A Quiet Place

Blu-ray Highlights: Week of July 8th, 2018 – Hush Hush, Keep It Down Now…

New to Blu-ray this week is a blockbuster thriller that had audiences shouting from the rooftops this past spring. Unfortunately, those viewers failed to learn anything from the movie and were promptly eaten by monsters. Seriously, shhhhhh…!

Which Blu-rays Interest You This Week (7/10/18)?

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New Releases (Blu-ray)

A Quiet Place‘ – Former ‘The Office’ star John Krasinski is having a pretty good year. He’ll be headlining Amazon’s new ‘Jack Ryan’ reboot in the fall, and he also helmed an ingenious sci-fi horror thriller about a family (Krasinski himself and real-life wife Emily Blunt) struggling to survive a post-apocalyptic world where making even the slightest sound could lead to their immediate deaths. Both critics and audiences ate this up with huge accolades and box office earnings. On disc, you can get a Blu-ray SteelBook at Best Buy or a 4k Ultra HD option, but unfortunately it does not appear possible to get both together in the same package.

Chappaquiddick‘ – Jason Clarke stars as rising politician Ted Kennedy in a docudrama about the fateful night in 1969 a car crash took the life of his young campaign strategist, and the accusations that followed about his attempts to cover it up. Allegedly, director John Curran (of the 2010 prison thriller ‘Stone’) tries to play this even-handedly in terms of politics, but the fact that he made the movie at this moment in time sure suggests that he’s courting an Alt-Right audience. If that’s the case, they didn’t seem to notice, as the movie made very little money. Reviews were mixed.

Lean on Pete‘ – Andrew Haigh follows his acclaimed ‘Weekend‘ and ‘45 Years‘ with a coming-of-age drama about a troubled boy (Charlie Plummer) who bonds with an aging horse after taking a job at a racetrack. The film was lauded by critics and highly buzzed on the festival circuit.

UHD

In addition to Paramount’s day-and-date release of ‘A Quiet Place‘, Sony gives a 4k upgrade to 2014’s ‘The Equalizer‘ (either in standard packaging or an ugly Pop Art SteelBook) to pave the way for that film’s impending sequel.

Catalog Titles

New to the Criterion Collection is one of the most popular sports movies of all time, Ron Shelton’s 1988 baseball dramedy ‘Bull Durham‘, starring Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. Criterion’s second title this week is the 1967 wuxia epic ‘Dragon Inn‘, from the director of ‘A Touch of Zen‘ (but more than an hour shorter).

The Warner Archive sets sail with ‘Billy Budd‘, the 1962 naval adventure directed by actor Peter Ustinov, adapted from a novel by Herman Melville.

A label called Milestone Cinemateque offers a new 4k restoration of Lucino Visconti’s sweeping Italian historical epic ‘Rocco and His Brothers‘. I don’t know anything about Milestone, but the restoration is credited to the Film Foundation and the Cineteca di Bologna, which did pretty extraordinary work with Fellini’s ‘La dolce vita‘ a few years back. Also from Milestone is ‘Maborosi‘, the 1995 feature debut for Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda (‘Still Walking‘).

The legendary Josephine Baker stars in the 1945 musical comedy ‘The French Way‘, which makes it way to high definition from an outfit called Kit Parker Films.

Arrow Video rolls out another yakuza thriller from cult favorite Seijun Suzuki with 1963’s imaginatively-titled ‘Detective Bureau 2-3: Go to Hell Bastards!‘.

Universal digs up the 1988 rom-com ‘Casual Sex?‘, as well as a trio of direct-to-video sequels from the ‘Bring It On‘ franchise.

Finally, Kino dredges through the 1990s and comes up with the forgotten Michael Keaton police drama ‘One Good Cop‘ and Nicolas Cage’s “Top Gun with Helicopters” action thriller ‘Fire Birds‘.

Television

Notable TV product this week includes Steven Soderbergh’s HBO miniseries ‘Mosaic‘, the third season of Syfy’s ‘The Magicians‘, and the fifth season of the British detective drama ‘Endeavour‘.

My $.02

I’m eager to check out ‘A Quiet Place’, but will probably do a streaming rental.

Even with the current Criterion sale, ‘Dragon Inn’ will probably not make my cut this month, but I’ll put it on my wish list for later, along with ‘Rocco and His Brothers’.

