Bird People (2014/MPI/Sundance Selects DVD)/Fury (2014/Sony DVD)/The Judge (2014/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD)/Starred Up (2013/Tribeca/Cinedigm DVD)

Picture: C+/C+/B & C+/C+ Sound: C+/C+/B & B-/C+ Extras: C-/C-/B-/C- Films: C/C+/B-/C

Here are some recent dramas going for serious issues...

Pascale Ferran's Bird People (2014) has Josh Charles as a man working for a big corporation, in Paris and about to head to the Middle East when he decides to just quit his job. Why? The film wants to be a profound character study and has the actors in Charles, Anais Demoustier as a maid always showing up at the oddest times, Camelia Jordana, Roschoy Zem, Clark Johnson and Radha Mitchell, but the script is a little lacking in character development, so the long 128 minutes get longer with various lingering camera shots that eat up time needed for exposition.

Some shots are nice, but we needed much more story here and then it all ends. It may not be a bird-brained exercise, but lacks the wings to really take off.

An Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.

David Ayer's Fury (2014) has Brad Pitt leading in yet another military film, this time about the title tank dealing with drama as WWII starts to come to its explosive end facing the last resistance of Nazis in this case with limited resources. It becomes an 'ark' film (the characters are in one place on a journey) as well as a 'stuck-in-a' film when they are IN the tank, which happens to offer some of the better moments in this 135 minutes attempt at an important war genre film.

On the down side are too many cliches (the young new crew member is a naïve virgin easily toyed with, scenes of which go on too long too often to the detriment of exposition, for example), the violence is all over the place (though it has a phony digital look which makes it look more like a video game than war film) and sometimes the makers just try too hard. Logan Lerman, Jason Issacs, Jon Bernthal, Michael Pena, Scott Eastwood and a Shia LeBeouf who actually shows up to give an acting performance for a change are a plus, but more originality was needed and this might not be the best possible edit of what was released. Now you can see for yourself, but nice try either way.

A behind the scenes featurette called Blood Brothers is the only extra, though the Blu-ray offers 50 minutes of more material including extra scenes. Bet they could have helped this out by at least some of them staying in the picture.

David Dobkin's The Judge (2014) is an ambitious drama about a slick lawyer (Robert Downey, Jr.) going back home when his mother passes away, but he is on the outs with his father (the mighty Robert Duvall, rightly getting a Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination for his work here) who is a strict parent and a very respected local judge. This also means dealing with the past, old wounds, more pain of his soon-to-be divorce and seeing his brothers (Jeremy Strong and Vincent D'Onofrio) again in person.

The script tries a circular narrative structure where subplots pop up when the writers think the audience might be getting bored or taking in too much of the main storyline, but that makes it a little formulaic and when the judge/father gets into trouble, the side stories seem a little more superfluous and ring falser. Still, Duvall outacts almost everyone (which says something in a cast this good) also including Vera Farmiga, Dax Shepard, Ken Howard, Balthazar Getty, Leighton Meester, David Krumholtz, Grace Zabriskie and Billy Bob Thornton as a formidable prosecuting attorney (pairing again with Duvall after Jayne Mansfield's Car).

To the makers' credit, this is an ambitious drama (with a surprisingly low budget these days) that rightly attracted some of the best talent in the business, but the script and director could not quite pull it off. Still, there are enough good moments and performances here that make this one worth a good look and Duvall alone was good enough for me to want to see it. Yes, he's still got it!

Extras include Digital HD Ultraviolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes capable devices, while both disc versions add the amusing Getting Deep With Dax Shepard featurette where he jokes around with several cast members, while the Blu-ray exclusively adds a feature length audio commentary track by Dobkin, Deleted Scenes and a Making Of The Judge featurette.

David Mackenzie's Starred Up (2013) is another British prison drama, this time about a young man (Jack O'Connell of Harry Brown) who is such trouble, he is moved from a lesser prison for teens to an adult one where his father (Ben Mendelsohn of Dark Knight Rises, The New World and Killing Them Softly) also happens to be and to say they have no relationship is an understatement. This is tighter than the other films here at only 106 minutes, yet it also had too many cliches, dull moments and noting much new to say in what we could refer to as an occasional genre.

To its credit, it is more blunt and brutal than most such U.S. film and TV productions, yet it never stuck with me and had more than its share of predictability. It is also less naturalistic than the likes of Michael Winterbottom's Everyday (2012, reviewed elsewhere on this site) and the realism is usually convincing. Rupert Friend leads a solid supporting cast and I just wished this worked better.

A Behind The Scenes featurette is the only extra.

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on the Judge Blu-ray is pretty consistent and good-looking throughout shot on 35mm Kodak Vision 3 T-grain negative film stocks in the 3-perf Super 35 format by no less than Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski, a veteran of Spielberg's serious period starting with Schindler's List resulting on one of the best-looking films of the year. The anamorphically enhanced DVD is a bit soft at times and no match for the Blu-ray, but is equalled by solid, anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Fury and Up, plus the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on People, which I bet would all improve nicely on Blu-ray.

As doe sound, the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on the Judge Blu-ray is well mixed and presented, even impressing in its quiet and refined moments, which survives somewhat in its lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 DVD version to the point that even the DVD outdoes the lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on the other 3 DVD releases which all are well recorded enough if not spectacularly so. Again, I bet lossless versions would reveal more detail, warmth and maybe even depth.

- Nicholas Sheffo