Trust the buzz: Laurent Bouzereau and Mark Harris‘ Five Came Back (Netflix, 3.31), a three-hour doc based on Harris’s 2014 book of the same title, is a knockout. Or at least it was for me. Call it an incisive, emotionally stirring, highly insightful saga of World War II, or rather the filming of it but in a broader sense the bruising reality of it. Like any good film Five Came Back swirls down, under, all around. 

It focuses on five big-name Hollywood directors — John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, George Stevens and John Huston — who put their Hollywood careers on hold during World War II in order to make propaganda-like documentaries (or doc-like propaganda films) for the U.S. War Department.

But it didn’t turn out that simply. While Capra devoted himself to producing several gung-ho esprit de corps films under the title of Why We Fight, Stevens, Ford, Wyler and Huston wound up capturing (and in a couple of instances recreating) harrowing scenes of real-life battle and carnage that not only shook them personally but led to periods of post-war melancholia as well as re-assessments of who they were and what kind of cinema they wanted to make.  It also led to the making of their finest films, particularly in the case of Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives), Capra (It’s A Wonderful Life) and Huston (Treasure of the Sierra Madre).

We’ve all have our impressions of World War II from this and that visual source (movies, docs, endless photos), but Millenials and perhaps even younger GenXers probably regard it as something that happened so long ago it’s in the same musty box as the Civil War. Five Came Back somehow makes this earth-shaking conflict seem more fierce and first-hand than it has since Saving Private Ryan (which is nearly 20 years old now, believe it or not).

This is largely, I feel, because of five present-day helmers — Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro, Francis Coppola, Larry Kasdan and Paul Greengrass — passing along thoughts and musings about this great saga, each focusing on a specific director and storyline (Spielberg on Wyler, Kasdan on Stevens, Del Toro on Capra, Greengrass on Ford, Coppola on Huston). These guys sell the shit out of this thing, and you can only do that with conviction, intelligence and empathy.

All five of the WW II-era directors suffered wounds, bruises and traumas of one kind of another…nobody came out of it without some kind of limp.

Ford, who incurred the wrath of his military superiors after descending into a three-day alcoholic bender after witnessing the bloody D-Day slaughter (4000 Allied troops died on 6.6.44), became less of a Grapes of Wrath or Informer-styled social realist and increasingly devoted himself to Western myths, which could be seen as a kind of sentimental retreat. 

Stevens, whose post-liberation footage of Dachau was used in Nuremberg war-crimes trials, wound up brooding for three or four years before finally getting back behind the camera to create his great American trilogy — A Place In The Sun (’51), Shane (’53) and Giant (’56) .  He waited until the late ’50s to direct a WWII drama, The Diary of Anne Frank, that channeled  or reflected his war experience.

50something years ago we had a flawed but elegant, well-educated President who obscured the truth from time to time but at least respected basic concepts of truth and accuracy in government, politics and public affairs (i.e., decades before the loony right and “alternative facts”). Plus he dressed well and kept his weight in check. Now we have a grotesque beast sitting at the same desk, a Mussolini figure — a lying, delusional, foam-at-the-mouth animal who regards the Presidency not just as a solemn responsibility but a terrific financial opportunity for himself and his homies. Every day I sit here and seethe. Not in our stars but in ourselves. Thanks, bumblefucks.

Yet another Islamic Jihadist wackjob attack, this time in London with a Nice-styled mowdown of several pedestrians by a large vehicle (at least one woman killed), followed by a stabbing of a police officer and then the assailant shot to death. We don’t know actually know that it was an ISIS-supporting, Allah-worshipping nutter. It could have been a college-educated Swede or Dane. The perpetrator might have been an exchange student from Georgia or Oregon. But if you were Sam Harris or Bill Maher, what would you be muttering right now? What did you mutter to yourself the moment you heard the news?…be honest. Thousands upon thousands of American tourists have just cancelled plans to visit London this summer because the actions of one or two lone-wolf assholes means that London is now a more dangerous city than it was before today’s incident.

Pete Hammond‘s Deadline review sold me on the Netflix doc Five Came Back (3.31). I just gained access to the Netflix press site and will watch later today or this evening. Based on Mark Harris‘s 2014 book, the three-part, three-hour series relates the sagas of five U.S. film directors (John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra, George Stevens) and their frontline work during WWII, and uses commentary from Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass and Lawrence Kasdan to discuss the particular journeys of the five. Narrated by Meryl Streep.

Said it last January: At the very least Roger Michell‘s My Cousin Rachel (Fox Searchlight, 7.14) is going to look great. The dp is Mike Eley, whose only major credit (at least in terms of high critical regard) is having co-shot Kevin McDonald‘s Touching The Void. You can tell right off that Rachel Weisz‘s Rachel is deranged and trouble for all concerned, and particularly for Sam Claflin‘s Philip. Claflin strikes me as a better looking, less creepy Michael Fassbender. Philip was played by Richard Burton in Henry Koster‘s 1952 version, which popped only a year after Daphne du Maurier’s novel was published.

HE to Criterion’s Peter Becker (who’s on vacation): “Peter — Could you please tell me what Criterion’s plans are for offering 4K versions of its library, if not via physical media (4K UHD Blurays) then at least via 4K streaming files on Filmstruck? I’ve been floored by Amazon’s 4K streaming versions of Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and I would love, naturally, to see L’Avventura, Blow-Up, One-Eyed Jacks, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and all my other favorite Criterion Bluray titles on 4K. A Filmstruck app, by the way, still isn’t available on the Roku box. A tech support person recently wrote that the Filmstruck app will arrive on Roku sometime in May. Is that true? I realize that you’re not exactly a vigorous communicator when it comes to direct questions from persons like myself, but is there any chance you could reply this time? Or at least ask someone to provide answers on your behalf? Many thanks — Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere”

Posted by TCM chatroom guy named “TopBilled” in thread about when Roku will finally carry the Filmstruck/Criterion app. A Filmstruck rep told him sometime in May, but you never know.

