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Reviews
August '25 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 07 August 2025 20:23
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
(Sony Classics)
For her smart, often dazzling writing-directing debut, actress Embeth Davidtz has made a poignantly personal drama, based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name, about a white Zimbabwean family during the Rhodesian Bush War in 1980, from the point-of-view of 8-year-old Bobo who, along with her teenage sister Vanessa, lives with her parents Nicola and Tim on a sprawling family farm full of ghosts, real and imagined.
Davidtz’ deeply felt drama of people clinging to a land that’s no longer theirs has a powerfully authentic sense of time, place and stifling atmosphere, and she gives a formidable portrayal of Nicola. But stealing the show is the astonishingly young Lexi Venter, who invests Bobo with a lively and precocious authenticity as our imperfect but captivating guide.
(Kino Lorber)
A true Manhattan time capsule, this vicious 1980 crime drama follows a former cop literally chasing the maniac who kidnaped his teenage daughter mistakenly thinking she’s a millionaire’s child through the streets is set in a seedy city about to burst from all the dirt, garbage and crime. Robert Butler took over the directorial duties after Sidney J. Furie left, and he pushes the boundaries of taste and logic with every insane chase sequence and bizarrely unrealistic bit of dialogue.
The performances by James Brolin (as the dad), Dan Hedaya and Richard S. Castellano (as antagonistic cops) and especially a nutso Cliff Gorman (as the kidnaper) are dialed up to 11, which makes this simultaneously silly and must-see viewing.
Rebel With a Clause
(Syntaxis Productions)
Only someone who loves language as much as Ellen Jovin would make—with her husband, Brandt Johnson—a documentary recording her visits to all 50 states, where she sits at a grammar desk to interact with curious people who discuss and ask questions about such things as past participles, the use of who/whom, ending a sentence with a preposition and, of course, the ubiquitous Oxford comma.
Jovin puts everyone at ease with her easygoing manner; Johnson’s camera catches the nuances of these interactions, even showing without commentary the state of homelessness in this country in a couple of heartrending scenes. But the emphasis is on community in an anything but communal society.
Black Tea
(Cohen Media)
Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako comes a cropper with this contrived tale of young African woman Aya (a delightful Nina Mélo) who leaves her cheating fiancée at the altar to flee to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, which has a heavily African population and where she learns the subtleties of tea-making from Cai (the charming Chang Han), with whom she slowly falls in love.
It’s certainly painless to watch, and Sissako’s eye is as ever precise in his observations, but there’s little here that hasn’t been done better by Sissako in films like Bamako and Timbuktu. The Blu-ray image looks luminous; lone extra is the Berlin Film Festival press conference featuring Sissako, Mélo and Han.
MacMillan Celebrated
(Opus Arte)
Kenneth MacMillan was a legendary British choreographer whose dances dominated ballet stages for decades; this disc celebrates his exuberant and innovative work with stagings of his Danses concertantes (to the music of Stravinsky), Different Drum (to Webern and Schoenberg) and Requiem (to Fauré).
These terrific 2024 performances were staged by the Royal Ballet at its Covent Garden home in London with a cast of exceptional dancers. The hi-def images and audio underline the onstage brilliance; extras include interviews with Benesh choreologists Gregory Mislin and Daniel Kraus as well as Macmillan’s widow Deborah.
(Cult Epics)
This pair of Dutch films from the 1970s features the estimable pairing of Sylvia Kristel (best known for the Emmanuelle films) and Rudger Hauer (who became a star as an early ’80s villain in Nighthawks and Blade Runner) but are of varying quality— Paul de Lussanet’s Mysteries, in which they play the leads, is a slog of a drama from a Knut Hamsun novel that’s lensed by the great Robby Muller. Krisel and Hauer are excellent, at least.
Wim Verstappen’s Pastorale 1943, by contrast, is a hard-hitting drama about Dutch resistance during World War II, with Kristel and Hauer in small supporting roles. In the lead as a Dutchman whose loyalties are murky is the excellent Frederik de Groot. Both films look good and grainy on Blu; extras include commentaries and vintage interviews with Kristel, Hauer, de Laussanet and actor Derek de Lint.
CD Release of the Week
Tamar Sagiv—Shades of Mourning
(Sono Luminus)
Israeli cellist Tamar Sagiv’s debut recording is an intensely personal disc that takes the artist—and the listener—through various stages of grief and mourning as well as love and acceptance; the nine short pieces (all original compositions) were inspired by losses in Sagiv’s life along with the precarious state of today’s world.
Her playing on solo pieces Shades of Mourning, Roots, Intermezzo and Prelude is starkly expressive and nakedly emotional, while her cluster of works for trio (violin, viola, cello) explores sound worlds both familiar and new. The last piece, In My Blue, is a cello quintet in which Sagiv layers all the parts into a lovely and, finally, moving whole.
