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All
Your Faces
(2023/Distrib/Icarus DVD)/American
Fiction
(2023/MGM/Amazon/Orion/Warner Blu-ray)/La
Chimera (2023/NEON/Decal
Blu-ray)/The Shining Hour
(1938/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-ray)
Picture:
C/B-/B-/B Sound: C/B/B-/B- Extras: C-/D/C-/C+ Films: C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The
Shining Hour
Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
These
dramas have some humor on the side or other indirect ways...
Jeanne
Herry's All
Your Faces
(2023) knows it is a film that involves endless talking heads
throughout and uses its title to be shameless and even ironic about
itself, but that does not prevent it from being a film that is
non-stop talking heads just the same. In this case, it deals with
the perpetrators and victims of crimes, but that does not necessarily
always work.
No
matter the crime and how much hurt, pain and trauma it might have
brought, this tries to keep this going for 118 minutes (!!!) and does
have some good moments. However, despite a decent cast, I thought it
was on the uneven side and though it did not trivialize anything
serious, it did not thoroughly deal with all it took on either.
Extras
include three trailers for other Distrib releases.
Cord
Jefferson's American
Fiction
(2023) rightly received much critical acclaim with Jeffrey Wright
(Westworld,
the Craig Bond films) plays a book writer at a crossroads when he is
sick of his smart work not having the commercial success it deserves,
so he makes a book that follows stereotypical trends and stereotypes
to the point he pretends to be a tough street guy to give credibility
to the exploitation 'street' book he has written.
However,
the film is not that simple, being a character study and examination
of where media stands today, how it is still regressive and some
progress has lost out to more regressiveness, but it is also the
characters so well played by the cast, including a pair of
performances by Issa Rae and Tracee Ellis Ross that are standouts and
display great chemistry with Wright.
On
the other side of things, some of his is a little predictable and
sadly so because of all the things that need to change and have not,
but the makers seem to know this and may even be playing it a bit coy
when those parts show up. Definitely worth a look, Sterling K.
Brown, Leslie Uggams and Adam Brody also star.
There
are sadly no extras.
Alice
Rohrwacher's La
Chimera
(2023) is the kind of smaller comedy/dramas the studios or their
prestige subdivisions used to pick up all the time, this time an
Italian film from the underrated Neon company. The title refers tot
he one thing everyone searches for in life and this film wants to use
that idea to get the audience to think and maybe dream to some
extent. Arthur (Josh O'Connor) does not know what that might be, but
brings us all over Italy in the process.
Unfortunately,
as nice as this is and as pleasant as it can be, it becomes some kind
of romanic comedy after all the more interesting side roads are
figuratively and literally given up on. Still, this is not as
shallow and obnoxious as the thousand of brain-damaging Hallmark
Network telefilms (especially the ones set in Christmas, as if
EVERYONE
actually celebrated that) and never condescends to its audience like
that (what does?) and those interested might want to give it a look.
A
trailer for the Neon horror film release Cookoo
is the only extra.
Last
but not least is Frank Borzage's The
Shining Hour
(1938) with Joan Crawford, based on a big hit Broadway play at the
time, Joan Crawford (who fought for the film and got it) is a
nightclub dancer who marries a farmer (Melvyn Douglas) she thinks she
is in love with, even with his financial success. However, when she
meets his brother (Robert Young in his leading man days) she is in a
love triangle she never expected.
Well
done with some predictability and a little more melodrama than I
would have liked that dates it a bit, it is still a top rate
production and MGM backed this one, it certainly has its moments and
the cast has some serious energy and chemistry. Margaret Sullivan is
Young's wife, Fay Bainter, Allyn Joslyn, Frank Albertson and Hattie
McDaniel, it is definitely worth a good look.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer, Radio Scenes for the film
within the MGM radio special Good News Of 1939 and classic
cartoons: Love and Curses, Porky's Five & Ten and
The Sneezing Weasel.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition
image on Fiction has good color and is consistent, yet is a
little softer in the fine detail portions than I would have liked,
while its DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix is better and the best sonically on the list.
Dialogue is very clearly recorded and mixed, the music never in the
way.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Chimera
also has some good color and shots, but it too has some softness
issues throughout that can get a little annoying in parts, but is
consistent otherwise, while the Italian DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is good but sometimes flawed and
trying. Otherwise, the two meld together well enough.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on Hour
can show the age of the materials used, but this also happens to be
the best looking transfer on the list with great depth and detail,
showing the archives took care of this film and Warner Archive has
done an ace job of restoring another classic in their catalog. As
well, the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is surprisingly clean
and clear for its age and otherwise, so we know it will never sound
better than it does here.
That
leaves us with the soft, anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on
Faces that just never gets clearer or sharper as you watch,
possibly a bad digital reduction of the digital shoot, but the lossy
French Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix is also on the surprising weak
side and not just because we get plenty of dialogue and talking.
Glad for the English subtitles.
To
order
The
Shining Hour
Warner Archive Blu-ray,
go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
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Nicholas Sheffo