COOL HAND LUKE (1967) (WBHE 4K ultra HD Review)

COOL HAND LUKE (1967)

Label: WBHE

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: PG-13 

Duration: 126 Minutes 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono (UHD), DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono (BD) with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: (HDR10) 2160p UHD Widescreen (2.35:!) , 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)

Director: Stuart Rosenberg

Cast: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, J.D. Canon, Robert Drivas, Lou Antonio, Strother Martin, Jo Van Fleet

In the prison classic Cool Hand Luke (1967) Paul Newman (Road To Perdition) stars Luke Jackson, a war hero who at the start of the film is arrested for disorderly conduct and destroying public property after the cops nab him walking an empty city street quite drunk and cutting off parking meters at the stem with a pipe cutter. Sentenced to two years of hard labor at a Florida prison run by a warden who goes by Captain (Strother Martin, The Brotherhood of Satan). Luke proves to be not a fan of being told what to do by the prison staff, especially the menacing prison guard Godfrey (Morgan Woodard, Battle Beyond the Stars), who always wears mirrored sunglasses, and sits watch over the work crew with a rifle. 

Inside he earns a reputation among his fellow incarcerated as someone who is cool under pressure, hence his titular nickname, and not one to easily fall into line when told do so. He earns the respect of the towering Dragline (George Kennedy, Creepshow 2) after taking him on in the weekly prison yard  boxing match, and despite being whupped by Dragline hands down he refuses to give up, even when he can barely stand up, he never stops swinging. 

Occasionally his ant-authority antics begin to rub Captain the wrong way, and after various infractions throws him in the sweat box overnight several times, but it never breaks him. However, when his dear momma Arletta (Jo Van Fleet, Satan's School for Girls) passes on it get's under the skin of Luke, and despite the Captain preemptively locking him away in the box so as he is not tempted to escape, he does just that. His escape makes him in instant hero among the convicted, he is re-captured and the Captain lays into pretty hard so as to set an example and discourage he and others from attempting escape again. He makes several more escapes, each time his punishment grows more extreme, and finally it seems to break him. The fellow inmates start to lose faith in their former hero, but Luke has more tricks up his sleeve, and eventually makes a final break-out with his bud Dragline in tow. 

Cool Hand Luke is a classic among prison film, Newman is in top physical form and the camera loves his glistening bare-chested body as he labors away in the son. He's just a cool cat and his character is charming as heck, his indomitable spirit even winning over a few of the prison guards along the way. He's capably supported by Kennedy who gives a terrific Oscar-winning supporting performance as the hulking Dragline, a felon with heart; and Strother Martin just about steals every scene he shows up in with his wicked and slightly effeminate Southern drawl, uttering perhaps the film's most iconic line, "What we have here is a failure to communicate...", made famous to my generation (Gen X if you're keeping track), after it was used on the Guns N' Roses tune "Civil War".  The film also feature turns from a lot of familiar faces including Joe Don Baker (Charley Varrick), Harry Dean Stanton (Repo Man) as a guitar strumming felon, Dennis Hopper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), Clifton James (Experiment In Terror), and Anthony Zerbe (Omega Man).

Audio/Video: Cool Hand Luke (1967) gets a region-free 4K Ultra HD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in HDR10-enhanced 2160p UHD widescreen (2.35:1), and while there's no specific information about the source of this new scan it looks quite nice. There's an unobtrusive layer of fine film grain that exports pleasing depth, clarity and fine detail throughout, especially in close-ups of characters caked in mud and sweat while working outdoors under the noon day sun. Colors are a bit muted and dingy by design, enhanced slightly by some judicious HDR10 color-grading that subtley  enhances primaries and boosts contrast with deeper more layered blacks during the night scenes. Audio on the UHD comes by way of DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with optional English subtitles. Its a solid track that is clean and offers intelligible dialogue, and the terrific Lalo Schifrin score sounds great. Unfortunately, the accompanying Blu-ray is a recycle of the 2008 release, which has only lossy Dolby Digital 1.0 mono, so the UHD's dual-mono DTS-HD track is actually a nice upgrade 

No new extras are afforded the Oscar nominated film, we get the archival Audio Commentary by Eric Lax on the UHD, which is duplicated alongside all the other archival extras on the Blu-ray, again a recycle of the 2008  disc, which are a bit light for a classic film in my opinion, a real shame The 2-disc release arrives in a black dual-hubbed keepcase with a single sided sleeve of artwork. Inside there's a redemption code for a 4K digital copy of the film. The slipcover is adorned with the WB 100 anniversary logo in the upper right hand corner, the wrap does not. 

