Flight – 4K-UHD/Blu-ray Special Edition – Kino Lorber
Closing Night of the 50th New York Film Festival featured one of Robert Zemeckis’s best films, Flight, starring Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, Brian Geraghty, Melissa Leo and Kelly Reilly, eons before Beth Dutton was born, although, in retrospect, it’s easy to see why she was perfectly cast in her iconic Yellowstone role.
I remember being blown away by Reilly, who had a few supporting roles in British films and the lead in the indie thriller, Eden Lake.
This was and is one of my favorite Denzel performances. He is at his best when he fearlessly dives into complex, multidimensional, problematic roles. Fences is another great example.
In Flight, he portrays alcoholic airline pilot Whip Whitaker, who, in an astounding early sequence, manages to crash land a distressed plane in a field, miraculously avoiding a total catastrophic outcome–and he even flies the plane upside down for a spell! But, as the media begins to label him a hero, questions start to arise about his sobriety, and an investigation shows he was drunk during the near-tragedy.
In a simultaneous story, a desperate addict, Nicole Maggen (Reilly), buys heroin and ODs.
The two characters meet up, in recovery, while sneaking a cigarette at an Atlanta hospital and an odd love story emerges. This standout scene boasts a terrific turn by James Badge Dale.
The film is highly entertaining, and the ensemble keeps us engrossed throughout, especially Washington and Reilly. Goodman provides hilarious comic relief. His character should have gotten his own spin-off movie.
The narrative gets way too feel-good in the final reel. Of course, it’s a requirement for most Zemeckis films to make sure the audience goes away feeling gooey, even when it goes against everything the story has presented beforehand. So, we are left with a too-abrupt, forced redemption.
Flight was nominated for two Oscars, lead actor for Washington and Original Screenplay for John Gatins—who had dubious credits before and since.
Kino Lorber has done a smashing job with this stunning brand-new restoration from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. Having not revisited the film since its NYFF world premiere, I felt transported right back to the Walter Reade Theater.
Special Edition extras include a new audio commentary by writers Julie Kirgo and Peter Hankoff, a new 29-minute chat with Zemeckis & Gatis as well as four archival featurettes.
https://kinolorber.com/product/flight-4kuhd
Runaway Train — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray – Kino Lorber
Another nail-biting, action-packed gem Kino Lorber has done a marvelous 4K job with is Andrei Konchalovsky’s riveting 1985 thriller Runaway Train.
Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus of The Canon Group, never known for releasing much in terms of quality, this was their zenith period (basically one year) when they also released John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, Robert Altman’s Fool for Love and Anthony Harvey’s underrated Grace Quigley. Before and after this time frame they mostly produced a lot of crap—that made a lot of money.
The legendary Russian helmer Konchalovsky had made the celebrated Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Siberiade (1979). Runaway Train would mark one of his first English language films, along with Maria’s Lovers (1984).
This action-adventure brings together notorious convict Manny (Jon Voight) and fellow inmate and chatty Cathy, Buck (Eric Roberts) as they escape an Alaskan Maximum-Security Prison—where Manny was being targeted for assassination by the warden (John P. Ryan). Both men hop a freight train towards their freedom. What they don’t know is that the engineer has died of a heart attack, so no one is manning the train, which is speeding towards disaster. A third passenger/railway worker is also on board (Rebecca De Mornay, surprisingly solid).
This taut and truly exciting work was based on an original 1960s screenplay by Akira Kurosawa and was quite the critical, if not commercial, success. It received three Academy Awards nominations including Best Actor (Voight), Supporting Actor (Roberts) and Film Editing (Henry Richardson). In addition, the film was nominated for three Golden Globes, Actor, Supporting Actor and Motion Picture Drama, with Voight a surprise winner!
Oscar-winner Voight (Coming Home) burrows deep into this messy, furious character and Roberts (King of the Gypsies, The Pope of Greenwich Village), still fairly new to the medium, matches him. Both have quite a few hilarious exchanges.
The Kino Lorber package boasts a brand new HDR/Dolby Vision Master – from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative, with Alan Hum’s stunning cinematography popping wildly. The sound is amazing.
Special features on the Blu-ray include a new 19-minute chat with Eric Roberts (along with an archival video with him) and an archival 38-minute interview with Voight as well as an older 16-minute chat with Konchalovsky. In addition, there’s an audio commentary by Roberts with film historians David Del Valle and C. Courtney Joyner as well as actor Kyle T. Heffner reflecting on the film.
https://kinolorber.com/product/runaway-train-4kuhd
Deep Water — Blu-ray — Magenta Light Studios
I’m a huge disaster film fan, especially those made in the 1970s. Try as they may with all the new technology and CGI galore, filmmakers just cannot seem to capture the good storytelling, intense suspense and terrific catastrophe sequences, whether in the water, on a plane or in a glass tower.
Deep Water, directed by once-wunderkind action man Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Cutthroat Island, The Long Kiss Goodnight), arrived and left cinemas before I was even aware it existed. A shame, too, because it’s probably best experienced on the big screen.
The narrative begins with an international flight taking off from Los Angeles to Shanghai. An explosion, non-terrorist related (imagine), jeopardizes everyone on board and Captain Sir Ben Kingsley and co-captain Aaron Eckhart are forced to land the plane—in a coral reef. Crash. Gruesome deaths. Rescues. Old Lady. Small Child. General Mayhem. And then…sharks.
Who will survive? Well, who really cares because the script—incredulously credited to four writers — doesn’t bother fleshing out most characters so we are left feeling virtually nothing for anyone except Eckhart and Kingsley—strictly because they’re Eckhart and Kingsley! It doesn’t help that most of the other actors aren’t very good. A decent script might have actually attracted good actors. Angus Sampson plays a character so laughably an asshole that you can’t wait for something terrible to happen to him—and it does.
The film borrows relentlessly from early disaster movies, especially the best of the ‘70s—The Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure and a few of the Airport films as well as Jaws, if only because of those (kinda superfluous) sharks.
The effects look too CGI-created which pulls you right out of the experience. But the movie did tap into my disaster love, so I was entertained, even when frustration set in. When are we going to finally get a proper homage to ’70s disaster, with a smart script and complicated characters we root for to survive???
The film looks quite good on Blu-ray, overly CGI visuals notwithstanding, but there is not one special feature. Curious.
