Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
40 years of ‘Saturday Night Fever’
For its 40th anniversary, the picture which made a movie star out of John Travolta gets a new transfer and a tweak or two from director John Badham.
Just about everything clicks in “Saturday Night Fever: Director’s Cut” (1977, Paramount, R, $17), the saga of Brooklyn teenager Tony Manero whose only escape from a dead-end job and overbearing parents is to strut his stuff on the dance floor. Tony’s such a standout that he winds up entering a big dance contest, with the talented Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) by his side.
The Bee Gees’ irresistible disco tunes add propulsion to the proceedings while Travolta keeps it real with a performance that’s raw, exciting and strangely touching. Extras: featurettes, deleted scene and Badham commentary. Also New To DVD I Am Not Your Negro (2016, Magnolia, unrated, $25): Directed by Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck and produced by his brother, Voorhees resident Hébert Peck, an assistant director of the Rutgers University Television Network, this astonishingly perceptive documentary pivots on author James Baldwin, whose unfinished manuscript about slain leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King is used to illuminate contemporary race relations. Samuel L. Jackson reads from Baldwin’s notes while Peck delivers footage of both the Hollywood movies which shaped Baldwin and the civil rights activists who inspired him. The end result is a timely treatise which argues that racism is damaging both to the oppressors and the oppressed. Extras: featurettes. Mifune - The Last Samurai (2016, Strand, unrated, $30): Keanu Reeves narrates this perceptive documentary about the late, great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. While there’s plenty of fresh information about Mifune’s hardscrabble early years and his decision to turn down a role in “Star Wars,” the heart of the movie is the actor’s complicated bond with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese turn up to sing the praises of the 16 Kurosawa/ Mifune collaborations, including “Rashomon,” “The Seven Samurai” and “Yojimbo,” which are sampled generously with lengthy clips. Mifune, who loved booze nearly as much as fast cars, remains something of an enigma but the doc argues for his inclusion in the pantheon of the world’s finest great actors. Extras: none. The Levelling (2016, Monterey, R, $28): Even “Game of Thrones” star Ellie Kendrick can’t save this dismal outing about a vet student who returns to her family farm in the wake of her brother’s suicide and discovers that the property in a state of disrepair. As she tries to solve the mystery behind her brother’s death, she must face up to her long-standing issues with her father (David Troughton). Everything about “The Levelling” is so one-note depressing that it makes the bleakest Ken Loach film feel like “The Wizard of Oz.” After about 30 minutes of doom and gloom, “The Levelling” becomes intolerable. Extras: none. Gianfranco Rosi Collection (1993-2016, Kino, unrated, $50): The standout of this four-movie collection is Rosi’s latest documentary, the Oscar-nominated “Fire At Sea,” which examines African refugees attempting to emigrate to Italy by boat. But the three earlier films – “Below Sea Level” (2008), “Boatman” (1993) and “Sacro Gra” (2013) - are also compelling features which look at groups of people who are often overlooked. Particularly fascinating is “Below Sea
Level,” which chronicles the hand-to-mouth existence of California’s flatland squatters. Extras: featurettes. Comes A Horseman (1978, Twilight Time, PG, $30):
Seven years after “Klute,” Jane Fonda and director Alan J. Pakula reunited for a cleareyed western drama that makes up in visual splendor what it lacks in emotional heat. Fonda underplays beautifully as a rancher who teams up with a WW2 vet (James Caan) and a hired hand (Richard Farnsworth) to help battle a greedy land baron (Jason Robards) looking to snap up her property. Set in the mid 1940s when the Old West was giving way to modernization, the new-to-Blu stunner transcends what could have been a formula story with its tough-mindedness. And the ending is a heckuva nail-biter too. Extras: none. S.O.B. (1981, Warner
Archive, R, $20): In 1981, before Robert Altman flayed Hollywood with “The Player,” writer/director Blake Edwards took aim at the studio system and landed more than a few direct hits. Julie Andrews, then Mrs. Edwards, stars as the actress-wife of a filmmaker (Robert Mulligan) in the midst of a meltdown after suffering a flop. Edwards, who endured his share of bigbudget movie failures, vents his spleen about Hollywood excess but there’s plenty of laughs too, most of which are supplied by Andrews, who infamously bared her breasts in her first nude scene, and Loretta Swit who steals the movie with her hilarious turn as a pushy gossip columnist. Extras: none. Animal Kingdom - The Complete First Season (2016, Warner, unrated, $30): If you have any doubt that Ellen Barkin is very good at being bad, give your eyeballs over to TNT’s crime thriller, based on the 2010 Aussie film of the same name. Barkin stars as matriarch Janine “Smurf” Cody who
The Affair - Season Three (2016, Paramount,
unrated, $40): The third season picks up three years after Noah’s (Dominic West) surprise admission of guilt in the murder trial of Scott Lockhart. Noah isn’t the only central character who is needled by his past mistakes. Alison (Ruth Wilson) is also haunted by her failures while Helen (Maura Tierney) is also unable to shake a feeling that her life has taken a wrong turn. With the latest batch of episodes, the Showtime series reveals itself, for better and worse, as Noah’s show, with West dominating much of the season with his portrayal of a character who ranks as one of TV’s most seriously flawed. Extras: featurettes.
The Last Ship - The Complete Third Season (2016,
Warner, unrated, $25): Fans of this Michael Bay-produced series about a Navy Destroyer returning from a four-month excursion to find most of the human population wiped out thanks to a mystery virus can expect an exciting, actionpacked season. In the latest batch of episodes, the crew members of the USS Nathan James are now shifting their attention to Asia in hopes of finding the “Scott cure” which the Chinese president might be hoarding. Extras: featurettes.