Blu-ray debut for Zhang Yimou's gorgeous and dark period piece, SHANGHAI TRIAD

Don't know how I happened to miss SHANGHAI TRIAD when it was released theatrically in the USA during the turn-of-the year holiday season of 1995-96. Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou and his star Gong Li were at the height of their critical and arthouse/ mainstream success around then, and the film itself -- a beautiful and quite dark costume/ gangster melodrama set in Shanghai in the 1930s -- holds up exceedingly well.

In any case, it's great to be able to catch up with the film in its new and very fine Blu-ray transfer from Film Movement. Visually, this is one of  the more beautiful movies you're likely to encounter, even if you will wonder if and why Zhang (shown at left) decided not (or simply neglected) to bother with any day-for-night effects. Nighttime has never looked this bright or sunny.

The initially-simple-but-soon-grows-more-complicated story involves an adolescent Tang family member (Wang Xiaoxiao, below, right) from the provinces who has come to Shanghai to work for the boss of an upper-echelon crime family, more specifically for that boss' spoiled and nasty showgirl mistress (played by Ms Gong, below, left).

Betrayals of many types soon follow, and characters (some of them, at least) grow and change. By the end of this breathtakingly gorgeous and quite dark movie, the lessons learned have come at a huge cost. If Shanghai Triad does not have the obvious political and emotional heft of To Live, nor the historical/political/feminist framework of something like Raise the Red Lantern, all of these things remain essential to the film nonetheless. They may seem buried under the melodrama, but in a sense this makes them register all the more oddly yet strongly

There is only a single Bonus Features on the disc, but it's a whopping good one: a video essay by Grady Hendrix entitled "Trouble in Shanghai" that goes to town on all the ways one can view Shanghai Triad -- including as a kind of unintentional biopic/biography of both Zhang and Gong and the filmmaking process itself. This is a witty, funny, hugely intelligent piece of criticism/provocation, but do wait until you've seen the film to watch and listen to it.

From Film Movement Classics, in Mandarin with English subtitles and running 108 minutes, the film makes its Blu-ray debut this Tuesday, August 4 -- for purchase (and eventually, I would hope, for rental, too).

Blu-ray debut for Robert Altman's lesser-known but first-class film, KANSAS CITY

I remember seeing KANSAS CITY at the time of its original theatrical release (1996) and enjoying it a lot. Yet viewing it again, in a glorious new Blu-ray transfer from Arrow Academy, it seems not simply very good but up there with its director and co-writer Robert Altman's best films.

So why is this remarkable movie so little know or even much talked about anymore? I suspect it has to do with how little, style-wise, the movie resembles so much of the other work for which Altman, shown at right, is now most remembered. By style, I mean in particular this filmmaker's much vaunted use of over-lapping dialog, together with the so-much-going-on visuals that have you scanning the screen, ever alert to what to watch and to whom to listen as the movie moves ahead.

No. This film, by conventional standards of Altman's work (if the word conventional can even be used here), seems almost traditional. Aside from a clever opening taking place in two time frames that soon come together (as well as coming clear), the film moves forward with the plot unfurling and characters developing, just as in so many more standard movies.

What sets Kansas City apart --  in addition to the first-rate set and production design, cinematography and all other technical aspects -- are the themes Altman so often pursued, especially the ways in which power congregates and corrupts, no matter the race or class represented.

The movie begins with a kidnapping of one woman by another, the reason for which only slowly comes clear. These women are played by Jennifer Jason Leigh (above, as Blondie) and Miranda Richardson (below, as Carolyn), each of whom is as good here as she has ever been. Their story is front and center, and their characters are wonderfully written (by Altman and his four-time collaborator Frank Barhydt) and beautifully acted by the two women, whose relationship grows oddly closer as the film progresses.

Simultaneously, Kansas City is a love story -- fueled by Blondie's love for her guy, a good-looking nitwit named Johnny, played with brainless charm by Dermot Mulroney, below -- and a non-love story in terms of the relationship-of-convenience between Carolyn and her husband, an ex-politician now working for President Roosevelt (Michael Murphy). The tale unfurls on and around election day, as the local Democratic candidate is jammed through via everything from voter fraud to cavalier murder.

