Review of THE HUNGER GAMES: THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS & SNAKES (4K Blu-ray)

Grade:  B+/B

Action-Adventure

Rated PG-13

The fifth film in The Hunger Games series is a prequel that focuses on the back story of young Coriolanus Snow, who in the first four films is the tyrannical president of Panem—a post-apocalyptic nation in North America originally composed of 13 districts (like the U.S.) that correspond to U.S. regions and states. Is it like the book? Mostly. Minor characters are eliminated, as Hollywood typically does, and one memorable scene between the two main characters is MIA. But again, that’s Hollywood.

These days the most successful young adult authors are good at aggregation and know that to really hook an audience the whole series has to be relatable to the lives of today’s readers—and that includes “forecasting” a frightening future based on a metaphoric depiction of the present that, let’s face it, probably already frightens teens and tweens. With little imagination viewers can find parallels to people making headlines today.

For the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling successfully combined various myths and mythological creatures with wizards and dragons and the trappings of medieval times in a cautionary tale about the abuse of power, including villains having a Hitlerian obsession with nationalism and purity of blood. For The Hunger Games dystopian novels, Suzanne Collins looked backward to a classic society that peaked and fell because of, well, a lot of factors.

That is, in The Hunger Games novels and films, there are echoes of the Imperial Roman Empire and the decadence and corruption that brought it to an end. It’s hard not to see such allusions when gladiator games are at the center of the books/films and characters are named for ancient Romans such as Crassus (Coriolanus’s empire-building father, who was killed prior to the start of this prequel—an allusion to the wealthy Roman military leader who was a member of the First Triumvirate that transitioned the democratic republic into an age of imperialism), Coriolanus (not just president, but in history a Roman general and the subject of a Shakespeare play), Casca (one of the assassins of Julius Caesar—in this film, dean of the academy and creator of the Hunger Games), and Volumnia (the mother of Coriolanus—in the film, the head gamemaker).

Viewers see an early, low-tech version of the games and a brand-new innovation: having the tributes from each of the 12 remaining districts “mentored” by one of the Capitol academy elite. With the emphasis on the poorest coal-mining District 12 and the games and mentors from the ruling class, it’s very much a haves versus have-nots kind of film.  

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is set 64 years before the action of the first Hunger Games. Fans and critics were especially hot for its release. Then again, they’ve been hot and full of high expectations ever since Jennifer Lawrence starred as the bow-and-arrow wielding Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (2012, 84% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), followed by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013, 90%—the highest rated film in the series), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014, 70%) and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 (2015, 69%). The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes received mixed reviews at 64% fresh, continuing the numerical slide. In fairness, though, when you look at numbers like these you need to realize that they’re generated largely by rabid überfans of the Collins’ series and by critics who can be curmudgeonly no matter what their age.

Just plain fans of the series ought to enjoy The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The plot is twisty but not contorted, and the pacing is crisp. The costume, set design, and special effects are convincing. The music provided by Zegler is a welcome addition, and there’s enough action to qualify for an action movie. In fact, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes was the 2024 winner of a People’s Choice Award for The Action Movie of the Year and also helped Zegler, who plays coal-mining district songstress Lucy Gray Baird, to earn The Action Movie Star of the Year.

The rest of the cast is solid as anthracite. Tom Blyth (Coriolanus Snow) has the brooding intensity of Adam Driver on a Star Wars turn, while Viola Davis is pretty darned chilling as Volumnia, Jason Schwartzman is the games emcee, and Peter Dinklage brings to life the role of Casca. Seldom, when a film has this kind of cast with memorable performances, will mediocre ratings stick. I expect the audience appreciation for this film to rise over time, because Ballad has relatively few weaknesses. There could have been a few more scenes that suggest the dynamics of the Capitol and districts, and a few more featuring Coriolanus and Lucy to show their relationship progressions and regressions. In addition, this origin story could have used a tad more development to show how Coriolanus transitions from an ambitious but borderline decent member of the upper class to someone who aspires to the heights of his late general father—eventually becoming the ruthless, heartless dictator played by Donald Sutherland in the first four films.

Still, this film seemed much shorter than its run time, which is always a good indicator of quality and audience engagement. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes will get repeat play in our house, and I suspect it will in others’ as well.

Entire family:  No (tweens and older)

Run time: 157 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Lionsgate

Aspect ratio:  2.39:1 widescreen

Featured audio:  Dolby Atmos

Bonus features: A-/B+, lots here to satisfy

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated PG-13 for strong violent content and disturbing material

Language:  1/10—One loudly exclaimed minor swearword was the only thing that stood out

Sex:  0/10—This isn’t a sexual film; a kiss here and there, a few undergarment shots, and that’s it

Violence:  7/10—People are poisoned, blown up, shot, stabbed, punched, bitten by rabid bats, burned to death in a fire, and attacked by snakes (the latter the result of some pretty impressive CGI); while some of it is bloodless, quick-peddled, or offscreen, the onscreen deaths do pack an emotional punch

Adult situations:  3/10—Some drinking and references to teen drinking, and a man abuses morphine

Takeaway: If you let your kids watch the first four HG films, this one is comparable in terms of violence, etc.; but buckle up. There’s nothing official yet, but the buzz is that The Hunger Games franchise is gearing up for at least two more films

Review of THE CANTERVILLE GHOST (2023) (DVD)

Grade:  B

Animation

Rated PG

In the year of Barbenheimer, The Canterville Ghost—animated in a style similar to but more accomplished than the popular Barbie direct-to-video movies for youngsters—offers a strong female character that girls can identify with in a life-or-death adventure that prominently features science and progress. Think Scooby-Do! mysteries, but with a real ghost that, despite having a history of haunting people for hundreds of years, meets his match when an American family visits and isn’t a bit scared. In fact, they torment him.

