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Reviews

December '15 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week
American Ultra 
(Lionsgate)
This fast-paced spy movie spoof—in which mild-mannered stoner-convenience store clerk Jesse Eisenberg discovers he's a sleeper CIA agent, to the shock of girlfriend Kristen Stewart, who has secrets of her own—fails to hide the strained goofiness at its center, with excessive cartoon violence that palls quickly, while the plot itself is so exaggeratedly silly that it immediately falls apart.
 
Still, Stewart and Eisenberg are good sports in the lead roles, and Connie Britton is ferocious and funny as an ass-kicking CIA boss. The movie has a good Blu-ray transfer; extras are a commentary, featurettes and a gag reel.
 
Amy 
(Lionsgate)
Asif Kapadia's documentary about Amy Winehouse—the singer whose hit "Rehab" became an ironic commentary after her 2011 drug-overdose death—recounts her brief but meteoric rise in the music biz and even faster tragic fall with access to video footage, home movies and audio interviews with family, friends and colleagues.
 
The movie is a despairing cautionary tale that would have been stronger had it been shorter—two-hours plus equals unneeded repetition that slows it down. The film looks fine on Blu; extras include unaired performances, deleted scenes, additional interviews and a commentary.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ikiru 
(Criterion)
Possibly Akira Kurosawa's most emotionally charged film—at least until the touchingly sentimental finale of his penultimate feature Rhapsody in August—this profound 1952 dissection of one man's discovery that he has terminal cancer is among the profoundest cinematic statements on mortality without the preachiness that marred August.
 
Takashi Shimura is exquisitely stoic and, finally, heartstoppingly moving in the lead, while Kurosawa himself reaches heights of humane expression rarely shown onscreen. The Criterion Blu-ray transfer is typically excellent; extras include audio commentary, documentaries and interviews.
 
Katy Perry—Prismatic World Tour 
(Eagle Rock)
I'm no Katy Perry fan, and the supposed charms of "Roar" and "Firework"—her two biggest hits and, not coincidentally, the first and last songs she performs in concert—continue to elude me: but I can see why millions of non-discerning fans adore her, since her concerts pump out those interchangeable hits and more.
 
Her high-energy performance keeps fans' eyes filled with everything—dancers and lighting and acrobats and other tricks—throughout what's a far more successful visual than aural experience. The Blu-ray follows suit, with top-notch image and sound; extras include behind the scenes material.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Martha Davis and the Motels—Live at the Whisky a Go-Go 
(Vesuvio)
It's been 30 years since I saw Martha Davis and the Motels in concert, so this concert at the L.A. club Whisky a Go-Go in honor of its 50th anniversary is my own celebratory return to hearing one of the most original female voices in rock music.
 
Davis' own return with her band's current lineup finds her piercing, clear and emotive voice still ringing through on songs like "Take the L," "Suddenly Last Summer: and "Only the Lonely," which sound as immediate as ever. Too bad there's nothing from the underrated 1985 album Shock, but that's a small quibble. Both film and music are presented in first-rate hi-def; extras include interviews.
 
Quay Brothers—Collected Short Films 
(Zeitgeist)
The identical twin American brothers who have been creating short films—and two features so far—in the past three decades show off their playfulness, visual inventiveness and mordant sense of humor in the 15 electrifying shorts in this collection.
 
The best of these mixtures of stop-motion and puppetry are the early The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer and Street of Crocodiles and the recent Maska, which co-opts the same startling Penderecki composition, Da Natura Sonoris No. 1, that Stanley Kubrick used so brilliantly in The Shining. The hi-def transfers of the Quay films—and Christopher Nolan's own short, Quay, eight minutes of the brothers at work—are for the most part mesmerizing, and six films include Quays' commentaries.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Queen—A Night at the Odeon 

(Universal/Eagle Rock)

Very slowly, we are finally getting legit releases of Queen's legendary 1970s performances, and this hour-long London concert on Christmas Eve in 1975 (shown on TV's The Old Grey Whistle Test), is one of the most sought-after, capturing Queen at its musical and theatrical best.
 
Freddie Mercury stalks the stage with more confidence than ever and guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon sound tight, taut and terrific: check out the pummeling "Ogre Battle," just one of many highlights, for proof. The video is nothing special, even on Blu-ray, but the sound is explosive. Extras are three songs from a 1975 Tokyo concert and new interviews with May and Taylor.
 
