FILM FRENZY

David Byrne’s American Utopia (Photo: Criterion)

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.)

ALEC GUINNESS MASTERPIECE COLLECTION (1949-1955). Those who only know Alec Guinness for his iconic, Oscar-nominated turn as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars or for his Oscar-winning performance as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai have only seen a sampling of what this extraordinary actor can bring to a role. For a more well-rounded lesson, check out this quartet of films he made for Britain’s celebrated Ealing Studios, all packaged together in a new 4K + Blu-ray collection.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) is a diabolically clever comedy in which the wronged aristocrat Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini (Dennis Price) decides to murder the eight relatives that stand ahead of him on the family tree; all eight (including Lady Agatha) are brilliantly played by Guinness. The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), meanwhile, earned Guinness a Best Actor Academy Award nomination and T.E.B. Clarke a Best Story and Screenplay Oscar win for this captivating tale of a mousy clerk (Guinness) who enlists the aid of his neighbor (Stanley Holloway) and two small-time crooks (Sidney James and Alfie Bass) to rob his own bank of gold bullion. Incidentally, that’s Audrey Hepburn playing Chiquita in one of her earliest roles. And The Man in the White Suit (1951), an Academy Award nominee for Best Screenplay, casts Guinness as Sidney Stratton, an oddball inventor whose creation of a suit that never wears out sends the fashion industry bigwigs into a panic.

Perhaps the best of all the Ealing comedies, The Ladykillers (1955) finds Guinness cast as Professor Marcus, a gentleman who rents a room from the sweet septuagenarian Mrs. Wilberforce (Katie Johnson). He informs her that he and his friends are amateur musicians and will be using the space for rehearsal; in truth, he’s a seasoned criminal, and he and his “friends” — the dapper Claude (Cecil Parker), the dim-witted One-Round (Danny Green), the nervous Harry (Peter Sellers), and the ruthless Louis (Herbert Lom) — are using the jam sessions as a cover for plotting a robbery. The heist goes off as planned, but after Mrs. Wilberforce realizes their true intentions, the crooks decide that she must be permanently silenced. The Coen Brothers remade this in 2004 with Tom Hanks in the lead role; while it’s better than its shabby reputation, it’s certainly no match for this droll comic gem.

Each of the four movies offers film historian audio commentary. Extras on Kind Hearts and Coronets include an introduction by filmmaker John Landis; an interview with cinematographer Douglas Slocombe (who shot the first three of these films and would later shoot the first three Indiana Jones adventures); and the alternate American ending. Extras on The Lavender Hill Mob include an introduction by filmmaker Martin Scorsese; an audio interview with Ealing director Charles Crichton (who 37 years later would helm A Fish Called Wanda); and an interview with Clarke. Extras on The Man in the White Suit include an interview with filmmaker Stephen Frears (The Queen) and the theatrical trailer. Extras on The Ladykillers include the 2002 documentary Forever Ealing, narrated by Daniel Day-Lewis; a discussion about the movie with Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist); and a look at the film’s restoration.

Kind Hearts and Coronets: ★★★½

The Lavender Hill Mob: ★★★½

The Man in the White Suit: ★★★

The Ladykillers: ★★★½

AT THE CIRCUS (1939). After their string of classics produced at Paramount and MGM, the Marx Brothers bounced around a few studios making movies that ranged from good to average. They returned to MGM during this period for At the Circus, but the film failed to recapture the magic of their earlier efforts at the studio. Groucho is lawyer J. Cheever Loophole, summoned by big-top employees Tony (Chico) and Punchy (Harpo) to help them stop villains from taking over the circus. Despite the promising backdrop, this lacks the go-for-broke zaniness of their past hits, and, as was often the case in Marx Bros vehicles, all action grinds to a halt whenever the story’s square lovebirds (here played by Kenny Baker and Florence Rice) sing a dreary tune. On the plus side, you do get to hear Groucho warble “Lydia, the Tattooed Lady.”

Blu-ray extras include a radio promo for the film; the 1939 Our Gang short Dog Daze; and the 1939 cartoon Jittterbug Follies.

Movie: ★★

DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPIA (2020). There’s no truth to the rumor that Da 5 Bloods was 2020’s best Spike Lee Joint. No, that honor would have to go to this vibrant filmization of the acclaimed Broadway production starring former Talking Heads head honcho David Byrne. As 1984’s Stop Making Sense still reigns as the greatest concert film of all time, there’s a nice symmetry in that the earlier picture showcased Byrne with his established all-American band while this effort finds him performing with a new generation of international musicians. Joyful, playful, and infused with progressive passion, it’s the best party around.