I was discussing with a friend the differences between real and fake 4K, and just how many 4K Blurays out there are generating the maximum true blue, and how many are flim-flamming with HDR-enhanced 2K uprez product, which seems to be good enough for most customers. There’s a half-decent site (Real or Fake 4K) that examines the particulars. Everyone says how great the Revenant 4K Bluray looks, but even this visually dazzling tour de force isn’t a pure experience. Real or Fake 4K says that while “films shot with 2.8K camera have more than twice the pixels as an ordinary 1080p Bluray”, The Revenant was “shot in 3.4K (some scenes 6.5K), VFX-rendered in 2K with the digital intermediate done in 4K” — obviously close but not quite an absolutely pure 4K cigar. The friend recommended that I buy Panasonic’s 4K UHD Bluray player — DMP-UB900 — for $600 and change, and right away I thought “no way.” Not until an abundant library of pure 4K Blurays of quality-level films are available, preferably with a good percentage of the classic stuff shot in large-format celluloid (70mm, VistaVision, et. al.). And that price has to come down.

Queer as I am for black-and-white Scope (2.39:1), I can’t see paying $30 for Twilight Time’s Our Man in Havana Bluray. I saw this agreeably droll Carol Reed film at the Aero two and half years ago, and as pleasant as it was it failed to lift me out of my seat. It was obviously made without any such notion in mind. Yes, I know the Bluray will almost certainly look sharper and richer than it did at the Aero. I would probably cough up $20 but no — Twilight Time insists otherwise.

Maureen O’Hara and Alec Guinness flanking Fidel Castro during making of Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana.

“Vacuum Cleaner Intrigue,” posted on 8.22.14: Last night I went to see Carol Reed and Graham Greene‘s Our Man in Havana (’59) at the Aero. A dryly amusing, mild-mannered timepiece. Intelligently written by Greene, pleasantly assembled. Handsomely shot in widescreen black-and-white (those old cobblestoned streets of Havana look wonderful under streetlights), although everyone is unfortunately affected with the CinemaScope mumps. Alec Guinness in his prime, Ernie Kovacs, Noel Coward, Maureen O’Hara, Ralph Richardson, Burl Ives, etc. The sort of light-hearted, old-school, mid 20th Century film that was all but eradicated by the cultural upheavals and radical passions of the ’60s and all that followed.

“Havana was filmed in Havana two months after Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.

I was told this morning that my Cannes ’17 press credentials have been approved, and that I’m good for the usual pink-with-yellow-pastille badge. Unlike Team Sundance, the Cannes people know how to treat a hard-filing veteran. I wrestled briefly with using the above headline, but it’s the first thing that came to mind and that’s usually the way to go. (Yes, every so often it’s not.) “In Like Flynn” means you’ve got it, no sweat, walk right in, etc. We’re all aware of Errol Flynn‘s errant reputation, but I decided long ago that he’s more of a metaphor for self-destruction than anything else. Flynn totally cancelled his cool ticket by destroying himself with drink. The man looked like a 73 year-old when he died at age 50 from a heart attack. He may have been “in like Flynn” in the late ’30s and ’40s, but he was “wrecked like Flynn” by the mid 1950s, when he was only 45 or thereabouts. Heed this warning, party animals: think seriously about making lifestyle adjustments when you hit your late 30s or else.

Errol Flynn at age 35 or thereabouts.

Destroyed, diseased, dessicated at age 50.

HE’s own Cristian Mungiu — Palme d’Or winner for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and co-recipient of last year’s Best Director prize for Graduation — will serve as the honcho for the 2017 Cannes Film Festival’s student and short film juries. What does this have to do with the price of rice in Pomona? Nothing, but at least it’s another opportunity to remind engaged, upmarket viewers to catch Graduation when it opens on April 7th…please.

It’s also an opportunity to re-post my 5.19.16 Graduation review, titled “Graduation Is A Grabber, But Cutting A Slight Ethical Corner In a Tight Spot Isn’t Necessarily An Evil Thing”:

Cristian Mungiu at Bouchon during a 2012 Beyond The Hills promotional party.

Graduation is a fascinating slow-build drama about ethics, parental love, compromised values and what most of us would call soft corruption. It basically says that ethical lapses are deceptive in that they don’t seem too problematic at first, but they have a way of metastasizing into something worse, and that once this happens the smell starts to spread and the perpetrators feel increasingly sick in their souls.

I don’t necessarily look at things this way, and yet Mungiu’s film puts the hook in. I felt the full weight of his viewpoint, which tends to happen, of course, when you’re watching a film by a masterful director, which Mungui (Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days, Beyond The Hills) most certainly is.

And yet I tend to shy away from judging people too harshly when they bend the rules once or twice. Not as a constant approach but once in a blue moon. I’m not calling myself a moral relativist, but I do believe there’s a dividing line between hard corruption and the softer, looser variety, and I know that many of us have crossed paths with the latter. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

Showtime’s page for The Beach Boys: Making ‘Pet Sounds’ (4.7, on demand 4.8) says that the doc is “celebrating the 50th anniversary” of Brian Wilson’s landmark album. But of course it isn’t. Pet Sounds was recorded between 7.12.65 and 4.13.66, and was released on 5.16.66, so the doc might as well celebrate the 51st anniversary. I’m presuming that it happened because of Bill Pohlad‘s impressive recreations of the making of this album in Love & Mercy. It would be more interesting, I feel, to see a doc about the making of Smile — the saga of how it was recorded and then abandoned and then reborn in the 21st Century.