the traveler's resource guide to festivals & films
a FestivalTravelNetwork.com site
part of Insider Media llc.
Connect with us:
Reviews
March '15 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 03 March 2015 23:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Beyond the Lights
(Fox)
In her long-awaited followup to 2008's The Secret Life of Bees (her only previous feature was 2000's affecting Love and Basketball), writer-director Gina Prince-Bythewood has made a melodramatic but involving film about an up-and-coming star singer and the bodyguard with whom she falls in love.
Memories of Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston notwithstanding, Prince-Bythewood explores this familiar tale with sensitivity, and there's a star-making performance by Gugu Mbatha-Raw—even better here than in her breakthrough, Belle—as the budding superstar. The Blu-ray transfer is first-rate; extras comprise a commentary, music video, featurettes and deleted scenes with commentary.
(Lionsgate)
Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan returns with this stylish but hackneyed drama about how the disappearance of a young girl affects her parents' relationship, as well as those in law enforcement and those behind her abduction.
As usual, Egoyan's pretentiousness gets in the way: convoluted plotting, wedded to inapposite allusions to Mozart's Queen of the Night (the movie's original title), detracts from the tense goings-on. The Blu-ray transfer looks immaculate; extras comprise Egoyan's commentary, deleted scenes, alternate ending and featurette.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory—10th Anniversary
(Warners)
Tim Burton's 2005 adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic book won't usurp the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka from classic status, yet Burton's treatment of the material—whimsical but dark, with a bizarrely fey Johnny Depp as the opposite of Wilder's charming Wonka—is perfectly attuned to his usual sensibility.
In fact, this was Burton's last fully-realized work until the recent Big Eyes finally approached his best earlier films, Ed Wood and Big Fish. The hi-def transfer is transfixing; extras include Burton's commentary, an "in-movie" experience and featurettes.
(Alchemy)
This erratic adaptation of Philip Roth's choppy 2009 short novel is worth recommending for the fine supporting performances of Dianne Wiest, Charles Grodin and Dylan Baker, but it is otherwise hamstrung by its two leads.
Greta Gerwig plays the lesbian who becomes the lover of a washed-up actor, played by Al Pacino; although theirs is an intriguing chemistry, they otherwise do little with their roles, and for this (as well as the cop-out ending in Buck Henry and Michal Zebede's script) we must blame director Barry Levinson, who doesn't do much to make Roth's story more compelling. The hi-def transfer is good; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
Kiss Me Kate 3D
(Warners)
Cole Porter's classic song-filled riff on The Taming of the Shrew became George Sidney's colorful backstage 1953 movie musical, with outstanding performances by Ann Miller, Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson—and a spectacular assist by a young dancer/choreographer named Bob Fosse.
If the Shakespearean allusions remain creaky, they are happily overshadowed by great Porter tunes like "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" and "I Hate Men." The Blu-ray transfer shows off a terrific restoration in both 2D and 3D; extras are Cole Porter in Hollywood: Too Darn Hot, hosted by Ann Miller; vintage short about Manhattan; and vintage cartoon.
(Acorn)
In the six 90-minute mysteries that make up this newest set of the popular Midsomer Murders, chief inspector John Barnaby is joined by new partner Charlie Nelson for a series of investigations into an array of killings throughout the local countryside and even abroad.
The best episodes are The Christmas Haunting and Let Us Prey, both with a welcome gallows humor, and (the show's 100th episode) The Killings of Copenhagen, which for fans of the great Danish seriesBorgen has the delectable Birgitte Horjt Sorensen as a local detective. The Blu-ray transfer looks splendid; extras are featurettes and interviews.
New England Patriots—Super Bowl XLIX Champions
(Cinedigm/NFL)
In one of the most competitive and exciting Super Bowls yet, the New England Patriots captured their fourth NFL Championship with a nail-biting 28-24 win over defending champs Seattle Seahawks, helped by a controversial last-minute play call.
