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

April '24 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 16 April 2024 22:11; Written by Kevin Filipski

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Absence of Eden

(Roadside Attractions/Vertical)

In writer-director Marco Perego’s sketchy melodrama, Shipp, a rookie border agent with a conscience, must deal with the cynical Dobbins for a partner; a girlfriend, Yadira, who may be undocumented; and an undocumented Mexican woman, Esmee, who is trying to protect a young child. Perego tries to be even-handed in his study of these flawed characters, but his vision is no deeper than that of a driver looking through his windshield in the pouring rain without wipers on.

The director’s wife, Zoe Saldaña, gives a committed performance as Esmee, Grant Hedlund is a persuasive Shipp and Adria Arjona is an impassioned Yadira, but they are performing in a vacuum, since the film is so thin dramatically and politically that it suggests a first draft.

Blackout

(Dark Sky)

If you haven’t had your fill of werewolf movies yet, along comes writer-director Larry Fessenden with his typically astringent take on the nocturnal creature feature, as an artist in a small town thinks that he may be the one who is behind several recent overnight maulings.

Fessenden keeps a sense of humor about his material, along with a smattering of social commentary, but there’s little here that we haven’t seen before—An American Werewolf in London anticipated the jokey but gory genre more than 40 years ago—yet it does have its occasional successfully tense moments.

Food, Inc. 2

(Magnolia)

In 2008’s Food, Inc., director Robert Kenner teamed up with investigative authors Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser to tell a cautionary tale of how Big Agriculture has made it nearly impossible to eat healthfully. Nearly two decades later, the sequel has arrived to tell an even more alarmist story that encompasses the disasters of the recent pandemic, notably that Big Ag corporations carved out exceptions to the many COVID restrictions to keep their factories going—at the cost of sick workers, among other things.

As Kenner, codirector Melissa Robledo, Pollan and Schlosser show, this is not a left-right issue, but one that affects all of us, and they allow several individuals (including U.S. senator Cory Booker) to discuss new and innovative ways of food production that might lead toward more food sustainability.

Irena’s Vow

(Quiver Distributing)

The astonishing true story of Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish Catholic nurse who was able to hide 13 Jews in the house of a prominent Nazi for whom she worked, is vividly dramatized in Louise Archambault’s feature from a script by Dan Gordon, based on his own play that played briefly Broadway in 2009.

Like the play, Gordon’s script is too melodramatic, even saccharine at times, but the humane, believable Irena of Canadian actress Sophie Nélisse rescues this low-key study of an ordinary person who almost backs into becoming a heroine.

Resistance—They Fought Back

(Abramorama)

This deeply felt documentary chronicles several instances of successful Jewish resistance against the barbarism of the murderous Nazis throughout Europe that counteracts the prevailing narrative that the Jews were just meek victims. Directors Paula Apsell and Kirk Wolfinger adroitly mix testimony from survivors and their descendants alongside discussion of historians to underline the heroic actions of so many.

With narration and other voices by Corey Stoll, Maggie Siff and Lisa Loeb, among others, this necessary portrait illuminates how goodness was able to, at times, overcome evil.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

The Devil’s Honey

(Severin)

When her boyfriend Johnny dies on the operating table at the hands of neglectful Dr. Wendell Simpson, vengeful young Jessica kidnaps Wendell and subjects him to torture of the physical and emotional kind, which morphs into a twisted sexual relationship. Italian director Lucio Fulci’s 1986 drama is often risible but always watchable, as he’s unafraid to get down and dirty with his characters—whether it’s the opening music-studio salvo between Jessica and Johnny as he plays his horn or the increasingly creepy interactions between Jessica and Wendell.

There’s also the stunningly erotic presence of Blanca Marsillach, the Romanian actress who plays Jessica persuasively. The film looks quite good in 4K as well as on Blu-ray; extras include interviews with Fulci, Marsallich and costars Brett Halsey and Corinne Clery as well as an alternate opening.

The Great Alligator

(Severin)

Not many would bring up this 1979 monster movie as one of the better rip-offs that arrived in the wake of Jaws, but Sergio Martino’s waterlogged thriller is demented enough to keep one watching, despite the silly dialogue and acting—especially by poor Barbara Bach, who looks properly embarrassed throughout.

The plot—an island god, seeking vengeance, takes the shape of a supergator to take down the natives and tourists at a tropical resort—is also ridiculous but keeps one interested for a relatively brief 90 minutes. The UHD transfer is good enough, as is the Blu-ray; extras include several interviews with cast and crew, including Martino, and English and Italian audio tracks are included.

