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Reviews
April '26 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 30 April 2026 12:56
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Release of the Week
The Seduction of Mimi
(Kino Lorber)
Italian director Lina Wertmuller—who died in 2021 at age 93—made frantic and garish but intelligent and humane movies for nearly five decades, like this raucous but perceptively comic portrait of Mimi, a loutish chauvinist who dumps his wife for a new woman whom he impregnates, all while trying to finesse being a Communist while trying to hold onto a job in a fraught political climate.
Wertmuller always kicks her characters in the rear as she simultaneously laughs with and at them; if there’s a certain rawness to her filmmaking—which would get progressively more confident, culminating in her all-time masterpiece, 1976’s Seven Beauties—she always is great with her actors, and Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, in their first of their three Wertmuller pictures as costars, respond with indelible performances.
Late Shift
(Music Box)
In Swiss writer-director Petra Volpe’s taut and often urgent drama, harried nurse Floria works a typical hospital night shift, running from patient to patient—some grateful, others not—desperately trying to get other colleagues’ help, even confronting a doctor about to leave (and does), all while doing whatever she can, which includes, at one point, making a mistake in medication.
In her screed against woefully understaffed hospitals, Volpe often lays it on too thick, but as her camera records the interactions of Floria and others, it becomes quite clear that Leonie Benesch gives an effortless but intense portrayal that even triumphs over a slightly sentimental final shot that damages but doesn’t destroy all that has gone before.
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Girls
(Cult Epics)
French director Just Jaeckin (1940-2022), known for softcore like the original Emmanuelle (1974) and The Story of O (1975), made this 1980 comedy-drama that’s also sex-centered but more character-centered as it chronicles four teen girls’ dealings with boys as well as older men while navigating themselves, their friendships and family life.
Although it’s a bit choppy, and the score by Eric Stewart of the band 10cc (whose “I’m Not in Love” makes an egregious appearance) is often misapplied, the energy and charm of its acting quartet—Anne Parillaud (who later became a star in La Femme Nikita), Zoé Chauveau, Charlotte Walior and Isabelle Mejias—make this an enjoyable romp. The UHD transfer has a nicely grainy look; extras include a commentary by Jeremy Richey and (on the accompanying Blu-ray) 2025 interview with Mejias, 2022 interview with Jaeckin and 1982 interview with Jaeckin, Parillaud, Cahuveau and Walior.
(Warner Bros)
The initial controversy over Barry Levinson’s 1996 movie as well as the Lorenzo Carcaterra book it was based on—is this story about several men whose deadly prank as young friends informs the rest of their lives true or not?—might have faded but watching the film makes one aware of how manipulative the entire thing is.
Still, your mileage may vary on whether that makes the storyline itself any less compelling, especially since it’s been expertly done by writer-director Levinson and his accomplished cast, from the big star names (DeNiro, Hoffman, Pitt, Bacon, Patric) to the mainly unknown youngsters. The film looks great in UHD; extras are two new featurettes with Levinson interviews.
Blu-ray Release of the Week
La Juive
(Naxos)
This grand opera by French composer Fromental Halévy (1799-1862), which dramatizes a then-impossible love between a Jewish woman and a Christian man, was once hugely popular but has since faded from the repertory with only sporadic revivals; this 2024 staging in Frankfurt, Germany, was directed by Tatjana Gürbaca, who does well by the work’s large scale and outsized emotions.
An excellent cast is led by Ambur Braid, John Osborne, Gerard Schneider and Monika Buczkowska in four demanding roles for big voices, and the orchestra and chorus are superbly led by conductor Henrik Nánási. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.
Blackbirds
(Alpha Classics)
This disc would be invaluable if it only included Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’ Cello Concerto No. 2—a remarkable work that should be in the regular repertoire alongside Dvořák and Elgar—which soloist Nicolas Altstaedt plays brilliantly, with Maxim Emelyanychev sensitively conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. But Alstaedt had the inspired idea to include other modern works from the 1960s (the Bacewicz piece was composed in 1963, just six years before the composer’s untimely death a few weeks before she turned 60) to round out the disc, small-scale works illuminating the era’s cello sounds.
Morton Feldman’s Durations II and Benjamin Britten’s Cello Sonata—both with Emelyanychev on piano—are expansive and enveloping, as is Sándor Veress’ Sonata for Solo Violincello, another piece that needs wider exposure. And the coup de grace is a version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” for cello, lute and vocal (the latter two by Thomas Dunford) that gives Alstaedt’s album the perfect title.
Brahms, Sibelius, & More with the Juilliard Orchestra
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 29 April 2026 14:34
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Claudio Papapietro, courtesy of Juilliard.
At Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, on the night of Friday, April 24th, I had the privilege to attend a superb concert featuring the precocious musicians of the Juilliard Orchestra, under the expert direction of David Robertson.
