Boulevard
Nights
(1979*)/The
Escort
(2023/IndiePix DVD)/High
Crime 4K
(1973/MVD/Blue Underground 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray w/Blu-ray + CD)/Marie:
A True Story
(1985/DeLaurentiis/*both Warner Archive Blu-rays)/One
Life
(2023/Bleecker Street/Decal Blu-ray)
4K
Ultra HD Picture: B+ Picture: B (DVD: C) Sound:
B-/C+/B-/B-/B- Extras: C-/C-/B/C-/C Films: B-/C+/B-/C+/B-
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Boulevard
Nights
and Marie:
A True Story
Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
The
following crime dramas can be very dark and hard hitting, but you
should know about each of them...
Michael
Pressman's Boulevard
Nights
(1979) celebrates its 45th
Anniversary and deserves to be rediscovered. As I said in my DVD
review years ago, the film ''...is a sort of lost little gem produced
by Tony Bill (My
Bodyguard)
about Hispanic American youth in East Los Angeles that features a
very talented cast that sadly did not get seen more as this film was
not the hit it deserved to be, but the characters and culture
featured here is as realistic as it is prophetic (including Rap/Hip
Hop forerunners) in a real slice of street life film that has aged
very well is is likely a minor classic of such a cinematic discourse
long before the recent increase (never enough) of great Hispanic
talent on the big screen.
Raymond
(Richard Yniguez) is an ex-gang member who has found love with a very
pretty gal (Marta Dubois) and wants to move on to a better life, but
he has is little brother Chuco (Danny De La Paz) who is angry and
cannot stay out of trouble from the first scene in the film. The 102
minutes never falls flat, is something special and work going out of
your way to see. Carmen Zapata (who passed away in 2014) and John
Fiedler are among the most recognizable of the adult cast, John
Bailey, A.S.C., is Director of Photography and Lalo Schifrin composed
the music score.''
This
rare film is the kind that we still only sadly see once in a while,
showing that Hollywood has a very LONG way to go and not enough has
improved in getting these stories told, of course in an obvious
understatement. This one is worth going out of your way for.
An
Original
Theatrical Trailer is sadly (still) the only extra.
Lukas
Nola's The
Escort
(2023) is an at least semi-political film from the late director (he
died a year before this film was made) with a married man (Zivko
Anocic) making a big mistake by sleeping with a prostitute who
happens to show up where he is staying on a business trip. Not
intending to tell his wife, things get worse when she turns up dead!
He
asks two people at the hotel to help him with the situation and they
do, but it turns out it will be with strings attached, et al. Well
shot and acted, I get what the filmmaker is saying about his home
country and he has his points, though the film has some
predictability and sadly, the personal and political claims are as
believable as they are realistic and all too familiar, especially
lately.
Still,
you hardly see any films out of this country (censorship?) and this
still has enough solid moments to giver it a good look.
Extras
include Trailers.
Enzo
G. Castellari's High
Crime 4K
(1973) is a highlight of the extremely successful, often brutal and
still wild cycle of Italian Crime films of the 1970s, this one with
original Django himself, Franco Nero. This time, he plays a police
commissioner whose discovery of a dead body linked to the red-hot,
very profitable heroin business, which fires him up to amp up his
efforts to bring them down at all costs. The result with be a
bloodbath with many twists and turns that never stops once its
starts.
This
one has a supporting cast that includes Fernando Rey (The
French Connection,
Tristana,
Chimes
At Midnight,)
James Whitmore (The
Asphalt Jungle,
Them!,
The
First Deadly Sin,
the original Planet
Of The Apes,)
and Delia Boccardo (Tarkovsky's Nostalghia,
Strogoff,
Inspector
Clouseau,
Tentacles,
Snow
Job)
are the name actors and faces who offer the usual unexpected support
in the genre where (like spaghetti westerns) were getting name actors
to fly over to be in them. Mickey Knox and Miranda Richardson also
turn up uncredited, with the rest of the cast as solid. The result
is that this is more involving and convincing, even when it gets
really graphic and does not seem it is just being graphic to shock
and impress.
This
one runs a tight, non-stop 103 minutes and especially with such an
impressive restoration, highly recommended if you can handle the
violence and themes.
Extras
are many, well done and (per the press release) include:
Audio Commentary #1 with Co-Writer/Director Enzo G. Castellari
Audio
Commentary #2 with Star Franco Nero and Filmmaker Mike Malloy
Audio
Commentary #3 with Film Historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson
and Eugenio Ercolani
The
Genoa Connection: Interviews with Director Enzo G. Castellari
and Star Franco Nero
From
Dust To Asphalt: Interview with Director Enzo G. Castellari
Hard
Stunts For High Crimes: Interview with Actor/Stuntman Massimo
Vanni
Framing
Crime: Interview with Camera Operator Roberto Girometti
The
Sound Of Onions: Interview with Composers Guido and Maurizio De
Angelis
The
Connection Connection: Featurette by EUROCRIME! Director Mike
Malloy
Alternate
Ending
Theatrical
Trailer
Poster
& Still Gallery
and
the HIGH CRIME Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Guido and
Maurizio De Angelis (with EXCLUSIVE Bonus Track) on a high quality
CD.
