Digital Week – April 2

This earnest biopic about Dr. Audrey Evans, a pioneer in researching childhood cancers and leader of the movement to create the Ronald McDonald House for families needing a cost-free place to live while their child is undergoing lengthy and expensive treatment is dominated by Natalie Dormer who, as the titular character, is unfussily focused and understatedly expressive. Director Ami Canaan Mann and writer Julia Fisher Farbman avail themselves of familiar sentimental and melodramatic biopic tropes, but Dormer and terrific support from Jimmi Simpson as Audrey’s colleague and later husband Dan D’Angio and Clancy Brown as Audrey’s boss C. Everett Koop (yes, that Koop) make it an inspiring watch.

Based on the award-winning 2018 novel by Sigrid Nunez, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s latest shows how book editor Iris responds to what author (and former lover) Walter leaves her after he dies: his Great Dane, Apollo. Iris lives in a small NYC apartment that doesn’t allow pets, and she must finesse many things at once: editing a final book of Walter’s letters, learning to live with—instead of getting rid of—Apollo and dealing with Walter’s three wives. This small-scale dramedy is perceptive at times, clichéd at others; it’s well-acted by Naomi Watts (Iris), Bill Murray (Walter), Carla Gugino (Walter’s first wife) and Sarah Pidgeon (Walter’s daughter)—but it’s stolen by the miraculous canine Bing as Apollo. Too bad McGehee and Siegel soften the book’s hard edges, especially the unsentimental ending, with something more conventional.

Louise Courvoisier’s feature, set in the Jura region of France where she’s from, is a sweet-natured but gritty chronicle of how shiftless 18-year-old Totone must mature quickly when tragedy befalls the family and he and his 7-year-old sister must fend for themselves on the faltering family farm. It has all the trappings of a corny, feel-good tale—especially when Totone begins a cute romance with Marie-Lise, who tends cows on a neighboring farm, and he decides to enter a cheesemaking contest to win the lucrative first prize—but the clear-eyed Courvoisier tells a shrewdly observant human comedy populated with a formidable cast of local unprofessional actors.

Claude Lelouch’s 1966 international breakthrough, which won the Oscar for best foreign film, is a pretty pedestrian love story between a race car driver and script supervisor on movie sets whose spouses rather conveniently die. And its famous earworm score by Francis Lai, along with a couple of silly love songs, is saccharine at best. But what it has in spades, however, is Lelouch’s clever editing and photography as well as Jean-Louis Trintignant’s solid performance as un homme and, best of all, Anouk Aimée, who gives a performance for the ages as une femme—how she lost the best actress Oscar to Elizabeth Taylor is an insult of epic proportions.

Prolific French director François Ozon’s latest follows the travails of retired grandmother Michelle, banned from seeing her grandson Lucas after he has an accident while visiting her rural home—but when her daughter Valérie is suddenly gone from the picture, she must deal with that unexpected absence from her and Lucas’ lives. There’s a welcome matter-of-factness to Ozon’s storytelling, but it’s too one-note when a fateful twist upends everyone and everything. Ozon gets uncluttered performances from his cast, led by Hélène Vincent (Michelle), Ludivine Seignier (Valérie) and Josiane Balasko (Michelle’s friend and neighbor Marie-Claude).

Japanese director Noboru Tanaka was a master of “Roman porno,” or pink films, which were sexually charged dramas popular in Japan in the ‘60s and ‘70s—this 1974 entry, shot in black and white, is one of his most memorably disturbing excursions into the sordid lives of prostitutes who endure beatings, brutal clients and social ostracism as they scrape together meager livings. His actresses Meika Seri and Genshu Hanayagi, who play daughter and mother prostitutes, powerfully bare their bodies and souls in this mesmerizing portrait of a bleak existence.

When Andy Kaufman died, at age 35 of cancer in 1984, many people thought it was a hoax, another crazy act in a career filled with them—from Latka in the sitcom “Taxi” to wrestling with women and alter egos that were aggressively more obnoxious, Kaufman rewrote the rules of and went beyond comedy to a place few others dared to go. Alex Braverman’s loving portrait has archival clips and interviews with Kaufman along with amusing and even poignant reminiscences by friends and colleagues Danny DeVito, Marilu Henner, Steve Martin and Laurie Anderson (who tells one of the best Andy stories). Most personal are appearances by several women in his life, including his last girlfriend Lynne Margulies. There are missteps—Garry Shandling’s name is misspelled at one point—but this is a touching tribute to a unique talent gone too soon.

Iris, a companion robot purchased by Josh for his pleasure, develops a mind of her own in this strangely compelling black comedy written and directed by Drew Hancock, who stuffs his script with too many obvious twists to be fully satisfying. Still, it’s fun to watch, and Sophie Thatcher is spectacularly good as Iris, but even she can’t overcome the contrivances Hancock adds that make his tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale of humans being overrun by AI. The film has a first-rate UHD transfer; extras include short on-set featurettes.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro codirected this deliriously scattershot 1991 black comedy, set in a French village following an unnamed apocalypse and centered around the local butcher’s shop, which serves human flesh to its customers due to a food shortage. There are dazzling set pieces and remarkable visuals, yet the overwhelming sense of style over substance ultimately becomes enervating, particularly in a final 30 minutes of wanton destruction. Its mix of frightful and frivolous would become Jeunet’s stock-in-trade for the next couple of decades in films from “A Very Long Engagement” to “Amélie.” The film looks precisely detailed in 4K; extras include Jeunet’s commentary, Jeunet and Caro interview, interviews with Caro and Terry Gilliam, and a makinf-of featurette Fine Cooked Meats.

Fast-paced if ridiculous action sequences dominate Jonathan Eusebio’s offbeat rom-com about Marvin, a real estate agent in a quiet suburb, who reverts to his previous job as assassin when his former love interest (and target) Rose returns, along with the henchmen of his brother Alvin, who wants to clean up messes left behind by Marvin’s departure. Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose are highly energetic and there’s silly fun to be had in the hyperkinetic fight scenes, but there’s too much crammed into too little time: this 83-minute flick moves swiftly in order to hide that there’s not much there. There’s a superb UHD transfer; extras include an alternate ending, deleted and extended scenes and short on-set featurettes.

In this frenzied animated adaptation of Dav Pilkey’s graphic novel series, the title character—grafted together from an injured police officer and his pet dog—is a relentless cop chasing Petey, the evilest cat around. Director-writer Peter Hastings smartly paces the action briskly and relentlessly, which glosses over some of the less funny parts—there’s fun, too, in the gleeful voice performances, from Pete Davidson’s Petey to the director’s own squeals and barks as Dogman. The hi-def transfer’s colors pop nicely; extras are a director’s commentary, deleted scenes and behind the scenes interviews.

In actress and screenwriter Aurélie Saada’s pithy 2021 directorial debut, the great Françoise Fabian essays the title role of the Goldberg family matriarch, whose life changes profoundly when her beloved husband of many decades dies suddenly and she must face widowhood and judgmental adult children. Even if some of what Saada shows of Rose not acting her age is borderline soap opera, Fabian commands the screen as she did as the irresistible Maud in Eric Rohmer’s 1969 “My Night at Maud’s”—until the very last image of Rose (and Fabian) fiercely looking directly at the camera…at us. The Blu-ray transfer looks good; lone extra is a Q&A with Saada.