Roger Waters The Wall 
(Universal)
Roger Waters has ingeniously morphed his Pink Floyd magnum opus from an anti-war, anti-audience rant in the group's 1979-80 concerts to political symbolism in 1990 Berlin to the current multi-media extravaganza: state-of-the-art sound and visuals allow Waters to turn The Wall into an arena rock spectacle without parallel.
 
But even with the incredible hi-def sound and video, this release has equally necessary extras for real fans: there's a collection of brief Facebook films (nearly an hour's worth) about the tour, as well as extracts from the 2011 London concert when David Gilmour joined Waters onstage for his incendiary and emotional "Comfortably Numb" guitar solos, followed by a reunion of Waters, Gilmour and Nick Mason, joining Waters' current band for the record's finale, "Outside the Wall." 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVDs of the Week
Captivated—The Trials of Pamela Smart 
(Icarus)
The star of the first gavel-to-gavel TV coverage of a murder trial, the infamous Pamela Smart was convicted in 1991 of coercing several teens (including the 15-year-old with whom she was having sex) into killing her husband: the blonde, photogenic 20ish wife became the devil incarnate, and the entire trial led to a foregone conclusion, at least according to Jeremiah Zagar's documentary.
 
Zagar brings up questions about what happened in and out of that courtroom a quarter-century ago, raising a few doubts about whether she was convicted in the media even before the trial began. The lone extra is a director Q&A.
 
The Dinner 
(Film Movement)
Whenever Giovanna Mezzogiorno is in a movie, make sure to watch: her exceptional, true, lived-in performances show off as natural an actress around today, from her breakthrough in The Last Kiss to her brilliant turn as Mussolini's mistress in Marco Bellocchio’s great Vincere.
 
She does it again in a film that becomes melodramatic at every turn despite a central subject so unsettling—did the spoiled teenage children of brothers (a respected doctor and infamous defense attorney) really commit a horrific crime?—that it compels continued viewing. Despite his missteps, director Ivano de Matteo has assembled an accomplished cast, with Mezzogiorno's portrayal of a mother who tries to comprehend what her son may have done indelibly filled with pain, heartache and even humor. Lone extra is an on-set featurette.
 
 
 
 
 
Grace of Monaco 
(Weinstein Co./Anchor Bay)
This biopic about Princess Grace, concerning a few months in 1962 when her marriage and adopted country of Monaco were in fraught peril, was slickly directed by Olivier Dahan, who does what he can with Arash Amiel's script, which only skims the surface of Grace's personal and public lives.
 
Although Nicole Kidman isn't embarrassing, her sort of Hollywood glamor is light years from Grace Kelly's natural beauty both on and offscreen, while Paz Vega—horribly miscast as Maria Callas—is far too beautiful to be a plausible stand-in for the famous singer.
 
Latin Lovers
The Merry Widow
(Warner Archive)
Lana Turner, one of the grandest of Hollywood leading ladies in the 1950s, oozed sex appeal effortlessly; Latin Lovers, Mervyn Leroy's decent 1953 romantic comedy, stars Turner as a successful corporate woman who has trouble finding and keeping men, until she finds Ricardo Montalban while vacationing in Brazil.
 
More entertaining is the third cinematic go-round (made in 1952) of The Merry Widow, Franz Lehar's classic operetta, with Turner as the irresistible title character who finds romance with the Count, played by Fernando Lamas. Both movies have spectacular color, which would look far better on Blu-ray instead of these MOD (manufactured on demand) discs.
 
 
 
 
 
CDs of the Week
Magnard—Piano Trio & Violin Sonata
Weinberg—Violin Concertino, Rhapsody, Symphony No. 10 
(CPO)
French composer Alberic Magnard's music is barely remembered; he's known—if at all—for how he died: foolishly if bravely defending his home from German soldiers at the start of  World War I. But his meager musical output (some 20 or so surviving works) is impressive: his four symphonies are as sturdy and memorable as Brahms' or Schumann's, while his heroic opera Guercoeur has many passages of unsurpassed beauty.
 
