4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Apparently, one self-important Joker movie wasn’t enough for Todd Phillips, who returns with a farrago that brings back Joaquin Phoenix as the most sullen Joker ever—and adds, pointlessly, Lady Gaga as an equally lunatic character who meets Joker cutely in prison (don’t ask) then becomes his biggest supporter when he’s on trial for the crimes of the previous movie. 

 

 

Phillips’ oppressively dark, often risible film bursts into song interludes of mostly old pop and showtunes warbled by Phoenix and Gaga that rarely further the narrative or comment on the duo’s psyches—Woody Allen’s 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You did this sort of thing far more shrewdly. The film looks impressive in UHD; extras comprise the making-of documentary Everything Must Go and several featurettes. 

 

 

 

Rolling Stones—Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush 

On their 1999 world tour, the Stones played mainly arenas and stadiums—with a notable exception for this 90-minute sprint through 35 years of hits at the relatively intimate Shepherd’s Bush in London.

 

 

Everyone is in peak form, with Mick Jagger prancing around the stage and Keith Richards and Ron Wood playing those indelible guitar licks, except, weirdly, the opener “Shattered,” whose famous guitar riff never seems to be correctly duplicated live. Sheryl Crow joins for an energetic “Honky Tonk Women.” There’s superior UHD video and audio.

 

 

 

Stir of Echoes 

In David Koepp’s 1999 horror entry—based on a novel by Richard Matheson—a working-class dad’s life is turned upside down after being hypnotized by his sister-in-law; he’s soon seeing visions of a local teenage girl who recently disappeared.

 

 

The story is quite sturdy, thanks to Matheson’s original, but Koepp teases out the most unpleasant details, and after awhile it becomes rather dumbing to watch, despite good work from Kevin Bacon (dad), Kathryn Erbe (wife), Ileana Douglas (sister-in-law) and Zachary David Cope (young son). There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the special edition steelbook contains the film on Blu-ray and extras including new and vintage featurettes and interviews.

 

 

 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Attorney Delphine gets an anonymous phone call from a colleague of her husband Antoine who says he’s having an affair with one of their adopted children, Adia and Aslan—taken aback, Delphine tries to discover if it’s true.

 

 

It is, of course, but writer-director Kaveh Daneshmand has nowhere to go once it’s discovered, and what began as a compelling study structured as a whodunit ends up trivializing a serious subject. Still, strong performances, led by Sophie Colon (Delphine) and Frédérika Milano (Adia), give this more gravitas than Daneshmand’s writing and direction deserve.

 

 

 

 

The Man in the White Van 

Based on a true story, Warren Skeels’ unsettling drama homes in on Annie, a Florida teenager who keeps seeing a suspicious van parked near school and home, but others scoff at her—even though other young women have been abducted and murdered in the past few years.

 

 

After a tense and compelling first half, Skeels’ film turns into a rote slasher flick, with fake scares and people in movies doing dumb things. But Madison Wolfe, a winning young actress, makes this underbaked study steadily watchable.

 

 

 

Theater of Thought 

For my taste, omnivorous director Werner Herzog’s off-kilter documentaries are far more fascinating than his off-kilter features, and his latest doc is another intriguingly obsessive exploration—this time of neuroscience, a field laden with ethical and moral roadblocks that are ripe to be skirted.

 

 

Herzog and Rafael Yuste (a professor at Columbia and the film’s advisor) travel around the U.S. for a typically refreshing look at another complex subject—complete with alternately bemusing and amusing interviews—made even more enjoyable by Herzog’s inimitable onscreen persona, endlessly curious and seeming unserious and ultra-serious simultaneously.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week  Her Body 

The excruciatingly sad story of Andrea Absolonová—a talented Czech diver whose career was cut short when she was injured training for the Olympics, so she began a successful career making porn films until dying of a brain tumor at age 27—has been made into a frustratingly inert biopic by Natálie Císařovská.

 

 

The director seems to be content with checking off events in Andrea’s life instead of diving more deeply—that Andrea starts her X-rated career as Lea De Mae after seeing porn tapes and magazines in her photographer lover’s apartment might be true, but in this context it’s presented as a dramatic shortcut. But there is a towering performance by Natalia Germani, intensely physical but also brittle and natural, making up for blurry storytelling.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Based on Robert Harris’ page-turning thriller about the political and moral machinations among a group of cardinals electing a new pope, Edward Berger’s adaptation is hampered by its structure—lots of voting in the Sistine Chapel and arguing in the cardinals’ private rooms for much of its two-hour length—but Harris’ wit and ability to enliven routine situations is much in evidence.

 

 

Of course, there’s also a starry cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Stanley Tucci have enormous fun playing various liberal or conservative, pious or impious cardinals—it’s too bad Isabella Rossellini can’t do much with the lone female speaking role. Berger directs a little too close to the vest; a less literal director might have made this cracklingly good, not merely diverting. The Blu-ray transfer is fine; extras are Berger’s commentary and a making-of featurette.

 

 

 

Hard Wood 

Ed Wood was the inept filmmaker who made Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, two of the worst pictures ever—but at the end of his career, in the 1970s, he made a few X-rated sex flicks that this three-disc set collects.

 

 

Straightforward and explicit, Necromania, The Only House in Town and The Young Marrieds show that maybe Wood missed out on his calling; he’s a competent pornographer, at least. The transfers are OK but nothing special; extras include softcore versions of the features, several porn loops, a non-sex feature, Shotgun Wedding, audio commentaries and interviews. 

 

 

 

Piece by Piece 

The eclectic career of music entrepreneur Pharrell Williams is recounted through animated Lego bricks by director Morgan Neville, who brings style and humor to this unique way of showcasing Williams’ own artistic path, of what Williams calls creating something new out of preexisting forms.

 

 

There are beguiling sequences with cheeky voice actors playing themselves (among them Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Williams himself and even Neville) and if it never strays from the surface, the movie works as a fresh hybrid of biopic and documentary. The hi-def transfer is colorfully eye-popping; lone extra is a featurette of Williams and Neville interviews.

 

 

 

Scala! 

Scala, a beloved London repertory cinema from 1978 to 1993, showed films others didn’t—like an unauthorized screening of A Clockwork Orange, banned in England at the time—and Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s loving documentary portrait is a wistful but lively reminiscence for so many of the place’s employees and guests, people like directors John Waters and Mary Harron as well as artist Isaac Julien and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

 

 

Giles, who worked at the Scala, has access to a lot of memorabilia and other vintage footage that helps tell its long, winding and absorbing story. Two extra Blu-ray discs house several short films that were shown at Scala along with the documentary Splatterfest Exhumed as well as interviews and audio commentaries.