Rambo—Last Blood

(Lionsgate)

If this is truly the final go-round for John Rambo, as this 2019’s title surely promises, then we’ve had worse before—I gave up after the awful third entry—and this, the fifth go-round, has Rambo going after the drug cartel criminals who have kidnaped and forced into sexual slavery the granddaughter of the woman who comanages his horse ranch.

Director Adrian Grünberg knows that Rambo’s—and Sylvester Stallone’s—bread and butter is action, the more violent the better, and this entry checks all the boxes, from the xenophobic treatment of Mexicans to some creative ways of taking out Rambo’s enemies when they attack him at home for a satisfying if predictable conclusion to the series. The UHD transfer is sparkling; extras are a substantial production diary and musical score featurette.

CD Releases of the Week

Benjamin Britten—Violin Concerto

(BR Klassik)

Just weeks after listening to Baiba Skride tackle the youthful Violin Concerto by English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-76), I got to hear another formidable take on that masterpiece, this time in an excellent recording by soloist Isabelle Faust, who easily dispatches the technical demands of this masterly workout for her instrument. Jakub Hrůša intelligently conducts the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Rounding out the disc are a few enticing chamber works by Britten that predate his concerto, including the world premiere recording of Two Pieces for violin, viola and piano, nicely played by Faust, her violist brother Boris, and pianist Alexander Melnikov.

Paul Moravec—The Shining

(Pentatone)

Despite being based on Stephen King’s original 1977 novel—which Mark Campbell’s libretto follows fairly faithfully—Paul Moravec’s opera must deal with the proverbial elephant in the room: Stanley Kubrick’s chilling 1980 film classic that jettisoned much of King’s book and remains The Shining of choice for me. That long shadow includes Kubrick’s music choices: his innovative and original use of works by 20th-century modernists Bartók, Ligeti and Penderecki are are one of the main reasons why the film remains disturbing and indelible. Moravec has gone in a different direction; the rumblings of menace always bubble under the surface of his score but often hold back the terrors that beset the Torrance family once father Jack becomes haunted by the Overlook Hotel’s ghosts.

Though it still effectively tells the tale, especially in its quieter moments like the touching finale, this adaptation falls short of the incendiary and baroque visual and musical explosion Kubrick created. Gerard Schwartz ably conducts the Kansas City Symphony and Lyric Opera of Kansas City Chorus, while the main roles are well taken by Edward Parks (Jack), Kelly Kaduce (Wendy), Tristan Hallett (Danny) and, best of all, Aubrey Allicock (Hallorann).

Broadway Musical Review—“Water for Elephants”

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Sunday, 14 April 2024 22:58; Written by Kevin Filipski

Water for Elephants

Book by Rick Elice; music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co.

Directed by Jessica Stone

Through September 8, 2024

Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th Street, NYC

waterforelephantsthemusical.com

Isabelle McCalla in Water for Elephants (photo: Matt Murphy)

Based on Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel that became a mediocre 2011 movie, Water for Elephants has splashed down on Broadway. And the most dazzling moments of this musical set in a circus are exclusively visual: the incredible acrobats and dancers as well as—impressively if derivatively—the puppetry that brings the captive animal performers, including Rosie the elephant, to life.

But despite that, Water for Elephants has songs that are unmemorable and a story that makes soap operas look like Shakespeare. The romantic triangle spotlights our desperate Depression hero, Jacob Jankowski, who joins the circus after a rural New York State performance—since his dad was a vet and Jacob studied it in school, he’s taken on as the new horse doc; Marlena, the beautiful star of the horse show; and ringmaster and circus owner August, who’s Marlena’s loving but brutal husband.

Jacob and Marlena meet cutely when he gives her recommendations about her ailing Silver Star, then they grow closer while training Rosie, who August hopes will be the big new attraction the circus needs. The musical then turns into a romantic rectangle, but its predictability overwhelms it: is anyone shocked by the comeuppance August contrives for aging circus veteran, Camel (who also was close to Jacob)? Then there's the unabashedly sentimental framing device of an elderly Jacob (played by the old pro Gregg Edelman), wandering into a circus from the rest home and telling his story to the workers—and us.

That Water for Elephants isn’t completely risible is due to Jessica Stone’s savvy staging that, whenever the love story cloys, comes to the rescue with spectacular acrobats or boisterously busy dance numbers—credit also to Shana Carroll and Jesse Robb’s clever choreography, Carroll’s lively circus design, Takeshi Kata’s evocative sets, Bradley King’s sharp lighting and David Israel Reynoso’s detailed costumes.

