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Reviews
November '21 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 25 November 2021 00:49
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Ran
(Lionsgate)
Akira Kurosawa’s black, bleak 1985 war drama is among the Japanese master’s greatest epics, poetically showing man’s inhumanity as it compellingly welds Shakespeare’s King Lear to traditional Noh theater. Kurosawa’s masterly adaptation gives that tremendous actor Tatsuya Nakadai (hidden behind amazing make-up) one of his best roles as the foolish king who destroys his empire by dividing it among his two older sons and banishing the youngest.
There’s a surfeit of sequences to gasp at—especially two unforgettably shot battle sequences, the despairing yet breathtaking final moments, and Toru Takemitsu’s perfectly realized score—in a subtly realized new 4K restoration that shows off Kurosawa’s stunning use of realistic and symbolic color. The lone extra is an interview with the French restoration team; the Best Buy exclusive comprises a garishly colored Steelbook (pictured).
(Warner Bros)
Director George Miller’s classic franchise—Mad Max (1979), The Road Warrior/Mad Max 2 (1981), Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)—comprises a quartet of kinetic action flicks that, as they rolled on, became catnip for those who don't care about characterization, plot or dialogue but want more explosions, stunts and non-stop action.
That's just what Miller and his crack technical crew do, conjuring wall-to-wall car chases, races and hand-to-hand combat that, after awhile, become bludgeoning and mindnumbing. But the first film remains a truly original creation, with a pre-superstar (and pre-lunatic) Mel Gibson front and center. The ultra hi-def transfers look incredible; lone extras are on the The Road Warrior disc: a Leonard Maltin intro, Miller and cinematographer Dean Semler commentary, and Road War: The Making of ‘Road Warrior’ featurette.
The Outsiders—The Complete Novel
(Warner Bros)
Francis Coppola’s 1983 adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s classic teenage novel was a mess when first released; Coppola later improved it somewhat by dropping his father Carmine’s bludgeoning score and replacing it with appropriate period pop tunes. It’s still a messy mix of great and cringeworthy scenes that’s worth a look for the future stars all in one cast: Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and—best of all—Diane Lane, whose Cherry is the most interesting character.
The 4K transfer looks terrific; new extras include restoration interview with cinematographer Stephen Burum, Zoetrope head of archives and restorations James Mockoski and colorist Gregg Garvin; deleted scenes; Coppola intro and “Anatomy of a Scene” featurette; and “Old House New Home” featurette. Vintage extras comprise a Coppola commentary; Dillon, Howell, Lane, Lowe, Macchio and Swayze commentary; Staying Gold: A Look Back at ‘The Outsiders’; S.E. Hinton on Location in Tulsa; The Casting of 'The Outsiders'; ‘The Outsiders’ Started by School Petition; and deleted/extended scenes.
Clerk.
(1091 Pictures)
Kevin Smith, who began his career with a bang with 1994’s Clerks—which heralded a fresh, funny new movie voice—then spun his wheels with movies that either were Clerks retreads or misbegotten attempts to branch out that made one long for Clerks retreads, has nonetheless navigated a nearly three-decade long career, which Malcolm Ingram’s a touch too reverential but well-done documentary shows. Smith was one of the first celebrities to grow his audience online, then branched out into comic books, podcasts and live performances, all while continuing to make the movies he wanted to make.
Interviews with Smith, his mother, brother, wife, daughter, sidekick Jason Mewes, producer Scott Mosier, and others who’ve worked with him or appeared in his films (Ben Affleck! Matt Damon! Stan Lee!) give this an appropriately exhaustive feel, although bookending the movie with two Springsteen songs is a bit much (at the final “The Wish” works better than the clichéd “My Hometown”).
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
The Bee Gees—How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
(Warner Archive/HBO)
Since the Bee Gees became such massive stars with Saturday Night Fever in the late 70s it’s easy to forget they had a pretty good career before and after that juggernaut, as Frank Marshall’s incisive documentary demonstrates. We start from their youth in Australia, hitting it big in Britain then the States in the ’60s and onto huge chart success in the mid-70s as they turned to disco, which extended into the early ’80s.
There’s also a sense of sadness, since two of the three brothers Gibb are gone—three of four, if you count younger brother Andy, also a hitmaker in his own right—and Barry, speaking today wistfully about their lives and shared career, looks as you’d expect someone who has had great highs and terrible lows. The Blu-ray image looks good; extras are two promos masquerading as deleted scenes.
(Cohen Film Collection)
This soggy adventure, which was directed in 1988 by an out-of-his-element Nicholas Meyer, makes an undeniably fascinating historical subject—a marauding band of local Thuggees, known as “deceivers,” killing and robbing in 1825 India—as urgent and exciting as watching water boil.
Pierce Brosnan plays a British officer who goes undercover to infiltrate the gang, but Meyer’s direction, Michael Hirst’s script and Brosnan’s performance drag down this two-hour drama, despite shooting on actual locations and being produced by the eminent Ismail Merchant. The excellent Blu-ray image at least has a fine amount of grain.
