Room (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) – Not The Room. Just Room, as if there were no others, and for Jack (Jacob Tremblay), the five-year-old son of a young mother (Brie Larson), there aren’t. It’s his entire universe and as far as he knows nothing exists outside the walls. His mother, known only as Ma in the film, has made a point of it, not to limit his universe to the 11 x 11 foot room but to let him fill it up with his entire being. She was abducted as a teenager, raped by her captor, and held prisoner as his sexual slave in this shed for seven years. Her son Jack, the offspring of her jailer, is the light of her life, perhaps the only thing that gives her reason to live. She has devoted herself to keeping Jack engaged and letting him know that he is loved. He has no idea they are prisoners. Room is all he’s known.
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson from a script by Irish-born writer Emma Donoghue, adapting her own novel, Room is a film that creates a universe in isolation and finds wonder and beauty and devotion in a story that could have been bleak and suffocating. That’s not to say that they romanticize or idealize their situation in any way. The man known only as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) robbed Ma of her life when he abducted her and continues to use and abuse her, but Abrahamson and Donoghue focus on the bond between mother and son and Larson, a fiercely talented young actress whose performance earned a well-deserved Academy Award win for Best Actress, and Tremblay, a newcomer whose spirit and instincts come through in a performance that is alive and authentic and honest, offer a relationship that feels deeper than earth and wider than sky. Room isn’t big enough to hold their love.
If you’re sold on the film already, read no more. It’s a film you should go into without any preconceived notions of what will happen. But if you are hesitant about committing yourself to a potentially claustrophobic or depressing drama, then rest assured that the film is not restricted to the tiny space.
Room isn’t just about how they survive their limited world, it’s about adjusting to life outside, which offers its own challenges as Ma takes stock of everything she missed out on during those years of isolation. Joan Allen and William H. Macy play her parents, intent on helping her through re-entry but unable to understand just how she reconceived her universe to survive her ordeal and how freedom is such a shock to the system.
Given all that, Room is more than a story of survival. It celebrates the love and commitment that saves these two people both inside and outside the world that Jack knew only as Room.
Blu-ray and DVD, with commentary with director Lenny Abrahamson, cinematographer Danny Cohen, sditor Nathan Nugent, and production designer Ethan Tobman, and three featurettes: “Making Room,” “11×11,” and “Recreating Room.” The Blu-ray also includes a bonus Ultraviolet HD copy of the film.
Jafar Panahi’s Taxi (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD, Netflix) carries only one acting credit, that of filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is quite literally in the driver’s seat of this guerilla film made on the streets of Tehran. It’s not a matter of ego—Panahi comes off as the most modest of filmmakers—but protection. This is the third film that Panahi has made since he was banned from filmmaking after his 2010 conviction for creating “anti-Islamic propaganda” through is probing, provocative, often slyly funny films. While he has co-conspirators in his defiant productions, he takes full responsibility in the credits. And his smiling face dominates, courtesy of a dashboard camera that he alternately turns back to see the folks in his cab or forward to look at the street scenes out the windshield.
This is a film shot entirely on smart phones and dashboard cameras which never leave the cab constantly observe the world outside while engaging with the conversations within, and there are many. Panahi, it turns out, isn’t much of a cabbie but he is an engaging host and he prompts everyone who steps inside to converse. One passenger, a man who sells DVD bootlegs of foreign films (Panahi was once a customer), spots the camera on the dashboard and recognizes the driver and asks if he’s making a movie. There are arguments over Sharia law, a conversation with an unnamed but real-life human rights lawyer, discussions over the hardships of everyday life, and of course talk about movies, both watching and making them. When his young niece Hana decries the restrictions imposed on a student film assignment—the very same restrictions imposed on all films made in Iran—Panahi’s commentary comes from practical experience.
Like so many of his previous films, Taxi slips between documentary and drama, staging scenes that may or may not be scripted with passengers who are surely actors, or at least friends willing to take a role in an illegal production. It all feels spontaneous yet knowing. Fans of Panahi will recognize references to his films Crimson Gold and Offside, old women transporting goldfish that recall The White Balloon, and the self-reflexivity of The Mirror, but they are playful asides in a film that seems to meander through conversations that, as they accrue, offer a sneaky, self-aware commentary on life in modern Iran that once again makes a show of threading the needle of official policy and calling it out at the same time. All while Panahi remains in Iran, flaunting his sentence with a gentle demeanor and an easy smile that belies the very real consequences his defiance could bring down upon him. That alone doesn’t make this a work of art, mind you, and his ambitions are somewhat lowered from his first post-sentence production, This is Not a Film (2011), but his slippery way of sliding between documentary and fiction and his hopeful outlook create something truly engaging.
