TV on Blu-ray Review: Sons of Anarchy -- Season Three

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Related Review:

Sons of Anarchy -- Season Two

With regard to plot alone, the masterfully multilayered, richly complex and emotionally charged third installment of FX’s Shakespeare’s-Hamlet-on-Bikes gritty crime saga Sons of Anarchy is number one with a bullet in terms of masterful storytelling, delivering a season so engrossing that I devoured all thirteen episodes in less than twenty-eight hours.

Timed to coincide with the start of the fourth season on the small screen, Fox’s Blu-ray boxed set offers three extended episodes which not only add to the cinematic feel of Kurt Sutter’s series – complete with carefully edited montages chopped to funky musical covers of rock classics that ingeniously bookend key events – but also showcases the showrunner’s commitment to cast and character.

Maggie Siff’s fascinating, put-upon Ophelia influenced Tara, the frustrated doctor by day/”old lady” by night that’s ever so closer to becoming Gemma with every successive episode is given the opportunity to deliver some of the otherwise male-dominated series’ best dialogue in the very first hour of season three, courtesy of footage that had originally been left on the cutting room floor in order to meet the forty-five minute commercial-free timeslot.

If SOA season one is the equivalent of Coppola’s first Godfather considering the daddy issues and conflicts of family vs. self in terms of the business the men of Charming (as opposed to the Corleone clan) have chosen, by bringing Sutter’s series to Belfast to unveil more of its origin story, season three therefore becomes SAMCRO’s own version of The Godfather Part II.

Although the previous baker’s dozen had greatly entertained, this time around we’re served up a sequence of sinfully seductive events with a richness in flavor we didn’t even know we were missing that’s augmented evermore by a deeply entrenched circular theme of life and death that adds a sense of greater urgency to the plight of Jax (the incomparable Charlie Hunnam) to find his kidnapped son.

While the threat of death has always been just a shot away on Sutter’s drama, from the metaphorical and allegorical decay of Ron Perlman’s arthritic “king” to ever-present ghosts of the past as well, more characters faced with birth, death and issues of mortality (as well as morality).

As always, the seamlessly interwoven Shakespearean element remains, both in overt and occasional nods to dubbing Perlman, Katey Sagal and Hunnam’s leads the king, queen and prince respectively and with regard to structural homage.

Although the interpretation is loose, Shakespeare’s influence is there all the same through foreshadowing and execution of tragic set-ups complete with the bard’s favorite devices, themes and motifs of eavesdropping, manipulation, betrayal, double cross, power plays, star cross’d problems of blood, fate and timing, madness, revenge and the comeuppance of sins executed in the past (whether carried out in kind or by kin).

In fact, Sutter nearly takes his passion for the classics a step too far by leading us into operatic “get to know a relative almost biblically” Godfather III terrain before ultimately backing out of the would-be Belfast booty call altogether to re-center Jax on his journey to hell and back to save his son.

Speaking of hell hath no fury, Ally Walker’s chilling ATF agent June Stahl returns to new diabolical heights as perhaps contemporary television’s most sinister small screen villain since Rich Man, Poor Man’s Falconetti in a role that’s made far more subversive not only because she’s embodied by a beautiful woman in a male run series but also because her very identity lies to us as an alleged “good guy.”

Yet in the gray landscape where Sutter’s show lays its scene amidst all of the exhaust and cigarette smoke that causes viewers to squint their eyes at the deceptively sunny Charming, California skies, it’s the Sons that as Piney informs us during a wild, wild west style shoot-out who are “the good guys” for helping put medication in the hands of those who need it.

An incredibly ambitious season that’s bursting at the seams with plot, the thirteen episodes of Sons 3 benefit considerably from both a second look as well as the opportunity provided by the set to absorb them as part of a consecutive marathon.

Though it threatens to spread itself too thin in terms of concurrent storylines as the season begins with the fine cast unwisely divided into three distinct areas with several compelling (yet mercilessly competing) plots, eventually it all comes together and the women of season three have much more to do than ever before.

Whether they’re holding life and death in their hands, bodies and selves or making some of the show’s most impactful decisions, the ever-changing dynamic between Gemma and Tara is now not only a hallmark of SAMCRO but a highlight.

Furthermore with the Hamlet level foreshadowing that leads us into the fourth season, Sutter’s elaborate series three stories continue to build at such a steady pace that frequently episodes start right back up in the exact same location that had faded to black just moments before in the previous entries, making the underrated SOA one of the sharpest, most addictive basic cable programs around.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  
 FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: High and Low (1963)

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A watershed production in the career of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, 1963’s High and Low utilized American postmodern Film Noir docudrama techniques evidenced in Sweet Smell of Success, Naked City, and The Killing to a level of painterly wizardry, culminating in one of the master director’s most technically innovative works.

