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January '24 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 31 January 2024 19:46; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Zone of Interest

(A24)

Jonathan Glazer’s loose adaptation of a Martin Amis novel looks at the banality of evil through the family of Auschwitz Commandant Hoss, who lives next door to the death camp with his wife Hedwig and their five children, including a toddler. They go about their daily lives, hosting parties, the kids going to school, the parents planning their postwar future, all while he works as a large cog in the murderous machine that was the Holocaust.

Though brilliantly executed, the film comes off as a stunt that doesn’t do much more than repeat sequences where what is going on in their lives and in their world goes unmentioned for 105 minutes. There’s extraordinarily effective sound design and Glazer allows himself flourishes like a local girl hiding food at night where the camp workers will be sure to find it the next day, shot in stark B&W; but the ending, in which modern-day custodians at the Auschwitz museum are seen going about their daily work while Hoss retches in an empty Nazi office building, is a meretricious copout.

The Peasants

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Filmed using the same astonishing hand-painted technique as the 2017 feature Loving Vincent—also made by the duo responsible for that earlier success, DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman—this picturesque journey through four seasons in a small Polish village, centered around a beautiful free spirit, Magda, who loves a married farmer but agrees to marry his widowed elderly father. What ensues is alternately sorrowful and affecting, horrible and hopeful.

It’s old-fashioned in its storytelling—the original novel, by Polish author Władysław Reymont, won the Nobel prize for Literature—but the dazzling colors embedded in the strikingly rendered animation make this breathtaking to watch.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Samson et Dalila

(Opus Arte)

French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ most successful opera, a musically poetic retelling of the Biblical story of the Jewish strongman Samson extracting revenge on his lover Dalila and the Philistines, is given an intelligent 2022 reading at London’s Royal Opera House.

Well staged by director Richard Jones, the opera showcases two monumental performances: South Korean tenor Seokjong Baek as Samson and Latvian superstar mezzo Elīna Garanča as Delilah, particularly in her ravishing second-act arias. There are short extras of conductor Claudio Pappano discussing the opera, and the hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them/Albert, RN

(Cohen Film Collection)

This pair of World War II dramas, crisply directed by Lewis Gilbert (who would later go on to direct three James Bond features), is so obscure that even Leonard Maltin’s comprehensive movie guide doesn’t include them.

1954’s The Sea Shall Not Have Them follows the difficult days after a crew of British airmen are shot down, adrift in the North Sea. And 1953’s Albert, RN is set in a POW camp where British and American naval officers try and escape. Both pictures, which feature typically tuneful scores by the great British composer Malcolm Arnold, look quite good in new hi-def transfers.

Silent Night

(Lionsgate)

Veteran director John Woo is at his best in long, choreographed action sequences, and his latest feature has that in spades as he follows a grieving father who goes to war against gang members who killed his son in a drive-by shooting. We watch him training, stalking, finally attacking, and Woo follows suit, heightening the tension until it’s ready to explode—it’s too bad that he loses it at the end with a ridiculous ending in which our hero acts stupidly confronting his final adversary and fatally hesitates.

Still, the 100 minutes move quickly, and Joel Kinnaman plays the silent—hence the title—man on a mission with an impressive singlemindedness. Unfortunately, as his sorrowful wife, Catalina Sandino Moreno is wasted. The film looks superb on Blu; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Wolf Pack

(Well Go USA)

In this action-heavy adventure, a paramilitary-trained physician (!) looking to uncover the truth behind his father’s suspicious killing joins a group of mercenaries that discovers a vast conspiracy that could threaten the lives of millions of innocent civilians.

It’s not the most original tale, but writer-director Michael Chang has dialed up the fighting sequences to 11, and many fans of this genre of filmmaking will surely overlook everything else: the routine plotting, acting and characterizations. There’s an excellent Blu-ray transfer.

DVD Releases of the Week

Billions—Complete 6th Season

Billions—Complete Series

(Showtime/Paramount)

Obviously season five sans Axe was subpar by Billions standards, so for the series’ final season look who’s back: in an effort to stop the Trump-like Prince from succeeding in his shady campaign to become U.S. president, the unlikely team of D.A. Chuck Rhoades and his former enemy Axe becomes an actual thing. While it doesn’t reach the delirious heights of earlier seasons—indeed, it comes off as even more contrived than anything else in the show’s checkered history—there’s fun to be had as Prince tries to ward off Chuck, Wendy, Axe and all the rest. The acting by Paul Giamatti, Maggie Siff, Asia Kate Dillon, David Constabile, Condola Rashad, Corey Stoll and Damien Lewis is much better than last season’s phone-in performances. Extras are two featurettes.

