Maleficent (Disney, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, VOD) does sort of a “Wicked” number on the story of Sleeping Beauty’s evil sorceress, casting her as the tragic figure of a dark fantasy (but not too dark for children—barely) of a revisionist fairy tale. Angelina Jolie plays the adult Maleficent, a fairy who watches over and defends the natural and supernatural wilds from human assault. With her magnificent leathery wings and curled horns, she has the look of a beautiful demon (even her cheekbones are sharpened to an edge that look like they could cut an unwary lover to ribbons) but is at heart an innocent, a primeval force whose emotions are pure and motives without guile. Her betrayal, at the hands of a human (Sharlto Copley) who was once a friend and lover, is an assault so personal and intimate and disfiguring that children can’t help but feel the transgression as a terrible, horrible wrong while adults see it as a form of rape. It is as powerful a dramatic moment you will see in an American film, let alone a mainstream spectacle, and coupled with Jolie’s committed performance (ripples of personality and conflicted emotions, as well as a playful sense of humor, play under even her iciest moments), it gives the film a power beyond the CGIed-to-monotony fantasy designs and magical creatures.
Not to slight Elle Fanning, who plays the princess Aurora as another innocent whose purity gets under Maleficent’s vengeful shell. Fanning has the ability to radiate pure joy and wonder and does so, but Jolie shows us that the potential for love is still within her, merely buried under rage and hatred and vengeance. It is a righteous revenge film, but with a feminist twist and a redemptive journey. To quote Matt Zoller Seitz: “The movie is a mess, but it’s a rich mess. It has weight. It matters.”
The five featurettes are quite brief (the longest, “From Fairy Tale to Feature Film,” runs only eight minutes) and there are five deleted scenes. The Blu-ray also features bonus DVD and Disney Anywhere Digital HD copies.
A Most Wanted Man (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) will stand as the final film completed by Philip Seymour Hoffman before his untimely death in February and that alone is reason enough to see the film, adapted from the post 9/11 novel by John le Carré and directed by Anton Corbijn, a music video veteran who becomes more accomplished with each feature. Hoffman has the ability to lose himself in his roles and as Günther Bachmann, the leader of covert German intelligence agency that monitors potential terrorist activity, he seems to pare down a performance to give us a man who betrays nothing of what he’s thinking or feeling yet radiates a gentle warmth for his team (made up of superb German actors Nina Hoss, Daniel Brühl, and Franz Hartwig). All we really know is his loyalty to his country and to his crew, and they return that loyalty in spades.
Günther and his team, working outside the traditional government structure (which clearly frustrates the official, traditional intelligence officials), follow the appearance of a tortured Chechen refugee to a possible financier of terrorism and battle bureaucratic interference to stay on mission. This is le Carré’s world of competing agencies within the same country who prize power over efficiency and interests outside the structure working their own interests; support from an American intelligence agent (Robin Wright) raises all sorts of alarms, not the least of which is: what is her endgame? There is idealism at the center (not just Hoffman but also Rachel McAdams as a human rights lawyer) surrounded by realpolitik pressure and compromise. Hoffman’s gift is to communicate the gravity of the stakes, in human and moral as well as in political terms, by the mere force of his commitment. It’s superb.
With two featurettes. The Blu-ray edition also includes an Ultraviolet Digital HD copy of the film.
Dormant Beauty (Kino Lorber, DVD, Netflix), directed by Marco Bellocchio in a return form (or near enough), is a sober look at the collision of politics, religion, and pious protest based on a real life controversy from 2009 in Italy (with echoes our own Terri Schiavo ordeal). A family chooses to remove a woman from life-support after 17 years in coma. The Catholics rise up in protest and Berlusconi (who remains offscreen) orders his party to vote in sympathy with protesters (because it’ll play well in the media, not out of any conviction), which doesn’t sit well with a newly-elected Senator (Toni Servillo). There are a lot of passionate people in this drama (Alba Rohrwacher as the Senator’s religious daughter, Isabelle Huppert as the mother of another girl in coma), but they are as angry, desperate, damaged and/or self-servingly pious as they are committed to the cause. Bellocchio doesn’t pass judgment when Rohrwacher abandons her protest group for a fling with a charming guy she meets in the protest crowds—if anything, he lets us see this from her POV, meeting a possible soulmate and giving in to overwhelming desire with a swoony rush—but he puts it all into perspective. Everyone is so focused on the sleeping dead that they forget about the living. The contradictions in these characters aren’t complex but they are moving and Bellocchio invests them with the weight of faith and honest emotion.
