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October '25 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 22 October 2025 20:43
Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week 
Auction 
(Menemsha Films/Film Forum)
A painting by Austrian artist Egon Schiele turns up in the house of a young man, and André, an enterprising dealer from a famed Paris auction house, discovers that it was taken from its rightful owner by the Nazis in 1939, and the owner’s heirs are making a claim to it.
 
 
Director Pascal Bonitzer’s accomplished drama unfolds like a slow-burning thriller, but it’s also a clear-eyed look at ethics and morality in a world that’s anything but black and white. Bonitzer and top actors like Alex Lutz (as André), the great Léa Drucker (as Bertina, his colleague and ex) and Louise Chevillotte (as his oddball intern) help make Auction smart and involving from the get-go. 
 
 
 
It Was Just an Accident 
(Neon/Film at Lincoln Center)
The latest from Iranian master Jafar Panahi—who has made ironical dramas about contemporary Iranian life for the past 30 years, since his debut, The White Balloon—is possibly his most incendiary yet, confronting defenders of the current authoritarian regime through their vicious actions against those in opposition.
 
 
Vahid, who was arrested years earlier by an unapologetic pawn of the regime who’s nicknamed Peg Leg, realizes his torturer is living an ordinary family life and decides to kidnap him—but then hesitates about what to do next. Suspenseful and tense sequences abound, including a few truly stunning one-shot moments that make the flamboyant visuals of One Battle After Another look like amateurish meandering. Panahi filmed this surreptitiously—and illegally, according to incensed government officials—but every frame is filled with unparalleled urgency and artistry.
 
 
 
The Mastermind 
(Mubi/Film at Lincoln Center)
Kelly Reichardt’s latest stripped-down anti-comic drama is crammed with contrivances that show a filmmaker who’s run out of ideas. When James, a disaffected, unemployed father, decides to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a Massachusetts art museum, he soon finds himself in trouble with his family, the mob and the law (duh). Although Jack O’Connor gives an appealing hangdog quality to James, a man who doesn’t quite know what his American dream but is desperate to try anything to achieve it, there’s not much else to recommend this shockingly sloppy movie. Rob Mazurek’s rhythmic score is more enervating than tense, while Alana Haim as Terri, James’ wife, is as inexpressive as she was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s worst movie, Licorice Pizza.
 
 
Though set in 1970, at the height of the Vietnam, evidence of the war is scant until there’s a climactic peace demonstration in which James gets his comeuppance; it’s one of the most leaden bits of dramatic irony I’ve seen in a long time but is the perfect ending for such a lazy film.
 
 
 
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Deep Crimson 
(Criterion)
Mexican master Arturo Ripstein’s take on The Honeymoon Killers is a fairly lurid, fairly sensational and fairly interesting crime melodrama—except that all those “fairly”s add up to a well-done missed opportunity. There are some very good, even memorable moments like each of the murder sequences, which are treated in a matter-of-fact fashion that’s all the more disturbing. And Ripstein’s vivid visual sense is made manifest by his subtly roving camera that moves among the criminals and their prey.
 
 
But a routine atmosphere soon settles in, and by the final scenes of the couple’s capture and execution, what started dynamically ends in lurching fits and starts. Even David Mansfield’s chamber score seems out of place. There’s an exceptional 4K transfer; extras are interviews with Ripstein and cowriter Paz Alicia Garciadiego along with a post-screening Q&A they gave.
 
 
 
Weapons 
(Warner Bros)
In Zach Cregger’s convoluted thriller, new teacher Justine is the prime suspect when all of the young students in her classroom disappear one night, except for one—but there’s much more to the seemingly inscrutable happenings once she, Archer (father of one of the children) and policeman Paul (a married ex she’s still sleeping with) start snooping around.
 
 
Cregger cheats right from the start—shots of the kids running through the streets at night have an eerily similar look to the famous photo of a Vietnamese child burned by napalm, which I hope isn’t intentional—and he ends up telling a familiar tale of a witch’s spell that destroys all in its nonsensical path. The acting by Julia Garner (Julie), Josh Brolin (Archer), Alden Ehrenreich (Paul) and an unrecognizable Amy Madigan (the witchy villain) partially elevates Cregger’s derivative script and direction. The film looks impressive on UHD; extras are short on-set featurettes and interviews.
 
