For the week of February 18th, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing the Academy Award-nominated A Star Is Born to Blu-ray. Writer/director/star Bradley Cooper's film is one of the most slickly produced mass entertainments that I've seen in a long time. At times, you wonder if it's not a remake (the fifth iteration of a story that goes back to 1932 - as What Price Hollywood - and already scored a near-definitive version with the 1954 Judy Garland-James Mason weeper) but rather the ne plus ultra of ten thousand focus-group adjustments. It is also extremely good at what it does. Credit to the original story, to Cooper, to his team of talented craftspeople, to the ferocious Lady Gaga, to whoever: if you're going to make a shameless Hollywood melodrama, this is how you do it. The Star Is Born template ranks among the hardiest of Hollywood formulas (troubled celebrity falls in love with/makes famous a talented nobody, only to see their fortunes shift as the nobody's star rises), which means that as a first-time director (and producer, and co-screenwriter, and co-songwriter, AND lead actor), Cooper knows he can innovate in other, more surprising ways. Long stretches of this movie have the vibe of a Howard Hawks picture: Cooper hates exposition and he loves watching people work, so he's content to just plunk us into the lives of rock star Jackson Maine (Cooper, doing a riff on Sam Elliott-doing-Ryan Bingham-doing-Bruce Springsteen-doing-Kris Kristofferson that seems hammy at first but grows almost unbearably powerful) and aspiring singer songwriter Ally (Lady Gaga, all authentic and messy and compelling charm) and let us figure out the dynamics on our own. In fact, the best scene in the film isn't Ally's big stage debut or any number of the uncomfortable arguments between her and Maine that dominate the second hour. Nope, it's the great opening setpiece, wherein Maine stumbles into a drag bar so he can go from tipsy to full-on drunk, catches Ally's stunning Edith Piaf act, and then leads Ally through some of L.A.'s night-owl haunts, all the while ruminating wistfully on their various dreams and regrets. The sequence plays like the beginning of Only Angels Have Wings as written by Richard Linklater, so naturalistically does Cooper sketch these two outsized personalities. Had the whole movie stayed at that level, we'd be looking at the best film of the year, but formula has other demands. At some point, we have to start the film's concurrent rise-fall/fall-rise arcs. Still, Cooper proves so good at mainstream filmmaking that we don't mind. As a director, it's clear his two biggest influences are his old working buddies Clint Eastwood and David O. Russell - what does surprise is how well those two great tastes taste together. Like Eastwood, he favors economy of action and totemic images; Cooper clearly loves Lady Gaga, and the ways he presents her has the simple, direct power of a myth. But he's just as comfortable transitioning into the kinds of freewheeling, improvisatory exchanges that would make Russell proud. We see that energy in that opening act, which loves watching the drag queens banter around Jackson and Ally as much as it does the main characters, or the way Cooper gets this lived-in, relaxed energy from Dave Chappelle (playing that Jackson's best friend) that I've never seen from the comedian on-stage (stealth humblebrag). I credit Cooper's Russellian skill at locking into performance and letting actors reveal themselves. So, yeah, A Star Is Born is conventional, and yeah, it makes moves you will see coming from a tour-bus's length away. But it also just works. Pure Hollywood hokum at its finest.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that "the film parallels Ally's rise and Jack's fall both personally and in the music industry. Ally, through Jack, her music, and stardom, finds her place in the world. Her rise is not gradual but rather instant, a whirlwind adventure that sees her slaving in a kitchen and singing in a bar one night and performing alongside an industry legend in front of thousands the next. Jack finds renewed purpose and vigor in life, but the specter of alcoholism and his own personal demons dog him through their time together. The film is certainly not concerned with broad originality in its outward presentation. Where the film succeeds is in its balance between the intimacy of Ally's relationship and romance with Jack and her opportunities and obligations as, first, a burgeoning sensation and then as a full-blown industry star and musical icon. It's in these not incompatible but often at-odds storylines where the film finds its most impressive character and dramatic beats. Cooper expertly meshes the heartfelt romance with the expansive musical scene and Ally's explosive appearance onto it. He juggles and juxtaposes large-scale narrative and industry realities with finely honed and honestly captivating tenderness on a small scale. The film thrives on that exploration of humanity in a world where the realities of stardom make it difficult to remain true to oneself, one way or another, to enjoy human intimacy when the music industry all but makes it impossible."
From Paramount Home Media Distribution comes the intense thriller Overlord. In theory, it's my favorite kind of genre movie: the turducken. I love nothing more than when one well-established genre piece morphs into another equally distinctive one. And at its best, Overlord has the frisson of the best genre mismatches. When we begin, we're in Man-on-a-Mission territory. The Allies are hours away from mounting the Normandy invasion, but if they've any hope of succeeding, a ragtag paradropping unit (Jovan Adepo, John Magaro, Iain de Caestecker, and Wyatt Russell, doing a respectable impersonation of his dad in John Carpenter's The Thing) must destroy a German radio encampment in a small French town. Our heroes are hopelessly outgunned and outnumbered, and that's before they discover a secret medical experiment to create a race of undead Nazi zombies. As such, we get an emergency paratroop landing to rival Band of Brothers AND fight scenes against mutating rage monsters. We get a team of well-worn soldier archetypes (the sensitive coward, the quiet badass, the schlub from Noo Yawk) AND a Big Bad (Pilou Asbæk, only missing a mustache to twirl) who injects himself with so much reanimating agent that he's capable of surviving catastrophic (and gory) bodily dismemberment. You can practically hear director Julius Avery cackling behind the camera every time he gets to stage some ghastly atrocity, although he's best at stretching the film's $38-million budget into something that looks like $100 million (big props to DPs Fabian Wagner and Laurie Rose and composer Jed Kurzel for adding to Overlord's deceptive scope). Here's the thing, though: if anything, it could lean into the crazy even more. Unlike, say, From Dusk Till Dawn, Overlord's Billy Ray-Mark L. Smith script doesn't offer a 50/50 split between war thriller and splatter horror. It's more like, 75% The Bridge at Remagen and 25% Re-Animator. Overlord is more comfortable as an action movie, despite the increasingly graphic supernatural happenings in the third act. Still, I guess if I want full-on Nazi-horror menace, that's what Wolfenstein is for. Overlord works more than it doesn't, and for that, I owe. I guess. Every now and then you crave fast food. Overlord serves it bloody.
Martin Liebman noted that "Avery does balance the film extraordinarily well, never at all pushing an overwhelming humor but it's clear in the subtext that the film was made with the proverbial tongue planted in the proverbial cheek. Even through the viscera and violence and violated characters and some very serious scenes of wartime action, child endangerment, and the true horrors of war, the film never feels at all serious in nature. It's built for entertainment, and it's built very well from the top down. Production design is first-rate, meshing era specifics with some ungodly practical and digital creature and gore effects. The film is nicely acted, though almost all of the characters beyond Boyce, Ford, Chloe, her brother Paul, and the Nazi Captain Wafner exist with precious little complexity; the gaggle of G.I.s are almost as faceless as the random Nazis, built only to the point that they are recognizable as 'guy with token accent' or 'photographer,' for example, characters filling shoes rather than filling integral story components."
From Lionsgate Home Entertainment is the latest iteration of the Robin Hood story. Critics have dogpiled on this new Robin Hood so hard that my vote of extremely measured praise is going to sound like a flat-out rave. Yes, the film is trying way too hard to be gritty - they sound the "this is not your father's Robin Hood" alarm way too loud, and often - and it's nowhere near as funny as it needs to be and it also just kinda stops partway through the big finale, but have you seen Ridley Scott's Robin Hood? That cynical, lumbering turd made the exact same dunderheaded moves as this one (they both end the same way - Robin shoots his own Wanted poster out of the Sheriff of Nottingham's hands) without having one exciting fight scene or semi-interesting character. I credit the new film's director, Otto Bathurst. He's been a steady hand on British television (he's helmed episodes of Peaky Blinders and Black Mirror), and he proves a surprisingly effective choice for Robin Hood's many action sequences. You could get in a twist over their lack of historical fidelity - Robin's siege in the Crusades looks like a Black Hawk Down outtake, while his time back in England owes a lot to the Assassin's Creed videogame - or you could enjoy Bathurst's choreography, which is frenetic and fluid and pleasingly crunchy. There's less cutting between coverage than you'd think, and he often lets you see Robin (the very appealing Taron Egerton, from Kingsman) firing his bow and arrow and hitting his target in the same frame. Whenever Robin is in motion, the film satisfies on a pure Sunday-morning-matinee level. I feel like if Robin Hood were 20% better, I could spend more time on its flaws. For example, that last action scene is a whiff: the end preps so hard for a sequel that will never come. Co-star Jamie Dornan is especially uninvolving, and indicative of the film's somewhat hilarious insistence on repurposing elements from the Dark Knight Trilogy. They should'a called it Robin Hood Begins: Egerton plays Robin of Locksley as Bruce Wayne (socially conscious hero who moonlights as a callow rich douche); Jamie Foxx is his Ra's Al Ghul/Lucius Fox-esque mentor; and the love triangle between Hood, Maid Marian (Eve Hewson), and Will Scarlett (Dornan) is the whole Batman / Rachel Dawes / Harvey Dent dynamic writ medieval, right down to...well, you'll be astounded at how carefully screenwriters Ben Chandler & David James Kelly were taking notes when they were watching The Dark Knight. It's one thing when Hollywood struggles to update an aging IP - those Nolan Batmans were only six years ago. And yet I was never bored watching Robin Hood; I might even watch it again, if I was stuck in a waiting room, and it was playing on TV. It's not that bad, and it's definitely not the Ridley Scott version. For some, that will be enough. It sure was for me.
