1900 doesn't seem so far from 2015. At its core, The Knick is a show about disenfranchisement, and the Thackery/Edwards dynamic allows for the most unsettling avenue into that idea. It helps, too, that Owen is so willing to subsume his movie-star aura under genuinely unsympathetic character traits, or that he's gracious enough to cede the spotlight to Holland, who gives a bravura performance as, essentially, the show's stealth protagonist. We don't expect this soap opera to deliver the kind of harsh cultural lashing that even Selma avoided, but then again, that subversive vein is what makes the program so compelling. It's also proof-positive of series director Steven Soderbergh's involvement. As is, The Knick wholly validates the auteur theory. This is a Soderbergh project to its bones, as much a piece of his oeuvre as Out of Sight or Che. We can feel his involvement in the stark digital photography, the anachronistic Cliff Martinez score (at times, it feels more befitting Soderbergh's Solaris remake than a period drama. That's a compliment), the dry sense of humor (the end shot has a blackly comic perfection worthy of O. Henry or Billy Wilder), and in his deftly underplayed gift for melodrama - Soderbergh will stage pulpy details like Thackery's increasing drug dependence or Edwards' forbidden relationship with the Knick's white social-welfare head (Juliet Rylance) in whispers and from a distance, or he'll give violence the gritty, you-are-there verisimilitude of a Maysles-Brother documentary (in its simultaneously objective and visceral depiction of total chaos, "Get the Rope" reminded me of Alfonso Cuarón's masterful Children of Men - the episode is 2014's single-most virtuosic directing feat). It's funny: for a few years now, the folks at Cinemax have been laboring mightily to create an original programming lineup that would help them shed the "Skinemax" nickname that hours of softcore porn have earned them, but most of their efforts are meat-and-potatoes genre efforts (I'm thinking of Strike Back and Banshee, two highly entertaining - and more-than-a-little disreputable - action melodramas that, ironically, feature a fair share of T&A), yet with this one series, Cinemax has created something that, so far, ranks with the best of anything HBO has to offer. Here's to the "retired" Steven Soderbergh and his freewheeling disregard for convention, and for the ten remarkable episodes of television that resulted from this union. A phenomenal inaugural year.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown had a less favorable opinion of the show, calling Season One "undeniably eye-catching and visually stimulating, with an aesthetic that's as cocaine-addled as the good Dr. Thackery. In the creative haze of the first two-thirds of the season, I struggled to grasp what Soderbergh was aiming for. By the season finale, his target had become more obvious, but no less obtainable. Perhaps that's precisely what was intended, but I couldn't shake the feeling that Soderbergh was having as tough a time grasping the series' tone and intentions as I was. There are moments when the show seizes, falling to the floor in frightening fits. There are also moments of profound stillness and stability, though never enough to inspire unshakeable confidence in the series, its creators or its high profile director. The cast is excellent, thankfully; even in scenes where [writers] Jack Amiel and Michael Begler's dialogue borders on silly, stilted, or both. Owen edges nearer and nearer to irresponsible overacting yet retains impressive command of his performance, creating a compelling character struggling with instability as vicious as it is unpredictable. Holland and his co-stars are just as impressive, despite having the at-times thankless job of reacting to the force of nature that is Thackery rather than developing their own crucial arcs. Again, though, it's the writing that fails the cast and, at its worst, threatens the show. Plotting and character development grow more and more convenient and contrived as the season progresses, and come dangerously close to unraveling throughout the season's ungainly middle. The Knick never comes completely undone, but it also doesn't live up to the talent on the screen and behind the camera. Therein lies the most damning disappointment: I expected much, much more."
Shout Factory is offering a new special-edition Blu-ray of Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs. A modest success when it premiered in 1991, the film has garnered a cult following, and for good reason: it's one of Craven's most idiosyncratic pictures. Always an uncommonly thoughtful horror auteur - this is the same person who turned The Hills Have Eyes into an allegory for the Vietnam War, used Freudian dream symbology to give A Nightmare on Elm Street its unique tenor, and saw Scream as a commentary on violence in cinema (and on the responsibility of filmmakers who use violence) – Craven was stunned by the intensity of the racial and class tensions at work in the 1980s and early 1990s (think the Rodney King beating and the L.A. riots that followed), and he used The People Under the Stairs to vent his frustrations at the state of America. Here, a poor, noble kid (Brandon Adams) breaks into the home of his repellent landlords, the Robesons (played by Twin Peaks' very own Hurley couple, Everett McGill and Wendy Robie), in order to provide for his struggling family, but he unearths a literal house of horrors that the deranged Robesons would kill – and worse - to protect. This is not a subtle movie: the outcasts (represented as primarily African-Americans, women, and the mentally impaired) are the heroes, and the rich white establishment (the inbred Robesons have converted all their wealth into gold and expound at length about returning to family values) is the villain. But The People Under the Stairs retains an antic, nightmarish lunacy that, while not wholly successful (for someone who's had so much experience with bloodshed, Craven actually whiffs the violence, which veers uneasily from graphic verisimilitude to Looney Tunes-esque chaos), taps into the feeling of class warfare almost as potently as Spike Lee's great Do the Right Thing. What's more, The People Under the Stairs remains one of Craven's most timely films,: the recent events in Ferguson and Baltimore stress the same kind of unrest and cultural divide that fractured this country over twenty years ago.