Blu-ray Release of the Week
School in the Crosshairs 
(Cult Epics)
Japanese auteur Nobuhiko Obayashi, whose unclassifiable but classic 1977 magnum opus House is his best-known film, made this even more surreal sci-fi parody-cum-homage in 1981. It follows the exploits of a high-school student (played by Hiroko Yakushimaru, a teen heartthrob at the time) who discovers she has telekinetic powers one day at school and soon realizes that a malevolent alien invasion is imminent.
 
 
Obayashi’s droll social commentary comes to the fore when several students’ minds begin to be controlled by extraterrestrials, stifling free speech; a welcome sense of playfulness in Obayashi’s directing and writing is on display, as it was in House. The restored film looks quite good on Blu; extras include a commentary and visual essay.
 
 
 
DVD Release of the Week 
Niki 
(Distrib Films US)
Charlotte Le Bon’s fiery performance as French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002), who overcame incestuous abuse as a young girl from her father—which led to mental health issues for which things like shock therapy were deemed appropriate treatment—to find her voice in painting, sculptures and collages, centers this conventional but well-made portrait of the artist as a young woman.
 
 
Making her directorial debut, Céline Sallette imbues time-honored devices like split screens and title cards with remarkable freshness, but it’s all at the service of telling an honest account of a difficult story that ultimately shows how art can be a way to overcome trauma.
 
 
 
CD Release of the Week
Bacewicz—String Quartet No. 4, Piano Quintet No. 1 
(Evil Penguin)
It’s heartening that Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69), the first 20th-century Polish female composer to earn deserved—if belated—recognition for her startlingly original scores, has in the past few had releases of several excellent discs of her music, even though they have primarily been recordings of her highly expressive orchestral works.
 
 
This disc features two of her most exhilarating chamber pieces, the Piano Quintet No. 1—which begins with one of the composer’s most haunting musical themes—and the String Quartet No. 4, which was composed in 1951, amazingly just a year before the quintet. The Kinski Quartet, with marvelous accompaniment from pianist Jâms Coleman in the quintet, gives these superlative pieces vigorous workouts alongside a beating heart.

October '25 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Wednesday, 15 October 2025 20:43
Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week 
F1—the Movie 
(Warner Bros)
Brad Pitt’s laconic charm is on display throughout this overlong commercial for Formula 1 racing: for two and a half hours, director Joseph Kosinski takes us on a relentlessly formulaic journey through several races, each of which writer Ehren Kruger tries his damnedest to make singular rather than repetitive. Kosinski and Kruger fail, for the most part, while the off-track scenes of Pitt as retired daredevil driver Sonny (who comes out of retirement), Damson Idris as young hotshot driver Joshua, Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben (who talks Sonny into returning) and Kerry Condon as Kate, the brains of the outfit (who—of course—falls for Sonny against her better judgment) are pretty ordinary.
 
 
It’s shot and paced efficiently and slickly, and if you’re a fan of cars flying around a track at 200 miles an hour, then your—um—mileage may vary. The film has a sharply detailed 4K transfer; extras comprise several making-of featurettes.
 
 
 
Message in a Bottle 
(Mercury Studios)
Set to 27 Police and solo songs by Sting, this story of the global refugee crisis is told through the mesmerizing movement of Kate Prince’s dance company, ZooNation—and, as jukebox shows go, it’s closer to Twyla Tharp’s take on Billy Joel’s catalog, Movin’ Out, than to the Abba megahit, Mamma Mia. 
 
 
Prince and dramaturg Lolita Chakrabarti have fashioned a narrative of sorts from which to hang Sting’s words and music, which have mostly been extensively rearranged and rerecorded. Whatever one thinks of how Prince and music supervisor and arranger Alex Lacamoire manipulate Sting’s tunes to fit the contrived narrative—sometimes a disservice to the songs, other times a disservice to the story—the dancing of Prince’s company, which specializes in effortlessly combining contemporary and hip-hop styles, is breathtaking. The UHD video and surround-sound audio are tremendous; also included is a Blu-ray of the performance. 
 
