Jason Bailey
Every Tuesday, discriminating viewers are confronted with a flurry of choices: new releases on disc and on demand, vintage and original movies on any number of streaming platforms, catalogue titles making a splash on Blu-ray or 4K. This twice-monthly column sifts through all of those choices to pluck out the movies most worth your time, no matter how you’re watching.
PICK OF THE WEEK:
Jackie Chan’s Breakout Hits!: There have been no shortage of Jackie Chan box sets on disc — one from Criterion, two from Shout Factory — but most focused on his early years, before his long-awaited (and initially unsuccessful) crossover to Western audiences. That blessed event finally occurred in 1995, with the release of Rumble in the Bronx, and it’s one of the six features from that period included in this essential ten-disc set from Arrow Video, which captures this one-of-a-kind artist at his most inventive, athletic, and entertaining. The best of the bunch is likely its immediate predecessor Drunken Master II, which amounted to a farewell to his period wuxia movies, albeit one infused with the mixture of action and comedy that he had then perfected. Rumble, Mr. Nice Guy, and Thunderbolt push that mixture to maximum effect, combining his goofball persona, breathless stunt work, and athletic prowess, particularly in the found-materials fight scenes that would become his trademark; it’s surprising that Thunderbolt didn’t see some kind of American release (the only one in the box, to my knowledge), since its combination of Chan action and Days of Thunder-style auto racing makes it seem custom-crafted for our shores. First Strike and Who Am I? are somewhat less successful, with Chan attempting to squeeze his style into a more generic, Bond-Lite box (the latter doesn’t give us a real Chan fight scene until the 57-minute mark), though when the big set pieces come, they truly deliver. Arrow’s set is loaded with extras and also thankfully thorough; many of these pictures were notoriously recut by New Line and Dimension for American audiences in the ‘90s, so some are presented in up to three versions for the purposes of comparison. (Includes audio commentaries, new and archival interviews, featurettes, outtakes, alternate and deleted scenes, trailers and TV spots, and essays by Thorsten Boose, Peter S. Bruce, Matt McAllister, Elaine Chung and Jialu Zhu.)
ON NETFLIX:
Chris and Martina: The Final Set: It’s a Netflix sports documentary, so you also may know exactly what you’re in for, and you’re not entirely wrong: archival footage, soft-focus interviews, inspirational music, and so on. But you don’t always have to dazzle us with innovative style if you have a compelling story to tell, and director Rebecca Gitlitz certainly has that: the riveting origins of subjects Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova as teenage tennis prodigies; the ups and downs of their on-the-court rivalry (they faced off 80+ times) and off-the-court friendship; and their current, concurrent battles with cancer, which have brought them even closer. Gitlitz also uses a clever wraparound device, sitting her subjects on a comfy white couch in front of a big TV and showing them their old matches for commentary. It’s fun to watch them watch themselves (“What a game!”); the director also helpfully gets into the weeds of their specific styles of play, and how they evolved, which is helpful for a tennis noob like me.
ON 4K / BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
It Was Just an Accident: The title of Jafar Panahi’s latest (new to the Criterion Collection) has a double-meaning; the story opens with an automobile accident that sets the events into motion, but what follows is a series of such coincidences and impossibilities that it’s entirely possible that everyone has made grave mistakes. It hinges on a question of identity, as mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) encounters a man (Ebrahim Azizi) whom he believes is the government agent who tortured him and several acquaintances years earlier. Writer/director Panahi finds moments of levity even within this dark story (the image of another possible victim, kicking a van and asking where he is while she’s donning nothing more regal than a wedding dress, is a memorable one), but it all culminates in a long, tough scene of confessions and confrontations that contains some of the most gut-wrenching acting of any film in recent memory. (Also streaming on Hulu.) (Includes interview, Cannes press conference, trailer, and essay by Sheida Dayani.)
Crime 101: It’s easy to ding Bart Layton’s sprawling Los Angeles crime drama for its blatant cribbing of the Michael Mann playbook — the look, the feel, the sound, the score, the narrative, the actors (Blackhat’s Chris Hemsworth and Collateral’s Mark Ruffalo), even individual shots do their damndest to replicate Mann’s distinctive aesthetic. But last week’s highest recommendation went to Charade, the most Hitchcockian movie Hitchcock didn’t direct, so maybe that doesn’t actually matter. Layton, who started out in documentaries (his debut film was The Imposter) is good at this kind of storytelling, throwing us in with little explanation, connecting his characters in believable ways, giving his fine cast (which also includes Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Corey Hawkins, and Nick Nolte) moments to breathe and live between his set pieces, and building to an ingeniously devised and impeccably executed climax. It may be Mann Lite, but it’s nevertheless good, crisp, expert action filmmaking. (Also streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)
ON BLU-RAY / DVD / VOD:
The Mastermind: On a baseline level, it’s kind of insane to imagine Kelly Reichart, the maker of such low-key indie dramas as Wendy and Lucy and First Cow, helming a heist movie. She’s aware of that incongruity, and leans into it, making a modest, ‘70s-era character study that not only de-glamorizes the heist itself (lingering on logistics, miring in minutiae, the execution more clumsy than cool) but the romantic notion of the life of crime. The early scenes find quiet irony in the domesticity of Josh O’Connor’s title character, whose planning meetings are interrupted by his curious but clueless wife (Alana Haim) and whose heist is thrown a monkey wrench by a forgotten inservice day for his kids (“You two stay outta trouble,” he instructs them, handing them a few bucks). But the deeper it gets, the more ironic the title becomes, as the depths of his ineptitude are revealed. The jazz score by Rob Mazurek is appropriate, since the director is doing idiosyncratic variations on familiar themes, all while stubbornly refusing to take narrative shortcuts or go in easy directions. (Also streaming on MUBI.) (Includes featurette.)
