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Reviews
May '26 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 21 May 2026 21:12
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
The Wizard of the Kremlin
(Vertical)
The relationship between incoming Russian president Vladimir Putin and advisor Vadim Baranov (based on the real-life Vladislav Surkov) during the bumpy beginning of the Russian Federation is dramatized with his usual rigor by French director Olivier Assayas. The political chicanery and media spin at the heart of Putin’s burgeoning autocracy is always enticing, but Assayas and cowriter Emmanuel Carrère stay mostly on the surface, rarely diving into the tantalizing complexities involved.
Paul Dano makes a one-note Vadim, Jude Law is an effective Putin and Alicia Vikander gives a stellar turn as Ksenia, a woman with whom Vadim gets entangled, but the film never really gains any dramatic or satiric steam, stopping and starting lethargically until the startling if unsurprising final shot.
(Black Bear)
Eiza Gonzalez shines as Rachel, a stealthy and glamorous lawyer who takes the assets of corrupt billionaires with the help of her reliable sidekicks Sid (Henry Cavill) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) in Guy Ritchie’s silly but entertaining adventure that traverses New York, the Canary Islands and Saudi Arabia.
Although there’s not much at stake here—even when Rachel gets abducted by her latest mark, Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem), we know she’ll be extracted by Sid and Bronco’s team—Ritchie paces his lark spiffily enough to get this to the finish line in a tidy 97 minutes.
Ask E. Jean
(Abramorama)
E. Jean Carroll initially appeared on most people’s radars a few years ago when she accused Donald Trump of sexual abuse in a department store changing room and successfully sued him for defamation when he stupidly—but unsurprisingly—said he couldn’t have done it because she wasn’t his type.
In Ivy Meeropol’s concise documentary, Carroll becomes more than just her run-in with Trump: she’s also an accomplished editor, writer, advice columnist and even television host who was called the female Hunter S. Thompson for her no-nonsense style. Indeed, she comes across in interviews both new and old along as other video footage as an intelligent and unafraid, the kind of woman who is Trump’s worst nightmare—which she is.
(Utopia)
When sister and brother art forgers Coco and Raymond start working with Holden, a young heir who wants his grandfather’s ruined artworks to be repainted and sold as genuine, their suddenly big-time operation enters the purview of Emily, an FBI agent who has befriended their mother in Jing Ai Ng’s fascinating study of the complicated ethics and morality of such partnerships.
Although the film’s ending is a bit rushed, the writer-director shows off a sure hand with his complex characters, all of whom are persuasively brought to life by Andie Ju (Coco), Brandon Soo Hoo (Raymond), Edmund Donovan (Holden) and Kelly Marie Tran (Emily).
Magic Hour
(Greenwich Entertainment)
There seems to be something wrong with married couple Erin and Charlie’s relationship—and we find out early on exactly what it is in this at times risible and always maudlin melodrama that approaches the subject of loss with tired visual tropes and dated emotional cues.
Although director Katie Aselton utilizes Sarah Wheldon’s cinematography to inject freshness into California’s overphotographed Joshua Tree, nothing can escape the banality of Aselton’s and husband Mark Duplass’ script. Aselton acts up a storm as Erin, and David Diggs is in fine form as Charlie, but it’s all for naught and feels overlong, despite its brief 80-minute running time.
The Propagandist
(Icarus Films)
Luuk Bouwman’s savage documentary focuses on Jan Teunissen, a Dutch filmmaker who became a major Nazi party supporter, for which he spent time in prison but afterward never expressed any regret for what he had done all while saying that he didn’t really anything that awful.
Rolf Schuursma, as part of an oral history project, interviewed Teunissen and others about being willing propagandists for Hitler’s regime, and Buowman introduces devastating evidence that Teunissen was far more than simply Nazi-adjacent. It’s an explosive if unsurprising portrait that demonstrates how collaboration is as damaging as being a true believer—and when it came to Teunissen, they overlapped.
CD Release of the Week
East Meets West—Anne-Sophie Mutter
(Alpha Classics)
When master violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter—who’s been performing in the international spotlight for about half a century—collaborates with some prominent contemporary composers on new works for her instrument, the result is unsurprisingly eclectic and often bracing. The album title comes from the composers and their cultural diversity: Aftab Darvishi (Iran), Unsuk Chin (South Korea), Jörg Widmann (Germany) and Thomas Adès (England).
