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Film and the Arts
MET Orchestra Perform Strauss at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 June 2025 13:30
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Soprano Elza van den Heever with Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Photo by Chris Lee
At the marvelous Stern Auditorium, on the night of Thursday, June 12th, I had the exceptional pleasure to attend a superb concert, the first of two in six days presented by Carnegie Hall and featuring the extraordinary MET Orchestra under the brilliant direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
The event, consisting entirely of music by Richard Strauss, started enchantingly with a splendid reading of the wonderful Suite from his glorious opera, Der Rosenkavalier. In a useful note on the program by Harry Haskell, he describes the Suite as “unauthorized” and says that “conductor Artur Rodziński had premiered [it] in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic in 1944.” He adds that “The published score credits Strauss as composer but fails to mention Rodziński’s presumed role as arranger.”
The terrific soprano Elza van den Heever then entered the stage to perform unforgettably a sterling selection of songs—all originally written for voice and piano and later orchestrated—beginning with one of the composer’s greatest and most popular, “Zueignung,” Op. 10, No. 1 from 1885, set to a poem by Hermann von Gilm, who also wrote the text for the third song on the program, “Allerseelen,” which is No. 8 from the same set and also one of Strauss’s most magnificent achievements in the form. Two of the songs—the second, “Wiegenlied,” Op. 41, No. 1, from 1899 and the final one, “Befreit,” Op. 39, No. 4, from 1898–have their sources in poems by a more famous author, Richard Dehmel, one of whose works inspired Arnold Schoenberg’s indelible Verklärte Nacht. (The latter of these two is referenced in Strauss’s gorgeous Ein Heldenleben that closed this concert.) The fourth song was another quite popular one, the 1894 “Cäcilie,” Op. 27, No. 2, to a text by Heinrich Hart.
Remarkable and rewarding as all this was, I found the second half of the evening even more impressive: an astonishing account of Ein Heldenleben. The composer wrote: “Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ is so little beloved of our conductors, and is on this account now only rarely performed, that to fulfill a pressing need I am composing a largish tone poem entitled Heldenleben, admittedly without a funeral march, but yet in E-flat, with lots of horns, which are always a yardstick of heroism.”
The work indeed begins heroically leading to the somewhat playful second movement, entitled “The Hero’s Adversaries,” which has caustic, scherzo-like sections largely for woodwinds. The third movement, “The Hero’s Companion,” is ludic too, even eccentric; dominated by the solo violin, it has some extremely beautiful, more lyrical, Romantic passages. The martial fourth movement, “The Hero’s Battlefield,” which opens with an offstage fanfare, is more turbulent. The annotator describes the penultimate movement, “The Hero’s Works of Peace”, as “a catalog of allusions to Strauss’s earlier tone poems and other music.” He adds, quoting Strauss:
In the final section, the composer speaks unmistakably in his own voice as the Hero, “overwhelmed with revulsion,” retires from the world, “now only wanting to live on his own reflections, desires, and the quiet, contemplative resolution of his very own personality.”
The artists deservedly were enthusiastically applauded.
Film Festival Roundup—2025 Tribeca Festival
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 17 June 2025 03:02
- Written by Kevin Filipski
2025 Tribeca Festival
June 6-15, 2025
Various locations in Manhattan
Tribecafilm.com/festival
Once again, the annual Tribeca Festival premiered dozens of features, shorts and documentaries—the latter are what I concentrated on, and as always, the films made for interesting, informative and at times exasperating viewing.
Marlee Matlin—Not Alone Anymore (Kino Lorber, opens June 20)
In Shoshannah Stern’s perceptive portrait of the first deaf performer to be nominated for and win an Oscar—for best actress in Children of a Lesser God (1986)—Marlee Matlin (above) lays herself bare, as a deaf person, an actress, and an advocate for the hearing-impaired community. She is remarkably candid about her upbringing, her addictions, her volatile romantic and professional relationship with William Hurt, her uneasiness at becoming the global “face” of the deaf community after winning the Oscar and her satisfaction at the nearly four-decade career she’s had despite many saying she was a one trick pony. Stern also speaks with Aaron Sorkin (who wrote a part in The West Wing specifically for Matlin), Henry Winkler (a close friend for many years), Lauren Ridloff (who played the same role in Lesser God a few years ago and received a Tony nomination) and Randa Haines (who directed the Lesser God film), all of whom illuminate the subject as a performer and, even more importantly, as a person.
Backside
Everybody knows that Churchill Downs is where the Kentucky Derby has been run for more than 150 years, but director Raúl O. Paz Pastrana focuses his camera on those whom the millions of visitors to horseracing’s most famous race never see—or even knew about. It’s the many workers behind the scenes (at what is considered the track’s “backside”) who groom and clean and pamper and feed and ensure that the horses are ready for training or racing. Pastrana takes his cue from the great Frederick Wiseman for this fly-on-the-wall record of the people (several of whom are migrants) who get no glory but are indispensable in keeping a booming industry going.
The Inquisitor
Briskly directed by Angela Lynn Tucker, this is an edifying examination of Barbara Jordan (above, center), who was a political trailblazer in many ways, including her being the first Black Southern woman elected to Congress, in 1972, which also enabled her to become a clear and articulate voice of reason during the Nixon impeachment hearings. Tucker not only uses well-chosen archival clips of Jordan herself but also conducts new interviews with admirers from Dan Rather to Jasmine Crockett. Narrator Alfre Woodard provides Jordan’s strong, eloquent voice.
Natchez
The Mississippi town that still clings to the fantasy of antebellum—that the South before the Civil War was a beautiful and glorious place, ignoring that it was built on the backs of its enslaved people—is chronicled in Suzannah Herbert’s thoughtful documentary that contrasts the booming antebellum tourist business with how local residents and officials are dealing with what’s often been an unspoken history. In this look at a wide array of people on all sides of the divide, Herbert’s camera displays the observational muscle of a Frederick Wiseman, which is high praise indeed.
Re-Creation
Although not a documentary per se, Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s tantalizing hybrid tackles a vexing criminal case: in 1996, a French woman was murdered in rural Ireland, and journalist Ian Bailey was a prime suspect who never faced an Irish jury. Playing off 12 Angry Men, the film posits a theoretical trial with evidence presented, actor Colm Meaney playing Bailey, Sheridan himself as the frustrated foreman and the amazing Dutch actress Vicky Krieps as the lone “not guilty” holdout who tries to convince the others that contradictory evidence and witnesses make a conviction anything but clear-cut.
Something Beautiful (Trafalgar Releasing/Sony Music)
In this “visual album” based on her just-released eponymously titled recording, Miley Cyrus (above) and codirectors Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter look for some variety in what are basically videos for all 13 songs, mixing straightforward performance clips with elaborately staged and costumed fantasy trips. I’m not a Miley fan, finding her songs repetitive mindless pop, but she does have a good singing voice and a real onscreen presence, so it’s too bad that this comes off as slight and self-indulgent instead of slight and fun.
Watch Over Us
In this devastating short, director Carlos Garcia de Dios follows Victoria Lopez (above), a Minnesota mother of four sentenced to a stupefying 88 months in jail for selling meth, who sees her kids before surrendering to the authorities and starting her jail term. (I’d love to know what sentence that judge would give to a white male frat boy for the same offense). Even though Lopez had her sentence commuted after a year in prison, the film still mortifyingly displays how our unfair justice system affects so many people, including family and friends of those convicted.
Off-Broadway Play Review—Donald Margulies’ “Lunar Eclipse”
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 13 June 2025 16:33
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Lunar Eclipse
Written by Donald Margulies; directed by Kate Whoriskey
Performances through June 22, 2025
Second Stage Theater at Pershing Square Theater Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
2st.com
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| Lisa Emery and Reed Birney in Lunar Eclipse (photo: Joan Marcus) |
At his considerable best, playwright Donald Margulies has a rare gift for creating characters whose down-to-earth realism makes them iconic, as in Dinner with Friends and Sight Unseen. When he’s at his less than best—as in his latest play, Lunar Eclipse—Margulies is still deft with his dialogue, but there’s something lacking in plotting, exposition and insight.
Longtime married couple George and Em sit in a dark field on their midwestern farm in lawn chairs and discuss their long and winding lives together while watching a lunar eclipse unfold. Margulies rotely sketches their decades-long relationship, as difficulties with childbirth led to adopted children: daughter Mary Ann turned out fine and is living in Denver, while son Tim (“Poor Tim,” Em calls him) became a drug addict. George and Em themselves are similarly perfunctorily sketched out—he’s sullen and quick to anger while she is a consoler and optimist. Indeed, at one point, George berates her for being too cheerful (“the smiley-face act,” he derisively calls it).
That’s not to say that there aren’t couples like this, seeming opposites whose decades together were meticulously cultivated to form a more or less stable family. Unlike in his masterpiece Dinner with Friends, here Margulies’ psychologically acute analysis is less than penetrating. Sure, his crisp, tart dialogue can still reverberate, as in George’s touching monologue about weeping over the death of Belle, the latest in a long line of beloved family dogs.
But the conceit of the eclipse itself—each segment of the play is prefaced by a description of how far into the eclipse we are, e.g.,” Moon enters penumbra. Penumbral shadow appears”—lacks poetic power, especially when Em spells it out: “Everybody’s got their own sad and messy lives to deal with. What do they need to hear me belly-aching for? My sadness is not unique. It’s the oldest story there is: Eve lost a son. The trick is not to let it take over. Cast its shadow over everything else. Like an eclipse.”
Still, as enacted by Reed Birney and Lisa Emery, George and Em become vivid and immediate, even in a strained epilogue that shows them on their first date—a solar eclipse, naturally. Director Kate Whoriskey’s understated direction, on Walt Spangler’s marvelously evocative set, rarely lets their talk go slack—but Amith Chandrashaker’s often resourceful lighting doesn’t mirror the ongoing eclipse. George and Em’s intimate drama would benefit from such moodier shading, especially from its talented creator.
