CD Release of the Week 

The fifth album by the immensely talented Mexican hard-rock trio follows four terrifically listenable albums, from the auspicious debut 21st Century Blood and the disturbingly striking concept album Queen of the Murder Scene to the potent post-COVID LP Error and the wide-ranging Keep Me Fed. Too bad Everything’s Falling falls short of the Villarreal sisters’ earlier eclectic but powerful musical statements. 

 

 

It starts off strongly with “Ritual,” one of the band’s heaviest musical and lyrical statements, followed by “Perfect Daughter,” which caustically takes aim at the group’s longtime male fans who still consider them girls (even though the Warning has been a band for 13 years, and guitarist/lead singer Daniela is 26, drummer Paulina is 24, and bassist Alejandra is 21). The title track is powered by one of Daniela’s most impassioned vocals, but that “Comfortably Numb” is namechecked in the lyrics yet there’s no stirring guitar solo from Daniela is a missed opportunity.

 

 

 

“Ego,” the band’s fourth song in its first language, Spanish, hammers away as Daniela brushes off any naysayers of their musical worth. Would that several of the other songs—“Bite My Tongue,” “Bloodsport,” “Break,” “Bruises” (with the sisters’ intoning something that sounds more like “Bruces”)—were more than just catchy three-minute power-pop tunes that are the aural equivalent of B movies, cowritten by the Villarreal sisters, their producer Anton DeLost (whose aural gimmickry often buries the trio’s viscerally powerful sound) and a crew of faceless writers-for-hire. But it’s obviously worked: Everything’s Falling is the highest-charting album of the band’s career, and the first single, the irresistibly propulsive “Kerosene,” was number 1 on the mainstream rock charts. 

 

 

But the overall effect is of a vital hard-rock band chasing after mere pop stardom. No doubt these songs will sound better live, since the sisters are such an energetic onstage force—and I’ll be seeing them for the third time, in Brooklyn next spring—but here’s hoping that the Warning’s next album will not sound so formulaic.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The original Evil Dead movies were relatively straightforward horror films with gory passages that cleverly stitched each extermination to the next, but the recent reboots—including the latest, directed with verve if little originality by Sébastien Vaniček—seem to simply revel in ways to be disgusting at the expense of plotting and (dare I say it) characterization. 

 

 

Faces rot away and get split into pieces; this and more are shown in closeups that show off impressive makeup artistry but not much else. On 4K, it looks even more vividly extreme; extras comprise a trio of short making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

Kriminal 

In this 1966 tongue-in-cheek action flick, a masked criminal mastermind is a menace to society through his daring heists and frustrates the detective tracking him after his escape from prison. 

 

 

Italian cult director Umberto Lenzi has made what is thought of as the zenith of pulp adaptations and it remains an entertaining time-capsule of a movie, kind of a 007-adjacent adventure, which looks colorfully eye-popping on UHD. There’s an audio commentary on the 4K disc, and the Blu-ray disc includes the film, a 90-minute doc on Lenzi’s career and legacy, Armed to the Teeth, and interviews with actor Glenn Saxson and archivist Pierpaolo De Sanctis.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week

Theoretically, a documentary based around an interview with nonagenarian Hollywood legend Kim Novak would seem a no-brainer: think of all her stories and observations about costars, directors—with Alfred Hitchcock front and center—and her decision to leave the movie business behind (for the most part) and take up painting in the Great Northwest. 

 

 

But director Alexandre O. Philippe fumbles this easy assignment, often simply marrying images of her films to her words. There’s a diverting section on Vertigo, of course, but otherwise it’s rarely incisive or illuminating. 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

This perfectly charming ballet, wittily choreographed by master Frederick Ashton, has been revived by London’s Royal Ballet, with director Kevin O’Hare restaging Ashton’s original dances and a cast of terrific performers—led by Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé—bringing the requisite energy to the entire proceedings. 

 

 

With attractive music by Ferdinand Hérold, played by the opera house orchestra led by conductor Jonathan Lo, this is a breezy couple of hours. There’s excellent hi-def video and audio; extras include interviews with O’Hare, Heyward and Sambé.