In Farsi with English subtitles. The Blu-ray and DVD feature a booklet with an essay by filmmaker and scholar Jamsheed Akrami.
Creed (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) passes the Rocky torch to the next generation, with Michael B. Jordan as the son of Apollo Creed and Sylvester Stallone quite touching as Rocky Balboa, playing mentor and father figure to the underdog boxer. The film was a dream project for filmmaker Ryan Coogler, who directed the acclaimed indie drama Fruitvale Station that brought both him and star Jordan to the attention of the studios, and he pushed for the revival that brought fresh blood to the aging franchise and gave Stallone an opportunity to play a different kind of character. Stallone earned an Oscar nomination for her performance (the equally deserving Jordan was overlooked, as was director and screenwriter Coogler), and I’m sure that’s partly because Stallone gave himself over to Coogler’s vision of the story. It’s a lovely performance, with Stallone using his age and size and slow way of talking to guide the retired, lonely Rocky, while Jordan is the anxious, ambitious Adonis Johnson, the son of Apollo Creed from an affair yet found and raised by Apollo’s widow (Phylicia Rashad), whose loving attention lets him know that he is genuinely family. Which is at the heart of the film: identity and family, the legacies you inherit and the legacies you create. It’s also a marvelously satisfying, old-fashioned, underdog boxing movie that delivers the thrill of a title bout in the climax. What a marvelous revival of a franchise that was all but down and out.
Blu-ray and DVD with the featurettes “Know the Past, Own the Future” and “Becoming Adonis” and deleted scenes. The Blu-ray also includes a bonus Ultraviolet HD copy of the film.
Despite its acclaim, I’m no fan of The Danish Girl (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD), which dramatizes the real-life story of Einar Wegener, the Danish painter who underwent experimental sexual reassignment surgery in the 1920s, one of the first people to undergo the procedure to give him the physical body that matched the woman inside. An admirable endeavor and an acting challenge for Eddie Redmayne, who plays Einar and his transition to Lili Elbe, the woman trapped inside the male body, but it’s a film in the stately shades of a Einer’s landscape paintings, distant and carefully framed, and self-aware as if looking at itself in a mirror… which, frankly, is at the center of Redmayne’s performance. Within this bloodless portrait, however, is a superb performance by Alicia Vikander as Gerda Wegener, Einar’s supportive wife and fellow painter who supports her husband’s transition even as the newly-emerged Lili grows away from her. Vikander won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress though the part is very much a leading role, easily the equal to Redmayne, and her performance is more nuanced and complex as she explores the turmoil of emotion that Redmayne’s Lili fails to explore as she basks in the joy of her physical transformation.
Blu-ray and DVD with the featurette “The Making of The Danish Girl.” The Blu-ray also includes a bonus Ultraviolet HD copy of the film.
Also new and notable:
Legend (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, VOD) stars Tom Hardy as Reggie and Ronald Kray, the identical twin gangsters who terrorized London in the 1960s (Reggie was the calculating brains behind their rise and Ronnie the brutal, homicidal muscle), and Emily Browning Reggie’s wife Frances. Written and directed by Brian Helgeland.
The Night Before (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD) stars with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, and Anthony Mackie as best friends on their last Christmas Eve together before their lives take them on different directions. So they do a lot of drugs and hit New York on a final Christmas odyssey. Directed by Jonathan Levine, who previously directed Gordon-Levitt and Rogen in 50/50.
Classics and Cult:
L’Inhumaine (Flicker Alley, Blu-ray)
Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection (15 films) (Universal, Blu-ray)
Strange Brew (Warner, Blu-ray)
Pieces (Grindhouse, Blu-ray)
The Decline of Western Civilization (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
The Decline of Western Civilization: Part II – The Metal Years (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray)
TV on disc:
Childhood’s End (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Americans: Season 3 (Fox, DVD)
Strike Back: Cinemax Season 4 (HBO, Blu-ray, DVD)
Z Nation: Season 2 (Universal, DVD)
The Fall: Series 2 (Acorn, Blu-ray, DVD)
More new releases:
Miss You Already (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD)
Don Verdean (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD, Netflix)
Life (Cinedigm, DVD)
Capture the Flag (Paramount, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
Lost in Hong Kong (Well Go, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Midnight Man (Cinedigm, DVD, Digital HD)
The Boy (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD)
Narcopolis (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, DVD)
Sunshine Superman (Magnolia, DVD)
She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry (Music Box, DVD)
Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (Warner, Blu-ray+DVD)
LEGO DC Comics Super Heroes – Justice League: Cosmic Clash (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD)
More Releases:
This is the launch of the first 4K UltraHD discs from Fox and Lionsgate, including The Martian, Sicario, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD