In-Theaters/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Ethan Hawke throws himself into playing Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart—one-half of the immortal team of Rodgers and Hart, creators of such indelible musicals as Babes in Arms and Pal Joey—in Richard Linklater’s mostly inert biopic that concentrates on one day in Hart’s life, the opening night of Oklahoma, the first collaboration of Hart’s former partner Richard Rodgers with Oscar Hammerstein II.

 

 

Set at the venerable theater restaurant Sardi’s, the film has a certain interest for musical theater fans (especially when a young Stephen Sondheim, a protégé of Hammerstein, appears), but Robert Kaplow’s script tries to cram too much into its single setting, taking away from its focus on Hart, who would be dead a few months after this night. Hawke does immerse himself poignantly in the songwriter’s messy personal life, and he’s the main reason to watch until the predictably tragic end.

 

 

 

Sentimental Value 

Danish-Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s latest melodrama explores a fractured family, as film director Gustav returns home after his ex-wife Sissel’s death to tell his two adult daughters—Agnes, a wife, mother and historian; and Nora, a temperamental stage actress having an affair with a married colleague—with the news that he’s making a film (with famous American actress Rachel Kemp) about his mother’s torture as a Nazi resistance fighter leading to her suicide when Gustav was young.

 

 

The complications of family history rear their heads throughout, but Trier concentrates on too many loose ends, like standard-issue stage or on-set sequences that do little to illuminate matters. Stellan Skarsgård is perfectly cast as the boorish but boyish Gustav, Elle Fanning is an excellent Rachel and Renate Reinsve a fine Nora, but Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas steals each of her scenes as Agnes. Trier should have focused on her instead.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Director Spike Lee and cinematographer Ellen Kuras capture David Byrne’s groundbreaking 2019 Broadway show combining music and movement in exhilarating fashion, centered on Byrne’s unique stage presence, a savant leading his congregation in the holy gospel of song, with Annie-B Parson’s expressive choreography and Bob Sinclair’s inventive lighting visually complementing Byrne’s songs—from early Talking Heads to his recent solo material—accompanied by a dozen musicians, singers and dancers.

 

 

Criterion’s new release comprises a 4K disc of the film, which looks and sounds immaculate; and two Blu-ray discs of the film and two extras: a 55-minute documentary about the show featuring Byrne, Kuras, Parson, and Sinclair, and a short Byrne and Lee conversation, socially distanced, from 2020.

 

 

 

Boogie Nights 

Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, made in 1997, is now considered a classic—unaccountably, in my view; this shrill, cartoonish, shallow look at the L.A. porn scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s fails as both a satire of and affectionate tribute to its dim denizens.

 

 

In a cast of banal caricatures, Mark Wahlberg and Burt Reynolds come off best; following his auspicious debut Hard Eight, this overstuffed would-be epic is the first of similar films that have dotted Anderson’s career—Magnolia, The Master, Licorice Pizza, One Battle After Another—but I realize I’m in the minority. It all looks great in 4K; extras include commentaries by Anderson and by the cast, American Cinematheque Q&A and deleted scenes.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Two legends of the silver screen—Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin—appeared for the only time together in French director Georges Lacombe’s doomed soap-operaish romance between a shop owner very popular with men and a working-class building contractor, whose jealousy over her sexually adventurous past (and present) pushes him over the edge tragically.

 

 

Despite the stiffness of the characterizations and the dialogue—especially in the climactic court sequence—the onscreen chemistry between Dietrich and Gabin more than compensates. The restored 1946 B&W film looks ravishing on Blu. 

 

 

 

DVD/CD Release of the Week

Italian composer Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) wanted to challenge reigning opera genius George Frideric Handel at his own game in London, and the result was this 1735 Baroque epic romance populated by the goddess Galatea, the Cyclops, and ordinary men including Ulysses, whose appearance presages a conflict between the gods and the mortals.

 

 

This live performance from Versailles in 2024 is colorfully over-the-top both vocally and visually; it’s too bad that it’s only a DVD instead of superior sharpness of a Blu-ray. Still, it’s nice to have a visual record of this performance, along with three CDs housing the audio recording.