Is there anything this week you feel like making some noise about?

12 comments

  1. BILLY BUDD: directed by and starring Peter Ustinov, introducing Terrence Stamp in the title role. With Robert Ryan as the villain.

    It is a naval trial story. Billy is martyred for the good of the Royal Navy.

  2. Tenchi Moyo is one of those franchises that I will just blind buy – I have never been disappointed with it. Still, I don’t like the idea of shorts – There is another series I have like that, and the credits are as long as the shows. So you may see “oh, $40 for 50 episodes is cheap”, but they are probably 3 minute episodes, so then you are like “Oh, $40 for 150 minutes of material”

    Adventures of Tom Sawyer looks interesting. I may have it preordered – I saw it in the Kino catalogue a few months ago (at least, that is where I think i saw it), and it caught my interest. I have heard of this version before, but have never seen it, so I am certainly interested in it.

  3. FYI from Milestone Film & Video: Milestone was started in 1990 by Amy Heller and Dennis Doros out of their New York City one-room apartment and has since gained an international reputation for releasing classic cinema masterpieces, groundbreaking documentaries, and American independent features. Since 2007, Milestone has concentrated on the restoration and worldwide distribution of films outside the Hollywood mainstream featuring “lost” films by and about African Americans, Native Americans, LGBTQ and women. Milestone’s motto (in polite company) is “We like to mess with the canon.”

    Thanks to the company’s work in rediscovering and releasing important films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles, Lionel Rogosin’s On the Bowery, Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba, Marcel Ophuls’s The Sorrow and the Pity, the Mariposa Film Group’s Word is Out, Billy Woodberry’s Bless Their Little Hearts, Lois Weber’s Shoes and The Dumb Girl of Portici, Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason, The Connection and Ornette: Made in America, Milestone has long occupied a position as one of the country’s most influential independent distributors.

    In 1995, Milestone received the first Special Archival Award from the National Society of Film Critics for its restoration and release of I Am Cuba. Manohla Dargis, then at the LA Weekly, chose Milestone as the 1999 “Indie Distributor of the Year.” In 2004, the National Society of Film Critics again awarded Milestone with a Film Heritage award. That same year the International Film Seminars presented the company its prestigious Leo Award and the New York Film Critics Circle voted a Special Award “in honor of 15 years of restoring classic films.” In November 2007, Milestone was awarded the Fort Lee Film Commission’s first Lewis Selznick Award for contributions to film history. Milestone/Milliarium won Best Rediscovery from the Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards for its release of Winter Soldier in 2006 and again in 2010 for The Exiles.

    In January 2008, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association chose to give its first Legacy of Cinema Award to Dennis Doros and Amy Heller of Milestone Film & Video “for their tireless efforts on behalf of film restoration and preservation.” And in March 2008, Milestone became an Anthology Film Archive’s Film Preservation honoree. In 2009, Dennis Doros was elected as one of the Directors of the Board of the Association of the Moving Image Archivists and established the organization’s press office in 2010.

    In 2011, Milestone was the first distributor ever chosen for two Film Heritage Awards in the same year by the National Society of Film Critics for the release of On the Bowery and Word is Out. The American Library Association also selected Word is Out for their Notable Videos for Adult, the first classic film ever so chosen.

    In December 2012, Milestone became the first-ever two-time winner of the prestigious New York Film Critics’ Circle’s Special Award, this time for its work in restoring, preserving and distributing the films of iconoclast director Shirley Clarke.

    In 2016, Dennis Doros was presented with the William S. O’Farrell Volunteer Award “in recognition of his significant contributions to AMIA and to the field.”

    In 2017, Milestone raised over $3000 for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dennis Doros was elected President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists and Milestone was presented the Barrymore Award by the Fort Lee Film Commission.

    Important contemporary artists who have co-presented Milestone restorations include Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Barbara Kopple, Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh, Thelma Schoonmaker, Jonathan Demme, Dustin Hoffman, Charles Burnett and Sherman Alexie.

    “They care and they love movies.”
    — Martin Scorsese
    “Milestone Film & Video is an art-film distributor that has released some of the most distinguished new movies (along with seldom-seen vintage movie classics) of the past decade.”
    — Stephen Holden, New York Times

  4. Lord Bowler

    I’ll be picking up ‘Fire Birds’ and probably ‘Chappaquiddick‘. I’ll be renting ‘A Quiet Place’.

