For the week of July 15th, Warner Home Entertainment is bringing Shazam to Blu-ray. Shazam (I'm not writing the exclamation mark) is one of the cheapest-looking superhero blockbusters of recent years. The flying special effects look more rudimentary than the ones in Man of Steel , which came out six years ago, and it does not help that to save money, the very talented DP Maxime Alexandre (he lensed High Tension and the The Hills Have Eyes remake) had to shoot on unrefined digital, giving the whole film this smeary texture. And as much crap as we give the MCU for its villain problem, the Big Bad here is the human equivalent of the Men in Black Trilogy neuralizer effect. I like Mark Strong, but someone should notify him that when he plays colorless heavies, it's only marginally less soporific than extended ASMR sessions. That's the bad news. The good news is, even with its faults, Shazam is the best, most enjoyable DC adventure since the Nolan Dark Knights. It's certainly the only one I've liked without reservations. Many will tell you that the reason Shazam works is because it thinks small. That's certainly part of it - while Strong's Dr. Sivana wants world domination, most of the film plays like Big with superpowers. Young foster kid Billy Batson (Asher Angel, quite good) gets cursed with fantastic powers and the ability to instantly turn into a muscled adult hunk, and what does he spend a disproportionate amount of time doing? Sneaking into strip clubs and trying to become a YouTube star. His lack of ambition is refreshing, especially after half a decade's worth of nonsense about Mother Boxes and Atlantis and Gods Who Bleed. So, too, do I appreciate the film's warm approach to invented family, what with its full-throated love of the foster system and the kindly misfits (Marta Milans, Cooper Andrews, Ian Chen, Grace Fulton, Jovan Armand, Faithe Herman, and It's Jack Dylan Grazer) surrounding Billy. But ultimately, Shazam succeeds for the same exact reason so many of the MCU features have: central casting. As Batson's adult form, Zachary Levi gives one of the most enjoyable superhero performances that I've ever seen. Think Christopher Reeve in Superman or Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man. That's how instantly Levi embodies the character. His Shazam is so infectiously goofy that you're delighted watching this muscle-bound god stammer with a complete and total lack of chill. He has a scene where he pretends to be Grazer's dad that's as funny as anything I've seen this year - he wears a comically oversized trenchcoat and babbles about getting hung up at "the business...office." I never watched Chuck; if Levi is as good there as he is here, I might have to start. And fundamentally, that kind of star power is enough. I like other things about the film, sure. Director David Sandberg is able to flex his Lights Out and Annabelle: Creation muscles in ways I wasn't expecting, and the third act builds to a joyful twist that, frankly, I didn't see coming (let's just say that Shazam has cancelled any need for another Justice League movie). But we go to these kinds of movies to see people like Zachary Levi become moviestars in real time.
Randy Miller III noted in hisShazam Blu-ray review that the film "feels like even more than the sum of its surprisingly modest parts. This film represents a clear improvement from last year's Aquaman , which similarly attempted to revitalize an almost 80-year-old character that hadn't been cool in decades, while avoiding some of the pitfalls that film sank into. Shazam feels lightweight instead of plodding, self-aware instead of pandering, and genuinely fun and exciting instead of occasionally enjoyable. Neither is it stuffed with too many supporting characters or overcooked, exhausting CGI effects, and it even manages to successfully shift its tone a few times. In fact, the only obvious problem here - aside from several jokes that don't land, as well as a few very small and very awkward supporting performances - is that Shazam feels somewhat hampered by its own backstory. I'm not implying that the creative team should have jettisoned the superhero's origin completely, but almost every visit to the wizard's domain seems to have slightly less impact than the last. Still, these are minor complaints…There are more action-packed superhero movies out there, and even some with more interesting characters, but Shazam's heart and charm are what ultimately sold me on a character I never really cared about before watching it."
