The week’s DVDs begin in Dublin:
DVDs for May 15 by Boo Allen
This week, we begin in Dublin:
Albert Nobbs (**1/2)
Rodrigo Garcia directed this dual character study based on a George Moore
novella set in turn of 20th century Dublin. Glenn Close, Gabriella
Prekop and novelist John Banville wrote the screenplay, with Close
starring as the title character, a repressed woman passing for a man
working in a shabby hotel. While carrying on her daily duties, Albert Nobbs lives in fear that
her secret will be revealed. Life seems to improve when Albert meets
Hubert (Janet McTeer), another woman with the same secret. The three
Make Up artists garnered an Oscar nomination as did Close and McTeer
for their fine performances.
Rated R, 113 minutes. The DVD, in all formats, offers
commentary with Close and Garcia, and eight minutes of deleted
scenes.
A Girl on a Motorcycle (**1/2)
In 1968, Jack Cardiff, a sporadic director but one of the greatest of
all cinematographers, built this free-form film around two of the
era’s Most Beautiful People. Marianne Faithfull plays the title
character, Rebecca, a vivacious young blonde who repeatedly rides her
motorcycle from her rural French home, and her boring husband of two
months, and travels to a nearby German town to visit her lover Daniel
(Alain Delon). In between, she reminisces with voiced-over memories
about the recent past. With Rebecca’s jaunts, Cardiff renders a
series of impressionistic scenes filled with colorful hallucinogenic
images that call for little acting from the inexperienced Faithfull.
The resulting visuals alone make this oddity worth watching.
Rated R, 91 minutes. The DVD also includes commentary from the legendary
Cardiff who died in 2009 at 94.
Primitive London (**1/2), London in the Raw (**1/2)
Kino-Lorber revives these two often lurid documentaries that reveal select
distaff elements of mid-1960s London. In both, writer-director Arnold
Miller takes his camera through the town, capturing and conveying
everyday events, as well as some of the more private ones, such as
Londoners exercising in a health club, undergoing plastic surgery, or
enjoying the city’s famous nightlife, whether in the forms of
musicals or visiting a high end brothel. Miller frequently stops long
enough to interview varied Londoners. The two unrated films serve as
authentic time capsules.
Primitive London (1965, 87 minutes), London in the Raw
(1964, 77 minutes)
Warner Archives continues to release interesting fare: Big
City (***, 1948, 103 minutes). Almost simultaneously, a
cantor (future TV star Danny Thomas), a clergyman (future Music Man
Robert Preston), and an Irish cop (future U.S. Senator George Murphy)
discover an abandonded baby. A few years later, she grows up to be
Midge (Margaret O’Brien) and lives with the cantor and his mother,
played by rarely seen opera star Lotte Lehmann. The three men want to
bring the child up as a team, which eventually causes problems in
this good-hearted film directed by one-time comic master Norman
Taurog. Plenty of music enlivens the proceedings, with contributions
from Irving Berlin. In the appropriately named Desperate Search
(***, 1952, 71 minutes), noted action director Joseph Lewis shows off
his lean style in the story about Vince (Howard Keel), a reformed
alcoholic who now flies planes in remote Canada. His two young
children visit him and then leave on a plane that crashes in the
wilderness. Vince reluctantly teams up with his ex-wife (Patricia
Medina), also a pilot, to search the area for the wreckage and the
children. Director Lewis also orchestrates several chilling scenes
involving the children, as they fight nature and struggle to survive.
If Winter Comes (***1/2, 1947, 119 minutes) takes place
in 1939 pre-war England, where author Mark Sabre (Walter Pidgeon) has
a love-less marriage with Mabel (Angela Lansbury). His ex-flame Nona
(Deborah Kerr), also unhappily married, returns, causing trouble for
both marriages. The outbreak of war unintentionally solves some of
the problems, but Mark finds himself a local outcast when he attempts
to help Effie (Janet Leigh), an unmarried, pregnant young woman. Mark
follows his ordained path of always doing the right thing, which
naturally leads to obstacles before an inevitably happy ending.
And, finally, from this week’s TV arrivals:
The Universe—complete season six
This popular series from cable channel History continues its success by
engagingly examining our world, including the formation of the
planets, our earth, its inhabitants, and how everything began. With
the use of CGI imaging, expert interviews, and some colorful footage,
the season’s 14 episodes, on three discs, cover such topics as “When
Space Changed History,” “God and the Universe,” “Alien
Sounds,” “Worst Days on Planet Earth,” and more.
Rated TV-PG, 616 minutes.
Doctor Who: Nightmare of Eden, Doctor Who: Dragonfire, Doctor Who: The
Happiness Patrol
The B.B.C. has digitally remastered and brought to DVD
three single disc entries in their long-running, seemingly endless
Dr. Who series. Nightmare of Eden (story 107, 1979, 100
minutes) stars Tom Baker as the good doctor as he holds the
Continuous Event Transmuter and fights the Mandrels. Sylvester McCoy
plays Dr. Who in both Dragonfire (story 151, 1987, 73
minutes) and The Happiness Patrol (story
153, 1988, 74 minutes). Dragonfire turns into a
convoluted chase through ice caves on Iceworld and also stars Sophie
Aldred as Ace. Dr. Who visits Terra Alpha in Happiness Patrol,
a place policed to make sure everyone stays content and
happy. Each disc holds individual but ample supplements, such as
commentaries, “making of” featurettes, deleted and extended
scenes, interviews, photo galleries, and more.
Hell on Wheels—season one
The initial season of this gritty western proved a breakout one for cable
channel AMC. A perpetually scruffy Anson Mount plays ex-Confederate
soldier Cullen Bohannon. The series advances by his need for revenge.
The Civil War ended after his wife and child had been killed by Union
soldiers in his absence. After the war, he heads west to pursue those
responsible. He hooks up with a railroad-building outfit financed and
led by Thomas Durant (Colm Meaney). Bohannon finds himself involved
with other dramas, including renegade Indians, a strong willed freed
slave (Common), an Irish widow Dominique McElligott), and enough
other sub-plots to keep this compelling work going through 10
episodes on three discs.
Not rated, 427 minutes. The DVD set also offers bounteous supplements,
including a 17 minute “making of” featurette, five separate
“making of” featurettes of about five minutes each, and seven
featurettes on the characters. Plus: the brief “Crashing a Train”
featurette and ten separate “Inside the Episode” featurettes for
each episode.
Also on DVD: The Grey, One for the Money, True Blood—season
four.