They all reach into different musical pasts and a shared present to create commissions that Mutter beautifully makes her own, from Darvishi’s affecting solo piece, Likoo, to Chin’s colorful Gran Cadenza for two violins, Widmann’s sixth string quartet, a pensive Beethoven study, and finally Ades’ Air—Homage to Sibelius, a soaring concerto in all but name.
Broadway Musical Review—“Beaches” with Kelli Barrett and Jessica Vosk
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 15 May 2026 20:52
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Beaches
Book by Iris Rainer Dart and Thom Thomas
Music by Mike Stoller, lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart
Directed by Lonny Price, co-directed by Matt Cowart
Opened April 22, 2026
Majestic Theater, 245 West 44th Street, NYC
beachesthemusical.com
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| Kelli Barrett in Beaches (photo: Marc J. Franklin) |
Most people remember Beaches as the aggressively sentimental 1988 movie starring Bette Midler. But it was originally a novel by Iris Rainer Dart, who cowrote the book and lyrics for the Broadway musical version based on her book, not the film. Whether this was to avoid comparisons with the beloved screen tearjerker or not, the result is stilted and mawkish.
Beaches follows the lifelong friendship of extroverted Cee Cee Bloom and introverted Bertie White (Hillary in the movie) from the time they meet cute as kids on an Atlantic City beach until the moment Cee Cee drops her show-biz career to look after Bertie when she falls deathly ill. If the movie relied on Midler’s charisma and Barbara Hershey’s weepiness, the musical doesn’t do enough with its two stars. Jessica Vosk plays Cee Cee to the hilt, but she’s been directed to storm around like Midler, even though in interviews she has said she’s definitely not doing that.
Then there’s Kelli Barrett, one of our most winning and talented musical actresses, who plays Bertie. After making a superb Sherrie in the Off-Broadway musical Rock of Ages, Barrett was bypassed when the show first went to Broadway and then was made into a movie. Since then, she’s been in duds like Getting the Band Back Together and Doctor Zhivago. But Barrett is a trooper, and she makes Bertie a far more complete character than she deserves to be. The performers who play Cee Cee and Bertie as young girls (Samantha Schwartz and Zeya Grace) and teenagers (Bailey Ryon and Emma Ogea) are solid, and the number where all three pairs of friends are together onstage—“Show the World Who You Are”—is the most appealing in the entire show. Otherwise, the co-direction of Lonny Price and Matt Cowart is as uninspired as the lazily minimal sets by James Noone.
Beaches could have been a jukebox musical, since the movie was crammed with period-specific pop songs; instead, Dart has written lyrics for a bunch of unmemorable songs to which vet Mike Stoller has supplied routine melodies. The elephant in the theater is the soaring ballad “Wind Beneath My Wings,” which became a Midler concert staple after it went to number one on the charts in 1989. But it’s used here in the most middling (or Midlering) way: after Bertie’s offstage death (poor Barrett doesn’t even get a good dying scene!), it’s the obvious 11 o’clock number—but since it seems so obviously tacked on, it doesn’t have the emotional weight as it should.
Botching its biggest hit is an “oof” moment for a show with more than a few of them. On that score, Beaches ends up out of tune.
May '26 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 08 May 2026 01:13
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Release of the Week
“Wuthering Heights”
(Warner Bros)
In Emerald Fennell’s latest pseudo-provocation—following Promising Young Woman and Saltburn—Emily Bronte’s classic novel has been transformed into an often limp romance that drags along for more than two hours: if Margot Robbie (as Cathy) and Jacob Elordi (as Heathcliff) remain watchable, it’s due more to their movie-star magnetism than Fennell’s labored direction and soggy writing.
The kids playing the star-crossed couple as youths— Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper—are quite natural and might come across better in a less obvious context, but we’re stuck with Fennell’s muddy visuals, choppy editing, on-the-nose symbolism and a score that’s not so much played as smeared over every frame. The film does look eye-popping on UHD; extras include Fennell’s commentary and three brief featurettes (23 minutes total) that include interviews with Fennell, Robbie and Elordi.
The Last One for the Road
(Music Box)
Italian director-cowriter Francesco Sossai’s scrappy comic drama tells the endearing if not poignant story of two drifting, alcoholic con artists who go on what they swear is a final bender, bringing with them a wide-eyed architectural student. Sossai makes up for what he lacks in originality with shrewd observations and a real sense of camaraderie that’s not forced.
The acting trio of Filippo Scotti, Sergio Romano and Pierpaolo Capovilla is impeccable, the smaller parts are all well-taken, and Sossai shows a relaxed style that might bode well in the future.
