THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) (Blu-ray Review)

THE LIGHTHOUSE (2019) 

Label: Lionsgate 
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 109 Minutes
Video: 1080p HD Full Frame (1.19:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD MA with Optional English Subtitles 
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe

After the critical success of the The Witch (2015) director Robert Eggers didn't fritter away his good standing among the film community by directing a some franchise sequel or reboot, nope, instead he went full-tilt arthouse-horror with another folk-horror tale set in New England, the Lovecraft-ian psychological thriller The Lighthouse (2019) set in the 1890s. 

The black and white film opens with former timberman Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) arriving at his new job, as a "wickie", a lighthouse keeper working with Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) on an inhospitable rock island, Wake is a salty sea-dog of a man who is set in his ways, and doesn't make life easy for the younger Ephraim. He's a harsh task master, assigning Winslow back-breaking chores along with some housekeeping the younger man feels is beneath himself, constantly criticizing his work refusing to allow Winslow to see the light at the top of the lighthouse. 

The slow-burning film is a creepy and taut excursion into the the realm of insanity, with each man getting on the nerves of the other, the isolation and claustrophobic confines chipping away at their civility towards one another. We see things mainly through the eyes of the younger Winslow, who begins to suspect a Lovecraft-ian tentacle nightmare that seemingly lays just beyond his periphery. 

Both Pattinson and Dafoe are phenomenal, both actors are in top-form, with Dafoe turning in a couple of deliciously fervent monologues, including a Neptune-naming diatribe that's begun over an argument about the quality of his lobster-cooking skills, that made me laugh quite a bit. Dafoe's craggy face looks amazing in the harsh and shadowed black and white lensing, and for the first time I can see Robert Pattinson as an adult, and not that kid from the Twilight franchise. 

The black and white imagery of the film looks stunning, the cinematography and odd silent-era styled framing really set a tone for the specific period of the film, capturing the harsh and monotonous lightkeeper lifestyle. We also get the aforementioned tentacled Lovecraft-isms that appear in a couple surreal scenes we well as conjurings of the cockle-shelled Lord Neptune and visions of a most vaginal mermaid I have ever seen. 

Audio/Video: The Lighthouse (2019) arrives on Blu-ray and digital from Lionsgate framed in the original 1.19:1 aspect ratio, shot on film stock in black and white the monochrome image is quite lovely, giving it a proper period aesthetic, white and grays are well defined, with the blacks looking deep and inky, with wonderfully supportive contrast. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround with optional English subtitles. It's not bombastic presentation by any means, this is a dialogue heavy film without any big action sequences to speak of, but the mix in complimentary to the surrounding, shifting tonally according to location, with the crash of the waves on the shore of the stony island and howl of the wind given god placement in the atmospheric surrounds. 

Extras on the disc include a 38-min three-part making of doc, 5-min of deleted scenes and an audio commentary with co-writer & Director Robert Eggers, plus a selection of Lionsgate trailers and a digital copy of the film.  

Special Features: 
- The Lighthouse: A Dark & Stormy Tale 3-Part Featurette (38 min) 
- Audio Commentary with Co-Writer/Director Robert Eggers
- Deleted Scenes (5 min) 
- Lionsgate Trailers (7 min)
- Digital Copy 

Egger's The Lighthouse might not be for all tastes but for me the Lovecraftian-leaning, slow-burn arthouse psychological thriller was completely and utterly engrossing from start to finish, if any of that sounds like your cup o'tea this comes highly recommended.  

