husbands and wives

Just a year after releasing Shadows and Fog - a film ensconced in the fog of 1920's German Expressionism - Woody Allen went and made the most modern film of his career. Husband and Wives (1992) is populated with the director's familiar group of urban elitists second-guessing their suspiciously shallow lives, but told with a hip visual style full of jump cuts, handheld shots and documentary confessionals. It's a refreshing change of pace that has an angry edge lacking in the rest of Allen's work.

After their surprise separation announcement, Jack and Sally (Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) bounce between rebound relationships and shallow sexual fulfillment. But their situation has an unintended effect on Gabe and Judy (Allen and Mia Farrow), who find their own previously stable relationship now falling apart. Allen doesn't rely on comic relief to ease the pressure; Husbands and Wives is a brutal parade of petty arguments and passive-aggressive bickering. And it all feels frightfully real. Love interests played by Liam Neeson and Juliette Lewis add fuel to the fire, resulting in a Woody Allen film that ditches his arm's length academia for a genuine emotional apocalypse.

Certainly not Allen's best looking film, the transfer here reflects the style in which it was shot: a bit grainy and underlit but intentionally so. Extras include an isolated score track, trailer and liner notes.

Marriage in the Age of Aquarius certainly wasn't any easier. First-time director Paul Mazursky's spot-on skewering of the peace-and-love generation - 1969's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice - actually had the courage to mock the rather short-lived sexual revolution while it was happening! The result is a film that revels in the awkward situations and desperate hypocrisies of two couples trying to adapt to an era where monogamy is quickly falling out of fashion.

Returning from a spiritual retreat with a new outlook on life, Bob and Carol (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood) attempt to convince Ted and Alice (Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon) that their new "open" relationship is no threat to their friendship. But when the infidelities start piling up, the couples begin to realize that free love doesn't come cheap. Mazursky's story is sharply satirical and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time, working with a cast at the top of their game. While Natalie Wood is transcendentally beautiful as the up-for-anything wife of Culp's slick poseur, it's Gould and Cannon who provide the most uncomfortable entertainment, trying to adapt to the new rules of marriage: one where there are no rules!

Twilight Time's Blu-ray is clean, colorful and detailed, making the film look almost like a modern release simply set in the '60s! Extras include an isolated music track, two audio commentaries, liner notes and a featurette.

Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) wasn't the first Gothic romance to hit the screen, but it was certainly the first to modernize it so successfully. And the lasting impact of that success hung around Hollywood for years to come. Case in point, 1946's Dragonwyck, starring Gene Tierney as Miranda, a wide-eyed governess brought to the eponymous country estate full of locked rooms, mysterious portraits and ghostly harpsichord solos. The estate is lorded over by Nicholas Van Ryn (Vincent Price), a blue-blooded landowner clinging to his heritage despite the rent-free rebellion brewing amongst his tenant farmers.

The directorial debut of Joseph Mankiewicz, Dragonwyk certainly looks the part of supernatural English tragedy (despite being set in New York state during the 1840s) with high production values and a surprisingly restrained - but still enjoyably villainous - performance by Price. But the film itself jumps through plot points like a hyperactive poodle, so eager to please that its central mystery, involving the death of Van Ryn's first wife (one of many obvious Rebecca connections), keeps getting kicked down the road to the point of distraction. When the denouncement finally comes, it's disappointingly obvious and turns Price's promising character (the only interesting one in the film) into nothing more than a plot device.

Another handsome hi-def transfer is paired up with a surprisingly strong slate of extras: isolated music track, audio commentary, separate featurettes on the film's production and Vincent Price specifically, two vintage radio shows, trailer and Julie Kirgo's liner notes.

Far more successful at duplicating Hitchcock's formula is My Cousin Rachel (1952), also based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel and starring Olivia de Havilland, sister of Rebecca's Joan Fontaine. In the film, Philip Ashley (Richard Burton) receives a series of post-dated letters from his wealthy cousin vacationing in Italy, claiming his death was caused his new wife, Rachel. Now the heir to a trust-fund fortune, Philip invites the widow to his England estate to confirm his suspicions. However, Rachel turns out to be charming and attractive, so much so that Philip falls for her himself. But is her affection merely a ploy to win back the fortune she was cheated out of in Italy...and what lengths will she go to get it?

My Cousin Rachel is a worthy successor to Rebecca's labyrinthian twists and turns, even upping the ante with an ambitiously ambiguous ending. Burton cuts quite a handsome figure in his first Hollywood role and his childish tantrums meet their match in de Havilland's coolly manipulative character. All that and the sumptuous stage-bound visuals (this is a gorgeous Fox production from top to bottom) make it easy to overlook the fact that, at heart, the film is a bit of a cheat. While the novel makes it clear everything is told from Philip's rather biased perspective, director Henry Koster can't help but lead the audience astray from time to time, swinging the pendulum on Rachel's guilt or innocence with clumsy abruptness. It's still grand 'ol Gothic fun, but doesn't quite manage to stick the landing

The hi-def transfer here might be the best of the bunch, presented beautifully in black-and-white with an isolated music track, trailer, liner notes and vintage radio show as extras.