My first-ever Central Park Shakespeare production was in 1989: Twelfth Night was a star-studded mess with Michelle Pfeiffer as a ravishing Olivia and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio a winning Viola/Cesario, but the rest was a motley crew including Jeff Goldblum, Fisher Stevens and Stephen Collins. Two decades later, Daniel Sullivan’s soggy 2009 Central Park Twelfth Night at least had a wonderful Anne Hathaway as Viola/Cesario; but tentative performances by Raul Esparza as Orsino and Audra McDonald as Olivia dragged it down. And the inconsistent Shaina Taub musicalization, which was at the Delacorte in 2016 and 2018, was anchored by the dynamic Nikki M. James’ Viola/Cesario.

 

Saheem Ali’s new production of the Bard’s dazzling comedy of errors, mistaken identities and the vagaries of love also introduces a revitalized Delacorte Theater. Actually, the theater doesn’t look much different, as most of the updating was done to the performers’ backstage digs and the amount of machinery needed for scene changes. (And yes, the nearby restrooms have been given a welcomed makeover.)

 

What’s onstage is the usual clash of acting styles, hit-and-miss directorial interventions and unnecessary additions to Shakespeare’s script that mark this pleasant evening under the stars—a gorgeous New York night like the one at the performance I attended helps compensate for what’s lacking. 

 

Ali announces his intentions from the start: at the rear of the stage, huge letters spell out the play’s cheeky subtitle, What You Will, wittily created by designer Maruti Evans and illuminated brightly by Bradley King. The cast walks on- and offstage near the letters, and Ali delivers a few visual puns, as when Sir Toby Belch (a memorably sardonic John Ellison Conlee) walks off saying “Ay?” while pointedly looking at the A in WHAT, and Sandra Oh—an otherwise unaffecting Olivia—lounges near the O in YOU. (A later scene where four characters hide behind a tree that is just four letters spelling TREE is far less felicitous.)

 

Ali has cut the play to 100 minutes sans intermission, which speeds up the action among the various subplots too quickly, muting the comic and dramatic highlights along with Shakespeare’s brilliantly conceived reveal. Of course, the hijinks of Toby, Andrew Aguecheek (a funny but overdone Jesse Tyler Ferguson) and Olivia’s maid Maria (a game Daphne Rubin-Vega) take center stage, with extra doses of would-be hilarity the playwright never thought of: Toby even snorts coke during one of their comic binges.

 

Malvolio, the self-centered servant whose loss of dignity and nervous breakdown can be blamed on the aforementioned trio, is played sharply by Peter Dinklage, although he only rarely approaches Philip Bosco’s unforgettable turn in the role, the highlight of Nicholas Hytner’s waterlogged 1998 Lincoln Center Theater revival. 

 

But Ali’s most interesting addition—having the separated twins Viola (the charming Lupita Nyong’o) and Sebastian (one-dimensional Junior Nyong’o, Lupita’s brother) speak Swahili as outsiders in Illyria, actual lines from the play—is marred by them sprinkling the Swahili in their dialogue throughout, so when they speak it to each other upon being reunited at the end it’s not as touching as it would have been if we hadn’t heard it several times earlier. 

 

Turning Feste the clown into a rapping and singing troubadour, and embodied agreeably by Moses Sumney, is a decent idea, while wrapping up the show with a curtain call in which the entire cast is clad in Oana Botez’ sumptuous, eye-catching costumes is something that can only work at the Delacorte. 

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.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Based on the sordid true story of a group of Europeans moving to an isolated island in the Galapagos in the early 1930s to escape what they see as the decline of civilization only to discover they are also capable of destroying themselves in utopia, Ron Howard’s drama is blunt and often eye-rollingly unsubtle, but the strange goings-on hold interest for two hours along with an array of bizarrely idiosyncratic performances.

 

 

There’s Jude Law and Vanessa Kirby, intense as the original couple; Daniel Bruehl and Sydney Sweeney, understated as the first visitors to arrive; and Ana de Armas, brazenly scenery-chewing as a self-styled, sexually voracious Baroness. A 2013 documentary, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, covers the same tale but gives the disappearances and deaths a more mysterious air.

 

 

 

Angelheaded Hipster 

Although Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex are known here solely for the hit “Bang a Gong (Get It On),” in England Bolan was a national treasure, as popular in his early ’70s heyday as Bowie, Elton John and Queen.

 

 

In keeping with their near-invisibility stateside, Ethan Silverman’s illuminating documentary was made in 2022 and is only getting released—it returns to that moment to show how Bolan’s personality and unique genius bolstered his popularity until his seemingly inevitable early death, at age 35 in a 1980 car crash. Voluminous archival footage, concert clips and interviews present a colorful portrait of a singular artist in rock history.

 

 

 

Checkpoint Zoo 

Russia’s unprovoked 2022 invasion of Ukraine has not only put people and property at great risk for the past 3-1/2 years but also countless animals; Joshua Zeman’s wrenching documentary focuses on Feldman Ecopark, an animal refuge near Ukraine’s second-largest city where those in residence needed to be removed from their dangerous location to safer spaces once the invasion began.

 

 

Zeman also introduces the many brave people, from zoo workers to volunteers, who risk their very lives to try and get the animals to safety, all while the deadly war rages around them. In fact, the most memorable moments of the documentary are the raw footage from the front lines that these same people record for posterity.

 

 

 

The Glassworker 

In the first hand-drawn animated film to be produced entirely in Pakistan, director Usman Riaz has created an often visually stunning if diffuse drama about Vincent, who follows in his father Tomas’ footsteps to become an original glassmaker; he also falls in love with Alliz, a young musician from an army colonel’s family.