Happily, enterprising musicians and labels make occasional recordings, and the latest, comprising two substantial chamber works, is worth seeking out. Both of these monumental pieces, a 37-minute piano trio and 41-minute violin sonata, receive vigorous workouts, and their originality, somewhere between the French tradition and Wagner, makes one lament that Magnard labored so long over his works, taking a year or more to finish one, robbing us of even more.
 
Another composer affected by war, Mieczyslaw Weinberg—whose Jewish family was destroyed by Nazis during World War II—died in 1996; afterward his music finally began catching a foothold. He also wrote a powerful opera—The Passenger, about a concentration camp survivor—and raging, ironical and exasperated music in several genres, reminiscent of one of his biggest influences, Dmitri Shostakovich.
 
This recording comprises three intense orchestral works, all given magnificent performances: Ewelina Nowicka plays the lyrical solo part of the haunting Violin Concertino along with arranging and playing on the attractive Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes; and Anna Duczmal-Mroz conducts the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra of Polish Radio in the shattering Symphony No. 10 for string orchestra.

November '15 Digital Week IV

Blu-rays of the Week

Code Unknown 

(Criterion)
Austrian director Michael Haneke—the enfant terrible of contemporary European cinema—made this extraordinarily unsettling and prescient drama in 2000, and its premise about unmoored refugees in Europe still resonates, perhaps even more so now than it did in a pre-Sept. 11 world.
 
Although Juliette Binoche is top-billed—and magnificent, as always—this is an ensemble cast in every sense of the word, whose relative unfamiliarity gives Haneke's film an authentic quasi-documentary look. The Criterion Blu-ray’s sharp image is marred by artifacts; extras include a Haneke intro, two Haneke interviews and an on-set documentary.
 
Deep in My Heart
Passage to Marseille 
(Warner Archive)
One of the more unheralded Hollywood musicals of its time, 1954's Deep in My Heart tells the life story of Broadway composer Sigmund Romberg (Jose Ferrer), cramming no less than 22 of his tunes into Stanley Donen’s sturdy musical biopic like the title song; but best of all are great song-and-dance numbers by Gene Kelly and his brother Fred, and by Ann Miller, who positively kills it on "It."
 
In Michael Curtiz’s 1944 Passage to Marseille, Humphrey Bogart plays a French resistance fighter who leads a group of escaped prisoners from French Guiana. This nail-biting drama, a reunion of the star and director of Casablanca, daringly utilizes the flashbacks-within-flashbacks technique of the novel it’s based on. Both films have superlative hi-def transfers, Deep in color and Passage in B&W; extras include vintage cartoons and shorts.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gloriana 
(Arthaus Musik)
The Tsar's Bride 
(Bel Air Classiques)
Benjamin Britten's grandest opera, Gloriana premiered for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, dramatizing the fraught era of Her Majesty's earlier namesake: this glittery 1984 staging complements the laser-like focus of Sarah Walker as Elizabeth I. Britten's dramatic instincts rarely fail him, even if some of his music here is less than his best. 
 
The Tsar's Bride, Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov's classic 19th century opera, is transformed by director Dmitri Tcherniakov into a pointless Eurotrash exercise that needlessly modernizes a drama inextricably linked with Russian history. The amazing soprano Olga Peretyatko impresses in the title role, at least. Both operas look and sound good on hi-def.
 
No Escape 
(Anchor Bay)
Poor Owen Wilson and Lake Bell have to pretend to be interested as they implausibly dodge all manner of southeast Asian terrorists and other villains, all while managing to protect their two young daughters from most of the mayhem.
 
Pierce Brosnan, who shows up periodically as a shadowy British secret agent, is fun as a kind of gruff 007, but whenever he’s not onscreen, the movie just goes through the action-movie motions. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras comprise a commentary, deleted scenes and interviews.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Requiescant 
(Arrow)
Director Carlo Lizzani’s 1967 spaghetti western stars Lou Castel—who made such an impression in Marco Bellocchio’s extraordinary debut 1965’sFists in the Pocket—as a gunman who helps rid a Wild West town of a cartel of bad guys. Castel gives a solid performance, and even director Pier Paolo Pasolini shows up as a priest, while Lizzani showed that there’s more to the then-revived western genre than the Sergio Leone epics that are most remembered. The new Blu-ray transfer is first-rate; extras include interviews with Lizzani and Castel.
 
