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Reviews

November '26 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 06 November 2026 02:56; Written by Kevin Filipski

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The End of Oak Street

(Warner Bros)

David Robert Mitchell wrote and directed this clever monster movie that plays like a lengthy Twilight Zone episode as it spins a bizarre yarn of a middle-class middle America neighborhood in 1982 that finds itself back in the prehistoric era and the families must fend for themselves against killer dinosaurs.

Of course it’s nonsensically silly but it works, mostly because Mitchell keeps it relatively short, populates it with good actors like Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor and concentrates on thrills instead of explanations (notwithstanding the goofy ending). It all looks magnificently treacherous in 4K; extras comprise a trio of on-set featurettes.

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Christmas at the Kringles

(Briarcliff Entertainment)

When Mark Sevenson and his family move into a new neighborhood, they discover that their eponymous neighbors are so besotted by the Christmas season that they celebrate every day of the year—and they will violently make trouble for anyone who doesn’t go along.

It sounds like a dopily dark comedy, but instead director Kevin Lewis and writer Zack Imbrogno have made a sour, mostly unfunny and unnecessarily bloody attempt to combine the holidays and horror. The cast is defeated by the unoriginal material, but Rob Riggle manages to squeeze a couple of laughs out of a nutty Santa.

Fjord

(Neon)

Romanian writer-director Cristian Mungiu returns with his latest provocative morality play that dramatically reverberates long after it ends, like his earlier 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days and Beyond the Hills. Romanian husband Mihai, his Norwegian wife Lisbet and their five children have moved back to Norway, where their conservative religious beliefs butt up against their new progressive community, coming to a head when the parents are accused of abuse and their kids are removed from their home.

Based on a true story, Mungiu’s film is as complicated and messy as real life—although a subplot involving their neighbors’ elderly father too obviously underlines the difficult relationships between parents and children—and it’s acted superbly by the entire cast, led by Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as the beleaguered Mihai and Lisbet.

Raise the Red Lantern

(Film Movement Classics)

Chinese master Zhang Yimou’s ravishing 1991 drama, set during the 1920s, follows Songlian, the young fourth wife of a wealthy man who lives on an estate with all his wives—or mistresses, as they’re referred to—and the power plays, double dealings and relationships that happen.

Zhang has always been a primarily visual director, and the variously subtle hues of red that he and ace cinematographer Zhao Fei film may be the apogee of their filmmaking style. Zhang’s then-muse, the stunning Gong Li, is a spectacular Songlian, while the new restoration makes Zhang’s film look more dazzling than ever.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Carmen

(Opus Arte)

French composer Georges Bizet never got to appreciate the success of his now-classic opera, since he died of a heart attack at age 37 a few months after its failed premiere. Of course, it’s now among a handful of recognizable musical stage dramas, with indelible characters, a romantic but tragic story and the most intoxicating earworms.

In director Damiano Michieletto’s serviceable 2024 staging set in Franco’s Spain at London’s Royal Opera House, Bashkir mezzo Aigul Akhmetshina makes a splendid Carmen, dramatic, fiery, humorous and ultimately tragic. There’s superb hi-def video and audio; extras are two backstage featurettes.

Franz

(Cohen Media)

For her ambitious biopic about Franz Kafka, director Agnieszka Holland refused to take the obvious route in dramatizing the ordinary existence and extraordinary work of a writer whose very name has become an adjective that even those unfamiliar with his writings know. Her energetic direction—heightened by Tomasz Naumiuk’s expert cinematography—unpacks Franz’s rather conventional life and quite unconventional art in ways both illuminating and irritating.

Several characters directly address the camera as if giving first-person accounts in a documentary, while a short story like the intense In the Penal Colony is recreated in a too-literally blood-dripping manner. Intentional anachronisms abound as well, making Holland’s kitchen-sink approach as eccentrically strange as her subject, played with enormous intelligence by Idan Weiss, a twitchy Kafkaesque lookalike.

American Ballet Theater Perform "Petal" & "Petite Mort" at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 30 October 2026 14:41; Written by Jack Angstreich

James Whiteside, Madison Brown, and Calvin Royal III in Petal. Photo: Nir Arieli.

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David H. Koch Theater, on the night of Wednesday, October 21st, I had the considerable pleasure to attend a marvelous mixed program of dance works presented by the outstanding American Ballet Theater, the first of its fall season.