Painstaking attention to detail in the marriage of theatricality and reality, Kurosawa fashions the film as if it were a piece of architecture. This cinematic approach finds Kurosawa’s talented stable of actors — including an implosive, controlled, and wonderfully against-type Toshiro Mifune — blocked in frame with the same care as props and set decorations.

And with this in mind, Kurosawa’s moody High also serves as a fascinating study for those who’ve just ejected Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, for example. Paying off on Tati admirably, High and Low is a perfect illustration of the way that space, shape, angles, and texture onscreen (or lack thereof) can impact not just the tone of the story and our understanding of it but the overall cohesive structure of a film as well.

By moving from a high key lit comedy to a Japanese take on Tinsletown noir, viewers will be able to appreciate the craftsmanship on a greater level than perhaps simply observed by moving through Kurosawa’s prolific oeuvre one film at a time to explore his countless and consistently diverse literary adaptations.

A kidnap for ransom thriller inspired by American crime novelist Ed McBain’s ’59 paperback King’s Ransom, High and Low was altered enough in screenplay form to bear only the basic spine of the scribe’s dime store detective potboiler.

Tengoku to Jigoku — literally translated Heaven and Hell — can be viewed straightforwardly as a cool, calculating crime picture or taken in a multitude of ways. Whether you're drawn in by its allegory as an exploration of the corporate Americanization of Japan (which makes High as timely today as it was in ’63) or get swept up by the ethical and moral dilemma of near-biblical proportions, High provides much philosophical food for thought.

Wealthy shoe company tycoon Kingo Gondo (Mifune) finds himself in the midst of an impossible situation. Caught between right and wrong and success and ruin, he's faced with the decision of whether or not to fork over more money than he has in his possession when a band of kidnappers mistakenly capture the son of his penniless chauffeur instead of his own.

A taut thriller that holds up well nearly five decades later, whichever way you investigate High and Low, the bottom line is Kurosawa’s picture still works as a sophisticated piece of popcorn cinema, entertaining the hell out of you as a tense, sophisticated, steadily-building showdown of good and evil.

While it does admittedly overstay its welcome, running out of steam in a final meandering act that loses some of the dramatic heft it had gathered earlier on, High’s impact on world cinema cannot be overstated.

Obviously it's a major source of inspiration for Ron Howard’s nerve-wracking ’95 chiller Ransom. Yet Kurosawa’s obsessive attention to detail and passion for police procedural minutia additionally anticipated and paved the way for the gritty docudrama style explorations of both sides of the thin blue line witnessed in Michael Mann’s Heat and David Fincher’s Zodiac.

A work of rare quality that’s intelligent as it is intense, High and Low does offer viewers a cinematic contact high, playing on the mind as well as the senses with shots that will leave you dizzy and breathless.

Pushing back the length of his ever growing shots even further, Kurosawa’s early ‘60s epic boasts numerous eight and nine minute takes, which easily benefitted from his notorious rehearsal periods.

Yet High and Low rivaled Hitchcock’s Rope with the inclusion of a near-reel spanning ten minute single sequential take in the form of a bravura footchase. The sequence necessitated not only raised stages and the conversion of theatre techniques to film but also the involvement of nine cameras shooting simultaneously, which pushed Kurosawa beyond his previous background of dual lenses and two camera set-ups.

Despite this, all of the architectural window-dressing and moviemaking wizardry in the world can’t hide the fact that High suffers from pacing lows and abrupt tonal changes in its final act as suddenly docudrama turned police drama morphs into a disjointed melodrama. Yet even though the film switches gears late in the game and loses some of the razor sharp focus it displayed early on, High and Low nonetheless remains a towering achievement in Kurosawa’s career.

Brilliantly brought to Blu-ray life in Criterion’s high definition update save for the absence of yellow subtitles to keep the white lettering from vanishing into the black and white concrete jungle of ‘60s corporate Japan, High and Low is an unparalleled effort. On the one hand, Kurosawa's work never ceases to impress from an aesthetic standpoint given its crisp museum level frame composition. And on the other, High and Low sets itself apart for its ethical engagement as a truly complex, humanistic thriller of high and low moral quandaries.

A compelling tale of crime, punishment, payment and class, Kurosawa’s heavenly look at Heaven and Hell is as multi-faceted as his spins on Shakespeare and as eye-catchingly unforgettable as the new wave of cinema that was occurring across the way in France at the very same time of this 1963 release.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Rio (2011)

Related Review:

Rio 2 (2014)

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Eye-poppingly gorgeous CG animated feature from Fox Ice Age franchise creators Blue Sky animation is given the luxurious Blu-ray high definition treatment for this charming fish-out-of-water (or domesticated-bird-in-the-sky) flick Rio.

