The week’s DVDs begin with the Woodman:
DVDs for Jan. 21 by Boo Allen
This week we begin with the Woodman:
Blue Jasmine (***1/2)
In Woody Allen’s latest, Cate Blanchett plays the title character, a decidedly blue lady of that name whose real name is Jeannette–but she might be best recognized by the name Blanche DuBois. Jasmine’s moniker could also derive from the song “Blue Moon,” as it played the night she met her husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), and she has never forgotten it. In this hard-to-classify hybrid of a film, Allen has rendered a dramatic, mostly purloined, plot filled with Allen humor, sometimes incongruously so. Allen does not make Jasmine a remake of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, but many plot points coincide. A visibly high-strung Jasmine arrives penniless in San Francisco to live with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). Jasmine immediately acts as she is above Ginger, even if, years before, Hal criminally mishandled the lottery winnings of Ginger and her husband Augie (a surprisingly effective Andrew Dice Clay). Once Hal’s misdeeds have been presented, Allen jumps chronologically back and forth to establish Jasmine and Hal’s luxurious New York lifestyle. But now, Jasmine causes problems for Ginger and her current boyfriend, Chili (Bobby Cannavale, persuasively channeling Stanley Kowalski). Allen orchestrates a few telling sequences to reveal Jasmine’s Dubois-like inner turmoil and confusion, and these sequences help to explain Jasmine’s lying, drinking to excess, and frequently popping Xanax pills. Among the humor and shifting moods, Blanchett serves as the film’s solid anchor, staying focused on portraying the states of a fragile woman. And she does it so well she has already won a Golden Globe and has just received a Best Actress Oscar nomination, which she could and should win.
Rated PG-13, 98 minutes. The DVD includes the six minute featurette “Notes From the Red Carpet” with several cast interviews, and a 25 minute filmed press conference moderated by Jenelle Riley with Blanchett, Peter Saarsgard and Andrew Dice Clay.
Nostalghia (***)
Russian maestro Andrei Tarkovsky only directed seven feature films in his fifty-three years, but those he left behind were haunting, dreamlike voyages. Kino Lorber now gives a re-mastered high definition Blu-ray debut to this meditative 1983 puzzler, Tarkovsky’s penultimate film. As usual in a Tarkovsky work, it takes awhile for a viewer to tune in to the narrative, here a story about a Russian writer, Andrei (Oleg Yankovskiy), and his translator-girlfriend Eugenia (Domiziana Giordano) traveling to a small Italian town for his research. Once there, they bicker and reconcile, all while wandering aimlessly around town, captured in Tarkovsky’s signature long shots, often filled here with haze and fog to complete his eerie atmospherics. In his walks, Andrei eventually encounters Domenico (Erland Josephson), who may, or may not, guide the Russian on his quest. Tarkovsky challenges his viewers to remain focused during this meandering dream. But in a good way.
Not rated, 125 minutes.
The Prey (***1/2), Terraferma (***1/2)
Cohen Media Group releases two fine yet vastly different imports. The French language The Prey is a beguiling comic-strip of a movie with constant action: car chases, foot chases, a jailbreak, a fall over a cliff, and more. Franck Adrien (Albert Dupontel) sits in jail for robbing a bank and then hiding the money. He thinks he can trust his meek cellmate, Maurel (Stephane Debac), who leaves when his conviction is overturned. Turns out, Maurel is a sadistic serial killer who then kills Adrien’s wife and kidnaps his child as he searches for Adrien’s hidden loot. Adrien breaks out of jail and tracks down Maurel in picturesque Provence while an army of cops searches for them both. Director Eric Valette keeps up a break-neck pace filled with white knuckle scenes. The disc also includes a 13 minute interview with Valette and a 38 minute “making of” featurette. The engrossing drama Terraferma takes place on a small Mediterranean island near Sicily. A family looks like it may split when the grandfather wants to keep fishing on his outdated boat, usually with his grandson Filippo (Filippo Pucillo). But the adult son and daughter want to concentrate on making a living from the island’s tourist trade. All problems change focus one day when the grandfather takes in some drowning illegal aliens from Ethiopia. This illegal act costs the grandfather his boat, and it sets into motion a chain of events that will affect everyone on the island. The disc holds a 24 minute “making of” featurette.
Instructions Not Included (***)
This film, mostly in Spanish but with some English, became the highest grossing Spanish language film ever in this country last year. Well known Mexican performer Eugenio Derbez directed and co-wrote this dramatic-comedy, and he also plays Valentin, a scruffy single man in Acapulco who enjoys the constant companionship of women. One day, a previous fling, an American, shows up and then disappears, but not before dropping off a year-old baby, Maggie, he never knew about. He tries to track the mother down in Los Angeles, a diversion that not only provides plenty of fish-out-of-water gags, but opens the door for Valentin to become a successful Hollywood stunt man. Flash seven or eight years ahead and Valentin, never having found the mother, continues
to raise a well adjusted, bilingual Maggie (Loreto Peralta). The long forgotten mother naturally re-appears and wants custody of Maggie, which sets off a custody battle while enabling Valentin to show what a good father he has become. It ends about as amiably as possible, but not before director Derbez includes every possible tear-jerking scene. He also includes enough humor and some clever stop motion animation that aids the film’s overall buoyant tone.
Rated PG-13, 115 minutes. The film includes commentary from Derbez.
Peanuts Deluxe Edition: Touchdown Charlie Brown
This single disc unrated collection includes the animated treat “It’s Your First Kiss Charlie Brown,” and it has been re-mastered and now arrives with three episodes from “The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show.” The episodes center on Charlie’s always comical attempts at football.
Comedy Bang! Bang!–season one
The ten episodes, of around thirty minutes each, of this Independent Film Channel series, arrive on two discs. In its first season, this strange hybrid spoof-sketch-satire-interview show scored some major guest stars who all seemed to want in on the joke: Andy Samberg, Jack Black, Elizabeth Banks, Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, Amy Poehler, Zach Galifianakis and others. Scott Aukerman co-created the show and acts as the default “host,” quizzing his guests on his talk show which manages to incorporate improvisations, sketches, short films and just about anything else he and co-creator and partner in mayhem Reggie Watts can conjure up.
Not rated, 230 minutes. The collection holds abundant supplements, such as commentaries, deleted scenes, and featurettes on test shoots for special effects, Reggie Watt’s introductions, another cut of “The Assassin,” an alternate title sequence, and more.
Also on DVD: Captain Phillips, Dark Touch, Machete Kills.