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Reviews
April '23 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 05 April 2023 02:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Special Screening of the Week
Hilma
(Juno Films)
Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a Swedish artist barely appreciated or known in her lifetime; only recently have her unconventional paintings received attention, as writer-director Lasse Hallström shows in his straightforward, intelligent biopic.
Presenting her as a fiercely independent free spirit who was attracted to women, more strikes against her along with being an artist, Hallström sharply defines her as a trailblazer with her own principles who pushed back against those who uncomprehendingly attacked, ignored or belittled her. The director has scored a coup with the title role: the younger Hilma is played by his daughter Tora Hallström, who is guilelessly natural, while the older Hilma is played by Hallström’s wife and Tora’s mother, the formidable Lena Olin.
On April 5, Scandinavia House in Manhattan is hosting the NY premiere including a Q&A with the director and his two stars. (ScandinaviaHouse.org) The film opens at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and in Los Angeles on April 14.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
(Film Movement Classics)
Shohei Imamura’s documentary-like portraits of the underbelly of Japanese society are filled with underdogs who are allowed to display their genuine humanity. His last feature, made in 2001 (Imamura died five years later, at age 80), is of a piece with his other films: shot through with sardonic humor and humane observation, it follows a middle-aged Tokyo office worker who goes to a small village where he meets and has a sexual relationship with a woman who shoots out a geyser of water during sex, whenever she’s “full,” as she tells him.
Simultaneously realistic and symbolic—which the title wittily alludes to—what in lesser hands might have been contrived or stilted becomes a wonderfully offbeat romantic comedy of manners, carried along by Shin'ichirō Ikebe’s inventively boisterous score.
Eight Deadly Shots
(Janus Films)
This five-hour, four-part 1972 Finnish miniseries is a truly remarkable discovery: the heretofore obscure director Mikko Niskanen—who also wrote and stars as the protagonist—has made a stark, illuminating chronicle of ordinary people living ordinary lives as the crushing banality of their existence is underlined by a shocking crime.
Based on a true story, Niskanen’s film provocatively concentrates the weight of its human drama—and the mindnumbing sameness of these lives in a rural village consisting of church, family, manual labor and drinking—into a vortex where the duration of time itself means nothing.
(Neon)
On a remote Cornish island studying a rare flower, a nameless female volunteer begins hallucinating that mold from the plant is also growing on her body along with her seeing other people—or is it all really happening?
Mark Jenkin’s heavyhanded piece of psychological horror has its moments—there’s a crude effectiveness to his one-man operation (he directed, wrote, photographed, and wrote the music)—but it often comes off, deliberately but self-consciously, like a too-clever experiment. The local standing stones on the island provide the evocative title (which is Cornish for “Stone Island”), but this look at a descent into isolation and possible madness never satisfyingly coheres.
Fugue
(Dekanalog)
Polish director Agnieszka Smoczyńska, whose disturbing debut, 2015’s The Lure, marked her as someone to watch, in 2018 made this equally unsettling study of an amnesiac middle-aged woman who’s returned to her husband and son after a two-year disappearance—she tries desperately to fit (even if she cannot remember if she was ever with them before) but cannot be just a dutiful wife and loving mother.
Smoczyńska dramatizes ugly truths about our memories and relationships in uncomfortable scenes that lead to an unsurprising but still devastating finale; it’s enacted with lancingly truthful subtlety by Gabriela Muskała.
(Ciesla Foundation)
With racist team logos, nicknames and mascots around for decades, some battles that Native Americans have waged against entrenched owners and willfully oblivious fans have been partly won—the Cleveland Indians are now the Guardians and the Washington Redskins are now the Commanders—but there’s still a long way to go, as this informative documentary shows.
Directors Aviva Kempner and Ben West have collected a lot of archival and contemporary material alongside substantive interviews with commentators from all walks of life (most impressive in their perceptiveness are Joely Proudfit and Mary Kathryn Nagle) to tell a still-ongoing struggle, as witness the Atlanta Braves’ tomahawk chop or the Chicago Blackhawks’ logo.
In Viaggio—The Travels of Pope Francis
(Magnolia)
Using archival footage, director Gianfresco Rosi has fashioned an intriguing if somewhat diffuse documentary about Pope Francis’ foreign trips throughout his papacy, from Cuba and Rio to Armenia and Iraq, and how he speaks his truth no matter how difficult for him to say (the priest molestation scandals) or for others to hear (the Turkish government was upset at his remarks on the Armenian genocide).
We glimpse Francis speaking in several languages to appreciative, often adoring audiences and visiting places as diverse as Canada’s indigenous first nation settlements and the urban battlefields of Africa, but Rosi provides little more than glimpses without much context—the footage could have been thrown together in any other order. Even his use of film clips (some from his own singular documentaries) alongside the Pope’s own journeys comes off as arbitrary, almost willfully offbeat.
Plane
(Lionsgate)
Bluntly if boringly titled—why not at least Plane Hit by Lightning?—this by-the-numbers actioner follows a resourceful pilot who, after safely crash-landing his plane on a Philippine island swarming with rebels, teams with a convicted murderer on his flight to free his passengers after they’re kidnaped for ransom.
Director Jean-François Richet makes much of this routine but at other times there’s excitement, while Gerard Butler gives a gruff action-hero performance—it’s a serviceable time waster for those so inclined. It does look terrific in 4K; extras are three on-set featurettes.
CD Release of the Week
Nino Rota—Orchestral Music
(Capriccio)
Last week I reviewed a delightful recording of The Florentine Straw Hat, a comedic opera by Nino Rota (1911-79); this week, it’s a superlative disc of several of Rota’s most attractive orchestral works, played by the excellent WDR Funkhausorchester Köln under the capable batons of Felix Bender and Michael Seal.
The five pieces on the disc show the many sides of this accomplished composer: the lush suite from the 1956 film of War and Peace and a trio of diverting segments from his final score, for his old friend Federico Fellini’s Orchestra Rehearsal, before Rota’s death at age 67; the propulsive Concerto for Strings; and two lovely concertos: the ballade for horn and orchestra (with soloist Marcel Sobol) and concerto for harp and orchestra (with soloist Esther Peristerakis).
March '23 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 30 March 2023 03:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
The Lost King
(IFC Films)
Stephen Frears’ latest slick entertainment stars Sally Hawkins as Philippa Langley, who became obsessed with clearing Richard III’s bad name from Shakespeare’s play and spearheaded efforts to find his remains in a parking lot in Leicester, England, in 2012.
It’s a feel-good story of David (Philippa) vs. Goliath (the local university), with serious undertones, like Frears’ own Oscar-nominated Philomena; both films were co-written by and costarred Steve Coogan, who here nicely underplays Philippa’s long-suffering former husband. Sally Hawkins is a credible Philippa despite going too often to the well of her trembly acting, undercutting some sympathy. Least successful are the periodic appearances of Richard’s ghost to Philippa, unwelcome intrusions that don’t bring any further depth or insight.
(Abramorama)
In this engrossing chronicle of how politics can intrude on music, director John Scheinfeld recounts how, in 1970, the then-huge rock band Blood Sweat & Tears—which had just beaten out the Beatles’ Abbey Road for the album of the year Grammy—was recruited by Nixon’s State Department for concerts in Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia.
The group’s members—several of whom discuss the events from a half-century’s remove—returned to the U.S. and basically said that, despite the anti-Vietnam and anti-Nixon atmosphere, living here wasn’t bad, especially compared to those behind the Iron Curtain. For such heretic statements, the group was branded “fascist,” and its career never really recovered.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Assassin of the Tsar
(Deaf Crocodile)
Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov’s gripping, surreal 1991 drama illuminates the confessions of an asylum patient named Timofyev, who admits responsibility for murdering Tsar Alexander in 1881 and his grandson, Tsar Nicolas, and his family in 1917.
Shakhnazarov’s use of the almost square 1.33:1 frame underscores the claustrophobia as well as the thin line between sanity and madness, truth and fantasy—and, of course, there is the remarkable Malcolm McDowell, whose Timofyev is intense, ironical and expressive; the actor burrows deep into this troubled man’s psyche. The hi-def restoration looks excellent.
(Criterion)
Joan Micklin Silver’s 1979 romantic comedy subverts the usual rom-com clichés in a smart-alecky story of Charlie, who falls head over heels for Laura, inconveniently married but conveniently ready to separate from her husband. Micklin Silver studies this couple with an amused and bemused eye and, in John Heard and Mary Beth Hurt, she has the perfect performers to make the pair sympathetically real but offbeat.
Originally released as Head Over Heels, it was a flop, so Micklin Silver cut the happy ending and gave it the same title as the original novel for its 1982 rerelease. It works better that way, but the Criterion release—which has a fine new hi-def transfer—includes the original ending as one of the extras, along with a new interview with producing partners Amy Robinson, Griffin Dunne and Mark Metcalf (the latter two have small parts in the film); a 2005 Micklin Silver interview; and a 1983 German documentary about the director.
Secret Defense
(Cohen Film Collection)
French director Jacques Rivette hit his stride in the early ’90s, with 1991’s magnificent, four-hour La belle noiseuse and the longer but intimate two-part 1993 study of Joan of Arc, Joan the Maid.
Though this tense 1998 slow-burn thriller (with the formidable Sandrine Bonnaire—also the star of Joan the Maid—as a scientist searching for the facts behind her father’s death) is overly padded, as too many Rivette films are, there’s a real sense of dislocation and mystery that keep viewers—and Bonnaire’s character—off-balance and desperately searching for meaning, even where there may be none. There’s a solid hi-def transfer; lone extra is Richard Pena’s informative commentary.
(C Major/Unitel)
Best known for his opera Andrea Chénier, Italian composer Umberto Giordano also penned Siberia, a true rarity in performance that may be less so now that two different stagings have been released on Blu-ray within the past year.
Although Giordano strains, at times, on the cusp of melodrama, his music is always lovely, and—in this 2022 performance from the Bregenz Festival, adroitly directed by Vasily Barkhatov—our heroine and hero, Stephana and Vissili, are brought to vivid life by the astonishing Canadian soprano Ambur Braid and Russian tenor Alexander Mikhalov. Valentin Uryupin conducts the excellent Vienna Symphony and Prague Philharmonic Choir. The hi-def video and audio is first-rate.
The Walking Dead—Complete Final Season
(Lionsgate)
For the series’ 11th and final season, survivors of the zombie plague stumble upon a large community of thousands of other survivors, all in a place called the Commonwealth, along with the tensions with another group named the Reapers.
Dark and brooding at times, the season’s 24 episodes provide a satisfying way out of one series as it hints, through several loose ends that remain untied, at other, possible spinoffs to come. As usual, everything looks razor-sharp on Blu-ray; the lone extras are deleted scenes.
Nino Rota—Il cappello di paglia di Firenze
(Capriccio)
Best known for the memorable scores he wrote for many Fellini films, from the sublime The White Sheik to the didactic Orchestra Rehearsal, Italian composer Nino Rota was also a master of chamber music, symphonies and even operas, the most popular of which is the delightful Il cappello di paglia di Firenze, Englishized as The Florentine Straw Hat.
From the opening notes of the Mozartean overture, Rota is in complete command of his wonderfully silky score, and this new recording follows suit: the performers sing beautifully and the Graz Philharmonic and Opera Choir (led by conductor Daniele Squeo) sound perfect.
March '23 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 24 March 2023 00:18
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
Inside
(Focus Features)
Willem Dafoe is pretty much the whole show in this claustrophobic story of a robber who gets trapped inside a high-tech apartment while stealing precious artworks when the electronic exits fail—and the owner, always traveling, never returns.
Director Vasilis Katsoupis and writer Ben Hopkinsan’s clever but unpleasant look at isolation and mental disintegration has unsettling moments of unease, but once Dafoe is inside his cage, there are only so many variations on survival mode before a certain torpor sets in—for the viewer as well as the protagonist. Maybe a 30-minute short would have been more pointedly disturbing, but Dafoe gives it his all, retaining interest despite the singleminded narrative.
