Hullabaloo: Saturday Night at the Movies by Dennis Hartley --- Summertime Blus: Best BD re-issues of 2014 (so far)

Since we’re more than halfway through the year (already?!), I thought I’d offer my picks for the best Blu-ray reissues (so far) for 2014. Most have a concurrent SD edition, so if you don’t have a Blu-ray player, don’t despair. Per usual, my list is in alphabetical order:

A Hard Day's Night - This 1964 masterpiece has been often copied, but never equaled. Shot in a semi-documentary style, it follows a “day in the life” of John, Paul, George and Ringo. Thanks to Richard Lester's inventive direction and Alun Owen’s clever script, the essence of what made the Beatles “the Beatles” is all right up there on the screen. Although it is in reality quite meticulously constructed, the film has a loose, improvisational vibe, and it feels just as fresh and innovative as when it first hit theatres 50 years ago. To this day I catch subtle gags and surprising little asides that previously eluded me (ever notice John snorting the Coke bottle?). Long overdue for a decent Blu-ray treatment (an underwhelming Canadian release came out a couple years ago), but Criterion has made it worth the wait, with an ace HD restoration and a plethora of extras.

Herzog: The Collection- (*sigh*) It turns out everything that I thought I knew about iconoclastic German director Werner Herzog’s oeuvre couldn’t fill a flea’s codpiece (hangs head in shame, while sheepishly offering to rip up critic’s license for the reader’s amusement). I came to this realization after perusing the list of films included in Shout! Factory’s handsomely designed new Blu-ray box set. Out of the 16 films (spanning the years 1970 to 1999), I had only seen 5. However, in my defense, this is the first time any of these films have been available on Blu-ray, and a good number of them (particularly from the 1970s) have been difficult to track down in any format since the advent of home video. As I have been plowing through this eclectic collection over the past week, I can confirm one constant that I had already gleaned about Herzog…from his earliest days as a filmmaker and continuing to this day, he goes to places where most of us fear to tread (literally and figuratively) and hones his lens in on the one thing in the room that makes us want to look away. And he keeps that goddam camera on it until we’re forced to look, before moving on (how does he always know?!) With beautifully restored prints, new audio commentaries, and many more extra features, this box set is a film lover’s dream.

Prime Cut - This offbeat 1972 "heartland noir" from director Michael Ritchie features one of my favorite Lee Marvin performances. He's a cleaner for an Irish mob out of Chicago who is sent to collect an overdue payment from a venal, sociopathic livestock rancher (Gene Hackman) with the unlikely moniker of "Mary Ann". In addition to overseeing his meat packing plant (where the odd debt collector ends up as sausage filler), Mary Ann maintains a (literal) stable of naked, heavily sedated young women for auction. He protects his spread with a small army of disturbingly uber-Aryan young men who look like they were cloned in a secret Nazi lab. It gets even weirder, yet the film has an oddly endearing quality; perhaps due to its blend of pulpy thrills, dark comedy and ironic detachment. It's fun watching Hackman and Marvin go mano a mano; and seeing Sissy Spacek in her film debut. Explosive Media skimps on extras, but boasts a sharp transfer.

Sorcerer - The time is ripe for a re-appraisal of William Friedkin’s 1977 action-adventure, which was greeted with indifference by audiences and cold-shouldered by critics at the time. Maybe it was the incongruous title, which likely led many to assume it would be in the vein of his previous film (and huge box-office hit), The Exorcist. Then again, it was tough for any other film to garner attention in the immediate wake of Star Wars. At any rate, it’s an expertly directed, terrifically acted update of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic 1953 nail-biter, The Wages Of Fear (I say “update” in deference to Friedkin, who bristles at the term “remake” in a “letter from the director” included with the new disc). Roy Scheider heads a superb international cast as a desperate American on the lam in South America, who signs up for a job transporting a truckload of nitroglycerine via decidedly under-maintained roads. Tangerine Dream provides the memorable soundtrack. No extras on Warner’s Blu-ray, but to finally see a restored, director-supervised transfer is a treat.

The Swimmer - A riveting performance from Burt Lancaster fuels this underappreciated 1968 drama from Frank Perry (and an un-credited Sydney Pollack, who took over direction after Perry dropped out of the production). In this darkly satirical John Cheever story (adapted for the screen by Eleanor Perry), Lancaster's character embarks upon a Homeric journey...working his way home via a network of backyard swimming pools. Each encounter with friends and neighbors (who apparently have not seen him in quite some time) fits another piece to the puzzle of a troubled, troubled man. It's an existential suburban nightmare that can count American Beauty and The Ice Storm amongst its descendants. Grindhouse Releasing's Blu-ray features a restored transfer that showcases David L. Quaid's superb cinematography, plus an absorbing 2 1/2 hour "making of" doc.

Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery - Who killed Laura Palmer? Who cares? The key to binge-watching David Lynch’s short-lived early 90s cult TV series about the denizens of a sleepy Northwestern lumber town and their twisted secrets is to unlearn all that you have learned about neatly wrapped story arcs and to just embrace the wonderfully warped weirdness. The real “mystery” is how the creator of avant-garde films like Eraserhead and Blue Velvet managed to snag a prime time network TV slot in the first place…and got away with it for two seasons! Paramount’s Blu-ray box set sports vibrant transfers and crisply re-mastered audio tracks. Extras include the “international” cut of the pilot episode, and the “prequel” feature film, Twin Peaks - Fire Walk with Me. All the extra features from the DVD “gold box” are ported over, with additional new bonus material.