This Blu-ray not only includes the game in sparkling HD, but also many extras for Patriots fans, including Media Day and post-game coverage, featurettes, and interviews with Coach Bill Belichick, Rob Gronkowski and MVP Tom Brady.
The Better Angels
(Anchor Bay)
Is A.J. Edwards merely a pseudonym for Terrence Malick (one of the film's producers)? If not, then Edwards has absorbed Malick's singular style—camerawork, editing, music, sights and sounds of nature—and put it to use to prop up his aimless chronicle of young Abraham Lincoln growing up on an Indiana farm.
To be sure, there are discernible differences—this has been shot in immaculate B&W by Matthew J. Lloyd, and Edwards' scope doesn't reach Malick's grandiose heights—but, despite moments of beauty, it comes off as a second-rate imitation.
Captive
(First Run)
This tension-filled dramatization of a real hostage crisis—based on a pre-Sept. 11 kidnaping of a group of innocent tourists and foreign workers at a Philippine resort by Islamic separatists, or "freedom fighters"—is directed by Brillante Ma. Mendoza as a believable recreation of the excruciating everyday horrors of months in captivity in the wild.
Although the always excellent Isabelle Huppert as a French social worker is this engrossing movie's obvious selling point, the entire cast of realistic unknowns provides the grounding that makes this an absorbing two hours.
(Eagle Rock)
Before hitting it big in the early '80s with playful hits like "Love Stinks" and "Centerfold," the J. Geils Band was playing R&B flavored tunes, both originals and covers, as this 1979 concert, shot for German television, shows.
The group—Peter Wolf on vocals, J. Geils on guitar, Magic Dick on harmonica, Seth Justman on keyboards, Daniel Klein on bass and Stephen Bladd on drums—is in rip-roaring form on originals like the opener "Jus' Can't Stop Me" and covers like the closing "First I Look at the Purse." Also included is a CD of the same concert.
Michael Collins
(Warner Archive)
Liam Neeson's commanding portrait of the leader who began the road to Irish independence until his untimely (and mysterious) death at age 31 in 1922 is the intense center of Neil Jordan's 1996 biopic, a fluid, exciting drama on a dense, difficult subject.
Great acting by Stephen Rea, Aidan Quinn, Alan Rickman and Brendan Gleeson offsets Julia Roberts' unmagnetic presence (and wavering accent) as Collins' fiancee. Although this film needs a hi-def restoration, not least to appreciate Chris Menges' cinematography, the lone extra—an hour-long South Bank Show episode with Jordan being interviewed and experts discussing Collins' life—is illuminating.
(PBS)
The tragic story of Chris McCandless, immortalized by the book and movie Into the Wild, has become modern mythology, his death also affecting many people personally, as this ultimately touching hour-long PBS documentary demonstrates.
Chris's family members discuss their son or brother, and while the family is currently estranged—the children, including Chris, accused their father of physical abuse—both parents speak, along with his sisters, who also make the emotional trek to Alaska to visit the rusted-out bus where he met his end.
Off-Broadway Review—"Lives of the Saints"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 27 February 2015 20:50
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Lives of the Saints
Written by David Ives; directed by John Rando
Performances through March 27, 2015
 |
| Rooth, Ellrod and Hutchinson in Life Signs, from David Ives' Lives of the Saints (photo: James Leynse) |
In Lives of the Saints, David Ives again shows off his mastery of the deceptively difficult short-play form. As in his earlier All in the Timing, what Ives does in his brief one-acts other playwrights can't do in 90 minutes or two-plus hours of stage time: the ability, in just a few fleet scenes, to create a world inhabited by realism and absurdism, and characters we laugh with, or at, or both. That Ives often pulls all of this off simultaneously is nothing short of astounding.
