In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Margaret Qualley is the main reason to see this scattershot, often lamebrained B-movie homage/parody from one-half of the Coen brothers (Ethan, along with cowriting partner, Olivia Cooke) in which she plays Honey O’Donahue, a lesbian private eye in a small town who investigates a case that results in several killings—which are often lasciviously (and pointlessly) dwelt upon by the filmmakers, to their film’s and their heroine’s detriment.

 

 

Despite Qualley’s immense charm, Honey is as underdeveloped as everyone else in the movie, and attempts to make her offbeat family and romantic relationships authentic come off as desperate. Coen and Cooke just throw everything into the kitchen sink, hoping something interesting, amusing or just plain eccentric will pop out of the inherent silliness. Even able performers like Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day and Chris Evans are reduced to caricature, while the always watchable Qualley can’t even rescue the risibly nonsensical ending.

 

 

 

Diva 

Called a dazzling formal exercise by many reviewers on its original 1982 release, Jean-Jacques Beineix’ film about a music lover who records his favorite opera singer in concert then finds himself in the crosshairs of criminals after another tape has always been ludicrous, and what seemed fresh and new four decades ago now comes off as arch and not as clever as it thinks.

 

 

The acting is variable, the shaggy-dog plotting includes characters that are mere pawns, and the director’s vaunted eye is just a nod toward stylish splashiness with little depth. Strangely, the Beineix films that never made it here (The Moon in the Gutter, Roselyne and the Lions, IP5) are more memorable than Diva and Betty Blue, his other cult hit.

 

 

 

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass 

The Quay brothers, who are identical twins from Pennsylvania, are the legendary creators of animated shorts and features stretching back decades—this, their first feature in nearly 20 years, is a typically dense and convoluted tale, as its title demonstrates.

 

 

Based on stories by the challenging Polish formalist Bruno Schulz, this nightmarish Kafkaesque labyrinth contains the brothers’ usual stunning array of foreboding imagery—through their unique combination of live-action and stop-motion—at the service of a bizarre storyline of a man’s visit to a sanatorium where his father is dying and where time itself follows no logical structure.

 

 

 

Suspended Time 

In his film set during the pandemic, French director Olivier Assayas creates an intriguing if slight auto-fiction that parallels his own COVID lockdown as an artist unable to work but also aware that staying with his brother and their girlfriends at their family’s house in rural France is not as bad as others have it.

 

 

Even though the film is populated by small, domestic disagreements that can blow up into something larger, Assayas’ razor-sharp observational eye—coupled with his witty narration—keeps this from becoming an awkward exercise of navel-gazing. It’s nicely acted by Vincent Macaigne and Micha Lescot (the brothers) and Nora Hamzawi and Nine d’Urso (the girlfriends).

 

 

 

4K Release of the Week 

The first film in the ongoing Conjuring series, made in 2013, remains the most satisfying, ably telling the story of the Perrons, a family terrorized by supernatural forces in their home and the real-life Warren couple, demonologists both, who investigate the malevolence inhabiting the home that, in a quite effective climax, provokes an exorcism.

 

 

There are good performances by Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as the Warrens and Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor as the Perron parents, while director James Wan does a creditable job keeping things on track without wallowing in lesser tangents. The UHD transfer looks great; extras include several making-of featurettes. 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Robert Kramer’s classic road movie that travels along the Eastern Seaboard, following U.S. Route 1 from Maine to Key West, was made in 1989 but remains particularly relevant today, as Kramer chronicles Americans of all walks of life, political persuasions and economic classes, along with visiting landmarks from Walden Pond to D.C.’s Vietnam Memorial. An American expatriate based in Paris (he died in France at age 60 in 1999) who returned to the U.S. to make this film, Kramer adroitly handles the camera while his friend, actor Michael Keillor, does the questioning and observing.

 

 

This four-hour exploration of the deep and dark crevasses of American life is crammed with incident, detail and insight but is far from exhaustive, mirroring Kramer’s wanting to “understand” the country he left. The film’s graininess really pops on the Blu-ray; the lone extra is a fascinating pendant to the main feature: Looking for Robert, a 2024 documentary portrait of Kramer and his film by colleague Richard Copans.

 

 

 

The Unholy Trinity 

Making a straightforward western today without being Kevin Costner is certainly a rarity, and if director Richard Gray and writer Lee Zacariah have made something less than earthshattering, at least the tale of Henry Broadway, bent on vengeance for his innocent father’s hanging who finds more trouble than he bargained for in the Wild West, is an entertaining 90 minutes.

 

 

The authentic atmosphere and the solid acting of Pierce Brosnan (Sheriff Gabriel Dove), Brandon Lessard (Henry), Veronica Ferres (the sheriff’s wife) and Samuel Jackson (the bad guy ironically named St. Christopher) contributes to the successful western vibe. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.