Has he lost it, or are these Americans something quite different from Brits? And will this ghost sink into depression or be lifted up by the family’s brave and compassionate daughter?

Though aimed at children, this Shout! Studios release holds appeal for adults as well, since it’s a fairly close adaptation of an Oscar Wilde story.

Out of the 30 Canterville Ghost films and TV movies/episodes that have been made since 1944, only a literal handful have been animated. This entry is one of the best because it offers a more hardened and hearty version of the teenage daughter that drives the narrative, but softens the crime that’s at the center of Wilde’s 1887 story. In the original and in other film/TV versions, the genial and hapless ghost, Sir Simon, is doomed to haunt his mansion, Canterville Chase, because he killed his wife. In this UK version, he’s deeply in love with his wife, and related circumstances caused him to forever wander the grounds until someone like Virginia came along.

This animated version features distinctive characters and rich nonverbal depictions. Crisply paced, it holds no-scare appeal for all ages because the ghost encounters are played for laughs. It’s only toward the end of the film that the daughter, who has befriended the ghost, decides to fulfill the prophecy that will allow the Canterville ghost to rest in peace.

To tell the story, director Kim Burdon and co-director Robert Chandler enlisted top voice talent Stephen Fry (The Morning Show, Danger Mouse) to follow in the footsteps of such actors as Charles Laughton, Patrick Stewart, and David Niven in playing Sir Simon. Emily Carey (House of the Dragon) voices the other main role of Virginia, while additional voice talents include Imelda Staunton (The Crown, Harry Potter films), Hugh Laurie (House), and Freddie Highmore (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

Released for Valentine’s Day, while laughs and mischief predominate, The Canterville Ghost does have a little romance in it:  Sir Simon’s centuries-old love for his wife, and a blossoming love between Virginia and the heir of Sir Simon’s rival.

Female characters in children’s movies have come a long ways, and Virginia emerges as a strong character who isn’t artificially so. Her actions and attitudes are a reflection of today’s young girls and teens who, at the very least, are the equal sex.

Entire family:  Yes

Run time:  94 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Shout! Studios

Aspect ratio:  1.85:1 widescreen

Featured audio:  Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround

Bonus features:  n/a

Trailer

Walmart link

Rated PG for thematic elements, peril and some violence

Language:  1/10—I didn’t catch anything offensive

Sex:  1/10—Nothing here kids can’t see

Violence:  3/10—Comic for the first two-thirds, after which there’s one party scene where guests are genuinely terrified and a third-act sequence where Virginia confronts Death personified; some swordfighting, objects hurled, etc.

Adult situations:  2/10—Some drinking in a social situation, the discovery of a skeleton, and a scene in which Virginia and Sir Simon both appear to be doomed

Takeaway:  The Canterville Ghost 2023 is a solid animated film that should get plenty of replays. Though not available on Blu-ray, you can get it at Walmart and other retailers and purchase/rent from digital platforms like AppleTV, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, Vudu, Microsoft, DirecTV, DISH, et alia

Review of DOUBLE TROUBLE (1967) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  C–

Comedy-Musical

Not rated (would be PG)

Elvis Presley made 31 movies between 1956-69, and 16 of them are currently available on Blu-ray from U.S. or European distributors (the latter via eBay).

Of those films currently on Blu-ray, King Creole has been broadly acclaimed as the best of the bunch, followed by Follow That Dream. After that there’s disagreement, but I would rank the rest currently available in this order: Jailhouse Rock, Viva Las Vegas, Blue Hawaii, Flaming Star, Love Me Tender, Kid Galahad, Spinout, Clambake, Charro!, Tickle Me, It Happened at the World’s Fair, Change of Habit, and Frankie and Johnny. The best films yet to be released in high definition are The Trouble with Girls, Girl Happy, Girls! Girls! Girls!, Loving You, Wild in the Country, G.I. Blues, Roustabout, Fun in Acapulco, and Live a Little Love a Little.

You may have noticed that Double Trouble hasn’t been mentioned yet. That’s because along with Easy Come Easy Go, Kissin’ Cousins, Harum Scarum, and Stay Away Joe, this 1967 film ranks as one of the worst that Elvis made. It’s for hardcore fans only. And even those fans might feel a little uneasy watching it.

Double Trouble is about an American performer in London who dates a girl who he thought was “legal” but is actually still months shy of her 18^th birthday. He goes to Brussels and she pursues him. He doesn’t put up much of a fight, instead vacillating between rejecting this “little girl” and embracing her. It’s not just the groupie thing. Further discomfort comes from knowing Elvis’s own story. Double Trouble was released in April 1967, just one month before Elvis married Priscilla Beaulieu—whom he was drawn to and dated intermittently (albeit with chaperones) since meeting her at a party at his rented house in Germany. He was 24; she was 14.

So yeah, while it’s a little creepy watching Elvis romance a fictional underage girl, it’s even more unsettling when you know the story of his relationship with Priscilla. Yes, it was chaperoned . . . but still.

Even if the character played by 19-year-old Annette Day were 18, Double Trouble would still be one of the worst Presley films. Though it’s helmed by frequent Elvis formula pic director Norman Taurog, the screenplay itself is a bomb. The writing is sillier and the gags are cornier than usual. Scenes with three bumbling policemen—echoes of The Three Stooges—are even painful to watch.

Elvis plays Guy Lambert, a small-time touring musician playing London who is dating a young woman named Jill (Day) and pursued by an older, more sophisticated woman (Claire Dunham). While the opening credits visually announce that Elvis is in Austin Powers Land and while many of the characters dress the Carnaby Street part, Elvis sports the same hair and look that he’s had in all his films set in contemporary times. In short order we learn that Jill, who continues to pusue Guy, is not only underage, but she comes from a wealthy family. Her uncle forbids her to see Guy, and thinks he’s solved the problem by sending her away to Brussels. Unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us), that’s exactly where Guy’s next gig is. But someone keeps trying to kill one of them, with Bond-era spy types lurking and the police also involved . . . somehow.