Ricki and the Flash 
(Sony)
One of Jonathan Demme's most inconsequential films stars Meryl Streep as a has-been rocker whose vagabond lifestyle screeches to a halt when she returns to her adult children's lives after decades. Demme's offhand style keeps things going even when little happens—which is often—but even though Streep finds some depth in Ricki, Diablo Cody's script has so little conflict that there's more drama over what song Ricki and her band (including a game Rick Springfield) will do next.
 
Kevin Kline and Audra MacDonald shine as Ricki's ex and his new wife, while Mamie Gummer (Streep's real-life daughter) plays her onscreen daughter with little persuasiveness or charm, unfortunately. The movie looks good on Blu; extras are featurettes and deleted scenes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Voyeur 
(Cult Epics)
That unapologetically sleazy Italian director Tinto Brass made this quasi-pornographic 1994 drama that at times cleverly (and at other times ineptly) shows a married man sexually dealing with his gorgeous but unhappy young wife and his elderly—but still virile—father’s sexy and seemingly willing nurse.
 
There’s a fine line between erotica and porn that Brass nonchalantly criss-crosses, and there are genuinely erotic moments, mostly involving Katarina Vasilissa as the voyeur’s young wife. Lone extra is a Brass interview.
 
DVDs of the Week
Exhibition on Screen—The Girl with the Pearl Earring 
Exhibition on Screen—The Impressionists and the Man Who Made Them 
(Seventh Art)
These succinct 90-minute documentaries illuminate the background of some of the most famous artworks ever painted: and the often elusive geniuses behind them, from the Vermeer masterpiece hanging in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands, to the French masters' works in such institutions as Paris' Musee d'Orsay.
 
One quibble: since these amazing paintings need high-definition to do justice to their unique use of color, it's too bad that these are only DVDs and not Blu-rays, which would further show off their every nook and cranny. But for anyone who loves art—and Dutch and French art in particular—these are most informative overviews.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Gone with the Wind—The Remarkable Rise and Tragic Fall of Lynyrd Skynyrd
(MVD)
The fast rise—and horrific fall—of Lynyrd Skynyrd, one of the best Southern rock bands of the 1970s, is chronicled in this almost too exhaustive documentary that includes tasty archival footage of the band performing some of their best songs from “Sweet Home Alabama” to “Gone with the Wind,” and interviews with surviving members, producer Al Kooper and music experts.
 
That the band proper ended in 1977 with the plane crash that killed charismatic frontman Ronnie Van Zandt and others is inarguable, despite a band claiming to be Skynyrd that's still touring: but the band's legacy remains great songs. Extras are additional interviews.
 
Stations of the Cross 
(Film Movement)
Director Dietrich Bruggemann's austere drama follows troubled teenager Maria, whose family belongs to a morally strict church, and who slowly realizes that maybe not everything in the world is evil, causing rifts at home and at school.
 
Bruggemann's formal style—14 chapters mimicking the stations of the cross at Jesus’ death—is equally strict, although it isn't hard to decipher how it ends, but his intelligence and rigor, coupled with Lea van Acken's astonishing portrayal of Marie, makes this a must-see movie that's not easily forgotten. Extras are a director's commentary and Bruggemann's short, One Shot.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Wind in the Willows 
(Warner Archive)
In this 1987 Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass’s adaptation of the beloved children’s story by Kenneth Grahame, an amusing cast led by Charles Nelson Reilly, Roddy McDowell, Jose Ferrer and Eddie Bracken  voice the animals who play out the wise and timeless tale.
 
With a half-dozen tuneful numbers sung by the likes of Judy Collins (who handles the title song), Willows has the typically basic Rankin-Bass animation, but for those looking for pleasant if not particularly compelling family fare, you could do worse.
 
CDs of the Week
Carl Nielsen—Symphonies and Concertos 
(Dacapo)
New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert has made it his mission to record the most important orchestral works of Danish composer Carl Nielsen, and this four-disc set brings together his six symphonies and concertos for violin, flute and clarinet.
 
The orchestra's playing on the symphonies—especially the masterly Fourth, the Indistinguishable—is energetic and expressive, and the concerto soloists—violinist Nikolai Znaider, flutist Robert Langevin and clarinetist Anthony McGill—acquit themselves admirably; these live performances provide a valuable glimpse of a composer often overshadowed by his Nordic contemporary Jean Sibelius.

On Broadway—'Misery' with Bruce Willis; 'Allegiance' with George Takei

Misery
Written by William Goldman; directed by Will Frears
Performances through February 14, 2016
 
Allegiance
Music & lyrics by Jay Kuo; Marc Acito, Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thione
Directed by Stafford Arima; choreographed by Andrew Palmero
Performances through September 25, 2016
 
Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis in Misery (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
Misery began as a trashily effective Stephen King novel, followed by a trashily effective Rob Reiner movie, which won an Oscar for Kathy Bates as the ultimate deranged fan, Annie Wilkes, who first saves the life of her favorite author, Paul Sheldon, then takes her revenge after reading his latest novel and discovering he killed off her favorite character, Misery Chastain.
 
It's a clever enough conceit, as some of King's story ideas are, even if—after devouring his novels as a gullible teenager—I realized how excess verbiage and an aw-shucks style made his books unreadable once I became aware of good writing. William Goldman—who also wrote the script for the Reiner movie—has streamlined the story further for the stage, distilling the cast to three: Paul, Annie and Buster, the local sheriff who finally pays for his inopportune visits.
 
In a trashily effective—if not especially taut—90 minutes, Miseryonstage provides the same thrills of its earlier incarnations, although why this version is necessary is another question. It serves as a vehicle of sorts for Bruce Willis as Paul, who spends most of his time either prone in bed or in a wheelchair, hunt-and-peck typing out a new novel. Willis barks out his crude lines credibly enough and even gets in a few profanity-laced insults at the woman Paul comes to loathe after initially thanking her for digging him out of his car in a blizzard.
 
But the play, movie and novel all belong to Annie, and onstage Laurie Metcalf gives a persuasive and just enough over-the-top portrayal of a self-sufficient woman who just happens to be crazy. Metcalf happily doesn't ape what Bates did in the movie, making Annie more pathetically than evilly monstrous in her desperate attempts to "keep" her beloved author.
 
Will Frears directs efficiently on David Korins' revolving set, which cleverly shows off Annie's house from the bedroom where much of the action takes place to her kitchen and outside porch. Despite its lack of forward momentum, this Misery gets the job done.
 
Lea Salonga and George Takei in Allegiance (photo: Matthew Murphy)
 
A painfully earnest venture, the new musical Allegiance covers the same ground as Alan Parker's film Come See the Paradise: that horrible moment in American history when, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government rounded up Japanese-Americans and sent them to internment camps. Such worthy subject matter needs exploring, but both the 1990 film and the musical are marred by contrived storytelling and slathered-on sentimentality.
 
Through clunky expository dialogue that over-elaborates about everything—there's discussion of the term "gaman," which someone actually explains to another character (but really us) that "it means 'to carry on'"—implausibly soap-operaish plot turns (including the fatal shooting of our hero Sammy's pregnant fiancée Hannah) and perfunctory songs that alternate between soaring ballads and soaring anthems, Allegiance dramatically wrong-foots it at nearly every turn.
 
What helps improve things are the staging and performances. Stafford Arima's directing and Andrew Palermo's choreography move the large cast about fluidly, making even a problematic sequence as soldier Sammy leading his unit into a suicide mission in Italy work, with Howell Binkley's boldly impressive lighting putting us in the midst of the carnage; similarly, Binkley and Palermo visually illuminate a wordless sequence about the Hiroshima atomic bomb. 
 
Telly Leung is an engaging and charismatic Sammy and Lea Salonga makes a belated (and welcome) return to Broadway by showing off her beautiful, clear-as-crystal voice as Sammy's sister Kei, while Star Trek actor George Takei—on whose family's experiences the show is based—is immensely likable as both the kids' grandfather Ojii-Chan and the older Sammy. Also making strong impressions (despite having little to work with) are Katie Rose Clarke as the idealized nurse Hannah and Christopheren Nomura as Sammy and Kei’s stern father Tatsuo.   
 
Based on a gut-wrenching subject that current events keep relevant,Allegiance relies on a first-rate cast and production to provide its emotional force.
 