WILD AT HEART (1990) (Collector's Edition Blu-ray Review)

WILD AT HEART (1990) 

Label: Shout Select
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 124 Minutes
Audio: English 2.0 DTS-HD MA Stereo, 5.1 DTS-HD MA Surround with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1) 
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover, Diane Ladd, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton

David Lynch's Southern Gothic road trip into Hell 'Wild At Heart' (1990) stars Nicolas Cage (Valley Girl) and Laura Dern (Blue Velvet) as incendiary young lovers Lulu and Sailor who are separated when he is imprisoned for manslaughter after a failed attempt on his life, an event ignited by Lulu's demented mom Marietta (Dern's real-mom Diane Ladd, Chinatown) who despises Sailor for reasons not yet known. He serves his time and few years later is released, with Lulu waiting outside to pick him up, right away the two embark on a Southern road trip that takes them through a nightmare south land where they catch a thrash metal show, run across a ominous car accident and wind-up Big Tuna, TX at a dead-end motel running on fumes, a seedy flea-pit populated by low-rent big-titty porn productions and hired assassins. The film has a heightened sense of reality that and is intercut with some strange Wizard of Oz-ish visuals including a visit from the Good Witch who compels Sailor to "don't turn away from love" when the chips are down. 

This is the film that introduced me to the real David Lynch, I had seen Dune and The Elephant Man but did not connect the dots that the same man made them, but this nightmare road trip made a mark, it scarred me a little, I'd never seen anything quite like it. At the time the closest thing I could compare it to from my own cinema experience was Tobe Hooper's black comedy TCM2, a comparison I think is still valid, both have this strange Southern nightmare aesthetic punctuated by moments of extreme violence and over-the-top performances. I love Nicolas Cage playing a Southern Gothic version of Elvis, his character decked out in a snakeskin leather jacket , which he more than once declares is "a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom", with an Elvis drawl and a somewhat dorky bravado that drips right off the screen. His and Lulu's love is red-hot, they're inseparable, it's an them versus everyone else sort of love story with a decidedly Lynch-ian skew.

As they travel deeper into the dark heart of the American south Lulu's mother sends two men in search of her daughter; her on again/off again suitor/private eye Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man) and her former lover/gangster Marcello Santos (J. E. Freeman, Miller's Crossing) who is more sinister, and who wants to do poor Farragut in. Were also introduced to a cast of strange characters that could only exist in a David Lynch film (with respect to novelist Barry Gifford), we have Mr. Reindeer (W. Morgan Sheppard, Needful Things) as the head of an assassin's guild who we see squatting on a toilet sipping espresso while a nude woman dances for his pleasure, or the bleach blond nightmares that are killers Perdita Durango (Isabella Rossellini, Blue Velvet) and her frightening sister Juana (Grace Zabriskie, Twin Peaks), also be on the lookout for Twin Peaks alum Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee and Jack Nance (Eraserhead). However, all other dark characters pale in comparison to the film's ultimate evil, Willem Dafoe as the greasy killer Bobby Peru, maybe one of the creepiest characters to ever leave a stain on the big screen, this is the film I saw him in first, completely ruining my image of him as anything but a low-life with those god awful rotten, worn-down teeth of his and devilish smirk that makes my skin crawl, gros. When he pulls a stocking over his head right before a doomed robbery attempt it's an image that will forever haunt by nightmares.

Audio/Video: Wild At Heart (1990) arrives on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory imprint Shout Select in 1080p HD 2.35:1 widescreen, I was comparing this to the now OOP 2014 Blu-ray from Twilight Time and they look identical right down to the grain structure with no notable difference in color timing or sharpness. The grain is nicely managed and colors look solid, skin tones are a bit warm but natural looking, and blacks are decent but grainy in spots. This is at least a five year old HD master, it would have been nice to have a new scan of the negative, but knowing Scream Factory there should be a Steelbook with a new scan in a year or two (wink-wink). 

The audio on the disc comes by way of 2.0 and 5.1 DTS-HD MA mixes, the surround track is decent, not a show-stopper, but there's some use of the surrounds that make it a viable option, I just prefer the more straight ahead stereo track, optional English subtitles are provided. 

Onto the extras is where we get new stuff that make this edition worth upgrading for, but first let's lay out the vintage 
e carry-over extras, we get MGM produced extras made for the special edition DVD, a 30-min making of doc with director David Lynch and stars Laura Dern, Nic Cage and Willem Dafoe, plus others, and about 21-min of extended interviews with the same bunch. Along the same lines we get a 7-min appreciation of the director by the cast of the film and David Lynch talking about the post-production of the film including color-timing, including minting a brand new scan from the OCN for the special edition DVD. Shout also include the 7-min vintage EPK, TV spots, trailer, and an image gallery for the film.

