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Reviews
December '25 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 18 December 2025 04:20
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theaters/Streaming Releases of the Week
Blue Moon
(Sony Classics)
Ethan Hawke throws himself into playing Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart—one-half of the immortal team of Rodgers and Hart, creators of such indelible musicals as Babes in Arms and Pal Joey—in Richard Linklater’s mostly inert biopic that concentrates on one day in Hart’s life, the opening night of Oklahoma, the first collaboration of Hart’s former partner Richard Rodgers with Oscar Hammerstein II.
Set at the venerable theater restaurant Sardi’s, the film has a certain interest for musical theater fans (especially when a young Stephen Sondheim, a protégé of Hammerstein, appears), but Robert Kaplow’s script tries to cram too much into its single setting, taking away from its focus on Hart, who would be dead a few months after this night. Hawke does immerse himself poignantly in the songwriter’s messy personal life, and he’s the main reason to watch until the predictably tragic end.
(Neon)
Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest melodrama explores a fractured family, as film director Gustav returns home after his ex-wife Sissel’s death to tell his two adult daughters—Agnes, a wife, mother and historian; and Nora, a temperamental stage actress having an affair with a married colleague—with the news that he’s making a film (with famous American actress Rachel Kemp) about his mother’s torture as a Nazi resistance fighter leading to her suicide when Gustav was young.
The complications of family history rear their heads throughout, but Trier concentrates on too many loose ends, like standard-issue stage or on-set sequences that do little to illuminate matters. Stellan Skarsgård is perfectly cast as the boorish but boyish Gustav, Elle Fanning is an excellent Rachel and Renate Reinsve a fine Nora, but Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas steals each of her scenes as Agnes. Trier should have focused on her instead.
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
David Byrne’s American Utopia
(Criterion)
Director Spike Lee and cinematographer Ellen Kuras capture David Byrne’s groundbreaking 2019 Broadway show combining music and movement in exhilarating fashion, centered on Byrne’s unique stage presence, a savant leading his congregation in the holy gospel of song, with Annie-B Parson’s expressive choreography and Bob Sinclair’s inventive lighting visually complementing Byrne’s songs—from early Talking Heads to his recent solo material—accompanied by a dozen musicians, singers and dancers.
Criterion’s new release comprises a 4K disc of the film, which looks and sounds immaculate; and two Blu-ray discs of the film and two extras: a 55-minute documentary about the show featuring Byrne, Kuras, Parson, and Sinclair, and a short Byrne and Lee conversation, socially distanced, from 2020.
(Warner Bros)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, made in 1997, is now considered a classic—unaccountably, in my view; this shrill, cartoonish, shallow look at the L.A. porn scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s fails as both a satire of and affectionate tribute to its dim denizens.
In a cast of banal caricatures, Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds come off best; following his auspicious debut Hard Eight, this overstuffed would-be epic is the first of similar films that have dotted Anderson’s career—Magnolia, The Master, Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another—but I realize I’m in the minority. It all looks great in 4K; extras include commentaries by Anderson and by the cast, American Cinematheque Q&A and deleted scenes.
Blu-ray Release of the Week
Maria Roumagnac
(Icarus Films)
Two legends of the silver screen—Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin—appeared for the only time together in French director Georges Lacombe’s doomed soap-operaish romance between a shop owner very popular with men and a working-class building contractor, whose jealousy over her sexually adventurous past (and present) pushes him over the edge tragically.
Despite the stiffness of the characterizations and the dialogue—especially in the climactic court sequence—the onscreen chemistry between Dietrich and Gabin more than compensates. The restored 1946 B&W film looks ravishing on Blu.
Nicola Porpora—Polifemo
(Chateau de Versailles)
Italian composer Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) wanted to challenge reigning opera genius George Frideric Handel at his own game in London, and the result was this 1735 Baroque epic romance populated by the goddess Galatea, the Cyclops, and ordinary men including Ulysses, whose appearance presages a conflict between the gods and the mortals.
This live performance from Versailles in 2024 is colorfully over-the-top both vocally and visually; it’s too bad that it’s only a DVD instead of superior sharpness of a Blu-ray. Still, it’s nice to have a visual record of this performance, along with three CDs housing the audio recording.
Broadway Musical Review—“The Queen of Versailles” with Kristin Chenoweth
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 14 December 2025 22:27
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Queen of Versailles
Music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz, book by Lindsey Terrentino
Directed by Michael Arden; choreographed by Lauren Yalango-Grant and Christopher Cree Grant
Performances through December 21, 2025
St. James Theater, 246 West 44th Street, NY
queenofversaillesmusical.com
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| Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles (photo: Julieta Cervantes) |
Proof that lightning does not strike twice, the latest Stephen Schwartz musical starring Kristen Chenoweth already posted its premature closing date on Broadway, while an earlier collaboration you might have heard about, Wicked, keeps going. But The Queen of Versailles is a cautionary tale for collaborators about what not to do when creating a Broadway musical.