In Italian with English subtitles. Also available to stream on Netflix.
Eurocrime! The Italian Cop and Gangster Films That Ruled the ’70s (Cinema Epoch) – Even among film buffs, the Italian “poliziotteschi” is a pretty specialized taste, given plenty of love by Quentin Tarantino (The Italian Connection was a significant inspiration for Pulp Fiction, and he quotes a lot of the music in his films) and almost single-handedly resurrected for American home video by Raro. This documentary, directed by Mike Malloy (an American fan turned genre historian), runs a bit long as such documentaries go (over two hours) s, but in the case of such an obscure genre, that is as much a strength as a weakness. Malloy fills the film with interviews with Americans who made a memorable splash in Italian crime films (John Saxon, Henry Silva, Fred Williamson, Joe Dallesandro, Chris Mitchum, Richard Harrison, and Michael Forest, who also was a dubbing specialist) and Italian from the genre: Franco Nero, Antonia Sabato, filmmakers Enzo G. Castellari, Claudio Fragaso, Mario Caiano, stuntman Ottaviano Dell’Acqua. Malloy provides the history lesson (complete with a checklist of inspirations, copies, and blatant rip-offs of American crime movies) but the personal stories and anecdotes are what make the film fun. A little too enamored of his own low-budget flourishes and of dubious value to anyone not already intrigued by the genre, but if you’re a fan, this is an informative (if a bit pedantic) overview with plenty of clips and some great tales.
The DVD quality is strictly low fidelity, and it features bonus interviews and other supplements.
TVD:
Three box sets of classic and cult TV shows arrive this week: The Sopranos: The Complete Series (HBO, Blu-ray+Digital HD), Sgt. Bilko / The Phil Silvers Show: The Complete Series (Shout Factory, DVD), and M Squad: The Complete TV Series – Special Edition (Timeless, DVD). I review them later in the week.
The Newsroom: The Complete Second Season (HBO, Blu-ray, DVD) improves upon the first season of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series set at a cable news channel full of brilliant, remarkably idealistic professionals who have sharp political instincts and poor impulse control, but not by a lot. This season turns on a controversial piece of investigative reporting on the use of chemical weapons by the American Military in the Middle East, a story that unfolds in flashback as the network lawyer questions the staff hard after the report turns out to be unfounded. Jeff Daniels grounds the whole thing while the would-be lovers of last season (John Gallagher Jr. as rising assistant producer and Allison Pill as dewy-eyed production assistant) escape through satellite assignments, one of which leaves a serious scar.
What could have been a provocative look into the complexity of investigative reporting and the ethics of journalistic endeavor ends up with a simplistic scapegoat, which is disappointing from Sorkin. But if you like his brand of collegial banter and can endure his affectation for having smart people shut down their minds to act impulsively on their emotions as if they have no self-control whatsoever, then you may enjoy this. His affection for these characters is hard to resist, and for all the stupid screwball complication that such smart folks should never make, he spikes the scripts with wit and intelligence.
Nine episodes on Blu-ray and DVD, with commentary on four episodes, featurettes on each episode, and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray also features bonus Ultraviolet Digital HD copes of each episode.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Series 13 (Acorn, Blu-ray, DVD) collects the five final episodes of the long-running British mystery series starring David Suchet as the great Belgian detective who relies on his “little gray cells” to solve crimes. Five episodes plus an interview with Suchet.
Also new and notable: 
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug – Extended Edition (New Line, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, Digital HD) arrives, like the first installment, with more footage on disc a few weeks before the next installment hits theaters. This one includes 25 minutes of new and extended scenes. Because we all know that the problem with Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit is that it simply isn’t long enough. This edition also features filmmaker commentary and two more installments of the epic “making of” saga that Jackson calls “The Appendices”: “Part 9: Into the Wilderland” and “Part 10: The Journey to Erebor.”
The documentary The Dog (Cinedigm, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD) profiles John Wojtowicz, whose robbery of a Brooklyn bank to finance his lover’s sex-reassignment surgery in 1972 was retold in the film A Dog Day Afternoon with Pacino playing Wojtowicz. It turns out that truth really is stranger than fiction and this guy has a story worth experiencing. Features filmmaker commentary, deleted scenes, and a booklet with filmmaker interview.
Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss play young marrieds on the verge of separation in The One I Love (Anchor Bay, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD), and indie romantic comedy about a weekend away to sort through issues and save their marriage that takes some unexpected detours. Features commentary by director Charlie McDowell and actor Mark Duplass.
Dwayne Johnson is Hercules (Paramount, Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, DVD, VOD) in the better of the two big screen adventures about the legendary demi-god and ancient muscleman. Brett Ratner directs this one and Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, Peter Mullan, and John Hurt co-star. The Blu-ray features an extended cut (it’s only about three minutes longer than the theatrical version), which is also available on Digital and Cable VOD, plus commentary, featurettes, and 15 deleted and extended scenes.
Digital / VOD / Streaming exclusives:
Coming to Cable VOD on Friday, November 7, same day as theaters is A Merry Friggin’ Christmas, a dysfunctional family comedy that was one of the last films Robin Williams completed before his premature death from suicide. Joel McHale, Lauren Graham, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Candice Bergen co-star.
Also coming to Cable VOD: the young adult romantic comedies Life Partners with Leighton Meester and Adam Brody (before theaters on Thursday, November 6) and Two Night Stand with Miles Teller and Analeigh Tipton (Tuesday, November 4), and for the AARP set there is Elsa & Fred, a romantic comedy with Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer (Friday, November 7, same day as theaters).
Classics and Cult:
Man of the West (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray, DVD)
Viva Maria! (Kino Lorber Studio Classics, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Doctor and the Devils (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
The Ninth Configuration (Hen’s Tooth, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: 50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (Classic Media, Blu-Ray)
Film Noir: 10-Movie Spotlight Collection (Universal, DVD)
The Looney Tunes Platinum Collection: Volume 3 (Warner, DVD)
Verdun: Looking at History (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Remember the Night (TCM Vault Collection, Blu-ray, TCM Exclusive)
Style Wars (MVD, Blu-ray)
TV on disc:
The Unauthorized Saved by the Bell Story (Lionsgate, DVD)
The Exes: Season 1 & 2 (Paramount, DVD)
The Merv Griffin Show (MPI, DVD)
White Collar: The Complete Fifth Season (Fox, DVD)
Touch: The Complete Second Season (Olive, DVD)
Impractical Jokers: The Complete Second Season (Warner, DVD)
Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Complete Cases Collection (Acorn, Blu-ray, DVD)
Sherlock: The Complete Season 1-3 Limited Edition Gift Set (BBC, Blu-ray)
Doctor Who: The Complete Matt Smith Years (BBC, Blu-ray)
Merlin: The Complete Series (BBC, Blu-ray, DVD)
Reno 911! The Complete Series (Paramount, DVD)
Quantum Leap: The Complete Series (Universal, DVD)
Napoleon Dynamite: The Complete Animated Series (Olive, DVD)
Law & Order: Season 15 (Universal, DVD)
Law & Order: Season 16 (Universal, DVD)
Law & Order: Season 17 (Universal, DVD)
Hill Street Blues: Season Three (Shout Factory, DVD)
Little House on the Prairie: A Merry Ingalls Christmas (Lionsgate, DVD)
To the Ends of the Earth (Timeless, DVD)
Walter’s War (BBC, DVD)
Last Heroes of D-Day (BBC, DVD)
The World War One Collection (BBC, DVD)
Craft in America: Service (PBS, DVD)
More releases:
Planes: Fire and Rescue (Disney, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD, VOD, Disney Movies Anywhere)
Step Up All In (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD)
Frontera (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD)
Exhibition (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Unrelated (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Archipelago (Kino Lorber, DVD)
Land Ho! (Sony, Blu-ray+DVD Combo, Digital HD, VOD)
About Alex (Screen Media, DVD)
Tosca’s Kiss (Icarus, DVD)
A Five Star Life (Music Box, DVD, VOD)
Rio 2 Sing-Along (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Premature (IFC, DVD)
The Taking of Deborah Logan (Millennium, DVD, VOD)
Plastic (Arc, DVD)
Tru Love (Wolfe, DVD, Digital)
Samantha: An American Girl Holiday (Warner, DVD)
Christmas Bounty (Warner, Blu-ray)
Sofia the First: Holiday in Enchancia (Disney, DVD)
A Belle For Christmas (Anchor Bay, DVD)
An Evergreen Christmas (Arc, DVD, VOD)
Birds of Paradise (Lionsgate, DVD)
Lifetime Holiday Triple Feature (Lifetime, DVD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD
