For the week of August 10th, MVD Visual is bringing the cable-TV favorite Split Second to Blu-ray. The only realm where Split Second ever had a chance was on television. A sci-fi-action-horror-thriller about two cops (Rutger Hauer and Alastair Duncan) hunting a serial killer that...might not be human, the film constantly betrays its loftier ambitions on a big screen. It was a cheap, fast production (seven million bucks; shot in eight weeks), and you feel that lack of resources in the grungy-but-indistinct production design (the major suspense sequences look like they were shot in a sewer or abandoned shanty with as little lighting as possible), in the abbreviated runtime (90 minutes including credits), and especially in the special effects. Apparently the production was such a mess (constant rewriting and infighting, which led to director Tony Maylam walking off the film before shooting the third act) that no one really decided on what the killer should look like until almost the last minute, and it shows (a little Xenomorph, a little Venom, a little Cenobite, and kept off screen for as long as possible). I'm not surprised the movie underperformed in theaters. But it played forever on HBO and Cinemax, and all because of the power of diminished expectations. A 40-foot screen only magnifies the movie's flaws; on a Sony box TV at 11:30 PM, however, Split Second proves uncommonly diverting. Its budgetary shortcomings? They start seeming more like clever dodges, like what a few enterprising kids might do to give their homemade movie a little added scope. Its tonal swings? They're charming on TV, almost as if the movie is trying to give you a full course meal - I don't even mind the detours into buddy-cop (Duncan is acting like the best friend on a goofy cop procedural) and romance (courtesy of Kim Cattrall) territories. Furthermore, the one objectively impressive part of the film is even more striking on TV. To wit: the Rutger Hauer star turn could have netted him a whole franchise if the movie took off at the box office, and Hauer seems even more iconic when he's overwhelming a 1.33:1, 20-inch screen. A lot of folks like me subsisted off a pretty steady diet of Split Seconds when we were young. I suspect this Blu-ray will cause all that to rush back.
From Warner Archive comes the fantasy-comedy Michael. Anyone following along with the great podcast Blank Check with Griffin and David knows that the show just finished a miniseries on the films of Nora Ephron. If you've been following along, then this this Blu-ray is a little late coming, but it still makes for a bizarre entrance into Ephron's work. In films like Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Julie & Julia, or her underrated family dramedy This Is My Life, Ephron established herself as a master of a very particular brand of witty, urbane comedy. Think Woody Allen without the misogyny or self-loathing, and you'll have a sense of what makes Ephron so special. But in between those wonderful pictures, Ephron had a yen for cranking out tonally confused fiascos. The 1994 suicide farce Mixed Nuts. The wannabe Coen Brothers crime-comedy Lucky Numbers. The freaking Bewitched movie, which features the most egregious case of miscasting since Sofia Coppola in The Godfather: Part III (I'm speaking, of course, of Will Ferrell, who has never been more out to sea in a leading role). And even though Michael quietly earned over $100 million at the box office, it's just as odd and misguided as those other stinkers. Ephron began her career as a famous newspaper columnist, so who better to satirize the world of tabloid journalism, and what happens when two down-on-their-luck reporters (William Hurt and Robert Pastorelli) find themselves interviewing an honest-to-goodness angel (John Travolta)? All the pieces are in play for a biting look at media cynicism...but my oh my, does Michael have other plans. For one, you would never guess Nora Ephron was a seminal figure in popular journalism from watching the film. There's zero specificity to her tabloid scenes, just a lot of hammy overacting (especially from Bob Hoskins as the newspaper's owner) and a weird amount of significance placed on a cute dog (see, Hoskins hates Pastorelli, but this dog that is the centerpiece of many stories loves Pastorelli, so Hoskins is hoping to lure away the dog so he can fire the man). And then, once our heroes (plus Andie McDowell's shifty "angel expert") meet the title character, the film shifts gears into a zero-stakes road movie, and one where Michael tries to have sex with every woman in sight while gorging himself on sugar and forging a love connection between Hurt and McDowell. This last particular is especially galling, given that Hurt brings a dead-eyed coldness that's anathema to what should be frothy romantic chemistry. Everything concludes in an ending that's both two sappy and two tricksy for its own good (suffice to say, in this realm, the problems of two people really do amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world), and for what? So Ephron can coast on Travolta's easy charm with zero higher purpose? So she can shoot the proceedings in a bleak, boiled-grey palette more befitting The Road? So we learn a lesson about, I dunno, dogs being nice and love conquering all? Just a weird, weird movie.
Just as strange is Kino's release of Diva, but here's the thing: there's weird-bad (Michael) and weird-good, and Diva definitely falls in the latter category. I am going to try and explain the plot of Diva without sounding like a crazy person. (Spoilers: I will not succeed.) The opera-obsessed Jules (Frédéric Andréi) makes a bootleg recording of soprano Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez, the "Diva" of the title), but before he really has time to savor it, he gets thrust into a world of blackmail, corrupt cops, brutal killers (including Jean-Pierre Jeunet favorite Dominique Pinon), philosophical hipsters (Richard Bohringer's Gorodish), and teenage shoplifters (Thuy An Luu), and all while Jules becomes an unlikely romantic foil to Cynthia for reasons? I watch this movie about once a year, and still I would fail a test on why what happens happens or how it all connects or even how it ends. The film's narrative logic is so elastic that it feels like it's making itself up as it goes along. Yet Diva is truly a film where the what of it all matters so much less than the how: how filmmaker Jean-Jacques Beineix transforms a whole load of pulp nonsense into one of the most diverting sensual experiences I've ever had at the movies. Like Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, this is less a movie than it is a collection of surfaces, of textures, of sounds, of references to other movies. Beineix only cares about getting you high off the experience. If he can't be bothered to put it all together, then why should you? And that blithe energy carries the whole film along. It helps, too, that unlike Godard, Beineix is less interested in some kind of postmodern deconstruction. Yes, he's messing with you, but he also wants to make something you're going to enjoy, so he stuffs the proceedings with comedy and action, not least of which is the thrilling chase sequences that finds Jules fleeing the cops on his scooter through the Parisian subway system. You watch Diva, and you immediately understand why it became an international sensation. It's one of the great movie-movies, and as thrilling a statement of purpose as I've ever seen from a first-time filmmaker.