ON 4K UHD:
Desperate Living: “I have never found the antics of deviants to be one bit amusing!” screeches Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) early in John Waters’s deranged 1977 black comedy, and if you share that view, steer clear; as with much of his output, Desperate Living is shriekingly loud, aggressively vulgar, and an absolute hoot. It’s easily his most surrealist work, beginning with Baltimore housewife Peggy and her maid Grizelda (Jean Hill) accidentally killing her annoying husband and hiding out in nearby Mortville, a shantytown ruled by the fascist Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey). Hilarity and hijinks ensue, each vignette in worse taste than the last, on the way to something akin to a feel-good ending. Also new to the Criterion Collection, with a 4K restoration that has to be the best it’s ever looked. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, featurette, trailer, and essay by Grace Byron.)
Hairspray: There’s a touch of cognitive dissonance in watching Waters’s other new Criterion release back-to-back with Desperate Living that makes the suspicion of his fans, upon its initial release, somewhat understandable; what was the self-proclaimed King of Trash doing making a cheery period piece with a (gasp) PG rating? (The whiplash is even further underscored by the appearance of Mink Stole as a totally normal person.) But if the contrast between his most nihilistic movie and his most mainstream effort is initially striking, there’s no selling out in the picture itself; it’s bright and peppy, and star Ricki Lake is a ray of sunshine, but Waters’s obvious affection for outsiders, eccentrics, and rabble-rousers is very much intact. (Includes audio commentary, interviews, deleted scenes, documentary, trailer, and essay by Jessica Kiang.)
Hang ‘Em High: Clint Eastwood’s first Western after the international sensation that was the Dollars trilogy gets a spiffy 4K upgrade from KL Studio Classics, and it looks great — and still resonates, its 1968 release falling in the early stages of the revisionist Western movement, best reflected by its frequent dramatizations of bloodlust among the commoners (the public hangings are rowdy town events; the convicts on a prison transport lustily hoot for the blood of an escapee). Director Ted Post also helmed Eastwood’s first “Dirty Harry” sequel, Magnum Force, and he has a blunt, mean, nasty way of picture-making that nicely contrasts the softer hand of Eastwood’s most frequent collaborator of the period, Don Siegel. And the supporting cast is aces, including an especially weaselly Bruce Dern, a beautifully complicated Pat Hingle, and a character first introduced as “plum loco” who turns out, of course, to be a zonked-out Dennis Hopper; Ben Johnson, L.Q. Jones, Ed Begley, and Alan Hale Jr. all turn up for meaty small roles as well. (Includes audio commentaries, TV spots, radio spot and trailer.)
ON BLU-RAY:
Magnificent Bodyguards: There aren’t many of them to choose from, but I’ve got a real soft spot for vintage 3-D kung fu movies. The genre, by nature, demands flourishes and experimentation; you can only watch a group of guys fight for so long before you want variations in props, choreography, and framing, and if you can toss things at the lens, all the better. This 1978 effort, the first Hong Kong martial arts film shot in 3-D, stars “Jacky Chan” (still seen primarily as a traditional action hero in the Bruce Lee mold) and is directed by Lo Wei (who, to his ultimate detriment, kept trying to make him into one). So you won’t see much of the Chan persona reflected in the Arrow box, but you will see Wei, one of the most creative and innovative shooters of the genre, having a great time playing with his new toy — heaving feet, sticks, darts, stars, knives, swords, snakes, and even falling rocks directly into the lens. It’s a blast, the technology treated like the gimmick it is, and the work put in by 88 Films and the 3-D Film Archive to give this long-neglected picture a proper restoration is commendable. And yes, it includes all of the lifted and unlicensed Star Wars music. (Includes three versions — digital 3D, anaglyph 3D with glasses, and flat 2D — audio commentary, featurettes, alternate audio, and essay by Thorsten Boose.)
The Lost Man: The central premise here — a Black revolutionary remake of Carol Reed’s classic Odd Man Out — is so delicious that it’s a bit of a bummer that it doesn’t quite come together; writer/director Robert Alan Aurthur can’t decide if he’s making a crime thriller or a character drama, so the pacing is off, and the picture goes slack when it needs to tighten up. But there’s still much to recommend here: juicy supporting work from Al Freeman Jr., Paul Winfield, and Joanna Shimkus (among others); a banger of a Quincy Jones score; textured photography by Gerald Finnerman; and a killer leading role for Sidney Poitier, who is working in a colder and more detached mode than usual, his sunglasses less a fashion choice than an effective tool for keeping everyone around him (including, for a time, the audience) at bay. (Includes audio commentary and trailer.)
Pretty Maids All in a Row: It’s not much of a surprise that this delightfully sleazy black comedy/murder mystery, set at a high school where every student is both ridiculously attractive and fucking a teacher, should come from director Roger Vadim, who made wife Brigitte Bardot an international sex kitten with And God Created Woman and did the same for later wife Jane Fonda with Barbarella. What’s less expected is the writer/producer who put this tale to the page and ensured that it made its way to the screen: Gene Rodenberry, better known for creating Star Trek. (But now that you mention it, Kirk’s frequent interplanetary snogging sessions do seem the handiwork of a mighty horny scribe.) There’s an undeniably icky vibe to the whole thing — though it’s softened somewhat by the fact that the primary cheerleader deflowerer is played by Rock Hudson — but you can’t take your eyes off it, whether out of curiosity or prurient interest; the colors pop (Warner Archives’ new transfer is a beaut), the performers are game (particularly Angie Dickinson, who redefines the whole “hot for teacher” thing), and Rodenberry’s script is certainly wittier than it had to be. (Includes trailer.)