The event started splendidly with a marvelous reading of the outstanding Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83, from 1881, impressively played by a remarkable soloist, Angeline Ma. The initial, Allegro non troppo movement begins soulfully and then dramatically while a passionate Romanticism pervades it, even in its quieter, more reflective interludes; it finishes triumphantly. The ensuing Allegro appassionato—which functions as a scherzo—has a somewhat stormy quality for some of its length but there are more subdued passages; a statelier, more affirmative section precedes a recapitulation of the original material before the movement concludes emphatically. The Andante that follows opens tenderly and gracefully, culminating in a serene, rather meditative episode, but the movement becomes more turbulent at times as it unfolds; the inaugural melody returns in an extended, irenic dénouement that ends gently. The Allegretto grazioso finale is enchanting and joyful with a waltz-like character and ludic measures; it closes happily.
The second half of the event was comparable in power, starting with an admirable realization of the extraordinary, unorthodox Symphony No. 7 in C Major, Op. 105, of Jean Sibelius, from 1924. Also exciting was the last work on the program, a sterling account of John Adams’s enthralling Doctor Atomic Symphony from 2007, based on his eponymous opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer and Los Alamos. The first movement, titled The Laboratory, begins portentously and a strong sense of disquiet is sustained throughout it. The next movement, Panic, is unsettled in mood too as well as propulsive and suspenseful—it is very reminiscent of the music of Igor Stravinsky, particularly of a score like The Rite of Spring. About a part of the final movement, Trinity, the composer has written:
It is a setting (here intoned by the solo trumpet) of the famous John Donne sonnet, “Batter my heart, three-person'd God.” Oppenheimer's deep ambivalence about the weapon he has brought into the world finds voice in the poet's anguished cry of remorse over the loss of his soul.
This movement is mysterious and more amorphous in structure but also agitated; it concludes forcefully.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
Broadway Play Review—“Dog Day Afternoon”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 28 April 2026 21:16
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Dog Day Afternoon
Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis
Directed by Rupert Goold
Performances through June 28, 2026
August Wilson Theatre, 245 West 52nd Street, New York, NY
dogdayafternoon.com
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| John Ortiz (center) in Dog Day Afternoon (photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman) |
There are several problems with the stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon, the classic 1975 film directed by Sidney Lumet with Al Pacino as bungling bank robber Sonny centering a richly and blackly comic portrait of New York in 1972. The biggest flaw is that the flavorful New York atmosphere of which Lumet was a master is almost completely missing.
Of course, that’s because the stage cannot replicate what Lumet could show: a Brooklyn neighborhood where dozens of police and reporters—including news helicopters—and hundreds of locals showed up. In the film, the crowd is another character, hooting and hollering, at first cheering on Sonny—who exhorts them to yell “Attica!” to mock the police (mere months after prisoners there were killed during rioting)—before turning on him as the day drags on and it comes out that he needs money for his partner Leon’s gender-reassignment surgery. The “Attica” moment becomes the big first-act finale, with the audience taking over as the Brooklyn crowd while Sonny yells out those three syllables, which isn’t a very compelling replacement.
Otherwise, the play is well-staged by Rupert Goold on David Korins’ terrific set of the bank’s interior and exterior, which swings adroitly back and forth depending on wherever we are in the scene. But aside from sound effects that blast “New York” to the audience, the authenticity of early ’70s Brooklyn is absent. Stephen Adly Guirgis has written plays that drip with the exciting if sordid atmosphere of New York City that’s not usually captured elsewhere, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning Between Riverside and Crazy, so he might have seemed a logical choice for Dog Day.
His dialogue has the usual rat-a-tat of the city; even though large chunks come from Frank Pierson’s Oscar-winning screenplay, lots of other dialogue is new to the show. Guirgis even invents an amusing scene of a TV reporter talking to a gay-rights advocate after the disclosure of Sonny’s and Leon’s relationship, but this seems shoehorned in. But perhaps a few more such moments would have better taken the pulse of snarky local press coverage and local people’s reactions.
Guirgis too often coasts, though, as cheap humor prevails over incisive dialogue. Even outing Sonny to the others in the bank is played for laughs, which seems rather ironic in this context. Guirgis even changes the name of the cop in charge from Moretti (played so memorably by Charles Durning in the movie) to Fucco, which occasions repetitive mispronunciations of his name as Fucko. It’s to John Ortiz’s credit that, as Fucco, he gives the most sympathetic and well-rounded portrayal in the show.
Lumet also had Al Pacino, John Cazale and Chris Sarandon to further make this tragicomic tale riveting and unforgettable. Onstage, Jon Bernthal tries so hard not to act like Pacino that he ends up doing it anyway as Sonny; as his partner in crime Sal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach is as effectively low-key as Cazale was, but in his own sardonic way. As head teller Colleen, Jessica Hecht is not as irritatingly mannered as she usually is, but I would have liked to have seen what Andrea Syglowski—a trenchant actress who plays one of the tellers—could have done with that part. Esteban Andres Cruz doesn’t have a chance to make Leon as believable in his brief appearance as Sarandon did in the film, since—again—Guirgis plays Leon’s stay at Bellevue for easy yucks. And the phone call between Leon and Sonny (one of the highlights of the film) doesn’t have the same heartbreaking weight.
