Digital Week – April 30

When Jessica, the depressed friend of two middle-class couples, decides after dinner to hang herself in the garden, the foursome goes through hell—unexpected police visits, unexpected potential house buyer visits, a fan of Jessica’s book visits—as they try and move the body so an impending house sale won’t be affected. Matt Winn’s scattershot black comedy (Winn also wrote the script with James Handel) has a great setup and quotable dialogue but soon goes overboard with ridiculous coincidences and unlikely reveals that make this start to drag even though it’s only 89 minutes. The sledgehammer use of music doesn’t help either; at least the formidable cast—Olivia Williams, Shirley Henderson, Rufus Sewell, Alan Tudyk, and Indira Varma as Jessica—keeps things percolating even when it becomes risible instead of funny. 

Brigitte Berman’s recently restored documentary of jazz clarinetist, composer and band leader Artie Shaw was cowinner of the 1986 Oscar for best documentary feature (along with Lee Grant’s Down and Out in America) is an engaging look at a complicated musical artist that benefits from a sit-down interview with Shaw, who’s a chatty and forthcoming subject. Berman also uses lots of well-chosen vintage clips and interviews with fellow musicians and some of the women in his life (Shaw was married eight times) to present a sympathetic but never fawning portrait.

In this 1976 western, Clint Eastwood plays the title character, who looks to avenge the slaughter of his wife and son on his Missouri farm by Union troops in the waning days of the Civil War—his joining the Confederates and facing down bounty hunters form the crux of the drama, which, at 137 minutes, is overlong if never dull. Although Eastwood directs as laconically as ever, he conjures up a vivid atmosphere of lawlessness that outweighs the cliched moments. The UHD transfer is transfixing; extras include Richard Schickel’s commentary as well as new and vintage featurettes about Eastwood the filmmaker and western icon.

In this 1985 western, Clint Eastwood plays the title character (who’s nicknamed “Preacher”), arriving in a gold-rush town and finding himself in the middle of a clash between a lawless mining syndicate and several prospectors in a stripped-down but familiar western (Shane, anyone?) that makes director Eastwood its understated star, along with the charming presence of then teen performer Sydney Penny as one of the locals he protects. There’s an excellent UHD transfer; extras include the usual new and vintage featurettes, along with the full-length 2010 documentary “The Eastwood Factor.”

Italian pianist Francesco Piemontesi talks with inspirational keyboard practitioners from superstars Alfred Brendel and Maria João Pires to reclusive American Stephen Kovacevich and French priest Jean-Rodolphe Kars, who vividly dissects and plays the sacred music of Messiaen. Piemontesi also takes a tour of the Swiss home of Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff with colleagues Yulianna Avdeeva and Zlata Chochieva. This lovely exploration of artistry and genius has the right balance of talk and performance to spread the gospel of the keyboard. The lone extra is an hour-long Rachmaninoff concert by Piemontesi, Avdeeva and Chochieva.

This 1976 entry in an increasingly bizarre oeuvre begins with an orgy featuring Adolf Hitler (hiding out in a Bavarian castle in California under an assumed name) and gets progressively stranger—but Russ Meyer doesn’t care: he loves showing off buxom, attractive women onscreen, whether they are sexually ravished or violently violated, sometimes in the same scene. Here he has real finds: leading ladies Raven De La Croix and Janet Wood are alluring and appealing personalities (they’re not really actresses) and the immortal Kitten Natividad—who was married to Meyer for a few years—plays the nude Greek chorus. The film has a good hi-def restoration; extras include a commentary by film historian Elizabeth Purchell and De La Croix interview.