Film & Arts - Film Festival Traveler

the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.

Connect with us:

You are here: Home

Film & Arts

Reviews

January '26 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 09 January 2026 01:23; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Housemaid

(Lionsgate)

This often risible but entertaining drama based on Freida McFadden’s lively page-turner of a novel, tries a sleight of hand by pitting an unhinged mother, Nina, against her new, desperate housemaid, Millie—as Nina’s angelic husband, Andrew and young daughter Cece look on.

Director Paul Feig could never be accused of subtlety, so when it’s obvious early on who the villain is, the rest of this overlong flick becomes a slog, especially when everything is spelled out with clunky flashbacks. Still, the twisty revelations and consequences meted out are fun to watch, as are Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney’s paired performances as Nina and Millie.

Holding Liat

(Meridian Hill Pictures)

When Liat Beinin Atzili and husband Aziz are taken hostage during the horrific October 7 Hamas attacks, her parents Yehuda and Chaya Beinin, sister Tal and children are left wondering if they are still alive and dealing with an unwanted notoriety, publicly discussing the hostages and navigating a minefield of political machinations from every side.

Brandon Kramer’s powerful documentary—which has been unjustly criticized for not acknowledging the suffering of Palestinians as well as other Israelis attacked that day—explores the family’s anger, despair, hope, sadness and willingness to put their trust in politicians with whom they disagree (notably Netanyahu) in an almost unbearably intimate way.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Black Phone 2

(Universal)

In this unnecessary sequel, director Scott Derrickson—who also helmed the much cruder original—cleverly made this entry a creepy slowburn that nevertheless overstays its welcome with the usual dumb behavior and cheap scares typifying its genre.

Still, the performances of Madeleine McGraw, Mason Thames and Miguel Mora as the teenage leads more than compensate, and even those not enamored of slasher flicks can find something worth their time. The UHD transfer looks superb; extras include deleted scenes and featurettes.

Bugonia

(Universal/Focus Features)

Director Yorgos Lanthimos returns for yet another hamfisted, unfunny satire-cum-allegory-cum-cautionary tale that takes a few interestingly offbeat ideas from Korean director Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save the Green Planet! and proceeds to make comic, dramatic and cinematic mincemeat of them.

When two inept kidnapers somehow capture a pharmaceutical company CEO believing she’s an alien about to supplant humanity, little happens that is any way original, amusing or insightful. Even changing the gender of the second kidnaper makes no narrative or symbolic sense; and if Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons continue to put themselves at Lanthimos’ behest with diminishing returns, poor Aidan Delbis as the expendable autistic idiot is hung out to dry. The film does look impressive in 4K; extra is a making-of documentary.

Streaming Release of the Week

Visions

(Dark Sky Films)

In this equally disturbing and enervating mystery, Diane Kruger gives a smoldering performance as Estelle, a jet pilot having an affair with another woman, Ana, who must figure out why she disappeared and whether her husband Guillaume (or Estelle herself) is involved. Yann Gozlan directs for maximum slickness, and considering the cast and locations, it all certainly looks good.

But the script is a mess, and the attempt to make this a sort of erotic Twilight Zone episode is only partly successful. Kruger, Marta Nieto (Ana) and Mathieu Kassovitz (Guillaume) do their best to keep this from going off the rails before the risible ending reveal.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Good Fortune

(Lionsgate)

Keanu Reeves is having a good time as Gabriel, an inept angel who is literally clipped of his wings when he screws up and ends up working in menial jobs while waiting for another chance to redeem himself in writer-director-star’s Aziz Ansari’s rather mild gig-economy satire set in a Los Angeles of haves and have nots.

Instead of concentrating on his own, drippy character Arj—hoping for a get-rich-quick break and winning the heart of Elena (the winning Keke Palmer)—Ansari should have junked it all (including the usual one-note Seth Rogen as Jeff, the rich tech bro who turns out to be a hero of sorts and the equally insufferable Sandra Oh as Martha, Gabriel’s angelic supervisor) and concentrated on Gabriel’s subplot, which is by far the best thing in the film. It all looks terrific on Blu-ray; extras are an audio commentary and featurettes.

CD Release of the Week

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—A Hero’s Life

(Beau Fleuvre Records)

The latest excellent release from conductor JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) is an adventurous recording bringing together a seemingly unlikely pair: Richard Strauss’ virtuosic tone poem Ein Heldenleben—the English translation of which gives the disc its title—and the world-premiere recording of Behzad Ranjbaran’s Violin Concerto.

A Persian composer, Ranjbaran filters thousands of years of his culture through the virtuosity of the orchestra and writes exquisitely for the violin. Strauss also powerfully unleashes large orchestral forces throughout, including a lovely violin line as well. BPO concertmaster Nikki Chooi is a masterly soloist in each piece, and Falletta conducts first-rate performances.

