Alice
(1990/Woody Allen/Orion/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition
Blu-ray)/American Made 4K
(2017/Universal 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray)/Cannonball
Run II (1984/Umbrella
Region Free Import Blu-ray)/Doc
Hollywood (1991/Warner
Archive Blu-ray)/The
Hospital (1971/United
Artists/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: A- Picture: B/B+/B-/B/B Sound: B-/A/C+/B/C+
Extras: C+/C+/D/C-/C+ Films: B-/C+/C-/B/B
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Alice
and The
Hospital
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time,
are limited to only 3,000 copies each and can be ordered while
supplies last, while the Doc
Hollywood
Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Comedies
can range from the totally idiotic to very dark, as these new
releases show...
Woody
Allen's Alice
(1990) is another of his Mia Farrow films, so you always watch them
knowing how badly things ended and still so with her son helping to
break open the series of sexual harassment scandals going on now, but
before, they made some good films. Farrow is the title character, a
married writer how is unhappy. Her husband (William Hurt) is not a
bad guy, but she finds another guy (Joe Mantegna) more exciting, has
an editor (Cybill Shepherd) who may or may not be a help, so she goes
for help to a special kind of doctor (Keye Luke) more into hypnotism
and herbs than the usual medicine.
This
is one of the latter films Allen made at Orion Pictures before the
mini-major studio sadly collapsed and folded. The film becomes more
surreal when the comedy gets sillier including a visit from her muse
(Bernadette Peters) and a former lover as a ghostly figure (Alec
Baldwin), along with funny, off-kilter visual moments, Blythe Danner
as her sister and great turns by Judy Davis and Gwen Verdon, et al.
The film could be seen as Annie
Hall-lite
or a more intellectual variant of Hall on a smaller scale, though
Allen does not show up in the film.
It
reminds me that Allen and Farrow actually had chemistry that worked
while their relationship lasted and though it is over in the worst
way, some good films were made. MGM, who now owns the later Orion
catalog, has allowed this to be yet another Twilight Time Limited
Edition Blu-ray, of which in Allen's case, we have now covered over a
dozen.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image was lensed once again by
Carlo Di Palma, A.I.C., who was able to deliver amazing shots for
Allen and they were a great team together. This transfer shows how
good this is and even when some visual effects have dated, that only
makes the film funnier. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is one of the rare
films in mono recorded and issued in Dolby's more advance SR
(Spectral Recording) analog noise reduction system and the clarity
here is impressive. Stanley Kubrick first employed older Dolby noise
reduction on A
Clockwork Orange,
the first film to use Dolby of any kind, though the film was
monophonic. In his final films at Orion, a studio that was very high
on the SR process, Allen become the first artist to use SR for
monophonic sound... and the last/.
Extras
include another nicely illustrated booklet on the film including
informative text and yet another excellent, underrated essay by the
great film scholar Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-ray adds an Isolated
Music Score with select Sound Effects and Original Theatrical
Trailer, which is about all the Allen films have been getting. Get
it for the isolate music if nothing else!
Tom
Cruise and Director Doug Liman (The
Bourne Identity)
team up again for American
Made
(2017), which is far different than the sci-fi extravaganza The
Edge of Tomorrow
(also known as Live,
Die, Repeat,
that they both made a few years back and which is reviewed elsewhere
on this site) expanding on a real life figure who also turned up a
few brief times in the great Narcos
TV series' first two seasons. American
Made
also stars the gorgeous Sarah Wright, Domhnall Gleeson, Jayma Mays,
and Connor Trinneer. The film is produced by Hollywood heavyweight
Brian Grazer.
'Based
on a true lie', American
Made
stars Cruise as Barry Seal, a talented TWA (a now-defunct airline)
pilot who got mixed up in the business of drug running for the CIA in
the 1980s. Starting out as a bored pilot who feels like TWA is
becoming a bit too safe and routine for his likings, he gets an offer
he can't refuse from a CIA Agent (Gleeson) and soon has more money
than he knows what to do with. Despite the life threatening risks of
the job, Barry still is at his happiest at home with the wife
(Wright) and his three young children. However, when employer Pablo
Escobar and others start getting heat from the Reagan Administration,
Barry soon feels that his flyboy days are about to end... and a poor
life behind prison becoming closer to reality.