National Velvet
(Warner Archive)
One of the all-time beloved movies is this 1944 melodrama about a teenage girl who, with help from a young drifter, trains her beloved horse Pie for the big race and…well, for those few people who don’t know what happens, I won’t spoil it.
Young Elizabeth Taylor and Mickey Rooney are an irresistible (and platonic) young couple and the horse sequences are beautifully done, particularly the race footage. It’s corny, sentimental uplift, which is what moviegoers during WWII wanted. The colors literally pop off the screen in hi-def; extras?
(Warner Bros)
The second season of this series based on Korean director Bong Joon Hoo’s 2013 post-apocalyptic sci-fi flick about a high-speed train circling the globe carrying what’s left of humanity after a disastrous attempt to fix global warming (elites in front, dregs in back) brings in Mr. Wilford—the shadowy billionaire behind the super train—who engages in a power play with Layton, the leader of the opposition.
Once again, despite incoherent plotting and jerky pacing, flashy visuals and the cast—led by Daveed Diggs (Layton) and Sean Bean (Wilford), although Jennifer Connolly is used to less good effect than in the debut season—provide the energy to keep Snowpiercer on track. The season’s 10 episodes look dazzling in hi-def; extras are short featurettes and interviews.
Some Came Running
(Warner Archive)
Considering daring in its day, Vincente Minnelli’s vicious 1958 evisceration of the hypocritical values of small-town America has lost some of its luster over the decades, but it still has several moments and images that are indelible and potent.
There’s also a superlative cast, led by Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Dean Martin, Arthur Kennedy and Martha Hyer, as well as a canny blend of location and studio shooting that’s pretty seamless. The hi-def transfer looks gorgeous; lone extra is the vintage featurette, The Story of ‘Some Came Running’.
The Early Films of Lee Isaac Chung
(Film Movement)
Before he made last year’s Oscar-nominated Minari, Lee Isaac Chung directed a trio of intimate films that explored the intricacies of relationships, whether young men from different tribes in Rwanda (2007’s Munyurangabo), friends dealing with another’s being diagnosed with cancer (2009’s Lucky Life) or a lonely middle-aged woman who miraculously finds a companion (2012’s Abigail Harm).
Chung’s understated technique perfectly illuminates the ordinary but remarkable people that populate these films, and that they comprise mainly unfamiliar faces—Amanda Plummer, as Abigail Harm herself, is the exception—makes them all the more real. The lone extras are a Chung commentary and behind-the-scenes footage on Munyurangabo.
Off-Broadway Review—“Morning’s at Seven”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 22 November 2021 21:52
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Morning’s at Seven
Written by Paul Osborn
Directed by Dan Wackerman
Performances through January 9, 2022
Theatre at St. Clement’s, 423 West 46th Street, NYC
morningsat7.com
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| Alley Mills, Lindsay Crouse, Patty McCormack and Alma Cuervo in Morning's at Seven (photo: Maria Baranova) |
Despite a 1939 Broadway premiere that was not very well received, Paul Osborn’s comedy Morning’s at Seven has had a lengthy afterlife: along with countless regional stagings over the decades, there have been Broadway revivals in 1980 and 2002. The latest off-Broadway incarnation underlines its strengths and weaknesses: this rickety boulevard play avoids taking chances or taking sides but contains nine juicy parts, another obvious reason why it keeps reappearing on stages throughout the country.
Morning’s at Seven concerns four sisters, Cora, Arry, Ida and Esther, who live in a small American town in 1922. Cora lives with her husband Thor in one house, along with Arry, while Ida lives with her husband Carl and son Homer in the other. The play takes place in the backyards of both houses, which is where the soap operaish relationships—Arry and Thor might have had an affair; Cora covets the house Homer and his fiancée Myrtle are planning to move into; Carl’s uncertain mental state worries Ida; Esther spends too much time with her sisters, upsetting her husband David; along with other family secrets and lies—play themselves out, predictably if not unsatisfactorily.
No one sees Morning’s at Seven for any stunning insights into the human condition but to be entertained by a harmless, humane comedy. And, as this staging demonstrates, it’s not that the jokes and repartee are especially funny or clever but that the nine members of the cast do their best to make everything land. Indeed, there’s not a weak link in the ensemble, including the charming Ally Mills, who only recently joined as Arry after Judith Ivey withdrew with an injury; Mills fits right in, bantering easily with the others.
It’s that homespun, believable chemistry among these performers that makes it so enjoyable: you really do believe that Mills’ Arry, Lindsay Crouse’s Cora, Alma Cuervo’s Ida and Patty McCormack’s Esther are loving but bickering sisters. Dan Lauria’s Thor, John Rubenstein’s Carl and Tony Roberts’ David are not far behind as the three husbands, and rounding out the cast are Jonathan Spivey’s Homer and Keri Safran’s Myrtle, who do nicely as the next generation.