Misery
Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, New York, NY
miserybroadway.comm
 
Allegiance
Longacre Theatre, 220 West 48th Street, New York, NY
allegianceonbroadway.com

November '15 Digital Week III

Blu-rays of the Week
The Bat
A Bucket of Blood 
(The Film Detective)
In 1959’s The Bat, an especially disjointed horror movie about a faceless man (the actor has a stocking over his head) who terrorizes women, Agnes Moorehead and Vincent Price help mitigate the fact that it’s forgettable in nearly every way.
 
Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood (also 1959), which follows a crazed artist whose bizarre and lethal new way of creating is exposed as murder, is so insane that even uniformly bad acting doesn't entirely bury it: the nutso premise helps keep it afloat for its brief 65-minute duration. The hi-def transfers are acceptable, nothing more.
 
Before We Go 
(Anchor Bay)
A guy smarting over a breakup and a gal who missed the last train out of Grand Central Station meet cute(ly) and bond over a night together in Manhattan has more contrivance than would seem possible in a 90-minute drama.
 
Although his directing debut is far from auspicious, Chris Evans does well as the sax-playing good Samaritan, while Alice Eve gives an even more nuanced portrayal of the woman he helps out. The Blu-ray transfer looks terrific; lone extra is a brief Evans interview.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Black Sails—Complete 2nd Season 
(Anchor Bay)
In the second season of this explosive high-seas guilty pleasure, the storylines and pirate intrigue both thicken while the women (played with zest by Jessica Parker Kennedy, Hannah New and Clare Paget) steal scenes pretty consistently from their male costars.
 
This season’s 10 episodes should satisfy those who like their pirate soap operas alternately intimate and epic. The series looks sumptuous on Blu-ray; extras comprise several featurettes.
 
Eric Clapton—Slowhand at 70: Live at the Royal Albert Hall
Nazareth—No Means of Escape 
(Eagle Rock)
To celebrate his 70th birthday, Eric Clapton performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in May by running through his five-decade career as the preeminent British blues guitar god. His incendiary guitar work on "Key to the Highway" and "Crossroads" remains peerless, but it's surprising that he still insists on digging out the dull acoustic version of "Layla" instead of the fiery original. But that's the only quibble with this memorable two-hour musical showcase.
 
Although not as well-known as Aerosmith or Guns'n'Roses—just two artists influenced by them—Scottish hard-rockers Nazareth have endured for four decades, despite member changes and other ups and downs, as this release's 50-minute retrospective documentary and new 75-minute concert show. "Love Hurts" and "Hair of the Dog" would be career highlights for any artist. Both releases look and sound spectacular in hi-def. Slowhand includes the entire concert on two CDs; Escape has additional interviews and an acoustic number.
 
The Hobbit—Battle of the Five Armies: Extended Edition 
(Warner Bros)
In the final film of his epic trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's first Middle Earth adventure, director Peter Jackson continues the drawn-out narrative he began with the Lord of the Rings trilogy: but The Hobbit is but one-third the size of Rings, so why stretch it out nearly as long, along with the extra 20 minutes added to the extended edition?
 
Whatever the reason, it all looks fantastic on Blu-ray, and fans will find much to admire. But the real motherlode is the two discs' worth of extras—nearly ten hours—of everything you'd want to know (and some things you didn't) about Jackson’s onscreen vision, along with a commentary and the final part of a New Zealand featurette. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Kurt Cobain—Montage of Heck 
(Universal Music)
More than 20 years after his suspicious death, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain still exerts a strange hold on his many fans, as that legendary aura has only grown: and that’s sort of what director Brett Morgen punctures in his fastidious, evenhanded documentary that's built around Cobain’s own recordings and drawings, shown to touching effect along with well-used (because not overdone) animation.
 
Interviews with Kurt’s widow, family members and a former bandmate—Krist Novoselic, not Dave Grohl, who was apparently unavailable, to the film’s detriment—round out this defiantly unhagiographic portrait. On Blu, the film looks quite good; extras comprise bonus interviews.
 
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 
(Warner Bros)
In this noisy reboot of the ‘60s TV espionage drama starring Robert Vaughn, director Guy Ritchie goes for the glitz, overwhelming a game cast—Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer and the usually spectacular Alicia Vikander—with so much inane plot twistiness, loudly thudding action sequences and colorful international locales that whatever might have made this an entertaining two hours has turned to mud.
 