Speaking of stars: watch Moon, which Sony is giving a 4K remaster, and see Sam Rockwell take his place among the most exciting actors working today. Prior to Moon, Rockwell had a reputation as a character actor's character actor: occasionally, he'd shine as the lead in an indie like Snow Angels or Safe Men, but more often than not, he seemed content to poach screen time from the sidelines with vivid supporting work in films like Galaxy Quest or The Green Mile. But Moon changed the public perception about him. As Sam Bell, a space miner working on the surface of the moon, Rockwell treats the film like his own private one-man show. He dreams of Earth and the wife he left back at home. He tries to stave off boredom in between shifts, bantering with the mining station's on-board A.I. (voiced by a cancelled Academy Award winner who, after being tried with sexual assault last year, tried to play damage control in the most off-putting fashion possible) and exercising to stay sharp. And he counts off the days until he gets to return home, only to find...well, let's just say he faces some complications he never imagined. Look, I know Moon is a decade old, and you probably already know what happens, but I don't want to risk spoiling the surprises that pop up, especially in terms of how they galvanize Rockwell's already-sterling work. If anything, his work gets richer - Rockwell reveals hidden depths and reservoirs of humor - the more technically complicated the performance becomes. That Moon satisfies as a micro-budget sci-fi also speaks to director Duncan Jones's facility behind the camera. Jones has copped to the biggest references powering the film (the mining colony comes from Outland; the lone spaceman from Silent Running; the vaguely sinister A.I. from 2001: A Space Odyssey), yet he uses them in a manner that feels wholly intimate and original. To date, Jones hasn't equaled Moon. But you remember Rockwell, and well you should. After he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, a lot of folks speculated that the award was his belated prize for his Moon turn. Rewatching the film ten years later, that argument feels all the more sound.
In his Blu-ray review, Martin Liebman wrote that the film "is one of the great Science Fiction films of the 21st century and it has received a top-flight UHD release from Sony. With top-tier picture and sound and several new supplements this is a must-buy and one of the year's finest UHD releases that earns my highest recommendation."
Finally, the Criterion Collection is giving Alan J. Pakula's dark character study Klute a Blu-ray showing. The film, which is the first entry in Pakula's unofficial '70s "Paranoid Trilogy" (it's this, The Parallax View, and All the President's Men), has always been a little misleading. See, the title refers to Detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland), a Pennsylvania cop searching for a missing person, and so naturally, you might assume the film focuses on Klute's investigation. It's a fair assumption. Sutherland gets top billing (and is largely terrific), and his pursuit to Manhattan forms the film's narrative spine. But in a lot of ways, Klute, his case, the whole plot mechanism: they're all just part of a larger MacGuffin. What really matters is Jane Fonda's steely sex work Bree Daniels. As far as the film's thriller aspects go, she's implicated in some obscene letters connected to Klute's search, but Bree is far too prickly and unpredictable to serve basic genre requirements. Fonda keeps layering in unforeseen depths: Bree's attachment-reactive disorders, her need for performance, the ways she simultaneously attracts and deflects (and somehow in the same space). In the film's most bracing formalist element, Pakula will puncture the mystery (which, somewhat dispiritingly, turns Bree into a love interest for Klute and a damsel-in-distress) with these psychiatric interludes - we see Bree in therapy, analyzing the facets of her personality that unsettle her the most - and these moments have a vérité immediacy more in line with Scenes from a Marriage or the late, great HBO series In Treatment than with a B-movie programmer. Steven Soderbergh has long been one of Pakula's most devoted acolytes (he covered All the President's Men for the New York Times' great "Watching Movies" series), and you sense that something like The Girlfriend Experience grew directly from watching Bree try to better understand herself. She makes Klute a singular experience, title be dammed.
Svet Atanasov wrote that "the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the engineer is essentially a smart ruse that forces the audience to examine the evolving nature of Klute's relationship with the call girl from different angles and then begin contemplating entirely different themes and issues. For example, initially she manipulates Klute just as she does her clients, but then begins to question her 'performance' and with it the identity of the modern woman she aspires to be. There is plenty of food for thought here. One of the most interesting revelations is that her independence is just another gig, so when there is no one around her she no longer acts her part and reveals her true self. Klute of course is in the opposite corner, rationalizing his existence in an entirely different manner. Even though he isn't particularly good at what he gets paid to do he is a pragmatic thinker who sees everything that occurs around him as an ongoing cycle of action and reaction, which is why his mind is constantly searching to identify the correct logic that makes everything easier to deconstruct. This process, however, requires a lot of acting as well, so even though Klute emerges from a different environment at the end he is also profiled as a social performer juggling multiple personalities."