One of last year’s most eagerly anticipated films, John Wells’ film of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize winning August: Osage County met with mixed reviews at last September’s Toronto Film Festival from which it never really recovered. Part of the problem was the film’s marketing as a dark comedy which it is not.

The film is a heavily corrosive drama about the disintegration of a family. What humor there is in it is of a gallows nature as played up in the film’s trailer and Oscar clips. Although it mines the same territory as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , the film doesn’t quite reach the same dramatic heights.

Meryl Streep pulls out all the stops as the matriarch from Hell with fellow Oscar nominee Julia Roberts nearly matching her as her eldest daughter, leaving the remainder of the large cast little to do, despite which several of them have a moment or two in which they shine. Margo Martindale as Streep’s sister and Chris Cooper as her fed up husband both have a strong late scene as do Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson as Streep’s other daughters. Ewan McGrgor as Robets’ husband; Abigail Breslin as their daughter; Dermot Mulroney as Lewis’ latest squeeze and Benedict Cumberbatch as Martindale’s timid son have less to do and Sam Shepard as Streep’s alcoholic husband is killed off too early in the proceedings to have much impact. Misty Upham has a nice bit as Streep’s caretaker.

The film is engrossing while it is unfolding but doesn’t really linger in the memory.

August: Osage County is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is a literary masterpiece. Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films based on the book is not Tolkien’s The Hobbit, it’s Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and that’s fine with some people, but as the song goes, “some people ain’t me.”

The second film in the trilogy is called The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and unlike the first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is not told from the perspective of the heroic Bilbo Baggins, but from the perspective of secondary characters Gandalf and Thorin which to me sends the film off on a tangent, a rather tiresome one. With long scenes of dwarfs vs. giant spiders and pseudo-intellectual dialogue that sounds like little more than gibberish, I was bored silly. Maybe it’s that I didn’t see it 3-D. Perhaps that makes the difference.

The Hobbit: T0he Desolation of Smaug is available in 3D Blu-ray; 2D Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This year’s Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature, 20 Feet from Stardom is an interesting film about a rarely explored area of show business: the back-up singer. It helps that three of the singers profiled, Darlene Love; Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer have had acclaimed solo careers as well. It also helps that their stories are given import by the likes of Lou Adler; Bruce Springsteen; Mick Jagger; Stevie Wonder; Bette Midler and other industry heavyweights. Whether the film deserved its Oscar over four more serious entries may be a matter of taste, but this one is well worth your time. Both Blu-ray and standard DVD are loaded with extras.

Two of 1950s icon Audrey Hepburn’s three most famous glamorous films of the decade have finally made it to Blu-ray in the U.S. Both 1954’s Sabrina and 1957’s Funny Face have previously been released to great fanfare in Europe. When Hepburn’s 1953 Oscar winner, Roman Holiday gets a Blu-ray upgrade is anyone’s guess.

Billy Wilder’s Sabrina is the story of the chauffer’s daughter who goes to Paris to study cooking and returns a beauty who enraptures her father’s employer’s two sons. Hepburn is delightful; John Williams is droll as her father and then recent Oscar winners Humphrey Bogart and William Holden come off looking none the worse for wear even if they are both too old for their parts. A tired looking Bogie looks particularly ill at ease as the older brother in a role meant for Cary Grant, but love conquers all in the end.

The 1927 Broadway hit Funny Face was one of Fred Astaire’s legendary stage musicals. Thirty years later Stanley Donen directed Astaire reprising some of George and Ira Geshwin’s original score in a then contemporary new musical about a photographer (Astaire) and reluctant model (Hepburn) who meet in New York and fall in love in Paris. Kay Thompson all but steals the film as a fashion magazine editor. This was Astaire’s second to last musical as a romantic lead. It’s still “S’wonderful”.

Olive Films have finally released the long delayed Blu-ray and standard DVD upgrades of two fondly remembered 1950s films, Cry Danger and Young at Heart.

1951’s Cry Danger, directed by Robert Parrish, is the last film noir that Dick Powell, the 1920s crooner turned 1940s tough guy would make. The actor, whose career entered a new phase with 1944’s Murder, My Sweet is properly deadpan throughout this rather sunny film noir. Rhonda Fleming makes a satisfactory femme fatale and William Conrad does his nasty best as the film’s principal villain. The film’s greatest asset, however, is character actor Richard Erdman as a handicapped World War II veteran. The film, which has previously been available in only dreadful public domain copies, has been beautifully restored by the UCLA labs.

A musical remake of the 1938 classic, Four Daughters, 1954’s Young at Heart, directed by Gordon Douglas, teams Doris Day and Frank Sinatra in their only film together in the roles created by Priscilla Lane and John Garfield. The sisters in this one are reduced to three with Dorothy Malone and Elisabeth Fraser filling in for Lola and Rosemary Lane and Gail Page. Robert Keith has Claude Rains’ old role as their father and Ethel Barrymore essays the role of the kindly aunt originated by May Robson. The earlier film was nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture; Director (Michael Curtiz) and Supporting Actor (Garfield) and spawned two sequels. The remake is a pale imitation although it does feature some lovely songs sung mostly by Day. Sinatra sings the title song over both the opening and end credits.

This week’s new releases include Oscar nominees Philomena and The Invisible Woman.