Ritchie’s insistence on flashy gadgetry and visual gimmickry over coherent storytelling and better acting makes this pale in contrast to the original series. The film does look first-rate on Blu; extras are several featurettes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mr. Holmes 
(Lionsgate)
In director Bill Condon's engaging fantasy, 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes' retirement is shaken by things beyond his control, especially his own fading memory: he attempts to find some semblance of peace before he completely loses command of his mental faculties.
 
Ian McKellen makes a fun Holmes, Laura Linney is her usual commanding self as his housekeeper, and Milo Parker is superb as her young son who finds the key to Holmes' final sleuthing days. The film's hi-def transfer is sharp and clear; extras are two very brief featurettes. 
 
Two Men in Town 
(Cohen Film Collection)
Alain Delon might have been a pretty face but he also could get down and dirty with the best of them, as in Jose Giovanni’s 1973 drama about an ex-con who, even while falling in love and starting anew, can never escape the cycle of violent crime, especially when a nosy detective ends up dead.
 
Veteran actors Jean Gabin and Michel Bouquet also give fully-realized performances, giving this familiar tale more authenticity. The restored film has received an immaculate transfer; lone extra is an audio commentary.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
DVDs of the Week
Marie's Story 
(Film Movement)
This unforgettable drama about a deaf and dumb French teenage girl could be the Gallic Miracle Worker, but shrewd director Jean-Pierre Ameris has instead made an enriching study of how two disparate and desperate people discover that they can spiritually feed each other, even with blindness, deafness and mortality at the forefront.
 
Ameris works miracles with deaf actress Ariana Riviore as Marie, whose onscreen forcefulness is complemented by Isabelle Carre who, as the nun who becomes Marie's Annie Sullivan, gives a bracing portrayal of grace and bravery. The movie looks and sounds glorious, its striking cinematography and sound (including sparingly-used solo cello music) underscoring this unique relationship. Extras are an interesting 26-minute making-of featurette and an Iranian short, Motherly, about a deaf woman. 
 
The Stanford Prison Experiment 
(IFC)
A disturbing psychological study underlining the questionable methods of Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo, Kyle Patrick Alvarez's drama recounts Zimbardo's 1971 prison experiment, which attempted to see how quickly people act as dominating guard or cowering prisoner.
 
Although it makes pertinent points about people subjected to cruelty and torture—and the Abu Grahib scandal exploded in 2004, Zimbardo was brought up—the movie almost too unrelentingly explores its subject in two hours, which creep by so slowly as to become  diminishing returns, despite excellent performances by a cast led by Billy Crudup's Zimbardo. Extras comprise a director commentary and featurettes.
 
 
 
 
 
 
A Tale of Two Thieves 
(Virgil Films)
The 1963 great train robbery, which has entered crime lore as one of the most daring heists ever, still raises questions about exactly what happened and who was involved, and Chris Long's documentary places one of the men—Gordon Goody—squarely at its center. Goody, now in his mid-80s, discusses his own criminal career and part in the robbery.
 
Even at a mere 69 minutes, the movie feels padded, its robbery reenactments and archival footage of swinging London and interviews with other, marginal people complementing Goody's tale. It makes for an interesting but less than enthralling documentary about a rich subject.
 
CDs of the Week
Guillaume Lekeu—Complete Works 
(Ricercar)
When he died at age 24 in 1894, Belgium's Guillaume Lekeu was already an accomplished composer, but the biggest tragedy of his early death from typhoid was that it snuffed out in its infancy the artistic career of someone who was already a prolific and important artist, as this eight-disc set of all of his extant works proves. 
 
I was mainly familiar with Lekeu’s chamber music, and this set's string quartets, trios and sonatas comprise lengthy, yearning movements similar to the structure of the late, great Schubert quartets and quintets, with solo piano pieces and songs that are equally accomplished.
 
The orchestral music, which has hints of Wagner throughout, sounds less essential than the chamber work but still shows off a first-rate orchestrator and melodist. The performances by many different soloists and ensembles are first-rate on these discs, and the music is varied enough to, once again, let us bemoan what was lost when Lekeu died and exalt in what he did compose.

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