Onto the new goodies we get a brand new interview with Novelist Barry Gifford that runs about a half-hour, discussing the liberties Lynch took with the novel in adapting it for the screen, he seems to enjoy what Lynch did with the story and were it went, pointing out key differences and giving some back story to the origins of the novel he wrote. Not exactly new but new to Blu-ray are 76-min of extended and deleted scenes that were previously included on the pricey David Lynch: The Lime Green Set - it's great to have them here on an affordable stand alone release. We also get the unaltered Bobby Peru death scene minus the flash-bang and smoke that the director used to obscure the gore to secure the film's Rating.

Something you can find on the Twilight Time release not found here is an isolated music and effects audio track and the the 8-page booklet with notes on the film from TT staff writer Julio Kirgo, but in all other respects this Shout Select release renders that OOP TT release irrelevant in my opinion. The single-disc release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork with a new illustration from artists Antonio Stella on one side and what looks to be a variation on one of the original movie posters, very similar to the TT release but cropped with a different logo.   

Special Features: 
- NEW Interview With Novelist Barry Gifford (30 min) 
- Extended And Deleted Scenes (76 min)
- Unaltered Bobby Peru Death Scene (1 min) 
- Love, Death, Elvis And Oz: The Making Of Wild At Heart (30 min) 
- Dell's Lunch Counter: Extended Interviews (21 min) 
- Specific Spontaneity: Focus On David Lynch (7 min) 
- Lynch On The DVD Process (3 min) 
- Original 1990 Making Of EPK (7 min) 
- Original Theatrical Trailer (2 min) 
- TV Spots (1 min) 
- Image Gallery (2 min) 

Lynch's Wilds At Heart (1990) is still one of my favorites from his venerable catalog, a Southern Gothic nightmare with two young lovers at the center of it all, surrounded by devils and killers with dark hearts. The new Blu-ray from Shout Select doesn't really improve on the A/V we saw with the Twilight Time release, but they do come through with some nifty new extras, those deleted scenes are worth the purchase price all by themselves. 

y

THE HUNGER (1983)

THE HUNGER (1983) 

Label: Warner Archive 

Region Code: A

Rating: R

Duration: 96 Minutes

Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono with Optional EnglisH SDH Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1) 

Director: Tony Scott
Cast: Susan Sarandon, Cliff De Young, Dan Hedaya, Suzanne Bertish, Willem DaFoe

Synopsis: Miriam Blaylock collects Renaissance art, ancient Egyptian pendants, lovers, souls. Alive and fashionably chic in Manhattan, Miriam is an ageless vampire. Although "vampire" is not a word you'll hear in this movie based on the novel by Whitley Strieber (Wolfen). Instead, debuting feature director Tony Scott fashions a hip, sensual, modern-Gothic makeover. Catherine Deneuve radiates macabre elegance as Miriam, blessed with beauty, cursed with bloodlust. David Bowie is fellow fiend and refined husband John. In love, in life, in longing, they are inseparable. But when John abruptly begins to age and turns to a geriatric researcher (Susan Sarandon) for help, Miriam soon eyes the woman as a replacement for John. The Hunger is insatiable.

Tony Scotts moody and stylish take on Whitely Stieber's source novel is a thing of arthouse beauty, an original vision of  what the life of contemporary bloodsuckers might have been in the '80s.  Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John Blaylock (David Bowie) are centuries long lovers, Miriam a vampire from the time of the Egyptian Pharpahs, John her companion whom she turned during the 18th century. The film opens with a phenomenal scene of the lovers at a night club where Goth rockers Bauhaus are performing, they meet a young couple and take them to their home where they exsanguinate the clubbers while professing their eternal love for each other, is sad and wonderful, and has a fatalistic mystique about it. 