    One strange comment from Josh in the review that I found out of place:
    Allegedly, director John Curran (of the 2010 prison thriller ‘Stone’) tries to play this even-handedly in terms of politics, but the fact that he made the movie at this moment in time sure suggests that he’s courting an Alt-Right audience.

    How is doing the story of Ted Kennedy’s infamous car wreck at this time courting an “Alt-Right audience”. It’s only been fifty years after the event and almost a decade after all of the people involved have died. This is the kind of story that Hollywood would have done movies on within ten years of the event, if it were any other family than the Kennedy’s. I think that the only reason the story got produced now is that no one cared to stop it anymore.

    This should have destroyed Ted Kennedy’s career rather than just costing him his chance at becoming President. Despite that, he still had a chance at becoming President, ultimately losing the nomination to someone else. Still, he went on to become one of the most powerful senators in American History loved by many in Massachusetts and in the Democratic Party. He’s even more loved than the longest serving Senator in US history, Robert Byrd, who had his own issues.

    I found the movie more than fair to Ted Kennedy, much more than I expected as it only depicted the events as Ted Kennedy relayed them when he was deposed by authorities. No other information was added, and there were no speculation. Which left me with many questions. Among them were: How did Ted get out of the car? Why no autopsy? Why couldn’t the rescuers get into the car the way Ted got out? Did Mary Jo die in the crash or afterwards? Why wasn’t Ted arrested for leaving the scene of the accident? Etc. These questions will never be answered as everyone with the answers are gone now. The movie did provide a lot of post-film discussion on the events and Ted Kennedy.

    • C.C.

      Tommy Lee Jones speech in FIREBIRDS is a classic:
      “First Class, All-American hero with his heart and brain wired together cookin’ Full-tilt Boogie for Freedom and Justice” !!

    • Even more to the point, even if the movie was pandering to an alt-right audience, so what? Why is it okay to pander to one political extreme, and not another? Don’t get me wrong, I am not an extreamist, or “alt” right or alt left or alt center or alt up or down or whatever. My point is this, and this seems to be the current mindset of the world these days. “Awww, you are offended? I like it. You are just intolerant. Oh wait, you like it and I find it offensive? You are not being politically correct, and this garbage needs to be shut down in the name of tolerance!” It’s a stupid argument, assuming that the vast majority of Americans actually care about politics, and can be easily swayed by a movie that no one bothered to see.

      The real question is, does anyone even still care about the Kennedys? Based on this movie only grossing half of its budget, I will say no. Now if Ted Kennedy could transform into a giant robot and blow some stuff up by day, then use his vampire charms by night to fall madly in love with someone a hundred years younger than him, but knowing they are both going to die thanks to his radioactive heart which is causing cancer to spread throughout his body, and that caused him to crash a car, then you have a movie people will want to see!

  5. C.C.

    A Quiet Place is the very definition of “overrated”, and how he did not get sued by Tim Lebbon for ripping off his book THE SILENCE, is a mystery.
    (THE SILENCE was in production as a film at the same time, with Stanley Tucci starring and directed by John R. Leonetti – and will most likely be released later this year).

  6. DaMac80

    You don’t have to be alt-right to dislike Ted Kennedy and be disgusted by what he did, trust me.

    Anyway another week of nothing for me. Bull Durham is a fun movie but I don’t need to own it. I will rent A Quiet Place, so I guess if I love that I’ll get the UHD down the line.

    • Lord Bowler

      I agree.

      I thought the movie was way more fair to Ted than he deserved. But, I can see why. It would have been very hard to make a movie showing Ted in a poor light even today in Hollywood. It still was a decent movie, that was well acted and directed. Jason Clarke did an excellent job in the movie. I would have liked to see more questioning of Ted’s story. Didn’t someone have question his side of the story?

      I personally think Ted should have been tried for manslaughter at least, possibly even murder. But, the family still holds a lot of power. This was by far not an “alt-right” movie. I would say this was smack in the center of the debate on Ted.

  7. “‘Lean on Pete‘ – Andrew Haigh follows his acclaimed ‘Weekend‘ and ‘45 Years‘ with …”

    Hey Josh, link to ‘Weekend’ leads to ’45 Years’ as well. Sorry to be that guy.

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