New York Philharmonic Perform Frolyak & More

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 08 January 2026 13:56; Written by Jack Angstreich

Dalia Stasevska conducts Joshua Bell. Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall, on the morning of Friday, November 7th, I had the privilege to attend a fine concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the distinguished direction of Dalia Stasevska.

The event started brilliantly with Aaron Copland’s extraordinary, stirring Fanfare for the Common Man. The celebrated Joshua Bell then entered the stage for an impressive performance as soloist of Thomas de Hartmann’s unsung Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 66, from 1943. The Largo introduction to the initial movement is lyrical and seemingly wistful; it transitions to a much livelier, playful section of the Allegro main body, but the more elegiac music returns, followed by an extended, more forceful—even martial—episode that, after a solemn cadenza, concludes with a sad dénouement. The slower, ensuing Andante religioso is at times anguished but ultimately affirmative, closing gently, while the more folkish Menuet fantasque that follows contains a lilting, dance-like Trio. The energetic Finale, marked Vivace, builds to a dazzling climax. Enthusiastic applause elicited a delightful encore from the violinist and the ensemble: Frédéric Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 9, No. 2, arranged by Bell and B. Wallace.

The second half of the concert was even stronger beginning with the admirably realized US premiere of Bohdana Frolyak’s striking Let There Be Light, from 2023. The composer contributed this note on the piece for its premiere:

All the music I write these days is about Ukraine: about its beauty, its uniqueness — and about light, which has to defeat darkness.

This single-movement work for symphony orchestra is quite a dynamic composition, symbolizing light that takes a path through darkness and back to light. This path is reflected in the musical language of the work. A calm beginning, with lyrical cello and violin solos over a background of coloristic harmonies in strings, and with these solos imitated in woodwinds, leads to a disturbing central section and then a dramatic culmination, at the peak of which we hear a melody in violins and full orchestra with expressive solos for strings.

Before the end of the work, where peace and an atmosphere of light take the lead, the music immerses itself in dissonant intervals and chords, as if to remind us of the darkness that rules the world.

The piece closes with a calm, enlightened coda, built on the basis of a clear C major, supplemented with layers of additional intervals and chords which, however, don't interfere with the “sound” of light and quietness.

Probably, the highlight of the program, however, was its beautifully enacted final selection: Benjamin Britten’s remarkable Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20, from 1940. About it, in an interview from that year, he explained:

I'm making it just as anti-war as possible. I don't believe you can express social or political or economic theories in music, but by coupling new music with well known musical phrases, I think it's possible to get over certain ideas. ...

One's apt to get muddled discussing such things — all I'm sure of is my own anti-war conviction as I write it.

He also contributed the following commentary on the piece for its premiere:

I. Lacrymosa. A slow marching lament in a persistent 6/8 rhythm with a strong tonal center on D. There are three main motives: (1) a syncopated, sequential theme announced by the 'cellos and answered by a solo bassoon; (2) a broad theme, based on the interval of a major seventh; (3) alternating chords on flute and trombones, outlined by the piano and harps. The first section of the movement is quietly pulsating; the second a long crescendo leading to a climax based on the first 'cello theme. There is no pause before —

II. Dies irae. A form of Dance of Death, with occa-sional moments of quiet marching rhythm. The dominating motif of this movement is announced at the start by the flutes and includes an important tremolando figure. Other motives are a triplet repeated-note figure in the trumpets, a slow, smooth tune on the saxophone, and a livelier syncopated one in the brass. The scheme of the movement is a series of climaxes of which the last is the most powerful, causing the music to disintegrate and to lead directly to —

III. Requiem aeternam. Very quietly, over a background of solo strings and harps, the flutes announce the quiet D major tune, which is the principal motif of the movement.

There is a middle section in which the strings play a flowing melody. This grows to a short climax, but the opening tune is soon resumed and the work ends quietly in a long, sustained clarinet tone.

The first movement, marked Andante ben misurato, begins dramatically and portentously—a certain lugubriousness is sustained throughout and it closes quietly. The Allegro con fuoco, second movement is more impassioned and turbulent, while the finale, with a tempo of Andante molto tranquil, is more subdued—the music intensifies but ends very softly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

Broadway Play Review—Bess Wohl’s “Liberation”

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Saturday, 03 January 2026 22:05; Written by Kevin Filipski

Liberation

Written by Bess Wohl

Directed by Whitney White

Performances through February 1, 2026

James Earl Jones Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, New York, NY

liberationbway.com

The cast of Liberation (photo: Little Fang)

Playwright Bess Wohl has a happy talent for astutely observing families and individuals that are either broken or whole; from Make Believe to Grand Horizons, Wohl’s plays understand the constantly shifting push and pull animating such relationships. Her latest, Liberation, continues that steak—to an extent. Based on her mother’s story and cheekily subtitled A Memory Play About Things I Don’t Remember, Liberation is a way for Wohl to work out what her mother and other women of that generation did on behalf of women’s equality a half-century ago and whether it was all for naught.

