Jacob Sahms

With apologies to Johnny Depp, Gene Wilder is the REAL Willy Wonka. And with apologies to Wilder’s other projects, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was THE movie he was meant to make. Based on the Roald Dahl book, the film’s eccentric characters make for a beautiful eccentric story for all ages.

For those who’ve never seen the film(s) or read the book, Wonka is the owner of a factory that produces candy, and is known as a reclusive (and rich) candy maker. When he announces that there are five Golden Tickets available inside of his chocolate bars, there is a mad scramble to tour his closed-to-the-public factor, and win a lifetime supply of chocolate. What the children who find the tickets (and their adult of choice) don’t know is that the process is actually a competition, and the real prize is the factory itself.

On the 4K Ultra HD, fans will receive a host of special features, like commentary from the Wonka kids, the documentary “Pure Imagination: The Story of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” four sing-a-long songs, a vintage featurette, and the theatrical trailer.

With the explosion of colors and music that runs through the film, what better way is there to see this magical story than on 4K HD? Oompa-Loompas are just as strange and wonderful, but much clearer than when I watched the film thirty years ago off of an old VHS tape! There’s still something magical about this grand parable about having enough, sharing, overindulgence, and all of the ways that lust can lead down dark, dangerous, destructive roads – for kids and adults alike.

Joining Chocolate Factory in Dahl’s books-to-film are James and the Giant Peach, The Witches, The BFG, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Matilda. But the best of them – in terms of lessons to teach and learn – remains this one. The sort of Wizard of Oz theme behind the curtain shows us how God allows us to check out the world for ourselves, and determine what role we’ll play in it. Sometimes, we don’t know exactly how our actions impact our future, but the direct reaction lessons of the challenge Wonka presents shows us in physical, immediate ways the dangers of our sins, and ultimately, the joyous jubilation of our character revealed, thanks to Charlie.

There are situations that fill a parent’s heart with dread. Their child is missing. Their child is diagnosed with an incurable disease. Their child completely rejects them.

In the case of Your Honor, there is one more: their child does something criminal, evil even, and choices must be made about how to protect them.

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) plays Judge Michael Desiato who, having already lost his wife, must now fight to protect his son Adam (Hunter Doohan) after Adam causes the death of another teenager. While every death is a tragedy, Desiato knows that the death of the other young man is dangerous for Adam, because the dead teen’s parents are New Orleans crime boss Jimmy Baxter (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife Gina (Hope Davis). But covering up a crime is no easy feat, and this situation will be no different.

Showrunner Peter Moffat (The Night Of) and executive producers Robert and Michelle King are no strangers to gritty explorations of justice, morality, and mortality. In Your Honor, it’s nearly Shakespearean cause and effect that is unveiled, as the original crime must be covered up by two more crimes, and exponentially more violent and dastardly outcomes result. It’s tragic, really, and shows the ways that our own less dramatic experiences can have the same ramifications: when we do something wrong to cover up another wrong, it snowballs. This is nearly a modern-day parable of pursuing self-preservation in the name of family, something that we all have experience in.

Neil Burger has made interesting films, like The Illusionist with Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti, and Limitless with Bradley Cooper. In Voyagers, which he also wrote, Burger takes us on an interstellar exploration of what humans could do to populate a new planet, generations after departing Earth. The end result is messy, but still intriguing.

The scientist Richard (Colin Farrell) decides at the last moment to join the test tube babies into space. He’ll be the sole adult, their teacher, confidant, and minder. Ten years later, the babies are now teenagers, and a couple of them figure out that Richard has been maintaining a level, non-reactive field by feeding them a drug that inhibits their desires. As teenagers, they begin to refuse the drug of course, and unbeknownst to Richard, several of them begin to have sexual desires, anger, and more develop. This can’t end well for Richard, right?

As the space flight goes Lord of the Flies, several teenagers, Chris (Tye Sheridan, Mud, Ready Player One) and Zac (Fionn Whitehead, Dunkirk) become the two ‘types’ of humans that the others either ally themselves with or run away from. In between the two teens is Sela (Lily-Rose Depp), a smart individual on her own right, who Richard poured special attention into, and now becomes the object of obsession. Throw in a hidden chamber onboard the ship that is believed to have alien life somehow contained, and the loss of Richard plus the inclinations of the teens sans drug, result in a serious struggle between the human and the inhumane.

I couldn’t help think of the Garden of Eden (or The Matrix) as the teens stop taking the drug. They suddenly have their eyes opened, and they realize that the others are attractive or scary or … whatever. They don’t know what to do with their emotions because they’ve been hidden from them, and therefore struggle to adapt to this new normal. But while humans were sent to repopulate a new planet to give humanity a fresh start, the reality is that the best and worst of humanity was already onboard – it’s nature/nurture mashed up together.

It’s an intriguing premise, even if it gets a bit lost in space.

Special features here include a look at the cast in “Born for This” and “Survival of the Fittest,” a look at the physical training required. An additional featurette, “On the Surface,” takes a look at Voyagers very cool visual appearance. This one is certainly sleek and futuristic for the sci-fi fans it hopes to attract.

In the cinematic adaptation of Australian author Jane Harper’s mystery The Dry, Eric Bana’s federal agent Aaron Falk returns to his village of Kiewarra, having left as a teenager under a cloud of mystery. He’s returned for the funeral of his childhood best friend, who apparently killed his wife and child and then himself. While he investigates the deaths on behalf of his dead friend’s parents, his memory turns to the death that drove him from Kiewarra decades earlier, as the two stories veer dangerously through truth and justice.

