Blue Valentine, The Boy Friend, Savage Messiah, and others

This week, we begin in a nursing home in Pennsylvania:

Blue Valentine (**1/2)

Blue Valentine is an often insightful dissection of the rise and eventual fall of a relationship. It is a real portrait, acutely chronicling the pain that drags down everyone connected to the relationship, even the viewers. Derek Cianfrance co-wrote, along with Joey Curtis and Cami Delavign, and directed this close-up look at what happens when the love, and spark, is gone. It is not new dramatic, or cinematic, territory, and Cianfrance’s main contribution to the already burgeoning genre seems to be little more than a few perceptive observations and some creative editing. When first seen, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) have a six year-old daughter, as well as an ominously missing dog. Their relationship has obviously hit trouble. Dean, a house painter, comes off as flaky and irresponsible, just as much now as when they first met six years earlier. His charm seems to have evaporated in the eyes of Cindy, who has obviously tired of his childish ways. So, flash back six years when they meet cute at a Pennsylvania assisted-living facility. The meeting suggests why she would initially be attracted to him. He then pursues her in all the quaint customs of movie males. Since their future has already appeared, they obviously have spent six years together, a period left mostly blank. But the gap also leaves out the needed perspective on how they arrived at their present conditions. Due mostly to the noted Method acting of the two principals, the physical transformations ring true: in their ending periods, they both appear pudgier, more louche than in their earlier incarnations. Williams and Gosling give authentic performances, but even they cannot fill in what has been left out of the story and script. Cianfrance adequately creates his appropriate settings and milieu, giving the early scenes of the relationship a little more color and vitality, as opposed to the drab, naturalistic rendering of the latter period. But, all along, you get the feeling that more attention has been paid to artifice than to personal understanding.

Rated R, 114 minutes. The DVD, available in all formats, offers commentary with Cianfrance and co-editor Jim Helton, a 13 minute “making of” featurette, four deleted scenes, and “Frankie and the Unicorn, “ a brief home movie of sorts.

Savage Messiah (***), The Boy Friend (****)

Although now mostly overlooked in the cinematic pantheon, Ken Russell, in the 1960s and 1970s, turned out some of the most imaginative and creative, if often outlandish, films of his era. Two now arrive from the on-demand Warner Archives. The opening credits of Messiah (rated R, 103 minutes, 1972) announce: “The story of a young French art student and the lonely Polish woman he met in Paris just before the First World War.” The student is Henri Gaudier (Scott Antony, going full speed), later to add Brezka to his last name when he meets the much older Sophie Brezka (Dorothy Tutin). The two live together and share an unconsummated romance. But they also live a full, eventful life, as he turns out magnificent works of sculpture, artworks that will bring him an everlasting fame he would not live to enjoy. Russell chronicles their lives together before Henri leaves to meet his death at 24 in World War One. Young Helen Mirren appears as a cigar-smoking suffragette. In The Boy Friend (rated G, 137 minutes, 1971), Russell films Sandy Wilson’s 1950s play about the staging of a 1920s musical, with British music hall theatrics, Busby Berkeley-style choreography, and some hoary Hollywood backstage histrionics. Russell renders a non-stop entertaining pastiche, with one number closely following the last. A surprisingly effective Twiggy stars with tap-dancing Tommy Tune (born in Wichita Falls), who went on to a long Broadway career as director and choreographer. Great songs, spectacular sets, gorgeous costumes.

M.G.M.’s Limited Edition Collection, available through on-line retailers, also continues their on-demand release of vintage titles from their library. Four recent releases caught our attention: Return from the Ashes (***1/2), The Captive City (***), A Cold Wind in August (**1/2), Cop Hater (***)

Ashes (not rated, 105 minutes, 1965) begins at the end of the Second World War, when Michele (Ingrid Thulin), a concentration camp survivor, returns home to find her opportunistic husband (Oscar® winner Maximilian Schell) living with her step-daughter Fabi (Samantha Eggar). First, Michele, assumed dead by everyone, tries to pretend she is someone else, but then switches her scheme only to find herself in the middle of multiple murders. Hollywood veteran J. Lee Thompson directed from a sometimes hard-to-believe script from Julius Epstein (Casablanca). Hollywood icon Robert Wise (director of The Sound of Music,editor of Citizen Kane) directed Captive City (not rated, 91 minutes, 1952), a quasi film noir about a small town newspaperman (John Forsythe) who discovers a clandestine crime ring operating with police cooperation. When he attempts to investigate, several people are murdered, he is stalked, and his newspaper offices are trashed. Senator Estes Kefauver, head of a Senate crime investigation, gives an address at the film’s end about the perils of organized crime. Natalie Portman lookalike Lola Albright stars as Iris in Cold/August (not rated, 80 minutes, 1961), a strident drama about a single woman (Albright) who lives in New York City in what seems an upscale apartment but without apparent support. She begins an unlikely romance with her superintendent’s 17 year-old son Vito (Scott Marlowe). The awkward relationship plays out with all the expected problems, accentuated when Vito accidentally discovers Iris’ secret. Cop Hater (rated PG, 75 minutes, 1958) is a gritty procedural crime drama set in Manhattan. Detective Steve Carelli (Robert Loggia) sees several of his colleagues mysteriously gunned down. And he has few clues to work with. But even with the seemingly primitive 1950’s Crime Scene Investigation technology, Carelli tracks down the killer, whose identity comes in a shocking big twist. Taut and tense, with little artifice.

UFC: Ultimate Royce Grace
This set features an extensive look at one of the early Ultimate Fighting progenitors. Along with footage of his bouts are interviews and behind-the-scenes materials.

Not rated, 337 minutes. Available in all formats.

And, for kids this week:

Splat the Cat
This three disc set contains fourteen stories, including four from author/illustrator Rob Scotton. Narration from Tim Curry, Catherine O’Hara, Laura Dern, and others. Not rated, 100 minutes. Set also includes a read-along and an interview with Scotton.

I Love Toy Trains: All Aboard!
The latest in this popular children’s video series features footage of both toy and real trains, trivia, six songs from James Coffey, and more. Not rated, 40 minutes.

Stan Lee’s Superhumans–first season
Daniel Browning Smith co-hosts with Marvel comic maven Stan Lee this History series as they search out people with genetic abnormalities that give them special “powers.” The two discs hold eight episodes along with additional footage. Not rated, 376 minutes.

Also on DVD: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Lockdown, No Strings Attached, The Violent Kind.