June '25 Digital Week II
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 11 June 2025 22:01
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Ballerina
(Lionsgate)
This entry into the John Wick universe introduces Eve, an assassin out to avenge her father’s murder at the hands of a syndicate headed by the Chancellor, who seemingly has an entire village in central Europe at his lethal disposal.
Director Len Wiseman doesn’t vary the blueprint for these shoot-’em-ups that resemble nothing more video games on the big screen, and despite how dopily entertaining it is, two hours of dozens (and dozens) of killings, however cleverly executed—Eve and adversaries wield guns, grenades, knives, swords, ice skate blades, water hoses and flamethrowers—make its star, the usually magnetic Ana de Armas, secondary to the action. The ending leaves room for a sequel, which is either a promise or a threat, depending on one’s point of view.
(Cohen Media Group)
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has already made films about Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion—Why Ukraine, Slava Ukraini, Glory to the Heroes!—and his latest (codirected with Marc Roussel) is another urgent dispatch from the front lines, showing that the fighting spirit of the armed forces, ordinary citizens and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has not wavered despite years of wanton destruction and death.
Lévy smartly shows, without comment, the disgusting gotcha Oval Office display by Trump and his lapdog Vance when they jumped on Zelenskyy as if he invaded Russia and not the other way around—letting its idiocy speak for itself. But the bulk of Lévy’s film records the depth of the brave patriotism of so many Ukrainians.
Redlands
(Dekanalog)
Made in 2014, John Brian King’s film about Vienna (Nicole Arianna Fox), a nude model who poses for creepy photographer Allan (Clifford Morts) while living with her creep of a boyfriend/pimp, Zack (Sam Brittan), is a slow-burn drama in which not much is burning.
It’s a series of stiffly staged sequences that leads to a final scene in a morgue, and it ends up resembling a snuff film. It’s sharply photographed by Ioana Vasile and unevenly acted by Morts as Allan and Brittan as Zack, while Fox’s winning presence as Vienna make us feel that both performer and character deserve a better fate.
The Amateur
(20th Century Studios)
Based on a novel by Robert Littell that was previously adapted as a 1981 drama with John Savage and Christopher Plummer, James Hawes’ mild thriller follows a CIA cryptographer, Charlie Fuller (Remi Malek), who forces himself into action to track down the quartet of terrorists responsible for the gruesome execution of his innocent wife Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan).
Jumping around Europe following Charlie ingeniously planning his revenge against the foursome—and evading his complicit superiors—the movie covers a lot of geographical ground but haphazard plotting and a lack of an emotional connection (Ramek is surprisingly distant in what could have been a bravura turn) mitigate its efficiency.
Hurry Up Tomorrow
(Lionsgate)
Pop star vanity projects are a dime a dozen, but not since the mid-’80s—when Prince’s Purple Rain and Under the Cherry Moon and Paul McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street soiled screens—has there been a wrongheaded entry like this, which the Weeknd cowrote and stars in as a version of himself dealing with emotional and relationship turmoil while being the biggest star in the world.
At least Prince and Paul had good tunes to assuage their egos; the Weeknd’s synth-laden, autotuned pop is tough to hear over and over. The usually appealing Jenna Ortega only has one good scene, when she dances deliriously; poor Barry Keough is also wasted as the star’s manager. Director Trey Edward Shults (also a cowriter) has little sense of pacing or drama, and the result is a dreary 105 minutes.
Brazil
(Criterion)
Terry Gilliam’s dystopian vision was made in 1985, but its bleak look at a society crushed by an oppressive government might even be more relevant today, in the second era of Trump. Despite its subject matter—our hero ends up being crushed like the bug at the beginning that sets everything in motion—the movie is awash with the brilliantly original visuals that have made Gilliam one of our premier cinematic stylists.
The 4K image looks superlative, and this set (one UHD, one Blu-ray) ports over numerous extras from Criterion’s three-Blu-ray set: Gilliam’s sparkling commentary; on-set documentary What Is Brazil?; The Battle of Brazil, a one-hour documentary about the friction between Gilliam and Universal Studios; interviews; storyboards; visual essays; and Universal’s 94-minute, mercilessly butchered “Love Conquers All” version of the film that Gilliam disowned and which was only shown in syndication.
Sean Connery 6-Film James Bond Collection
(Warner Bros)
Debates have gone on for decades about who was the best James Bond; Pierce Brosnan came close with his mixture of sardonic suavity, but the OG, Sean Connery, still reigns supreme, as witness this set of his first six appearances as 007. The movies, of course—1962’s Dr. No, 1963’s From Russia With Love, 1964’s Goldfinger, 1965’s Thunderball, 1967’s You Only Live Twice and 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever (his abortive return in 1983’s Never Say Never Again is mercifully skipped)—remain sniggeringly sexist and offhandedly racist, but Connery’s charisma and a raft of plots, gadgets and guest villains make them as entertaining as ever.
The films have superb UHD transfers; and the voluminous extras include director and crew commentaries as well as many archival featurettes, interviews, TV ads, and documentaries.
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