(Uncork'd Entertainment)
Director April Wright traveled the U.S. to check in on the health of one of the last bastions of independent moviegoing, particularly in the wake of the pandemic: the drive-in. She finds a patient on its last legs but still hanging in there despite all the obstacles in its way.
Visiting 11 locations from north to south and coast to coast. Wright soaks up a lot of local color in places like the suburbs of Buffalo, where the Transit Drive-In—a place I went to many times growing up—still going. Nostalgia permeates this fascinating trip through Americana.
The Magic Flute
(Shout Studios)
Florian Sigl’s misbegotten update-cum-adaptation of Mozart’s classic opera reimagines its heroes, heroines and villains through the eyes of a young music student, who drops into the fairy-tale world conjured by librettist Emanuel Schikaneder.
There are memorable moments, thanks to some dazzling visual flourishes; too bad that the music (sung in English) doesn’t come off particularly well—only the fine French soprano Sabine Devieilhe perfectly nails the classic Queen of the Night aria. And bookending the film with mediocre pop tunes says more about the filmmakers than about Mozart.
(Roadside Attractions)
Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin have gotten a lot of recent mileage from their comedically inspired pairing in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie: first with 80 for Brady and now teaming for this intermittently funny black comedy-revenge pic about two women attending their longtime friend’s funeral to confront her unruly, prickly widower.
Tomlin and Fonda get great mileage out of writer-director Paul Weitz’s serviceable but clichéd premise, Malcolm McDowell enlivens the stock part of the bad hubby, and the movie’s relative brevity (80 minutes) helps keep it from jumping the shark before it predictably but satisfyingly ends.
4K/UHD Release of the Week
Rocky—The Knockout Collection
(Warner Bros)
The original Rocky, winner of the 1976 best picture Oscar and directed with precision by John G. Avildsen, remains the ultimate rags to (almost) riches fairy tale nearly a half-century later. Too bad its sequels got progressively more gimmicky, from II’s perfectly plausible rematch with Apollo Creed to III’s comic version of fighting Mr. T (as Clubber Lang) to IV’s “us vs. them” Cold War battle with Russian Ivan Drago. Stallone becomes less appealing with each successive movie, while Talia Shire—heartbreaking in the original—has little to do as the stories progress.
Still, there are those always exciting boxing sequences. This set brings together the first four films—and a director’s cut of IV, for their first foray onto UHD, looking superlatively grainy throughout. An extra Blu-ray disc collects the extras, mostly from the original movie but also a new, hour-long Making of Rocky vs. Drago: Keep Punching, with Stallone himself as our guide.
Leonor Will Never Die
(Music Box Films)
Marika Ramirez Escobar’s frivolous if fun feature follows Leonor, retired from the movie business, who dusts off an old script—and, after she is knocked on the head by a falling TV, actually enters her own screen story. There’s cleverness galore, but the initially diverting maneuvering between Leonor’s real and scripted lives—slyly shown in different aspect ratios—soon becomes repetitive.
So, even though Sheila Francisco is a wonderful Leonor, her movie (like Inside) might have made a more rewarding short. There’s an extremely good hi-def transfer; extras are Escobar’s commentary, interview and short film as well as a making-of featurette.
Let It Be Morning
(Cohen Media)
As in earlier works like his breakthrough, The Band’s Visit, writer-director Eran Kolirin’s latest audacious film walks a tightrope between black comedy and outright tragedy; Palestinian-born Israeli citizen Sami, returning to his hometown from Jerusalem for his brother’s wedding—and where he reunites with his estranged wife Mira, whom he’s cheating on with a colleague—finds himself stuck when the military authorities suddenly begin building a wall as part of a local blockade.
Kolirin incisively finds both humor and horror in this realistic but patently absurd situation, which doubles as a pointed satire of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The superb cast is led by Alex Bacri as the put-upon Sami and Juna Suleiman as the spirited Mira.
Goliath
(Distrib Films US)
Part preachy but exceptionally enthralling, Frédéric Tellier’s eco-thriller savvily introduces several characters—an environmental lawyer fighting for victims, a slick lobbyist for a chemical conglomerate, and a woman whose husband’s fatal illness has been caused by chemicals in the soil—to tell the complex story of how wary governments try to split the difference between safety and capitalism.