Lives of the Saints comprises six short plays, each funny and intelligent on its own, but with the cumulative effect of hilariously supple writing making the whole more substantial than the sum of its parts. The opener, The Goodness of Your Heart, which pits neighbors against each other over the "gift" of a widescreen televsion, takes perfect aim at the current annoyance of those self-entitled dopes who think that the world is theirs alone. Soap Opera is a farcical dismantling of that longtime afternoon TV scourge, has a Maytag repairman in love with his washing machine. A doctor's office is the setting for Enigma Variations, as "Mrs. Dopplegangler" (two of them) complains to Dr. Bill (two of them) that her life is filled with deja vu.
The second act comprises more delectable one-acts. The excruciatingly funny Life Signs, in which a just-dead Park Avenue matriarch begins to prattle on in front of her grieving son and Southern Belle wife, confessing her own (and her daughter in law's) hidden sexual indiscretions, is followed by It's All Good, an ingeniously conceived short about a successful New York writer returning to his old Chicago neighbrohood, where he meets himself as he would have been if he hadn't left. The final sketch, Lives of the Saints, sympathetically shows two chatty middle-aged Polish ladies preparing a funeral breakfast in their local church basement.
Ives' masterly writing zeroes in on everyday lives, thanks to the playwright's innate sense of comic irony and absurdism, which also includes a goodly amount of belly laughs. The alternating digs of disagreeing friends in Goodness, the laundry list of washing machine puns in Soap Opera, the loony confessions of a cadaver in Life Signs: Ives can mine humor and humanity in any situation. And even when brilliant ideas falter—the doubling down of the antics of Enigma, the non-ending to It's All Good, the introduction of actors providing kitchen sound effects for the ladies in Saints—there's always something else to take their place.
On Beowulf Boritt's crafty stage designs, director John Rando has a shrewdly loose leash on his talented cast: of this superlative quintet, Rick Holmes, Kelly Hutchinson and Liv Rooth are first-rate, while Arnie Burton and Carson Ellrod go even further, with a winning repertoire of voices, accents and facial expressions and inflections that change in the blink of an eye.
Lives of the Saints
The Duke on 42nd St, 229 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
primarystages.com
The Duke on 42nd St, 229 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
primarystages.com
February '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 21:03
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Birdman
(Fox)
One of the most annoying of recent Oscar-winning Best Pictures comprises Emmanuel Lubezki's relentlessly mobile Oscar-winning photography, scenery-chewing performers delivering moronic dialogue dreamed up by four Oscar-winning writers and Alejandro G. Inarritu's too-clever but Oscar-winning directing, which add up to a headache-inducing cartoon about acting, show biz and (mostly) whatnot. As Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Ed Norton, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough and others ham mercilessly, Amy Ryan scores by her relative restraint, while the caricatured critic (played with notable embarrassment by poor Lindsay Duncan) is only part of the movie's ludicrous treatment of Broadway theater.
So much is nonsensical—like a final sequence featuring a hospital window a few floors up which a patient can open and climb out of—that this should be called Birdbrain. It does look alluring on Blu-ray; extras include an Inarritu and Keaton interview and a 30-minute making-of featurette.
In the Land of the Head Hunters
(Milestone)
These two releases continue Milestone's remarkable streak of restoring forgotten classics. Independent-film trailblazer Shirley Clarke's 1961 feature The Connection finds intense drama in a group of addicts and jazz musicians who populate a dilapidated New York apartment and who talk and riff for an arrogant documentary filmmaker while waiting for their drug connection to arrive.
An even more vital restoration, In the Land of Head Hunters, is famed photographer Edward S. Curtis' 1914 foray into feature filmmaking, and its immersion in the world of Native Americans before white settlers arrived is far more than a mere historic document. The spectacular restorations of both films look great in hi-def; Connection extras include interviews and featurettes, and Land extras include a 1973 version of the film, audio commentary, and film reconstruction and making-of featurettes.
Far from the Madding Crowd
(Warner Archive)
In this beautifully shot 1967 adaptation of Thomas Hardy's epic novel, director John Schelesinger goes the David Lean route by following the plot faithfully (courtesy Frederic Raphael's literate script) and having attractive performers in the leads, as Julie Christie's Bathsheba plays with the men in her life, played by Alan Bates, Peter Finch and Terence Stamp.