 

 

 

Le Joli Mai 

In Chris Marker and Pierre Llohme’s cinema verité portrait of Paris in May 1962 (post-Algerian War), dozens of Parisians wax philosophically about their lives and where they are headed as a society. 

 

 

But its 145 intellectually packed minutes are an endurance test because only some of the participants’ arguments and opinions are clearly articulated: judicious tightening would make this snapshot even stronger. Unlike the original DVD release, only Simone Signoret’s English narration is heard (Yves Montand’s original French narration and deleted scenes are not included); a 2016 Llohme interview and Playtime in Paris, a 1962 short film by Catherine Varlin.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

In early 1930s Oregon, Murphy (Ethan Hawke), who made a wrong move against undercover policemen, finds himself on a brutal work gang and separated from his beloved young daughter—but the warden, Clancy (Russell Crowe), takes a shine to him and says he can get him an early release if he takes on a dangerous mission to smuggle gold through forbidding wilderness. This no-nonsense drama has its share of suspenseful moments, but the potentially intriguing relationship between a desperate Murphy and the shady Clancy never becomes momentous, despite both actors at their grim best.

 

 

Director Padraic McKinley and writers Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines don’t make any of the characters (including Anna, an Indigenous woman played strikingly by Julia Jones) authentic enough to root for, so the story’s power somewhat dissipates.

 

 

 

Without Blood 

Angelina Jolie certainly began her directorial career auspiciously with the intense historical dramas In the Land of Milk and Honey and Unbroken, but since then she’s floundered—this exploration of the closeness of grief, memory and vengeance was made in 2024 but sat on the shelf until now.

 

 

It’s not hard to see why: this 85-minute film barely has enough time to sketch out its protagonists and their horrific histories, and even with committed performances by Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, Jolie is unable to provide anything more than earnest, clichéd and (yes) bloodless platitudes.

 

 

 

 

You Had to Be There 

In 1972, a Toronto production of the musical Godspell was populated by several future comedy legends: Gilda Radner, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, etc., and director Nick Davis brings many of them back for an often hilarious (and equally touching) reminiscence.

 

 

Also on hand are Godspell composer Steven Schwartz and fans like Mike Myers and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who expound on the singular talents of these performers, many of whom would go onto fame on SCTV and SNL. This terrific trip down memory lane climaxes when the surviving group gets together in a NYC apartment and sings songs from the show like “Day by Day.”  

 

 

 

My Brother’s Wedding 

Director Charles Burnett’s sophomore feature was this compassionate 1980 drama that centers around Pierce, who lives in a South Central L.A. neighborhood that remains a close-knit community despite the often miserable reality of everyday existence.

 

 

This authentic slice-of-life culminates when Pierce must decide whether to attend the wedding of his brother Wendell or the funeral of his good friend Soldier. Although the film has its share of amateurish performances, Burnett’s script and direction have a clarity that makes this a still meaningful glimpse into ordinary Black lives. 

 

 

 

4K Releases of the Week 

Anne Rice’s 1976 novel was an anomaly in its time: an intelligent gothic romance about New Orleans vampires that paved the way (or is that can be blamed) for the later undead craze. In Neil Jordan’s atmospheric 1994 adaptation, the master Phillipe Rousselot’s glistening photography and Dante Ferretti’s gorgeous set design are the real stars, even with memorable performances by Brad Pitt, Stephen Rea and a young Kirsten Dunst.

 

 

Too bad the film is saddled with Tom Cruise’s unmenacing Lestat along with an unrelieved seriousness that doesn’t seem aware of the campiness of the material. The film looks exquisite in 4K; extras include a Jordan commentary as well as new and vintage featurettes with interviews with the cast, Rousselot, Ferretti, Jordan and Rice.

 

 

 

Supergirl 

In the latest superhero reboot, Kara Zor-el—female cousin of Superman from the planet Krypton—gets her own origin story as she travels across the galaxy to make sure the villain who hurt her dog Krypto gets his comeuppance.