As for the songs, it doesn’t help the underage thing to have Elvis sing “Old MacDonald” to Jill as they ride on the back of a hay wagon—the kind of song parents everywhere sing with their children to get them to make different animal sounds. It also doesn’t help that they ruin a perfectly good song—“I Love Only One Girl”—by dragging it out and having Elvis prance around a festival singing to costumed women from different countries. That leaves “Long Legged Girl (With The Short Dress On)” and the title song as the upbeat songs worth mentioning.

Entire family:  No (though theoretically, yes)

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.35:1 widescreen, Color

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  two cartoons and a trailer

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for some peril and adult situations)

Language:  1/10—Maybe something slipped past me, but I doubt it; Elvis flicks are pretty clean-cut affairs

Sex:  2/10—As always, nothing explicit or even highly suggestive; here, it’s just the awkwardness of a 17-year-old groupie in pursuit of an older man who doesn’t really fight her off

Violence:  2/10—Everything is done with a certain level of campiness, not unlike the pianos that would be dropped on cartoon characters

Adult situations:  2/10—Some smoking and drinking in club settings, and the 17-year-old thing

Takeaway:  You have to wonder what goes into a decision to release an Elvis flick on Blu-ray, and how a stinker like this got to the front of the line when more entertaining films are still only available on DVD; Girl Happy or The Trouble with Girls ought to be next up

Review: INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (Blu-ray)

Grade:  B

Action/Adventure

Rated PG-13

Let’s get one thing out of the way:  Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) was such a larger-than-life kickback to old-time serialized movie adventures that anything afterwards had to be judged by an unfair standard. So the snark came out after Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) was released, and a collective sigh of relief could be heard following the addition of Sean Connery to the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) father-son adventure that brought the franchise back to the level of the original.

Many fans think that Lucasfilm should have stopped with that trilogy, because a sequel made almost 20 years later—Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)—was the weakest of the bunch. But you get the feeling that George Lucas doesn’t have it in him to end anything on a low note, and neither does Harrison Ford, who played not only that iconic Lucas character but Star Wars’ Han Solo as well. When characters reach those kind of heights, there’s a need to give them the type of retirement party that they deserve, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destinydoes that.

It’s a curtain call film, aimed at giving fans one last look at a favorite character and series, with a déjà vu familiarity that is deliberately cultivated through old characters from the earlier films (Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies both appear) and trigger scenes that evoke memories of many others that fans have enjoyed over the years. The Nazis are here, of course, though in opening flashback featuring a younger CGI-generated Harrison Ford in sequences that look so good they’re bound to further alarm actors worried about AI taking away jobs.

James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari) seems like an odd choice to direct, but a fresh pair of eyes apparently helped. So did a return to the real object quest. The two most successful films in the series had plots spun from fictionalized takes on real ancient world  objects—the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders and the Chalice that Christ drank from at the Last Supper in Last Crusade—and Mangold does a nice job of handling the pacing and the complicated fictional history constructed for the real object in this last installment:  the Antikythera, a clock-like mechanical device attributed to Posidonius (but to Archimedes in the film) that was discovered off the coast of Antikythera in 1900. The real device isn’t a time machine, but that’s how it functions in this fifth and presumably final chapter of the Indy saga.

Mangold gets the pacing and tone right, and the special effects and visual effects are top-notch. But the plot can seem a bit far-fetched at times. I’m thinking here of a train scene where Indy and his less physically capable colleague both manage to climb onto the curved roof of a fast-moving train and run from car to car—something that, I can attest from my own experience hopping freight trains, is damn near impossible. And don’t think too long about how time travel plunks Indy down in ancient Greece, where he somehow instantly recognizes Archimedes. Thankfully, the pacing is crisp enough that it prevents you from thinking too much about any plot points that seem a bit too strained,  and that pacing reminds you that you’re watching a contemporary version of the old campy silent and early talky era serials, the installments of which moviegoers saw weekly in neighborhood theaters. They were all far-fetched, and from the beginning the Indiana Jones films have sought to pay tribute to those films by having fun with the genre.

Indiana Jones plays best as a character that reacts to others, and award-winning actress Phoebe Mary Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Crashing) is more than capable as a foil that frequently drifts across the line between ally and nemesis. In this installment she plays Helena, the daughter of a professor who was a close friend of Indy’s and whose life’s work revolved around the Antikythera.

There are age jokes, of course, but not nearly as many as you’d expect. The idea of the thin line between friend and foe is also walked by an astrophysicist (Mads Mikkelsen) who worked for the Nazis but now is employed by NASA . . . with his side hustle involving pursuit of the object that was within his grasp back in 1944, and using CIA agents to help him get it. Yeah, don’t think too much about that either.

Antonio Banderas appears as an Indy former friend who also walks that thin line, though as Banderas himself described it, his appearance is more of a cameo than anything fleshed out. There are plenty other minor characters to try to keep straight, but one that bears mentioning is Teddy (Ethan Isidore), who, like Short Round, provides some comic relief but is also well integrated into the plot.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom started to grow on fans over time, while Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull remains a shrug. I suspect that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is one that fans will like more as time passes. Even now, it’s solid entertainment.

At a time when everyone knows ageism is wrong but the U.S. still remains a youth culture, Ford as Indy reminds us that it’s not too late to fight off the gravitational effects of aging. He reportedly took daily walks and also incorporated 40-mile bicycle rides into his routine in order to get in shape for the film. His vigorous onscreen presence is a shout-out for elder RESPECT.

