As it zooms spiffily on to DVD, while still in cinemas across the UK, Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Disney, 12) stands as both more and less than a single film. The third highest-grossing blockbuster of all time worldwide is, on its own terms, a sensible regrouping of a franchise done damage by its trio of dopey prequels: that very title can be read as a mea culpa of sorts.
Yet it’s impossible to consider it separately from what it follows and potentially precedes; JJ Abrams has refashioned the complete narrative template of 1977’s series starter as a mere warm-up exercise, with all the cautious structural limitations that implies.
Speaking as one who has never been sentimentally invested in the Star Wars universe, this peppy refresh is quite worthy of its predecessors. It’s a surprisingly old-fashioned space opera that barrels along jovially if not sleekly, hampered slightly by too-cute stylistic nods to George Lucas, but enlivened by the new arrivals in its cast. Daisy Ridley needs another film or two to fully thaw as a performer, but Adam Driver’s villain lends these otherwise by-the-book proceedings a welcome shot of human peculiarity. Would I be wholly enthralled if this were my first awakening to the Force? Probably not, though the numbers suggest more than a few virgins must have been converted.
As for the extras-stuffed Blu-ray package, complete with feature-length, festival-premiered making-of doc Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey, longstanding devotees have plenty to pore over before the next instalment lands.
For film nerds of a more classical persuasion, this week brings home-entertainment news of comparably gargantuan proportions: the Criterion Collection, the beloved American series of vintage and art house DVD and Blu-ray releases, has finally hit the UK market. No further need for pricey imports and region-one players, then, to savour the impeccable transfers, high-end artwork and academically rich supporting material that have made Criterion the Folio Society of cinephilia.
Its UK slate kicks off next week with a sextet of titles only tentatively indicative of the collection’s range and reach. A pin-sharp reissue of the 1928 Harold Lloyd silent Speedy is the most obscure pick in a sample group that also includes Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (recently celebrated in this very column), Sydney Pollack’s Tootsie, Howard Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings and Albert and David Maysles’s Grey Gardens. All are invaluable additions to any film lover’s shelf, though some non-English-language fare will surely follow. I have, as yet, only skimmed through the sample Blu-rays, though in their 4K digital restorations they look as handsome on screen as they do on the shelf. Collectors, start your engines.
Two wily-witted genre twists released this week are unlikely to enter Criterion’s hallowed ranks, but impress all the same. Irish writer-director Stephen Fingleton’s debut The Survivalist (Bulldog, 18) is an apocalyptic thriller stomach-tightening enough to take down grander examples of its form, sparely delineating a future in which sex and sustenance are desperately aligned. The innovations of Emelie (Icon, 15), a bad-babysitter thriller with a shiveringly mean streak, are more modest, but director Michael Thelin takes cool cues from the Michael Haneke school of home invasion.
Netflix continues to be a refuge for spiky, festival-approved documentaries that can’t gain a foothold in the theatrical distribution racket. A recent addition to its library, Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, is another worthy example. Kitty Green’s funny, fired-up portrait of Ukrainian feminist protest collective Femen avoids obvious rhetorical puffery to zero in on the group’s ideological passions and imperfections alike, at once joining in their spirit of sisterhood and probing the insidious patriarchal influence of group “consultant”, Victor Syvatski. It’s a film of white-hot feeling burning through its fascinating contrasts and conflicts.