The
film reminded me a little bit of the Johnny Depp drug running film
Blow
(2001), however here, Cruise isn't portrayed as taking part in the
drugs but is in it more for the thrills of law breaking and money
making than getting a high. Still, the film moves at a fast pace and
gives us a different 'down to earth' side of Cruise that isn't
dodging explosions at every turn.
The
film is presented in a 2160p HEVC/H.265, HDR (10; Ultra HD
Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition image on Ultra HD disc with a
great sounding DTS-X 11.1 (and a DTS-HD MA 7.1 mixdown), both of
which are at a high standard for the new format. Also included is
the lesser quality 1080p high definition Blu-ray disc, which isn't as
impressive as the HDR presentation of the 4K UHD disc. There are
lots of beautiful aerial shots of various foreign territories in the
film and has a few sequences that look as if they are shot on various
formats including VHS, super 16mm, and others. However, the looks
pulled off here could be digital trickery, it still is effective
onscreen.
Also
included is a digital UV copy of the film.
Special
Features include...
Deleted
Scenes
American
Storytellers
- The American
Made
filmmakers share their thoughts on the appeal of their film as
another important American story to be told.
Cruise
and Liman: A Conversation - Tom Cruise and Doug Liman discuss the
making of American Made.
In
the Wings
- Sarah Wright Olsen, Caleb Landry Jones, and Domhnall Gleeson
discuss their characters.
Shooting
American
Made
- A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.
Flying
High
- Tom Cruise and Doug Liman discuss the aerial stunts in the movie.
The
Real Barry Seal
- Aaron Seal reflects on his father's life.
2017
was no doubt a little rough on Cruise, whose other Universal film
(The
Mummy
reboot) wasn't exactly a huge hit. Still, he has has plenty of
upcoming projects for fans to look forward to, including another
entry in the Mission:
Impossible
franchise and a possible Top
Gun
sequel that has been in discussion for years. For what it is, I
enjoyed American
Made
and found it to be a nice 4K disc that's worthy of checking out for
its presentation alone.
Hal
Needham's notoriously bad Cannonball
Run II
(1984) may still hold the records for most major actors picking up a
paycheck for doing very little, in one of the most unnecessary
sequels of all time still, with zero point, a mix of a few good cars
and many dated ones in a nightmare George Orwell could have never
predicted. As is often the case today, the producers did not realize
how lucky their Gumball
Rally
knock-off got at the box office and Reynolds in particular made the
error that his record run as a #1 box office star made him
invulnerable to slop jobs like this.
Instead,
he started barely showing up for his sequels, if at all and critics
shredded him as fans started to get bored. Add a false attack that
he had AIDS early in the crisis (he lost a great amount of weight
suddenly, but after a stunt accident, yet some Right Wing homophobe
who hated Hollywood conjured up the lie and it did not help him or
anyone) and the unthinkable happened... Reynolds box office run ended
abruptly. Choices like this did not help and set him up for his own
downfall.
A
barely present Burt Reynolds (are those all outtakes?), Jackie Chan
(lesser-known then), Sammy Davis, Jr., Catherine Bach, Dom DeLuise,
Dean Martin, Marilu Henner, Telly Savalas, Ricardo Montalban, Jamie
Farr, Shirley MacLaine and infamous Frank Sinatra spins around in a
leather desk chair appearance are among the stars who show up in what
plays like a slightly upscale Hollywood
Squares
with cars on film, but a half-hour game show would have had a far
more substantial plot.
Umbrella
in Australia has issued this dud as a Region Free import Blu-ray, so
now at home, you can see more vividly than ever why it is so horrid
and a knowing waste of time. It did not do well at the box office,
but how much could it really have cost? Incredibly, it was still not
enough of a bomb that a third installment was attempted and at least
one was transformed into a non-sequel still filmed and released.
Many more bad imitators surfaced at times until a new era began with
the infamous Stallone big budget megabomb Driven
which co-starred Reynolds and a smaller film at Universal no one
expected anything from that was a surprise hit: The
Fast & The Furious.
The rest is more awful cinema history.
The
1080p 1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer can show the
age of the materials used and though color can be good, this can look
strained and a little off at times. The
only track here is a lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix with weak Pro
Logic surrounds, but the film was never sonically impressive either.
There
are fortunately no extras.
Michael
J. Fox stars in Doc
Hollywood
(1991), which is my favorite film of the actor's distinguished resume
outside of the Back
to the Future
Trilogy. Released for the first time in HD, the film remains a
funny, romantic, and heart warming feature.
