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September '26 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 04 September 2026 01:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Practical Magic
(Warner Bros)
Griffin Dunne’s pleasant enough 1998 movie about a family of women witches and the men who nearly upset their bond didn’t set the box office on fire but has become a cult item well-liked enough to merit a sequel, coming out next week.
Based on Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel, it’s not a patch on something more sinister like The Witches of Eastwick (either John Updike’s novel or George Miller’s flawed but fun 1987 adaptation), but an entertaining cast led by Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters, Dianne Wiest and Stockard Channing as their aunts and Goran Visnjic and Aidan Quinn as the meddling men helps it to the finish line. The film looks great in UHD; extras comprise a commentary with Dunne, Bullock, producer Denise DiNovi and composer Alan Silvestri as well as two short vintage featurettes.
(Cult Epics)
In his likably raunchy, nearly hardcore sex comedies, Italian director Tinto Brass unapologetically puts the female form front and center, probing his fresh-faced models nearly gynecologically. This 1995 feature, as its title implies, is an “adaptation” of fan letters he received, bringing to life erotic trysts and fantasies that he oversees onscreen.
If it lacks the artfulness of his other films like Frivolous Lola and Cheeky, it’s still the product of a singular creator of erotica. Dante Dalla Torre’s cinematography and the many ladies parading in front sparkle in 4K; extras include the film on a Blu-ray disc, a new commentary, Italian and English language tracks, and a 1995 Brass interview.
In-Theater Releases of the Week
How to Divorce During the War
(Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber)
In this often lacerating dark comedy, Marija, who runs a thriving startup in Vilnius, Lithuania, tells her floundering husband Vytus that she wants to break up—but the very next day, Russia invades Ukraine, making the couple’s lives more difficult to navigate in a suddenly topsy-turvy world that includes refugees, new loves and bitter acrimony.
Writer-director Andrius Blaževičius successfully balances emotional drama with biting satire as the couple’s fraught breakup becomes a stark metaphor for how forces from within and without can damage even the sturdiest relationship. It’s immaculately acted by Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė (Marija), Marius Repšys (Vytas) and especially the precociously talented Amelija Adomaitytė as young daughter Dovilė.
(Circle Collective)
In her auspicious debut as a writer-director-actor, the winning Lauren Caster plays Ro, a failed dancer who returns to SoCal from NYC to meet her birth father Gregory while also juggling a tempestuous relationship with her lesbian mother Susan, a possible boyfriend in coworker Zach and a new job at a senior care facility, Leisure World, that gives her a new perspective on life (and gives Caster the chance to amusingly riff on that name, i.e., Seizure World).
Caster is a refreshingly guileless screen presence, and her generosity as a triple-threat extends to the characters she’s written. The excellent cast also includes Tate Donovan (Gregory), Amy Aquino (Susan), Conor Donnally (Zach) and Marianne Muellerleile as Ethel, the orneriest of the seniors she works with.
DVD Release of the Week
Life Is Life
(Distrib Films US)
Based on a true story, this beguiling comedy follows the antics of down-on-their-luck residents of a forgotten region of Sardinia up in arms over the steadfast refusal of elderly shepherd Efisio to sell his ancestral land to a greedy Milan developer, who wants to build a luxury resort on the sparkling local beach. Director Riccardo Milani sometimes lays on the us-vs-them, working-class-vs-elite parallels too thickly, but there’s no denying the pointed comic, dramatic and even political points he scores throughout.
Non-actor Giuseppe Ignazio Loi is perfectly cast as the barely literate Efisio, while Virginia Raffaele is marvelously affecting as his stubborn daughter Francesca, his biggest ally after her initial skepticism.
Leoš Janáček—The Excursions of Mr. Brouček
(LSO Live)
Czech composer Leoš Janáček, who wrote some of the greatest operas of the 20th century, including Jenůfa, Káťa Kabanová, The Cunning Little Vixen, The Makropulos Case and From the House of the Dead, wrote this satirical two-part opera based on a famous Czech novel about a philistine named Brouček who, after heavy drinking, first visits the moon then goes back in time to 15th-century Prague.
It’s entertaining if not nearly as memorable as his classics, with Janáček’s colorful music more often skimming the surface rather than digging deeper into the characters and their tales. This 2025 concert recording, from London’s Barbican Hall, captures the opera’s antic energy, with Simon Rattle conducting the venerable London Symphony Orchestra and a top-notch chorus and cast of soloists.