But Schlesinger errs in substituting gigantism for subtlety. Freddie Francis' exquisitely wrought camerawork and Richard Rodney Bennett's varied musical score are also undeniable assets. The Blu-ray transfer is excellent; lone extra is a vintage 10-minute on-set featurette.
Fellini Satyricon
(Criterion)
Federico Fellini's free-wheeling, flagrantly unfaithful 1969 adaptation of Petronius' memoir of Rome is the epitome of the adjective "Felliniesque": the freaks and grotesques that populate this world are less ancient Roman denizens and more Fellini's own fantastical creations. Of course, this stunning-looking film has extraordinary photography, sets and costumes, but the superimposition of Fellini onto the material makes it most memorable.
The Criterion Blu-ray transfer is immaculate; extras include a commentary, behind-the-scenes diary, hour-long on-set documentary Ciao Federico!, archival Fellini interviews, new interview with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno and new featurettes about the adaptation and famous on-set photographs.
Horrible Bosses 2
(Warners)
The first Horrible Bosses was mostly mediocre, a fitful comedy with few laughs; but the sequel emphasizes the first word of its title to stultifying effect, especially when allowing Charlie Day and Jason Sudekis—neither remotely funny here—to dominate the asinine proceedings.
If you want to hear Jennifer Aniston curse like a sailor, this might be your best chance, but even that isn't enough to save a movie that (aside from Kevin Spacey's hilarious cameo) is dead on arrival, whether in the 105-minute original or even deadlier 115-minute extended cut. The Blu-ray looks fine; extras comprise several featurettes.
(C Major)
Richard Strauss's magnificent 1911 opera is many things: a lament for the middle-aged Marschallin, who loses her young lover Octavian; a romance of young love between Octavian and sweet Sophie; and a farce about foolish middle-aged von Ochs, Sophie's erstwhile suitor. The music is gloriously melodic, as always with Strauss, and the characters are expertly etched by his best librettist, Hugo von Hofmannsthall.
Last summer's Salzburg Festival staging (by Harry Kupfer) keeps liberties to a minimum and has the characters front and center, with superlative musical portrayals by Krassimira Stoyanova (Marschallin), Sophie Koch (Octavian) and a meltingly lovely Mojca Erdmann (Sophie); Franz Welser-Most conducts a sympathetic account of Strauss' music. The Blu-ray video and audio are first-rate.
Stray Dogs
(Cinema Guild)
Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang's slow-moving films are not everyone's cup of tea, although many reviewers swear by his impossibly long, static takes that delve into people's interior lives: still, those shots can go too far, making us wonder whether shots of seven or eight minutes can convey just as much in half that time.
This drama about a single father in Taipei struggling to raise his children is his latest contemplative examination, highlighted by several astoundingly long takes, especially the final two shots, which run twelve and seven minutes repectively; aside from making us marvel at his actors' ability to do little for so long, they don't really add anything of substance. The hi-def transfer is stunning; extras are Tsai's 55-minute film Journey to the West (also in HD) and his 70-minute master class at Paris's Cinematheque Francaise.
Above Suspicion—Complete Collection
(Acorn)
The offbeat (not entirely sexual nor entirely platonic) chemistrty of Kelly Reilly and Ciarin Hinds as a newish detective and her hard-bitten boss is delicious to watch in this well-scripted, superbly-acted series of taut mysteries that, unfortunately, ran its course after four television films, all included in this boxed set.
Here's hoping that someday there's a follow-up feature film—or another series—with these two fascinating characters....and performers. Extras comprise behind the scenes featurettes and interviews.
Altar
(Cinedigm)
What begins as a familiar but stylish haunted house movie set in misty Yorkshire soon becomes a lumbering "dad goes crazy" flick that recalls and—as discordant music swells on the soundtrack—downright steals from The Shining.