 

 

Unfortunately, director Craig Gillespie’s adventure is as simple and pedestrian as it sounds, as Supergirl meets an assortment of bizarre characters that seem to have emerged from a Mad Max sequel. Milly Alcock is a winning performer, but she ends up battling a mediocre script and pedestrian direction to differentiate this from other comic-book flicks. Unfortunately, she fails. It all looks great on UHD; extras are several featurettes and deleted scenes.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Japanese director Mitsuo Kobayashi’s 1964 classic is unlike other ghost stories, since he is not concerned at all with actual scares or things that go bump in the night (predating Kubrick’s The Shining), and deliberately has made one-dimensional characters who are lacking in motivation throughout these four weird tales. Instead, Kobayashi concentrates on stylized atmosphere above all else: each story’s setting is brilliantly evoked, beautiful and haunting trappings for these eerie meanderings.

 

 

Stylishness has never been so spectacular, and Kobayashi’s cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima, editor Hisashi Sagara, art director Shigemasa Toda, costume designer Masahiro Katô and composer Toru Takemitsu are up to the formidable task. 

 

 

 

The Oldest Person in the World 

For Sam Green, the premise was simple but daunting—track down and interview the world’s oldest person. But since that person inevitably keeps changing, Green has to keep moving, traveling from Brooklyn to Europe and back to the U.S. to talk with centenarians who hold the Guinness age record, however briefly.

 

 

But that premise is just the beginning of this beguiling documentary, for Green also discovers that mortality is a large part of a 50-year-old filmmaker’s life as well, when he is diagnosed with multiple myeloma (which has been kept under control so far). But Green never loses his sense of humor: while making the film, he and his partner welcome a baby boy, whom Green slyly calls “the youngest person in the world”—if only for a brief moment, until the next baby is born somewhere else.

 

 

 

On a String 

Isabel Hagen, a Juilliard-trained violist turned comedian and filmmaker, has mined her own experiences for the core of this often amusingly grating glimpse at Isabel, a freelance New York City musician who still lives with her overbearing parents and brother while navigating the cutthroat world of musicmaking, where even a friend will betray you, like a fellow quartet member also going to a New York Philharmonic audition and getting a callback instead of her.

 

 

Hagen writes, directs and also stars as Isabel—she comes off as a less enervating Greta Gerwig, which works well for her jaundiced semi-autobiographical self-portrait. There are also solid turns by New York acting veterans like Dylan Baker, Eric Bogosian and Fred Weller.

 

 

 

Serpent’s Path 

Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa remakes his own sinister 1998 thriller, about child exploitation and organ trafficking, in France, and it’s another compelling exploration of grief checkered by revenge and ultimately betrayal. Heroes and villains are a slippery concept in Kurosawa’s hands, and he is masterly at transforming ordinary situations that devolve into chaotic cruelty.

 

 

It might go on a bit too long, especially in a finale as conventional as it is implausible but, led by an excellent group of French and Japanese actors like Damien Bonnard, Ko Shibasaki, Mathieu Amalric and Grégoire Colin, this is a rough but riveting watch. 

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

If there’s a Jason Statham vehicle blueprint, it’s this tautly executed, single-minded action flick in which our hero, who plays Cole Reed, a former commando whose life is in danger after he’s accused of murdering his rich boss and stows away on a ship involved in human trafficking. Director Jean-François Richet and writers Lindsay Michel and J. P. Davis waste no time on niceties like characterization or believable dialogue, but they give Statham—and costar Annabelle Wallis as his unlikely but effective sidekick—the chance to continually overwhelm the dastardly bad guys.

 

 

Special credit goes to Adrian Lester, whose U.S. military ship captain becomes more entertainingly bemused as he gets a fuller picture of what’s happening aboard the rogue boat.

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

In French director Cédric Klapisch’s latest drama, four cousins meeting for the first time explore their celebrated ancestor Adèle’s home—we meet Adèle herself (a fine Suzanne Lindon) as she leaves the sticks for Paris at the zenith of the 1890s Belle Époque and befriends artists like Claude Monet, who ends up having more to do with the cousins’ extended family than expected.

 

 

Typically flavorful and spirited, lavish but not overstuffed, Klapisch’s film might be schematic in how it crosscuts between the present-day cousins’ endless zoom calls about Adèle’s valuables—including a painting that may have a surprising provenance—and her adventures in the dazzling city of lights, but it’s a delight from start to finish. Too bad there’s no hi-def release, since the visual wonders Klapisch conjures aren’t seen to their fullest effect on DVD.