Twenty years ago, Falk’s romantic interest Ellie Deacon drowned, and because a note from Falk was found with her belongings, Falk was blamed by the townfolk and Deacon’s family. As he investigates the death of his friend’s family, the Hadlers, he encounters the disbelief of those around him who believe he’s responsible for Deacon’s death. Thanks to the adaptation of Harper’s story and Robert Connolly’s direction, the audience remains off-kilter in terms of Falk: is he a reliable narrator or was he responsible for Deacon’s death?

The investigation into the Hadlers’ death is equally tricky. The flashbacks show Falk’s friend, Luke, as troubled, and various townsfolk have insight into the Hadlers’ lives that lead Falk’s investigation with local sergeant Greg Raco (Keir O’Donnell) down various rabbit trails. Falk’s interest in Gretchen (Genevieve O’Reilly), the fourth member of the teen group he ran with, adds romance to the mystery – along with a hint of danger.

Throughout this dusty mystery, Australia as setting adds character to the visuals, too. The audience’s attention is distracted in the details, but the emotional heartbeat remains Falk’s own self-examination of himself and the past. While few will have experienced the level of accusation – did he kill his teen sweetheart? – the reality is that few get to go home again on their own terms. Lives are judged by preconceived ideas, by old patterns, by the way that childhoods leaned even if changes occurred as adults. Unfortunately this is true in the church, too: grace is discussed and redemption proclaimed, but too often, we don’t actually operate like we believe that people can change.

That’s the kind of graceless reception Falk receives in Kiewarra, even as he pursues justice for others. And it makes for a captivating mystery.

In a year when the world has spent months locked in and socially distanced, a new thriller plays on our isolation and self-doubt. In Joe Wright’s Netflix thriller The Woman in the Window, Amy Adams plays Dr. Anna Fox, a child psychologist suffering from agoraphobia. Fox’s own sadness has driven her farther and farther away from others, and deeper and deeper into her own shame. When she witnesses a bloody death in the apartment building across the street, her sadness manifests into terror and hysteria.

A psychologist deep into drugs and self-doubt… that must be one of the most terrifying mental experiences. Wright’s cinematography, including one scene with a close up/amplified experience of a faucet dripping, pushes the audience deeper into Fox’s experience of isolation and mental space. Her drug use augments her frenzied mental state, and the cinematography often gives the audience a sense that they’re seeing the world through Fox’s eyes. They hear through Fox’s ears, too, not least because Fox has conversations with people who aren’t there, even before the death across the street.

Shot darkly, the film’s lens into Fox’s life and the atmospheric beats of the soundtrack make for a claustrophobic feel. The tendrils of the pandemic foster that feeling for the viewer, and remind the audience that they can remember isolation and the way it twists the corners of one’s mind. While the shame Fox feels might be extreme, anxiety is something relatable – especially given the strange sci-fi world we have been living in these last months. Wright plays with the feelings that Alfred Hitchcock knew so well, a new Rear Window for the post-COVID world.

Across the street isn’t any picnic either. Austere Alistair Russell (Gary Oldham) and his wife are raising a young man, Ethan (Fred Hechinger). But the woman who introduces herself as Russell’s wife(Julianne Moore) and is subsequently murdered isn’t the woman who Russell introduces as his wife after the death (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Fox’s own flaws and guilt influence how she sees the relationships, and impact her choices and involvement, but the audience doesn’t know how reliable her assessment is.

Further muddying the waters, David Winter (The Falcon & Winter Soldier’s Wyatt Russell) lives downstairs as a tenant in Fox’s house, and he’s … dark, too. Throw in a pair of police detectives who seem skeptical of Fox’s mental well-being, in line with Fox’s own psychiatrist Dr. Landy (screenwriter Tracy Letts), and there’s enough confusion about who the reliable narrator is. But while the ending makes sense – and may even be discernable for thriller fans, it’s Fox’s own heart/head space that proves most interesting.

At one point, Fox determines to record her will and testament in video form. She is broken by her previous experiences, and struggling to find any way that redeems her. In fact, she looks into the camera several times and says, “I can’t be forgiven.” She deems herself unforgivable, unable to be redeemed even though she’s repented, unable to be reconciled with her own life and with those around her. Her shame imprisons her, and her fear becomes her penance for her sins. Her baptism of redemption forces her to make decisions that will determine her fate, when she chooses to involve herself in the world around her.

Will her decision set her free or lead to her destruction?

During World War II, FDR recognizes that the Allies need help, so the Justice Society of America is assembled: Black Canary, Hawkman, Hourman, Flash, and Wonder Woman, along with the military’s Colonel Steve Trevor. Voiced by the likes of Stana Katic and Matt Bomer, the film has a complex, developed script of a man between two worlds.

Flash from the present day, out for a date with his would-be wife Iris West, finds himself channeling the Speed Force when Brainiac fires a Kryptonite bullet at Superman. Led by Dr. Fate, Flash ends up back in World War II, dealing with time paradoxes as he and the old Flash occupy the same time. The JSA needs the future/present Flash to help them, and in the process, he sees the beauty of teamwork which he’ll end up bringing back to the present.

Together, the older heroes and the new Flash have some pretty grand adventures, and experience a few twists that I’ll leave unrevealed here. While the basis exists in the characters created by Gardner Fox (1941), the script from Meghan Fitzmartin and Jeremy Adams proves to have the panache of a full-length theatrical film.

The 4K HD combo pack includes “Adventures in Storytelling: Justice Society: World War II,” a couple of cartoons from the DC Vault, a look at the next feature (“Batman: The Long Halloween Part I”), and an animated short based on Jack Kirby’s Kamandi, “The Last Boy on Earth.”

The film is available now digitally, and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Combo Pack and Blu-ray on May 11, 2021.