Two classic essay films and Captain America on a train that won’t stop
Here’s what’s new to DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD this week.
Top picks: Classic
F For Fake (Criterion)
Orson Welles’ last major work—previously issued by Criterion as a standard-def DVD—is a tour de force of wit, illusion, and artistic pranksterism. The subject, at least at first, is art forgery, though Welles quickly expands it to include Howard Hughes, stage magic, his own notorious War Of The Worlds radio-play, film editing, and the very act of storytelling itself. Like his debut, Citizen Kane, Welles’ final masterpiece doubles as a summary of everything movies can do.
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Cinema Guild)
Thom Andersen’s cantankerous, highly opinionated video essay—which has been circulating in bootlegs for the last decade—has had a big influence on American film criticism and film culture. Employing hundreds of film clips, Andersen explores the ways in which movies have portrayed and disguised Los Angeles over the decades; this much-belated release—available in DVD and Blu-ray—comes with Andersen’s recent, playful Tony Longo Trilogy, which pays tribute to the bit actor the filmmaker calls “the axiom of the American action cinema.”
Other classic releases
The Girl Hunters (Kino Lorber) cast writer Mickey Spillane as his sadistic gumshoe character, Mike Hammer. With his reedy voice, GI haircut, stocky build, and beak nose, Spillane doesn’t look or sound like anyone’s idea of a chiseled pulp dick; what he does bring to the movie, however, is an unintentionally authentic presence. He looks like a real goon who’s accidentally wandered onto a movie set.
The Naked Face (Kino Lorber), the final feature by English director Bryan Forbes (Seance On A Wet Afternoon), stars Roger Moore as a psychoanalyst accused of murdering one of his patients. It’s hokey stuff, but not without its pleasures—not the least of which is Forbes’ effective use of the industrial corners of downtown Chicago.
La Dolce Vita (Criterion) is the favorite movie of gray-haired Paul Mazursky fans who sit on the advisory boards of lesser opera companies. Federico Fellini certainly did much worse; however, as demonstrated by Nights Of Cabiria and 8 1/2—the films he made directly before and after this one—he could also do much better.
Also out this week: the Christmas-themed low-budget slasher To All A Goodnight (Kino Lorber), which actually opens with a scene in a sorority house where young women run up and down the stairs, shouting “Sorority! Sorority!”; Michael Apted’s often tedious Soviet-set potboiler Gorky Park (Kino Lorber), featuring a script by Dennis Potter, a fascinating mishmash of accents, and one of the most mannered performances of William Hurt’s career; and the tony, S&M-themed West German drama A Woman In Flames (Film Chest).