For the week of January 13th, Paramount Home Media Distribution is bringing Ang Lee's Gemini Man to Blu-ray. This sci-fi actioner isn't very good, but it's essential viewing for anyone interested in technological innovations within cinema. The film marks Ang Lee's second at-bat with High Frame Rate (HFR) 3D after his 2016 drama Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk , and the new film proves a far better marriage of form and content. Lee uses the film's globetrotting action narrative as an HFR demo reel, and the visual effect alone is often astonishing. I found myself gasping during the opening sequence, which finds Will Smith's Henry Brogan plotting an assassination from a sunny Belgian hill. Every detail is so visceral, from the way Brogan adjusts the sights on his scope to how the train seems to barrel along at the precise curve of the earth's rotation. The traditional up/down, left/right axis no longer applies. Any given shot offers you about a thousand focal points to watch, and as such we experience the events as active participants. You are literally receiving more visual information - "normal" movies play at 24 frames per second (fps), whereas most theaters that offer HFR will play Gemini Man at somewhere between 48 and 60 fps (although not at Lee's intended fps of 128, a source of no small controversy) - and so between trying to figure out what to look at and how to absorb the extra frames, I found myself straining to keep up with the film. But Lee has gotten so much better at wielding HFR since Billy Lynn. He holds shots for longer than you expect in order to give you time to acclimate to the HFR, favoring close-ups and medium shots that limit the amount of work you have to do, and he directs his actors to deliver subtler, more restrained performances than you might expect from this kind of action extravaganza. HFR can make actors look physically twitchy and amateurish if they're doing too much, so the quieter they are and the less they move, the more natural they seem. I don't think Clive Owen's impassivity has ever seemed less like an affectation than it does here, and Smith strips back all his tics and mannerisms to the barest essentials: it's the most controlled and quietly confident performance the Former Fresh Prince has ever given. And since HFR reduces motion blur and captures more information, a well-lit shot holds depth of field for literally miles. At one point, Brogan and his sidekicks (Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Benedict Wong) call a government stooge (Linda Emond) from a rooftop cafe in Budapest, and you can see our three heroes, their table, the buildings behind them, and the pedestrians crossing a bridge about a mile behind them, and all in near-perfect focus. The movie only really has two action sequences - a motorcycle chase through Cartagena and a shootout in some small Georgia town - but all these visual elements click together during the fray of battle. They're undeniably immersive, like you're playing the biggest, most expensive video game ever designed. If you had a project as weird and surreal as HFR inherently is, you might be able to create something special. The problem, of course, is that there's nothing weird or surreal about Gemini Man except the technology used to make it. What we get is a high-concept premise - Smith's assassin faces off against his own clone, who looks about twenty-five years younger than he is - done up in the most basic formula possible. This is just a straightforward programmer with no twists and baldly expositional dialogue, that does everything you expect it to and nothing you don't. I guess you could argue that for a demo reel, that's a strength. You already know where Gemini Man is going, so you can take the time to get lost in the HFR of it all. Yet I became aware of this vast gulf, that the ambition of the bleeding edge tech far exceeded that of the paint-by-numbers script. I wish Lee had gotten come to Life of Pi with this technology. That movie, as wonderful and unnerving and bizarre as it is, would have fit the actual filmmaking better than Gemini Man does, and it would have afforded Lee the chance to better invest himself in the project. The vibe I get off him in Gemini Man? Robert Zemeckis from 2004 to 2009.
Of Gemini Man, Martin Liebman noted that "Ang Lee unquestionably pushes technical boundaries but does little to push emotional buttons. The film nobly attempts to look into the heart of an assassin from two differing perspectives: a man of soul and understanding, shaped by decades of death that have slowly killed him on the inside and a younger, but deliberately bred and naive, version of himself that knows little of the true heartbeat of humanity. There's opportunity for great character conflict, study, reflection, and depth, and the film gives an honest effort to uncover and explore those qualities in several powerfully charged scenes. But the center ultimately falls a bit too flat through predictable angles and tepid emotional currents, all of which ultimately plays second to the action and third to Lee's seemingly unnecessary hyperrealism. The film actually plays better at 24 frames per second, allowing the viewer to feel more fully engaged with the story and characters under less distracting parameters, even if the filmmaking feels stilted away from its intended presentation flow and flavor."
