Posted

in

by

Tags:


Presented at this year’s Cannes Film Festival last May, Cohen Media Group has released a sparkling new 25th Anniversary 4K Restoration of James Ivory’s film of E.M. Forster’s Howards End on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The is the first of most films in the Merchant-Ivory library that will be restored by Cohen and released both theatrically and on home video in the coming years. The only exceptions appear to be A Room With a View, given a beautiful 4K restoration last year by Criterion, and The Remains of the Day also released last year by Twilight Time.

Filmed in 1991 and released in 1992, Howards End is generally regarded as the best of the Merchant-Ivory films. Nominated for nine Academy Awards and winner of three, the film won Best Picture honors from the National Board of Review and BAFTA while Emma Thompson swept up just about all the Best Actress awards in existence.

Set in 1910 Edwardian England, the film is a metaphor for the changing country itself, exemplified by the upper class Wilcoxes (Anthony Hopkins, Oscar-nominated Vanessa Redgrave, James Wilby, Joseph Bennett, Jemma Redgrave), the bourgeois Schlegels (Thompson, BAFTA-nominated Helena Bonham Carter, Adrian Ross Magenty), and working class Basts (BAFTA-nominated Samuel West, Nicola Duffett). The titled house is owned by Vanessa Redgrave who wills it to her friend Thompson who is denied her inheritance by Hopkins who destroys his late wife’s will. Eventually Hopkins, despite his cold manner, and the compassionate Thompson fall in love and marry. Meanwhile a rift has developed between the once close Schlegel sisters over Bonham Carter’s concern for the Basts, which runs counter to tight-fisted Hopkins’ regard for them. Misunderstandings abound as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer leading to a tragedy that sets things right for the remaining characters in the end.

The difference between the old faded looking Criterion Blu-ray release and this beautifully restored release is stunning. Most striking are the details in the tree that Redgrave and Thompson loved but Hopkins never noticed and the bluebells that highlight West’s dreams and eventual walk through the woods to the climactic confrontation.

While The Player, which won the 1992 New York Film Critics award, and Unforgiven, which won the Oscar, are great in their own way, the most timeless of the three is Howards End which has finally been given its due on home video.

Extras include a new audio commentary by film critics Wade Major and Lael Lowenstein, 2016 on-camera interviews with Redgrave and Ivory at Cannes, and a 2016 on-camera interview with Ivory at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Tons of previously available material have also been included.

Kino Lorber has released two controversial films that bookended the 1970s on Blu-ray and standard DVD for the first time.

Angela Lansbury left the movies where she was latterly cast as the mother of actors her own age and older in the mid-1960s to a triumphant comeback on the Broadway stage in Mame. She returned to the screen in 1970 in a role even more glamorous than Mame as a descendant of Attila the Hun, the local countess and owner of a castle in a small German town that survived the Nazis in the black comedy Something for Everyone.

It is not Lansbury, however, who has “something for everyone.” That’s Michael York as the drifter who murders Lansbury’s footman who has befriended him so he can take his place. He seduces not only Lansbury, but her teenage son (Anthony Higgins, then billed as Anthony Corlan) as well, while her daughter Jane Carr (the ill-fated idealistic student in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) looks on in bemusement. Eventually there will be more murders as York comes up with a plan to provide the castle with the money it needs to survive. In the end York will be out-smarted by someone he took for granted in the highly satisfactory surprise ending.

The film, which was the first to be directed by legendary Broadway producer-director Harold Prince, was only moderately successful, although it did result in a Golden Globe nomination for Lansbury who was finally being given the screen showcase she long deserved. It did not, however, result in an Oscar nod for the actress despite that it was a very lean year for leading actresses.

After the success of Last Tango in Paris and 1900 earlier in the decade, writer-director Bernardo Bertolucci was given carte blanche by Hollywood to do whatever he wanted. What he wanted to do was the film that opened both the 1979 Cannes Film and New York Film Festivals. That film was Luna about an American opera star (Jill Clayburgh) on a tour of Italy accompanied by her 15-year-old son (future casting director Matthew Barry). Discovering that her son is addicted to heroin, she gets the notion that the only thing that can cure him is having sex with her, and proceeds to put her idea to practice. While critics praised the performances of Clayburgh and Barry, as well as Vittorio Storaro’s gorgeous cinematography, they didn’t quite know what to make of it. One thing is for sure, there’s never been anything outside of a porn film that’s ever been quite like it.

It’s highly unusual for Kino Lorber to provide extras with their releases, but they’ve loaded this one with separate on-camera interviews with Bertolucci and Barry, and two audio commentaries, one with Barry and video producer Elijah Drenner.

Olive Films has released Tay Garnett’s 1941 film Cheers for Miss Bishop on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This film about a college English teacher in the American midwest from 1883 to 1934 was clearly made because of the success of Goodbye, Mr. Chips two years earlier. While it is nowhere as good as Chips, it is worth seeing for Martha Scott’s career best role as the idealistic Ella Bishop. William Gargan, Edmund Gwenn, Mary Anderson, and the now 99-year-old Marsha Hunt co-star.

Released on standard DVD only, Chris Kelly’s autobiographical Other People, which opened this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was marketed as though it were a comedy with the word “hilarious” emboldened in ads and on the DVD cover. Trust me, it’s not a comedy. While it certainly has some funny moments, it is a slice-of-life drama about a gay 29-year-old comedy writer who has come home to Sacramento to help his father and sisters care for his terminally ill mother, an Oscar-worthy Molly Shannon. If you’re looking for a deeply moving, often brutally frank, drama about the end of life, you couldn’t ask for a more compassionate film. If you’re looking for yucks, however, it’s best to look elsewhere.

This week’s biggest waste of time release is Paul Greengrass’s Jason Bourne with Matt Damon, Alicia Vikander, and Tommy Lee Jones going through the motions in what is basically a repetition of the first three films in the franchise with, except for Damon, different actors.

This week’s new releases include Florence Foster Jenkins and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Verified by MonsterInsights