Digital Week – October 23

Based on Robert Harris’ page-turning thriller about the political and moral machinations among a group of cardinals coming together to elect a new pope after the incumbent dies mysteriously, Edward Berger’s adaptation is hampered by its structure—lots of voting and arguing in the Sistine Chapel or the cardinals’ private rooms for much of its two-hour length—but Harris’ wit and ability to enliven routine situations is much in evidence. It helps, of course, when there’s a starry cast like this one: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Stanley Tucci have enormous fun playing various liberal or conservative, pious or impious cardinals—it’s too bad Isabella Rossellini can’t do much with the lone female speaking role. Berger directs a little too close to the vest; a less literal director might have made this cracklingly good, not merely diverting. 

The latest UHD rescue of Italian director Tinto Brass’ not-quite-hardcore but titillating sex comedies is his 2000 entry, rating among Brass’ most enjoyable, again relying on a lovely young lass with refreshing screen presence to shoulder the load, so to speak. He came up aces with Yuliya Mayarchuk, a Ukrainian model-actress who plays the uninhibited Carla, who’s trying to placate her jealous boyfriend about her many sexual adventures; although Brass pours on the heavyhanded sexual symbolism, whenever Mayarchuk is onscreen—either clothed or (most often) nude—her natural freshness is impossible to ignore. There’s a first-rate UHD transfer; a Blu-ray disc also includes the film, and the lone extra is a commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nathaniel Thompso.

The original “Twister” was a silly but watchable disaster thriller that made tons of money—so it’s surprising that it took nearly three decades to come up with a sequel, which is basically the same story: tornado chasers vs. Mother Nature, with nature winning most of the time. Director Lee Isaac Chung follows the original’s Jan de Bont by combining lousy dialogue, cardboard characters and truly impressive—if overdone—special effects. Of course, technology has improved since 1996, so these killer tornados are even more startling, but the acting of Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos can be charitably called competent. On UHD, the detailed images are quite eye-popping; extras include deleted scenes, gag reel, several featurettes and Chung’s commentary.

Deborah Twiss wrote and directed this attempt at eroticism as stepmom Amanda and grown stepson Tyler can’t keep their hands off each other, all while her husband/his father Lukas has no interest in her and his younger sister Jillie (whom Amanda also raised) can spot their frolicking a mile away. Twiss herself is a quite winning Amanda, but she saddled herself with a mediocre script, her own routine direction and a trio of inadequate performances by her costars, adding up to less than the sum of its parts. 

The monumental films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan—lengthy (often clocking in at over three hours) and verbose (consisting almost entirely of long conversations)—are serious, absorbing explorations of the human condition. His humane new film, novelistic in scope, centers on Samet (played with credible weariness by Deniz Celiloğlu), an art teacher at a small village elementary school hoping to land a better job in Istanbul; he and another teacher are accused of inappropriate behavior by two female students, including one Samet thought of as a protégé. Ceylan and cinematographers Kürşat Üresin and Cevahir Şahin work marvels with expansive wintry exteriors and cramped interiors—when the film switches to spring at the end of the school year, the colors burst into vivid life as Samet ties up loose ends before leaving for the city, including a tentative truce with his accuser, who seems more mature in their final encounter than she was earlier. A transcendent image of the girl’s dark eyes staring into the camera, her hair dusted with snowflakes is a distillation of this remarkable film—deeply mysterious and ambiguous but exquisitely human. The Blu-ray image looks tremendously detailed; lone extra is a Ceylan interview.

Writer-director Jang Jae-hyun’s unnerving horror film is a strangely compelling ghost story of a reawakened family curse that involves grave digging and exorcisms. Although it’s way too long at 135 minutes—after the 90-minute mark, the repetition starts to become damaging to the plot—it’s been made with assurance and style, and it’s acted most convincingly by a large cast; it’s not surprising that this culturally-specific feature became one of the biggest box-office hits in South Korean film history. The hi-def transfer is transfixing; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Louise Brooks became a legend of the silver screen in a trio of films, “Miss Europe” (1930), “Diary of a Lost Girl” (1929) and “Pandora’s Box” (1928), the latter two by German director G.W. Pabst, who knew how to utilize Brooks’ unique Americanness—here, she plays Lulu, who leads men to their ruin before she faces her own moral and mortal downfall. Pabst wisely keeps the focus on his actress, who is irresistible to the camera, which is what keeps this moralizing drama relevant. Criterion’s Blu-ray includes a vastly improved restored transfer and several extras: four musical scores, by Gillian Anderson, Dimitar Pentchev, Peer Raben, and Stéphan Oliva; commentary by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane; “Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu,” a 1998 documentary by Hugh Munro Neely; “Lulu in Berlin,” a rare 1971 interview with actor Louise Brooks, by Richard Leacock and Susan Steinberg Woll; and interviews with Leacock and Michael Pabst, the director’s son.

Although Julia Louis-Dreyfus won several Emmy awards for best actress in a comedy series as Selina Meyer, the VP who becomes president over the course of the show’s seven seasons, she always was the weakest link of a sublime comedic cast who propped her up: everyone from Tony Hale, Anna Chlumsky and Reid Scott to Matt Walsh, Timothy Simons and Gary Cole are true perfection. Created by Armando Iannucci, “Veep” has the same flavor of rancid ineptitude in our political systems as his brilliant British series “The Thick of It All” and the priceless film satires “In the Loop” and “The Death of Stalin,” but “Veep” spun its wheels too often and limped to the finish line. The show’s 65 episodes look pristine on Blu; extras include several featurettes and interviews.

The second season of Julian Fellowes’ series about haves and have-nots in late 19^th century Manhattan pretty much follows the script of the first, with the privileged upper crust trying to fend off a “take over” by upstart Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), whose husband George (Morgan Spector) is among the city’s newly minted robber barons. This season’s 10 episodes are again dominated by alluring costumes and sets, and only Christine Baranaki, as the sarcastic Agnes, ultimate defender of the status quo, transcends by-the-numbers plotting and characterizations. Too bad that several able New York theater performers—in addition to Coon and Spector, there’s Debra Monk, Cynthia Nixon, Michael Cerveris, Donna Murphy, Kristine Nielsen and Kelli O’Hara—are underwhelming. Extras are on-set featurettes and interviews.