 

 

There’s also a war that kills Alliz’s father and indirectly cripples Tomas; if parts are borderline cheesy and shamelessly sentimental, there’s no denying the mindblowing animation that spectacularly recreates the exacting glassworks. 

 

 

 

My Mother’s Wedding 

Although it’s laudable that Kristin Scott Thomas makes her directorial debut from a script she cowrote with her current husband John Micklethwait based on how her father’s and stepfather’s tragic deaths affected her and her family, the resulting film is a soggy mess, with the director herself playing Diana, marrying for the third time while her grown daughters—Victoria, a famous Hollywood actress; Katherine, a Navy officer; and Georgina, a harried wife and mother—must deal with the heavy emotional baggage of the event and family history.

 

 

To be sure, some of the acting is excellent, with Sienna Miller particularly effective as the pampered Victoria, Scott Thomas her incandescent self as Diana and Emily Beecham a heartbreaking Georgina, but Scarlett Johannsen is out of her element as Katherine, with a wavering British accent and no chemistry with the charming Frieda Pinto as her lover Jack. 

 

 

 

My Undesirable Friends: Part I—Last Air in Moscow

This monumental five-hour documentary by director Julia Loktev is an upsetting yet hopeful chronicle of the state of opposition journalists in Russia—specifically, those who, against all odds and with punishment hanging over their heads, counter the party line that Putin is infallible. (According to law, they must admit, in their writings and TV appearances, that they are “foreign agents.”)

 

 

Anna Nemzer, one of these enterprising and unabashedly brave journalists, codirects, and together she and Loktev have created an urgent time capsule of Russian resistance just before and immediately after Putin’s illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine. 

 

 

 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Japanese director Kon Ichikawa (1915-2008) made several classics, including An Actor’s Revenge (1963) and Tokyo Olympiad (1964)—both also released by Criterion—but his greatest may be this pair of anti-war dramas that home in on how individual soldiers are forever changed by the insanity of war. 

 

 

The Burmese Harp (1956) follows several prisoners of war in a British labor camp and how their spirituality helps them overcome all odds, while Fires on the Plain (1959) poetically but terrifyingly evokes the complete loss of humanity among a group of soldiers lost inside war’s horrors. Ichikawa was a humanist who was also a realist and his films are a difficult but worthwhile watch. Both films have luminous UHD transfers; extras include interviews with Ichikawa, actors Rentaro Mikuni and Mickey Curtis and an intro by scholar Donald Richie.

 

 

 

The Accountant 2 

Did we really need a sequel to the autistic hitman movie of a few years ago? Apparently so—and, it must be admitted, the second go-round of accountant/killer Christian Wolff’s exploits is more entertaining than the first time.

 

 

If director Gavin O’Connor takes his sweet time setting things up—and almost losing control during a drawn-out set piece concerning a bus filled with migrant children—the payoff is in the chemistry between Ben Affleck’s Christopher and Jon Bernthal’s Braxton, Christian’s brother and fellow hitman. (How’s that for keeping it in the family?) There are already rumblings that there will be a third chapter, and if they can make it sleeker and swifter (under two hours, please!), I’ll gladly partake. The film looks splendid on UHD.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

In this historical opera by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), the real-life tale of England’s Queen Elizabeth I and her favorite, the Earl of Essex, has attractive music and fast-moving—if often fanciful—storytelling.

 

 

Stephen Langridge’s 2024 staging at Bergamo, Italy’s Donizetti Festival keeps the focus on the central relationship, and the performances of Jessica Pratt (Elisabetta) and John Osborn (Roberto Devereux) are musically and histrionically satisfying. The playing of the Orchestra Donizetti Opera under conductor Riccardo Frizza and singing of the Coro dell’Accademia Teatro alla Scala under chorus master Salvo Sgrò are equally fine. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

 

 

 

His Motorbike, Her Island 

Maverick Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) made several films about ordinary young people on the margins of society, and his 1986 drama follows Koh, a biker who meets and falls for Miyoko, a young woman who also rides motorcycles.

 

 

Obayashi cleverly uses much visual and aural trickery to his advantage, and his leads, Riki Takeuchi and the beguiling Kiwako Harada, are thrillingly alive as the young lovers. The film looks quite good on Blu; extras comprise a commentary, two visual essays and an archival Obayashi interview. 

 

 

 

Rather 

The long and storied career of veteran CBS reporter and anchorman Dan Rather is recounted by director Frank Marshall in this breezily informative—but not hagiographic—documentary. Rather’s many highs (coverage of the JFK assassination, the 1968 Democratic Convention, the Vietnam War) are documented alongside lows like his antipathy for the Bush family that culminated in the sad spectacle of forged documents about Dubya’s national guard exploits that nearly derailed Rather’s career.

 

 

Rather himself, of course, is heard from, in archival footage and in a new interview, along with family members, colleagues and analysts like Margaret Sullivan of the Buffalo News. The sad truth is that the sort of journalism Rather practiced is sorely missing from today’s imbecile news cycle and will probably never come back.

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

As the daughter-in-law of famed Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov—whose elaborate operas never gained a foothold in the repertory but whose evocative orchestral piece Scheherazade did—you’d think Julia Weissberg Rimsky-Korsakov (1878-1942) would have had a higher prominence based on name alone. But that was the not the case: although her music was played in Russia and Germany, after her death she faded in obscurity, possibly because she didn’t use her famous father-in-law’s last name.

 

 

Now, thanks to the intrepid efforts of American soprano Sarah Moulton Faux, here’s a group of 15 of Weissberg’s songs that will likely be an impressive introduction for many listeners. These harmonically adventurous songs have fluid vocal lines that Faux sings beautifully; piano accompanist Konstantin Soukhovetski plays sensitively; and the disc makes us want to hear more from a mostly forgotten composing voice.