The complete boxed set of all six seasons of Billions gives the show’s fans much more bang for their buck, with all 84 episodes included on 28 discs. Also featured are more than an hour’s worth of extras that encompass several making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

CD Release of the Week

Bridget Kibbey—Crossing the Ocean

(Pentatone)

Harp virtuoso Bridget Kibbey, who has already demonstrated her bona fides in much of the 19th- and 20th-century repertoire for her instrument, on this new disc performs works by contemporary composers whom she has commissioned. The result is as beguiling and affecting as anything she’s ever done, and she again shows why she is second to none in these new pieces for solo harp.

There are six composers from six countries, including David Bruce, Kati Agócs, Kinan Azmeh, and Paquito d’Rivera, who have written varied works that showcase her astonishing technique, with a bonus on the lovely set of Three Butterfly Songs by Avner Dorman: the still formidable soprano Dawn Upshaw. But make no mistake: this is Kibbey’s show, and she is the star, especially on Du Yun’s poignant closer, The Ocean Within. Kibbey will show off her prowess in local concerts at Lincoln Center on February 10, Weill Recital Hall/Carnegie Hall on February 21, and Bridgehampton, Long Island, on Apri1 13.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Play Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 31 January 2024 14:08; Written by Jack Angstreich

Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Andris Nelsons, Music Director and Conductor with Seong-Jin Cho, Piano. Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium on the evening of Monday, January 29th, I had the pleasure of attending an excellent performance—the first of two on consecutive nights—of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, admirably conducted by Andris Nelsons. The second concert was a presentation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s remarkable opera after a famous story by Nikolai Leskov, Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. (The same narrative was later memorably filmed in Yugoslavia as Siberian Lady Macbeth—released in 1962—by the great Polish director, Andrzej Wajda.)

The program opened promisingly with a marvelous realization of Tania León’s challenging but rewarding Stride from 2019—according to the program note by Robert Kirzinger, it was “composed on a commission from the New York Philharmonic, premiered in 2020, and won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Music”—which is notable especially for its compelling orchestration. The composer’s statement on it is worth quoting in full:

When the New York Philharmonic reached out to me about writing for this project celebrating the 19th Amendment, I confess I only knew about it generally. I started doing research, reading Susan B. Anthony’s biography, her statements. It was tremendous to see the inner force that she had. Then I started looking for a title before starting the piece—not the way I usually do it. The word “stride” reflected how I imagined her way of not taking “no” for an answer. She kept pushing and pushing and moving forward, walking with firm steps until she got the whole thing done. That is precisely what I mean by Stride. Stride has some of what, to me, are American musical influences, or at least American musical connotations. For example, there is a section where you can hear the horns with the wa-wa plunger, reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, getting that growl. It doesn’t have to be indicative of any particular skin tone; it has to do with the American spirit. When I discovered American music, Louis Armstrong actually was the first sound that struck me. When I moved here, the only composers I knew anything about were Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin. The night I arrived at Kennedy Airport, I was picked up by a Cuban couple from the Bronx, who allowed me to stay on their sofa. I looked at the stairs outside of their building, and I started crying “Maria!” They were confused, and I explained that in Cuba I’d heard the song by Leonard Bernstein. I later worked with Bernstein, and we were very close in his later years. When I first arrived here I couldn’t speak English … but I knew how to say “Maria.”

The composer, who attended the event, afterward ascended to the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

An amazing soloist, Korean virtuoso Seong-Jin Cho, then joined the musicians for a brilliant rendition of Maurice Ravel’s awesome Piano Concerto for the Left Hand. In a discussion with critic and musicologist M. D. Calvocoressi, the composer affirmed that: “In a work of this sort, it is essential to avoid the impression of insufficient weight in the sound-texture, as compared to a solo part for two hands. So I have used a style that is more in keeping with the consciously imposing style of the traditional concerto.” The piece begins ominously and builds to an apotheosis; the piano then enters dramatically with a cadenza that quickly becomes characteristically Impressionistic in style, a passage that Ravel described as “like an improvisation.” The orchestral interludes in this Lento section attain a considerable grandeur. At its outset, the Allegro that comprises the balance of the work has a quasi-martial ethos reminiscent of music in the early scores of Igor Stravinsky, although before long it is abundantly inflected with jazzy elements with some playful measures. The composer commented that, “Only gradually is one aware that the jazz episode is actually built up from the themes of the first section.” The concerto concludes powerfully, if abruptly. An enthusiastic ovation elicited a dazzling encore which was one of the highlights of the program: Franz Liszt’s exquisite Consolation No. 3 in D-flat Major.

