FILM FRENZY

Lily Gladstone in The Unknown Country (Photo: Music Box Films)

By Matt Brunson

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray, 4K and DVD. Ratings are on a four-star scale.)

THE BUSTER KEATON COLLECTION: VOLUME 5 (1923). After releasing the first three volumes of Buster Keaton classics over a four-month stretch in Summer 2019, the Cohen label finally offered a fourth volume in December 2020. Yet that 15-month wait seems like a blink of an eye compared to the 36-month lag between that fourth edition and the latest Blu-ray twofer. Despite offering top-flight entertainment, the two pictures in Volume 5 are historically important in that they were Keaton’s first two features as director.

After writing and directing approximately 20 shorts (and starring in over a dozen more), Keaton made his feature directorial debut with Three Ages (1923). As the title suggests, it’s three connected stories in one, showing how love affects a meek man in the Stone Age, the Roman Age, and the Modern Age. Keaton respectively plays a caveman, a gladiator, and a poverty-stricken gentleman, each competing against a brute (Wallace Beery) for the hand of a lovely woman (Margaret Leahy). Anticipating Mel Brooks’ hilarious History of the World: Part I in a few ways (not to mention some Marx Brothers tomfoolery), Three Ages contains some great gags and at least one fantastic shot (Keaton falling into a river, filmed from above), although it doesn’t always hang together as a narrative feature.

Three Ages was a hit, and Keaton followed it a mere two months later with a comedy that was even more successful. Set circa 1830, Our Hospitality (1923) finds Buster playing Willie McKay, a young man who returns to the family homestead a full 20 years after he was sent away as a mere toddler. Willie is blissfully unaware that his family and the neighboring Canfields have always been sworn enemies, with members of each clan killing their rivals at every opportunity. Willie falls for local beauty Virginia Canfield (Natalie Talmadge, Keaton’s wife at the time), initially ignorant that her father (Joe Roberts) and her two brothers (Ralph Bushman and Craig Ward) mean to shoot him dead. The lengthy stretch in which Willie connives to remain inside the Canfield home as their guest, knowing he’ll be killed if he steps outside, is a running succession of clever gags — ditto the set-pieces involving a rather unique train. Still, the film’s showstopper is the dynamic climax in which Willie and Virginia find themselves at the mercy of a waterfall.

The only Blu-ray extra is a re-release trailer for Our Hospitality.

Three Ages: ★★★

Our Hospitality: ★★★½

DEATH WISH (2018). First, the good news: Despite all the worries at the time of its initial release that this remake of the 1974 Charles Bronson hit (itself an adaptation of Brian Garfield’s novel) would be nothing more than an alt-right wet dream in which Bruce Willis guns down scores of blacks and Muslims while shouting, “Trump 2020!,” the film is actually restrained in such matters and isn’t any more reactionary than other action films of recent vintage. Now, the bad news: The movie still isn’t very good, as it largely strips away the angle that made the Bronson flick so memorable. Very much a film of its time and setting (New York City), the original Death Wish cast Bronson as Paul Kersey, a mild-mannered architect who turns vigilante after his wife is murdered by punks (including Jeff Goldblum!) and his daughter is placed in a coma. But that picture was more about Kersey’s open war on all criminals — startlingly, the thugs who destroyed his family are never apprehended. This version finds Willis playing a mild-mannered Chicago surgeon who similarly sees his wife (Elisabeth Shue) and daughter (Camila Morone) suffer and opts to take the law into his own hands. But this Paul Kersey has the means to track down his family’s assailants — he quickly stops going after random criminals and focuses solely on those who personally wronged him, and this unfortunate narrative turn renders the picture no different than any other run-of-the-mill revenge flick. Willis is no match for Bronson, although Vincent D’Onofrio has a few choice moments as Paul’s concerned brother.

Extras in the 4K UHD + Blu-ray edition include audio commentary by director Eli Roth and producer Roger Birnbaum; a piece on Roth’s direction; and deleted scenes.

Movie: ★★

MY FATHER’S GLORY (1990) / MY MOTHER’S CASTLE (1990). It was 1986 that saw the back-to-back releases of Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, writer-director Claude Berri’s two-part French drama based on Marcel Pagnol’s source material. So perhaps it’s fitting that, a few years after those art-house hits (reviewed below in From Screen to Stream), Pagnol himself would be honored with a two-parter — specifically, a pair of pictures based on his own childhood memoirs. Whereas the fictional Jean / Manon naturally relied on narrative twists and carefully constructed characterizations, these films, lovingly crafted by writer-director Yves Robert, are just the opposite. They’re as idyllic and unhurried as their pastoral setting, and dramatic urgency is noticeably MIA. They’re lovely and delicate, and it isn’t until the end of the second film that the cumulative force of its emotional strands is felt in full force.