Sunny family fare, Rio centers on a rare Minnesota macaw (Social Network’s Jesse Eisenberg) that’s persuaded to fly south to Brazil along with his adorably mousey bookish bookshop owner (voiced by Funny People’s Leslie Mann) in order to mate with the last exotic feathered creature of his kind and save their species’ line.

Although slightly underwhelming given its predictability in plotline once we venture to new terrain, Fox’s family film is otherwise infectious. Comprised of Pixar cuteness and Dreamworks’s Madagascar-inspired dance fever via a penchant for getting funky at the drop of a computer-drawn hat in several sequences, Rio is sweet, snappily paced, refreshingly wholesome thanks to its large avoidance of crass scatology or a need to be so pop-culturally referential that it’s dated by the time it hits disc.

Amazingly crisp, clear and clean in is visual presentation, while I’m sure it’s an absolute stunner in 3D Blu-ray so if you’ve got the technology then flaunt it by all means, the 2D version is so superlative that it puts the drab, lifeless color scheme and cold, hard lines of Disney’s recent Mars Needs Moms release to shame.

As a love letter to Brazil – complete with a celebration of Carnival -- Rio plays like a kid-tested, film geek approved CG animated and certifiably tragedy free Black Orpheus replacement for the preschool set in its commitment to setting. And furthermore, considering the selection of an unexpected starting location via my old stomping grounds of Minnesota, the creativity just keeps on coming and is particularly evident throughout in its unwillingness to adhere to traditional gender stereotypes in animated movies.

An antidote to princess-centric damsel in distress storytelling that’s overly-reliant on hero’s journey motifs, Rio helps differentiate itself from usual fare and avoid parroting previous hits like Disney’s affable Beverly Hills Chihuahua, by going against what’s expected with the decision to make Anne Hathaway’s beautiful Brazilian bird the wiser, experienced alpha to Eisenberg’s earnest newbie wimp male.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

DVD Review: The Entitled (2011)

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Courier Paul Dynan (Kevin Zegers) may boast an impressive education, a penchant for perfectionism and a hunger for hard work so strong that he’s willing to offer firms the chance to test drive his skills for free as a volunteer just to get his foot in the door.

But at the end of the day, Paul Dynan understands that he’s still just a blue collar bike messenger who can’t keep that door open without assistance because in the New York business world it’s all about who you know and where you come from no matter how many hours a night he spends reading up and researching the beautiful and damned entitled ones he knows are entitled enough to get ahead without even trying.

Facing mounting medical bills for his increasingly sick mother and foreclosure notices arriving everyday, Paul decides to put his extracurricular “homework” to unorthodox use by way of a most dangerous and daringly deadly plan.

He quickly sets in motion a kidnap-for-ransom Robin Hood scheme of stealing rich spawn from the rich with the goal of hijacking the paternal pockets of the trust fund babies he’ll hold hostage along with two sociopathic slackers of the Gus Van Sant To Die For persuasion, hoping to pocket the proceeds long enough to pay off his parents’ overwhelming debt.

Former Air Bud Disney kid turned talented Transamerica character actor Kevin Zegers continues on his casting tour of New York based rebels following a snakelike stint on CW’s Gossip Girl with yet another fine turn as the anchor of Anchor Bay’s darkly engrossing thriller that actually packs along a few nice surprises to help it elevate above and deviate from other B-movie straight-to-disc noirs of the Ray Liotta variety.

Although it’s fairly easy to see one character-based twist a mile away thanks to some transparent context clues dropped into the dialogue of Entitled daddies Ray Liotta, Victor Garber and Stephen McHattie, Aaron Woodley’s picture nonetheless manages to command out attention throughout and well past the point of relative character inconsistencies and faulty logic.

While admittedly it’s safe to predict that Paul’s plan will be neither simple nor perfect and we know from the moment it starts that it will fail to go according to any kind of schedule, Woodley’s cinematic plan – thanks to a taut script from William Morrissey – is a different story altogether.

Pulsing along at a fast pace, Anchor Bay’s effective Entitled offers new angles on an old noir arrangement with sharp direction, sublime technical specs that make the clarity of the DVD image sparkle like high definition, in addition to a performance by Zegers that’s not only so authentic that it should be criminal but so impressive it’s bound to open more doors for the up-and-coming actor.  


Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: Something Wild (1986)

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On the surface, Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild might seem like an odd choice for the filmmaker’s inaugural Criterion Collection release. Yet upon closer inspection, Demme’s unsung and often overlooked Wild card work of ‘80s cinematic iconoclasm of the countercultural existential yuppie nightmare variety (think Blue Velvet, Blood Simple, After Hours, Paris, Texas, Lost in America) proves to be something of a zeitgeist title.

As such, Criterion’s colorful warm-weather release of road movie madness taps into what sets him apart as a storyteller, thus begging a more careful reading of Demme’s deceptively simple contemporary cult classic which pays tongue-in-cheek homage to yellow brick route ‘66s and rabbit holes Out of the Past filled with Pandora’s boxes and Louise Brooks bobs.

An intentionally sexy screwball noir turned thriller dramedy, Wild signifies Demme’s transition from pop culturally in-tune documentaries and slice-of-life character studies like Stop Making Sense and Melvin and Howard to sociologically inclined edgier fare that provoked strong international response from terror to empathy and back again in Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia respectively.

A genre blurring rollercoaster, Something Wild barrels down the same tracks twice – the second time in reverse – as first time screenwriter and then-recent NYU graduate E. Max Frye’s intricately planned puzzler uses similar locales, plot points as well as some of the exact same dialogue to which we’d been initially introduced to inventive, intriguing and at times downright ironic effect.

By matching the lusty abandon of Wild’s first half with an impending sense of doom in the second loopy go-round, Frye crafts an endlessly fascinating if admittedly flawed and by its very nature unevenly unstable minor Demme masterpiece where up is down and left is right.

Seducing a stranger right along with the audience, Wild features Melanie Griffith in a pre-Working Girl/post-Body Double breakout role as a risk-taking, fast talking hedonist named Lulu who picks up a seemingly straitlaced businessman (Jeff Daniels) with a compulsion for seeing how many small crimes and cheap thrills he can get away with under the guise of yuppie pretense and politeness.

Ignoring all advice not to talk to strangers as well as traffic ordinances and good sense, Daniels’ corporate dullard Charlie is more than happy to play the part of Lulu’s sudden love slave, playing hooky from cubicle life, an unseen wife and ‘80s suburbia in favor of stolen hooch and a cheap hotel room that turns into an impromptu road trip back ten years to Lulu’s high school reunion in small town main street USA.

Just one of several turns on a roadmap we realize we haven’t seen before, by the time Demme’s second unorthodox ‘80s outsiders-on-the-road movie hits its halfway point, we’re no longer sure just who’s playing who once Lulu’s screw-loose old flame appears on the scene in the form of a devilish and diabolical Ray Liotta.

Singlehandedly bringing Film Noir into Demme’s contemporary spin on Stanwyck and Sturges style screwball, Liotta’s presence throws us for a major loop, nearly taking the film into Coen or Lynchian territory, switching the tone from howlingly comedic to twisted and sardonic, making us reevaluate all that had come before it as Frye revisits the same paradigm setup in a new light.

An all-around oddity, Demme’s Wild will most certainly divide film fans that prefer to avoid pictures that don’t play by genre rules. Yet even though Wild threatens to jump the tracks as it careens into a jarring and surprisingly violent climax worthy of black and white Robert Mitchum-flavored Film Noir, if you grab onto something and ride it out, there’s no underestimating Wild’s ability to thrill from the first uphill climb to the second run-through along the tracks.

Given a crisp, clean if sonically underwhelming Blu-ray high definition transfer, while Wild may be light on Criterion Collection bonus features, Demme’s sinfully smart, singularly suspenseful, seductively silly film is Something extraordinarily unexpected and indefinably wild to behold all the same.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: The Count of Monte Cristo (2002)

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Fans of Robin Hood, Rob Roy, The Three Musketeers, Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel and Dr. Syn are sure to flock to this Errol Flynn style swashbuckling throwback to the golden age of escapist tinsletown fare of 1940s picture shows.

Posh production values boasting picturesque European scenic views, elaborate nineteenth century period art direction and lush character-enhancing costuming help cushion director Kevin Reynolds’s genre appropriate penchant for movie melodrama in this – Hollywood’s tenth sudsy swordfight-laden spin on Alexander Dumas’s original eponymous epic centering on the vengeful Count of Monte Cristo.

Made by a company so successful at adapting classic adventure in a multitude of mediums from animating Robin Hood, developing a Syn miniseries, a Zorro series and a big screen Musketeers release that they could take out a patent or outsource an entire assembly-line like factory devoted to the craft, Touchstone’s parent company Walt Disney Studios spared no expense in bringing Dumas’s tale to the screen.