It might seem unfair to compare the play to the film, but this production keeps inviting it, mostly to its detriment. The stage version even uses a snippet of Elton John’s “Amoreena,” a rollicking deep cut from Tumbleweed Connection that’s played over the film’s opening credits, to begin act two. My most pressing thought after seeing this was, now that three 1975 best picture Oscar nominees have had stage adaptations (also One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Jaws, by way of The Shark Is Broken), when will we get to see Nashville and Barry Lyndon onstage?
Book Reviews—Wings, Scorsese, Miyazaki, Hirschfeld's Sondheim
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 25 April 2026 21:41
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Wings—The Story of a Band on the Run
(Liveright)
As part of Paul McCartney’s ongoing Wings reclamation project—which began with the music compilation and documentary Wingspan back in 2002 and continues this year with the release of the Amazon Prime documentary Man on the Run—this first-person account chronicles Paul’s entire ’70s trajectory, from leaving the Beatles and releasing two initially derided but now beloved albums, McCartney and Ram, before he and Linda embarked on putting together a new band with—aside from ever-loyal Denny Laine—a revolving cast of drummers and lead guitarists.
Editor Ted Widmer judiciously compiled new and archival interviews with Paul, Linda, Denny, other band members, the McCartneys’ children, Paul’s brother Mike, and others like Dustin Hoffman—who relates the famous anecdote of Paul whipping out an acoustic guitar and conjuring up “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” right in front of the actor—to present a thorough decade-long history of Wings. After Paul’s 1979 Japanese drug bust came the unceremonious dissolution of one of the biggest hitmaking groups of the decade and led to Paul’s resurgence as a formidable solo artist and as a keeper of the Beatles’—and, of course, Wings’—flame.
(White Lion)
Now six decades into a career that still continues to surprise, director Martin Scorsese has been tagged with the label as a maker of mainly gangster pictures, since GoodFellas looms so large in his oeuvre. But, as Ian Nathan’s closely argued appreciation of his more than two dozen films (so far—he’s currently making What Happens at Night, once again starring his favorite late-career actor, Leonardo DiCaprio) adroitly demonstrates, there’s much more to Scorsese than that.
After all, he’s adapted novels by Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence), Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ) and Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island), along with creating music documentaries about the Band, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison. Then there’s that startling character study, the underappreciated The King of Comedy, which may well be his most enduring film. OK sure, for every Mean Streets, Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, there are busts like New York New York, Cape Fear or Bringing Out the Dead, but Nathan skillfully chronicles Scorsese’s wide-ranging oeuvre as unique in American movies, with plentiful color images from the films underscoring his points.
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki
(Frances Lincoln)
Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki has made a dozen features over 45 years, and his elegantly artful onscreen stories are simultaneous mythic and humane, starting with his feature debut, 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, and continuing with his international breakthrough, 1988’s Princess Mononoke, all the way up to his—supposedly—final feature, 2023’s The Boy and the Heron. This beautifully designed volume, which includes a plethora of color film stills alongside Miyazaki’s own sketches for projects made and unmade, thematically groups the auteur’s subjects by section.
Nicolas Rapold’s text nicely weaves the many threads of Miyazaki’s influences and inspirations (as the subtitle makes clear) and the sheer beauty of the filmmaker’s fantastical imagery—often centering on anthropomorphic creatures who befriend intelligent but lonely young children—is what is most memorable in a splendid career that’s filled with highlights like the wrenchingly autobiographical The Wind Rises (2013).
(Abrams Comic Arts)
Last fall, Strokes of Genius, a superb exhibition of caricatures by the great Al Hirschfeld, was on display last September at the Oak Room in Manhattan’s fabled Algonquin Hotel. The small exhibit was populated by classic Hirschfeld sketches of entertainment legends from Louis Armstrong to Aerosmith. Also included were several of his drawings that were the highlights of so many Sunday New York Times’ Arts and Leisure sections, including several works illustrating shows by Stephen Sondheim.
This slim but elegant volume (the first of what is purported to be many “poster books” of Hirschfeld drawings) collects more than 50 sketches of Sondheim’s Broadway triumphs (and misfires), including those that were part of the exhibit: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sunday in the Park With George, Passion, and Putting It Together. More than two dozen images that take up entire pages can be removed from the book as ready-made frameable prints. David Leopold, creative director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, has written a nicely focused commentary on the drawings and shows; the book’s introduction is by none other than Sondheim veteran Bernadette Peters and the foreword is by theater reviewer Ben Brantley.
A new exhibition, Hirschfeld's Icons, which features his indelible caricatures of superstars from Liza Minnelli to the Beatles, will be on view at the Algonquin Hotel April 28 to May 8.
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