Roger
Donaldson's Marie:
A True Story
(1985) is the film the internationally successful journeyman director
did between his Anthony Hopkins/Mel Gibson The
Bounty
(1984, reviewed elsewhere on this site) and hit No
Way Out
(1987) which was just issued on 4K disc. Based on the real events of
a woman (Sissy Spacek, with her patented southern accent always in
tact) who escapes an abusive marriage, moves to Tennessee, eventually
lands up getting a key job in state government involving the parole
board and slowly uncovers a huge legal and political scandal.
At
first, she just thinks some of the events are odd, but they soon turn
into a pattern of payoffs, inequity, justice not served and she tries
to do something about it. On top of threats, she then gets fired,
lied about, her reputation trashed and this turns into a legal drama
in addition to everything else.
Well
the cast is good here with Jeff Daniels, Morgan Freeman, Keith
Szarabajka and some other faces you may not be able to name, but
recognize (Melissa Sue Anderson shows up in an uncredited turn!) and
the cast melds well together. But the script keeps getting
sidetracked with melodrama that feels like 1980s mall movie filler
and then we have then-lawyer turning actor Fred Thompson playing...
Fred Thompson!
Later
a politician outright, he is Marie's lawyer (as he was in real life)
and it is fair he tells his story personally by reliving it. His
acting career included a hit TV show and more appearances in
Donaldson's films that followed this one. However, it just makes the
film that much more mixed up and while he comes across as a sort of
hero here, that was not ultimately his political legacy before he
passed away, so that ages the film is odd ways. Not very successful
at the time for the other reasons, with was one of the films
Dino DeLaurentiis made with MGM/UA as he was launching his own
brief-lived movie studio. It is also one of the last MGM films
chronologically (along with Michael Cimino's Year
Of The Dragon,
reviewed elsewhere on this site) that Warner landed up owning form
the dawn of that studio from their turner entertainment acquisition
before the MGM of today started owning their own films again. At
least they were being ambitious then, as I wish studios would be all
the time now.
If
you are curious, you should still see this one once.
The
only extra is an Original Theatrical Trailer.
James
Hawes' One
Life
(2023) is an underrated biopic about Nicholas Winton, a stock broker
and businessman from London who landed up going to
then-Czechoslovakia during WWII and saving over 600 children from
being killed by the German Nazis. Anthony Hopkins plays him in the
modern day, still horrified by those he could not save despite what
he incredibly achieved and Johnny Flynn (Stardust,
Song
One)
plays him really well in the extended flashback/past parts of the
story.
Why
this film was not picked and and did not do better or get more
critical recognition is a big head scratcher because it is one of the
best films on the subject and best such films we have seen like it in
a while despite parts sadly, necessarily, being things we've seen
before and will keep needed to see again because of retro-denial and
horrific current events still going on as we post this coverage.
Besides
being well thought out, well paced and the WWII sequences being very
period-correct and convincing, we have a great supporting cast
including Lena Olin, Helena Bonham-Carter, Romana Garai, Marthe
Keller, Jiri Simek, Alex Sharp and a great turn by Jonathan Pryce, in
a brief reunion with Hopkins after their Popes
movie, it is hard to stop watching once you start. Definitely catch
this one if you like serious dramas for mature adults.
Extras
include three Making Of featurettes: That's
Life,
Stories
From The Heart
and a general Behind The Scenes piece.
Now
for playback performance. The 2160p HEVC/H.265, 1.85 X 1, Dolby
Vision/HDR (10; Ultra HD Premium)-enhanced Ultra High Definition
image on High
Crime
looks great, has fine color, has been restored in a way that will
shot those used to tolerating flaws on so many Italian crime films
from the 1970s and this is one of the best-looking films from that
cycle. It is a real pleasure just to see it looking so good, nothing
manipulated or tampered with either. The regular 1.85 X 1 1080p
Blu-ray also looks good, but cannot match the 4K version. Both have
DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes in English and Italian that
are equally good in this case, showing their age a bit as expected,
but much of this was shot with the actors actually speaking English.
The
rest of the Blu-rays also look as good with the 1080p 1.85 X 1
digital High Definition image on Nights is a nice improvement
over the older DVD version, though it looks like the same HD master.
That is good news as the master is accurate enough. But would look
even better with a new 4K scan. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix as good as the film is
likely to ever sound and also is a nice improvement over the old,
compressed, lossy DolbY Digital from the old DVD.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Marie
also looks good, as shot with real, anamorphic J-D-C Scope lenses,
adding to how good this can look. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix is also as good as
this will ever sound with clean, clear dialogue, music and sound
design, form a time when some films could still get away with being
monophonic. That period was about to come to an end.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on One
Life
is very consistent and looks fine throughout, an HD shoot that is
better than so many dramas we've seen in the last few years, with a
convincing style on the scenes that take place decades ago. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix is a little off with limits
to its soundfield for whatever reason, but it is fine for a
dialogue-driven film. Oddly, the older films on Blu-ray can compete
sonically with it.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the Escort DVD is
softer than I would have liked, especially since this is well shot
and edited with decent color, while the lossy Croatian Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo plays even better allowing this to be enjoyed more. The
combination is passable, but I wish a Blu-ray were issued on this
one.
To
order the Boulevard
Nights
and/or Marie:
A True Story
Warner Archive Blu-rays, go to this link for them 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