Then there’s the arresting appearance of several adorable animals, from a pet pooch and the circus monkeys to the unfortunate Silver Star, who gets the show’s best moment when Antoine Boissereau exquisitely performs a ballet in the air to visualize the animal’s suffering. Rosie, by contrast, isn’t very imaginatively thought out; in any case, the anthropomorphic animals’ look and movement are cut from the same cloth as the puppetry of The Lion King and War Horse, tweaked by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman and Camille Labarre but coming in a distant second.

The merely serviceable songs by PigPen Theatre Co. and book by Rick Elice are enlivened by the large and energetic cast, with the lovers Marlena and Jacob winningly enacted by Isabelle McCalla—who might soon give Lea Michele a run for her money—and Grant Gustin. They might not save Water for Elephants from drowning, but the show is a mild diversion.

April '24 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 10 April 2024 18:35; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Coup de Chance

(MPI International)

For his 50th film, Woody Allen returns to the blunt morality tales of Match Point and Solitary Man, this time set in Paris—and spoken in French (a language he doesn’t speak): a beautiful young wife runs into an old schoolmate and begins an affair, which triggers her jealous husband’s radar, with ultimately fatal results.

Woody foregoes the complex moral study of a masterpiece like Crimes and Misdemeanors for a straightforward story with an O. Henry twist; it’s minor but satisfying, thanks to his economical directing, Vittorio Storaro’s glistening photography and the persuasive performances, especially by the always winning Lou de Laâge.

The Beast

(Sideshow/Janus)

French director Bertrand Bonello has tackled provocative subjects as disparate as pornography, prostitution, terrorism and zombies. His latest, though, is a loose, middling adaptation of a fascinating novella by Henry James (The Beast in the Jungle); Bonello follows Gabrielle, a young woman whose DNA has purified and emptied of emotions, and he shows her past lives, from 1910 to 2044.

The 145-minute film is turgid and slow-paced, and even the myriad stylishness Bonello partakes in—split screens, changing aspect ratios, freeze frames, slow-motion, rewinding, voiceovers—are desperate stratagems to hide the lack of any compelling characterizations or insights. Even the usually magnetic Lea Seydoux at its center—and with fine support from George McKay, who reportedly learned French for the role—can’t keep this from becoming wan and moribund, except for a stunning underwater sequence halfway through.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Monster

(Well Go USA)

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made several memorable films about family bonds and their complexities, and his latest is a riveting, potent drama about the ramifications of a bullying accusation made against a schoolteacher. As usual with Kore-eda, the plot is like a pebble being thrown into a pond: its reverberations take in superbly etched studies of several characters, with flashbacks and shifting points of view keeping us on edge and involved.

The director has enormous sympathy for each of them in turn, his sensitive and insightful approach always paying dividends, and leading to a surprising, emotionally devastating finale. It goes without saying it’s exceptionally acted from a large cast. The film looks wonderful on Blu; lone extra is an English dub.

Lisa Frankenstein

(Focus/Universal)

In this soggy spoof of and homage to silly ’80s horror comedies, writer Diablo Cody has fashioned an occasionally funny but ultimately derivative tale of teenager Lisa, who meets and starts a secret relationship with a male zombie from the Victorian era.

It sounds icky and, for the most part, it is—neophyte director Zelda Williams and Cody lean into the goofiness of the era it’s set (1989), but that only goes so far: it’s up to Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse as the unlikely couple to make this enjoyable at times. The Blu-ray transfer is terrific; extras include Williams’ audio commentary, interview with Cody and Williams, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

Night Swim

(Universal)

This waterlogged attempt at a supernatural horror film is saddled with protagonists—a suburban family consisting of an ill, retired major leaguer, his wife, their son and daughter—that act moronically from the start, as the family buys the house even after the dad nearly drowns after falling into the seemingly haunted pool.

Once strange things start happening—which we know about since we saw a girl drown in the pool in the film’s intro—it spirals into true risibility as it steals from better movies like Jaws and Poltergeist. As the parents, Wyatt Russell and especially Kerry Condon try but fail to keep their heads above water, and writer/director Bryce McGuire is unable to throw the cast a lifeline. It looks good on Blu; extras include several on-set featurettes.

Die Walküre

(Naxos)

The second opera of Richard Wagner’s fabled Ring cycle receives a 2021 Berlin State Opera staging by director Stefan Herheim that’s part perplexing and part powerful—here’s hoping that the production becomes clearer in the final two Ring operas, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung.