The women of Liberation are from a small town in Ohio and meet in a school gym once a week in the slowly changing 1970s. The lead character is Lizzie, Wohl’s mother’s—and Wohl’s—stand-in, who toggles between both women while breaking the fourth wall to address the audience; she starts a discussion group of local women, not knowing who might show up. But several respond to her flyer, across a convenient spectrum—several white women (one a foreigner) and two Black women—and the play follows their ill-fitting first steps while they slowly gain confidence to have their voices heard in a protest about equal pay for equal work.

Alongside the 30ish Lizzie, there’s Margie, in her 50s; Susan, in her early 20s; Celeste, a Black woman in her late 30s; Isidora, an Italian woman around 40; Dora, also in her 20s; and Joanne, a Black woman in her early 30’s. After an initial thawing-out period, they start trusting one another by nudging others to take control of their own situations, whether it’s Margie belatedly realizing her lengthy marriage to a typical caveman of the time has been a sham or Dora leaving her secretarial job after her sexist boss bypasses her for a promotion in order to elevate another “neanderthal,” in Dora’s words.

Although the situations occasionally turn sitcomish or saccharine, Wohl’s truthful dialogue allows her women to speak frankly and with an incisive bite, including hilarious interactions like Margie bringing her husband’s beer to share with the others (”he’s not going to miss it,” she says) or Isidora’s frequent foul-mouthed outbursts. Only Lizzie seems more a symbol than an individual, and Wohl’s decision to include Bill (Lizzie’s future husband and the narrator’s future father) as the play’s lone male is ill-advised not only because the feminine/feminist dynamic is unbalanced whenever he appears but also because such a dramatic crutch is a contrived way to get Wohl’s parents onstage together.

There are other missteps, like Joanne standing in for Lizzie in scenes that explore more intimate moments in Wohl’s mother’s and father’s relationship but simultaneously keep them at a safe distance. And the humor can also get arch, as in the opening scene when the women wander into the gym and there’s an argument about whether the “B” that Lizzie wrote on the flyer to denote “basement” looks more like an “8,” causing Isidora to walk all the way upstairs looking for a non-existent high floor.

But the uniformly excellent performances of the entire cast—led by Susannah Flood as Lizzie, another in this terrifically personable actress’ series of thoughtful portrayals (including another in Make Believe)—coupled with Whitney White’s empathetic direction on David Zinn’s pinpoint unit set let Liberation be pretty satisfying as a personal and political memory play.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s Performs Beethoven at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 02 January 2026 14:56; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Fadi Kheir

At the splendid Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, November 6th, I had the privilege to attend a wonderful concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—of masterworks by Ludwig van Beethoven, including several rarely heard in live performance, featuring the excellent Orchestra of St. Luke’s—admirably conducted by Raphaël Pichon—along with several impressive singers and the outstanding Clarion Choir led by its Director, Steven Fox.

The event started promisingly with the seldom rendered Geistlicher Marsch from the lesser-known incidental music for Friedrich Schiller’s play König Stephan, Op. 117, from 1811. This was followed by selections from the poetry of Walt Whitman, recited by Alex Rosen. Another pleasurable surprise was Friedrich Silcher’s Persicher Nachtgesang from 1846—here arranged by Robert Percival—after the magnificent Allegretto from Beethoven’s extraordinary Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92; Rosen sung the basso part along with mezzo-soprano Beth Taylor, tenor Laurence Kilsby and The Clarion Choir.

Two beautiful movements ensued from the equally undervalued incidental music from 1815 for the play, Lenore Prohaska, by Johann Friedrich Duncker: first the Romance sung by soprano Liv Redpath, and then the Melodrama. Taylor then recited an excerpt from “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, whose autobiography was praised by literary critic Harold Bloom.

The highlight of the evening, inevitably, was its final work, a sterling account of Beethoven’s incredible Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125, completed in 1824, which employed all the soloists as well as the chorus. Most of the marvelous initial movement—marked Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso—which opens mysteriously, and seemingly inchoately, interrupted by forceful statements of the primary theme, is alternately lilting and propulsive; it finishes somewhat suddenly and emphatically. The succeeding, often exhilarating and sometimes playful Scherzo—its tempo is Molto vivace—is the most transumptively Mendelssohnian of the movements and it too has a driving rhythm and ends abruptly; the contrasting Trio section has an almost pastoral quality. Like many of the composer’s lyrical slow movements, the one in this piece, an Adagio molto e cantabile, contains some of its most heavenly music and concludes relatively quietly. In the glorious Finale, after what Richard Wagner described as a “fanfare of terror,” the score has a tentative quality until the stirring statement of the famous theme setting Friedrich Schiller’s 1785 poem, the “Ode to Joy,” whereupon the basso enters; it closes triumphantly.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

Newsletter Sign Up

Upcoming Events

No Calendar Events Found or Calendar not set to Public.

Tweets!

Tweets by @FilmFestTravel