Given a gorgeous Blu-ray high definition transfer that brings post-Napoleonic France directly into your living room, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Tristan & Isolde director Kevin Reynolds introduces us to Jim Caviezel’s soon-to-be-betrayed lead in the form of the gentle, ethical and unfailingly loyal illiterate sailor Edmond Dantes.

Manipulated by his spoiled, selfish – not to mention wealthy and titled – lifelong best friend Mondego (Guy Pearce), Dantes finds himself knocked down like a chess pawn in one of the games the two used to play as children.

While spending more than a decade in Shawshank Redemption-like prison conditions, Dantes plots not only his escape but also his plans to embark on a new game once he reaches the outside, putting Mondego in the position of a pawn to his king (or rather the fictional “count” he reinvents himself as) in order to exact revenge.

Extremely ambitious and considerably well-executed throughout, although the tenth cinematic Count consistently holds your attention at least for the entire count of each characters’ elaborate psychological and physical moves and attacks, overall Reynolds’s Count is nearly undone by its initially sluggish and ultimately staccato pacing problems.

Spending far too much time locked up with Dantes while suffering from a postmodern Green Mile of the Monte Cristo Redemption-like feel before having to breathlessly rush through the ultimate comeuppance vs. Mondego which the entire crux of the character’s arc had been based on makes the final reel a bit of an unsatisfying letdown.

While unfortunately the pacing issues take their toll on Count’s overall success, it’s a bit easier to overlook some laughable gaffes in the believability of the timeline given the dubious “aging” of the picture’s primary characters.

Despite the fact that neither Caviezel or Pearce appear to have changed a day since the purported sixteen year gap in time that marries the beginning of the film to its conclusion, the magnetism of the men in their performances more than makes up for the shortcomings in makeup (if not story structure).

Though it’s Memento’s Guy Pearce that manages to steal focus throughout as Dumas’s diabolical villain, particularly when pitted against the rather one-dimensional development of Caviezel’s gallant yet guileless and initially dim sailor, the plight of our dogged lead and revenge by any means remains not just as cinematically compelling as ever but fascinating enough to make new fans reach for the scribe’s swashbuckling source material.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: The Tempest (2010)

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Prospero’s past is prologue for plot and point-of-view as he becomes a she in visionary filmmaker Julie Taymor’s feminist, female-centric Tempest.

As Prospera, Helen Mirren cuts right to the core of the banished Italian single mother’s rage by unspooling her plan for wrath and revenge on the men who'd done her wrong.

With a conjured storm of comeuppance in the present for sins of the past that will impact the future of Shakespeare’s entire cast of characters, Prospera proves that Hell hath no fury like a sorceress scorned, shipwrecking the guilty victims shortly into Taymor’s audaciously avant garde cinematic interpretation of the Bard’s final opus.

Though it’s amusing to note that Taymor’s adaptation allows Mirren to reunite with her recent 2011 Arthur costar Russell Brand in a new and completely different play on previously produced material, the actress is in exceptionally fine form, commanding and earning our attention to the exclusion of all else every single time she appears onscreen from start to finish.

And as it turns out, the Mirren distraction is a welcome one indeed as even Taymor’s trademark stunning visuals – whether sparse and severe or vibrantly eye-popping – fail to keep us as engaged as we should be and have been in other Taymor titles and Bard-on-the-big-screen endeavors.

Though given an impressively crisp and technically dazzling Blu-ray high definition transfer, overall The Tempest suffers from an excess of cinematographic style over simple storytelling substance – screaming for our consideration audibly and visually, when a simple stage whisper would’ve not just sufficed but seduced us in Shakespearean grandeur.

Despite a genuinely gripping introduction and some shivery Shakespearean soliloquies spoken by the likes of David Strathairn, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina, 2010’s Tempest quickly grows wacky, wild and just plain weird as it continues, trying our patience and testing our mettle following a catastrophic loss of momentum in the second half.

Wandering around aimlessly in search of some way to bring all of the elements together cohesively and – when failing to do so – using every opportunity to call attention to itself superficially rather than genuinely engaging us in the tale, this time around Prospera’s sorcery inspires more of a mess than the stuff of which dreams are made.

Of course, given the number of overlapping subplots, themes and literary devices apparent in Tempest, which he’d brilliantly recycled and repurposed for comedy and tragedy alike throughout his oeuvre, the play itself at times feels like a filmed feat of Cliff’s Notes or a musical interpretation of the Bard’s greatest hits collection.

Yet flaws aside, Taymor’s Tempest is perhaps best appreciated as a companion piece to the director’s previous pictures from Frida to Titus to her pop art rock opera masterpiece Across the Universe.

Text ©2011, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 
FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.