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Reviews
April '16 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 20 April 2016 21:55
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead
(Magnolia)
The long, strange history of National Lampoon—once America’s most irreverent humor magazine, notable for controversial covers like the iconic dog with a gun to its head, while also spinning-off to radio and TV shows and movies like Animal House and Vacation—is satisfyingly recounted in Douglas Tirola’s documentary.
New and vintage interviews illuminate the behind- the-scenes vibe, including glimpses of such veterans as P.J. O’Rourke, Matty Simmons, Doug Kenney and John Hughes. There’s a solid hi-def transfer; extras comprise more than an hour of interviews and deleted scenes.
(Severin)
This celebrated 1978 bit of Australian erotica, finally released in hi-def, stars the effervescent Glory Annen as a naïve young woman who blossoms sexually after discovering the delights of carnality.
Director John D. Lamond isn’t after subtlety, even if the soft-core sex scenes seem far less racy today; coupled with two bonus mid-‘70s films by Lamond, The ABCs of Love and Sex and Australia After Dark, this is a fine introductory set for those interested in adult-film history. Extras are audio commentaries and outtakes.
The Fool
The Major
(Olive Films)
Russian director Yury Bykov, who debuted with 2010’s To Live,followed up with these tough, vivid depictions of the current lawlessness in Putin’s Russia. 2014’s The Fool is an allegory about a plumber who, blowing the whistle on a dangerously teetering apartment complex, tells the local authorities, who are incompetent and corrupt.
2013’s The Major is an allegory about local police arrogantly protecting one of their own after he runs over a young boy on an icy road: they will eliminate anyone who questions the official report, including the boy’s mother, who witnessed the whole thing. There’s much to admire and provoke in Bykov’s cinema. The hi-def transfers are exemplary.
(Fox)
In which for two hours and 35 minutes, Leonardo DiCaprio undergoes impossibly rigorous physical treatment—including the infamous bear sequence—for which he won his supposedly long-overdue Best Actor Oscar.
DiCaprio is impressive in a role that’s more a test of physical stamina than outright acting, but most ungainly about the film is director Alejandro G. Inarritu’s crude technique that overrelies on stunts, CGI and Emmanuel Lubezki’s admittedly miraculous camerawork—although Lubezki has done it before, and better, for Terrence Malick—to tell a story that, without these frills, is merely mundane. The hi-def transfer is excellent; lone extra is a 45-minute making-of documentary.
Theory of Obscurity
(Film Movement)
The Residents have been the most famous—or infamous—music/video collective of the past half century that’s managed to hide its identity from the world, and Don Hardy’s mostly amused, occasionally bemused documentary recounts its bizarre and extended career, as discussed by many people around the band’s members.
But not the guys themselves: they remain—coyly but playfully—anonymous. At least it seems that way: maybe some of the members are posing as mere collaborators. The film looks fine on Blu; extras comprise featurettes, outtakes, performances and interviews.
Silicon Valley—Complete 2ndSeason
(HBO)
Some of Veep’s barbed humor got noticeably smoothed out when Selina Meyer became president, forcing an edgy if uneven satire to sometimes turn desperate in its attempt to return to earlier glory. Although Julie-Louis Dreyfus is fine in the lead, it’s the supporting cast—led by Anna Chlumsky, Tony Hale and Timothy Simons—that keeps it from jumping the shark completely.
Silicon Valley, the one-joke Mike Judge comedy, has stretched itself perilously thin, and even if the actors transcend their caricatured characters, it will be interesting to see if the humor can find more depth in its upcoming season. Both shows look quite good on Blu; extras include deleted scenes and, on Valley, commentaries.
DVDs of the Week
Cinema’s Exiles—From Hitler to Hollywood
(Warner Archive)
This endlessly fascinating 2007 PBS documentary about how so many emigres from Germany’s film industry—the world’s best by the early 1930s—were able to flee the country after Hitler came to power and, in several instances, resuscitate their careers in Europe and Hollywood is narrated by Sigourney Weaver.
