Video Dispatches: TRACK 29, BATMEN, THE BELIEVERS & GHOSTS OF MARS

Video Dispatches is a regular column covering recent home video releases.

Track 29 (1988) – Indicator

As Danny Leigh mentions in his new essay, Nicolas Roeg’s career past The Man Who Fell to Earth is too often thought of as merely a postscript. Seeing Bad Timing when Criterion released it in 2005 felt like opening a blast of repressed energy — extremely sexual and sad, abrasive and experimental, it’s anything but an afterthought. While less successfully on a whole, Track 29, an unhinged take on American suburbia and the Oedipus complex, doesn’t fall short to Bad Timing on levels of pure carnal confusion and non-traditional cinematic instincts.

Roeg’s then real-life partner and common collaborator Theresa Russell plays a frustrated housewife (Linda) who misses the son she gave up for adoption in her teenage years and Gary Oldman plays her raucous adult son, who’s randomly turned up and is probably just a manifestation of Linda’s imagination. Oldman’s never been so manic and Russell seems to slowly spiral away from her specific character and into a southern stereotype, which is no knock as her wild affectation adds to Roeg’s overarching madness. Christopher Lloyd plays the aloof, boring, model train-obsessed husband with typical brilliance. His shining moment is at a well-attended model train convention, where he gives an enthusiastic speech that is unavoidably and remarkably proto-Make America Great Again.

If you have any interest in Roeg at all, this is a safe blind buy. Or, hell, if you have any interest in cinema and how its diverse masters have used it in to express themselves, this is recommended — I had little idea what I was getting myself into when picking up Bad Timing 14 years ago, but it remains an indelible viewing experience for me. Indicator, per usual, fill this disc to the brim with supplements. It’s heavy on anecdotal interviews with Roeg’s collaborators, but also has an archival interview with the director that plays over the film and spans almost its entirety.

Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997) – Warner Bros.

This month, WB has released the four-film run starting with Tim Burton’s 1989 film that chart the adaptation of Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s superhero, Batman — a quartet of films that, while wildly varying in quality, is most noteworthy for steeping the character within a filmmaking style that foregrounds artifice, often over anything else.

The first two films, by Burton, remain wildly successful. I struggle to think of another occasion when a director and an IP married so gracefully. His gothic style, dry yet silly wit, and attachment to outsiders fit the character as well as the Batsuit. And Burton’s Art Deco set designs, Roger Pratt’s canted angles and Danny Elfman’s majestic score create a rich world that continues to be developed rather than rehashed in Batman Returns.

What I love most about Burton’s Gotham City is its existence within a perfectly blended amalgamation of 40s/50s Art Deco noir and the contemporary late 80s/early 90s. This is something mostly stripped away, or pushed to the background in the next couple films, directed by Joel Schumacher.

What Schumacher does bring to the table is a focus on action filmmaking — it’s still not great, but during combat and vehicle action, he widens the scope from Burton, who was obviously not interested in such things. Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, while offering continually diminishing returns almost minute by minute, are also noteworthy texts for their flamboyance — an unthinkably campy approach to such a high-visibility IP in our contemporary blockbuster landscape. Unfortunately, by the time you’ve reached the third Batman in three films, there’s enough whiplash to disconnect, and it doesn’t help that George Clooney is entirely miscast, though the real-life playboy he was.

Retrospectively, given where Schumacher left this franchise, it’s no surprise that Christopher Nolan‘s reboot in 2005 were so successful, taking the Dark Knight out of the studio and into urban settings, shooting in places like Chicago, Pittsburgh, China and London that were an attempt to completely strip the franchise of its artifice.

It’s worth noting that the WB haven’t just released four films in a presentation that made me feel like I was seeing parts of the first couple films for the first time, they’ve also stacked these discs with archival supplements, including filmmaker commentaries on each.

The Believers (1987) – Olive Films

It’s a good summer for John Schlesinger fans, if there is such a fervent contingent, as Olive has released The Believers and Sony prepares their Blu-ray of Pacific Heights — one film made in the driest period, critically, of his career and the one that got him out of it.

The Believers, a horror film about a newly widowed police psychiatrist who moves his son to New York City and discovers a strange, child-sacrificing cult, boasts an incredible pedigree. Besides Schlesinger, a more than capable filmmaker, the film stars a virile Martin Sheen, is lensed by the recently-passed Robby Muller during an incredibly fruitful span of his career, and is penned by Mark Frost just a couple of years before the premiere of Twin Peaks.

Alas, while Muller’s handiwork is certainly on display and worth devouring — and Olive does him well with this presentation — The Believers doesn’t work. There are strong resonances of Rosemary’s Baby, as well as some of Brian De Palma and David Cronenberg’s films from the 70s and 80s, but it lacks their points of view. I have little doubt after this viewing that Frost needs a David Lynch.

Additionally, Sheen is serviceable but ultimately impenetrable, or dried of substance, so any attempts at spooking with body horror or the ambiguity of its coda, while enjoyable, remain cosmetic delights.

Ghosts of Mars (2001) – Mill Creek Entertainment

As much as John Carpenter’s second-to-last (as of now, at least) feature-length film, Ghosts of Mars, is his space film, it’s designed closer to the western. Set on the red planet in 2176, a native police squad sets out to retrieve a criminal (played by Ice Cube) from a mining colony but get more than their bargained for. Most of the film, which I’ve also heard referred to as a flaccid remake of the director’s own Assault on Precinct 13, takes place over traditional western plotting: capturing the bad guy before the bad guy joins forces against the real bad guys, surveying horizons and hectic showdowns.

As classic a structure Ghosts of Mars has, it feels like an ancient artifact, dressed in Carpenter’s most base 2001 interests: nu metal, psychedelic drugs, martial arts and Pam Grier. Even on nostalgic levels, the film, which isn’t a disaster, only delivers so much excitement.

Mill Creek have included a few archival bonus features, including diary videos of the production of both the film and the soundtrack. Being diary videos, these aren’t the type of making-of featurettes with actors speaking press-junket-like snippets in talking-head shots, but just lo-fi digital videos someone took while being a proverbial fly on the wall. These will be welcome for the Carpenter Heads and feature some idiosyncratic moments, like watching Buckethead string a power chord donning his signature KFC bucket while Carpenter nods approval, but who other than Carpenter Heads will be buying Ghosts of Mars, which is titled in full as John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars?