Digital Week – December 12

The latest video-game-turned-movie, this tongue-in-cheek horror flick has moments of amusing depravity as animatronic characters from a deserted family restaurant a la Chuck E. Cheese come to life and—coincidentally enough—kill several bad guys. Director Emma Tammi keeps a steady hand between silly and scary, and there’s enough of a heart—the hero is a flawed single dad who redeems himself to his young daughter and the cute local cop—to make this watchable for those not inclined towards all the mayhem. The film looks great in UHD; extras include on-set featurettes.

The green quartet returns for a reboot, this time voiced by actual teenagers, which is some kind of forward progress; also, the animation has a hand-drawn look that’s been out of recent fashion and so has the value of not having the usual antiseptic digital look. The breezy if clunky result, directed by Jeff Rowe, has an array of voices—including Ice Cube, Jackie Chan, Paul Rudd and Rose Byrne—providing comic heft when the plot and visuals bog down in the mire. There’s a fine 4K transfer; extras are several making-of featurettes and interviews.

This 1988 revisionist western, which brought together then up-and-comers Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Dermot Mulroney, Casey Siemaszko and Lou Diamond Philipps, is agreeable entertainment, with the unruly young guns balanced by grizzled veterans Jack Palance and Terence Stamp. Director Christopher Cain guides the proceedings well enough, and if there’s not enough here for a sequel, one would follow anyway two years later. There’s a terrific UHD transfer; extras include a commentary with several of the young guns (but no Sutherland, Estevez or Sheen) and on-set featurettes.

This second-rate The Wicker Man knockoff follows the travails of Rebecca, a young priest who live with her husband Henry and young daughter Grace in a remote village; one evening at an outdoor festival, Grace disappears and Rebecca finds herself increasingly at odds with a pagan leadership that doesn’t want to be unmasked. Director William Brent Bell hits all the narrative beats but there’s little here that’s resonant, despite the intense performance by Tuppence Middleton; and, there’s a climax that not only begs belief but is pretty risible as well.

The 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear-plant disaster in central Pennsylvania continues to reverberate, and director Heidi Hutner returns to the scene to talk with the mothers and whistleblowers women—who lived through it and tried to pry the truth from authorities who tried to whitewash the dangers. It’s not enough that they were vindicated (even though the courts allowed the company to reopen the plant years later), but they were able to push back against Big Energy despite the odds against them.

Sergei Prokofiev’s delightful ballet based on the classic fairy tale, has some of the Russian composer’s most beguiling music, and the choreography by the great Frederick Ashton is consistently inventive and amusing. London’s Royal Opera House 2023 staging also features striking visuals (Tom Pye’s sets, Alexandra Byrne’s costumes and David Finn’s lighting) and wondrous music (conducted by Koen Kessels) as well as a star-making performance by Marianela Núñez in the title role. There’s topnotch hi-def video and audio.

In Babak Jalali’s low-key character study, Donya, an Afghan who was an interpreter, now works at an American fortune cookie company in a small town and feels out of sorts, thinking she will never fit in, be recognized for her writing talent, or find love. Lo and behold, all three may be just around the corner. It’s a little amateurish and fuzzily sentimental, but Anaita Wali Zada’s charm as Donya sells it, and there’s a wonderful bit by Jeremy Allen White, who shows up late to propel “Fremont” toward a bittersweet if not fully earned conclusion. The B&W photography looks excellent on Blu.

The single-character, single-set movie returns in this entry by director John Curran; set in a car—as many of these gimmicky flicks are—it follows a father desperately looking for his kidnaped young daughter, with cops on his trail, his ex-wife berating him and an anonymous caller telling him what to do to keep his daughter alive. It’s done in a swift 90 minutes, and if the ending is a bit of a bait and switch, Luke Bracey gives a believably frantic portrayal of the harried dad and Toby Jones’ voice is perfectly creepy. There’s a quite good hi-def transfer.

A pair of Roger Corman-directed cheapies make up this fun release, starting with “The Terror” (1963), which stars Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson in a bizarre fantasy that’s more goofy than eerie; Karloff’s scenes were reportedly shot in a few days, and it shows in this endearingly amateurish romp. The same could be said for 1960’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” the basis of the hit musical about the talking, man-eating plant—but Nicholson steals the movie as a dental patient who’s really into pain. Corman’s direction is insubstantial but these curios are still worth a watch. The movies are good on Blu; extras include a commentary for each film, visual essay on Corman and part 2 of the “Hollywood Intruders” documentary.

This 2017 concert at London’s Hackney Empire finds the Scottish band—led by founding members Jim Kerr on vocals and Charlie Burchill on guitar—delivering solid renditions of some of their best songs, from early gems like “New Gold Dream” and “Promised You a Miracle” to breakout international hits “Don’t You Forget About Me” and “Alive and Kicking.” The songs gain urgency from the new arrangements, especially covers of Bowie’s “Andy Warhol” and Richard Hawley’s “Long Black Train.” (Hawley even shows up for the final encore of Steve Harley’s “Make Me Smile.”) The full concert is on the Blu-ray and the CD, the latter with first-rate hi-def video and audio.