Matthew Modine (who was in Kubrick's Shining follow-up, Full Metal Jacket) plays the father with an obviously crazed glint in his eye while, sadly, Olivia Williams—a resourceful actress whose roles rarely suit her talents—is little more than a screamer here, like Shelley Duvall in (of course) The Shining. Writer-director Nick Willing's cheat of an ambiguous ending shows his desperation.
August Wilson—The Ground on Which I Stand
Shakespeare Uncovered—Series 2
(PBS)
The revealing American Masters episode, August Wilson—The Ground on Which I Stand, chronicles the career (which ended far too early upon his death in 2005 at age 60) of the trailblazing playwright, whose singular 10-play cycle encompassed the black experience in America.
In the second series of the entertaining, informative Shakespeare Uncovered, six actors each analyze one of the Bard's classic plays: Joseph Fiennes (Romeo and Juliet), David Harewood (Othello), Hugh Bonneville (A Midsummer Night's Dream) and Morgan Freeman (The Taming of the Shrew) provide enjoyable hours, but best are Kim Cattrall's look at Antony and Cleopatra and Christopher Plummer's illuminating overview of the most despairing of Shakespeare's masterpieces, King Lear. Wilson extras include additional segments.
Star 80
(Warner Archive)
Bob Fosse's unlikeable 1983 masterpiece, which tells the depressing, sordid story of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten and her discoverer, slimy Paul Snider, is Fosse's own cautionary morality tale of the seamiest side of show business, as the director artfully rubs our noses in watching how Snider got Stratten her big break, only to rage against her when she finally outgrows his low-class ways, finally killing her, then himself, in 1980, when she was 20 and on the cusp of stardom.
That Eric Roberts pretty much repeated his performance as Snider for much of his career doesn't make it any less poweful, while Mariel Hemingway makes a sweetly naive Dorothy. It's too bad that Warner Archive released Star 80 without any restoration, compromising Sven Nykvist's dark, moody cinematography; this classic deserves a Blu-ray with contextualizing extras, which we probably won't get any time soon.
February '15 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 February 2015 21:56
- Written by Kevin Filipski
A Day in the Country
(Criterion)
A masterpiece in miniature, Jean Renoir's buoyant 40-minute short might be his profoundest statement mainly because he refrains from making one: this graciously comic look at a city clan's eventful visit to the country is an absolute delight to watch.
Renoir's lively visuals are reminiscent of his father's lustrous paintings, while his generosity and sympathy lie with his characters, foibles and all. This unfinished classic (finally released 10 years after it was shot in 1936) has been given the first-rate Criterion treatment, from the wonderful restoration to voluminous extras comprising a 90-minute compilation of outtakes, Un tournage a la campagne; interviews; a video essay; Renoir's introduction; and screen tests.
(PBS)
In this gorgeous-looking five-part study, Dr. M. Sanjayan's travels are turned into a new kind of nature documentary, which shows how humans and animals are inhabiting our magnificent planet, both apart and together.
The episodes, which feature one aspect of our mutually beneficial relationship—Home, Plains, Forests, Oceans, Water—also examine ways we can preserve our precious natural resources for ourselves and the future. The Blu-ray visuals are, naturally, eye-popping; lone extra is bonus Sanhayan interview.
Fear Clinic
(Anchor Bay)
If not for Robert Englund—best known as Freddy from the Nightmare on Elm Street series—this thriller about people dealing with a horrific past event through hallucinations that are becoming murderously real would be even more routine than it is.
Englund is solid as the doctor whose risky treatments might be the cause of some grisly deaths, but flimsy motivation and scare tactics won't appeal to any but the least finicky horror fans. The movie looks good in hi-def; lone extra is an on-set featurette.
(Lionsgate)
Director Tommy Lee Jones, who stars in this western as an outlaw who helps a spinster take a trio of women driven mad by the harsh frontier existence to a safe house, has made a sturdy, solid picture that's a bit too slow and studied for its own good; surprisingly, Jones gives a curiously uncontrolled performance that mars the straightforward filmmaking on display.