Entire family:  No (probably age 8 and older)

Studio/Distributor:  LucasFilm

Aspect ratio:  2.39:1 widescreen

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 7.1

Bonus features:  B-

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking

Language:  2/10—It’s funny, but thinking about it in retrospect I can’t recall any language to cite here; it’s not that kind of film

Sex:  1/10—Indy indulges in a rekindled relationship kiss that is tastefully filmed as a long shot, and he is also shown shirtless in at least one scene

Violence:  4/10—Characters are killed, others are speared, and there’s plenty of hand-to-hand fighting, but the tone of the film is tongue-in-cheek and so, therefore, is the violence

Adult situations:  2/10—There is some smoking and some drinking, but not to excess and the quick pacing and focus on action makes all of it recede into the background

Takeaway:  Fans were pulling for Ford and Indy, hoping for a suitable send-off, and I think they got a respectable one—a film that should age well; for my money, Raiders is still tops, followed by Last Crusade and Temple of Doom, but Dial of Destiny isn’t far behind

Review: SPINOUT (1966) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  C+/C

Comedy-musical

Not rated (would be PG)

The “formula” Elvis Presley picture was a thinly plotted, quickly filmed excuse to string a few new equally slapdash songs together so audiences hungry for All Things Elvis could get their fix at a time when “The King” wasn’t touring. Elvis movies were a phenomenon in the sixties—a part of the cultural milieu before Vietnam and Civil Rights demonstrations rocked the American landscape so much that wholesome light and fluffy escapist fare like these instantly became extinct.

But back in the day, rare were the teens that didn’t go to movie theaters to see Elvis, although (or perhaps because) they knew what they were going to see:  a number of songs (some good, some not so good), at least two pretty women pursuing Elvis, lots of silly-to-watch-now dancing, and a light tone that was an important part of the formula.

Elvis made 31 movies between 1956 and 1969, with the first “formula” picture coming in 1960 with G.I. Blues. Spinout was released in 1966, when the Elvis films were already steering toward self-parody, with more silliness, overused running gags, and minor characters leaning closer to caricatures.

Spinout was the second of three movies that Presley made opposite former teen star Shelley Fabares, who played daughter Mary on the popular TV series The Donna Reed Show and scored a #1 hit in 1962 with her song “Johnny Angel.” Fabares actually plays well off Presley, so it’s easy to see why producer Joe Pasternak went to that well more than once. Onscreen she has a wholesome perkiness tempered by impertinence. In this one she plays a spoiled rich girl who flat-out tells racecar driver Mike McCoy (Elvis) that she always gets what she wants, and she’s set her sights on him. So has an older woman (Una Merkel, in her last film) who does undercover research for how-to tell-all books about understanding American males. And he’s the intended subject of her next book.

Fans of Westerns will recognize the former star of Sugarfoot, Will Hutchins, who plays a cop with a food fetish and also turns up in a more major role in Clambake in a Prince and the Pauper variation as a rich Texan who trades places with poor water skiing instructor Presley.

The formula had been getting so old and obvious that the filmmakers felt compelled to throw in a third love interest:  the band’s tomboy drummer Les (Deborah Walley, of Gidget Goes Hawaiian fame). Figuratively speaking there’s even a fourth person who’s  after Mike:  the rich girl’s father (played by Fabares’ TV dad from Donna Reed) who wants him to drive the racecar he designed in an upcoming race—with nary a seatbelt that I could see.  

It didn’t matter how much they tried to freshen up the formula. Despite moments when Fabares and a couple of Presley songs brighten things up, Spinout isn’t in the same class as the best of the Fabares-Presley films, Girl Happy (1965), and isn’t even as good as Clambake (1967), a film that provoked mixed reactions. Maybe fans need to clamor a bit for Girl Happy, because MGM does seem to be listening. With this release they added a song index where fans can watch all the songs being performed, without having to try to guess the scene selection chapters.

Auto racing fans should enjoy seeing a Cobra, Cheetah, and McLaren Elva being put through their paces before CGI, and Elvis fans might relish seeing him play a twin-necked guitar. But Presley’s best racing film is Viva Las Vegas. 

Entire family: Yes (see below)

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.35:1

Featured audio:  DTS-HDMA 2.0 Mono

Bonus features:  C

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for implied adult themes)

Language:  1/10—Euphemistic swearwords if anything; Elvis movies were pretty clean and wholesome

Sex:  2/10—Elvis kisses a number of women and it’s implied that he spent each night with a different woman apart from the three who are after him in the film; there’s also a pool scene with lots of skin and bikinis and briefs

Violence:  0/10—Usually there was a fist fight in the typical Elvis picture, but not this one; just a few cars run off the road

Adult situations:  1/10—Some characters have champagne, and the whole idea of women scheming to marry Elvis is adult, though the situation now is dated and sexist

Takeaway:  Come on, Warner Bros. Put Girl Happy in your Elvis queue, and Girls! Girls! Girls!—both of which are more entertaining formula flicks than this one

Review: THE SCARLET LETTER (1934) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  C+

Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

First, schools across America absolutely ruinedNathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter for readers by force-feeding it to them when they were disinterested children. Then Roland Joffé spoiled it for film buffs by giving them a weird and distorted 1995 version starring Demi Moore—a film so bad that the essence of its badness stays with you years after you’ve forgotten what made it a stinker.

But there is some redemption for the American classic in this newly restored and released talking 1934 adaptation starring Colleen Moore, one of the biggest stars of the silent era. While the film didn’t do well because sound was still in motion picture infancy, it might look and sound better now than it did when it was first released, thanks to Film Masters’ meticulous restoration and digital advancements. The black-and-white film looks visually stunning for a film that old, and the sound is distortion-free, with respectable clarity.

