Digital Week – October 30

This startlingly sorrowful yet ultimately optimistic documentary by Shiori Itō, a Japanese journalist, recounts her struggle after accusing legendary journalist Noriyuki Yamaguchi of a 2015 sexual assault—her bravery is in stark contrast to Japan’s buttoned-down social, sexual and political reticence. Itō bares herself emotionally and psychologically dealing with the slowly turning wheels of justice: the MeToo movement gives her traction, but she must push herself to keep going amid a countersuit by Yamaguchi, who was very close to then prime minister Shinzo Abe. Propelling this incredibly intimate account is Itō’s unflinching honesty as both filmmaker and subject.

Daisy Ridley is credited with the idea for this story of marital betrayal—Ridley plays Anette, who’s married to Ben (Shazad Latif) and whose young daughter Matilda (Hiba Ahmed) is cast in the role of beautiful movie star Alicia’s (Matilda Lutz) daughter in a new film. One parent must accompany Matilda on the set at all times; when Ben does, he begins a relationship with the glamorous Alicia—or does he? Director Sam Yates and writer Tom Bateman have made an efficient by-the-numbers thriller that leads to an obvious but satisfying twist that justifies sitting through the 90-minute buildup. The uniformly excellent cast is led by Ridley’s frazzled but always protective mother and wife.

Poor Melissa Barrera—the breakthrough star of In the Heights and Scream VI is now stuck in a one-note rom-com/”Beauty and the Beast” mashup. Yes, you read that right: after a cancer diagnosis, Laura is dumped by her longtime boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donovan) and soon finds herself with a new roommate, the beastly Monster (Tommy Dewey, looking like Ron Perlman in the 1980s TV series), who’s a manifestation of her simmering anger over her current predicament. What could have been a perfectly good short is drawn out by writer-director Caroline Lindy into a repetitive and often risible 95-minute feature; even the usually charming Barrera is misdirected into being as annoying, even enervating, as possible, which is obviously not Lindy’s intention.

This latest attempt to translate the mindlessness of playing a video game into a big-screen adventure with actual characters and an interesting plot doesn’t work simply because it’s too reminiscent of the post-apocalyptic elements of the “Mad Max” series, which does this sort of thing far better. The cast, comprising big names like Cate Blanchett, Gina Gershon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Hart, is game but turned into a routine and flattened crew by cowriter-director Eli Roth, who at least stages a series of impressive action sequences that, nevertheless, become stale after awhile. The UHD transfer accentuates the stunning visuals; extras include several making-of featurettes.

In this intriguing variation on the werewolf theme, young Willow (Caoilinn Springall, giving a miraculously mature performance) and her mom Imogen (Ashleigh Cummings) live in a walled-off compound deep in the forest with her dad Noah (Kit Harington), who undergoes a scary physical transformation that Willow is first traumatized, then increasingly empowered, by. Director Alexander J. Farrell and co-writer Greer Ellison rely more on atmosphere than originality, but the film does have an effective ambiguous ending that makes one look at the previous 100 minutes in a different light. 

If you want to see a couple of early features starring the Polish enfant terrible, actor Klaus Kinski, this double bill is for you: 1967’s “Creature with the Blue Hand” and 1971’s “Web of the Spider” feature Kinski in relatively subdued mode. In the strangely inert “Creature,” based on an Edgar Wallace story, Kinski plays an escaped mental patient who might be committing several murders, while “Web” has him playing none other than Edgar Allan Poe in a stylish haunted house tale. Both films have been resurrected with decent hi-def transfers and an array of extras, including commentaries on each feature; a bonus feature, 1987’s “The Bloody Dead,” related to the original “Creature,” with a commentary; and featurettes on Wallace and Kinski.

Corsican director Paul Vecchiali, who has been nearly forgotten—if he was remembered at all when he died last year at age 93—made this enjoyably sleazy softcore (with hardcore inserts) comic mystery in 1974—it follows Melinda (the great French actress Myriam Mézières), a private detective who’s hired by an heiress who’s being blackmailed with X-rated flicks starring her estranged son. It’s as goofy as it sounds, but Mézières is always delectable and Vecchiali’s directorial hand is light, even in the plentiful and often amusing sex scenes. The film looks good on Blu; extras include new interviews with Mézières, actor Jean-Christophe Bouvet and screenwriter Noel Simsolo, an appreciation by director Yann Gonzalez and a featurette on Vecchiali’s career. 

For three decades and 20 films, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made some of the most enduring works in British cinema, which include many indelible images, from those of “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp” (1943), “A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) and “Black Narcissus” (1947) to “The Small Back Room” (1948), “The Red Shoes” (1949) and “The Tales of Hoffman” (1951). David Hinton’s informative documentary dissects their partnership and why it ended (Powell made films himself, including the overrated cult item Peeping Tom, in 1960). Then there’s Martin Scorsese, an unabashed Powell and Pressburger fan, who not only narrates but acts as our on-camera host, even comparing what he did in some of his films with what they did in their pictures (a word he loves). Scorsese is always a terrific raconteur and knowledgeable commentator on film history, but “Made in England” needs a little less Marty and a little more Powell and Pressburger. There’s a solid hi-def transfer, with many of the P&P excerpts newly restored.