It’s to Schwartz’s credit to try something original, and the story of Jackie Siegel, as seen in the eponymous 2012 documentary film directed by Lauren Greenfield, certainly qualifies. (Has there been another Broadway musical based on a documentary?) Greenfield’s film explores Jackie’s and ultra-rich husband David’s conspicuous consumption with both sympathy and bemusement, something difficult to finesse in a big-budget stage musical.
So Lindsey Ferrentino’s book and Schwartz’s songs try and have it both ways. We root for Jackie as she lucks into getting rich after some bad decisions, but as she and David start to throw around their money on a mansion nicknamed Versailles, it becomes increasingly difficult to spend time with them, especially since David is so heartless a millionaire villain, and F. Murray Abraham plays him as a comic caricature.
Chenoweth, on the other hand, remains enjoyable and funny, which makes Jackie less nuanced and, when she’s in financial and personal doldrums—the 2008 recession brings mansion construction to a halt, then her teenage daughter Victoria commits suicide—there’s a gaping dramatic hole that no amount of teary songs—including the Act I finale, “This Is Not the Way,” which Chenoweth carries effortlessly—can fill.
This might have worked shorter, making Jackie’s roller-coaster ride faster. Instead, it lumbers around for a bloated 2-1/2 hours, with sympathy gone and dramatic comeuppance obvious. Even appearances Louis XIV to make explicit the parallels between the Versailles of the 17th and 21st centuries are less amusingly pointed as they recur.
Needless to say, director Michael Arden’s slick staging can’t reconcile the inherent messiness of the subject and Schwartz’s and Terrentino’s treatment, while the first-rate trappings—Dane Laffery’s clever sets and video design, Christian Cowan’s tongue-in-cheek costumes, Natasha Katz’s brilliant lighting—only obscure the dramatic emptiness.
Chenoweth, of course, dominates any show she’s in, but that only shows up the rest of the cast. Abraham’s David has a few amusingly nasty moments and Nina White’s Victoria has the needed pathos, but they are shunted aside by the hurricane at the center. Even though Chenoweth gives it her all, she can’t save The Queen of Versailles from being guillotined.
December '25 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 10 December 2025 15:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Hamnet
(Focus Features)
Chloé Zhao has made an enveloping adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novelistic flight of fancy about how the death of 11-year-old son Hamnet affected William Shakespeare and his wife Anne (in the film, Agnes)—directly leading to the Bard’s most celebrated tragedy (which includes the ghost of a beloved father and many ruminations about dying by the protagonist), Hamlet.
Beautifully filmed and filled with more nature shots than anything by Terrence Malick—who should get a co-directing credit—Hamnet is at its most persuasive showing how death was perceived four centuries ago, as personal and up-close rather than clinical and distant. The acting is immaculate, especially by Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Will.
(Film Movement)
Palestinian director Scandar Copti’s drama about the interactions of several family members through four interlocking stories set in Jerusalem insightfully shows how women are still often treated as second-class citizens in supposedly enlightened patriarchal societies.
A Jewish woman, Shirley, decides to keep her baby over her Palestinian ex Rami’s objection; Rami’s mother Hanan deals with financial difficulties that are exacerbated by an accident involving her daughter Fifi, who’s having a secret affair; and Shirley’s sister Miri, dealing with her teenage daughter’s depression, tries convincing Shirley to have an abortion. The acting, by a mainly amateur cast, is unforgettably real in front of Copti’s vigorously probing camera.
Little Trouble Girls
(Kino Lorber)
Slovenian writer-director Urška Djukić’s auspicious debut is set in a girls’ school where the members of the choir—including shy 16-year-old Lucija—become friends and adversaries, finding humor in and mocking each other’s budding sexuality as well as dealing with their mercurial male chorus master.
Without condescension, Djukić shows how these teenagers act together and separately, while her excellent young actresses are led by Jara Sofija Ostan, who gives a star-making performance as Lucija.
(Vertical)
Lucy Liu is astonishingly good as Irene, a terminally ill Chinese mother in San Gabriel Valley, California, who’s worried about her schizophrenic 17-year-old son Joe’s future without her in director Eric Lin and writer Marilyn Fu’s heartbreaking study that’s enormously sympathetic but also unrelievedly depressing.
Liu’s wrenching portrayal, superbly complemented by Lawrence Shou as Joe, leads to a shocking but understandable final decision that makes this film hard to shake.
In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week
Man Finds Tape
(Magnolia)
In this cleverly constructed found-footage thriller, documentary filmmaker Lynn returns to her small Texas hometown to study footage that captures weird phenomena happening to locals that no one can remember—and that’s before she has to deal with the legacy of her brother and a newly-arrived stranger.
Directors Peter Hall and Paul Gandersman don’t do anything particularly original here, but their eerie premise and the terrific acting by Kelsey Pribilski as Lynn give this just enough to make it weirdly watchable.
Streaming Release of the Week
After the Hunt
(Amazon MGM)
The latest mild provocation from Italian director Luca Guadagnino is a soggy #MeToo drama that plays out on the Yale campus as Margaret, a bright student of professor Alma, accuses another professor, Hank—with whom Alma has been carrying on an affair under her therapist husband Frederik’s nose—of sexual abuse, triggering an investigation that could ultimately derail Alma’s chances of getting tenure.
There’s some good material in Laura Garrett’s script, but the personal relationships are navigated by Guadagnino in a way that eschews depth for obviousness. The performances follow suit: Ayo Edebiri (Margaret), Julia Roberts (Alma), Michael Stuhlbarg (Frederik) and Andrew Garfield (Hank) give solid but uninspired portrayals, further stranding what aspires to be a mature drama.
CD Release of the Week
Saint-Saëns— L’ancêtre
(Palazzetto Bru Zane)
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) is best known for his glorious Biblical grand opera, Samson et Delilah, which premiered in 1877; nearly three decades later, he wrote this lyrical opera set in Corsica that has much beautiful music but a less well thought-out plot. Happily, listening to this richly produced audio recording means that one can elide the hackneyed story and characters and concentrate on the imposing orchestral and vocal writing.
Kazuki Yamada conducts the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and the Philharmonic Chorus of Tokyo in a first-rate performance that includes a top-notch group of singers led by Jennifer Holloway, Gaëlle Arquez, Hélène Carpentier, Julien Henric, Michael Arivony, Matthieu Lécroart. As always with Bru Zane releases, this two-CD set houses an impressive 127-page booklet that comprises the libretto and several essays about the opera, including a report from Saint-Saëns’ most famous student, composer Gabriel Fauré, about its 1906 premiere in Monte Carlo.
Orchestre National de France Performs Ravel & More at Carnegie Hall
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 05 December 2025 14:58
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Stefan Cohen
At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the afternoon of Sunday, November 9th, I had the privilege to attend an excellent concert—presented by Carnegie Hall—featuring the superb musicians of the Orchestre National de France, led with great distinction by its Music Director and Conductor, Cristian Măcelaru.
The event started admirably with a fine account of Elsa Barraine’s seldom heard but striking Symphony No. 2, “Voina,” from 1938. After a brief, Adagio introduction for winds, the main body of the Allegro moderato movement swiftly intensifies and is frequently turbulent but with sometimes haunting, more reflective passages—it finishes forcefully. The ensuing Marche funèbre is somewhat lugubrious and moody while the Allegretto Finale is spirited and quirky, with charming elements but also moments of mystery, ending emphatically.
The renowned soloist Daniil Trifonov then entered the stage for an impressive version of Maurice Ravel’s popular Piano Concerto in G Major, completed in 1931. The initial, Allegramente movement opens playfully but a more jazzy, introspective interlude influenced by George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue follows—it becomes much livelier and concludes dynamically. The succeeding Adagio assai is more interior and lyrical—the most exquisite of the movements, it has some of the Romantic emotionalism encountered in the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff and it closes softly. The Presto finale is ebullient and dazzling and the most virtuosic of the movements—it builds in suspense and excitement, ending suddenly, if wittily.
Trifonov returned at the beginning of the event’s second half for a superb rendition of Camille Saint-Saëns’s pleasurable Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 22, composed in 1868. The Andante sostenuto first movement starts passionately—with a cadenza—but in its main body, it is at first inward and song-like but it becomes more “purple” and opulent as it develops—there are some lovely episodes and it finishes with a powerful statement. The subsequent Allegro scherzando is vivacious, fittingly ludic, and often delightful, concluding gently. The Presto finale is ultimately exhilarating in its forward momentum, closing triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited an extraordinary encore from the pianist: Claude Debussy’s "Reflets dans l'eau" from his collection, Images.
The highlight of the program, however, was its here brilliantly realized final work: Ravel’s glorious Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2–the ballet score from which this is excerpted was described by Igor Stravinsky as “Not only Ravel’s best work, but also one of the most beautiful products of French music.” The initial selection, Lever du jour, is splendorous and mystical while the Pantomime that it precedes is less abstract and sumptuous; lastly, the mesmerizing Danse générale ends arrestingly. A standing ovation was rewarded with another outstanding encore: the same composer’s entrancing Boléro.
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