For fans of classic films like The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, what jumps out instantly is the familiar face and onscreen persona of character actor Alan Hale, who played Friar Tuck in that swashbuckler and offers the same type of performance and comic relief  . . . in The Scarlet Letter! Hawthorne would be horrified, of course, but Hale’s recognizable presence and that unmistakable period touch adds an element of interest to this early sound offering. It was one of 14 films (you heard right) that Hale made in 1934, and what that suggests, of course, is low budget and quick turnaround time. This one was shot in a month.

I’m not sure how accurate the depiction of Puritan life is in the film, but Puritans were big on public humiliation for any infraction, and in opening scenes we get examples of someone in stocks and another with wooden splints clamped to her tongue with a sign that reads “Ye olde gossip.” Again, there’s that blend of interpreted history and the preferred light touch of Hollywood films from the thirties. We also see an engaged couple using an “engagement horn” that was essentially an eight-foot long device that they had to use to talk to each other at a respectable distance. I could picture this film being used by teachers in addition to Hawthorne’s novel. It would make for a nice comparison discussion. Is the punishment for “malicious gossip” too strict? Is Hester’s punishment sexist?

The makers of this 1934 film chose to depict the Puritan culture within the broader context of early settlers and pioneers. And after all, Puritans were extremists who tried to impose their rules on entire communities. Too often in film and discussions of the text we tend to get Puritans in self-contained homogenous communities (I’m thinking The Crucible). But in this version, Chillingworth (Henry B. Walthall), who studied medicines with the American Indians, actually comes to town dressed like someone who lived with the Indians. He’s a bearded frontiersman wearing buckskins and a coonskin cap. Other traders and trappers walk past the camera with a dead deer on a pole, and when the Puritan city fathers hold an event in the town square there are non-Puritans dotting the audience landscape as well as the bunch in austere black-and-white and their armor-plated enforcers.

As Hester is publicly shamed for bearing a child out of wedlock and must begin wearing an “A” on her chest, Dimmesdale (Hardie Albright) is appropriately duplicitous.  He also  acts a bit like Ralphie when the boy’s teacher asks what happened to Flick, the friend that the Christmas Story main character abandoned when his tongue got stuck to a metal pole. Hester? Who’s she?

Hawthorne’s novel was a psychological drama of the heart and concerned the tormenting power of guilt, not unlike Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. And Dimmesdale’s hypocrisy would have resonated even more with audiences in 1850 because the Puritan way of life—husbands as spiritual heads of the household—would not have been as far removed from them. There is less implication that Dimmesdale’s torment comes at the hands of Chillingworth than in the book, but the basic principles remain the same.

Although director Robert G. Vignola gave viewers a very watchable version of The Scarlet Letter that showcases the severity of Puritan extremists in a Hollywood backlot environment of drama and spot humor, I have to admit that the Film Masters’ bonus features are almost if not more riveting. Teachers might like to augment their reading assignments with the 17-minute “Hawthorne on Film” bonus feature. Another extra, the 13-minute “Salem and The Scarlet Letter,” is a nice contextual history made during the sixties and narrated by John Carradine.  

I’m usually not into commentary tracks, but when you have a film this old that features contributions from Cora Sue Collins, the young actress who played Hester’s daughter, Pearl, it’s worth watching the film all over again to listen to her and Colorado Christian University professor Jason A. Ney, who also contributed liner notes.

But the bonus feature that I thought was as entertaining as the movie was the 19-minute Revealing the Scarlet Letter, in which producer Sam Sherman shares the story of how he came to dedicate himself to this project. It’s actually quite engrossing.

Entire family:  Yes (but what small children would want to watch?)

Studio/Distributor:  Film Masters

Aspect ratio:  1.33:1

Featured audio:  Dolby Digital Mono

Bonus features:  B-

Trailer

Best Buy link

Not rated (would be PG for implied adult themes)

Language:  0/10—Uh, Puritans

Sex:  0/10—Uh, Puritans

Violence:  1/10—Things are thrown at Hester and Pearl

Adult situations:  1/10—Kids would have to know where babies come from to even grasp that there was anything adult in this, and there is one death near the end

Takeaway:  Hawthorne lives! Ironically, in retrospect. I’m not sure that a faithful adaptation could be made these days, given the audience expectations for skin, language, and violence, all gratuitously inserted because they were lacking in the book; this version remains the best choice for classrooms

Review: Oppenheimer (2023) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  B+/A-

Drama

Rated R

On the heels of Barbie comes this review of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer—the other half of the Barbenheimer cultural phenomenon, where moviegoers took to seeing both films in tandem this past summer.

Nolan’s sweeping saga, a blend of color and black-and-white sequences, stars Cillian Murphy as theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who directed work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and successfully tested the first atomic bomb. After President Truman made the decision to drop A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer became a victim of his own conscience and Republican-led McCarthyism—the latter resulting in him being kicked to the curb for “red” associations, even as (or partly because?) he saw the horror of the bomb they created and pushed for international control of nuclear weapons.

Oppenheimer isn’t a lock to win the Oscar for Best Picture, but I’d be very surprised if it didn’t, because it’s the kind of film that voters have gone for in previous years:

—It’s a biopic, and from the earliest BP Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld through films like Patton and Gandhi to more recent entries like The King’s Speech, Hollywood has often had a soft spot for films based on real people and true stories—even ones like Oppenheimer, which focus on a very specific time in a historical figure’s life. In this case, from 1922-63, with the bulk taking place between 1938, when Oppenheimer realizes that nuclear fission could be weaponized, and 1954, when his career is threatened by a hearing to determine if he is a threat to national security.