The
film also stars Julie Warner, Woody Harrelson, Bridget Fonda, David
Ogden Stiers and Barnard Hughes.
Hot
shot L.A. Doctor Ben Stone (Fox) ends up in small town in South
Carolina on the way home and gets into a minor accident. Sentenced
by the court to work in the small town as a Doctor after destroying a
fence with his classic car, Ben soon gets his life turned upside down
as he has to put in sixteen hours of community service before a
deadline back west. Things shift into a new gear when he meets the
girl of his dreams (Warner) and begins to self examine his life and
career in the process.
Presented
in 1080p high definition with a widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and
a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo track with Pro Logic surrounds
from the original analog Dolby A-type noise reduction release (their
oldest system), the film looks and sounds better than I've ever seen
it here. Having seen the film so many times on cable TV, it's nice
to see it as originally intended. A little dated but not without a
great soundtrack, if you're a fan of the film then you'll want to
seek this release out.
The
only special feature is a restored HD trailer. Which is a bummer as
it would have been nice to have a cast/crew retrospective on the
film.
Last
but not least is Arthur Hiller's film of Paddy Chayefsky's The
Hospital
(1971), bashing the medical system starting to head for its
then-worst long before HMOs in the 1980s (invented in the 1970s with
Nixon's help as it turns out) expecting greed, apathy and idiocy to
ruin vital medical help for people. Once again, Chayefsky was more
accurate than he lived to see. At a Manhattan hospital where
protests are taking place during the counterculture movement and
patients from all over the urban city area come in, bureaucracy is
catching up. Patients are dying, but not just from ill health, but
because of scheduling mistakes, patient mix-ups, insurance mishaps
ands distracted doctors, one of whom is having sex with various
nurses, et al. When he and some other patients, doctors, nurses,
etc,. start turning up dead, is there a killer at the hospital?
George
C. Scott is the head doctor trying to cut through the chaos, but he
himself falls for a very sexy, attractive female daughter (Diana
Rigg) of a patient whose father is even using Native american
chanting and dancing to be cured. If the mishaps keep happening,
what could it hurt?
The
film may not be as biting as Network!
would be a few years later, but in a world where people could afford
health care more (jobs that generously gave them proper humane
coverage), had higher expectations form their institutions and
government in general and doctors still did house calls (there were
so many mom and pop docs then), this was funnier in comparison to
real life than the mess we have now all the way to 'Obamacare' which
tries to being back coverage people had before the gutting of
everything that started in the 1980s. Barnard Hughes also shows up
here along with Richard Dysart, Robert Walden, Frances Sternhagen,
Nancy Marchand, Christopher Guest and Stockard Channing.
Yes,
its one of those kind of great films more people need to see, from
the amazing cast (including stars to be) to what the film has to say
for how well it is written, acted and made. This might be Hiller's
best film, a real gentleman Hollywood director who made his share of
blockbusters (Love
Story,
Silver
Streak)
and other smart, fun films. He tends to be underrated and deserves
more credit than he gets, especially in how he handled comedy, which
he was really fine at. This was made by United Artists at its later
peak and MGM has decided to let this hem be issued as a Twilight Time
Limited Edition Blu-ray. Hard to believe this is not a more
prominent film, but its comeback cannot happen fast enough,
Definitely worth going out of your way for, the return of The
Hospital
is one whose time has come!
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer can show the
age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all
previous releases of the film even in the softer sections because the
naturalistic soft look is the look of the film. At that time, it
connoted realism and even with 35mm dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor prints being issued (this only looks like
that one of the time, but that's not a bad thing as the transfer is
consistent enough), the idea was more honest color than TV could
deliver and old Hollywood did.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless sound mix shows its age
(as does the isolated music score), but that is the fidelity of mono
of the time and I doubt it could sound much better, but is fine for
what it is. Despite the moments of yelling, fighting and chaos, this
can also be a quiet film.
Extras
include another nicely illustrated booklet on the film including
informative text and yet another excellent, underrated essay by the
great film scholar Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-ray adds an Isolated
Music Score with select Sound Effects and Original Theatrical Trailer
that is also amusing, but should not be seen until after watching the
film.
To
order the Alice
and/or The
Hospital
limited edition Blu-rays, buy them and other great titles while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
...and
to order the Doc
Hollywood
Warner Archive Blu-ray, go to this link for it and many more great
web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.wbshop.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo & James
Lockhart (4K, Doc)
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