Extras in the 4K Ultra HD edition consist of a new documentary featuring Byrne, Lee, director of photography Ellen Kuras, dancer-vocalist Tendayi Kuumba, choreographer and musical stager Annie-B Parson, lighting designer Rob Sinclair, and bassist Bobby Wooten III; a conversation from 2020 between Lee and Byrne; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★½

IT’S LOVE I’M AFTER (1937). Three heavyweights receive above-the-title billing in this trifling comedy, although it’s a supporting actor who swipes the picture from the all-stars. Leslie Howard and Bette Davis respectively play conceited actor Basil Underwood and temperamental actress Joyce Arden, stage stars who have been engaged 11 times but always break it off following one of their blow-out squabbles. Entering the scene is Marcia West (Olivia de Havilland), a star-struck blue blood whose adoration of Basil complicates matters for everyone. While this offers a change of pace for Davis, the role is rather underwritten, whereas de Havilland’s part is merely badly written. Howard fares best, and that’s largely because he shares many of his scenes with Eric Blore, who was a riot as Edward Everett Horton’s valet in 1935’s Top Hat and performs similar duties as Howard’s valet here.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 1937 Porky Pig cartoons Porky’s Building and Porky’s Badtime Story, and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★½

THE MAD MISS MANTON (1938). This bright screwball comedy casts Barbara Stanwyck as Melsa Manton, a Park Avenue heiress who stumbles across the body of a murder victim. The corpse is gone by the time the police arrive, leading them to dismiss it as a prank and newspaper editor Peter Ames (Henry Fonda) to publicly lambast the ditzy actions of wealthy ladies. Undeterred, Melsa assembles her merry pranksters — seven other socialites — and seeks to solve the murder herself, with Ames reluctantly dragged into the proceedings. The madcap pace can’t completely camouflage a dawdling murder-mystery, but the film maintains enough speed to succeed. Hattie McDaniels appears in support; of course she’s cast as Melsa’s maid, but here she’s given a role with bite, as her Hilda has the mouth of The Jeffersons’ Florence and benefits from some of the script’s best zingers.

Blu-ray extras consist of the 1938 cartoons The Penguin Parade and Porky the Gob (starring the Pig), and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

MAMA (2013). Mama begins with a crazed father failing in his attempt to murder his two children before turning the gun on himself (an homage to Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout?). The girls (Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse) spend the next five years living in a cabin in the woods, with only a spectral mother figure to protect them. Once the kids are located, they’re placed in the care of the dead dad’s brother (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his Goth-chick girlfriend (Jessica Chastain). But as the children warm up to their surrogate parents, the malevolent Mama responds in a jealous rage. This finds writer-director Andres Muschietti expanding on his 2008 short of the same name — that 3-minute effort sought only to provide a chill and succeeded. This 100-minute piece dilutes the primal terror with obvious plotting, thin characterizations, and heavy use of CGI.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition include a making-of featurette; deleted scenes; and the original short film.

Movie: ★★

OUTLAND (1981). It’s impossible to find any review that doesn’t short-hand Outland as “High Noon in outer space,” but that designation actually only covers the second half of this picture. Initially, it concerns the efforts of William O’Niel (Sean Connery), the serving marshal on a mining colony on Jupiter’s moon Io, to discover why numerous crew members are suddenly going insane and meeting gruesome ends. He meets a formidable opponent in the station’s profit-driven head honcho (Peter Boyle) and a powerful ally in the facility’s sarcastic doctor (a fantastic turn by Frances Sternhagen). The early-going intrigue maintains interest, but once the film starts shamelessly riffing on the Gary Cooper Western classic (seasoned killers are heading toward Io, and no one’s willing to help the poor lawman), all the excitement fritters away.

4k extras include audio commentary by writer-director Peter Hyams and a new interview with Hyams.

Movie: ★★½

OUT OF THE FOG (1941). Irwin Shaw’s play The Gentle People is softened for the screen in this offbeat offering pairing Warner stars Ida Lupino and John Garfield. Neither is seen to full advantage, though, with character actors Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen essaying the better roles. Jonah (Mitchell) and Olaf (Qualen) are Brooklyn fishermen who decide they’re gonna need a bigger boat and decide to buy one — along comes Harold Goff (Garfield), a two-bit extortionist who demands $5 a week in protection money or else. While Jonah and Olaf decide how best to handle the situation — is murder the only way out? — Jonah is further disturbed that his daughter Stella (Lupino) is charmed by Goff’s thuggery even though she knows how he treats her own father. It’s marginally entertaining if rarely convincing.

Blu-ray extras include the 1941 Bugs Bunny cartoon The Heckling Hare and the 1941 cartoon Hollywood Steps Out, featuring caricatures of over 50 celebrities (Bogart, Cagney, Gable, etc.).