—It’s a social commentary “message” film, like such previous winners as Driving Miss Daisy, 12 Years a Slave, Green Book, Moonlight, Spotlight, Parasite, Nomadland, and CODA. We see scientists question whether they’re doing the right thing by creating a super bomb, and we see a level of caution that all suggests they had no real idea of exactly how great and how destructive the A-bomb would be. For all the intellectual brilliance assembled at Los Alamos, there was also a startling level of naiveté, and we  also see Oppenheimer staring at his reflective decisions in the rear view mirror. Oppenheimer was billed as a thriller, but with a security clearance hearing that functions as a trial providing the narrative structure, it feels more like a tense courtroom drama.

—It’s also a historical epic, and Hollywood has always been a sucker for epics when it comes to Best Picture voting. The very first BP winner (Wings) was a historical epic. Such films offer an in-depth but also broad sweeping treatment of material suggesting consequences that reach far beyond the characters’ lives, whether it’s the settlement of the West (Cimarron), the fall of the Old South (Gone with the Wind), or an ill-fated voyage (Titanic) that still has a ripple effect. Epic stories often have epic lengths, like Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, or Chariots of Fire. And Oppenheimer, which runs 3 hours—another reason I preferred Blu-ray to movie theaters.

Most importantly, Oppenheimer has gravitas—a weightiness and solemn seriousness that testifies this is a HUGE topic in the annals of history and the evolution of humankind. The film is about a serious topic and brainy people, produced now when anti-intellectuals are as vocal and politically active as they were during the time of Oppenheimer’s hearing. That makes Oppenheimer even more relevant, and the factor most likely to earn the film a Best Picture statue.

Murphy said he starved and practically tortured his body to become as gaunt as Oppenheimer—something he vowed never to do again. I hope he’s pleased with the results, because the only way Oppenheimer would be more convincing is to have Oppenheimer play himself. Even then, I’m not so sure that he could express wordlessly what Murphy is able to do in order to suggest what’s going on inside that brilliant mind. In this, Nolan uses visual techniques reminiscent of what Ron Howard in A Beautiful Mind (another BP winner) did to suggest the complicated visionary mind of mathematician John Nash, who became involved in his own secret work that turned nightmarish.

The cast is epic, but make no mistake—this is Murphy’s film, with stolen moments by Emily Blunt (as Kitty Oppenheimer), Robert Downey Jr. (convincingly aged and periodized to look like a ‘40s and ‘50s politician), and Matt Damon (who plays the military head of the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer’s immediate superior).

The only head-scratcher is Nolan’s somewhat gratuitous insertion of two sex scenes that really showed more skin than anything of Oppenheimer’s character or plot points. There were other ways to suggest womanizing, other ways to suggest the appeal he had for women (not unlike the appeal that Henry Kissinger famously had—intellectuals are sexy to some women!), and certainly other ways to suggest the woman was a member of the Communist party.

Inception and Dunkirk both received Best Picture nominations but did not win. Oppenheimer ought to be the one to give Nolan the big prize.

Entire family:  No (older teens only)

Run time:  180 min., Color/Black & White

Studio/Distributor:  Universal

Aspect ratio:  Mixed 2.20:1 and 1.78:1

Featured audio:  DTS HDMA 5.1

Bonus features:  B+

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity, and language

Language:  7/10—More f-bombs than you can count on one hand, and various other curse words

Sex:  6/10—Just those two gratuitous lovemaking scenes showing full-body (no genitalia) nudity in muted light in the process of having sex; did Nolan opt for them to get an R rating thinking it would add to the gravitas?

Violence:  3/10—The film is about mass killing, but it’s all conceptual or reported after-the-fact, off-camera; one disturbing scene, shot kaleidoscopically, shows a woman committing suicide.

Adult situations:  5410—It was the era a smoking and social drinking, and the film reflects that

Takeaway:  Nolan has only been making films for some 15 years, but his body of work is already impressive, with brainteasers like Memento and The Prestige, his Batman trilogy and Man of Steel, and thought-provoking thrillers like Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet, and historical blockbusters like Dunkirk and Oppenheimer; it’s anyone’s guess what he does next, but you can bet stars will be nudging each other out of the way to get onboard

Review: BARBIE (2023) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  B+/B

Fantasy-Comedy

Rated PG-13

Barbie’s creator, Ruth Handler, merited a chapter in the 2018 book Shapers of American Childhood, and why wouldn’t she? Barbie was a blank slate. For the first time, girls had a doll that wasn’t a baby who dictated pretend motherhood play. With Barbie, they had a doll who was ostensibly a teen or adult, and that invited them to pretend play in a totally different way. They could be more than nurturing mothers.

Sure, Hasbro coined the term “action figure” to apply to a similar sized doll—G.I. Joe—that would appeal to boys, but that was in 1964. Barbie debuted in 1959, and though Mattel marketed her originally as a “fashion doll” with multiple outfits to buy and rotate, she had moveable arms, legs, and head, same as the army doll. Girls could pose her to ride in her pink convertible or boat, surf at the beach, swim in her pool, shop at the stores, or work behind the desk as a business executive. So yeah, a case can also be made for Barbie being the first action figure.

But through four waves of feminist criticism, Barbie also has come under fire for everything from the unnatural “ideal” shape of her body and what it does to girls’ self-image, to some of the things that the talking Barbies said (“Math is hard”) and early attempts at diversity that still used the same body mold and Caucasian features.

Barbie the live-action film (not to be confused with the 42 animated and streaming TV films) celebrates the iconic nature of the doll and is chock full of allusions to the wardrobe and accessories of Barbies past. The thoughts behind Barbie’s creation—“A doll can help change the world” and  “You can be anything”—celebrate the creator’s intent and Barbie’s iconic status. But that’s offset by the campy Zoolander airheadedness of the various Barbies and Kens. Surprisingly, the criticisms are also taken into account, with plenty of jokes and allusions. The result is a rich assessment of a doll that was an important part of postwar American culture—a clever film that manages to have it both ways. For that, credit co-writers Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, as well as Gerwig’s direction.

