Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
Cold Case Hammarskjöld
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Yesterday Was a Lie, Candy, Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll (Collector’s Edition) and Cold Case Hammarskjöld.
Yesterday Was a Lie (IndiePix)
Picture Philip K. Dick gone film noir. The ambitious 2009 production, shot for $200,000 in lustrous black and white by writer-director James Kerwin, cuts between now and an indefinite then—a quasi-1940s world with a fedora-wearing woman detective (Kipleigh Brown) gumshoeing in a shadowland of murder and mystery. The literate screenplay references Carl Jung and T.S. Eliot, and the visuals nod to classic noir. The 10th-anniversary Blu-ray edition features audio commentary by Kerwin.
Candy (Shout! Factory)
Heath Ledger will forever be remembered as The Joker, but was excellent in smaller, human-scale roles such as Dan in Candy (2006). He’s hooked on heroin along with his lover (Abbie Cornish). Both give powerful performances in several emotional keys as the degradation spirals downward. Geoffrey Rush is also superb as their enabler. Candy captures the warm numbness as well as the physical agony of heroin and provides an astute exploration into the chemistry of addiction.
Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll (Collector’s Edition) (Shout! Factory)
Chuck Berry was notorious in his later years for perfunctory performances with pick-up bands. But for this 1987 documentary, Berry was in top form, eagerly duckwalking and bending the blues into his distinct sound. The film’s 60th birthday concert brings together Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and others for music and testimonial. Bruce Springsteen recalls the night when he was Berry’s pick-up band. Special features include a making-of documentary and nearly an hour of concert rehearsal footage.
Cold Case Hammarskjöld (Magnolia Home Entertainment)
Rumors surrounding the death of U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld could fill an Oliver Stone screenplay. Danish documentarian Mads Brügger states that he doesn't care about Hammarskjöld—he’s only a convenient topic for a movie that leads into dark passageways inhabited by the CIA, MI6 and apartheid South Africans seeking to kill blacks by spreading AIDS. Cold Case is interesting for grappling with the slippery texture of truth but glib in its handling of the subject.
