Digital Week – July 1

The biggest surprise at this year’s box office so far has been this low-budget horror black comedy, written and directed by comedian/YouTuber Curry Barker, who turns a decent premise for a “Twilight Zone” episode into an interminable feature that is far less clever than it thinks. When music-store employee Bear makes a wish that his attractive coworker Nikki will fall for him, it leads to crudely shocking but entirely predictable consequences. There are a couple of cheap jump scares, including one telegraphed so blatantly I’m surprised anybody fell for it, while the haphazard plotting and nonexistent characterizations don’t help. Michael Johnston makes a one-note Bear, while Inde Navarrette’s shrill Nikki scores mainly because her opposite number is so invisible. Here’s hoping we don’t get a run on even worse low-budget horror comedies as producers attempt to chase box-office glory. 

In this heavyhanded if earnest drama set in the 1970s, Esther travels to Israel after her mother dies to learn about a closely-held family secret, which involves a free-spirited woman named Yehudit, a settler in a rural village in 1930s who affects the live of three local men. Director Guido Chiesa awkwardly handles the film’s flashback structure, and his and Nicoletta Micheli’s script injects sentimentality into what should have been a straightforwardly incisive study of hidden truths. Still, the performances of Mili Avital as Esther and Ana Elaru as the tough-as-nails Yehudit make this watchable throughout.

Following their international breakthrough, 1986’s “A Room with a View,” the next year director James Ivory and producer Ismael Merchant daringly tackled another Forster novel (with a script by Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey), this one about the intimate relationship between Maurice and Clive, two young men in the stiflingly repressive culture of Edwardian England. The leisurely 140-minute film drags at times but the atmosphere and details are unerringly right. So is the acting from James Wilby (Maurice) and Hugh Grant (Clive) as well as Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow and Billie Whitelaw, among others in a superb supporting cast. The film looks ravishing in 4K; extras include a commentary on the 4K disc and, on the accompanying Blu-rays, the film, alternate takes/deleted scenes with Ivory commentary, interview/Q&A with Ivory and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, making-of featurette and a conversation between Ivory and director Tom McCarthy. 

Hong Kong master Tsui Hark’s bleak 1980 drama follows three nihilistic teens who are blackmailed by a cunning young woman into committing further acts of violence after she witnesses them set off a bomb in a movie theater. And that’s just the beginning: be warned that there are scenes here that might make some viewers close their eyes, from the opening images of a mouse to a cat being thrown off a balcony—but Sark’s fast-paced immersion in this sordid world is ultimately impossible to look away from. Alongside the uncensored international version, this set includes the banned Chinese version and English dubbed version, a commentary, and interviews with Hark, two actors, an assistant director and Hark’s cowriter.

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze’s 1960 roundelay, which follows three mostly mismatched couples at an imposing French chateau, proves that not all French New Wave directors were masters of their craft:  the director-writer crafted a dull-edged, often tone-deaf film that wavers between comedy and tragedy and wastes a game cast (especially Bernadette Lafont, Alexandra Stewart, and Francoise Brion, who was also Doniol-Valcroze’s wife), Roger Fellous’ lovely B&W cinematography and Serge Gainsbourg’s attractive score. The film looks great in hi-def; lone extra is a 1965 short also starring Lafont, “The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora,” directed by Jeanne Barbillon.