4K Release of the Week 

Christopher Nolan’s latest bloated super-spectacular attempts to one-up his earlier convoluted films with a constantly time-shifting (and aspect-ratio changing) plot that’s mainly an excuse for alternately exciting (opening concert hall invasion, backwards-car chase) and pointless (final battle) set pieces. Nolan fans will spend hours explaining away his densely plotted but scientifically suspect script but Tenet is yet another example of Nolan taking 2-1/2 hours to tell a story that The Twilight Zone would have covered satisfyingly in 30 minutes.

 

 

John David Washington makes a dull hero, further robbing the movie of credibility; Kenneth Branagh’s colorful if stereotypical Russian villain is fun, while Elizabeth Debiecki gives an exceptionally nuanced performance that has no place in something so singleminded. The UHD transfer looks luminous; lone extra (on a separate Blu-ray disc) is a 75-minute making-of.

 

 

 

 

 

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week

In Niki Stein’s lavish biopic being released on the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth, Beethoven’s life is cleverly reconstructed as it covers three distinct periods: the young prodigy, the teenage wunderkind and the deaf genius near death. While it covers too much ground—there are appearances by Mozart and Haydn, who both give the budding composer-pianist their seal of approval—Stein’s film is intelligent and witty, with musical cues from among works both challenging (late quartets) and popular (the symphonies).

 

 

Colin Pütz, Anselm Bresgott and Tobias Moretti are exemplary in the title roles from youngest to oldest, while Ronald Kukulies gives a heartbreaking portrayal of Beethoven’s father, whose existence devolved into drink and tragedy. Arthur W. Ahrweiler’s moody cinematography perfectly mirrors the protagonist’s wide-ranging artistry and unpleasant personality.

 

 

 

 

 

To the Ends of the Earth 

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest follows a Japanese newscaster covering a story in Uzbekistan who finds herself in emotional difficulties after evading local cops and hearing that her boyfriend back in Tokyo might be injured in an horrific fire. Kurosawa records his protagonist’s everyday dealings with wry understatement, but at two hours, his film is definitely overstuffed with shots of her wandering the streets.

 

 

Atsuko Maeda has an ingratiating presence in the lead, and is quite touching at the end when her character sings (Maeda is a famous pop singer in Japan) the last of weirdly placed but effective song interludes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Mountain Thyme 

John Patrick Shanley’s beguiling play Outside Mullingar premiered on Broadway in 2014 with Brian F. O’Byrne and an unforgettable Debra Messing as lifelong next-door neighbors in the Irish countryside who bealtedly find love. But everything delectable in his original play is missing from Shanley’s own adaptation, a strained attempt to re-light a fire that burned so brightly onstage.

 

 

Emily Blunt and Jamie Dornan are OK in the leads, Christopher Walken is eye-rollingly bad as Dorman’s father, Dearbhla Molloy (the lone Broadway cast holdover) is terrific as Blunt’s mom, and Jon Hamm—in a thankless role smartly omitted from the play—does what he can as an American cousin with designs on Blunt. Of course, Ireland’s locales are lovely and there are enough rom-com pleasures to make it watchable, but Outside Mullingar deserved much more.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Director Boaz Yakim juggles with ideas of gender identity by dramatizing the relationship between two dancers, male and female—and their respective feminine and masculine sides—and casting two couples to visualize the interactions.

 

 

It’s too bad that it turns out so heavyhanded—especially in the many repetitive and explicit sex scenes featuring the performing quartet in various permutations—and that the dancers are inadequate actors: what could have been an insightful study of gender fluidity and sexual complexity becomes banal. Star Bobbi Jene Smith’s often thrilling choreography makes its mark in several dancing sequences, like the final one in Central Park. The Blu-ray transfer looks beautiful; extras are 15 minutes of dance rehearsals with Smith’s discussion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mister Roberts 

Jack Lemmon won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his semi-comic relief role in this mild entertainment based on the hit play by Thomas Heggen—who wrote the original novel—and Joshua Logan about sailors on the USS Reluctant in Pacific waters during WWII, including the title character (the men’s immediate supervisor) and the ship’s captain.

 

 

John Ford and Mervyn Leroy co-directed (with uncredited work by Logan), and if the movie lacks comic or dramatic sizzle, it’s worth watching for its cast: Henry Fonda (Mister Roberts) gives his usual sturdy, decidedly “straight man” portrayal; James Cagney (Captain Morton) is enjoying himself immensely; and Ensign Pulver is among the earliest of the typically manic Lemmon performances. Taken together, however, these seemingly inapposite actors make this far more diverting than it should be. The Cinemascope film looks lovely on Blu; lone extra is a Lemmon commentary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mouchette 

Following one of his most singular films, his 1966 allegory of faith and sacrifice that centered on a donkey, Au hazard Balthasar, French master Robert Bresson returned the following year with another bleak journey, this time following a young girl through her harsh existence.

