Blu-ray Review: Cowgirls 'N Angels 2: Dakota's Summer (2014)

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Alternate Titles: Dakota’s Summer; Cowgirls ‘N Angels: Dakota’s Summer

Improving upon the same Flicka-inspired cowgirl coming-of-age formula established by the previous 2012 installment that first introduced viewers to the trick-riding Sweethearts of the Rodeo, writer/director Timothy Armstrong returns with a newfound filmmaking confidence and a much stronger character arc for this impressive straight-to-disc Fox studio sequel.

Revisiting the same themes, a few supporting characters as well as the clever family mystery plot device served up in the earlier Cowgirls which found its younger heroine running away with the rodeo while on the hunt for the father she’d never met, Dakota’s Summer takes a much more ambitious approach to its older eponymous teenager’s family tree fueled journey of self-discovery.

Having always wondered why she didn’t look more like her older, blonde sister (played by Arrow fan-favorite Emily Bett Richards) or had the natural genetic ability of her rodeo legend grandfather Austin Rose (Keith Carradine), shortly into the film, Dakota (Haley Ramm) finally learns the secret that her family has been keeping from her since birth.

Still reeling from the shock, Dakota travels to her grandfather’s ranch to process the revelation and do a little Nancy Drew-like digging in the process.

Gradually letting her guard down the more time she spends helping out with the running of a miniature horse camp that Austin hosts on his ranch for orphans and troubled tweens, Dakota soon finds an unlikely friend and kindred spirit in a young, mischievous girl named Summer (Jade Pettyjohn) whose love of horses rivals her own.

With the lesson that success has more to do with heart than biology, Dakota musters up the courage to literally and figuratively get back on the horse after stumbling in her own life as well as at the rodeo -- rejoining the Sweethearts after the life-changing summer reminds her that what she was looking for she had all along.

Handling a contemporary identifiable dilemma with realism as well as maturity, Armstrong deftly tackles difficult terrain involving self-made vs. biological families and the importance of good friends who are there to help play that role when times get tough.

Admirably avoiding the easy way out by refusing to treat certain characters like one-dimensional villains or opt for an overly sugar-coated fairy tale approach, Armstrong instead depicts all sides and points-of-view regarding the topic of adoption, therefore ensuring that there will be much for families to discuss together after the movie given his more humanistic treatment of the subject.

While obviously because the main storyline is so rich, some of the supporting characters get lost in the shuffle and a few plot points get resolved a bit too conveniently in the nick of time including a disappointingly protracted conclusion to Dakota’s ongoing rivalry with a former childhood friend turned trick-riding antagonist. Yet in the end, Dakota’s Summer is just so darn lovable in its wholesome approach that its minor flaws are easy to overlook.

Beautifully transferred to Blu-ray, the film’s visuals radiate the warmth reflected in its title as well as its script. Shot with an emphasis on the bright colors of a golden rayed sunshine, Dakota’s Summer is filled with the same feel-great key-lighting that harks back to the old-fashioned girl and her horse coming-of-age films of decades past from which the series was initially inspired.

A superior sequel that easily transcends its dated origins thanks to its intelligent handling of a more contemporary plotline, Dakota’s winning combination of heart and horses keeps the briskly paced girl power film galloping along.

Highly recommended, Dakota’s Summer is sure to become a replay-worthy favorite on your daughter’s upcoming summer vacation, thanks to the convenient inclusion of a digital high definition portable device copy of the film with the Blu-ray release that will enable you to bring Austin’s miniature horse camp with you wherever you go (no saddle required).

Text ©2014, 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 may have 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: Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)

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Although filmmaker David Lowery intended his sophomore feature Ain’t Them Bodies Saints to play to audiences like a Bob Dylan inspired folk song, in the end it was The Beach Boys rather than Dylan whose lyrics echoed strongest in my mind.

Yet far from their “Fun, Fun, Fun” era, the tune that resonated most for me was the Pet Sounds epic “I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times,” which, had it been left off that landmark album and penned directly for film would have made the perfect theme song for Bodies’ main character Bob Muldoon, as played by Casey Affleck.

A man out of time, regardless of what time he’s in, Bob Muldoon is one of a long-line of fictional dreamers – the kind descended from Heathcliff or Jay Gatsby whose doomed end you see coming a mile away but whose unflappable belief that he will earn his Happily Ever After remains both his ultimate hubris as well as his ultimate strength.

