VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week 

Unlike 1917, last year’s Oscar-bait stunt set during the First World War, this Latvian drama drops us right into the center of the horrific maelstrom through the eyes of a 16-year-old volunteer who fights the Germans after his mother is murdered in cold blood by them.

 

 

Despite relying too heavily on coincidence and heightened melodramatics (our baby-faced hero seems to be in the middle of every bloody battle), director Dzintars Dreibergs shrewdly keeps the drama personal, which makes a burgeoning romance with a young nurse the protagonist meets while recuperating from a wound less sentimental than it might have been. This unsparing vision of war’s horrors (a distant cousin to Elem Klimov’s 1985 masterpiece Come and See) is anchored by a superlative performance by Oto Brantevics as the boy who becomes a man as his homeland gains its independence.

 

 

 

 

 

MLK/FBI 

That J. Edgar Hoover kept tabs on Martin Luther King Jr. is old news, but how the FBI went about their surveillance and targeted harassment is the eye-opening takeaway from this absorbing documentary by director Sam Pollard.

 

 

Pollard uses recently declassified files as well as interviews with experts to paint a shocking but unsurprising portrait of how the Bureau treated King, even using nefarious methods like making tapes of his trysts with other women for his wife Coretta to hear. Pollard’s film is a valuable record of how underhanded those in power can be, and it takes on an added relevance in the waning days of trump and (one hopes) trumpism.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-rays of the Week 

The great Spanish director Luis Buñuel (who died in 1983 at age 83) began his career in the silent era with the anarchic short Le chien andalou and ended it with a trio of surrealist nightmares collected in this Criterion boxed set—1972’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1974’s The Phantom of Liberty and 1977’s That Obscure Object of Desire—that are fitful, vastly uneven, and only intermittently successful. Phantom is the best of the three; its playfulness fits the serious social and political ramifications better than do the overrated Charm and clunky Object.

 

 

Criterion’s boxed set comprises top-notch hi-def transfers of all three films and many extras, including several documentaries about the director’s life and career; archival interviews with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, performers Stéphane Audran, Muni, Michel Piccoli and Fernando Rey, and other collaborators; Lady Doubles, a 2017 documentary with Carole Bouquet and Ángela Molina, who share the role of Conchita in Object; and excerpts from Jacques de Baroncelli’s 1929 silent film La femme et le pantin, an adaptation of the 1898 novel on which Object is also based.

 

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Scott's Power Trip 

The ways that utility companies put a stranglehold on local municipalities and throw their weight around to not allow solar energy to gain a foothold is explored in this enraging documentary by Jonathan Scott, star of the HGTV network series Property Brothers.

 

 

Scott shows how fossil-fuel monopolies protect their bottom lines (with the help of government) by helping phase out solar credits and giving utility customers no choice in the matter. Since nothing is being done on a federal level, Scott notes the incremental victories that are occurring locally which provide real energy choice for the public’s benefit. Hi-def video looks great.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week 

Jordan Peele’s reboot of the classic TV series has a second season that’s as up-and-down as the first: for every decent episode (“Meet in the Middle” with Jimmi Simpson and Gillian Jacobs), there are others that either go nowhere (“You Might Also Like,” a hamfisted rewrite of the all-time classic episode “To Serve Man,” wastes a fine performance by Gretchen Mol) or wear out their welcome quickly (“Try, Try” with Topher Grace and the winning Kylie Bunbury).

 

 

This new iteration certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Rod Serling’s original, which ran for five seasons and produced dozens of episodes that are superior to anything Peele and company have come up with in these 10 attempts. Extras are deleted scenes and a gag reel.

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week 

Bryan Fogel’s powerful documentary chronicles the events leading to the horrific murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 by persons under the direction of the Saudi crown prince himself.

 

 

For anyone who’s followed the story over the past couple of years, very little of what is presented here is new, but the accumulation of evidence and details that form an airtight case against the crown prince as well as sorrow over such an awful act committed to silence a vocal critic of the state makes this shocking and unforgettable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Corpore 

Sarah Portelli and Ivan Malekin’s four-part omnibus feature about the vagaries of intimacy has a healthy freedom from hypocrisy by unflinchingly dramatizing the physical intimacies of the four couples involved, but by concentrating on what happens in bed leads to a fuzziness of characterization.

 

 

It mainly comes off as earnest but amateurish—especially in the third segment, set in Berlin—but there are two finely etched portrayals: from Clara Francesca Pagone as a woman who sleeps with an old boyfriend in Melbourne at the beginning and confesses to her husband in Manhattan at the end, and—even more memorably—Naomi Said, heartbreakingly real as an unhappy wife in the second and best segment, set on Malta.

 

 

 

 

 

My Rembrandt 

In the world of high-priced art, Rembrandt is an Old Master name that brings dollar signs to the eyes of collectors, museum officials and art dealers, and Oeke Hoogendijk’s engaging and insightful documentary follows the travails of several valuable Rembrandt paintings in the hands of private collectors. There’s a portrait of an old woman over the fireplace of a Scottish duke’s estate; another picture up for auction that may or may not be authentic; and a pair of full-length portraits that the Louvre and the Rijksmuseum are contemplating bidding on together.

