Unlikely Besties

Sometimes it’s hard to find a theme for a column. And sometimes it’s pretty easy, as we’ll see in the same-day releases of Wicked and Juror #2. Both were hotly anticipated studio titles, after all, and both became cultural flashpoints … though for very different reasons.

Wicked – or rather Wicked Part One, as the on-screen title announces – was the 800-pound gorilla of the holiday season, an adaptation of the blockbuster stage musical adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s revisionist prequel to The Wizard of Oz that imagines the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North as school pals. (Did anyone not know that? Well, now you do.)

Starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in roles originated onstage by Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenoweth, with Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum in key supporting roles, it was marketed with all the power the studio could muster, laser-targeting theater kids with TikToks and Instagram Reels and whatever they have on Twitter now. You couldn’t not know it was coming out.

Juror #2, on the other hand, only became a thing when it looked like it might not be coming out at all.

Clint Eastwood’s legal drama – his first film since the pandemic-era Cry Macho – nearly went straight to streaming, until the outcry led Warner to grant it a modest theatrical release, ostensibly to qualify for awards consideration. It didn’t wind up getting that much traction, but it did become a cause celebre among entertainment journalists and film critics, who framed the movie as an example of the grown-up, unflashy cinema been that’s increasingly struggling for oxygen in the current entertainment landscape.

And you know, they’re right. Juror #2 may not be Eastwood’s best movie, but it’s easily his best work in a decade or so, and with a wide release and a half-decent marketing push it could have done decent business against the bigger, noisier holiday movies. Counterprogramming still works, if not on the same scale as the before-times, and this movie had something most of last fall’s other awards bait didn’t: It’s a conversation starter.

Juror #2 is a moral thriller, with Jonathan Abrams’ screenplay dangling a hook worthy of John Grisham: You have the chance to exonerate an innocent man, but it comes at the cost of your own freedom. Do you do the right thing? Or do you try something else?

That’s the quandary facing everyguy Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a devoted husband and expectant father who’s been selected to sit on what looks like a straightforward murder trial in Savannah. Except that as he learns the details of the victim’s death, he comes to believe that he himself was driving the car that struck and killed her, rather than her hot-tempered boyfriend. (It was raining heavily that night, and Justin thought he’d clipped a deer.) Realizing that stepping forward would implicate him in a hit-and-run, Justin instead tries to steer his fellow jurors towards a not-guilty verdict without betraying his own culpability.

Eastwood encourages Hoult to have fun with the role, and the actor is totally up for it; as Justin spirals between guilt and self-preservation, Hoult remains sympathetic while also being kind of a shit-weasel: He’s all about fixing the problem he caused without taking responsibility for it, which – as a recovering alcoholic – he should know is a terrible way to make amends. (Justin clings to the fact that he hadn’t been drinking on the night of the accident, and in all fairness it was an accident … but every moment he doesn’t come clean takes an innocent man that much closer to prison.)

Hoult isn’t operating in a vacuum, either; Zoey Deutch plays Justin’s very pregnant wife, Toni Collette is the district attorney who’s more concerned with bagging another conviction than revisiting the facts, Chris Messina is the defense attorney who remembers when it used to be about justice, man, and Kiefer Sutherland brings a frustrated dignity to the role of Justin’s AA sponsor, who happens to be a lawyer and therefore knows exactly how to help Justin navigate this awful dilemma – while also knowing he shouldn’t be helping him at all.

Leslie Bibb, Adrienne C. Moore, J.K. Simmons and Cedric Yarborough turn up as fellow jurors, each of them bringing a different and interesting energy to their scenes. And given Eastwood’s last decade of work, the fact that Juror #2 has any energy at all is a most welcome surprise. It feels like Eastwood got caught up in the production along with his cast, and the reward for his engagement is a small but very pleasurable picture. This one was worth fighting for.