If he’d had more education or was more literate, Bob Muldoon may have been a writer churning out fiction that would fit somewhere in between Steinbeck and Dickens infused with a bit of the Beat Generation’s “go, go, go” lust for aimless adventure.

Dreaming his life away longing for things he’ll never achieve for more than a mere moment, Bob Muldoon understands he’ll never have the same opportunities that educated men have. As he is in love with ideas of what he should do, the kind of life he should lead and the woman he seems to be more in love with in theory than truly connected with, Bob Muldoon does the most with what he’s given until he gets it in his head that he deserves a bit more.

So he embarks on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque crime-spree with a buddy and his true love that culminates the way everyone (except Bob and those he’s seduced with his stories) know it will. For, that’s what stories do, don’t they? – offer the promise of a future that’s much greater than the one at present.

And unfortunately for Bob, his friend Fred and his girl Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara), the story he dreamed up at the start does not have a happy ending – ending instead in a hail of gunfire that leaves his friend dead and a police officer wounded by a bullet fired at the hands of a pregnant Ruth.

But even in the darkest of moments, Bob Muldoon won’t allow himself to drop the thread of the tale he’s written for himself – ensuring the safety of Ruth and his unborn child by confessing to the shot he did not fire so that at least for now he remains in his eyes as well as Ruth’s the hero of the story.

Yet there’s something about Ruth that brings out the hero in everyone as once Bob finds himself behind bars, two more men pick up the torch – from the father (Keith Carradine) of their deceased friend to the police officer (Ben Foster) whose presence at the wrong place at the wrong time caused his fate to be forever intertwined with those that Bob left behind.

 

Feeling a kinship to Ruth and her daughter that he can’t deny, Foster’s good-hearted Patrick – much like Bob had done in the past – takes in upon himself to be her protector. Likewise, idealizing Ruth in the same way that Affleck’s convict continues to do in prison – neither man ever looks past their own narratives to understand that perhaps Ruth is the strongest of them all. And in fact, Ruth is quite capable of looking after herself and the child she’d had after Bob’s incarceration that is now a strong-willed variation of her parents at the tender age of four.

Similarly affected by her father’s sense of heroism, Ruth’s daughter Sylvie applies it to her own life, taking in not one but four stray kittens that – much like her – have lost a parent and fighting any boy who speaks ill of her family.

Although every character takes it upon themselves to serve somebody, nobody takes this belief more seriously than Bob, using his time in prison to put his dreams to paper, focusing all of his new stories on a happy reunion with those he loves at home in a series of letters he pens to Ruth.

 

Believing it to be his destiny to be with her once again, regardless of how many laws he has to break – Bob promises Ruth that the next letter he writes to her will be placed by him directly into her hands and attempts a sixth prison escape, which turns out to work like a charm.

Like an aftershock of an earthquake, the effects of Bob’s escape are felt by everyone but the man who’s put prison in his rearview, as we’ve been made painfully aware by Lowery just how much things at home have changed, which is in stark contrast to Bob’s belief that he can just show up and pick things up where they’d left off.

Unbeknownst to him, alliances have shifted, feelings have grown far more complex and there’s much at stake externally as well as internally and unfortunately, this is precisely where the film begins to lose its direction.

For what had begun so successfully as a Terrence Malick inspired adaptation of an Emily Bronte or Willa Cather novel channeled with post-Hemingway masculinity in the American west suddenly switches gears after Bob begins to venture home.

Tonally uneven, Bodies becomes an episodic crime saga that replaces romance with Cormac McCarthy-like Noir ideas of revenge that raise far too many unanswered questions when it cuts from Ruth’s storyline to follow Bob’s ever-changing journey of subplots.

 

And this startling change of pace is perhaps most evident in an otherwise powerfully acted scene in which Carradine has a major confrontation with Bob that feels like it’s come from a different movie altogether that’s been accidentally edited into the picture before it tries to bring us back to our regularly scheduled program.

While the introduction of thriller elements and some mysterious characters definitely liven up the admittedly slow-moving film, we aren’t provided with enough information to fully process the events that unfold onscreen.

Initially lost in the shuffle with regard to who some of the new individuals are and just what it is that they want – thanks to not just the ambiguities in the writing but the way the edited film deviates from one subplot to the next – Bodies stumbles a bit in its second half before drawing us back into the romantic spirit of the piece in its final moving act.

