Intrigo:
Death Of An Author
(2018/Lionsgate Blu-ray)/Just
Mercy
(2019/Warner Blu-ray)/Little
Women/Overcomer
(both 2019/Sony Blu-ray w/DVD)/Their
Finest Hour
(1942, 1955, 1958/incl. Dam
Busters
& Colditz
Story/Film
Movement Blu-ray Set)/Yesterday
Was A Lie
(2018/IndiePix Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+/B+/B & C+/B+/B/B Sound: B+/A-/B & C+/B+/B-/B
Extras: C/C+/B-/A/B/B Films: B-/B/B-/B+/B*/C
Here
is a rich, wide-ranging selection of dramas, including some classics
and new gems...
Based
on the author Hakan Nesser, Intrigo:
Death of an Author
(2018) is an interesting murder mystery with an engaging cast and
screenplay.
Starring
Ben Kingsley, the film tells the story of an author (Benno Furmann)
whose wife (Tuva Novotny) plans to leave him for another man as she
is pregnant by him. After she is in a deadly car accident, it begins
hard for him to cope with her loss. Her body is never found,
however, he is still convinced that she is alive. He then gets a
final novel to translate by a novel of an author who also died under
mysterious circumstances as well. Are the two cases connected? Can
the mystery be solved?
The
film also features Michael Byrne, Veronica Ferres, Sandra Dickinson,
Daniela Lavender, and Elizabeth Counsell. Intrigo:
Death of an Author
is from the Director of the original foreign Girl
With The Dragon Tattoo
films, Daniel Alfredson, who proves he has some chops here.
Intrigo:
Death of an Author
is presented in 1080p high definition with a 2.40:1 widescreen aspect
ratio and a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix. The film is
highly cinematic and looks very nice here on disc. Colors are mainly
natural toned with nothing too overly stylized, however, the film
does have strong production value and several exotic locations. Skin
textures look pretty good on the 4K upscale. Overall, a nice looking
presentation here from Lionsgate.
Special
Features include two featurettes:
A
Portrait of Hakan Nesser
and
The
Making of Intrigo.
Michael
B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson star in Just
Mercy
(2019), which is based on a true story. Dramatic and immersive, the
film is based on a Harvard graduated lawyer named Bryan (Jordan), who
struggles to help prove an imprisoned man (Foxx), whose accused of
murder. Bryan he believes this man is innocent and part of a
cover-up. Eva Ansley (Larson), is a local advocate that helps Bryan
over the many trials and tribulations (and racism) that he faces
proving this man's innocence, whilst helping others along the way.
The
film also stars Rob Morgan, O' Shea Jackson, Jr., Tim Blake Nelson,
and Karan Kendrick to name a few. It is directed by Destin Daniel
Cretton (Short
Term 12,
The
Glass Castle).
Just
Mercy
is presented in 1080p on Blu-ray disc with a widescreen aspect ratio
of 1.85:1 and audio mixes in an impressive Dolby Atmos 11.1 (a Dolby
TrueHD 7.1 (48kHz, 24-bit) mixdown for older systems as well)
lossless mix. This film is slightly stylized in terms of color
correction with heavy saturation and nice slightly muted tones in
areas and nice cinematography. Being mostly dialogue driven, the
film looks fine on the format. A digital copy is also included.
Special
Features include:
Making
'Mercy'
This
Moment Deserves
The
Equal Justice Initiative
and
several fine Deleted Scenes
Just
Mercy
is an interesting film with pretty strong filmmaking and acting
behind it. Definitely worth checking out if you're a fan of true
crime thrillers. At the same time, HBO has issued their documentary
True
Justice
on DVD, which is a biography about Bryan Stevenson's life and the
real-life cases he has had to take on. We'll cover that next time.
Next,
did we really need another live action adaptation of Louisa May
Alcott's Little
Women
after it has been covered so many times, including the Winona Ryder
version that I thought was just too silly for its own good? Well,
the fine actor Greta Gerwig felt she had a very worthwhile take on
the story of Jo (Saoirse Ronan) and her family and her desire to be a
writer and decided to take it all head-on and 'who cares?' about the
other versions. Not my favorite book, good but sometimes just a bit
overrated, but she does come up with a better version than I
expected.