Barbie, as the world knows by now, stars Margot Robbie as the title character, and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the doll who exists only in relation to Barbie as a kind of accessory.  Almost every other female is also named Barbie to reflect the different models and types that were produced over the decades, and there’s more than one Ken as well. The elevator pitch for this film could have been made between two floors: First Barbie, then Ken has an existential crisis.

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling nail it as the main Barbie and Ken, the forever California beach-culture kids who never age and never seem to change in a sort of utopian alternate reality where all Barbies are successful businesswomen, lawyers, doctors, teachers, and elected officials, while Kens are just arm candy and perpetual beach boys with nothing to do but be “Ken.” That in itself makes for a clever construct of an inverted world.

There’s also something Elf-like about Barbie. Like Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf, a wide-eyed, naïve Barbie and Ken leave their highly stylized fantasy world full of bright colors for the industrial look of the real world. The result is a fish-out-of-water comedy. Buddy was on a mission to find his “naughty” father, while Barbie is told by “Weird Barbie” (Kate McKinnon) that she needs to travel to the real world to find the child who’s playing with her in order to get to the bottom of why she’s experiencing sudden concerns about mortality and discovering such human imperfections as cellulite, bad breath, and flat feet. Like Back to the Future, the reason for having to go back might be crucial to the plot, but it’s not the source of pleasure. Juxtapositions between the two worlds are, and Ken’s discovery that in the real world men (rhymes with Ken) are in charge. Suddenly he’s embracing “the patriarchy” and bringing those ideas back to Barbieland.

So far Barbie is the highest grossing film of 2023, and the film’s musical numbers received 11 Grammy nominations. Even if it wasn’t half of the pop-culture “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that saw post-COVID moviegoers flocking to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer because they were released about the same time, odds are that Barbie would have been a tremendous success because it appeals to both Barbie fans and critics. Throw in musical numbers and humor, and it expands the appreciative audience even more. And the soundtrack features Ava Max, Charli XCX, Dominic Fike, Fifty Fifty, Gayle, Haim, Ice Spice, Kali, Karol G, Khalid, Sam Smith, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish, Pink Pantheress, Tame Impala, the Kid Laroi, and cast members.

Because of its complexity and ideational juggling act, Barbie the movie ends up being as much of a blank slate as the dolls. People will see what they want to see in the film, and that’s almost as phenomenal as Barbie, whose creator, Ruth Handler, also is celebrated. And I mean celebrated. That’s the overall tone of this film, and the music makes it feel like somebody’s birthday—like Barbie’s 64^th.

Entire family:  Yes (most of the PG-13 stuff will fly right over their heads)

Run time:  114 min., Color

Studio/Distributor:  Warner Bros.

Aspect ratio:  2.00:1

Featured audio: Dolby Atmos TrueHD

Bonus features:  B

Trailer

Amazon link

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language

Language:  2/10—One censored f-bomb, references to “phallic”, and a few “bitches” that pop up in one soundtrack song

Sex:  2/10—Construction workers catcall Barbie, who responds that she has no vagina and Ken has no penis; Skipper’s breasts inflate to imitate the short-lived “Growing Up Skipper” doll; male cops and a man on the street sexualize Barbie, the latter by slapping her butt off camera; and Barbie showers, with nothing shown

Violence:  1/10—A comical big fight, with punches, kicks, and silly weapons applied here and occasionally elsewhere that seems clearly cartoonish

Adult situations:  1/10—The Kens drink beer though it’s only pretend beer, as with all Barbie and Ken actions to imitate pretend play of the dolls. 

Takeaway:  This is one film I hope isn’t followed by a sequel, for a sequel, I fear, would totally remove any have-it-both-ways ambiguity toward Barbie and Ken; Barbie works, but I’m not sure Barbie II would

Review: SCRAPPER (Blu-ray)

Grade: B

Drama

Not rated (would be PG)

After watching Scrapper a second time, I found myself scratching my head that British director Charlotte Regan was able to craft such a likable feature film her first time doing something more than music videos and short films. It confirmed for me that the “flaws” I perceived initially were really just stepping stones for this director’s different sort of journey. I liked it despite:

—a gentle tone that comes dangerously close to meh territory,

—a quirkiness that’s understated even by indie standards,

—a narrative that has conflicts you’d also have to call gentle or understated,

—a crisis point that’s relatively calm in a story with no real antagonist, and

—emotional content that’s so understated (there’s that word again) it borders on matter-of-factness or apathy.

Altogether, it adds up to a different kind of daddy-daughter story—one that’s endearing in a non-cloying way and that tells a story of human interaction without relying on standard tropes and audience manipulations.

Amazon link

Scrapper might work just as well as a play, because it revolves around two flawed characters who learn to put up with each other and peacefully coexist. They’re their own antagonists, as we watch them take baby steps toward an understanding that both of them seem to want, deep inside. Except their outsides don’t know it yet, and so they resist or fall short of full commitment.

Here’s how simple the plot is:  Georgie’s mum died, and while aren’t supposed to question the logistics of why she wasn’t taken away when the body was, we see her fending for herself in the flat. She pays the rent by stealing bicycles with her best (and only) friend Ali (Alin Uzun) and selling them to a fence. One day she looks out the window and a strange man is hopping her fence. It turns out that he’s her dad, returned from a carefree life in Ibiza. He heard her mum passed away and decided to see how she was doing. Though Georgie isn’t about to let any stranger who calls himself “dad” in her house, he blackmails her by telling her he’ll phone social services.