Douglas Moore—Giants in the Earth
(Pentatone)
This opera by American Douglas Moore, which won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize in music, tells the story of a tragic romance among Norwegian American settlers in the Dakota territory in the late 19th century.
Despite its award-winning pedigree, the work has rarely been revived, and even this excellent world-premiere recording of a performance by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and Chorus as well as a group of fine vocalists all under conductor Delta David Gier can’t make it gripping. Still, Moore’s music is certainly attractive and singer friendly.
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra at Lincoln Center
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 02 September 2026 13:45
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Keri-Lynn Wilson leading the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra on August 25, 2026, at David Geffen Hall in New York City. Photo: Richard Termine / Met Opera
At Lincoln Center’s wonderful David Geffen Hall, on the night of Tuesday, August 25th, I had the exceptional pleasure of attending a superb concert—the first of two on consecutive days—performed by the outstanding Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, under the impeccable direction of Keri-Lynn Wilson.
The event started splendidly with a sterling realization of the marvelous, one-movement Suite from the new opera by the Ukrainian composer Maxim Kolomiiets, The Mothers of Kherson. (I predict that this Suite will enter the orchestral repertory.) The extraordinary, Norwegian soprano, Lise Davidsen—whose terrific, debut recital at Carnegie Hall this June I have already reviewed here—then entered the stage for an unforgettable rendition of Richard Strauss’s magnificent Four Last Songs, from 1948, written for the legendary Kirsten Flagstad. The initial three lyrics in the sequence are exquisite poems by the major novelist, Hermann Hesse. The first of these, “Fruhling,” is the most optimistic of the set, while the remaining songs express a more fatalistic outlook, beginning with “September” and followed by “Going to Sleep.” The final song, “At Sunset,” is a setting of a poem by the great Romantic lyricist, Joseph, baron von Eichendorff. The singer and the ensemble were enthusiastically applauded.
The second half of the evening was comparably memorable, consisting of an enchanting version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s amazing Symphony No. 7. The first movement opens suspensefully with a Poco sostenuto introduction, at length anticipating its joyous, recurringly propulsive main body which at times reflects an almost pastoral ethos, although it finishes emphatically. The ensuing Allegretto is much more solemn in mood, but it too has an insistent—if much slower—rhythm; a central section has a sunnier, more lyrical quality, but the darker, more elegiac music soon returns, elaborated in a fugue-like episode—the movement closes somewhat abruptly, if satisfyingly.
The succeeding, energetic scherzo, is cheerful, even playful at moments, displaying the composer’s boundless capacity for surprise, but the second half of the movement becomes more serious in tone before the dance-like, initial music is recapitulated, although the second, statelier theme is soon forcefully restated—it too ends unexpectedly. The Allegro con brio finale is jubilant, dynamic and breathless, with lilting passages, and it builds to a rousing, triumphant conclusion.
A standing ovation elicited a fabulous encore: a beautiful arrangement of the Ukrainian national anthem.
August '26 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 20 August 2026 21:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
If These Walls Could Rock
(Bungalow Media & Entertainment)
The Sunset Marquis, a hotel in Hollywood that’s become a haven and hangout for musicians, takes center stage in Tyler Measom and Craig A. Williams’ documentary in which diverting stories about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll are entertainingly told for 90 minutes.
Billy Bob Thornton—who moonlights in a rock band in addition to being an award-winning actor and filmmaker—is our guide of sorts, while we hear priceless anecdotes from legendary music figures Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen, Slash, Dave Grohl and Gene Simmons, among others, along with those in and outside the family that’s been keeping the beloved Marquis going for decades.
(Film Movement Classics)
Director Stanley Kwan’s restored 1991 epic about Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu—who starred in silent films before killing herself at age 24 in 1935—provides a thoughtful portrait of a long-gone era of cinema history that comprises recreations of her film sets, clips from her final two films and meta-interviews with Kwan, his actors and people who knew Ruan.
As the fated actress known as the “Chinese Garbo,” Maggie Cheung gives a colossally charismatic performance, and she’s nearly matched by Tony Leung as Cai Chusheng, one of Ruan’s most notable directors.
Dead Souls
(Kino Lorber)
For his first feature in nine years—since his Eastern/Western mashup, 2017’s Tombstone Rashomon—English filmmaker Alex Cox has made a madly offbeat adaptation of Russian Nikolai Gogol’s novel, transposed to the American West circa 1890, with Cox playing Strindler, a man compiling a list of dead Mexican laborers in Arizona.
