Digital Week – November 27

One of Hitchcock’s most memorable—if also one of his most nonsensical—films, this 1959 classic contains some of his greatest set pieces and silliest plot twists, holding itself together as a grandly entertaining yarn. Cary Grant is his usual suave self as the innocent man mistaken for an FBI agent, James Mason makes a dastardly villain and Eva Marie Saint is the perfect femme fatale. But the real star is Hitch: the wit, the thrills, the pacing of three masterly sequences (the corn field, the auction room, and Mount Rushmore) epitomize the film’s all-time status. The film’s UHD transfer looks perfect; extras comprise screenwriter Ernest Lehman’s commentary and several behind-the-scenes featurettes.

James Cameron’s 1984 sci-fi actioner made Arnold Schwarzenegger a superstar and Cameron an A-list director, although this feature about a murderous time-traveling cyborg who is assigned to kill an innocent woman for the future crime of giving birth to a savior is crudely, often laughably silly. Linda Hamilton makes a sympathetic victim—she would become a femme fatale in the much more entertaining 1991 sequel—but Schwarzenegger is too robotic (even for him) and Cameron’s directing has cleverness without being particularly distinguished. The film looks splendid in 4K; extras are seven deleted scenes and three featurettes.

Writer-director Tyler Chipman’s overlong psychological melodrama about a family dealing with mental illness and suicide takes an interesting germ of an idea but does little more with it than skim the surface, instead crassly visualizing the malevolence and repeating dream jump-scares, more desperately each time. Not helping is the one-note acting by most of the cast—only Laura Benanti, as the troubled brothers’ single mom, gives an expressive, humane performance. Otherwise, this can be considered a nice try but ultimately a failed exploration of a serious subject.

French composer Jules Massenet’s Romantic-era opera about a young woman about to become a nun who elopes with her love became, in choreographer Kenneth MacMillan’s hands, equally lively and dramatic. In this return to London’s Royal Ballet stage earlier this year, MacMillan’s brilliantly precise movements for the couple—embodied beautifully by Natalia Osipova and Reece Clarke—fit like a glove. Koen Kessels conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a fine reading of Massenet’s marvelous music. Hi-def video and audio are topnotch; extras are interviews with the creative team, Osipova and Clarke.

A longtime award-winning producer/director team, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory made films—often written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and scored by composer Richard Robbins—that included stories about India (“Shakespeare Wallah,” “Heat and Dust”) and historical biopics (“Jefferson in Paris,” “Surviving Picasso”). But their greatest successes were lush literary adaptations like “A Room with a View,” “Howards End” and “The Remains of the Day.” Director Stephen Soucy interviews Ivory, who speaks candidly about his and Merchant’s professional and personal relationship—they were lovers for decades—and also talks with stars like Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Helena Bonham Carter and Vanessa Redgrave. The result is a loving if tad too reverent portrait of these not quite first-rate artists. The film looks excellent on Blu; extras are extended interviews, Ivory and Soucy discussions and Soucy’s short, “Rich Atmosphere—The Music of Merchant Ivory Films.”

This nearly forgotten pair of B movies from the Roger Corman producing stable, low-budget sci-fi thrillers 1958’s “Night of the Blood Feast” and 1959’s “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” are about as simplistic as their descriptive titles. Both films, which were directed by someone named Bernard L. Kowalski, are largely risible but are also effective timewasters if one is in the right mood. The films look decent on Blu; extras include “Mystery Science Theater 3000” episodes for both films, commentaries on both films, the academy-ratio version of “Blood Beast”; and featurettes. 

Writer-director Thomas Lilti made this amusing and often illuminating drama about a group of teachers at a typical French high school who deal with the messy everyday situations that come up involving their students, the parents and even one another, as told through the eyes of Benjamin, a young substitute teacher. A superlative ensemble comprising Vincent Lacoste (Benjamin), Louise Bourgoin, François Cluzet and the always extraordinary Adèle Exarchopoulos, among others, makes this a sharp and penetrating look at classroom complexities in the vein of other French films like Laurent Cantet’s “The Class” and Nicolas Philibert’s documentary “To Be and to Have.”