The other big Paramount title this week? A set compiling new 4K masters of all three Beverly Hills Cop movies. I don't know if there's a franchise as reliant on the power of the Movie Star as this one is. To wit: Martin Brest's 1984 original has a reputation as a comedy classic, but this fish-out-of-water tale (Eddie Murphy's brash Detroit cop Axel Foley upends the lives of the rich and famous when he travels to Beverly Hills to investigate a murder) came together almost by accident. Sylvester Stallone was supposed to star, but he thought the movie was too silly, and so he bailed at the last minute (fun fact: he ended up spinning his vision for Beverly Hills Cop into the 1986 thriller Cobra). Casting Murphy - the fearless breakout star of both Saturday Night Live and 48 Hrs. - was a Hail Mary if I've ever seen one, but the switch secured the film's placement in the canon. With little more than his charm and expert timing (Murphy allegedly improvised his way through Daniel Petrie Jr.'s Oscar-nominated script), Murphy transformed a safe cop procedural into a farce that felt transgressive and even a little dangerous. Audiences got to watch this hip, young, black detective pull one over on his stuffy white handlers (the very funny pairing of John Ashton and Judge Reinhold) and defeat the bad guy (a smarmy Steven Berkoff), and all without breaking a sweat. Even adjusted for inflation, the film is still one of the ten highest-grossing R-rated movies of all time. Of course we were going to get a sequel, yet the 1987 follow-up is striking for how tonally dissimilar it is from its predecessor. Without tweaking the format all that much (after one of his Beverly Hills cop buddies is almost killed, Foley heads back to the West Coast to solve the crime), Beverly Hills Cop 2 plays as a far more violent picture. A lot of that, we can attribute to director Tony Scott, who bathes the film in the kinds of lurid textures and bloody shootouts he'd give True Romance or Enemy of the State, but he's just following Murphy's lead. By '87, Murphy wanted people to take him seriously as a leading man, and films like this, Harlem Nights, and Another 48 Hrs. seem almost perversely calculated to tamp down his iconic comic energy. Not for nothing, but Judge Reinhold gives the funniest performance in Cop 2 by a mile. By the time we get to Beverly Hills Cop 3 in 1994, Murphy was feeling worn down by a string of high-profile flops (Harlem Nights, Another 48 Hrs., and The Distinguished Gentleman all tanked at the box office), and the movie shares his defeated mien. It's simultaneously high-concept and low-wattage: for reasons I'll never fully understand, Foley tries to uncover a conspiracy at the heart of a Disneyland-esque theme park called Wonder World, except Murphy can't be bothered to care, so we don't either. Director John Landis has said that while Murphy wasn't unpleasant to work with, he just didn't want to be funny. Now that Murphy seems invigorated by the success of his Netflix Original Dolemite Is My Name, I'd love to see him take one final crack at this franchise. I want a fully engaged Axel Foley again.
Martin Liebman praised the films themselves, but of this new set, he wrote that "while each film looks terrific and the second and third sound wonderful, Paramount's decision to release the films to Blu-ray only rather than add a 4K UHD/Dolby Vision option is disappointing to say the least. Also disappointing is the absence of supplemental content for the second and third films. But for fans only concerned with owning the films with first-rate picture and sound, this Blu-ray set does not disappoint, and it's priced right, too. Highly recommended."