Movie: ★★½

THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES (2013). The Place Beyond the Pines finds Ryan Gosling reteaming with Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance, and the film’s narrative is so uniquely structured that it’s difficult to describe without drowning in spoilers. Suffice it to say that the plot centers around the separate yet interconnected lives of two men: Luke (Gosling), an ace motorcyclist who turns to robbing banks to support his son, and Avery (Bradley Cooper), a greenhorn cop whose heroic deeds are at odds with the fear and hesitancy he feels inside. The movie is constructed like a three-act saga, with only the third part failing to completely satisfy.

Extras in the 4K + Blu-ray edition consist of audio commentary by Cianfrance; a behind-the-scenes featurette; deleted and extended scenes; and the theatrical trailer.

Movie: ★★★

FROM SCREEN TO STREAM

THE GOLD RUSH (1925). The Gold Rush remains one of Charlie Chaplin’s unqualified masterpieces, up there with City Lights and (my fave) Modern Times. The Little Tramp turns prospector here, hoping to strike it rich during the Klondike gold rush but instead finding himself battered by the elements, bullied by fellow fortune-seekers (Mack Swain and Tom Murray), and brokenhearted in his pursuit of a saloon girl (Georgia Hale). No one can mix slapstick and sentimentality quite like Chaplin, and this film mines real pools of poignancy with its rocky romance while serving up a series of classic comic interludes: the teetering cabin on the cliff, the meal consisting of shoe soles and shoe strings (look out for those nails!), the dance of the dinner rolls, and more. A hit in 1925, Chaplin re-released the movie in 1942 with added narration, new music, and a shorter running time. It’s also great, but the 1925 original is the way to go.

Movie: ★★★★

IN THIS OUR LIFE (1942) / THE NANNY (1965). One can never have too much Bette Davis, so here are two more pictures starring the phenomenal actress.

In This Our Life finds Bette at her most vicious. She plays a party girl who steals the husband (Dennis Morgan) of her patient sister (Olivia de Havilland), toys with her ex-fiancé (George Brent), flirts with her incestuous uncle (Charles Coburn), and blames a black man (Ernest Anderson) for the death she causes in a hit-and-run accident. The portrayal of Anderson’s character, far more sensitive than most seen in this time period (he’s a well-spoken young man studying to become a lawyer), earned Warner Bros. a spot on the New York Public Library’s Honor Roll of Race Relations, although predictably, Anderson’s scenes were largely deleted when the film played the South because it made him too likable!

Although Britain’s Hammer Films was best known for its monster flicks starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, it managed to land the services of Davis for The Nanny, which was then shown stateside by Fox. An effective thriller, this casts Bette as the title character, forced to deal with the temperamental behavior of a 10-year-old boy (William Dix) who, as the story goes, accidentally killed his younger sister a few years earlier. But everything’s not as it seems in this well-mounted yarn written by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster.

In This Our Life: ★★★

The Nanny: ★★★

JACK FROST (1998). In 1998, Michael Keaton hit rock bottom so hard that a body cast was probably in order. He began the year with one critically panned box office flop, the thriller Desperate Measures, and ended it with another, the seriocomedy Jack Frost. The latter finds Keaton playing the titular Jack, a struggling blues musician who doesn’t spend enough quality time with his wife (Kelly Preston) and son (Joseph Cross). While rushing home to be with his family for Christmas, he dies in an automobile accident, returning a year later in the form of the snowman that his kid built. One sight gag involves a dog urinating on the mobile snowman — while such a scene would be the low point in about 1,000 other films, here it’s merely the norm. It also took four screenwriters to come up with dialogue so horrendous, it could have single-handedly ushered in a new era of silent cinema. “You the man!” “No, you the man!” “No, I’m the snowman!” Pass the spiked eggnog, stat!

Movie: ★

ROMEO AND JULIET (1936). In It’s Love I’m After (reviewed above), Leslie Howard gets to deliver a handful of lines from a handful of Shakespeare plays, but here he goes the whole nine yards. To play the roles of the Bard’s teen protagonists, MGM cast 43-year-old Howard and 34-year-old Norma Shearer — it sounds like celluloid suicide, but somehow the pair pull it off, resulting in a solid adaptation of the tragic tale of the “star-cross’d lovers.” MGM head (and Shearer’s husband) Irving Thalberg spared no expense in mounting this passionate production, and the stellar cast includes Basil Rathbone as a scowling Tybalt and John Barrymore as a prancing Mercutio. Only frequent Western sidekick Andy Devine, playing a servant, seems out of place. This earned four Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor (Rathbone), and Art Direction; missing out was Howard, whose line readings are simply exquisite.

Movie: ★★★