 
 
A Nightmare on Elm Street—7-Film Collection 
(Warner Bros)
Wes Craven’s 1983 horror entry has gained stature over the past four decades despite being simply a crudely effective horror film about a teenage girl’s nightmares getting intruded on by the now-legendary Freddy Krueger, who enters the real world and starts a killing spree.
 
 
No one expected six sequels and spinoffs over the next 11 years, but that is what we got—most are even more forgettable, but each has its moments of dream-like lunacy, whether it’s the cleverly bizarre murders or the sixth installment’s desperate use of 3-D for the finale (yes, 3-D glasses are included in this set). All seven films have an impressive hi-def look; the many extras include commentaries, interviews, featurettes, music videos and alternate endings.
 
 
 
In-Theater Release of the Week
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 
(Icarus Films/Film Forum)
From the director of 2011’s The Black Power Mixtape, Sweden’s Göran Hugo Olsson, comes another imposingly thorough archival collage that, if nothing else, becomes a valuable historical document of the Israel-Palestine conflict through the unique lens of Swedish journalists in the region.
 
 
Olsson has assembled footage, shown in this 3-1/2 hour film in mostly chronological order, from Sweden’s state television network SVT’s wide-ranging coverage of the always charged relationship between Israelis and Palestinians that display both the misunderstandings and missteps that have trailed that region and its people for so long. Whether Olsson agrees with what is being presented and how is not the focus; there is no editorializing (which some might perceive as a copout). Instead, it’s an absorbing chronicle of what viewers in Sweden saw on their TV sets over a period of three decades from a network whose stated mission was impartiality in news coverage. It’s a long way from “We report. You decide.”
 
 
 
Blu-ray Releases of the Week 
The Bad Guys 2 
(Universal)
This intermittently amusing sequel to the hit 2022 animated adventure again follows a squad of reformed crooks (Wolf, Shark, Piranha, Tarantula and Snake) who have further misadventures. Director Pierre Perifel hits on some colorful visual inventiveness that mirrors the first film while Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen’s script has ricocheting one-liners that at times hit their intended targets.
 
 
What propels it all is the exuberant voice cast: Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson and Awkwafina as the bad guys and Zazie Beetz, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne and Maria Bakalova as the bad girls. There’s a bright Blu-ray image; extras include a new short, Little Lies and Alibis; deleted scenes; making-of featurettes and interviews.
 
 
 
Peter Gabriel—Taking the Pulse 
(Mercury Studios)
In 2010, Peter Gabriel released an album, Scratch My Back, his cover versions of favorite songs with orchestral accompaniment—on the ensuing tour (which I saw at Radio City Music Hall), Gabriel played those covers as well as his own songs performed with the New Blood Orchestra. This concert from that tour, filmed in Verona, Italy, at the venerable outdoor amphitheater Arena di Verona, comprises only Gabriel’s songs and is all the better for it.
 
 
Hearing classics “San Jacinto,” “Red Rain” and “Darkness” backed by the power of a full orchestra (led by conductor Ben Foster) is a rare privilege. The highlights are “Blood of Eden” and “Don’t Give Up,” duets with vocalist Ane Brun, who impressively takes the Sinead O’Connor and Kate Bush parts. The hi-def video looks fine, and the surround-sound audio is fantastic.
 
 
 
When Fall Is Coming 
(Music Box Films)
Prolific French director François Ozon’s latest follows the travails of retired grandmother Michelle, who’s been banned from seeing her grandson Lucas after he has an accident while visiting her rural home—but when her daughter Valérie is suddenly gone from the picture, she must deal with that unexpected absence from their lives.
 
 
There’s a welcome matter-of-factness to Ozon’s storytelling, but it’s too one-note when a fateful twist upends everyone and everything. On the positive side, Ozon gets uncluttered performances from his cast, led by Hélène Vincent (Michelle), Ludivine Seignier (Valérie) and Josiane Balasko (Michelle’s friend and neighbor Marie-Claude).
 