In his Blu-ray review of the earlier Universal release, Michael Reuben wrote that "Craven's fertilely twisted imagination was inspired to dream up the masterminds who might have been behind it all. The advertising on the film's one-sheet (which has unfortunately not been used for the Blu-ray cover) neatly summed up the spirit of the story: 'In every neighborhood there is one house that adults whisper about and children cross the street to avoid.' Both the tagline and the film have gained force in the years since The People Under the Stairs was released. Every time the news reports the discovery of people (usually young women) held for years against their will in seemingly normal neighborhoods without anyone noticing, Craven's gothic nightmare seems a little less incredible. As the villainous homeowners of the story, Craven made the novel casting choice of Wendy Robie and Everett McGill, who had caught his attention the previous year as the eccentrically mismatched couple, Nadine and 'Big Ed' Hurley on TV's Twin Peaks. Identified in the film's credits as 'Woman' and 'Man,' their characters are larger-than-life monsters in the great tradition of Freddy Krueger: merciless psychopaths with a bizarre sense of humor and a very strange relationship that makes sense only to them. Robie and McGill tear into these roles with gusto. All by themselves, they make The People Under the Stairs worth watching."
From Kino comes the 1931 version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's journalism comedy The Front Page. Hecht and MacArthur's original stageplay galvanized audiences with its brisk pace and bracing sense of humor, and at its best, director Lewis Milestone gives this first film adaptation that same velocity. What Hecht and MacArthur did so brilliantly was marrying the micro to the macro; we first think we're in for some kind of farce as hardboiled newspaper editor Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou) schemes to keep star reporter Hildy Johnson (Pat O'Brien) from leaving the paper and marrying his naive fiancée (Mary Brian), but then the story switches gears dramatically, and we're off to the races with the very real drama of Burns and Johnson's attempts to secure an interview with the story of the century: an escaped murderer (George E. Stone) whose actions threaten to turn the city into a tinderbox. Stone's crime isn't that far removed from the racial strife we can find in The Knick, but Milestone mostly keeps this intense material light because of the interplay between Menjou and O'Brien. This Front Page often functions as an early screwball comedy, with the newspaper folks sending one-liners and snappy retorts at one another, and so the delivery and performances become the attraction rather than the racial/social implications. However, that underplaying of genuine pain cuts both ways. As enjoyable as The Front Page can be, it's also mired in racial stereotypes which are no longer as blithe as audiences might have thought them in 1931 - now, this content just seems offensive, and with good reason. As such, we're cringing at The Front Page when we should be marveling at the narrative twists and character idiosyncrasies. It's a problem that the film's greatest remake, Howard Hawks' 1940 classic His Girl Friday, manages to circumvent. Not only does Hawks remove much of the offending details, but he also tunes his dialogue and staging to about fifteen times faster than Milestone managed in The Front Page. Plus, in a stroke of genius, Hawks gender-swaps Hildy's character: he becomes a she (Rosalind Russell), a change that intensifies the efforts Burns (Cary Grant, in his finest comic performance) makes to keep Hildy in the office (he's Hildy's ex-husband, you see, and he has a vested personal interest in keeping her around) AND rebrands the film as a proto-feminist text starring a strong, take-no-B.S. woman who easily steamrolls over the men in her professional spheres. I realize I've lost the thread somewhat from The Front Page, yet that's kinda the problem. The Front Page is an interesting curio, and His Girl Friday is a masterpiece. So it goes.
Brian Orndorf's Blu-ray review noted that the film "present[s] a sharp, incisive look at journalism of the day, finding its depiction of sensationalism and the lure of personal corruption still resonate in 2015...Director Lewis Milestone crafts a tightly wound effort that invests in speed, electing a screwball tone to balance out the grim realities in play. It's a witty picture, with finger-snap timing and shaded but bellowed performances from the cast, including Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, and Mary Brian, and one that's aware of journalism as it transforms from a pursuit of justice to demoralizing routine. While the comedy doesn't play as freshly today, intent is perfectly clear and smartly rendered."
Finally, Criterion is bringing Karel Reisz's wonderful The French Lieutenant's Woman to Blu-ray this week. Reisz drew inspiration from the landmark John Fowles novel of the same name, and in doing so, he gave himself what many thought an impossible task: how do you make a movie from Fowles' defiantly postmodern tale? While nominally a Victorian romance about a young gentleman (played in the film by Jeremy Irons) engaging in a torrid affair with a social outcast (Meryl Streep), the print version of The French Lieutenant's Woman skirts melodramatic conventions through Fowles' canny manipulation of form. He gives his lovers multiple endings that hint at different resolutions, and he tells the story using a very contemporary voice that isn't shy about placing this Victorian melodrama in the context of the 20th Century. It is, in fact, a book that pivots off its use of the written format - you can't simply pull a one-to-one screen translation. However, Reisz employed the help of master playwright Harold Pinter, who devised an equally postmodern conceit, albeit one that riffs exclusively on cinematic conventions. As with his Betrayal, Pinter crafts the movie French Lieutenant's Woman as a structural gambit. While the romance story remains in faithful (if abridged) form, it exists nested inside a larger story about two film actors (also played by Irons and Streep) who become involved - both personally and professionally - during the shooting of the movie version of The French Lieutenant's Woman. The intrigue comes from the blending of reality and fiction, with the actors' affair spilling over into the production (or is it vice versa?), and as such, Reisz is able to keep viewers just as off-balance as Fowles' novel kept readers. Furthermore, The French Lieutenant's Woman has proven quietly revolutionary, inspiring such meta-commentaries on the creative adaptation process as Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and Charlie Kaufman's brilliant Adaptation. Like those other features, it's postmodern fun that's fun for everyone; no matter how thematically or narratively twisty the structure gets, Reisz grounds the story in conventional filmmaking mastery, from Freddie Francis' sumptuous photography to the lead performances, which still rank among Streep and Irons' finest work. Unsurprisingly, Streep is the standout - this is a virtuoso turn that grows from hundreds of precise character choices - embodying the part with a subtlety that she seems to have mostly abandoned in her current acting choices.