With its generous use of many vintage interviews—including with directors Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder—and archival footage of the likes of Marlene Dietrich, this absorbing cautionary tale is far more than a mere piece of distant film history.
(Lionsgate)
This schlocky thriller about a trans-Pacific flight that begins to go badly out of control when a healthy passenger suddenly dies is at least short at 80 minutes, but even its brevity can’t cover up the many crazy contrivances that proliferate, and culminate with a twisty and insane denouement.
The mainly no-name cast actually works hard—even poor Leslie Bibb, who rarely gets the good roles she deserves, does what she can as a veteran flight attendant—but it ends up being for naught.
Grace and Frankie—Complete 1st Season
(Lionsgate)
The unlikely chemistry between Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as two long-time antagonists who together must deal with the aftermath of their husbands leaving them after admitting they’ve been carrying on an affair with each other is what makes Grace and Frankie watchable, even when the series itself tries (and fails) to balance showing the characters’ new relationships.
Happily, alongside Fonda and Tomlin, the rest of the cast (starting with Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston as the soon-to-marry husbands) is also up to the task. Extras include featurettes, gag reel and commentaries.
April '16 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 13 April 2016 22:42
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
The Forest
(Universal)
The setting for Jason Zada’s lackluster thriller, a real Japanese forest—one of the top sites in the world for suicides—is a decent horror-movie idea, but there Zada’s inspiration ends.
It’s too bad, for there are a few frightening moments, and actress Natalie Dormer is sympathetic and unsettling as protagonist twin sisters (and Zada rightly focuses on her piercing eyes), but overall this tepid shocker relies on a none-too-original ending twist. The movie does looks sumptuous on Blu; extras are a making-of featurette and Zada’s commentary.
Jackie Robinson
(PBS)
For their latest historical documentary, legendary filmmaker Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband David McMahon examine the life of the first black player to play in the big leagues and one of the most important individuals of the 20th century.
Although at times the usual template—talking heads, narrators, vintage photos and film footage—seem to tread water, this four-hour portrait of American race relations remains a must-see. The primary witness is Rachel, Jackie’s still-sharp 92-year-old widow; the appearance of the Obamas, whose relationship mirrors the Robinsons of a strong woman as backbone for her husband’s historic accomplishments, is a real coup. The hi-def transfer is flawless; extras comprise a conversation with the filmmakers, outtakes and a featurette.
The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun
(Magnolia)
Based on a novel by Sebastian Japrisot (whose One Deadly Summer and A Very Long Engagement were adapted into movies with Isabelle Adjani and Audrey Tautou, respectively), this labored mystery about an innocent young woman suspected of murder has been directed with stylishness but incoherence by Joann Sfar.
Even though his leading lady Freya Mavor makes a formidable femme fatale, she is unable to make this empty vessel anything more than derivative. It all looks splashy enough on Blu, at least; extras are a Sfar interview and featurette.
(Lionsgate)
This unpleasant drama masquerading as existential art cinema is director (and The Departed screenwriter) William Monahan’s pretentious, overwrought tale of an artist who meets up with his murderous doppelgänger while wandering in the desert.
It’s as risible as it sounds, so Oscar Isaac and Garrett Edlund must be commended for playing it with straight faces; deglamorized French actress Louise Bourgoin is at sea as the protagonist’s girlfriend: neither she nor we have any clue what’s going on. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.
The Story of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps
Blood on the Fields
(Arthaus Musik)
Igor Stravinsky’s once-controversial, now-classic ballet caused a riot in 1913 but is now part of the standard repertoire, and 1999’s revealing The Story of… provides Russian conductor Valery Gergiev’s thoughts on the work—with Stravinsky himself chiming in through vintage interview footage in both English and French—along with orchestral excerpts Gergiev leads.
