4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The latest installment of this agreeably slight adventure series about a group of mercenaries who go out on all sorts of dangerous missions hits the usual action and narrative beats, as their leader (Sylvester Stallone, natch) is presumed dead and the others have to deal with that and track down terrorists looking to start a nuclear war.

 

 

It’s explosive in all senses, and director Scott Waugh keeps things fast-moving for 100 minutes, although the best performance comes from Megan Fox’s tattoos. There’s a first-rate UHD transfer; extras include Waugh’s commentary and two making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

The Fugitive 

The old TV series starring David Janssen was updated effectively in this 1993 blockbuster, which becomes quite exciting when it concentrates on the accused doctor’s escape from custody and attempts to track down his wife’s real murderer, all while he’s being frantically pursued by a federal marshal.

 

 

Harrison Ford is his usual entertainingly stolid self as the hero, Tommy Lee Jones makes a formidable adversary and director Andrew Davis stages and paces the action beautifully, ensuring the film is a well-oiled thrill machine. The 4K transfer looks excellent; extras are an intro by Ford and Davis, commentary by Davis and Jones, and three making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

Oppenheimer 

Christopher Nolan’s take on Robert J. Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project is typically Nolanesque: very long, very loud, very overblown and very shallow. This three-hour behemoth is loaded down with visual and aural pyrotechnics from the start: I wouldn’t be surprised if Nolan’s noise is louder than actual atomic explosions. Ludwig Göransson’s ludicrously bombastic score is smeared over virtually every scene—I hope he got paid by the minute—including moments where ostensibly important dialogue can’t be heard. Cillian Murphy is properly intense but he’s overshadowed by Nolan’s self-importance.

 

 

Aside from Robert Downey and Matt Damon, who make an impression despite Nolan’s singlemindedness, the starry cast is forgettable: Gary Oldman is a cartoonish Harry Truman, likewise Tom Conti as Albert Einstein; poor Florence Pugh, usually a formidable actress, is reduced to a nothing role comprising several gratuitous nude scenes. The film, of course, looks stunning in UHD; extras comprise the 70-minute The Story of Our Time: The Making of Oppenheimer, the NBC News documentary To End All War: Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb, and a Trinity anniversary panel discussion with Nolan and others. 

 

 

 

Saw X 

There’s always an audience for torture, as the tenth installment of this franchise whose hook is “let’s torture people—innocent or deserving—in more creatively nasty ways” shows. John Kramer, torturer extraordinaire of previous Saws, is now a sad victim of a fake cancer-miracle cure and who—of course—returns the favor on those who scammed him.

 

 

Of course, you already know whether this is for you; even so, there are a couple uniquely gross ways of torturing, and director Kevin Greutert even partly succeeds in making Tobin Bell’s Kramer kind of sympathetic. Now that’s an original achievement. The film looks pristine in 4K; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

One of his very best, Claude Chabrol’s 1995 melodrama is a cracklingly good study of manners, mania and murder as a cleaning lady is befriended by a local woman who prods her to target the family she works for. Chabrol’s precise direction moves things along slowly but surely, so that, by the final violent outburst, we are literally left shaken at its horrible, ironic logic. This taut chamber piece is enlivened by the spectacular acting of Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert, Jacqueline Bisset and Virginie Ledoyen as well as the felicitous music of Matthieu Cahbrol, the director’s son.

 

 

Criterion’s excellent hi-def transfer makes Chabrol’s compositions look crisp and clear; extras include Chabrol’s select-scene commentary, intro by director Bong Joon Ho, making-of featurette, and archival interviews with Bonnaire, Huppert, Chabrol and co-writer Caroline Eliacheff.

 

 

 

South Park—The Streaming Wars 

In the South Park duo’s latest “special” two-episode event, the town’s water supply is dwindling thanks to an evil corporation whose head honcho, ManBearPig, has separated it into streams. As usual, Trey Parker and Matt Stone combine astute satire with crude parody and cheap jokes (Cartman gets breast implants) into a stew only they can concoct: somehow, a metaphor for the proliferation of streaming services—including Paramount +, which shows South Park—emerges with eviscerating swipes.

 

 

The episodes run about 100 minutes total, so it’s like getting four or five South Park episodes for the price of two, which is sort of a bargain.

 

 

 

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Sixty years on, the assassination of President Kennedy remains a singularly mortifying event in American history, and Alan Govenar’s documentary returns to the scene of the crime—Dealey Plaza in Dallas—to interview several people who were there that day to jog their still-vivid memories.

 

 

Hearing them speak after so long is quite touching, and Govenar supplements this with plaza interviews that serendipitously occur on the same day as a nearby mass shooting, as U.S. and international visitors discuss gun control. Illuminatingly, Govenar features mournful songs written by bluesmen and others in response to the JFK tragedy, as he shows more recent footage of ongoing gun violence and homeless people that is quintessentially—and sorrowfully—American. 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) was one of the most original musical voices of his day, combining romantic sensibilities with a love for the past that brought him fame and fortune with several beloved works, including his Roman trilogy, The Birds, Three Botticelli Pictures and his three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, all of which are staples for any orchestra worth its salt. All of these works, of course, make up a big part of this 8-disc set of Respighi’s orchestral works, but even though the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra (Roman trilogy) and Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege (everything else) under conductor John Neschling give vigorous, well-oiled readings of them, the real gems are several works that are not nearly as well known.

 

 

For example, there are Sinfonia drammatica, Brazilian Impressions, Church Windows and Il tramonto, in which Italian soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci provides a dreamy, lovingly rendered account. Too bad there’s not more of his wonderfully offbeat operas other than the overture of Belfagor, but hoping it will spur listeners to further explore Respighi’s world, operatic and orchestral.