Jeffrey Kauffman's Blu-ray review criticizes how the film "spends an inordinate amount of time documenting the attempts of John to help train Robin to become the vigilante the traditional legend depicts him as being, though in this case the 'rich' Robin wants to steal from is not an amorphous class, but Nottingham himself. Various machinations unfold, leading to a weird kind of ménage à trois feeling between Robin, Marian and Will. Director Otto Bathurst offers a relentlessly peripatetic camera (and editing) style, with propulsive sound effects and manic framings, but it's all built upon a rather flimsy foundation, with characters that seem neither real (despite or actually maybe because of their ostensible 'modernization') or even sympathetic. Perhaps the film's oddest aspect is its production design, though. As perhaps can be gleaned from some of the screenshots accompanying this review, costumes in particular seem weirdly contemporary… Even hairstyles seem designed to evoke a current day ethos, while other elements, like brief CGI scenes of Nottingham, seem like a steampunk take on feudalism."
Finally, Kino Video is offering a Blu-ray of John McNaughton's offbeat crime-comedy Mad Dog and Glory. So much of this film functions as a corrective to the predetermined formulas of studio filmmaking: I can't believe Universal Studios bankrolled something this quirky and idiosyncratic. Robert De Niro stars as the titular "Mad Dog," and even his name is an ironic gag - this lonely, jazz-loving Chicago cop ranks as one of De Niro's gentlest performances. But his timid nature proves unexpectedly advantageous when Mad Dog ends up humiliating himself to prevent a murder suspect from hurting anyone else, and in doing so Mad Dog saves the life of mob capo Frank Milo (Bill Murray). Frank recognizes a fellow outsider - he fancies himself a standup comic, forcing his underlings to attend his terrible open mics - so he "gifts" Mad Dog a young woman (Uma Thurman) who's deep in debt to the mob. This is a weird setup, made all the stranger by McNaughton's casting De Niro as a coward and Murray as the least intentionally funny man on the planet, but the leads are so good, and the Richard Price script so specific about their respective lives, that we're just happy to eavesdrop for a bit. No one writes cops and criminals better than Price. He nails the banal drudgery inherent to both subcultures, from the Barney Miller-esque resignation of the precinct to the dispassionately hostile vibe of Murray and his cronies. As with his scripts for Sea of Love or Clockers, Price writes cracking dialogue for even the smallest supporting parts, which means I get to split MVP between Mike Starr's fussy mob underling and David Caruso's knowingly stupid cop (Caruso gets the film's best line: "If I ever had an intelligent thought, it would die of loneliness"). What keeps Mad Dog and Glory from becoming a minor classic is, unfortunately, the Uma Thurman of it all. The setup is provocative, and Price keeps hinting that her character (the "Glory" of the title) is playing Mad Dog so he'll help free her from Frank's clutches. But at this stage in her career, Thurman was no good at playing ambiguously duplicitous. It doesn't help that when Universal saw what McNaughton and Price were getting away with, they freaked and ordered reshoots that made Glory more of an innocent and, therefore, less interesting. In fact, the whole third act plays like a push-pull between the film and the studio. We'll get some amazingly well-scripted banter between De Niro and his equally lonely neighbor (Kathy Baker, who would have deserved a Best Supporting Actress nomination had the movie given her one more significant scene to play), only to cut to De Niro and Thurman making googly eyes at each other. Murray will strike this ineffable mix of funny and scary, but then the film undercuts him by having Frank go all soft at the finale (he does get one great line, though, a resigned, "Women: Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em," as if he's the long-suffering husband on a TV sitcom). By the end, we don't know how to feel - sad that Mad Dog and Glory keeps compromising its strange integrity, or happy to cherish what strange integrity remains.