For the week of March 23rd, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing Sam Mendes' Oscar-winning 1917 to Blu-ray. There is a lot to respect about this WWI saga, which follows two British soldiers (Dean-Charles Chapman and a very good George MacKay) as they traverse No Man's Land and the French countryside in order to prevent a doomed assault on the German line. Mendes has picked up a lot of technical acumen working on two James Bond thrillers (as fraught as both the Skyfall and Spectre production schedules were), and he lends this rather modest thriller (it clocks in at under two hours) epic scale. Working with the great production designer Dennis Gassner (Blade Runner 2049, Road to Perdition), Mendes conjures a vision of the Northern-French front that's almost mythic in its opening brutality: a late-film setpiece through a bombed-out French village recalls The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as art-directed by Pieter Brueghel, maybe. But ultimately, the film's most innovative creative choice is also its most deleterious. See, Mendes and his old Jarhead / Skyfall collaborator Roger Deakins have chosen to present this story as largely one continuous camera take (well, technically, it's two, given that one of the characters gets knocked out and takes the film with him, and even more technically, both of those takes consist of seamlessly-stitched-together smaller takes, but I don't want to be pedantic). In theory, I get the instinct. As Brian De Palma once said of his own sinuous one-ers, every time you cut, you release some tension, so locking viewers into 1917's grueling war odyssey should engender in us the same panic that its increasingly desperate protagonists feel, right? And at times, you key into the exact visceral charge that Mendes and Deakins want to convey - a claustrophobic trek through the German trenches, or the horrifying interlude that captures one character's final moments - with wrenching precision. Yet these moments are few and far between. More often than not, 1917 can play like the best-looking, most expensive cutscene reel from Call of Duty. As anyone who's ever sat shotgun next to another person who's hogging a video game can tell you, no matter how nice the graphics are, you get a little bored watching someone else have all the fun. This film is a technical exercise and little more. For all the formal skill on display, it's hard to connect with the characters, who are largely personality-free avatars. Furthermore, the one-take conceit reveals its limitations. Yes, it can be exciting to watch the action/suspense sequences play out in real time, but all of the exposition or transitions in between drag. In particular, a long, dull sequence in the back of a British patrol van goes on forever because Mendes can't rely on a cut to pace things up. Had he followed the lead of someone like Alfonso Cuarón in the great Children of Men (so, letting the action unfold in long takes and then resorting to traditional editorial coverage for the in-between moments), Mendes might have really had something, but as is, the thuddingly technical monotony of 1917 just wears on you, and not in a good way.
Martin Liebman had a far more positive take on the film, writing that "Mendes and Deakins build the movie with unprecedented fluidity. The first, and only, obvious "cut" comes 66 minutes into the movie during a key transitional period that advances time several hours. It's the only respite from the illusion of an otherwise continuous take that is truly seamless, both from photographical and performance perspectives. George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman are excellent in the leads, never breaking the illusion as they work through extended stretches and perform seamlessly with the technical side of things. But 1917 never feels like it's about its technical merits, as splendid and noteworthy as they may be. For such a complex undertaking, the story is incredibly simple and straightforward and, eventually, asks its audience to experience the journey as much, if not more, through the psychological perspective as the physical perspective. And that is why it works. Certainly the production design, the photographic composition, the action, and the acting are world-class, but it's that intimacy of narrative and the essential human emotions that drive the movie to success well beyond the other components that would only support, not lead, when in lesser hands and with lesser material."