 

Augmented by the sheer beauty of the work thanks to the luscious Sundance award-winning cinematography by Bradford Young and the lyrical score by Daniel Hart that easily tugs on viewer heartstrings, Bodies may disappoint us by the fall it takes from the greatness experienced in the film’s opening but it’s spellbinding nonetheless.

Further proof of the brilliance of Ben Foster in taking what could’ve easily turned into a clichéd, one-dimensional role as the polar opposite of Bob and coloring it with such complexity that he nearly steals every scene he’s in from the two dynamic leads, Lowery’s Saints is a must-see for fans of the talented cast.

 

Gorgeously transferred to Blu-ray where it makes its home entertainment debut as a fully loaded disc – while it’s unfortunately missing a digital copy or filmmaker commentary, Bodies serves up some genuine surprises including Lowery’s first film St. Nick as well as a number of behind-the-scenes extras.

Overall an ambitious, if flawed, ode to the transformative power of dreams – and the American dream in particular – Bodies celebrates storytelling as if it were its own version of true love, which in Bob’s case, may very well be true as he blends together daydreamed stories of love and life that somehow envelope his own love and life in the process.

While we are never in doubt that this will end badly for Bob as a man who just wasn’t made for these times (and a character better served in fiction than in real life), the strength of Bodies is that we’re so enchanted by the promises of Bob’s stories that we’re taken in by it all the same.    

Text ©2013, 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 may have 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: Nashville (1975) -- Dual Format Edition #683

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In the work that would ultimately define Robert Altman’s filmmaking carrer both as a process behind-the-camera and a style onscreen, Altman takes a cue from Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages,” using “ideas as… [his] maps” to guide us through his version of Nashville (and by extension America) as he saw it post-Watergate in 1975.

A freewheeling epic piece of cinematic portraiture that leaves “the obligatory scenes out” to follow dozens of characters and set a specific time and place onscreen, Nashville seems like quintessential Altman to fans looking back today but in understanding its chronological place in his filmography – it’s a piece of filmic tapestry built from the ambitions and experimentation explored earlier in his career.

 

From the oral credits that echo M*A*S*H to the motif of character sacrifice that began with The Long Goodbye and would continue on up through his sardonic Sunset Boulevard infused Hollywood roast The Player, Nashville captures the filmmaker at the very peak of his directorial powers.

Recognizing the truth – as in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil– that sometimes you make your best work under the gun, Nashville began as a compromise by Altman, promising Paramount a country western movie in exchange for the greenlight to make Thieves Like Us.

 

Given a garbage script he refused to shoot, he relied upon the most Altman of traits – loyalty – in collaborating with longtime friend and Thieves scripter Joan Tewkesbury who traveled to Nashville with a journal at her side.

A stranger in a strange land, Tewkesbury culled many of the film’s most memorable sequences from personal experience including the opening traffic jam that turns into a neighborhood block party and establishes the vital idea that the characters will be vehicles themselves, occasionally colliding and passing one another both accidentally and on purpose.

While in the end Tewkesbury’s 140 page opus was distilled to its very essence by Alan Rudolph and a large amount of the film’s dialogue and action was discovered during its extensive rehearsal period, Tewkesbury’s sense of gender balance and outsider appeal lives on in the final cut as Molly Haskell beautifully describes in her Criterion Collection essay.

 

Given the most control he’s ever had over one of his films, Altman took advantage of the absence of studio interference, amusingly joking in one of the Criterion’s three supplemental filmmaker interviews that by not having power, he had power indeed, paving the way for other directors like Clint Eastwood to go off and make films on their own, outsiders be damned. And in doing so, he released what the vintage trailer promises was “the damndest thing you ever saw,” in a film that defies genre label or any other traditional categorization by celebrating the very cast that helped create it.

 

Avoiding the surrealism, impressionism or expressionism found in foreign films of the past in favor of his own brand of heightened realism that had more in common with a great American novel than the docudramatic work of contemporaries like John Cassavetes or Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman paved the way for not only Paul Thomas Anderson but early 2000 Mexican New Wave filmmakers like Alejandro González Iñárritu as well.