Director Dan Wackerman puts this nonet through its paces quite capably on Harry Feiner’s realistic set, which looks artfully artificial and lived-in simultaneously. The production has been lit beautifully by James E. Lawlor III and costumed spiffily by Barbara A. Bell. It’s been a long time since there’s been live theater to attend, and Morning’s at Seven will do very well for those wanting light entertainment.
Off-Broadway Review—New Musical “The Visitor” with David Hyde Pierce
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 15 November 2021 23:17
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Visitor
Music by Tom Kitt
Book by Kwami Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey; lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Directed by Daniel Sullivan
Performances through December 5, 2021
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NY
publictheater.org
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| David Hyde Pierce and Ahmed Maksoud in The Visitor |
Based on Tom McCarthy’s 2007 film—a nicely observed character study about a widower whose personal and professional malaise is partly mitigated by an unlikely friendship with an undocumented couple—the new musical The Visitor doesn’t find enough compelling reasons to embellish its characters and their stories with songs.
The Visitor follows Walter who, bored of the dull class in economics he’s teaching, returns to his long-vacant New York apartment to prepare to present a colleague’s paper at a conference. He finds Zainab, a young Senegalese woman, and Tarek, her Syrian boyfriend, living there. Taking pity on them since they don’t have another place to go to, he lets them stay, and after Tarek is arrested and thrown into a detention center after jumping the subway turnstile, Walter finds his power of purpose by advocating for his friends while meeting Tarek’s widowed mother, who arrives from Michigan to be closer to her son.
Of course, the movie also contains music, in the form of Walter’s late wife, a concert pianist whose CD is played, along with Tarek, who plays the African drum that he teaches Walter to play. For the musical, composer Tom Kitt embraces the drum, mirroring the movie’s scenes of Walter starting to get his groove back, literally and figuratively, through his playing, starting when he joins in on a joyful drum circle in the park.
The musical follows the movie fairly closely yet lacks the internal logic of McCarthy’s sharply drawn characters who try to overcome their racial and cultural differences and find a way to mutual understanding. Instead, the book by Kwami Kwei-Armah and Brian Yorkey shaves off the film’s rough edges to concentrate on Tarek and others’ detention to make obvious points about our country’s current immigration mess.
To be sure, the musical’s least effective scene—Walter self-righteously berating the guards after discovering that Tarek has been permanently deported—is also in the film, where it glaringly sticks out. Notwithstanding a couple of rousing ensemble numbers (notably the exuberant drum circle of Tarek and his cohorts, who play for, then with, Walter), Kitt’s music—as well as Yorkey’s lyrics—rarely furthers the characterizations or plot. A striking exception is Zaniab’s harrowing description of her journey, “Bound for America.”
Daniel Sullivan directs adroitly, the lyrical movements (or lack of such) of the various characters saying a lot more than the songs themselves do; ace choreographer Lorin Latarro deserves praise for that. David Zinn’s simple but effective scenic designs are set off by Japhy Weideman’s lighting, which performs sundry visual wonders, particularly in “Lady Liberty,” a quiet moment of solidarity—which is not in the movie—between Zainab and Mouna.
Keeping The Visitor from becoming too pedantic are Ahmad Maksoud’s charming Tarek, Alysha Deslorieux’s appealing Zainab and Jacqueline Antaramian’s tender Mouna. And, as Walter, David Hyde Pierce performs with his usual wry understatement, which fits as snugly as Richard Jenkins’ Oscar-nominated performance in the movie.
Philadelphia Orchestra Performs Classics & Contemporary at Carnegie
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 11 November 2021 15:33
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, photo by Pete Checchia
On the evening of Tuesday, November 9th at Carnegie Hall, I had the great privilege to again hear the superb Philadelphia Orchestra, under the sterling direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in the latest, exciting installment of their impressive cycle this season of the complete symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.
The program began beautifully with a marvelous account of the undervalued Eighth Symphony. The opening Allegro vivace was brisk, ebullient and sometimes suspenseful. More irrepressible was the Haydnesque wit of the second movement, while the third was lilting in its dance-like rhythms, leading into a spirited, indeed exuberant, finale.
The excellent Fate Now Conquers by contemporary composer Carlos Simon—which cites Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh Symphonies and is notable for its accomplished orchestration—served as a compelling interlude between the two major works of the concert, the second of which was that extraordinary Seventh Symphony, splendidly realized here. Nézet-Séguin and the musicians effectively struck a note of grandeur the introduction preceding the exultant, Vivace main body of the opening movement. The justly celebrated Allegretto that followed was magisterial succeeded by a Scherzo with arresting Presto sections alternating with enchanting Trio passages, concluding with a triumphant Allegro con brio finale. I eagerly look forward to the next program in the series on December 7th.
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