In 1996’s informative documentary Blood, composer Wynton Marsalis discusses his own large-scale composition of the same name, a jazz-classical hybrid that won the Pulitzer Prize for Music. The Blu-ray visuals look decent enough.
(Warner Archive)
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s earliest classics, this absorbing 1941 mystery stars Joan Fontaine—in the only Oscar-winning performance ever in a film by the Master of Suspense—as a woman sure that her ne’er-do-well husband (Cary Grant) is intent on killing her.
Only Hitchcock could turn the screws so tightly on viewers while gleefully manipulating their responses without ever losing them completely. Even if it cops out at the end (can’t let matinee idol Grant be the bad guy), it’s still a singularly Hitchcockian achievement. The black-and-white Blu-ray transfer looks superb; lone extra is a retrospective featurette.
DVDs of the Week
Chantal Akerman—Four Films
(Icarus)
Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, who killed herself last year at age 65, was a fixture in certain cinematic circles, although I found her most renowned films like Jeanne Dielmann and Les Rendez-vous d’Anna too single-minded to justify their extended running times.
On the other hand, her non-fiction films—four of which are collected here—more interestingly if explicitly espouse their political viewpoints. The films—From the East (1993), South (1999), From the Other Side (2002), Down There (2006)—are complemented by an extra,Chantal Akerman: From Here, a 2010 conversation with the director about her singular career.
(IFC)
In his uneven study of Kermit, a young man who, fresh out of jail for a youthful mistake, returns to his trailer-trash town to start anew and falls for Rachel, a young woman moonlighting as an exotic dancer to help her sick mom, writer-director Hank Bedford shows sympathy for those down on their luck without condescension; inserting real people discussing their meager lives, however well-intentioned, tends to turn the story proper into melodrama.
Yet impressive acting by Chris Zylka (Kermit) and Riley Keough (Rachel) and persuasive support by musical stalwarts Faith Hill (Kermit’s mom) and Steve Earle (Kermit’s uncle) help greatly. Extras include Bedford and Zylka’s commentary, interview and deleted scenes.
House of Lies—Complete 4th Season
Episodes—Complete 4th Season
The Odd Couple—Complete 1stSeason
(CBS)
In the fourth season of House, even more unethical than usual wheeling and dealing continues, as Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell continue to provide balance between over-the-top and right on-target; Episodes, in its fourth season, with Matt LeBlanc persuasively playing someone named “Matt LeBlanc,” has finally found its comedic footing.
However, despite the best efforts of Matthew Perry and Thomas Lennon, the first season of the reboot of The Odd Couple shows that Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, masterly stars of the original sitcom, are irreplaceable. Odd Couple extras include deleted scenes, featurettes and a gag reel.
Theater Reviews—Two Plays by Danai Gurira, 'Familiar' & 'Eclipsed'
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 08 April 2016 21:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Familiar
Written by Danai Gurira; directed by Rebecca Taichman
Performances through April 10, 2016
Eclipsed
Written by Danai Gurira; directed by Liesl Tommy
Performances through June 19, 2016
 |
| The cast of Familiar (photo: Joan Marcus) |
It's rare for any playwright to have two plays running in New York simultaneously, but Danai Gurira—better known to some (not me) as an actress in TV’s The Walking Dead—has done it with Eclipsed on Broadway and Familiar off-Broadway.
Familiar, though the lesser work, is in no way negligible. Set in Minneapolis, the play concerns the Chinyaramwiras, a Zimbabwean-American family frenziedly making preparations for daughter Tendi’s impending wedding. Youngest (and prodigal) daughter Nyasha has just arrived from New York while mother Marvi (short for Marvelous) rues the arrival of her eldest sister Anne from the home country, since Marvi hopes that Tendi’s wedding to local man Chris will further the family’s American success story. But—needless to say—complications ensue.