After opening remarks by Susan Jaffe, the Artistic Director of Ballet Theater, the event started splendidly with an admirable performance of Helen Pickett’s remarkable Petal, from 2008, originally commissioned by Aspen Santa Fe Ballet and here receiving its company premiere. The piece features a beautiful score: two excerpts from Philip Glass’s “dance opera,” Les Enfants Terribles, after Jean Cocteau’s eponymous novel, as well as the end title music from Thomas Newman’s soundtrack for the film, Little Children. (The connection with Glass recalls Jerome Robbins’s Glass Pieces which would seem to be a likely influence.) The attractive costumes were designed by Nete Joseph, and the excellent lighting by Brandon Stirling Baker. The performance featured a superior cast, including Lauren Bonfiglio, Tristan Brosnan, Madison Brown, Jacob Clerico, Fangqi Li, Calvin Royal III, Sunmi Park, and James Whiteside.

Also rewarding was the next work, Petite Mort, by the distinguished choreographer, Jiří Kylián, which, despite certain modern inflections, bore a stronger relation to the classical vocabulary. This piece had the most glorious score on the program: two of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s greatest slow movements from his piano concerti, i.e., the Adagio from the A Major K. 488 and the Andante from the C Major K. 467, the celebrated Elvira Madigan concerto. (Evangelos Spanos was the impressive piano soloist, with the orchestra conducted by Charles Barker.) The elegant costumes were designed by Joke Visser and the effective lighting by Joop Caboort. The cast here was even starrier, with Park, Li, Brosnan, and Whiteside again, along with Zimmi Coker, João Menegussi, Betsy McBride, Carlos Gonzalez, Chloe Misseldine, Thomas Forster, Hee Seo, and Isaac Hernández.

The highlight of the evening by far, however, was the concluding selection which hadn’t been performed by this company in three decades: the magnificent Paquita, choreographed by the now legendary Natalia Makarova, after that of the immortal Marius Petipa, set to a charming score by Ludwig Minkus, orchestrated by John Lanchbery. (The conductor was David LaMarche.) The sets and winsome costumes were designed by Jose Varona. This had the finest cast of all led by the astonishing Devon Teuscher and Joo Won Ahn, along with Yoon Jung Seo, Sierra Armstrong, Breanne Granlund, and Léa Fleytoux. (The superb corps de ballet were also featured.)

The artists, including Makarova herself who finally entered the stage, deservedly received a standing ovation.

October '26 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 29 October 2026 18:25; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Once Upon a Time in Harlem

(Neon/Film at Lincoln Center, filmlinc.org)

Filmmaker William Greaves pointed his revealing camera at a starry group of dignitaries from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance—including musician Eubie Blake, lyricist Noble Sissle and artist Romare Bearden—whom he invited to Duke Ellington’s uptown townhouse in 1972 for honest, informative and illuminating conversations about their memories of that era and how it helped to transform American culture.

Greaves’ son David took his father’s footage and has made a compelling and fresh portrait that ensures that these artists and intellectuals not only get a chance to speak their minds but also to—even more importantly—be identified.

Fatherland

(MUBI/Film at Lincoln Center, filmlinc.org)

In Pawel Pawlikowski’s chamber film, Nobel laureate Thomas Mann—the greatest German writer of the first half of the 20th century—returns home four years after Hitler’s defeat to claim plaudits from his native country with his daughter Erika—whose own demons include the suicide of her beloved brother, writer Klaus Mann—driving him in what becomes a metaphorical and poetic journey.

There’s a lot stuffed into this 80-minute drama from German literary and cultural history to the fraught relationship of Mann and his children. Although Pawlikowski glosses over some of this rich ore, the excellent central performances of Hanns Zischler as Thomas and Sandra Hüller as Erika make this near-essential viewing. Too bad the resourceful August Diehl only gets one scene as Klaus, but it’s a dark scene-setter for this chronicle of a broken family and nation, beautifully photographed in rich greys by Łukasz Żal.

Streaming Release of the Week

A Brief Affair

(Breaking Glass Pictures)

Ludovica Rampoldi wrote and directed this a one-note comedy-drama about two people who meet cute one night and reluctantly fall into an adulterous affair, managing to keep their illicit encounters secret—at least until a couple of unsurprising plot twists end up bringing everything into the open.