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary by Eric Lax

- “A Natural-Born World-Shaker: Making Cool Hand Luke” (featurette) (29 min) 

- Trailer (3 min) 

- Slipcover

- Digital Copy 

THE EPITAPH VOL. 36 - THE LITTLE THINGS (2020) - JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS IN OUTER SPACE (1972-1973) - DAVID GULPILIL: WALKABOUT TO HOLLYWOOD (1980) - AWOKEN (2019) - MORGUE (2019)

THE EPITAPH VOL. 36

THE LITTLE THINGS (2020) - JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS IN OUTER SPACE (1972-1973) - DAVID GULPILIL: WALKABOUT TO HOLLYWOOD (1980) - AWOKEN (2019) - MORGUE (2019) 

Another week brings another installment of The Epitaph. No theme this week, a fairly random grouping of bite-sized capsule reviews of physical media releases from the U.S. and Australia. We get a star-studded crime thriller, a kitschy 70's cartoon rebranding, a documentary about a fascinating Australian aboriginal actor, a sleepy slice of insomnia infused exorcism, and a Paraguayan haunter. 

THE LITTLE THINGS (2020) 

Label: Warner Bros Home Entertainment

Region Code: A

Rating: R

Duration: 127 Minutes 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen

Director: John Lee Hancock 

Cast:  Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Chris Bauer, Michael Hyatt

When Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel Washington, Man On Fire) is sent to Los Angeles for a quickie evidence pick-up assignment he becomes entrenched in the search for a serial killer who is stalking the city. L.A. Sheriff Department Sergeant Jim Baxter (Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhasphodie) is a hot-shit cop who comes to trust Deke’s instincts, unofficially bringing him onto the case, inadvertently dredging up a case from Deke’s secretive past that will threaten to unravel both men. I loved this Se7en-ish noir thriller right up till the final leg when it swerved into subtlety instead of stepping on the gas, it didn't ruin it for me but it befuddled me. Jared Leto (Requiem for a Dream) as the intensely creepy suspect has several unnerving engagements with the detectives that got under my skin in a good way, but  the finale does not have the impact I think writer/director thought it would. The movie is building to a fever-pitch, but it never boils properly over. I will concede that I can see liking this more when I re-watch it, but for right now I'm lukewarm. 

Special Features:

- Four Shade of Blue (Blu-ray only) 

- A Contrast In Styles

- Digital Copy

JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS IN OUTER SPACE (1972-1973) 

Label: Warner Archive

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated 

Duration: 352 Minutes

Audio: English DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 Mono with Optional English Subtitlez

Video: 1080p HD Fullscreen (1.33:1)

Cast: Janet Waldo, Barbara Pariot, Jackie Joseph, Jerry Dexter, Casey Kasem, Sherry Alberoni, Don Messick 

 

In the early 70s I was still in the lower half if the single digits but I still have memories of sitting at my mother's feet watching the original Josie and the Pussycats and this sequel series set in outerspace. It wasn't my favorite but back in the day we had four channels tops so you watched whatever took arrived over the boob-tube, you couldn't be picky about these things! However, I was and will always be more a fan of Thundarr the Barbarian and Scooby-Doo, and this series definitely smacked up a Scooby-Doo riff. Josie and the gang get into plenty of alien adventures, along the way meeting a race of cat people, robot monsters, evil dictators, space pirates and plenty of other space-based screatures, including their new companion Bleep, voiced by Hanna-Barbera legend Don Messick. I am still not over keen on the kitschy girl-band show, but the 2-disc Blu-ray from Warner Archive contains all 16-episode of Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space with fresh 2021 HD scans and uncompressed audio with optional English subtitles. Its a fantastic looking set, on par with their other recent Hannah-Barberra restorations. If your a fan of vintage 70s kid friendly animation along the lines of The Monkees by way of Scooby, this is good stuff. No extras on this release, but the Warner Archive animation restoration is top-notch. 

DAVID GULPILIL: WALKABOUT TO HOLLYWOOD (1980)

Label: Umbrella Entertainment 

Region Code: Region-Free (NTSC) 

Rating: M

Duration: 49 Minutes 

Audio: English Dolby Digital 2.0 Dual-Mono 

Video: Fullscreen (1.33:1)

Director: BIll Leimbach

Cast: Buffy Sainte-Marie, David Gulpilil. Peter Weir, Robert Powell

David Gulpilil: Walkabout to Hollywood (1980) is a 49-minute documentary produced for the BBC and directed by documenarian Bill Leimback. It's subject is the Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, who at the age of sixteen starred in Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, which is also the first film I saw him in. He's an actor with a lot of presence and an expressive face that is very compelling. He went into feature in many more films, including Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Storm Boy, (1976), The Last Wave (1977), Dark Age (1987), The Tracker (2002), and Cargo (2017), before retiring in 2019 after announcing he was diagnosed with lung cancer. Gulpilil has a style that is so naturalistic and sometimes otherworldly, but never feels a parody of the indigenous people  of Australia, he has a way of expressing deep emotion with minimal dialogue. The doc is mainly focused on Gulpilil himself as he spends time in the outback teaching his kids traditions and in the city where he teaches aboriginal dance, including a trip to the U.S. screenings of his films and Q&A with fans. We also see him in conversation with Native Americans, discussing their art and culture. Its a fascinating story and a well-done doc, highly recommended if your interested in learning more about Gulpilil.the DVD from Umbrella Entertainment is fullscreen 4x3 and has not been restored. Its a warts and all presentation but is watchable. The only extras is a David Gulpilil trailer reel. 

Special Features: 

- David Gulpilil Trailers: Walkabout (1971), Mad Dog Morgan (1976), Storm Boy, (1976), The Last Wave (1977), Dark Age (1987), The Tracker (2002), Cargo (2017

AWOKEN (2019)

Label: Umbrella Entertainment

Region Code: 4

Rating: MA 15+

Duration: 88 Minutes 

Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1 with No Subtitle Options 

Video: Anamorphic Widescreen 

Director: Daniel J. Phillips

Cast: Benson Jack Anthony, Erik Thomson, Sara West

In the indie exorcism flick Awoken (2020) Karla, a young medical student, is at her wit's end trying to find a cure for a genetic, terminal sleep afflicting her brother Blake. With few options left ro explore she agrees to an experimental treatment at a clinic in the basement of an abandoned underground hospital, which should send up red flags right away.  While there she discovers long lost tapes that reveal sinister secrets about their mother’s death from the same genetic disorder, revealing that demonic possession is also at play. Ironically for a film about people afflicted with insomnia I found it hard to stay awake. This was a real snoozer and I say its a hard pass. The region 4 DVD from Umbrella Entertainment is anamorphic widescreen as has zero extras. Skip it. 

THE MARKSMAN (2020) 

Label: Warner Bros Home Entertainment

Region Code: A

Rating: PG-13

Duration: 108 Minutes 

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1) 

Director: Robert Lorenz

Cast: Liam Neeson, Katheryn Winnick, Juan Pablo Raba, Teresa Ruiz

Liam Neeson seems to be enjoying a late-career run as an old man vigilante along the lines of Charles Bronson and Clinton Eastwood. I've never seen any of the Taken franchise or post-Taken movies either, they're not high on my list to see either, but that's no slight against Neeson or the movies, they're just not my cup o' tea. Here Neeson plays a grisled ex-Marine, an Arizona rancher named Jim Hanson (Liam Neeson) who is living a rugged life on the borderland with his trusty dog sidekick. Still grieving the death of his wife from cancer and the seemingly inevitable bank foreclosure on his property the fed-up vet gets a chance to vent his frustration on a drug cartel when he rescues an 11-year-old migrant named  Miguel and his mother who are fleeing the cartel and end up on his property. Its a decent flick with plenty of action, I didn't love it but appreciated Neeson's sturdy stubborn bad-assery, and its well-shot to boot, a decent popcorn muncher for sure. 

Special Features: 

- The Making of The Marksman

- Digital Copy

 THE MORGUE (2010)

Label: Well Go USA 

Region Code: A

Rating:

Duration: 81 Minutes 

Audio: Spanish and Guaran DTS-HD MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles 

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)

Director: Hugo Cardozo 

Cast: Francisco Ayala, Maria del Mar Fernandez, Abel Martinez, Pablo Martinez, Raul Rotela

The Paraguayan haunter Morgue (2019) follows a hard-luck security guard named Diego Martinez who is assigned nighty duty  at a creepy morgue, which he anticipates will ge an easy gig, but he's wrong. He ends up locked inside with what turns out to be the restless spirits of the dead. Unfortunately I couldn't get into this one, its slow-moving, predictable and not terribly well-excuted either, relying too heavily on cheap jump scares and not enough suspense magination to keep me interested.  