Once he’s in, she sends him on an errand and then changes the lock. Again, pretty swift work, unless a locksmith owes her a favor or she just happens to have a new lock ready to install right there at the apartment. But he doesn’t get angry—no one, really, expresses feelings that run high on the Emotion Meter—and they continue to tolerate each other. Small things happen in small ways to help them get to a point where they’re ready to accept each other. That’s the film in a nutshell:  subtle, and far from the kind of heartstring tugging that a director could have opted for with a daddy-daughter-reunion-‘cause-mommy’s-dead story. Except that they’re really more like older brother and younger sister as they try to negotiate a relationship from scratch.

In retrospect, that’s kind of refreshing. The wildest or most expressive elements in the film seem to be leftover ideas from Regan’s music video days—a few visual tricks and modern sitcom-style “interviews” to impart quirkiness in a different kind of way. To me, though, they didn’t add to the film, and, overdone, detracted from it.

But the tentative relationship between Georgie (Lola Campbell) and her dad, Jason (Harris Dickinson) is strong enough to weather the stylistic storm. Overall, this film really has a gentle vibe—no tantrums, no shouting, no swearing, and no “go to your room”s. But it was strong enough to win the Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance.

Entire family:  No (Age 10 and older?)

Run time:  84 min., Color

Studio/Distributor: BBC Film / Kino Lorber

Aspect ratio:  2.39:1

Featured audio:  DTS 5.1 Surround

Bonus features:  C

Trailer

Amazon link

Not rated (would be PG for petty theft and adult situations)

Language:  1/10—Nothing verbalized that I caught, but there was one prominent middle finger

Sex:  0/10—Nothing, other than Ali’s concern for his friend sleeping in the house with a strange man roaming about

Violence: 2/10—One incident involving one child giving another a black eye

Adult situations:  2/10—A child steals bicycles and “dad” advises her to file off the serial numbers before painting it—there are no role models here, only characters trying to figure things out

Takeaway:  Scrapper sticks with you because of the casting of the two main characters, the understated direction, and the way those two make you believe you’re watching life as it’s really lived

Review of RIDE ON (2023) (Blu-ray)

Grade:  C+/C

Action comedy

Not rated (would be PG)

These days the media is full of stories about writers, artists, and people working the film industry who are worried that their livelihoods might be threatened by the new AI technology.  But stunt actors everywhere whose demand has been diminished by CGI work have got to be thinking, Welcome to MY world. While this Larry Yang film is yet another vehicle for the ageless Jackie Chan and his creative martial arts sequences, it’s also a loving tribute to the Kung Fu stuntmen from Asian films, and, in fact, is dedicated to them. Yang was said to have begun working on this film after being inspired by the Kung Fu Stuntmen documentary.

In Ride On, a sentimental action comedy in Mandarin with English subtitles (or dubbed English), Chan plays Lao Luo, a washed-up old stuntman who, along with his stunt horse from recent years, has been put out to pasture. He and the horse have been reduced to working studio lots trying to get tourists to pay money for a photo—money Luo needs to keep debt collectors from trying to break his legs. That’s only the tip of the manure pile that his life has become. Years earlier Luo lost custody of and contact with a daughter he hasn’t seen in forever. Now he’s in danger of losing the most important thing in his life:  the stunt horse he bought from his producer after the injury.  

A new businessman and his company have acquired Luo’s old studio and they’ve decided to auction off all of that studio’s assets—including Luo’s beloved Red Hare, a horse they say was owned by the studio since he has no paperwork to prove otherwise.

The X-factor in the film is Luo’s estranged college-age daughter, Bao (Liu Haocun), who with her boyfriend/fiancé (Guo Qilin) is studying law. Reluctantly she agrees to help her father, though she has all sorts of daddy issues, and understandably so. Things don’t get any better when her father has to meet her fiancé’s parents, nor when Lao battles a debt collector (Wu Jing) and talks him into helping him against the others. That fellow has a connection to a film in production that has need of a stuntman and stunt horse. We’ve already witnessed him putting the animal at risk because of his pride and his stuntman’s creed. And yes, some of his stunts involve the horse fighting with him. Will this end badly?

It does, if you ask me—and I don’t mean because of anything that happens to Lao or Bao or Red Hare. For me, what might have been a C+ all the way through loses at least a half-grade because of an ending that takes the sentimentalism running through the film and amplifies it in the third act so that you can’t help but think, Ok, stop tugging at the heartstrings, already.  

Perhaps it’s that sentimentality and the focus on rider-horse and father-daughter relationships that make Ride On feel like a family film. Aside from action that’s mostly comic, as has been the case with so many of Chan’s movies, this 2023 film is pretty tame and suitable for almost all ages.

In the end, just as Ride On pays tribute to Kung Fu stuntmen, it also honors the stunt-heavy career of Chan, and fans will revel in seeing people onscreen watching a compilation of “Lao’s” greatest stunts—all of which will be familiar to Chan buffs. It’s like watching an aging John Wayne play an aging gunfighter in The Shootist, where you realize that the actor and the character have much in common. There’s a poignancy to it all that would have been enough to create a powerful emotional reaction in viewers, even if Yang decided to dial back a bit on the sentimentality.

Entire family:  No (Age 8 and older?)

Run time:  126 min. 

Studio/Distributor:  Well Go USA

Aspect ratio:  16:9 widescreen

Featured audios:  Mandarin w/English subtitles, Dubbed English

Bonus features:  C-

Trailer

Best Buy link

Not rated (would be PG for fighting action and scenes of peril)

Language:  2/10—Mostly euphemistic

Sex:  0/10—Nada

Violence: 5/5—Mostly comic, as almost all recent Jackie Chan action movies have been

Adult situations:  4/10—Some drinking, but mostly moments of peril where youngsters with empathy might have a Dumbo’s mother moment

Takeaway:  Chan has had a remarkable career, and this film feels like a loving appreciation