In-Theater Release of the Week 

Each Paul Thomas Anderson film is treated as an Event, but his latest magnum opus cobbles together themes and characters he’s worked on for decades—this loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland is a flashy, convoluted, crude and cartoonish take on an America comprising left-wing terrorists and right-wing authoritarians. There’s some good material here, but Anderson throws everything against the wall to see what will stick, resulting in a tonally unbalanced and unwieldy 160 minutes.

 

 

The acting is all over the map—Leonardo DiCaprio’s wild-eyed terrorist hero stops just short of caricature, while Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti are solid if unspectacular as his wife and daughter, both of whom however (especially Taylor) are shortchanged by the script. Then there’s Sean Penn’s villainous Colonel Lockjaw—a failed attempt to channel Dr. Strangelove’s Jack D. Ripper and General Turgidson—which is wincingly embarrassing, likely the worst performance of a storied career. Anderson’s bombast reaches its nadir when he kills off Lockjaw three times in a couple of dragged-out, pedestrian sequences that add nothing to an already overstuffed vehicle. Finally, the less said about Jonny Greenwood’s typically excessive score—whose rhythmic drive is more repetitious than tense—the better.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week

Miguel Llansó’s often imaginative sci-fi hybrid follows a trio of bored young women in the Estonian capital of Talinn one summer whose meeting with a man named Dr. Mindfulness who introduces them to the wonders of a new app that promises a meditative experience but ends up being much more than they bargained for.

 

 

Llansó’s film adroitly balances everyday relationships with fantastical dream-like interactions that become a fascinating exploration of bodily autonomy and the lure of change. A top cast led by actresses Hannah Gross, Johanna Aurelia Rosin and Teele Kaljuvee-O'Brock sells it.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

In Jacques Audiard’s bracing remake of James Toback’s messy 1978 drama Fingers, small-time Parisian hood Thomas (a magnetic Roman Duris) tries resurrecting a lost musical career as a classical pianist. Unlike Toback, whose film never felt organic, just willfully contrived, Audiard makes the disparate parts—the scuzzy characters and their motivations alongside beautiful music making—snap together as perfectly as a Bach or Chopin piano piece.

 

 

The film looks grittily authentic on Blu; extras include a new Audiard interview, vintage interviews with cowriter Tonino Benacquista and composer Alexandre Desplat, 2005 Berlin Film Festival press conference, rehearsal footage and deleted scenes with Audiard’s commentary.

 

 

 

Gilbert & Sullivan—The Gondoliers 

This terrifically mounted 2021 staging of one of the legendary musical duo’s characteristic works by the Scottish Opera works well thanks to Stuart Maunder persuasive direction, the colorful and witty costumes and sets, the superlative acting and singing by a large and distinguished cast, and the excellent music making by the Orchestra of the Scottish Opera and the Chorus of the Gondoliers under conductor Derek Clark’s baton.

 

 

Of course, it helps to be on the same musical wavelength as Gilbert & Sullivan for full appreciation—those who aren’t might think it’s much ado about not much. The hi-def video and audio are flawless.

 

 

 

Mieczysław Weinberg—The Idiot 

Russian-Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) died before his musical renaissance began with his emotionally shattering Holocaust opera The Passenger, several productions of which were soon followed by dozens of recordings of his varied orchestral and chamber music. Although not as affecting as The Passenger, his operatic adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s disturbing The Idiot is a major accomplishment, as this 2024 Salzburg staging by director Krzysztof Warlikowski—imaginatively done in a modern setting—demonstrates.

 

 

For more than three hours, Weinberg’s powerful reimagining of a great writer’s painfully intimate study holds us in thrall, and the remarkable vocal performances of Bogdan Volkov, Ausrine Stundyte and Vladislav Sulimsky—heading a flawless cast—along with the Vienna Philharmonic (led by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla) and Vienna State Opera Chorus (led by Pawel Marcowicz) provide more musical and dramatic dividends. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio but unfortunately no contextualizing extras.