Digital Week – February 14

Obviously a labor of love, Steven Spielberg’s most personal film is also, unsurprisingly, one of most sentimental—as well as an often exhilarating and touching journey through his own life story, with many of the sequences that show a boy falling in love with movies and then moviemaking among the most thrilling he’s ever committed to celluloid. Those indelible moments include his obvious wink to the audience in the final shot (preceded by a gloriously grumpy cameo by director David Lynch as director John Ford) and mitigate the bumpy parts of the ride, like the pet monkey scenes, too-fluttery Michelle Williams as Spielberg’s beloved mother and no-talent Seth Rogen ruining every scene he’s in as the young hero’s uncle. The 4K transfer looks immaculate; extras comprise three making-of featurettes with interviews with Spielberg and his cowriter Tony Kushner, along with the cast and crew.

This 1989 campfest, sequel to 1982’s all but forgotten “Swamp Thing,” lives on, kind of, thanks to its star, Heather Locklear, at the height of her TV fame (the soap “Melrose Place”) and her marriage to Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee. The movie at least knows it’s silly and leans into that, so when Locklear falls in love with the title creature, it’s not as completely idiotic as it might have been. There are also good actors doing decent work like Louis Jourdan as the mad doctor and Sarah Douglas as his valuable assistant. The film looks gloriously colorful on 4K; extras include interviews with director Jim Wynorski, producer Michael E. Uslan, editor Leslie Rosenthal and composer Chuck Cirino, commentary by Wynorski, music video by the Riff-Tones and vintage promo material.

This often risible attempt at a rom com-cum-zombie movie became an unlikely hit in 2013, but it remains a half-baked, too-clever attempt to retell “Romeo and Juliet” with a young woman and male zombie in the leads (she’s Julie; he’s R., natch). Luckily, Teresa Palmer and Nicholas Hoult make the pair’s growing relationship almost touching, which makes us forget, if only for a fleeting moment, that neither director-writer Jonathan Levine or original novelist Isaac Marion are a patch on Shakespeare. The UHD transfer looks great; extras include several making-of featurettes, interviews, deleted scenes (with Levine commentary) and a gag reel.

What starts as a genuinely creepy incursion into a deeply problematic murder-suicide at a Catholic convent in rural Scotland populated by a group of troublesome nuns soon becomes a standard-issue horror flick that relies on the clichéd dreams, hallucinations and implausibilities that permeate the genre. Jena Malone is her usual sober self as the aptly named Grace, an ophthalmologist who decides to investigate her brother’s mysterious death—it’s linked, maybe, to a cycle of abuse in their family and, by extension, the church itself—but she is defeated by writer-director Christopher Smith’s singleminded insistence on making his story as convoluted as possible—he even ruins the disturbing opening shot of a nun with a gun by returning to it at the end, where it’s simply ludicrous.

For a few decades, Nina Menkes has carved out her own niche in the American independent cinematic landscape with challenging films that deserve more notoriety than they’ve gotten: so this two-disc set, comprising five of her features and two shorts, is quite noteworthy. Among her films that compellingly skirt the line between fiction and documentary—several starring her sister and muse, Tinka Menkes—are “Magdalena Viraga,” “Queen of Diamonds” and “The Bloody Child,” all intelligent in their dramatic vision. The films look splendid in new hi-def transfers, especially the transfixing long shots in “The Bloody Child” and the intimate B&W images of “Phantom Love.” Extras include several interviews/Q&As with and commentaries by Menkes.

In this pair of schlocky horror flicks, 1996’s “The Dentist” and 1998’s “The Dentist 2,” Corbin Bernsen plays an insane dentist who maims and/or kills whoever crosses his path or gets in his chair, starting with his cheating wife, whose tongue he tears out after seeing her going down on the pool boy. Both flicks have a few memorable moments of crazed gore, which will delight those who like that sort of thing. For others, Linda Hoffman brightens the first film as the cheating—then cut-up—wife, while Jillian McWhirter plays Berssen’s romantic foil in the sequel with a bit less panache. Both films look good on Blu; extras include commentaries by director Brian Yuzna and makeup supervisor Anthony C. Ferrante as well as interviews with Bernsen, McWhirter, and other crew.

This overlong, underwhelming 1984 Jacques Rivette film follows Geraldine Chaplin and Jane Birkin as actresses who perform plays at homes who are hired by a mysterious man to act in his mansion in a new work he’s writing. Rivette spends much time with this intriguing but slight premise, touching on—but never developing—themes of reality vs. illusion and theater vs. film, Chaplin and Birkin are game in the leads, and William Lubtchansnky’s photography and Nicole Lubtchansky’s editing are expert, but spending three hours with these women is undeniably dreary. The hi-def transfer looks gorgeous; lone extra is scholar Richard Pena’s informative commentary.

French director Jean-Denis Bonan’s 1968 drama about a serial killer went unreleased, and it’s easy to see why: it’s a disjointed, barely coherent, awkwardly acted feature almost redeemed by the final 15 minutes, encompassing a reveal of the murderer and a Parisian rooftop chase. Shot on the cheap during the fateful events of May 1968 in France, Bonan’s film is definitely a relic of its era and has a certain value as an historical curio. The UK-based company Radiance has done a superb job with this release, providing a textual introduction and commentary, several of Bonan’s short films from the ’60s, and a 40-minute documentary about the director, “On the Margin: The Cursed Films of Jean-Denis Bonan.” The Blu-ray transfer of the B&W feature is appropriately grainy.