Conductor Donald Runnicles nicely harnesses the massive orchestral forces, and the singers (especially Iain Paterson’s Wotan, Elisabeth Teige’s Sieglinde and Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde—handle the treacherous vocal writing spectacularly. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Releases of the Week

Fauré—Complete Music for Solo Piano

(Sony Classical)

French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a master of smaller forms, as witness his magnificent chamber music—his piano trio, quartets and quintets; cello and violin sonatas; and string quartet are all masterpieces. His larger works—the opera Pénélope; grand cantata Prométhée and his famous Requiem—are equally brilliant, but, as this new set of complete solo piano music attests, Fauré is justly celebrated for his intimately-scaled works.

Young French pianist Lucas Debargue tackles Fauré’s solo piano oeuvre with passion and precision; the Nocturnes and Barcarolles that Fauré composed throughout his life are imposing in their variety and majesty, and other works—the early F-major Ballade and the late 9 Préludes—sound both revelatory and reassuringly familiar in Debargue’s expressive hands.

Weinberg—Four Sonatas for Solo Cello

(Arcana)

Russia’s Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) sadly never witnessed his musical renaissance, which began with his shattering Holocaust opera The Passenger, several productions of which were followed by many first-rate recordings of his varied orchestral and chamber music released in the past couple decades.

Weinberg’s set of four solo cello sonatas (written between 1960 and 1986) nods to Bach’s renowned half-dozen suites—Benjamin Britten also composed three suites for Mstislav Rostropovich between 1964 and 1971—but there’s also a modernity to Weinberg’s technical demands that sets the four works apart. Cellist Mario Brunello plays magnificently throughout, and these formidable sonatas are another aspect of Weinberg’s large body of work that continues to be performed and appreciated.

New York Philharmonic Play Webern & Scriabin

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2024 14:35; Written by Jack Angstreich

Karina Canellakis conducts the New York Philharmonic with Alice Sara Ott on piano. Photo by Erin Baiano.

At Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall on the evening of Saturday, April 6th, I had the enormous pleasure of attending an extraordinary concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the brilliant direction of Karina Canellakis, in her uncommonly auspicious set of debut performances with this ensemble.

The event began admirably with a very impressively executed account of Anton Webern’s challenging but compelling, superbly scored Six Pieces for Orchestra. According to the useful program note by Christopher H. Gibbs (who is James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College and co-author, with Richard Taruskin, of The Oxford History of Western Music, College Edition):

Webern composed the initial version of Six Pieces for Orchestra in the summer of 1909, using as a model Schoenberg's recent Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, and offering the dedication: “To Arnold Schoenberg, my teacher and friend, with greatest love.”

He adds:

He revised the pieces in 1928, writing to Schoenberg: “Everything extravagant is now cut (alto flute, six trombones for a few measures, and so on).” In a later program note he said that the new version, heard on this concert, “is to be considered the only valid one.”

Webern wrote to Schoenberg before the premiere, saying that:

The first piece is to express my frame of mind when I was still in Vienna, already sensing the disaster, yet always maintaining the hope that I would find my mother still alive. It was a beautiful day — for a minute I believed quite firmly that nothing had happened. Only during the train ride to Carinthia — it was on the afternoon of the same day — did I learn the truth. The third piece conveys the impression of the fragrance of the Erica, which I gathered at a spot in the forest very meaningful to me and then laid on the bier. The fourth piece I later entitled marcia funebre. Even today I do not understand my feelings as I walked behind the coffin to the cemetery.

The composer also “provided the following explanation of the pieces for a German music festival in 1933”:

They represent short song forms, in that they are mostly tripartite. Thematic relations do not exist, not even within the individual pieces. I consciously avoided such connections, since I aimed at an always changing mode of expression. To describe briefly the character of the pieces (they are of a purely lyrical nature): the first expresses the expectation of a calamity; the second the certainty of its fulfillment; the third the most tender contrast — it is, so to speak, the introduction to the fourth, a funeral march; five and six are an epilogue: remembrance and resignation.

The individual movements of the work themselves somewhat deny my powers of description so I shall rest content here with Webern’s commentary quoted above.

The proceedings continued excitingly with a marvelous rendition of Richard Strauss’s magnificent, neo-Wagnerian, and highly dramatic tone poem, Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24. Annotator James M. Keller records that, “In 1895 Strauss acquiesced to a friend's request to provide an explanation of the piece's action”:

The sick man lies in a bed asleep, breathing heavily and irregularly; agreeable dreams charm a smile onto his features in spite of his suffering; his sleep becomes lighter; he wakens; once again he is racked by terrible pain, his limbs shake with fever — as the attack draws to a close and the pain resumes, the fruit of his path through life appears to him, the idea, the Ideal which he has tried to realize, to represent in his art, but which he has been unable to perfect because it was not for any human being to perfect it. The hour of death approaches, the soul leaves the body, in order to find perfected in the most glorious form in the eternal cosmos that which he could not fulfill here on earth.