We learn that while Miriam is eternal in her youth provided she feeds once a week that her companions who she turns begin to retroactively age at an accelerated rate after three-hundred years. John grows increasingly panicked by the aging and seeks the assistance of scientist Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), who has been in the news having published a book about her research into the biology of aging, she has been able to accelerate the process but have not yet reversed it. Roberts blows off John at her clinic believing him to be a nut and asks him to wait in the lobby with no plans to follow-up, during the hours long wait John ages dramatically in a well-executed series of scenes. Frustrated by being blown-off John leaves but not before Roberts spots him on the way out, later she tracks John to his shared home with Miriam in Manhattan, and there's a certain chemistry between the two women.

Afterward, in a moment of desperation John's commits a heinous murder that is hard to frogive, the murder of an innocent and one of the Baylock's only regular visitors to their home. soon after the aging progresses leaving his body near useless, what follows is a haunting revelation as we learn that Miriam's former lovers through the millennia do not die in a traditional sense, they merely wither away physically but live on, useless, she keeps each of them in lovingly tucked away in a series of coffins she keeps in her attic.

When Robert's (Sarandon) comes calling at a later date to look in on John she is told by Miriam that he has since left for Sweden to seek a cure for his illness, and the two women conversate over wine with Miriam seducing Sarah. In an erotically charged lesbian scene that has been burned into my head since my younger years, it rivals anything from Bound, which is surprising as I do not consider sarandon to be an object of sexual desire, but Deneuve on the other hand has a classic and eternal beauty. During the encounter Miriam transfuses Sarah's blood with her, infecting her with the curse of vampirysm. 

What happens next is an exploration of the forced vampirysm with Sarah's behaviours becoming more erratic which alarms her boyfriend Tom (Cliff De Young), who is also a co-worker at the lab, where Sarah begins to run tests ion her blood, discovering that there are two strains struggling for supremacy within her, he own natural blood and the infected strain from Miriam. As things transpire Sarah struggles to reconcile the her relationship with Jon who is becoming more suspicious of Miriam and the way she was turned without permission. 

Audio/Video: Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983) arrives on a long overdue HD format courtesy of Warner archives who have released this as an manufacture-on-demand format in the original (2.40:1) widescreen aspect ratio. The 2K scan looks fantastic in 1080p HD, faithfully reproducing the deep shadow and light compositions, this film is drenched is neo-noir imagery, each scene is painterly with hard shadow and angles of light slicing through it, the blacks are deep and inky and there are textured wafts of smoke permeating the air. 

We only get a DTS-HD Mono 2.0 mix on the disc, but it's solid with a good dynamic range and good separation, from the opening scenes with Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi is Dead" on through to the more classical composition and electronic augmentation we have a top notch presentation free of any distortion, very crisp and clean. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided. 

A fantastic commentary from with director Tony Scott and actor Susan Sarandon and a theatrical trailer is carried over from the 2004 Warner Bros.DVD, missing is the extensive still galleries from that disc. The commentary is stitched together from two separate commentaries, Scott and Sarandon are not together on this one, but chime in separately. 

Special Features: 
- Commentary by Susan Sarandon and Director Tony Scott
- Theatrical Trailer 

As a young kid I saw this movie on TV and didn't care for it, the stylishness of the production did nothing for me, I wanted traditional bloodsuckers and Gothic vampire lore, the contemporary setting felt cold and I couldn't appreciate how prescient the transmission of the "curse" through blood was at a time when the AIDS epidemic was in bloom. Watching it again in my twenties after I'd developed an appreciation for foreign and arthouse cinema it floored me, and remains one of my favorite vampire movies of all time. A stylish, slightly narrative-poor, slice of arthouse that is both haunting and gorgeous, with a certain amount of ambiguity that I've come to enjoy, not all of life's mysteries require definition. The Blu-ray from Warner Archive looks fantastic, and while I would have loved a new making of doc the commentary is really great. 4/5