The film, though, belongs to Hilary Swank, who as the spinster gives a thoughtful, intelligent performance, even if the occasionally harrowing drama (based on a 1988 novel by Glendon Swarthout) severely shortchanges her, throwing the story out of whack in its final half-hour. The western vistas look spectacular on Blu-ray; extras include three substantial on-set featurettes.
Laggies
(Lionsgate)
This mild comic study about Megan, a 20ish slacker who befriends high school student Annika and her father, with whom she becomes romantically involved, limps along without committing for 100 minutes, essentially aping its idle protagonist.
With a too-familiar script by Andrea Seigel and uneven direction by Lynn Shelton, it's still worth a look, thanks to committed acting by Keira Knightley, Chloe Grace Moretz and Sam Rockwell. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray; extras are Shelton's commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Magnolia)
Steve James' documentary about Roger Ebert's final years is an affecting portrait of the famous movie lover who faced mortality with bravery and humor, especially after horribly disfiguring cancer treatments that only prolonged the inevitable (he died in 2013).
There's no denying the importance of the phenomenally popular movie review show starring Ebert and fellow Chicago reviewer Gene Siskel—who died of a brain tumor in 1999—but James shows how Ebert kept his love of cinema in proper perspective, as only one aspect of his gregarious love for life. The Blu-ray has a first-rate transfer; extras are deleted scenes, James interview and featurettes.
Mariinsky II Gala
(Arthaus Musik)
When the Mariinsky Theatre opened its ultra-modern concert hall, Mariinsky II, on May 2, 2013, the cream of the crop of its stable of singers, musicians and dancers, alongside international stars, converged on St. Petersburg for the ultimate gala concert, led by the indefatigable conductor Valery Gergiev.
Among dozens of highlights, there are Russian superstar soprano Anna Netrebko, the immortal Placido Domingo and luminous ballerina Diana Vishneva. The two-hour performance features Russian composers Tchaikvsky, Prokofiev and Stravinsky, and works by Wagner, Mozart and Verdi. The Blu-ray's image and sound are extraordinary.
(Kino Lorber)
French director Jacques Rivette's fanatical cult marches on despite a painfully mediocre cinematic output: his 1981 Paris-set film pairs a middle-aged ex-con and a paranoid 20ish loner, who together battle a menagerie of men named Max for a red-herring filled "mystery" that wears out its slender welcome long before its two-plus-hour running time expires.
Amid the eternal beauties of Paris locations—which, to Rivette's credit, bypass the usual tourist traps (except for the Arc de Triumphe) for less photographed areas—actress Bulle Ogier and daughter Pascale (who tragically died in 1984, one day short of her 26th birthday) traipse around with little rhyme or reason. There's enough willful obscurity and symbolism to delight Rivette fans; for the rest of us, it's heavy going. The Blu-ray looks splendid; extras are two video essays.
Syncopation
(Cohen Media)
In this 1942 dramatization of jazz's evolution, trumpeter Jackie Cooper falls in love with piano player Bonita Granville, but their romance rightly takes a back seat to the glorious musical performances from the likes of Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa.
Director William Dichterle provides enough breathing space for the musicmaking to make viewers overlook the bumpily melodramatic plotting and pacing. The restored film looks tremendous on Blu; extras comprise nine jazz shorts featuring such luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Bille Holliday, Duke Ellington and Bessie Smith.
(Millennium)
When she was Derek Jeter's girlfriend, Minka Kelly was just another pretty face, but her strong portrayal of a young woman caught in a cycle of drugs, violence and sexual exploitation catches all the nuances of what could have been a paper-thin character.
Too bad the rest of the film (despite solid acting by Noah Wyle, Jeremy Irvine and Adelaide Clemens) isn't up to her forceful portrayal, instead getting bogged down by back-country in-fighting and Civil War memories that make this downbeat melodrama meander for two hours. There's an excellent hi-def transfer.
More Articles...
Newsletter Sign Up
Upcoming Events
No Calendar Events Found or Calendar not set to Public.