Gurira has everyone and everything in their places for her amusing, at times insightful if too, um, familiar comedy, smartly balancing arguments for assimilating with those for retaining ultural customs—Aunt Anne wants to resurrect an elaborate Zimbabwean ritual for Tendi’s ceremony, whose working out takes up a good chunk of the overlong first act—and finding the humorous absurdity in both sides.
With this group of people who speak normally and fight over every little thing both serious and frivolous, Gurira’s stage family is recognizable and real. If she relies too much on the strictures of drawing-room comedy, snowballing into Neil Simon slapstick at the close of Act I, it’s certainly forgivable.
Rebecca Taichman thoughtfully directs on Clint Ramos’ spectacular set, which exactingly captures the family house's solidly upper-middle class interior. The acting is forceful and funny across the board, with standouts being Tamara Tunie’s headstrong Marvi, Ito Aghayere’s Nyasha and Joe Tippett's surprisingly sympathetic turn as Chris’s brother Brad, whose arrival is just one of many bizarre interludes in a distinctly unfamiliar day for the Chinyaramwira family.
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| Lupita Nyong'o (center) in Eclipsed (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Stronger still is Eclipsed, set during the Liberian Civil War in the early 2000s. We meet several unnamed women in a worn-down shack, each of them designated by a number, since they are “wives” for one of the warlords, who periodically calls one of them to his bed while the others sit and wait around.
If spending two-plus hours in such company seems depressing or enervating, the reality is far from that: Gurira's potent, probing play illuminates our shared humanity, even in a place where social and cultural structures have broken down and been replaced by wholesale degradation, destruction and slaughter. The women form a bond—at one point, the only literate one among them begins reading from Bill Clinton’s autobiography, which becomes a source of endless consternation, amusement and even hope—and it’s only in the second act, when the newest arrival joins another "wife" as a rebel soldier, does Eclipsed threaten to unravel.
That it doesn’t is a tribute not only to Gurira’s incisive and unsentimental writing but also the spot-on production by Liesl Tommy, who directs five miraculous actresses (Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o is the lone marquee name, but she’s just one-fifth of a marvelously harmonious ensemble) on Clint Ramos’ imaginatively dilapidated set.
Familiar is worth attending and Eclipsed is a major achievement: playwright Danai Gurira has arrived in New York.
Familiar
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
playwrightshorizons.org
Eclipsed
Golden Theater, 252 West 45th Street, New York, NY
eclipsedbroadway.com
April '16 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 06 April 2016 03:27
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Banshee—Complete 3rd Season
(HBO)
The third season of this extremely violent but rarely dramatically potent Cinemax series ratchets up the excessive gore at the expense of coherent storytelling and plausible characters: jettisoning anything resembling credibility in order to oversell the next bludgeoning, killing or decapitation is a recipe for becoming less interesting as it continues.
It has stylishness in spades, including its ultra-attractive cast, but then the blood-letting begins again and it loses any dramatic momentum. The hi-def transfer is impeccable; extras include commentaries, deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Arrow USA)
Italian giallo master Luciano Ercoli directed his future wife, actress Nieves Navarro—who went by her stage name Susan Scott—in a pair of bloody thrillers as a clichéd damsel in distress: both 1971's Death Walks in High Heels and 1972's Death Walks at Midnight lean on Scott's winsome personality to follow her through convoluted mysteries that are minimally psychological but maximally trashy.
As always, Arrow has included both films in a classy boxed set that features a 60-page booklet, new hi-def transfers, and interviews, featurettes and introductions/ commentaries.
King Priam
Cinderella
(Arthaus Musik)
While I've never been a fan of British composer Michael Tippett, his 1962 opera King Priam is strongly dramatic and musically cohesive; based on Homer’s Iliad, it’s a knottily-plotted tale, and Nicholas Hytner's 1985 film (with Rodney McCann as Priam, Sarah Walker as Andromache, Neil Jenkins as Achilles and Anne Mason as Helen of Troy) is a tough, taut interpretation.
