Digital Week – April 11

Terry Gilliam’s 1991 fantasy is, despite the bravura lunacy going on around his main characters, his most heartfelt film: the sympathetic portrayals by Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruehl (who won an Oscar) keeps the drama earthbound and personal even when Richard LaGravenese’s scattershot script threatens to really go off the rails. Gilliam’s dazzling direction juggles the bizarre fantastical stuff and the humanity underneath in a way unlike his other films, while his outlandish visuals look even more spectacular on Criterion’s new UHD transfer; extras feature Gilliam’s commentary; interviews with Gilliam, LaGravenese, Bridges, Ruehl and Amanda Plummer from the 2015 Blu-ray release; 2006 Williams interview; and deleted scenes with Gilliam commentary.

When James Dean died at age 24 in a car crash, he had made only three films, all classics: Elia Kazan’s “East of Eden” (1954), Nicholas Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) and George Stevens’ “Giant” (1956). But it was perhaps Ray’s “Rebel”—which also launched the careers of Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo and Dennis Hopper—that best exemplified how Dean’s magnetic presence could fill the screen. There’s an immaculate 4K transfer; extras comprise an audio commentary, screen and wardrobe tests, deleted scenes, “James Dean Remembered” (1974 TV special) and featurettes “Rebel Without a Cause: Defiant Innocents” and “Dennis Hopper: Memories from the Warner Lot.”

If you lost track of Mena Suvari after her appearances in American Pie and American Beauty, it might be strange to see her headline Elizabeth Blake-Thomas’ feature, ostensibly a straightforward revenge flick but with interesting little blackly comic weirdness going on. Suvari plays a woman freshly dumped by her girlfriend who agrees to accompany a teenage boy and his dad on a weekend getaway to their “hunt club”—it turns out she (and other unfortunate women) are the hunted. It’s silly and predictable, but Blake-Thomas has a few reversals up her sleeve and Suvari carries herself commandingly as the heroine, upstaging Mickey Rourke and Casper van Dien, who are the main antagonists. It’s a real guilty pleasure for anyone in the mood.

Martin Koolhoven is a name I haven’t encountered before, but his offbeat 2001 drama, resurrected by Cult Epics, shows a writer-director with a talent for engaging and enraging audiences; an unsettling experience, it’s anchored by terrific performances by Fedja van Huet (another name I’m unfamiliar with) and the always explosive Carice van Hauten. The story of a family trying to keep its closely held, deplorable secrets is old-hat, but Koolhaven, van Huet and van Hauten make it come alive with authority. The film looks expressively grainy on Blu; extras are new and vintage interviews and making-of featurettes with the director and his two actors along with a Koolhaven and van Huet commentary. A most welcome second disc includes the director’s TV films, both in a similarly creepy vein: 1999’s “Suzy Q,” with a brilliant van Houten, and 1997’s “Dark Light.”

For a remarkable six seasons and 61 episodes, this blissfully nutty animated series about mad scientist Rick and gleefully supportive grandson Morty keeps reaching new levels of insanity as its creators keep cramming more visual hijinks and verbal zaniness into the mix. As these latest 10 episodes aptly demonstrate, the show always threatens viewers with overload, but endless crude jokes and the inventive animation make the pair’s journeys to many alternate realities deliriously entertaining. The sixth season looks dazzlingly colorful on Blu-ray.

Jacques Rivette’s 1995 film is a sweetly entertaining look at a trio of women navigating romance and friendship in Paris; although it’s too long, as most Rivette films are, at least it has some unaffected and simpleminded song-and-dance interludes to fill out the running time. The three actresses are given co-writing credits, but even if the dialogue and subplots are less than scintillating, Laurence Côte, Christine Laurent and Marianne Denicourt are captivating enough to make it watchable. The hi-def transfer looks quite good; the lone extra is Richard Pena’s commentary.