The second half of the evening was comparable in strength, consisting of an accomplished reading of Stravinsky’s magnificent The Rite of Spring, Pictures from Pagan Russia. The first part, The Adoration of the Earth, has a stunning and sudden climax, while the second, The Sacrifice, also closes exhilaratingly. The artists were ardently applauded.

January '24 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 25 January 2024 03:33; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

I.S.S.

(Bleecker Street)

This thin sci-fi flick starts with an obvious setup—3 Russians and 3 Americans on the orbiting international space station are told by their handlers to take over the vessel in the name of their country once war breaks out on earth—and spends its remaining 90 minutes letting the six of them act alternately smartly and stupidly in the name of either humanity or patriotism. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite never fully takes advantage of the claustrophobic setting, and the capable actors can’t do much more than maneuver themselves into ever-dwindling spaces, with the result neither an epic fiasco nor a nail-biting thriller.

Apolonia, Apolonia

(HBOMax)

Parisian artist Apolonia Sokol is the focus of this documentary by Danish filmmaker Lea Glob, who several years ago began recording Apolonia’s long and winding road from obscurity to acclaim, in addition to presenting intimate scenes of the artist’s personal life. There are moments that are quite shattering—notably Apolonia’s response to hearing that her close friend, the Ukrainian activist Oksana Shachko, committed suicide—amid the insights and colorful glimpses at the modern-art world that show how this young woman has become such an artistic force with her original canvases as well as her friendship with Glob herself.

Fallen Leaves

(Mubi)

Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki’s latest deadpan comic portrait plays like desperate self-parody; if I didn’t know he had made it, I’d have sworn some no-talent had lazily aped what gave Kaurismaki his international reputation. But where in his better films like Le Vie de bohème and Drifting Clouds the humor and melancholy felt organically entwined, here it’s the opposite: the characters are caricatures, the humor is puerile, the romantic relationship is risible, and the attempts at bittersweetness are eye-rolling. Shockingly, this has gotten Kaurismaki’s best reviews in decades.

4K Release of the Week

Trolls Band Together

(Universal/Dreamworks)

The return of the kids’ cartoon favorites following 2016’s Trolls and 2020’s Trolls World Tour includes several animated sequences that are amusing nods to classics of the genre like Fantasia and Yellow Submarine, and there are funny voice performances by Anna Kendrick, Eric André, Andrew Rannells, Amy Schumer and Kenan Thompson. But the storyline, which features boy bands not unlike NSYNC—and including vocal appearances by the likes of Justin Timberlake and Lance Bass—makes it all much ado about not much. Still, the UHD transfer for this “Sing-Along Edition” looks superb—the extras include a Trolls short, It Takes Three; deleted scenes; cast-filmmaker interviews; and featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Childe

(Well Go USA)

When Marco, a Korean-Filipino boxer whose beloved mother needs expensive surgery, goes to look for his estranged father, he stumbles into getting mixed up with vicious underworld characters, including a particularly ruthless assassin and a rich heir who has eyes on his father’s fortune. Park Hoon-jung’s high-octane but overlong thriller spins its wheels after an impressive first hour, with skillfully done action sequences combining gunplay and physical dexterity. The film looks excellent in hi-def.

Special Ops—Lioness

(Paramount)

This high-tension series stars Zoe Saldana, who’s surprisingly effective as the leader of a shadowy special-ops group that initiates a new recruit, Cruz, for a dangerous mission that involves her infiltrating the personal life of a known terrorist’s daughter. Over eight fast-moving episodes, there’s an intriguing balance of the quotidian alongside the scheming among government agents. Zaldana’s career-best performance is equaled by one by Laysla de Oliveira, who shines in a physically demanding role as Cruz. The hi-def image looks terrific; extras include making-of featurettes and interviews.

Your Lucky Day

(Well Go USA)

What begins in the most contrived way possible—what occurs in the deli after a $156 million lottery ticket is sold is unbelievable in the extreme—soon settles into a diverting crime drama for about an hour or so, until it devolves into something that’s less clever than it thinks, with a particularly anticlimactic windup. Writer-director Daniel Brown cranks up the intensity—and also, for no particular reason, revels in ratcheting up the violence—and gets a rock-solid central performance by Jessica Garza as a pregnant deli customer who makes the most of a bad situation, but his social commentary is a bit too on the nose. There’s a fine Blu-ray transfer.