A few cringy moments take a backseat to the exciting confrontations of these wildly disparate (and often desperate) people, enacted compellingly by a cast led by Gilles Lellouche (lawyer), Pierre Niney (lobbyist) and Emmanuelle Bercot and the great Marie Gillian as women personally affected by corporate treachery and thuggery.
CD Release of the Week
L’Amant Anonyme—Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges
(Cedille)
Recordings of works by a remarkable musician and composer, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, are filling a hole in part of our music history: a Black man from Guadeloupe (then a French colony), Bologne was born to an enslaved 16-year-old in 1745 and was considered the “Black Mozart” by his contemporaries for his versatility as an instrumentalist and facility as a composer.
His attractive operatic work has been resurrected by the enterprising Haymarket Opera Company; the well-crafted music includes beguiling ballet interludes and lovely singing lines for a cast that’s headlined by the gorgeous-sounding soprano Nicole Cabell. Conductor Craig Trompeter leads a stylish performance spread out over two CDs, with a third disc eliminating the plentiful dialogue if you just want to concentrate on the lovely music. It’s all housed in a beautifully designed package.
For 25 Years, Joe Hurley has Produced His All-Star Irish Rock Revue With NY’s Finest
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 14:16
- Written by Bruce Alexander & Brad Balfour
Photo by Bruce Alexander
Joe Hurley’s 25th Anniversary All-Star Irish Rock Revue
Friday, March 17, 2023
6-8 pm
City Winery
25 11th Ave. (at 15th St.)
New York, NY
646-751-6033
A St. Pat’s Day celebration took place in City Winery’s main space with veteran rocker and producer Joe Hurley and his band, Rogue’s March. They were joined by what seemed like a cast of thousands of NYC Stars coming together to sing The Great Irish Songbook.
Founded in 2008 by Michael Dorf, City Winery is more than a music venue — it is a winery, restaurant, fine wine bar and private event space. Recently re-located to Pier 57 on the Hudson River in New York, it has excellent views of the Little Island NYC, is near the Whitney Museum, Chelsea Market, and the High Line. The location delivers a unique culinary and cultural experience for urban wine enthusiasts passionate about music. And as a venue for events—a place for happy hours, family reunions, and birthday parties. — it hosts live events most nights from concerts to comedy shows as well as including Joe Hurley with his All-Star Irish Rock Revue.
The dapper Hurley led his all-star cast of singers and musicians in performing a selection of classic Irish songs — both traditional and those by contemporary composers. Performers included NY1 news reporter Roger Clark, who let loose with a rocking stage presence and led the grand finale rendition of Van Morrison’s “Gloria.” Another great New York rocker, Willie Nile, performed the late poet/performer Jim Carroll’s “The People That Died” — a song that should not be forgotten. Mike Fortunate did a killer version of Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ “Come On Eileen.”
Sheryl Marshall, whose husband was telling stories of Soho New York in the ’70s while his wife performed, provided a soulful presence to the musical festivities. Guitarist Mark Bosch — once a member of Bowie-produced Ian Hunter’s band — kept trying to edge his way in during Clark’s unstoppable punk dancing stage bombast — but the green-clad rocker held his own.
UK comic hero, the bald-headed Stephen Frost, R&B singer Carlton Smith, Austrian exotic dancer Anna Copa Cabanna, accordion player Kenny Margolis and former Meatloaf singer Ellen Foley were among the many hitting the stage. All were keeping it real for the entire show –especially legendary NYC singer Laura Cantrell. And the list goes on — Sage Leopoid of Panik Flower, Tiffany Lyons of Slyboots, James Maddock and Ricky Byrd, the guitarist from Joan Jett’s band. All jammed it up with fine renditions of songs from U2 to Thin Lizzy and The Pogues and many more.
It was a packed house with everyone dancing and singing in celebration of Saint Patty’s Day. And there was no better MC and singer than Joe Hurley to make it all happen for what became a three-hour long extravaganza.
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