Set at the turn of the 20th century, the movies center on 11-year-old Marcel (played as a child by Julien Ciamaca, narrated in VO as an adult by Jean-Pierre Darras), his schoolteacher father Joseph (Philippe Caubère), his sensitive mother Augustine (Nathalie Roussel), and his little brother Paul (Victorien Delamare). Although they live in busy Marseille, the family members find themselves increasingly drawn to their countryside cottage, where they can bask in the rural splendors and spend time with the cheerful locals.

My Father’s Glory is largely episodic in nature: Like chapters in a book, it tackles one subject — Joseph and Marcel’s school days, the wooing of Augustine’s sister Rose (Thérèse Liotard) by the jovial Jules (Didier Pain), Marcel’s friendship with a country boy named Lili (Joris Molinas), etc. — before moving onto the next. My Mother’s Castle is far more focused: After an interlude in which Marcel gets charmed by a bratty girl (Julie Timmerman) who treats him — and makes him act — like a dog, the story specifically centers on the family’s escapades as they repeatedly take a possibly illicit shortcut to their country home, one which finds them crossing the properties of various local landowners. My Father’s Glory can function as a standalone film, My Mother’s Castle perhaps not so much. But I defy anyone to watch the enchanting first film and not want to return to this world right away.

My Father’s Glory and My Mother’s Castle are available in a two-disc Blu-ray set from Film Movement. Extras consist of a discussion with Yves Robert’s son Jean-Denis Robert, his grandson Martin Drescher, and the films’ cinematographer Robert Alazraki; a visual essay; and theatrical trailers. A booklet is also included.

My Father’s Glory: ★★★½

My Mother’s Castle: ★★★½

RAPA-NUI (1994). Somewhere in our garage, among the many remnants from my childhood, rests a 1975 issue of Marvel’s Tomb of Darkness in which the cover story (a reprint from a 1962 issue of Tales of Suspense, and courtesy of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby et al) employs Easter Island as its setting. It turns out that all those mysterious stone statues are really giant extra-terrestrials remaining dormant until they’re given the order to rise from the earth and (if memory serves) conquer our planet. Honestly, a movie based on this outlandish premise would scarcely have seemed more silly than what transpires in Rapa-Nui, an eminently junky — and weirdly watchable — period epic produced by Kevin Costner and written and directed by his frequent collaborator Kevin Reynolds (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Hatfields & McCoys). Jason Scott Lee, the underappreciated actor from Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and the best version of The Jungle Book, is Noro, a member of the ruling class on the Chilean island; Esai Morales, the villainous Gabriel in the latest Mission: Impossible chapter, is Make, a member of the proletariat. Not only do they both love the beautiful Ramana (Sandrine Holt), they’re also two of the athletes taking part in an annual competition that determines which tribe will rule the island. At least the boys get to enjoy the sunshine and the sea; as part of the various trials set forth by a duplicitous high priest (George Henare), Ramana must spend six months in the “Virgin Cave” (more like a “Virgin Cubbyhole”) so that her skin might become lighter before she marries the winner of this Polynesian Gladiators competition. Rapa-Nui is part Romeo and Juliet, part X-Treme Sports, part “save the planet,” part historical record, and wholly silly in its plot contrivances and in its oddball attempts at humor.

The only Blu-ray extra is the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY (2023). It’s been a good week for Lily Gladstone, as the Native American thespian won the Best Actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Outstanding Lead Performance at the Gotham Awards for writer-director Morrisa Maltz’s The Unknown Country. Gladstone’s Killers turn will garner all the ink as we head deeper into Oscar season, but it’s her work in the smaller picture that builds on the indie promise she earlier displayed in Kelly Reichardt’s 2016 gem Certain Women (reviewed here), where her performance nabbed her approximately two dozen nominations and a half-dozen wins. Gladstone plays Tana, who finds herself emotionally and mentally adrift after the death of the grandmother to whom she had been serving as caretaker. Leaving her Minnesota home to attend a cousin’s wedding in South Dakota, Tana finds plenty of opportunities to reconnect with her Oglala Lakota family but discovers it’s a little more difficult connecting with herself. Thus, her road trip continues, and while she runs into some difficulties along the way — a scene in which a man ogles her as she pumps gas late at night perfectly encapsulates the perpetual threats faced by indigenous women — she more often encounters kind and colorful people who embrace humanity in all its imperfections. Maltz’s decision to often surround Gladstone with non-professionals basically playing themselves (I especially liked the verbose convenience store clerk) brings to mind Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, and while this one may not cut as deep, it’s nevertheless a quietly effective drama anchored by a superlative lead performance.

Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by Gladstone, Maltz, and editor Vanara Taing; a Q&A session with Maltz; Maltz’s 2014 short film Odyssea; and the music video for DYAN’s “Looking for Knives.”

Movie: ★★★

WHITE LIGHTNING (1973) / GATOR (1976). White Lightning and its sequel Gator were two of the so-called “hick flicks” that helped sustain Burt Reynolds’ superstar career during the 1970s and helped sink it during the 1980s. White Lightning has by far the better reputation of the pair, although I found them to be of comparable quality.

White Lightning casts Burt as Gator McKlusky, an Arkansas moonshiner who learns that his younger brother was murdered by a corrupt good ole boy sheriff (Ned Beatty) for being a college-educated activist (read: Commie Pinko and filthy hippie). Since he’s presently incarcerated with a year left on his sentence, Gator’s only chance at being released to get his sweet revenge is to agree to help the feds by providing evidence on the sheriff’s illegal bookkeeping activities. It’s fun to see Reynolds and Beatty reunited one year after Deliverance, and Bo Hopkins delivers one of his patented performances as a slow-speaking, slow-moving, and slow-witted redneck. This is standard yahoo fare that was made for the Southern drive-in crowd, marginally elevated by good performances and a certain sense of devil-may-care style. Diane Ladd (billed as Diane Lad) appears in a supporting role, and that little girl who plays her child is her real-life daughter, a then-6-year-old Laura Dern in her film debut.

Gator finds Burt back in action, as his character is this time forced to help out after a federal agent (Jack Weston) threatens to make life difficult for his kin. Gator is tasked with infiltrating the Georgia-based operation of Bama McCall (Jerry Reed), a former friend who is now involved in drugs, prostitution, the usual. While he’s busy reestablishing his relationship with Bama, Gator also finds time to woo a local news reporter (Lauren Hutton). Reynolds doesn’t flub his feature debut as director, and he can be forgiven for providing his leading man plenty of loving close-ups (after all, he’s merely keeping the customers satisfied.) As in the first film, the vehicular chases go on too long and the Kentucky fried humor doesn’t usually work, but Reed, the country music star who would later be generally cast as affable sidekicks (as in Reynolds’ Smokey and the Bandit), is surprisingly good as the particularly sleazy villain.

White Lightning and Gator are sold separately on the Kino label. There’s a two-part interview with Reynolds spread across both offerings; other Blu-ray extras on each include film historian audio commentary; radio spots; and the theatrical trailer.

White Lightning: ★★½

Gator: ★★½

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

JEAN DE FLORETTE (1986) / MANON OF THE SPRING (1986). It’s a shame that the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (aka BAFTA) has in recent decades become content slavishly patterning itself after our own Oscars and positioning itself as a predictor of how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will vote. That’s because, in past decades, the organization saw fit to forge its own path. Witness, for instance, the 1987 BAFTAs, when the French gem Jean de Florette scored a whopping 10 nominations and four awards, including the prize for Best Picture. With our own Oscars, Jean de Florette‘s nomination tally was … zero, and it wasn’t until 2019’s Parasite that the xenophobic Academy handed a foreign-language release the Best Picture Oscar. At any rate, Jean’s BAFTA victory was a fitting one, given that the movie was an international sensation and, even here in the U.S., a potent art-house hit. Working from Marcel Pagnol’s source material, writer-director Claude Berri (scripting with Gérald Brach) ambitiously crafted a two-film, four-hour saga, with the first half of the tale related in Jean de Florette and the second in the follow-up film, Manon of the Spring.

Jean de Florette is the more powerful picture, delineating how the greedy Cesar Soubeyran (Yves Montand) and his dim-witted nephew Ugolin (Daniel Auteuil) conspire to steal water-rich property away from the hunchbacked Jean Cadoret (Gérard Depardieu), a former city dweller who has moved to the country with his wife Aimée (Élisabeth Depardieu, Gérard’s then-wife) and their small daughter Manon (Ernestine Mazurowna). Visually resplendent and magnificently acted (particularly by Auteuil), Jean de Florette has all the trimmings of a great Greek tragedy. Manon of the Spring loses much of that intensity, as Jean’s now-grown daughter plots her revenge on the two men who irreparably destroyed her family. As Manon, Emmanuelle Béart is stunning in her breakthrough role, but her character is a bit more passive than desired, and the cathartic release isn’t as great as expected. Still, as a bookend set, these two pictures shouldn’t be missed.

Jean de Florette: ★★★½

Manon of the Spring: ★★★