 
 
DVD Release of the Week
Peanuts—Ultimate TV Specials Collection 
(Warner Bros)
What better way to celebrate the immortal Charlie Brown and his pals and commemorate their creator Charles Schulz’s genius than with this comprehensive collection of 40 Peanuts television specials, from A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)—still the greatest animated TV special of them all—to the most recent, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown (2011).
 
 
If you have other favorites, they’re probably here, like It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973); along with all 40 specials on five discs, there’s also a collectible 28-page booklet.
 
 
 
CD Release of the Week 
Walton/Britten/Tippett—Works for Piano and Orchestra 
(BIS)
Vibrant works for piano and orchestra by three prominent 20th-century British composers make up this luminous-sounding disc with the exceptional pianist Clare Hammond as soloist. First is William Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante, a sprightly 1927 work that Walton revised in 1943; Hammond beautifully performs the revision, which makes clear this is less a concerto than a symphonic work with a prominent piano part.
 
 
Benjamin Britten’s 1940 Diversions was originally written for piano left-hand for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in World War I. Hammond and the BBC Symphony Orchestra led by George Bass get the tricky balance between the soloist and the orchestral players exactly right. Finally, there’s Michael Tippett’s 1953 concerto, one of the composer’s most exuberant works: again Hammond and the orchestra perform with passion, alternating between power and finesse throughout.

NYO-USA All-Stars Play Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 09 October 2025 14:37
Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the superb Stern Auditorium on the night of Tuesday, October 7th, I had the great pleasure to attend Carnegie Hall’s terrific, opening night gala concert featuring the NYO-USA All-Stars—i.e., the Alumni of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America—under the admirable direction of Daniel Harding.

The event started brilliantly with a sterling realization of three selections from Leonard Bernstein’s marvelous Symphonic Dances from West Side Story from 1960, beginning with the intensely lyrical “Somewhere,” one of the most beautiful songs in the score. The ensuing “Scherzo” is an elegant interlude, while the set finished with the jazzy, exuberant, propulsive “Mambo,” which concludes forcefully. 

The sexiest of contemporary virtuosi, Yujia Wang, then entered the stage to conduct and dazzlingly play Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s fabulous Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, Op. 23, completed in 1875. The famous opening of the initial movement, marked Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso, is exhilarating, quickly becoming immoderately passionate; a lilting, Slavic melody then comes to the fore, ushering in a moodier, more reflective section, but the music then at length ascends to a climactic passage succeeded by more elaborate developments, before accelerating to an exciting close. The following, Andantino semplice movement begins with a lovely, subdued theme that leads to a livelier episode before ending softly. The spectacular, Allegro con fuoco finale is animated and dance-like, even vigorous, but with quintessentially Romantic moments that progress toward its triumphant conclusion.

The evening finished at its acme, with a masterly version of Igor Stravinsky’s stunning 1919 Suite from his ballet The Firebird. It opens with an ominous Introduction followed by the delightful if almost disorienting The Firebird and its Dance and the Variation of the Firebird. The impressionistic, enchanting Rondo of the Princesses precedes the arresting, sinister but mesmerizing Infernal Dance of King Kashchei. The subsequent Lullaby is glorious and unutterably beautiful while the Finale is majestic and exultant.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

New York Philharmonic Perform Boulez & Debussy at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 09 October 2025 13:58
Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, October 4th, I had the pleasure to attend a superb concert—of music by Pierre Boulez and Claude Debussy—presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the exceptional direction of Esa-Pekka Salonen, one of the finest contemporary conductors.

In the first half of the evening, the works were performed without pauses in between them, starting with Boulez’s very brief Notation IV, Rythmique, for Solo Piano, from 1945, played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, himself a protégé of the composer and widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest living pianists. This was followed by a powerful account of the orchestral reworking of the same piece, the final revision of which was undertaken in 1987. 

