Digital Week – January 30

In Italian director Lina Wertmuller’s simultaneously hilarious and sad battle of the sexes, Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato are at their most bracingly explosive as Gennarino, a Communist worker from the south, and Rafaella, a rich capitalist from the north, who find themselves stranded on a deserted Mediterranean island, where their roles are reversed, as sexual politics takes the upper hand in a mordantly uncomfortable showdown. Wertmuller’s next film—the unforgettable Seven Beauties—is her masterpiece, but this 1974 black comedy (whose full title, “Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August,” is a typically expansive Wertmuller description) shows the director at the height of her considerable powers, unafraid to dissect human behavior, however foolish or self-contradictory, in a masterly fashion.

Made by a collective of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers, this difficult-to-watch Oscar-nominated documentary harrowingly shows how activist Basel Adra, alongside others in his community, fights to save his village, Masafer Yatta, from the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. While recording soldiers blithely destroying his and his neighbors’ homes, Adra becomes friends with Yuval Abraham, an Israeli journalist who takes up the villagers’ cause. The film follows the encroaching occupation over a five-year period, while the unspoken but ever-present subtext is that, despite working together, there’s a huge chasm between Abraham, who can come and go as he pleases, and Adra, who deals with a military presence on a daily basis. Adra and Abraham, with Jamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, have created an enlightened piece of journalistic advocacy.

This globe-trotting espionage thriller is director/cowriter Neil Burger’s attempt at a Steven Soderbergh flick: shot mostly with a jittery handheld camera by ace cinematographer Jackson Hunt, the drama follows a young woman, Maya, reunited with her distant father after her mom’s death, who discovers what he’s really been up to on his foreign travels. She soon finds herself embroiled as well, in a world where lives are not valuable. Phoebe Dynevor plays Maya with an initial naivete that morphs into a hardened shell of determination; she even sells the on-the-nose final scene that explains the title. Burger keeps things moving swiftly over many plotholes, and Rhys Ifans provides solid support as Maya’s shady dad.

The first of big-boob purveyor Russ Meyer’s vixen films, made in 1968, is both the rawest and most ragged as well as the most straightforward and honest, tackling female sexuality, sexism and even racism. In the title role, Erica Gavin, was one of Meyer’s greatest finds, and she plays the irrepressible Vixen to the hilt. The film has been restored and looks good and grainy in hi-def; extras include commentaries by Meyer and Gavin, interviews with Gavin and actor Harrison Page, vintage TV interview of Meyer and Yvette Vickers, and a censorship featurette.

Two more films in Russ Meyer’s “vixen” series are an embarrassment of riches, so to speak, that  are a greatest hits grab bag of jiggly T&A (and occasionally more); 1975’s “Supervixens,” at 105 minutes, goes on too long, while 1979’s “Beneath the Valley,” cowritten by reviewer Roger Ebert, is the silliest yet. Meyer always found appealing newcomers to populate his filmic fantasies: “Supervixens” stars Shari Eubank, who never appeared in another film, and Uschi Digard, while “Beneath the Valley” features Kitten Natividad, Uschi Digard, Ann Marie, June Mack and Candy Samples. Both restored films have excellent hi-def transfers; extras include Meyer commentaries, interviews with Meyer, Natividad and actor Charles Napier, vintage Meyer TV appearance, 1979 Meyer interview by Tuscon talk show host Ellen Adelstein and a new Adelstein interview.

Belgian director Chantal Akerman’s suicide in 2015 came directly following the death of her beloved mother, and the director’s poignant if meandering final documentary explores that relationship in depth. Akerman’s mother Natalia was a Holocaust survivor who was always the daughter’s reservoir of strength, which is shown in the many conversations between them, both in person and via Skype. Although the film, like so many others by Akerman, wears out its welcome before it ends, its tragic real-life epilogue gives it a gravitas missing from much of her oeuvre. A bonus film, “I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman,” is Marianne Lambert’s documentary portrait of the director, centered around illuminating interviews; both films look good on Blu.