In a similar vein, in this – my fourth viewing of the film – and the first time not on VHS, it’s impossible to watch and not see how much inspiration has been taken from the work in other mediums, with HBO’s The Wire and Treme feeling like long-lost descendants as well.

Yet as influential as it is, it remains just as vibrant as ever, merging together the plights of more than 20 distinct characters, over an hour of musical performances and an ever-present political van where a disembodied voice manages to alternately engage, provoke, confuse and empower everyday citizens to participate in government across a five day period.

Without any main characters or archetypal heroes or villains (at least that we can see coming the first time around), everyone is given equal footing. This idea makes Nashville timelier than ever as a refreshing celebration of the everyman and woman from magician to groupie in a post-modern world with a 24 hour celebrity news cycle that has turned America into a bit of a caste system of ninety-nine percenters taught that they don’t matter unless they are “seen”... even in an un-heroic light.

Similar to another ‘70s era multi-character (although more traditional) masterpiece The Godfather, I manage to find new things to love and a new main character to become fully invested in with every viewing.

 

Nonetheless, the two individuals who have always stood out in Altman’s classic were both last-minute casting changes in the form of Lily Tomlin’s gospel singer (replacing Louise Fletcher) and Henry Gibson’s initial country stereotype who later manages to put people before himself in the work’s bravura ending in a role that was (coincidentally) originally slated for Godfather's Robert Duvall.

While Gibson’s selfless act at the end marks a big surprise that makes you reevaluate your perception of the character and check your own stereotypes at the door, Tomlin’s character’s actions are surprising on a far subtler level when the married mother of two deaf children finds herself tempted by Keith Carradine’s lothario folk rocker.

The seductive lead-in to their tryst – deliciously unsentimental by the effect that his performance of the Oscar winning Original Song has on (at least) three women who believe he’s singing “I’m Easy” to them – is one of the high-points of the movie, managing to convey multiple thoughts from and about the perspectives of several characters at the exact same time.

And although we see Carradine bed a multitude of beauties, the effect that Lily Tomlin has on him is just as powerful as the song he’d previously sung has been on her. Yet true to life, we’re the solitary witnesses to the facts of just what goes on behind closed doors between men and women as the full weight of Tomlin’s scene is felt after she closes the door behind her and leaves him alone onscreen.

While Altman always intended the obnoxious BBC reporter played by Geraldine Chaplin to serve as a sort of stand-in and bridge from the film to the audience with the way she gets into people’s faces, establishes their history and asks some of the questions we want to know, I’ve always felt like the truest guide to Nashville is Scott Glenn’s unnamed Vietnam veteran soldier.

 

A man whom we recognize only in regard to his uniform and the name “Kelly” adorned upon it, Glenn’s sensitive soldier is present at most of the film’s most vital scenes and it’s in his ambiguity that Altman truly invites us to confront our thoughts, hopes and fears in the post-Kennedy, Vietnam War and Watergate America as Altman’s Nashville opened just two months after the war ended. And it's in his interactions with others where people are often at their emotionally truest for better or worse.

Brilliantly restored for its Criterion Collection debut, the 683rd series release serves up the film in a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack, offering the 160 minute work separately on two discs in each format and boasting a bonus DVD of standard definition extras already included on the high definition disc.

In addition to the traditional keepsake book featuring Haskell’s well-researched, thoroughly engrossing essay and the three interviews with the late filmmaker from 1975, 2001 and 2002, Criterion’s gorgeous Nashville collection also offers a brand new feature-length documentary, vintage behind-the-scenes footage, live Carradine musical demos along with Altman’s 2001 DVD commentary.

Since it packs quite an audible punch and in soundbar tests, I did notice a distinct lack of clarity, Nashville is best experienced on a big screen television in high definition complete with 5.1 DTS-HD surround sound to fully appreciate Jim Webb’s breakthrough multi-track sound system capable of picking up the subtle nuances of layered voices in a way that makes them all understandable.

As weird, witty, wonderful and wild in its wandering style as it was the first time I ever saw the film – Altman’s cinematic novel is most often remembered for its influence on the auteurs that followed. But perhaps its biggest impact was on the filmmaker himself as Nashville was not only birthed from Altman films of the past but – thanks to the ideas in it that he mapped – would likewise go on to birth some of the best Altman films of the future from The Player and Short Cuts to Cookie’s Fortune and Gosford Park.    

Text ©2013, 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 may have 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.