Even more memorable was a sterling realization of Debussy’s marvelous Gigues from his outstanding set of Images for Orchestra, completed in 1912. His colleague André Caplet assisted in the orchestration of the piece, writing of it in 1923 as follows: “Gigues … sad Gigues … tragic Gigues … The portrait of a soul in pain, uttering its slow, lingering lamentation on the reed of an oboe d'amore.” He continued: “Underneath the convulsive shudderings, the sudden efforts at restraint, the pitiful grimaces, which serve as a kind of disguise, we recognize … the spirit of sadness, infinite sadness.” In the liner notes for a 1967 recording of symphonic works by Debussy in which Boulez conducted The Cleveland Orchestra, he wrote this about it:

… I do not find the Scottish element the most significant feature of Gigues, but rather the oscillation between a slow melody and a lively rhythm. I use the work “oscillation,” but I might equally say “coinciding,” because, when the two elements are superimposed, they give the impression of a double breathing, and this is most unusual. Timbre plays a primary part in separating the two planes of sound; and by giving the slow opening theme exclusively to the oboe d'amore the composer helps to isolate it in the listener's mind. It is not only that the tone of the oboe d'amore is pretty and unusual, intended to recall that of the bagpipes and excellently suited to the expression in this opening passage. It also makes us aware that the tempo of this tune will not be “disturbed” by the appearance of other figures in a different tempo. 

After this, Aimard executed the Notation VII, Hiératique, which was immediately succeeded by its impressive orchestral version from 1997. This preceded an excellent performance of Debussy’s extraordinary Rondes de printemps, also from Images. About this composition, Boulez wrote in the same liner notes:

In Rondes de printemps Debussy makes use of a favourite rhythm of five beats in the bar, subdivided into two and three, with repeated notes … . The Frenchness of this piece is certainly the least noticeable thing about it, at least to foreign ears, and was, I suppose, wholly absorbed by the composer's own personality, so that there was no room for the “exotic.” His different handlings of “Nous n'irons plus au bois” are not in fact the most remarkable thing about this piece either. It may well be that Debussy felt most free when he was least concerned with the accuracy of his quotations.

Aimard then played Notation II, Très vif, before its compelling, final orchestral revision from 1987 that concluded the first half of the event. Salonen commented in a recent interview on Boulez's Notations: 

Notations is a very fascinating series of orchestral compositions. He didn't consider a work of his to be a closed unit, like a final word — everything was a continuous process — and Notations gives us a really fascinating point of view of this. 

What we are going to experience in the audience is like snapshots at a certain phase of the life of the composition that we are going to be hearing. The original Notations are these tiny, miniature piano pieces that Boulez wrote in 1945 — they are very much in the Webern tradition, extremely brief in expression and form, and each basically dealing with one idea. Decades later he takes one of these tiny piano pieces and expands it for a massive orchestra. It's really amazing to see that the DNA itself doesn't change and is able to produce that kind of monster. Notations II and IV are these quickly moving, massive pieces in which Boulez uses the full symphony orchestra including eight percussionists. Number VII, for me, is a little gem. That's Boulez in his most Ravel-ian, Debussy-esque mode, full of very serious beauty and a lot of ripples on the surface of an otherwise calm sea. I find that actually very poetic.

The second half of the concert was even more remarkable, beginning with Aimard returning to the stage for a magnificent rendition of Debussy’s seldom presented but beautiful Fantaisie for Piano and Orchestra, which was finished in 1896 but never performed in the composer’s lifetime. The initial, Andante ma non troppo movement opens lyrically, eventually becoming moodier and more turbulent, even dramatically so, but it concludes triumphantly. The ensuing, exquisite Lento e molto espressivo movement is more subdued and reflective—it too increases in intensity—while the closing Allegro is lively and virtuosic, ending forcefully.

The program attained its pinnacle with an enchanting reading of the same composer’s masterwork, La Mer, which received its final revision in 1910. The first movement—From Dawn till Noon on the Sea—starts somewhat mysteriously, soon acquiring a shimmering texture, but superseded by impressionistic passages before closing majestically. The next movement—The Play of the Waves—is, appropriately, more ludic in inspiration on the whole, but with moments of urgency; it concludes softly. The last movement—Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea—begins portentously and the music is often agitated—if rewardingly so—even tempestuous, but with quiet interludes; it finishes with a thrilling, propulsive climax.

The artists deservedly received enthusiastic applause.

Salonen’s tribute to Boulez with this ensemble continues through the following week.

More Articles...

  1. October '25 Digital Week I
  2. New York Philharmonic Turn on the "Devil's Radio" at Lincoln Center
  3. September '25 Digital Week IV

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