Blondie's Johnny has stupidly planned a robbery of a rich gambler that goes awry but brings in the man who own the gambling house (a nifty Harry Belafonte, below, essaying a role unusual for him). How all these plot strands bounce off each other, finally coming together in a manner that is shocking, horrible, inevitable and completely understandable. It will leave you satisfied and musing, I think, on exactly the subjects Altman wants you to be considering, even as you are impressed all over again with what this great filmmaker could accomplish.

Kansas City is a violent film, but never unduly so, with that violence ranging from the merely casual to the grizzly. Yet it all seems appropriate to the period, the locale, and the situations, while the writer/director's take on race in particular is strong and true for this time and place.

In addition to all of the above, Kansas City boasts some wonderful music -- jazz of the day played right and real -- taking place in the club owned by the Belafonte character. As critic Geoff Andrew tells us in the excellent, newly-filmed appreciation of the movie that is a part of the Bonus Features on the disc, this was perhaps the most personal of all of Altman's work, in so many ways, and the filmmaker's attention to detail in every aspect comes through quite beautifully.

TrustMovies believes this new Blu-ray release will help place Kansas City much higher in the canon of Mr. Altman's oeuvre. It should attract both his die-hard fans for a re-look, while garnering a bunch of new ones, too.

From Arrow Video, distributed here in the USA via MVD Visual/MVD Entertainment Group, the film made its Blu-ray debut last week -- for purchase (and I hope, somewhere, rental).

Good, intelligent filmmaking for folk who know their history: Trevor Nunn/Lindsay Shapero's RED JOAN

Oh, yes: And it also has Dame Judi Dench in the leading role (senior version; up-and-comer Sophie Cookson plays her younger self). If Dame Dench isn't enough to garner the mainstream/ arthouse crowd to RED JOAN, nothing will.

A set of very mixed reviews (only 30% positive on the notoriously unreliable Rotten Tomatoes site) oughtn't keep at least senior moviegoers away, for the film's very structure and execution is so by-the-book that few viewers should find it difficult to follow.

In this case, however, the "book" the film is "by" proves perfectly acceptable in its own right. The screenplay (from Lindsay Shapero) may be very dialog-heavy, but since the dialog is quite good, so what? Unfortunately, many in our younger critical establishment are more special-effects happy than dialog-prone, and I fear their understanding of world history is also somewhat lacking. This movie demands that, and many of our senior viewers are fairly fluent in it.

The film's director, legit theater's Trevor Nunn (above) also has the needed appreciation of dialog, and his filmmaking skills are good enough to adequately take us crisply and energetically along.

Though the film is said to be based upon a real-life case, it seems to TrustMovies that almost everything we see and hear has been so very added, changed or re-arranged that one might as well approach the movie as fiction, and simply sit back and go with the flow.

Red Joan begins with arrest of said red, now a very elderly woman (Dench, above), then immediately flashes back to those younger days (via Cookson, below), and continues this back-and-forth throughout, as we see how the young Joan is slowly and quite understandably sucked into the brand of mid-to-late 1930s European Communism that proved so popular with the younger generation of that day, when economic times were grave around the world and the Spanish Civil War was simultaneously erupting.

Two love stories figure into the plot, one with a hot young student, Leo (Tom Hughes, shown at bottom, left) who doubles as spy, the other with our heroine's older-but still-attractive boss, played by that fine actor Stephen Campbell Moore (below, right), who here -- despite the good work of Dench and Cookson (shown above), manages to provide both the film's emotional and moral compass.

The moral question is one of having to choose between betraying one's country (but not, as in Auden's example, one's friend) and betraying the world at large. While the choice will seem right or wrong, depending on your view of things, how and why that choice is made is presented quite well, I think. And Red Joan ends up an intelligent and pretty classy example of not really a thriller (as unfortunately the film is being marketed) but a thoughtful piece of history that doubles as moral dilemma.

From IFC Films, the movie opened last week on our cultural coasts and now expands to other cities across the country. Here in South Florida it will open tomorrow, Friday, May 3, in the Miami area at AMC's Aventura Mall 24 and Sunset Place 24, Landmark at Merrick Park and CMX Brickell City Centr; in Fort Lauderdale at the Classic Gateway 4; at the Movies of Delray and Movies of Lake Worth; in Palm Beach Gardens at the Cobb's Downtown at the Gardens 16; and at the AMC's City Place 20 in West Palm Beach. Wherever you are around the country, click here to find the theater nearest you.