 

 

Hoogendijk introduces an array of colorful and even assiduously oddish characters, including Stanley S. Kaplan, an American billionaire and owner of several Rembrandts who recalls the moment when—after purchasing his first Rembrandt painting—he kisses its subject on the mouth. No explanations are required for art lovers.

 

 

 

 

 

The Passionate Thief 

Mario Monicelli’s raucous but ultimately touching 1960 comedy stars Anna Magnani and Totò, two of the greatest stars of Italian cinema, along with a dubbed Ben Gazzara as an unlikely trio tramping through Rome on New Year’s Eve.

 

 

Monicelli’s typically light touch treads a fine line between humor and heartbreak, even finding a moment for a brief parody of Fellini’s Trevi Fountain sequence in La Dolce Vita, and climaxing with a perfectly pitched and amusing sequence in a church. This is a remarkable rediscovery that deserves to be seen and savored.

 

 

 

 

 

4K Release of the Week 

This cleverly constructed mash-up of dystopian horror and rom-com stars a likeable Dylan O’Brien as Joel, a nerd still pining for the girlfriend he last saw seven years ago—right before the “monsterpocalypse” destroyed civilization.

 

 

Much of Michael Matthews’ movie comprises our hero’s adventures through a dangerous landscape, with only an adorable dog as a companion, and if too much of the movie’s running time is taken up by his encounters with various—and, after awhile, repetitive and tired—monstrous creatures, there’s a sweetness and vulnerability that keeps it all watchable, as does Jessica Henwick, who makes a magical Aimee, Joel’s long-lost girlfriend. The eye-popping 4K transfer also accentuates the fakeness of the creatures; there’s a second disc that includes a Blu-ray transfer of the film and short featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Richard Wagner’s heroic opera is a transitional work between the grand operas of his past and philosophical dramas of the future, but it’s filled with wondrous music and gorgeous dramatic tableaux, the latter of which are only partially achieved in Árpád Schilling’s scattered 2018 Stuttgart staging.

 

 

Happily, the musical side more than compensates, with Michael König’s stentorian Lohengrin, Simone Schneider’s compassionate Elsa and Martin Gantner’s forceful Friedrich von Telramund. Cornelius Meister superbly conducts the Stuttgart State Orchestra and Chorus; hi-def video and audio are excellent.

 

2020 started out horribly for Rush fans with the untimely death of lyricist and drummer extraordinaire Neil Peart in January. That news put a damper on the 40th anniversary of the Canadian prog-rock trio’s commercial 1980 breakthrough, Permanent Waves, which received a deluxe edition in May comprising the original album and 11 live tracks from the accompanying worldwide tour on two CDs and two LPs as well as bric-a-brac for fans, all housed in an LP-sized boxed set. 

 

When it was released in 1980, Permanent Waves showed that the band could move into shorter, more accessible song forms without sacrificing the epic structures and instrumental chops that characterized records like 2112 and A Farewell to Kings. 

 

From the opening track “The Spirit of Radio”—which became one of the most popular Rush anthems—to the closing multi-part suite “Natural Science,” Permanent Waves splits the difference between musical complexity (“Jacob’s Ladder”) and lyrical simplicity (“Entre Nous,” “Different Strings”), with the straight-ahead rocker “Free Will” thrown in for good measure. 

 

Drummer Neil Peart’s lyrics could be too self-consciously literary with a touch of the pompous—“For the words of the prophets were written on the stadium walls/concert halls” remains too clever for its own good—and bassist Geddy Lee’s vocals, while not as screechy as on earlier albums (especially on Rush’s previous opus, 1978’s Hemispheres, where Lee struggled to sing songs composed in a higher key than he could handle), are still on the “acquired taste” side. 

 

But there’s no denying the instrumental chops of Peart, Lee and underrated guitarist Alex Lifeson whenever the trio locks in on particularly illuminating breaks throughout, particularly on the epics “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Natural Science.” And there’s always a tinge of regret at the end of “Different Strings,” an uncharacteristically subdued Rush track, as Lifeson’s biting guitar solo begins and the song immediately fades out instead of continuing for another minute or so.

 

This welcome commemorative set comprises the superb-sounding remastered album and 11 electric live tracks from the group’s 1980 tour on two CDs and two LPs: the concert cuts include most of the then-new record along with earlier gems like “Cygnus X-1”—both Books I and II, which the trio rarely played live—and “Xanadu.” 

 

The set also features items that will excite hard-core Rush fans, from a 40-page hardcover book filled with rare photos and new artwork by longtime Rush album cover designer Hugh Syme to Peart’s lyric sheets for “The Spirit of Radio,” “Entre Nous” and “Natural Science” as well as a replica of the band’s 1980 tour program. 

 

That last inclusion is notable since each Rush tour program always contained a thoughtful and enlightening Peart essay on the making of the group’s newest album. So including the program is, in essence, the ultimate RIP to a superb writer and rock artist.