Spike Lee has just released Highest 2 Lowest, his remake of the Akira Kurosawa classic High and Low. Just in time to celebrate, the Criterion Collection is releasing a new 4K UHD disc of High and Low.
Buy High and Low (Criterion Collection)Based on an Ed McBain novel called King’s Ransom, High and Low follows a kidnapping plot where the culprit accidentally nabs the chauffeur’s boy instead of the son of rich businessman Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune). Gondo must decide whether to pay the ransom for this kid who is not his. To complicate matters, he was just about to use all of his money on a business deal that is set to make him very rich.
Much of the film is a straight police procedural (albeit a very good one), but Kurosawa also focuses on the deep differences between the rich Gondo, who sits high above the city in his big house, and the culprit, who lives in squalor far below in the bowels of the city. It is a great film with a wonderful central performance by Mifune, and some terrific directing from Kurosawa. Much of the film is set within one room of Gondo’s house, but Kurosawa, a director known for his sweeping camera movements, still finds a way to make the small setting feel dynamic. Criterion presents the film with a new 4K restoration and their usual bounty of extras.
Also out this week that looks interesting:
Jurassic World: Rebirth: How far this little dinosaur series has come. Jurassic Park was an innovative, technological marvel. Each sequel has gotten a little bit worse. The first Jurassic World reboot was relatively interesting in an entertaining way, but I’ve not bothered with any of the sequels. This one looks terrible. But it was a big hit, and so there are a variety of releases of it coming out.
Jurassic World: 7-Movie Collection: With the release of the latest films comes this boxed set of every film.
Ballerina: Ana De Armas stars in the next phase of the John Wick universe as – surprise – an assassin out to take revenge on the people who killed her family.
Elio: This latest film from Disney Animation involves a boy who gets mistaken for Earth’s intergalactic ambassador.
Materialists: Celine Song’s latest film stars Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. The story is about a matchmaker whose life gets complicated when she involves herself in a toxic love triangle. The reviews for this have been good, and I loved Song’s last film, Past Lives.
Dark Winds: Season Three: I quite enjoyed Season One of this AMC+ series about a group of Navajo Tribal Police solving crimes in the 1970s. I really need to catch up on the rest of the seasons.
The Ritual: Al Pacino and Dan Stevens star as two priests with troubled pasts trying to save a demon possessed girl.
Little House on the Prairie: The Complete Series: My brother has randomly been watching this series about Laura Ingalls and her family’s lives on the frontier in the 1870s. I make fun of him viciously for it, but to tell the truth, I loved the show when I was a kid, and I might have to take another look.