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WONDER WOMAN 1984 (2020) (4K UHD Review)

WONDER WOMAN 1984 (2020) 

Label: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: PG-13 

Duration: 151 Minutes 

Audio: English Dolby Atmos, Dolby TrueHD with Optional English SDH, Spanish, French, Portugue

Video: 2160p UHD Widescreen (2.39:1 & 1.90:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (2.39:1 & 1.90:1) 

Director: Patty Jenkins

Cast: Chris Pine,  Steve Trevor, Kristen Wiig, Pedro Pascal, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen 

Set in 1984 the sequel Wonder Woman 1984 finds Diana Prince (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) living among we mortals in the Nation's Capitol D.C. where she works at the Smithsonian, curating ancient artifacts. The film opens with a flashback to her as a child (played again by Lilly Aspell) on the hidden island of Themyscira where she partakes in a athletic event, the only child among a group of adults. It's an action packed and well staged spectacle that teaches young Diana a life lesson about winning and losing. We then come back to '84 where Diana as her alter-ego Wonder Woman stops a botched heist at a jewelry store at a mall, that most 80's of monuments to excess culture and greed, god I miss it, the arcade and record stores anyway.

It turns out that the jewelry store was a front for stolen antiquities operation, and some of the the gems from the heist are sent to the Smithsonian to be verified by the museums resident gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig, Bridesmaids). Intrigued by the ancient artifacts Diana befriends the mousy Barbara and offers to help her identify the gems. Diana takes a sincere liking to shy Barbara, and while assisting her in identifying the gems takes notice of a relic called the Dreamstone, with a Latin inscription claiming to bestow the holder of it to a singular wish. Barbara secretly wishes to be more like her new friend Diana, while Diana herself dreams of being reunited with her lost love, pilot Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, Wonder Woman). 

Diana plans to remove the stone from museum, realizing that it was created by a god of mischief and lies, and that no mortal should have access to it, but before she can reclaim it a benefactor of the museum, con artist Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal, The Mandalorian), borrows it, having long searched for the stone to fulfill his dreams of success and power. 

Meanwhile, Barbara begins to take on some surprising new attributes, these include the ability to walk in heels, more self confidence, and she gets a huge uptick in strength, tearing the door off her fridge while looking for a midnight snack. Diana on the other hand begins to feel her strength wane, and magically Steve is returned to her, though somehow he has taken over the body of a completely different man, which is problematic to say the least if you think about, which I assure you I did not. 

Lord becomes the big baddie of the film, a character that is meant to symbolize the greed of the 80's, his wishes upon the Dreamstone to become the embodiment of the Dreamstone, which leads to him granting wishes to a lot of people, but as he is now the Dreamstone personified he is able to request something in return, which allows to to amass oil, wealth and power in very short order. All this wishes-granting however leads to the world teetering on the brink of nuclear war.

The other minor baddie is Barbara Minerva who with her newfound strength has teamed-up with Lord, who grants her the wish of becoming an apex predator. She is more fully transformed into Wonder Woman's comic book nemesis Cheetah, though she is never called that in the film.

That's the film in a nutshell, with Diana and Steve attempting to thwart Lord before the world self-destructs  in a mushroom cloud of greed and pettiness. It's all a bit sillier than the first film, and I think setting it in the 80's is an appropriate venue for such a goofy comic book sort of premise. Thankfully, I am down with silly comic adaptations, it might be a bit of a shock to the system after the dour DC run of films, and the tone is a bit all over the place, but I had fun with WW84, the same way I had fun with Godzilla vs. Kong, it's a big dumb fantasy film and on that level I was entertained, 'nuff said.

I can see how goofy it is, I am clear-eyed about that, but I can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of it, munching on my popcorn and having a good time without having a tantrum about how stupid or dumb it all is, I mean it's not that much more cartoonish than Batman Returns and it's nowhere near as mind-numbing as Batman & Robin. Some of the sillier stuff would be that this film is Diana still grieving for Steve to a ridiculous degree seventy-years later, or that she swings around on that lasso at the mall like she's DC's answer Spider-Man, and that stuff actually looks great. I though Lord was a lazy caricature of an 80's villain, and how Steve was returned is just plain weird. Then there's her lassoing a jet, and even an RPG a, both of which she hitches a ride on it, but that is no more silly than what I read in the comics  as a kid. As a fan of the Super Friends TV serie I was happy to see the introduction of the Invisible Jet, but again, the introduction of it and how that was achieved is pretty silly, but there is no denying that the ride through a fireworks event in the invisible jet looks stunning. 

I see all that, and I still had a fun time with this movie, though I readily admit it's a severely stupid film, I don't care. I love Gadot as Wonder Woman and her alter-ego Diana Prince, and while Pine's return strains reason he's a charming cat and I loved having him back, plus we get some fun 80's fish-out-water shenanigans, including an 80's fashion montage that includes parachute pants and fanny-pack. I thought Pascal as Lord was also a good time, he's vamping it up like an 80's era Trump by way of the Wishmaster, he goes big with it. That Wiig plays the mousey girl who suddenly turns heads that we've seen a thousand times before is a bit lame, and that her boss battle with Wonder Woman is so dark that  it seemed like they were trying to hide her Cheetah transformation, the look of which was not awful, but was a mixed bag. That we never see her in the light of day really felt like they did not believe in the look of the character. 

The overall feel of the film is that of a fun, light-hearted, one-off, that would seem to have little to no consequence for the character or the larger DC franchise, and I found it interesting that Wonder Woman can ride the lightning, swing like Spider-Man on her lasso, and can actually fly, but none of that has ever been duplicated in Batman V. Superman or Justice League which came later. 

I had expected something a bit more epic for this sequel, and while it wasn't what I was expecting I was not altogether butt-hurt about the silly spectacle that we got, Wonder Woman is still a bad-ass and the action sequences at the mall and in the Middle East are fun, epic and well-made, and at the end of the day I was still entertained after seeing this for the fourth time, those action set-pieces are well designed, it might be silly but it is not boring. 

Audio/Video: WW84 arrives on 4K UHD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, presented in 2160p UHD and framed in 2.39:1 along with some eye-popping 1.90:1 IMAX sequences. The UHD is finely detailed and the HDR10+ Dolby Vision color grading punches up the primaries, the colors are vibrant throughout, contrast is fantastic, and the Lasso of Truth, which looks magnificent. The film which is set in '84 has a colorful, robust color palette, which sets it apart from the other desaturated looking DC films, which I certainly appreciated.

The Dolby Atmos audio is fantastic, a thunderous and deep-sounding presentation that is fully immersive, making wonderful use of the surrounds for the more subtle atmospherics, the Hans Zimmer score, and the action sequences are filled with piercing gunfire, fireworks,  numerous explosion and a terrific armored vehicle car chase that has plenty of a deep bass. 

Extras include a very good half-hour making of featurette , and a variety of shorter featurettes exploring the opening scene, the mall sequence, the armored vehicle chase, the relationship between Gadot and Wigg and how much fun they had on-set together. Some of the extras have cool behind-the-scenes footage, animatics, and storyboards, it was very cool to see how much of this was shot on a real location and not digitally rendered, including a ton of harness and wire work from Gadot.  

We also get a 6-minute gag reel, a Black Gold Informercial, a 22-min Zoom panel with the Amazon warriors in the film, a fun 2-minute Wonder Woman 1984 Retro Remix and a 2-minute promo for The Suicide Squad. 

The 2-disc Blu-ray/UHD combo arrives in a Viva Elite black keepcase with a single sided sleeve of artwork which is replicated in the slipcover. Inside we get the discs plus a Movies Anywhere digital redemption code for a UHD copy of the film complete with extras. 

Special Features: 
- The Making of Wonder Woman 1984: Expanding the Wonder (36 min) HD 
- Gal & Kristen: Friends Forever (5 min) HD 
- Small But Mighty (11 min) HD
- Scene Study: The Open Road (6 min) HD
- Scene Study: The Mall (5 min) HD
- Gal & Krissy Having Fun (1 min) HD 
- Meet the Amazons (21 min) HD
- Black Gold Infomercial (2 min) HD 
- Gag Reel (6 min) HD 
- Wonder Woman 1984 Retro Remix (2 min) HD

- Trailers: The Suicide Squad (2 min) HD 

The film seems to have split fans but I had a good time it, the often light-hearted film offering plenty of bombastic spectacle as well a few cornball comic book moments brought to life on the big screen. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) gets a fantastic 4K UHD presentation from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, plus we get a decent assortment of extras. Regardless of how you feel about the film the A/V presentation is top-notch. 

Screenshots from the Blu-ray: 

Extras: