4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Ryan Coogler’s ambitious epic, which marries African American and ethnic music history to a metaphorical vampire saga, is an often exhilarating—and quite often enervating—entertainment that’s a more successful popcorn movie than it is the dramatically incisive exploration of racism in the Jim Crow South that it aspires to.

 

 

Led by Michael B. Jordan’s superb dual performance as the Smokestack twins, the cast also features knockout turns by Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Lola Kirke, Miles Caton and Delroy Lindo—only blues legend Buddy Guy, in an unnecessary epilogue (shown after some of the end credits, a bizarrely awkward choice), comes off amateurishly. Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s magnificent cinematography, Michael Shawver’s razor-sharp editing and Ludwig Göransson’s savvily eclectic score contribute handsomely to making this a visceral thrill. The UHD imagery looks stunning; extras comprise more than an hour of on-set footage and interviews along with 18 minutes of deleted scenes.

 

 

 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Brad Pitt’s laconic charm is on display throughout this overlong commercial for Formula 1 racing: for two and a half hours, director Joseph Kosinski takes us on a relentlessly formulaic journey through several races, each of which writer Ehren Kruger tries his damnedest to make singular rather than repetitive.

 

 

Kosinski and Kruger fail, for the most part, while the off-track scenes of Pitt as retired daredevil driver Sonny (who comes out of retirement), Damson Idris as young hotshot driver Joshua, Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben (who talks Sonny into returning) and Kerry Condon as Kate, the brains of the outfit (who—of course—falls for Sonny against her better judgment) are pretty ordinary. It’s shot and paced efficiently and slickly, but if you’re a fan of cars flying around a track at 200 miles an hour, then your—um—mileage may vary.

 

 

40 Acres 

What begins as unsettling post-apocalyptic sci-fi whose plot follows an Afro-Indigenous family defending its valuable farm from hordes of cannibalistic marauders in a not-too-distant future of famine and anarchy turns into a standard-issue drama bogged down by the usual genre tropes.

 

 

It’s too bad that R.T. Thorne’s writing and directing debut doesn’t live up to its potential, for there are a lot of interesting ideas at work—but unsubtlety (the family’s name is Freeman, for example) and implausible characterizations/relationships mitigate the film’s more original moments. The impressively physical cast is led by Danielle Deadwyler and Kataem O’Connor.

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week

In this tepid twist on Fatal Attraction, Alicia Silverstone is Sophie, a successful executive who favors casual hookups, but after she hooks up with the younger Elliot (including a torrid Paris weekend), she can’t shake him, leading to serious consequences.

 

 

Silverstone is surprisingly good in the Michael Douglas role, but Karl Glusman is overwrought and hammy in the Glenn Close part, which—with Justin Kelly’s choppy direction and Jack Donnelly’s by-the-numbers script—makes this a watchable but routine revenge thriller.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

Swiss director-cowriter Maxime Rappaz makes her feature debut with this intriguingly off-kilter study of Claudine, a middle-aged seamstress who cares for her mentally impaired adult son as well as regularly travels from her small town to a Geneva hotel where she hooks up with single male travelers for no-strings-attached trysts.

 

 

But she soon meets a German who upsets her well-ordered personal world. Rappaz’ offbeat character study ends up too reliant on cliches, but the film is helped immeasurably by Jeanne Balibar’s emotionally vulnerable portrayal of Claudine. 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Argentine master Alberto Ginastera (1916-83) might be best known for his tango music and its variations, but his works in forms ranging from orchestral music to operas to chamber pieces are notable for their originality and vigor. His three string quartets are prime examples of his virtuosity; written in three distinct styles, they respectively integrate his local folk-music studies, mid-century modernism and a distinctive late style of pure emotion. 

 

The Miró Quartet plays these thrillingly idiosyncratic works with the necessary power and finesse, while soprano Keira Duffy gives  beautifully ethereal voice to the Spanish-language poems that make up three movements of the third quartet, a remarkably haunting “hallucination,” in Ginastera’s own description.