There are no supplements on Warner’s Blu-ray, but we do get a very good 1080p/24 presentation of the feature, with a subdued but effective Dolby Atmos soundtrack. No special features, not even a trailer or the obligatory Clint At Work production featurette that’s accompanied every other one of Eastwood’s pictures on disc for decades. That seems kinda disrespectful, but I guess we should be grateful Juror #2 got a physical release at all.

Universal’s Wicked discs are jammed with goodies, because this movie is all about giving the fans what they want. The 4K and Blu-ray platters offer both the original theatrical version and the sing-along edition of Jon M. Chu’s candy-colored Part One. All two hours and forty minutes of it.

Does it need to be this long? My friends, it does not; while the act break is much more satisfying than Denis Villeneuve managed in Dune: Part One – “Defying Gravity” is a showstopper, after all – the story Chu is telling could have been delivered in two hours or even less. There is a lot of padding in this movie; it spaces out the songs and character introductions to an almost absurd degree, as Erivo’s misfit Elphaba and Grande’s vacuous Galinda circle each other for an hour or so of screen time before deciding to be besties – at which point the movie sits in place for another half-hour before the plot actually starts. Did that opening number move faster on stage? It must have, right?

Still, audiences have come to expect long movies to justify the price of an IMAX ticket, so here we are – and if the box-office returns are any indication, no one else had a problem with Wicked: Part One running almost as long as the entire stage show. Erivo and Grande are both giving big, movie-scale performances, and Jonathan Bailey is a fun foil as the aristocratic goofus who has chemistry with both of them.

Yeoh is quietly commanding! Goldblum talk-sings his way through the Wizard’s big number! Peter Dinklage voices a talking goat! And when it ends there’s … still more to come.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit Wicked isn’t a movie for me. I watched it, and it was fine; I’ll watch the second one, even though I know where it all has to end up and honestly prefer the songs in The Wizard of Oz.

Still: Universal’s 4K disc is top-notch, with a surprisingly delicate HDR grade – or maybe “restrained” is the right word, since the colors pop exactly when they’re supposed to – and whizzing, enveloping Dolby Atmos audio. (The screeches of those transforming monkeys really land.) If you want to bring Wicked home, this is the best way to do it.

Extras include two audio commentaries – a technically-minded track from Chu, and a much chattier one from co-stars Erivo and Grande – as well as 15 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, a 45-minute production documentary and three shorter featurettes (“Welcome to Shiz,” “A Wicked Legacy” and “The Wonderful Wizard”) that drill down into specific aspects of the production. Like I said, none of this is for me. But the faithful will love it.

Some other business before I sign off:

Remember how I wrote in my review of Heretic that VVS Films’ Canadian Blu-ray had been announced with different supplements from the A24 4K and BD editions available in the US? That disc arrived yesterday, and while the commentary track with writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods is included, the “Seeing Is Believing” production featurette is not; instead, VVS offers two junket-style conversations – one with leads Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, the other with Beck and Woods – and two promotional clips of the actors discussing their roles. Total run time is just under 20 minutes.

If you’re just looking to own the movie, VVS’ disc offers a pristine 1080p/24 master with the same Dolby Atmos mix that graces the A24 release.

I’ve also been given new check discs of Arrow Video’s recent 4K and Blu-ray release of The Cell, and the issue with repeated footage in the director’s cut has been corrected in both formats; I expect Arrow to announce a replacement plan in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll post the contact here when I have it.

And now that you’ve read all the way to the end, here’s a contest! I’ve got 4K/BD combo editions of Wicked for two lucky Shiny Things readers, courtesy of Universal Studios Home Entertainment; to enter, just e-mail normwilner@gmail.com with the subject line “Green Is Good” by 12pm ET on Thursday February 6^th. Winners will be selected at random, no singing required. Best of luck!

Wicked is now available in a 4K/BD combo edition from Universal Studios Home Entertainment; a Blu-ray edition is also available. Juror No. 2 is now available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.

Up next: Criterion gives Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy and Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey the special editions they deserve. Come meet the pickle man.