The second half of the evening was also memorable, starting with an exceptionally accomplished realization of Maurice Ravel’s awesome Piano Concerto in G Major, dazzlingly played—in another amazing debut with the orchestra—by the meteoric Alice Sara Ott, who was dressed in a fabulous, sparkling, silver-white gown. About the composer, Keller records that:

As early as 1906, he reported that he had begun sketching a piano concerto on Basque themes, provisionally titled Zazpiak-Bat, and in 1913 he informed his friend Igor Stravinsky that he was refocusing his attention on it. But in late 1914 Ravel, by then installed in the south of France due to the disruptions of World War I, wrote to his student and colleague Roland-Manuel that he had to give up work on the piece since he had left his sketches behind in Paris. And that was the end of it, except that some material from the project was reworked when Ravel came to write his G-major Piano Concerto.

To the critic M.D. Calvocoressi, Ravel called it “a concerto in the truest sense of the word: I mean that it is written very much in the same spirit as those of Mozart and Saint-Saëns.” He continued:

The music of a concerto should, in my opinion, be lighthearted and brilliant, and not aim at profundity or at dramatic effects. It has been said of certain classics that their concertos were written not “for” but “against” the piano. I heartily agree. I had intended to title this concerto “Divertissement.” Then it occurred to me that there was no need to do so because the title “Concerto” should be sufficiently clear.

The initial, virtuosic Allegramente movement is ebullient and jazzy with some moody passages, strongly recalling the music of George Gershwin, and ends forcefully. The exquisite Adagio assai begins with a long, introspective introduction for solo piano; the movement becomes more lyrical with the entry of the orchestra and continues to build in intensity. The propulsive and spirited Presto finale is another showcase for piano technique; the composer’s affinities with Igor Stravinsky—in the latter’s early phase—are at their most pronounced here. Exuberant applause elicited a terrific encore from the soloist, Arvo Pärt’s Für Alina from 1976—the Ravel concerto appeared almost sheerly profligate beside this minimal work.

The night concluded stunningly with a thrilling version of Alexander Scriabin’s glorious The Poem of Ecstasy, Op. 54. The composer’s own program note for “a performance in Moscow shortly after the Russian premiere,” is gnomic and confounding:

Le Poème de l'extase is the Joy of Liberated Action. The Cosmos, i.e. Spirit, is Eternal Creation without External Motivation, a Divine Play with Worlds. The Creative Spirit, i.e. the Universe at Play, is not conscious of the Absoluteness of its creativeness, having subordinated itself to a Finality and made creativity a means towards an end. The stronger the pulse-beat of life and the more the precipitation of rhythms, the more clearly the awareness comes to the Spirit that it is consubstantial with creativity, immanent within itself, and that its life is a play. When the Spirit has attained the supreme culmination of its activity and has been torn away from the embraces of teleology and relativity, when it has exhausted completely its substance and its liberated active energy, the Time of Ecstasy shall then arrive.

Scriabin told his friend Ivan Lipaev, “When you listen to Ecstasy, look straight into the eye of the sun!” In 1909, Sergei Prokofiev interestingly remarked about the work that:

Both the harmonic and the thematic material, and the voice-leading in the counterpoint, were completely new. Basically, Scriabin was trying to find new foundations for harmony. The principles he discovered were very interesting, but in proportion to their complexity they were like a stone tied to Scriabin's neck, hindering his invention as regards melody and (chiefly) the movement of voices. Nonetheless, Le Poème de l'extase was probably his most successful work, since all the elements in his manner of composing were apparently balanced. But it was hard to imagine, at first hearing, just what he was trying to do.

In one of his notebooks, Scriabin inscribed the following poem, which served as the basis for The Poem of Ecstasy:

The Spirit
Winged by the thirst for life,
Takes flight
On the heights of negation.
There in the rays of his dream
Arises a magic world
Of marvelous images and feelings.
The Spirit playing.
The Spirit longing.
The Spirit with fancy creating all,
Surrenders himself to the bliss of love. …
I call you to life, mysterious forces!
Drowned in the obscure depths
Of the creative spirit, timid
Embryos of life, to you I bring audacity! …

With the piece’s astonishing and exalting close, the audience delivered an enthusiastic ovation.

Reviews

April '24 Digital Week III

Broadway Musical Review—“Water for Elephants”

April '24 Digital Week II

New York Philharmonic Play Webern & Scriabin

More Articles...

Newsletter Sign Up

Upcoming Events

Tweets!