July '25 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 July 2025 22:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Release of the Week
Final Destination—Bloodlines
(Warner Bros)
The first Final Destination—has it really been a quarter-century?—competently executed a clever idea: after a group of high school students gets off a plane before takeoff and it explodes, killing everyone aboard, death gruesomely takes each survivor. The original was a fun popcorn flick, but the sixth go-round is running on fumes—it’s more of the same, directed with a sledgehammer by Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky from Guy Busick and Lori Evans Taylor’s sloppy script.
The most memorable scene is also the most imbecile: no hospital would have an industrial-grade MRI machine in an unattended, unlocked room—be that as it may, the horrible MRI deaths uncannily resemble what fatally happened to someone on Long Island. The film looks fine in 4K; extras are a directors’ commentary, two making-of featurettes and a tribute to actor Tony Todd.
Shari & Lamb Chop
(Kino Lorber)
Ventriloquist Shari Lewis—whom I remember watching as a kid on various TV shows with her unique hand puppets, including the beloved Lambchop—was a trailblazer who has been nearly forgotten, and whom director Lisa D’Apolito resurrects in this entertaining but not entirely sycophantic documentary.
Lewis’ fascinating career and complicated personal life are honestly chronicled, with interjections from her daughter, friends, family and associates, and the result humanizes a genuine artist.
Sovereign
(Briarcliff Entertainment)
Nick Offerman’s performance as Jerry Kane—an angry, widowed father who subscribes to the lunatic notion that he and his teenage son Joseph (Jacob Tremblay) are sovereign citizens and not subject to the laws of the United States, an attitude that ends badly for all involved—is authentically scary and commanding.
The film, which director-writer Christian Swegal based on a real incident in Arkansas in 2010, is unsettling to its core, and if it succumbs to clichés like dogs and babies at the end, there’s a lot of difficult but necessary questions about our country’s direction.
Mr. Blake at Your Service
(Sunrise Films)
In this predictably cheesy but cute comedy, John Malkovich plays the title character, a stuffy Englishman who returns to the house where he and his dead French wife met and causes havoc among those living there: Nathalie de Beauvillier and her house servants. Blake becomes de Beauvillier’s butler and by the time the movie ends, all has been put right in everyone’s world.
Malkovich is crusty but charming—and speaks French as a stumbling non-native would—as is Fanny Ardant as de Beauvillier. Sadly, Émilie Dequenne, who plays the cook Odile in such a memorably no-nonsense style, died soon after finishing the film of cancer at age 43—a wonderful performer taken far too soon.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Shadow Force
(Lionsgate)
Kerry Washington and Omar Sy play an estranged couple whose past as paid assassins catches up to them when a vengeful former boss pays a half-dozen killers to go after them—and their young son. In director/co-writer Joe Carnahan’s hands, it all plays out as one improbably violent and explosive sequence after another.
Washington and Sy do what they can, although their characters are faceless ciphers. The film looks good on Blu; extras are Carnahan and editor Kevin Hale’s commentary and three making-of featurettes.
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(Accentus Music)
Richard Wagner’s colossal tetralogy about dwarfs and nymphs and gods and mortals and dragons and gold and incest and murder and Armageddon is, at 15 hours of music, punishing for singers, musicians and—sometimes—audiences. Whenever a new Ring staging premieres, Wagner fans worldwide converge, as they did for this staging at the Zurich Opera House last year. Director Andreas Homoki’s concept is minimalist, based on a unit set that has some interesting visual aspects, but the dragon’s appearance is laughably inadequate.
Still, at least Homoki’s staging never buries the story and music, which—as conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and performed by the Zurich Philharmonia—sounds as glorious as Wagner intended. The acting and singing by such stalwarts as Tomasz Konieczny (Wotan), Camilla Nylund (Brünnhilde), Christopher Purves (Alberich), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Mime) and Klaus Florian Vogt (Siegfried) moves the huge plot forward until those final, indescribably beautiful notes. There’s first-rate audio and video; too bad there are no interviews with the conductor, director or singers.
Blu-ray/CD Release of the Week
Walkin’ After Midnight—The Music of Patsy Cline
(Mercury Studios)
Country legend Patsy Cline was an inspiration to so many female singers, which this special concert—recorded live at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville last year—showcases with a baker’s dozen of performers ranging from country stalwarts like Wynonna and Pam Tillis to newer voices like Mickey Guyton and Sheya Shepard to Broadway stars like Kristin Chenoweth and rock stars like Pat Benatar.
Among these superb performances, highlights are Guyton’s “Walkin’ After Midnight,” Shepard’s “I’ve Loved and Lost Again,” Benatar’s “Imagine That” and Wynonna’s “Crazy.” Hi-def video and audio are impeccable; the accompanying CD includes the same songs.
"Sylvia" Echants With The American Ballet Theater
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 July 2025 13:07
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Carlos Gonzalez in Sylvia. Photo: Nir Arieli.
At the matinee on Saturday, July 12th, at Lincoln Center’s marvelous Metropolitan Opera House, in the final weeks of the current, exemplary season of the extraordinary American Ballet Theater, the company performed one of the greatest works in its repertory, the Frederick Ashton masterpiece, Sylvia, from 1952, set to the wonderful score—it was, apparently, deeply admired by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky — by Léo Delibes, who is also famous as the composer of another celebrated ballet, Coppélia, in addition to the lovely opera, Lakmé, especially well-known for its glorious “Flower Duet” and its aria, the “Bell Song.”
Ashton would seem to be—with George Balanchine—the most astonishing choreographer of the 20th century, with an ostensibly boundless originality and creativity evident at every moment in this work. The ballet’s scenario is inspired by the “neoclassical” Aminta by Torquato Tasso, a colossal figure in late Italian Renaissance poetry. The excellent staging is by Susan Jones, with attractive original designs by Robin and Christopher Ironside and additional ones by Peter Farmer. (The effective lighting is by Mark Jonathan.)
The performance I attended had a remarkable primary cast led by Catherine Hurlin who shone brilliantly as the nymph of the title. She was partnered unexpectedly strongly by Calvin Royal III as the shepherd Aminta, here dancing at his seldom seen best. Cory Stearns who has matured laudably as a dancer, was also very fine as the evil hunter Orion. (I did once see this production here—and previously reviewed on this site—indelibly performed by the incomparable trio of Maria Kochetkova, Herman Cornejo and Daniil Simkin in the main roles.)
Striking assistance was provided by the other significant players — Carlos Gonzalez as the god Eros and Virginia Lenssi as the goddess Diana — while the very many other dazzling dancers, particularly in the fabulous series of divertissements in the final act,are unfortunately too numerous to record here. The sterling corps de ballet was, as usual, terrific.
Revisiting this production now, the staging seemed more powerful than my earlier recollection. I look forward to the return of this essential company in the fall of this year.
Classical Review—Gabriel Fauré Recital at the 92 Street Y
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 22 July 2025 00:36
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Bell-Isserlis-Denk Trio & Friends
July 9, 2025
92 St Y, 1395 Lexington Ave, New York City
92ny.org
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| Bell, Duval, Denk, Engstroem and Isserlis performing Fauré’s First Piano Quintet |
(photo: Michael Priest Photography)
Just a notch above Sergei Prokofiev and Ralph Vaughan-Williams, Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) is my favorite classical composer. A master of small forms, Fauré wrote magnificent chamber music—his piano trio, quartets and quintets; cello and violin sonatas; and string quartet are all masterpieces.
I discovered Fauré’s musical elegance about four decades ago, when I saw French film director Bertrand Tavernier’s classic Un Dimanche à la Campagne (A Sunday in the Country), which used excerpts from Fauré’s late chamber pieces to incisive effect. Indeed, critic John Simon, in his 1985 rave of Tavernier’s film, wrote that conductor Herbert von Karajan sent a letter to Tavernier congratulating him on what Karajan considered, in the broadest sense, the most musical film he had ever seen.
To its credit, for its Midsummer MusicFest, the 92nd Street Y on Manhattan’s Upper East Side brought the Bell-Isserlis-Denk Trio & Friends—violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, pianist Jeremy Denk, with their friends, violinist Irène Duval and violist Blythe Teh Engstroem—for two all-Fauré concerts jammed with chamber masterworks.
I was only able to attend the first night (even though the second recital had even better works on the program) but was delighted by the passionate and precise performances of such glorious music of quiet clarity and eloquence.
The July 9 concert began with Fauré’s mighty A-major Violin Sonata, the most well-known work on the program, expressively performed by Bell and Denk. Isserlis then joined the pair for an artful reading of the sublime Piano Trio.
After intermission, Isserlis and Denk played lovely versions of two of Fauré’s small-scale gems: the Sicilienne (which features one of the composer’s most ravishing melodies) and Berceuse. I would have preferred to hear one of Fauré’s two great cello sonatas—both among the peak works of his late period—instead of these subtle miniatures, but Isserlis must have had a good reason for excluding them.
This remarkable concert ended with all the musicians onstage to play Fauré’s masterly Piano Quintet No. 1, one of his most brilliant works—although I prefer, by just a hair, the even more majestically intimate second quintet. The interplay, energy and ebullience of the performers during this heavenly half hour was something I haven’t experienced very often.
Kudos to the five friends—and bravo to Gabriel Fauré!
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