Woody's back -- with the impeccably cast, acted and photographed CAFE SOCIETY

Woody Allen's final-period movies (I am guessing here, of course, but really: He'll reach 81 this December, so how much longer can the guy go on?) continue to grow more assured, pleasurable and (TrustMovies thinks so, anyway) mature. Mr. Allen, below, has finally grown up in ways, movie-wise and maybe otherwise, that he hadn't achieved till now. Less interested in being profound or super witty/nerdy/brilliant, he's finally willing to let his characters behave and learn and grow, rather than merely being mouthpieces (often very clever or crazy ones) for his own neuroses.

This has lent a distinctive autumnal feeling to all his recent work -- whether it's an odd murder mystery like Irrational Man (a better film than was generally acknowledged), a surprisingly sweet love story complete with maybe-the-other-worldly such as Magic in the Moonlight, and now something like his latest, an alternately dark and endearing coming-of-age tale called CAFE SOCIETY. Allen (along with ace casting director Juliet Taylor) has long had a knack for fitting the actor to the role. He fills his movies with fine actors, lets them do their thing, and so -- even with

sometimes middling screenplays -- the movies come together surprisingly well. This casting-coup works as well in his latest film as it ever has. I'd say every role is filled just about perfectly (we'll get to the details in a bit), but there's something more here, too. For the first time Allen is working with the great Italian cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (shown at right), and the result is -- whew! -- something wonderful. Because the film takes place in 1930s New York and Los Angeles, we get the bonus of nostalgia, of course, and handled, as it is, with Storaro's mastery of light and composition, everything from the interiors to exteriors, faces to fabrics glow and resonate. Yes, we're mostly with the wealthy upper-crust, but watch how this master handles the scenes involving the lower-middle class New York family at the center of the film. These scenes resonate cinematically in their own dark, quiet manner.

The story -- of a young man named Bobby (a just-about-perfect Jesse Eisenberg, above, left) who must break away from his family for awhile and so ventures out to Hollywood, where his uncle (the ever more versatile Steve Carell, below) is a big-time agent, then falls in love with the uncle's secretary (Kristen Stewart, above, right, adding another smart feather to an already full cap) -- is serviceable and malleable. And, my, how these actors bring it to splendid life.

Speaking of versatility, there's Corey Stoll (below, whom I didn't even recognize in his role of Eisenberg's older brother, Ben, until the end

credits rolled). I find it amazing how Allen gloms on to new and special talent, always making such good use of it. This is as true with his use of Stoll as it is the way he uses Blake Lively (below, center) in the role of  Bobby's other love interest. Ms Lively brings genuine caring and concern to a part that could easily seem little more than secondary. Ditto Jeannie Berlin, who plays the brothers' mama, Rose, with enough depth and passion to help disguise and rise above a screenplay that is, at best, serviceable and often flits a little too close to cliché.

Good work also comes from the likes of Anna Camp, Parker Posey and Ken Stott. By the finale, we've come, along with Eisenberg's Bobby, through enough incident and revelation to reach a level of maturity that allows us to look back in some sadness, yes, but also with the wisdom to appreciate what we have, as well as better understand what we've lost.

Cafe Society -- from Amazon Studios by way of Lionsgate, and running 96 minutes -- after opening in New York and Los Angeles, hits much of the rest of the country this Friday, July 29. Here in South Florida, it plays the O Cinema Miami Beach, the AMC Sunset Place 24, Coral Gables Art Cinema, Muvico Broward 18 in Pompano Beach, and the Movies of Delray in Delray Beach. To view playdates, cities and theaters elsewhere around the country, simply click here.

Sunday Corner: Lee Liberman goes DANCING ON THE EDGE with Stephen Poliakoff

Writer-creators Stephen Poliakoff and Julian Fellowes were attracted to the same hot topic when they wrote screenplays about the rise of jazz between the great wars, shining light on glittery elites whose following attracted the public through their patronage of black artists. The Cotton Club was all the rage in NYC while the royals juiced the trend on the British side of the pond, helping to make jazz musici-ans celebrities of the 1920s & 30s.

Fellowes' version of the jazz trend had cousin Rose flinging with black bandleader Jack Ross in Downton Abbey while Poliakoff uses his entire vehicle DANCING ON THE EDGE to throw fuel on the subject of race, class, sex, and jazz for 6 episodes in which poverty, hunger, and immigration issues lurk around the edges. Little by little tensions grow in our story as the elite pursue their latest hobby, trouble stalks band members, and German diplomats in town are already revealing their racist hearts in public

Chiwetel Ejiofor (above, l) leads a terrific cast as black band leader Louis Lester, along with charming Matthew Goode (above, r ), playing irrepressible rogue Stanley Mitchell, music impresario and editor of a rag called "The Music Express". Stanley, most at home in his paper's lair, is thought by some reviewers to have dubious motives, but I found his enthusiasm contagious as he recognizes the band's potential and organizes one gambit after another to promote and protect them. Stanley makes bits of mischief for Louis but always has his back -- the band has one foot in the world of high society but also uncomfortable exposure to police and/or the alien immigration authorities.

Louis's saga as an up-and-comer begins when Stanley hears a snippet of the band at a grungy dive club and knows they are something special. He has a commission in his pocket to recommend a new band to the Imperial, a once fashionable palace that is now dowager country (above, the stand-in for the Imperial). He organizes a booking for the instrumentalists and singers, Jessie and Carla (Angel Coulby and Wunmi Mosaku, third and fourth from left in photo below). Gradually the band grows an audience including a small group of influentials whom we get to know well (plus Prince George and Edward, Prince of Wales, the "playboy" princes who were serious patrons of Duke Ellington and Florence Mills, among others).

There's Walter Masterson (above, second from l) an American money bags with extreme sexual proclivities and hazardous morals (John Goodman), Lavinia Cremone (a splendid Jacqueline Bisset, 5th from r), an aristocrat who still mourns three sons lost in World War I but is newly aroused to do good in the world; Mr. Donaldson (Anthony Head, 4th from r ), an urbane fellow and silent manipulator; Pamela Luscombe (Joanna Vanderham -- Denice in The Paradise, 6th from r) and her high-strung, troubled brother Julian (Tom Hughes, far l) are rebellious offspring of rich, racist social climbers ("We are going to have a party for mummy and fill the house with blacks and Jews" says Pamela); photographer Sarah, daughter of a Russian emigre with a mysterious past, who has an affair with Louis, (Janet Montgomery, on Ejiofor's arm, left center).

In episode 3, a band member is stabbed and later dies. Our society patrons come into focus as evidence appears against Louis that will make his conviction likely of a murder he didn't commit. Who is genuine and who is not figures here as some deliberately aim to implicate Louis, some look the other way, and others take personal risks to help him escape. Lady Cremone (Bisset, below) swings one way and then the other. A hotel manager complains: "You brought the roof down on all of us, Stanley -- you brought the band here." Masterson's response is to throw money around (as above, with singers Jessie and Carla).

The murder plot is resolved by the end of the fifth episode but Poliakoff (pictured below) adds a sixth episode in the form of Stanley's interview with Louis, an unsatisfying discussion of questions we never had and anecdotes we didn't need. The addition of this episode speaks to a lack of discipline, as though Poliakoff, shown below -- who both wrote and directed the series -- had some thought streams he couldn't shoehorn into the body and added this vehicle to include them. It lumbered.

The original score glitters but is not as titillating as the raw, edgy music of the early jazz era. But despite its flaws, Dancing's story-in-chief and the ensemble of players are very engaging and leave us wanting more. We get that the subject of race is topic A, crossing social red-lines topic B, and both will remain ever thus. But rather than this being a message movie, particularly, 'Dancing' offers good company, entertainment, hypocrisy revealed with wit, and a window on the lively era that roared into the 30's, oblivious to the rise of The Third Reich.  A BBC2 production, Dancing on the Edge  first appeared over here on Starz and is now streaming via Netflix.

(The above post was written by 

our correspondent Lee Liberman.)