 

 

Exquisitely shot in black and white by that extraordinary choreographer Ghislain Cloquet—whose photography shimmers in Criterion’s new hi-def transfer—Mouchette has a quietly devastating finale that is among Bresson’s most indelible images. Extras are an audio commentary; Au hasard Bresson, a 1967 documentary with Bresson on the Mouchette set; segment of a 1967 episode of French TV series Cinéma, with on-set interviews of Bresson and actors Nadine Nortier and Jean-Claude Guilbert; and the original trailer, edited by—of all people—Jean-Luc Godard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tex Avery Screwball Classics, Volume 2 

Animated genius Tex Avery was responsible for a lion’s share of the classic output during the golden age of animation—in the ‘40s and the ‘50s—and this second volume brings together another 21 of his most wanted treasures, some starring his classic canine character, Droopy, and several others featuring his most memorable anthropomorphic animals and goofy contraptions.

 

 

Some of it is dated and in questionable taste; nearly all of it is entertaining and funny. The restored hi-def color images pop off the screen; the lone extra is a substantial documentary of Avery at work, Tex Avery: King of Cartoons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2020 World Series Champions—Los Angeles Dodgers 

For a sports year unlike any other, the Dodgers won the championship in a shortened regular season made up of 60 games followed by four playoff rounds, but not before COVID outbreaks threatened to derail the whole thing.

 

 

But the Dodgers prevailed, finally, over the Tampa Rays in six games, and this disc revisits the ups and downs of a strange season that most are hoping is an anomaly, all narrated by legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully. The hi-def images and audio are top-notch; extras are season highlights, clinching moments and “How They Got There” featurette.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week

French director-writer-actor Yvan Attal has yet to make a truly satisfying comedy of manners in a career as a third-rate Woody Allen yearning to be second-rate, but this is an only intermittently irritating dramedy about a blocked middle-aged writer who lets a huge, dumb canine into his life, only to watch its arrival parallels the disintegration of his marriage and the straining of his relationships with his adult son and daughter.

 

 

Attal still goes for cheap laughs or fake profundity, but his other actors—led by his always dependable real-life wife, Charlotte Gainsbourg—are fine and the oversized pooch (actually named “Stupide” in the film) is irresistible, which helps smooth over the rougher edges of Attal’s inconsistent filmmaking.

 

 

 

 

 

Roadkill 

British playwright David Hare, one of our most skillful and insightfully political playwrights, tries his hand at parsing a conservative cabinet member—Hare is a leftist—in this intelligent if melodramatic four-part miniseries that rides on Hugh Laurie’s potent portrait of a man who, despite his act as honest and straight-talking, is not what he seems.

 

 

Although Hare allows contrivances that wouldn’t pass muster in a Screenwriting 101 course, he’s on firmer ground when he’s assailing the machinations of the prime minister (a terrific Helen McCrory) and her minions at 10 Downing Street, while Michael Keillor’s direction smartly guides Hare’s story to its satisfying conclusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Route One/USA 

Robert Kramer’s legendary 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 the D.C. Vietnam Memorial.

 

 

An American expatriate based in Paris (he died in France at age 60 in 1999) who returned to the U.S. for this film, Kramer adroitly handles the camera while his friend, actor Michael Keillor, does the questioning and observing. Route One/USA’s 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 Trip—Four-Course Meal 

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon went on four go-rounds touring Europe, annoying each other and eating superb meals along the way, and this set collects all of them: 2010’s The Trip (at home in England), 2014’s The Trip to Italy, 2017’s The Trip to Spain and this year’s The Trip to Greece. 

 

 

 

Although it’s as formulaic as hell—amazing scenery, delectable dinners, good-natured banter and dueling impressions—the stars have such undeniable chemistry that it all works. Michael Winterbottom directs all four series with his usual light hand; it’s too bad that the full version of these peregrinations—each trip began as six-part series for British television—isn’t included. But even as standalone, shortened films, these are extremely pleasurable journeys. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Novelist Salman Rushdie’s typically fantastical story about an imaginative young boy growing up in a world of misery and censorship was adapted into a musically adventurous opera by American composer Charles Wuorinen, which premiered in 2004 by New York City Opera. Wuorinen, who died this past March, was known for this thorny, difficult scores, but taking a cue from Rushdie's playful and multilingual pans, Wuorinen’s Haroun is dotted with references to various musical works past and present.

 

 

This new recording by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), from the company’s 2019 concert performances, features the original Haroun from the premiere, the terrific soprano Heather Buck, who centers the rangy score with her radiant singing throughout. Gil Rose conducts the BMOP musicians and chorus in this enchanting reading. It's too bad that such a colorful and visual opera does not have a video release to complement this recording.