Cox has never been the most subtle director—his best-known films, Repo-Man and Sid & Nancy, are cult items—and Dead Souls follows suit, especially with an in-joke about Strindler’s list (ahem). Otherwise, Cox throws shade at U.S. politics and culture, something that’s surely needed but not, at least in his hands, on target.
Miroirs No. 3
(1-2 Special)
In the latest from German director Christian Petzold, his muse Paula Beer is Laura, a depressed music student taken in and cared for by a nearby rural woman, Betty, after Laura’s in a car accident that claims her fiancé. As Petzold films go, this one is pretty slight: Laura’s presence makes things uncomfortable for Betty’s husband Richard and son Max, especially when it’s revealed that Laura reminds Betty of her daughter, who recently committed suicide.
Beer is riveting, as always, but the familiar plot machinations trip up her writer-director, who only finds his footing at the very end, when Maurice Ravel’s piano piece that’s also the film’s title is heard.
Silent Friend
(1-2 Special)
Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi has been making narratively fractured, visually dazzling, thought-provoking films since her stunning 1989 debut, My 20th Century. At the center of her latest is a large ginkgo tree, around which revolve three narrative threads that take place more than a century apart, between 1908 and the COVID year of 2020, all in the college town of Marburg, Germany.
Enyedi, together with her magnificent cinematographer Gergely Pálos and editor Károly Szalai, have created indelible visuals to illustrate a meditative exploration of the connection of humans to the natural world, even though we might be unaware of it. The excellent cast, led by Léa Seydoux and Tony Leung, makes this at times inscrutable drama emotionally accessible.
Shakespeare in the Park Review—“The Winter’s Tale” at the Delacorte Theater with Raúl Esparza
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 19 August 2026 16:57
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Winter’s Tale
Written by William Shakespeare
Choreography by Mimi Lieber; directed by Daniel Sullivan
Performances through August 23, 2026
Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York City
publictheater.org
 |
| The cast of The Winter's Tale (photo: Joan Marcus) |
The lasting effects of jealousy have rarely been so searingly explored as in The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s most complex and inscrutable plays, one which asks a lot from any cast and director. Admittedly it’s a very bumpy ride even in the most capable hands, as when director Sam Mendes’ Bridge Project came to BAM in 2009 with a production illuminated by the magisterial Rebecca Hall as the wronged queen Hermione.
Set in the neighboring kingdoms of Sicilia—where Shakespeare brilliantly sets up the dramatic conflict of King Leontes’ unhinged accusations against his faithful (and pregnant) Hermione of infidelity—and Bohemia, The Winter’s Tale is filled with betrayals and deaths, humor and heartbreak, reunions and even a resurrection of sorts, along with what might be the most famous—or infamous—stage direction in all of theater.
At the Delacorte, director Daniel Sullivan lingers over too many scenes, making it an exceedingly slow-going evening (this staging lasts 3 hours and 20 minutes), especially in the ponderous Sicilia scenes. Even a first-rate actor like Raúl Esparza intoning Leontes’ lengthy and self-justifying monologues about why he wants his pregnant wife put to death for treason can’t move things along. Conversely, the boisterousness of rustic Bohemia—personified by the rogue Autolycus (an amusing but overdone Steven Skybell)—is underscored with a wearying bluntness; a little of this sort of “fun” goes a long way.
On the plus side, Sullivan has Matthew Eby, who plays Leontes and Hermione’s tragic child Mamillius, also play Time, which gives the play’s crucial jump of 16 years a new twist. Sullivan pulls off the inevitable “exit, pursued by a bear” moment so cleverly that some members of the audience missed it completely, and he adroitly stages the final coup de theatre that, for better or worse, is what most audiences remember about The Winter’s Tale.
The acting, aside from Esparza, is a mixed bag. Marsha Stephanie Blake makes a forceful and funny Paulina, the queen’s most honest defender, but Hermione herself is played by Lily Rabe, who gives a one-dimensional and shouty performance, robbing this viewer at least of the necessary sympathy for her fate. Rabe does, however, memorably freeze into a statue-like pose of surpassing stillness, a not unimportant aspect of her characterization.
Chuck Cooper is an unalloyed delight as the Old Shepherd, and if Gilbert Owuor is a bit too stiff as Bohemia’s king Polixenes, two able young performers—Daniel Kyri and Isabela Ferrer—are full of effervescence as Polixenes’ son Florizel and Leontes and Hermione’s daughter Perdita, respectively.
Maruti Evans’ scenery, Linda Cho’s costumes, Bradley King’s lighting, Brian Ronan’s sound design and Tom Kitt’s music all handsomely contribute to this bumpy but entertaining night of theater in Central Park.
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