It
has a good supporting cast, good tone, consistent energy and is never
phony, so that helps, but that still did not make me love it. Emma
Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, Laura Dern, Timothee Chalamet,
Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts. Bob Odenkirk, Louis Garrel and even Meryl
Streep show up in the cast, but even all that and some above-average
filmmaking (including some of the directing) did not make me say
'wow, what a movie and wow what a book' or the like. Still, it is
worth seeing and among the many versions, I would now put this on the
shortlist of the very few to even consider sitting through. Now you
can see for yourself.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image was totally shot on
Kodak 35mm Vision 3 color negative and the result is the most
color-advanced adaptation of this book that has ever been made and
probably ever will be made, with its great costumes and locales
lensed by Director of Photography Yorick Le Saux. I cannot wait to
see this in 4K or an actual film print.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is dialogue driven, but has
some nice, subtle use of sound in the surrounds and a solid music
score by the underrated Alexandre Desplat. Combined with the image,
this is more than just a melodramatic costumer, but something with
honest density that feels like the period and justifies it being a
remake.
An
anamorphically enhanced DVD with lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is
also included, but it is only here for convenience and is too soft
and weak to really watch seriously.
Extras
include Digital Copy, while the disc adds
featurettes including (per the press release) A
New Generation of Little Women:
The superb cast recreated the beloved world of the March family with
realism, humor and vulnerability, Making
a Modern Classic:
The film combines its modern elements kinetic camerawork and
overlapping dialogue with the historically authentic bespoke
costumes, sets and locations, Greta
Gerwig: Women Making Art:
Go behind the camera with Writer/Director Greta Gerwig, discover her
process and how she applied her own style to the story, Hair
& Make-Up Test Sequence:
A lovely showcase featuring the outstanding costumes, hair and
make-up crafted for the film, Little
Women Behind the Scenes:
Take a quick look behind the scenes on the set of LITTLE WOMEN and
Orchard
House,
Home of Louisa May Alcott: Find out more about Louisa May Alcott and
visit the real-life Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts.
When
the town factory closes, basketball Coach John loses his team and is
forced to coach a one girl cross country team ...with asthma.
However, Hannah needs a coach and John needs BE a coach (and he
doesn't have much of a choice). Angry at the world and at God, John
can't believe why God turned him from his basketball team to a one
person cross country team. But Hannah shows Coach John how to
believe God has a plan and Coach John learn how to heal his heart,
home and family in Alex Kendrick's Overcomer
(2019).
Coach
John was once a proud basketball coach, but due to the town's factory
moving he loses his entire team and he is forced to become the cross
country coach (and he doesn't even like running). He meets Hannah, a
young girl with asthma. By fate, he meets and learns of Hannah's
blind and dying father in the hospital and Hannah has been raised by
her grandmother who told her, her father was dead. Hannah's father
then tells Coach John how to put God first and God will provide the
rest. Coach John wants to help reunite Hannah with her estranged
father, but he must find a way to mend bridges with Hannah's bitter
grandmother.
This
was another religious/inspirational movie about faith and the power
of acceptance and forgiveness. It reminds people that even after
losing everything, it isn't really everything and by turning to God
there is hope.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 HD image on DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1
soundmix combine to be very professional presentations that look and
sound as good as any of these faith films, but there is still nothing
distinct or exceptional about the presentation either. Extras
include Making
of Overcomer,
additional and deleted scenes, commentary with director, Theme
of Identity,
Power
of Forgiveness
and a music video.
Next
up is a collection of five WWII films made in the U.K. from the
Ealing Studios arriving on Blu-ray in a new set called Their
Finest Hour
from the Film Movement label, who just landed rights to a group of
key films from that catalog, often titles long overdue for reissue.
They include...
Alberto
Cavalcanti's Went
The Day Well?
(1942) is based on a Graham Greene story of Nazis invading a small
town disguised as British soldiers and how the townspeople catch on
and fight back. It is a little slow to start and a little uneven
throughout, but has its moments and was a big deal upon its release.
Leslie Banks and Elizabeth Allan lead the decent cast who are good
here and the film is worth a look, if not the strongest on here.
Guy
Hamilton's The
Colditz Story
(1955) is the 4-time Bond director's take of a Nazi Prison Camp and
how the supposedly inescapable locale (deep in Germany) was broken
out of eventually in a precursor to The
Great Escape,
with John Mills, Eric Portman, Lionel Jeffreys, Bryan Forbes and Ian
Carmichael leading the cast. This is the most underrated film in the
set.
Michael
Anderson's The
Dam Busters
(1955) is the great, still fun film about how the Royal Air Force
found a great way to mess up German dams by building a bouncing bomb,
one that would skip over the water until it hit its target. Richard
Todd, Michael Redgrave, Ursula Jeans and Basil Sydney lead the cast
in this gem from the man who later directed Logan's
Run
and the Oscar-winning Best Picture, Around
The World In 80 Days
(1956).