Theater/VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week 

Sadly, Kate Winslet and Saiorse Ronan strike few sparks in this 19th-century love story that has to labor in the shadow of the much better French feature Portrait of a Lady on Fire, despite writer/director Francis Lee basing her drama on real-life paleontologist Mary Anning’s intense relationship with neglected wife Charlotte Murchison, shown in the film built on intellect as much as attraction.

 

 

Lee shows the physical nature of her protagonists’ relationship fairly explicitly—including their first encounter, which ends with an eye-rolling cut from Winslet going down on Ronan to the fossil they discovered—and the two game actresses go for broke…along with their body doubles. But it all adds up to very little, unfortunately.

 

 

 

 

 

Ikarie XB 1 

Czech director Jindřich Polák made this 1963 sci-fi drama, and if it’s a product of its genre and its era—low-budget special effects and a Fantastic Planet/Lost in Space-type robot, for example—its intelligence and seriousness anticipate, in broad strokes, Kubrick’s masterly 2001: A Space Odyssey five years later.

 

 

At a compact 87 minutes, Polák’s dazzling drama tidily depicts a futuristic journey to “the white planet,” and his imaginative direction never relies on clichés or standard sci-fi tropes.

 

 

 

 

 

Love, Weddings & Other Disasters 

In this cutesy rom-com that gets increasingly desperate as it goes along, various people meet cutely and either get together or don’t by the climactic wedding, which is as lazily put together as nearly everything elsem. Dennis Dugan directs unpersuasively, while his script is seemingly slapped together from every available cliché.

 

 

With the exception of Diane Keaton (as a blind woman) and Jeremy Irons, the cast is defeated by the mediocre material. Maggie Grace, despite her natural likability, plays a slightly annoying character, while Andrew Bachelor, playing the least believable character onscreen, can’t overcome his silly story arc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4K Release of the Week

Why director Peter Jackson turned Tolkien’s middle earth novel—a straightforward, unpretentious prequel to the more expansive Lord of the Rings trilogy—into a multi-part, lengthy film adaptation is a mystery.

 

 

There’s much to enjoy (notably the elaborate physical production), but the plot is dragged out beyond endurance and the characters aren’t satisfyingly fleshed out despite the nearly eight-hour running time (nine hours total in the extended editions). Whatever the reasons, it all looks fantastic in 4K, although none of the Blu-ray releases’ extras has been included.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

In the Hammer Studios’ stab at the infamous Mary Shelley story, Peter Cushing plays the eponymous doctor who brings inanimate material to life, only to see his creation go on a killing spree. This colorful 1957 adaptation has its moments—particularly in the scenes with Christopher Lee as the monster—but director Terence Fisher doesn’t do enough with such material for this to be a complete success.

 

 

Warner Archive’s two-disc edition presents three versions of the film in different aspect ratios: 1.85, 1.66 and—in the way many people first saw it on TV—1.33; extras are an audio commentary and five new interviews/featurettes about different aspects of the film.

 

 

 

 

 

Holiday Affair 

Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum are a nicely matched couple of sorts in this Christmas-set 1949 romance that hasn’t earned much status as a holiday classic—I personally had never seen it before—but it’s a heartwarming concoction all the same.

 

 

Too bad the cute kid playing Leigh’s young son, Gordon Gebert, is no actor; but there’s a refreshing realism to Don Hartman’s direction, despite his movie hinging on something as innocuous as a toy train set. There’s a splendid new hi-def transfer; lone extra is a 1950 radio version of the story with Mitchum and Laraine Day.

 

 

 

 

 

Raining in the Mountain 

A heist movie set in a monastery? Why not, says director King Hu, whose stylish 1979 adventure explores the machinations of a group of monks over an ancient and important scroll.

 

 

Imaginatively directed with astonishing visuals that take full advantage of the widescreen frame, Raining is a far superior precursor to such martial-arts hits as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, with its action sequences developed more organically, and bolstered by the presence of such stars as Hsu Feng (also memorable in Hu’s A Touch of Zen). The film looks spectacular on Blu; extras are a video essay on the film and an audio commentary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

This successful reboot of the classic detective series starring Jack Lord as McGarrett and James MacArthur as his partner Danno—and which showed the then new state as a crime-infested paradise—lasted ten seasons (the original lasted a dozen, from 1968 to 1980), with a younger, spirited cast led Alex O’Laughlin and Scott Caan.

 

 

This complete set comprises the show’s 240 episodes sprint all over the islands as the good guys earn their pay. Extras include two episodes of the original series and crossover episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles and the Magnum P.I. remake.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) is best known for his shimmering vocal work, Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5, but in no way does that make him a one-hit wonder. In fact, he has made substantial contributions in genres from string quartets (he composed 17 of them) and concertos (he wrote pieces for piano, cello, violin, guitar, harp, and harmonica) to symphonies, of which he wrote 11. (They’re numbered from 1 to 12, but number 5 is missing, and may never have been composed.)