Conversely, it’s simply too bad about choreographer Maguy Marin's 1989 production of Cinderella, Sergei Prokofiev's most beguiling ballet: child-like masks and costumes, which may have looked charming onstage, instead come off mildly creepy on TV. Video and audio for both discs are fine.
Losing Ground
(Milestone)
Another valuable addition to Milestone Films' growing library of resurrected historically and artistically important American films and filmmakers, this two-disc set features this astute 1982 character study by provocative writer-director Kathleen Collins (who died six years later at age 46) starring Seret Scott and Bill Gunn as an artistic couple with marital problems: Collins’ genius was for showing her characters as people, not simply as black people.
Also included are The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy, the 1980 debut collaboration between Collins and cinematographer Ronald K. Gray, a probing 1982 Collins interview, and new interviews with Scott, Gray and Collins' daughter. The film has been lovingly restored in hi-def.
Michael Collins
(Warner Archive)
Liam Neeson's commanding portrait of the Irish independence leader from his political beginnings until his untimely (and mysterious) death in 1922 is the center of Neil Jordan's 1996 biopic, a fluid, exciting drama on a dense, difficult subject. Complementing Neeson is superb support by Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn, Alan Rickman and Brendan Gleeson, which offsets Julia Roberts' unmagnetic presence (and wavering accent) as Collins' fiancée.
The film's belated but welcome appearance on Blu-ray helps viewers better appreciate Chris Menges' tangy cinematography; extras are an hour-long, illuminating South Bank Show episode about Collins' life and a Jordan interview.
(Anchor Bay)
I don't get the current mania for trying to make Jason Sudekis—who was merely a comic journeyman on Saturday Night Live—a leading man in the movies, but this low-energy character study of a dead pop star's widow rediscovering her importance as muse thanks to a music professor leaves a gaping hole at its center with his casting.
Happily, the widow is played by Rebecca Hall, an actress of rare grace, vulnerability and truthfulness, so all is not lost. Small roles are well-handled by Blythe Danner, Richard Masur, Dianna Agron and Griffin Dunne, helping Hall to fill the Sudekis void. The film looks decent on Blu; extras are making-of and music featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
Brotherly Love
A Fine Pair
(Warner Archive)
Although their films aren't very memorable, two star pairings provide mostly indifferent vehicles with occasionally interesting moments. 1970's unsubtle Brotherly Love, about a man's more-than-familial interest in his sister, stars Peter O'Toole and Susannah York as misfit siblings, and they get more out of the problematic relationship than it deserves.
Similarly, 1968's Fine Pair, set in shabby New York and photogenic Italy, teams Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale for a forgettable caper chase picture that promises little but delivers some entertainment thanks to its stars’ presence.
(The Christopher Nupen Films)
Supremely gifted English cellist Jacqueline du Pré stopped performing at age 28 due to her battle with multiple sclerosis, which she sadly lost at age 42, in 1987; the loss to the music world is immeasurable, as this disc of vintage interview clips with contemporaries, friends and loved ones discussing her force of personality, musicianship and happiness (her nickname was Smiley) shows.
We see her performing, especially the Elgar Cello Concerto, which she is most closely associated with, and hear her discuss her own love for music, and the three-plus hours of footage become a riveting portrait of a great and humane artist.
Ron Taylor—Dr. Baseball
Invisible Scars
(First Run)
The 20-minute short Ron Taylor—which recounts his baseball career, quitting the big leagues at 35 to become a doctor, then returning to baseball in a medical capacity—was made by sons Drew and Matthew as a loving document of their dad's overlooked career.
In Invisible Scars, co-director Johnna Janis opens up about sexual abuse as a youngster and how it affected her ever since: interviews with experts and victims paint a troubled portrait of how people are affected by such a tragedy, but there’s also an optimism that many—including Janis herself—are defiantly taking charge of their own lives. Taylor extras are a directors' interview and film festival Q&As; Scarsextras are extended interviews.
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