It’s all attractively acted by Pilar Fogliati, Adriano Giannini, Andrea Carpenzano and Valeria Golino, but Rampoldi’s derivative script and direction prevent this from becoming a true guilty pleasure. Too bad the costume film Primavera, directed by Damiano Michieletto from Rampoldi’s flavorful script, hasn’t been released yet hereabouts.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Eclipse Series 5—The First Films of Samuel Fuller

(Criterion)

Samuel Fuller (1912–97) was a director who was best-known for making low-budget films in many different genres mainly outside studio interference, although his first three features (collected here) are primary examples of his takes on the western and the war film.

His debut was the myth-busting western I Shot Jesse James (1949), followed by the darkly comic The Baron of Arizona (1950) and gritty Korean War drama The Steel Helmet (1951). Fuller’s films were raw and often crude but nearly as often original; on Blu-ray, these black and white films look vividly striking.

Rusalka

(Naxos)

Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s most dramatic and enticing stage work is this “lyric fairy tale” about the titular mermaid who becomes human when she falls in love with a man but her decision leads to tragedy. Dvořák’s gorgeously melodic music includes one of the most stirring arias ever written, the “Song to the Moon,” sung here in Philipp Stölzl and Philipp M. Krenn’s otherwise misguided modern production by the beguiling Dutch soprano Johanni van Oostrum.

Although the rest of the cast impresses—as is the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Dutch National Opera Chorus under conductor Joana Mallwitz—it’s van Oostrum who makes this strangely impersonal staging attractive. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week

George Enescu—Octet and Quintet

(Chandos)

Romanian composer George Enescu (1881–1955) was a musical prodigy on the level of Mozart and Mendelssohn, as these remarkably mature chamber pieces, written when he was a teenager, can attest.

Enescu composed his string quintet at age 15, but it’s an accomplished work that’s more than a bit reminiscent of Enescu’s musical hero, Brahms; but his octet for two string quartets, finished when he was just 19, is something else altogether: a thoroughgoing masterpiece that stuns with its breathtaking originality and endless variety. Members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective perform both pieces with assurance and vitality, befitting the youthful zest in which they were written.

Teatro Real Orchestra Perform at Lincoln Center

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 27 October 2026 14:16; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Thursday, October 15th, I had the exceptional pleasure of attending a fabulous concert presented by the incomparable musicians of Madrid’s Teatro Real Orchestra, under the outstanding direction of Gustavo Gimeno.

The event started brilliantly with a marvelous realization of Manuel de Falla’s exquisite El amor brujo, some of which has a celebratory quality, but elsewhere is more dramatic—or at least suspenseful—in character; it has some intimations of the music of Igor Stravinsky, especially in its rhythms. A terrific soprano, Adriana Gonzalez, then entered the stage to arrestingly perform the same composer’s superb Seven Popular Spanish Songs which vary considerably in mood and feature extraordinary orchestrations. Enthusiastic applause elicited a stunning encore from the vocalist with the ensemble: an aria, "Goizeko eguzki argiak," from the Basque zarzuela, Mirentxu, by Jesús Guridi.

Another splendid soloist, guitarist Juan Manuel Cañizares, then joined the artists to enchantingly play Joaquín Rodrigo’s superb Concierto de Aranjuez. The initial, Allegro con spirito movement opens somewhat jauntily and this is sustained throughout it, although some serious undercurrents are discernible. The ensuing Adagio opens with a haunting melody for the English horn which is then recapitulated by the guitar—most of the remainder of the movement is elaborated from this unforgettable material and it concludes very quietly. The finale, marked Allegro gentile, is also lively and cheerful, closing softly but charmingly. A standing ovation drew forth another enjoyable encore, here from Cañizares alone: “Cádiz,” from the Suite Al-Ándalus, the version for solo guitar derived from his own Concierto Al-Ándalus.

The second half of the evening was comparable in strength, consisting of a bewitching version of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s fantastic Scheherazade, Op. 35, which begins somewhat portentously and then mysteriously and then reveals a seemingly enormous influence upon the early ballet scores of Stravinsky for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Ardent applause was again rewarded with another lovely encore: the famous Prelude from the zarzuela, El bateo, by Federico Chueca.

Reviews

November '26 Digital Week I

American Ballet Theater Perform "Petal" & "Petite Mort" at Lincoln Center

October '26 Digital Week II

Teatro Real Orchestra Perform at Lincoln Center

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