From Walt Disney Home Entertainment comes the fantasy sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. As far as attempts to exploit Disney's own IP go, the 2014 Maleficent isn't half bad. Yes, the Sleeping Beauty prequel/redo doesn't feel all that essential, but Angelina Jolie is phenomenal as the title character, and the film manages to smuggle a potent rape/trauma undercurrent into all the fantasy world-building (basically, Maleficent is drugged and assaulted in a manner that plays like a date-rape nightmare). You could do a lot worse, and I'd say the same about Mistress of Evil. It's slight, but it moves quickly and gives Jolie all sorts of opportunities vamp it up. This time around, she and her ward Aurora (Elle Fanning) have brought peace to the enchanted land of the Moors, but trouble comes in the form of Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson, blandly replacing the almost-as-bland Brenton Thwaites), who wants to marry Aurora. Maleficent couldn't be less thrilled, and the movie is at its best when it's functioning as a light comedy of manners: Jolie delights in transitioning her character from peevish rage to forced support of the engagement, particularly during a very funny scene where she has to practice small talk and happy facial expressions so as to not horrify the groom's family. Her apprehension leads to Mistress of Evil signature setpiece, an uncomfortable dinner sequence where Maleficent tries - and fails - to make nice with Phillip's father (Robert Lindsay) and mother (the great Michelle Pfeiffer, and more on her in a minute). This sequence could be Meet the Parents with magic - it made me yearn for a entire movie of Maleficent bungling basic social interactions. Alas, the film itself has more pedestrian narrative aims. It may not surprise you to learn that Phillip's mom is not exactly on the level (light spoiler: the "Mistress of Evil" subtitle doesn't refer to Maleficent), and that she may be plotting horrible retribution against Maleficent and Aurora's woodland community. So, too, does this revelation lead to Maleficent's discovery of her own lineage, as well as a final battle sequence that's too busy by half in terms of all the frenetic CGI explosions. But busy and familiar aren't the same as bad, and the film still held my interest even as it downshifted into more familiar terrain. Jolie deserves a big portion of the credit, but so does Pfeiffer, who sneers and cackles her way through otherwise rote Big Bad dynamics. Without resorting to prosthetics or digital makeup, she uses that same cracked charm that made her Catwoman so indelible to suggest deep wells of madness and revenge. I'll take a good Michelle Pfeiffer performance anywhere I can find it, and she is very good here.
Martin Liebman wrote that the film "more often than not works at its core, away from the visual effects, though the film admittedly tries too hard, at times, to be everything for everyone rather than fully satisfy its most fundamental needs. At that sort-of focused center is the story of Philip and Aurora's engagement and the family dynamics involved with introducing a Fey Godmother to a human mother-in-law with a chip the size of a kingdom on her shoulder. On a deeper level, the film delves into Maleficent's origins and attempts to explain both her powers and her reputation in the human realm where she is reviled despite being the one to break Aurora's curse. The film is very well made, even if it's far too frequently dependent on cutesy visuals, and triumphs as a story of love against hate and identity beyond preconceptions. But it also, at times, plays like an unnecessary epilogue to a story that was heretofore complete."
Finally, Disney is also offering a 4K upgrade of its hit live-action Jungle Book remake. I suppose "live-action" might be a tad imprecise when describing this family-friendly adventure. Most of the time, star Neel Sethi (who plays young Mowgli) is the only real thing on screen; director Jon Favreau approached this feature much like Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, shooting the entire film in a studio (in downtown L.A., as opposed to the jungles of India) and digitally generating all the environments and non-Mowgli characters. It's always a risk when you resort to this CGI gambit. As visually accomplished as, say, Sin City is, you're always aware you're watching a recreation of something, and that knowledge can act as a barrier between story and viewer. Not so with The Jungle Book. Favreau's digital world is one of the most persuasive digital "realities" I've ever seen, with Sethi integrated perfectly alongside his animated counterparts. We never doubt the reality of this world, and it's surprising how invested we get in the narrative even though it's all an illusion. But going back to the first Iron Man or even Zathura, Favreau has always been a canny manipulator of VFX: he knows he needs to sell you on the weight and reality of it, and his biggest coup here is his incredible voice cast. It's a series of no-brainers. Ben Kingsley as the noble, compassionate panther Bagheera. Idris Elba as the villainous tiger Shere Khan. Scarlett Johansson as the serpentine seductress Kaa. Christopher Walken, putting all his Walken-isms into the delightfully weird King Louie. Best of all, Bill Murray as Baloo, which is a powerful an illustration of the "born to play this part" argument as I've ever seen. To some extent, Favreau is relying on typecasting, but in the best sense: he uses our associations with these actors to fill in the gaps in their artificial counterparts. And that's not the only positive about The Jungle Book. The film even softens much of the unpleasant colonialism that plagued Rudyard Kipling's source material AND the 1967 Disney original. However, for all its strengths - and they are many - watching The Jungle Book feels slightly hollow, and for the most unavoidable of reasons: the limitations of home media. In theaters, this picture offered a transcendent experience - Favreau has created an immersive experience that holds up under scrutiny of both the big-screen and the 3D technology, the latter of which was as indelible as James Cameron's groundbreaking work in Avatar. But at home, without the benefits of a forty-foot screen and 3D, The Jungle Book can't help but seem slight by comparison, a tech demo reel without the tech. It's still watchable. It's still accomplished. But it's just not as grand.