November '25 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 12 November 2025 15:38

Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Nouvelle Vague 

(Netflix/Film at Lincoln Center)

I’ve never been a Richard Linklater fan—even his “serious” films like Boyhood and Last Flag Flying are better in theory than in execution—but even by those standards, his paean to Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave seems like a particularly desperate way to look relevant to film buffs. The result might wow film festival audiences but is too lightweight for any insight into a classic era in cinema history.

 

 

And when Linklater introduces dozens of characters who have tangential or no relevance to the story being told of Godard directing his debut feature, 1959’s classic Breathless, the contrivance is eye-rolling. Some of the actors are good, like Zoey Deutsch’s charming Jean Seberg, while others are less so, like Guillaume Marbeck’s amusing but caricatured Godard and Aubry Dullin’s unmagnetic Jean-Paul Belmondo. 

 

 

 

Hedda 

(Amazon)

Despite a committed performance by Tessa Thompson as Henrik Ibsen’s fiery heroine, this shaky adaptation by writer-director Nia DaCosta seems content to willfully undermine Hedda Gabler, including making the pivotal character of Eilert—who was once in love with Hedda before ruining his life and their future—has become Eileen, for no good reason aside from giving Hedda a same-sex love interest.

 

 

Despite her good work with Thompson, DaCosta has also directed Nina Hoss—a heretofore indestructible actress—to shamelessly overdo it as Eileen, further making a mockery of a pivotal relationship in Ibsen’s play. 

 

 

 

A House of Dynamite 

(Netflix)

Director Kathryn Bigelow can ratchet up tension effortlessly, as in her real-life military and political dramas The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit. Although this drama about a missile fired from somewhere in Asia that’s headed toward a major American city and how everyone from the president to those responsible for retaliatory weapons responds is tautly made and vividly written (by Noah Oppenheim), its many moments of real-life scariness owe a great debt to past films like Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove. 

 

 

In fact, I couldn’t get the Kubrick classic out of my head, especially when Bigelow’s war room has a sign that reads “Big Board” and George C. Scott’s masterly comic performance in Strangelove reared its head. There’s excellent acting by Tracey Letts, Rebecca Ferguson, Idris Elba and Jared Harris, among others, but Bigelow and Oppenheim’s “beat the clock” precision leads to diminishing dramatic returns. 

 

 

 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Andrea Bocelli—The Celebration: 30th Anniversary 

(Mercury)

When beloved Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli wanted to commemorate three decades of his unparalleled singing career, so many celebrities and musicians came out to honor and perform with him that the celebration extended for three concerts in July 2024.

 

 

This two-disc set, comprising nearly five hours of music, includes Bocelli singing not only greatest “hits” like “O Sole Mio” and “Ave Maria” but also duetting with everyone from the amazing American soprano Nadine Sierra and pianist Lang Lang to pop singers and actors Katharine McPhee, Jon Batiste, Russell Crowe and even Will Smith. The highlight, though, is the unlikely but unexpectedly emotional performance of Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever” with the band’s legendary guitarist Brian May. It’s captured beautifully in UHD, with first-rate surround sound.

 

 

 

Downton Abbey—The Grand Finale 

(Universal)

The final chapter in creator Julian Fellowes’ magnum opus about the interwoven lives of the Earl of Grantham’s family and their loyal (and occasionally disloyal) servants comes off as nothing more than a two-hour episode, but when it’s done this well by writer Fellowes, director Simon Curtis and the large cast led by Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery and Laura Carmichael, no fan of the series will complain.

 

 

Even a cameo by Noël Coward could have been a bit precious, but Arty Froushan’s understated portrayal works. There’s a sumptuous 4K transfer; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews along with a commentary by Curtis and McGovern.

 

 

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 

(Warner Bros)

After 50 years, Randall P. McMurphy remains Jack Nicholson’s signature role: the intense stare, smirking line readings, energy to burn and sarcastic attitude are present and accounted for in his performance, which won him his first best actor Oscar.

 

 

Milos Forman’s bittersweet tragicomedy about inmates at an Oregon insane asylum remains a touchstone film, mainly for the terrific supporting actors (Oscar winner Louis Fletcher, Brad Dourif, Will Samson, William Redfield, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd). There’s also Forman's tenderness in presenting these people as victims of unfeeling bureaucracy, something unoriginal even in 1975 but which continues to reverberate strongly. Warners’ latest re-release includes a very good UHD transfer along with a few special features ported over from previous releases.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover 

(Icarus Films)

Marc Allegret’s tame 1955 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s classic novel can only allude to Constance Chatterley’s sexual encounters with her husband’s gamekeeper Oliver, but the casting of Danielle Darrieux in one of literature’s greatest female roles at least makes this stuffy reimaging of the book watchable.

 

 

Of course, Constance and Oliver have a happy ending, instead of the novel’s more uncertain denouement, and Darrieux shines throughout, outclassing her costars, Leo Genn (husband) and Erno Crisa (lover). The film looks wonderful in a new restoration, but there are no extras.

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Pacifica Quartet—The Korngold Collection 

(Cedille)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was a musical prodigy, as the remarkably mature and inventive chamber works on this disc—played sensitively by the Pacifica Quartet and special guests—indisputably demonstrate.

 

 

Korngold would later become famous when he moved to Hollywood and wrote some of the most memorable and rousing film scores ever, but several of these chamber-music gems (he wrote the superlative string sextet at age 17!) prove that he was a masterly composer from the start: the first quartet, piano quintet and sextet are as adventurous and confident in their musical language as quartets 2 and 3, which Korngold wrote years later. 

 

Schreker/Korngold/Krenek—Orchestral Works 

(BIS)

Franz Schreker (1878-1934), Erich Korngold (1897-1957) and Ernst Krenek (1900-91) were three of the most inventive composers of their time—but their wholly original, often innovative music went out of fashion after World War II, as serialism and atonality took over from their grandly ambitious Viennese sounds.

 

 

 

But the works on this CD—performed beautifully by the Orchestre national des Pays de la Loire under conductor Sacha Goetzel—provide a glimpse into their accomplished artistry in the shimmering loveliness of Schreker’s overture to his magnificent opera Die Gezeichneten, the youthful dazzlement of the 16-year-old Korngold’s Sinfonietta, and the alternately festive and melancholy feeling of Krenek’s Potpourri. 

Off-Broadway Review—Leo McGann’s “The Honey Trap” at the Irish Rep

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 06 November 2025 19:28

Written by Kevin Filipski

Mathis and Hayden in The Honey Trap (photo: Carol Rosegg)

New York Philharmonic Perform Innocente Carreño

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 05 November 2025 15:32

Written by Jack Angstreich

Diego Matheuz conducts the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall, on the evening of Saturday, October 25th, I had the privilege to attend an outstanding concert presented by the New York Philharmonic, under the extremely impressive direction of Diego Matheuz, whose subscription debut with the ensemble was with these performances.

The event started brilliantly with a sterling realization of Innocente Carreño’s marvelous, seldom played Margariteña, glosa sinfónica, from 1954. According to notes on the program by John Henken, “The work’s title derives from Margarita, an island off the coast of Venezuela, east of Caracas,” the composer’s birthplace. He adds that “Solo horn opens the work, with a motif that introduces the popular song Margarita es una lágrima”:

Margarita es una lágrima, 
que un querubín derramó
y al caer en hondo piélago 
en perla se convirtió.

Margarita is a tear drop 
That a cherubim shed, 
And upon falling into the deep sea 
It changed into a pearl.

He continues: “The piece quotes several other popular and traditional songs, using Margarita es una lágrima in different guises as a recurring reference point, including a powerful climax. One of these songs is Los Tiguitiguitos (The Little Tigers).” The notes report that: “Other traditional material Carreño uses includes a religious song sung at wakes and funerals and an Afro-Venezuelan social song (Canto del Pilón, a pilón being a small gift or free bonus on a deal).” Margariteña, glosa sinfónica is mysterious at first, and then more exultant, ushering in more music in an affirmative register; it closes triumphantly.

Also rewarding was Erich Korngold’s melodious Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 35, from 1945, admirably played here by concertmaster Frank Huang—it contains much lovely music. In notes for the program, James M. Keller comments:

Listening to his Violin Concerto, one may hear echoes of familiar film music. Indeed, most of its themes are drawn from Korngold's film scores: in the first movement, from Another Dawn (1937) and Juarez (1939); in the second, from Anthony Adverse (1936, though the movement's misterioso middle section is original to the concerto); in the mercurial finale, from The Prince and the Pauper (1937).

The first, Moderato nobile movement begins lyrically and Romantically with a lush primary theme and concludes forcefully and joyfully; the cadenza that follows the initial development is surprisingly spiky—at moments, the music is strongly reminiscent of that of Richard Strauss. The opening of the ensuing Romance is even more song-like in character, although much of the movement has a wandering, almost ruminative quality; it closes gently. The Finale, marked Allegro assai vivace, starts dynamically and cheerfully and ends spiritedly—much of the first section has a dance-like, even galloping, rhythm.

The second half of the evening was even more memorable: a thrilling account of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s magnificent Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64, from 1888. In a letter from that year to his benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck, the composer wrote the following about the work: 

Having played my Symphony twice in Petersburg and once in Prague, I have come to the conclusion that it is a failure. There is something repellent in it, some over-exaggerated color, some insincerity of fabrication which the public instinctively recognizes. It was clear to me that the applause and ovations referred not to this but to other works of mine, and that the Symphony itself will never please the public.

Elsewhere he said:

the organic sequence fails, and a skillful join has to be made… . I cannot complain of lack of inventive power, but I have always suffered from want of skill in the management of form. 

The Andante introduction to the initial movement is somewhat lugubrious, even mournful, with its “motto theme” that recurs throughout the piece, while the main body of the movement, marked Allegro con anima, becomes quite impassioned, although it is not without reflective passages—at times, maybe surprisingly, one can discern anticipations of some of the symphonic music of Jean Sibelius. Toward the movement’s finish, music with a driving rhythm abruptly engenders a quiet close. The second movement, with a tempo of Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza, starts softly before stating a gorgeous, radiant, Romantic theme—some of the composer’s most exquisite music may be found here. Although some of the movement has an elegiac ethos, it ultimately evinces a compelling, if not unchallenged, optimism; it concludes on a subdued note.

The succeeding Valse, marked Allegro moderato, is imbued with immense charm—some of it has a very playful character but with more serious interludes—and it ends emphatically, if somewhat unexpectedly. The Andante maestoso introduction to the Finale, is solemn, if majestic; the main body of the movement conveys a sense of exhilaration, even of extravagant exuberance, despite some more relaxed but still delightful episodes—it closes in a blaze of glory.

Deservedly, the artists received an enthusiastic ovation.