From Sony Picture Home Entertainment comes a new pressing of Gillian Armstrong's 1994 Little Women adaptation; the film was initially only part of Sony's "Choice Collection" edition, but the upcoming home-media release of Greta Gerwig's recent Oscar winner means that corporate synergy wins the day, and so Armstrong's take gets a more widely available version. In this case, that's a good thing. Despite the preponderance of Little Women book-to-film translations (at least nine, including one lost silent version and two separate ones released in 2018!), the '94 iteration holds a special appeal for many viewers. Some of that is nostalgia - a whole generation of fans grew up on this copy, which was a perennial VHS favorite in millennial sleepovers and birthday parties. But credit to Armstrong and her screenwriter Robin Swicord: together, they made an iconic Hollywood melodrama, one that uses the contours of Louisa May Alcott's source material (we spend a few years in the life of the March family, paying particular attention to sisters Jo, Amy, Meg, and Beth) for something empathetic, glamorous, and deeply emotional. It's easy to get invested in headstrong writer Jo (Winona Ryder, who doesn't get enough credit for how good she is here - it's a 180-degree shift from her iconic Heathers and Beetlejuice characters), impetuous wild child Amy (played by Kirsten Dunst as a child and then Samantha Mathis as an adult), practical matron Meg (Trini Alvarado), and kind Beth (Claire Danes), the latter of whom is responsible for the film's most aggressive - and effective - tear-jerking moments. Like the best melodramas, their heartaches and triumphs become ours, and I can't think of a better example that straddles both than the sort-of love triangle that emerges between Jo, Amy, and childhood friend Laurie (Christian Bale). Even though this subplot plays out fairly closely to how Alcott wrote it, I defy you to find a Little Women fan who doesn't have the ironclad belief that Jo should have ended up with Laurie. Again, I credit the film's sheer professionalism and skill, and though I think I prefer the Gerwig version for its screwball-lightness and structural experimentations, I can't deny the power of the Armstrong version. Highly recommend.
I like a good, junky B-movie as much as the next person, and so Ant Timpson's twisty Come to Daddy (which arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Home Entertainment) proved not unenjoyable fare over an evening of civically mandated social distancing. Timpson, you may be aware, is a New Zealand filmmaker best known for producing the likes of The Greasy Strangler and The ABCs of Death, yet as extreme as those features often are, what initially distinguishes Come to Daddy is its restraint. At times, writer Toby Harvard's script feels like a expanded, two-character stage play. We open just as Norval Greenwood (Elijah Wood) has arrived at his (long-estranged) father Brian's secluded Pacific Northwestern estate, clutching a letter that promises a reconciliation between parent and child. Except his dad (Stephen McHattie, who's just great) barely seems to recognize Norval. Or the letter. And over the course of a few hours, Brian grows increasingly hostile towards his son, acting out in ways that are far odder than the film's horror-themed trailer might suggest. In fact, I'd hesitate to call Come to Daddy a horror film at all; the battle of wills between Norval and his dad shares a lot of tonal similarities with the strange, Beckett-infused weirdness of something like The Lighthouse. For one, Brian spends most of the film's first half in varying degrees of inebriation, and he's quick to taunt Norval for not imbibing himself, even though his son is in recovery after a failed suicide attempt. But like Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse, Norval is not some dewy-eyed audience surrogate. Furthering his post-Lord of the Rings mission to play as many weirdoes and scumbums as possible, Wood gives Norval a host of off-putting affectations, including a loathsome little haircut and mustache combo, a reliance on shallow designer fashion (at one point, he sneers that he has a gold iPhone "designed by Lorde"), and an almost pathological need to assert his music-industry bonafides. In the film's best scene, Norval sets off Brian after bragging about Elton John and Kendrick Lamar being among "his closest allies," and the wilier-than-he-looks father figure goes about dismantling his son's over-inflated sense of self. It's a lot of fun, and it builds to a development just at the halfway mark that blindsided me...except Come to Daddy can't maintain its weird energy over the back end. There's still a lot to like. If the film began as a Lighthouse riff, it ends as Coen Brothers fanfic, in a way, and Wood does such a great job of maintaining just enough of our sympathies without softening Norval's irritating tics. I just wish Timpson had been able to sustain that note of bizarre lunacy without descending into bloody violence and truly disgusting scatology (let's just say that the title also functions as a vile double entendre). Still, Come to Daddy will maintain your interests, and in these troubled times, maybe that's more than enough.