Our Land
(Strand Releasing)
The 2009 murder of Indigenous protestor Javier Chocobar in Argentina and its complicated legal and moral aftermath is the center of this enraged documentary by Lucrecia Martel, who has been making provocative features for more than a quarter-century.
Martel follows the tense courtroom drama—which plays out nearly a decade after the killing—but more importantly gives voice to the heretofore unheard Chuschagasta community, up against wanton corporate racism and destruction, all set in gorgeous landscapes stunningly rendered by Martel’s camera.
(Kino Lorber)
Iconoclastic French director Arnaud Desplechin—whose My Sex Life and A Christmas Tale are remarkably cutting portraits of messy relationships—returns with another skewered tale of screw-ups: classical pianist Mathias returns to his hometown Lyon from Japan, where he’d been teaching, to perform with his mentor, Elena. Butting heads with her during rehearsals, he finds himself drawn back into the life of his ex, Claude, whose husband has just died—Mathias befriends her young son, who looks strongly like him.
Desplechin revels in throwing these characters into highly emotional moments to navigate, and if he sometimes veers into melodramatic territory—Mathias feints when he first sees Claude upon his return—the observations are deeply felt, as are the performances by François Civil (Mathias), Charlotte Rampling (Elena) and Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Claude).
DVD Release of the Week
The Ties That Bind Us
(Distrib Films US)
In Carine Tardieu’s sensitive drama, the death of young mother Cécile in childbirth is the catalyst for several people—her shattered husband Alex, her confused young son David, their middle-aged (and childless) neighbor Sandra and young doctor Emillia—to deal with the tragedy in myriad ways, from disbelief and anger to healing and newfound love.
Although she skirts sentimentality throughout, Tardieu weaves very human responses into an emotionally stirring portrait of several different forms of parenting. The superlative cast includes Pio Marmaï (Alex), Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Sandra), César Botti (David) and Vimala Pons (Emillia).
Hidden Legacies—Weinberg & Korngold
(Delos)
When Soviet composer Mieczysław Weinberg died in 1996, he was a relatively unknown composer; three decades later, his musical renaissance is in full swing, and this disc highlighting two of his significant works for cello and orchestra is an example.
The Cello Concerto is one of Weinberg’s most eloquent large-scale pieces, while the Fantasia is less weighty but still enchanting. Rounding out the disc is the one-movement Cello Concerto of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who was more famous for his film scores but also more than capable of this short but enticing orchestral work. Cello soloist Kristina Reiko Cooper, who plays exquisitely, is given solid backup by the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra under conductor Constantine Orbelian.
Orchestra of St. Luke’s Performs Mozart & Mendelssohn at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 07 May 2026 13:30
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Jennifer Taylor
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, April 30th, I had the privilege to attend a splendid concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the fine musicians of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, under the distinguished direction of Masaaki Suzuki.
The event started auspiciously with an admirable rendition of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s popular Overture to his magnificent opera, Don Giovanni, from 1787. The renowned virtuoso, Midori, then entered the stage for a memorable performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s magisterial Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 61, from 1806. The long, complex, initial, Allegro ma non troppo movement begins somewhat solemnly with an extended introduction that soon becomes more intense before the orchestra states the beautiful, chorale-like, primary theme—with the entry of the soloist, a greater sense of lyricism is afforded. Despite the gravity of much of the movement, the music here ultimately is broadly affirmative in character; after a challenging, suspenseful cadenza, it ends triumphantly.
The ensuing Larghetto has a somewhat stately quality but is song-like too, if much more reflective and inward on the whole, before a dramatic transition to the ebullient—indeed, celebratory—dance-like, Rondo finale. In the latter movement there are, too, more serious, contrasting passages as well as pastoral moments—after a dazzling cadenza, it concludes jubilantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited a welcome encore from Midori: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Largo from his Solo Violin Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005.
The highlight of the evening, however, was the last work on the program: a superb account of Felix Mendelssohn’s extraordinary Symphony No. 4 in A Major, Op. 90, the “Italian,” which was originally completed in 1833, but then was revised in 1834. Its fabulous, Allegro vivace, first movement is joyous and quintessentially Mendelssohnian, although more subdued interludes express deeper sentiments; a glorious fugal section is simply astonishing in effect—after a marvelous climax, it closes exultantly. The Andantecon moto that follows is march-like and noble in spirit, if relatively restrained—it finishes softly. The succeeding Con moto moderato projects a certain serenity, despite elements of tension, and ends gently. The Saltarello finale, marked Presto, is propulsive and dynamic, with quieter episodes, but becomes more passionate and concludes forcefully.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
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