Leslie
Norman's Dunkirk
(1958) tells the same story the recent Christoper Nolan film did, but
without the big budget and from some different perspectives, so it
may be dated in some ways, but is still not bad and has a solid cast
that includes John Mills, Richard Attenborough, Robert Urquhart and
Bernard Lee, four years before becoming the first 'M' in the James
Bond series. Norman directed other films like Hammer's X
The Unknown
before becoming a go-to director for British action and spy TV
classics like The
Saint,
The
Avengers,
The
Baron,
Department
S,
The
Persuaders!
and Return
Of The Saint.
Last
but not least is longtime journeyman director J. Lee Thompson's Ice
Cold In Alex
(1958) with John Mills, Sylvia Sims, Harry Andrews and Anthony
Quayle, about a medical unit that needs escorted across Northern
Africa to help the Allies against the Nazis. Shot on location, it is
still impressive to this day and the energy is there, with some good
action, but also some good drama. Despite a few false notes, it
holds up well and rounds out this set nicely.
All
five films are in
1080p black & white digital High Definition presentations, all
1.33 X 1 except Dunkirk
and Alex,
presented at 1.66 X 1. All have been restored and Busters
is gleefully promoting its 4K upgrade. Save for some parts of a few
shots that seem a little brighter and detail-challenged than they
should be, these look as good as they ever did and will impress fans,
as well as those surprised they can look so good for their age. The
exception is the older stock footage used in most of the films, which
was typical of the filmmaking of the times.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mixes on all five films
are as clear and warm as they are going to get for older theatrical
monophonic releases of their time are ever going to get, so no major
issues with the audio either.
Extras
include a nicely illustrated booklet on all five films including
informative text, an essay by film scholar Cullen Gallagher and tech
info, but only four of the five discs
have extras. The breakdown is (per the press release):
THE
COLDITZ STORY
THE
DAM BUSTERS
The
Making of The Dam Busters
Sir
Barnes Wallis
documentary
617
Squadron Remembers
documentary
Footage
of the Bomb Tests
The
Dam Busters
Royal Premiere
Restoration
of a Classic
featurette
The
Dam Busters
75th
Anniversary trailer
DUNKIRK
Dunkirk
Operation Dynamo
Newsreel
Young
Veteran
Ealing Studios documentary (1940)
Interview
with actor Sean Barrett
John
Mills home movie footage
ICE
COLD IN ALEX
Extended
Clip from A
Very British War Movie
documentary
John
Mills home movie footage
Interview
with Melanie Williams
Steve
Chibnall on J. Lee Thompson
and
Interview with the great Sylvia Syms.
If
you are interested in more war genre films after seeing 1917
and the like, Their
Finest Hour
is a great set for you to take on.
Finally,
IndiePix celebrates the anniversary release of James Kerwin's
Yesterday
Was A Lie
(2008) with a brand new and much better looking Blu-ray presentation
that film noir fans should check out. I definitely applaud this film
for having a highly cinematic and attractive 'film noir' look despite
its budgetary limitations. The lighting and black and white
photography is really the selling point as the plot is a bit hard to
follow and some of the acting iffy. This is a very nice movie to
look at though.
The
film stars John Newton, Chase Masterson, Kipleigh Brown, famed radio
personality Robert Seigel, and even the late Peter Mayhew (Star
Wars)
in a cameo role. Yesterday
Was A Lie
tells the story of a detective who goes on a strange case that
eventually uncovers the truth behind the most powerful thing in the
universe - the human heart.
Yesterday
Was A Lie
is presented in 1080p high definition on Blu-ray disc with a
widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 (original aspect ratio is 1.85:1)
and a fine sounding audio mix in DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless
5.1. The black and white image has strong shadows and contrast that
come across nicely in HD. There is also an English 2.0 Stereo
Surround mix on the disc as well, depending on your home
entertainment system limitations. This version of the film has been
remastered shot by shot to create a whole new remaster of the film,
which is much better looking than the previous 2008 cut available
before.
Special
Features include:
Audio
commentary by James Kerwin, Kipleigh Brown and Chase Masterson
Multiple
featurettes
Cast
and Crew interviews
WonderCon
Panel Discussion
and
never-before-released outtakes and camera tests.
-
Nicholas Sheffo (Women,
Hour),
Ricky Chiang (Overcomer)
and James
Lockhart
https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/