CD Release of the Week

Miklós Rózsa—Orchestral Works

(Capriccio)

Hungarian composer Miklós Rózsa (1907-95) is best known for some of the most memorable movie scores to ever come out of Hollywood, written for such classics as Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Lust for Life and Ben Hur, but he also made equally good “serious” concert music, as this first-rate disc shows. The trio of works included here—Overture to a Symphony Concert and Hungarian Serenade (both from 1956, when his film career was in full swing) as well as 1972’s Tripartita—includes the boisterous writing for orchestra that marked his best scores, well performed by the German State Orchestra (Rhineland-Pfalz) under conductor Gregor Bühl.

January '24 Digital Week II

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 18 January 2024 02:32; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Maestro

(Netflix)

That Bradley Cooper’s biopic about conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein is a labor of love is not in doubt; details are right, from Cooper’s looking amazingly like Bernstein to his time spent on the podium, particularly an excerpt from Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony that was shot in Ely Cathedral in England, where it was actually performed.

But concentrating on such minutiae sucks the life out of Maestro, since Cooper seems to be giving a Saturday Night Live impression of Lenny, and his film plays like a greatest-hits list of scenes only about his musical career and volatile marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre. That the film’s Lenny and Felicia are apolitical is inexcusable whitewashing; even a brief scene would have gone a long way toward making this portrait more honest. Still, Carey Mulligan gives another of her effortlessly spellbinding performances as Felicia, keeping the film on course whenever Cooper the director goes off the rails, visually and narratively.

Household Saints

(Kino Lorber)

As long as she sticks to a realistic portrait of two immigrant families in New York’s Little Italy from the 1940 to the ’60s, Nancy Savoca’s 1993 film is richly illuminating. But when she attempts to get fancy after the main plot kicks in—the daughter, Teresa, of the main couple, Joseph Santangelo and Catherine, wants to devote the rest of her life to Jesus Christ—Savoca is unsure whether to play it straight or for laughs.

She ends up trying to do both, but the combination makes for an uneasy and bumpy couple of hours. Fortunately, Savoca’s marvelous cast, headed by Tracey Ullmann (Catherine), Vincent d’Onofrio (Joseph) and particularly Lily Taylor (Teresa), rescues the movie from becoming too maudlin.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

The Devil’s Partner

(Film Masters)

Another in a series of restored and rediscovered lost “classics” comprises two fun genre exercises, starting with Charles R. Rondeau’s The Devil’s Partner, a truly weird attempt at supernatural thriller about an old man whose pact with the devil allows him to return as a malevolent young man.

There’s also another 1960 “gem,” Roger Corman’s Creature From the Haunted Sea, about a monster of the deep preying on divers and adventure seekers. Both films are cheaply made but entertaining in spite of their obvious shortcomings. They both look fine in hi-def; extras include the theatrical and TV versions of both films, commentaries on both films, an interview with Corman and the third episode in a series about Corman and his cohort, Hollywood Intruders: The Filmgroup Story.

DVD Release of the Week

Neil Diamond—The Thank You Australia Concert, Live 1976

(Mercury)

Neil Diamond ended his 1976 Australian tour with an outdoor concert for tens of thousands of his fans that was televised on Australian TV; this DVD re-release of the nearly two-hour performance presents it mostly uncut (unlike its recent, much shorter showing on PBS). Many of Diamond’s most enduring songs are featured in energetic performances, including “Holly Holy,” “I Am I Said,” “Crackling Rosie,” and “Sweet Caroline”—the latter happily long before it was ruined by fans as a mindless singalong.

The only dull moments come courtesy a suite of tunes from the Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack, but that doesn’t dim the luster of an otherwise terrific concert. Video and audio are acceptable but unremarkable; extras are footage of Diamond performing the song “Morningside”; a substantial interview with Diamond for Australian TV; an intro by David Frost; and amusing on-stage commercials by Diamond during the show.

CD Release of the Week

Ruby Hughes—End of My Days

(BIS)

Welsh soprano Ruby Hughes returns with another beautifully curated collection of songs, following her strong recital disc Echo from 2022. This time, she and the members of the Manchester Collective (a shape-shifting ensemble) created this program during the first round of COVID lockdowns in hopes of performing it to uplift audiences.

The songs, beginning with Errollyn Wallen’s mournful but sturdy “End of My Days,” are both reticent and hopeful, perfectly mirroring the conflicting emotions of that time. Composers as varied as John Dowland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are heard from, all brilliantly played by the collective and sung with her usual expressiveness by Hughes, especially on the benediction of a finale, Deborah Pritchard’s “Peace.”

Reviews

January '24 Digital Week IV

Boston Symphony Orchestra Play Carnegie Hall

January '24 Digital Week III

January '24 Digital Week II

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