 

 

This valuable boxed set brings together an imposing cycle performed and recorded over several years by the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra under the steady baton of conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky: their intelligently performed survey moves from his early romantic-era symphonies 1 and 2 to his more Brazilian-inflected symphonies 3, 4 and 6 to his later masterworks, No. 10, an epic choral work, and the surging, exciting No. 12, a capstone on the composer's brilliant musical career.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Martin Scorsese mines familiar territory in his latest crime drama, a leisurely study of organized crime through the eyes of Frank Sheeran, who became a confidant to Mafia bigwigs and—or so he says in his autobiography, I Heard You Paint Houses (which is also the onscreen title of the film)—was responsible for the disappearance of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa.

 

 

With unsurprisingly rich and varied performances by Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, The Irishman is never dull even if it runs for nearly three and a half hours; the iffiest element is the special effects that de-age the leading men so they can play scenes taking places decades earlier: it doesn’t look bad, exactly, but it doesn’t look seamlessly believable either. Criterion’s edition includes a fine hi-def transfer and an extra disc of bonus features, including interviews with Scorsese, Pesci, Pacino and DeNiro; a featurette about the de-aging effects and a making-of documentary; and archival interview excerpts with the real Sheeran and Hoffa.

 

 

 

 

 

Frühlingsstürme

Two musical rarities—one from the 20th century and one from the 17th—are given exemplary productions that might help securing future revivals. Frühlingsstürme (Spring Storms), by Czech composer Jaromir Weinberger, premiered in 1933 but was soon banned by the Nazis; this sprightly operetta may go on far too long but provides delectable roles for its performers, embodied at Berlin’s Komische Opera by the excellent singer-actors Alma Sade, Stefan Kurt, Vera-Lotte Boecker and Tansel Akzeybek.

 

 

Italian composer Pietro Antonio Cesti premiered La Dori in Venice in 1663, and this staging from last year in Innsbruck, Austria, provides its dramatic and musical due. Both discs have first-rate video and audio.

 

 

 

 

 

Sleepless Beauty 

Pavel Khvaleev’s slickly made but gimmicky horror flick might be the last word in torture porn: a kidnaped young woman is forced to stay alive by participating in gruesome killings at the same time as she is subjected to her captors’ demented demands like locking her in a box with several rats.

 

 

Though gleefully sadistic, after the first few bloodlettings and hide-your-eyes moments, the movie becomes routine and even monotonous, notwithstanding the sheer will power of Polina Davydova’s impressively physical performance. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; extras comprise deleted and alternate scenes and an on-set featurette.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still Life 

Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke reached the heights of cinematic brilliance in his best films, 2000’s Platform and 2004’s The World, but this 2006 exploration of the denizens of an old city, Fengjie,  that’s being flooded to make way for the massive Three Gorges Dam also has its moments of vibrancy, incisiveness and insight.

 

 

Following two people who are each searching for an absent spouse, Jia records their quotidian lives and relationships with great compassion. There’s a decent but not superb hi-def transfer; there are also no extras: too bad Jia’s related 2006 documentary, Dong, wasn’t included.

 

 

 

 

 

4K Release of the Week 

Peter Jackson’s towering trilogy of epic adventures based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings novels—The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King—finally makes it to ultra-HD in all its visual splendor, especially the loving Middle Earth recreation of Jackson and his army of collaborators.

 

 

The clarity of the images is breathtaking throughout, and both the original theatrical versions and Jackson’s extended cuts—which add an additional 50-60 minutes to each of the three films—are included, although there are no extras. (A larger boxed set including the special features will be released in 2021.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week

Federico Fellini’s 1987 auto-hommage is as entertaining and playful as anything this irrepressibly self-indulgent filmmaker ever made. For his ostensible tribute to the glorious Cinecitta, the studio where he made so many of his classics, the great Italian director—unsurprisingly—drags in everything but the kitchen sink (elephants, attack dogs, even Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastrioanni, who watch, teary-eyed, their memorable scenes from La Dolce Vita) to elevate this wonderful memory piece.

 

 

Crammed with the usual indelible Felliniesque faces, Intervista is hilarious but also poignant, as its lovely, bittersweet freeze-frame at the end demonstrates.

 

 

 

 

 

The Walrus and the Whistleblower 

Marineland, a popular Canadian tourist attraction near Niagara Falls (I visited several times while growing up in Buffalo), is called out by Phil Demers, who was a trainer there and who quit after blowing the whistle on the animal abuse he witnessed.

 

 

Nathalie Bibeau’s compelling documentary follows Demers as he tries to get a bill passed in Canada’s House of Commons to end the practice of keeping marine mammals in pools while, at the same time, Marineland is suing him for allegedly plotting to kidnap a beloved walrus from the facility. Demers’ love of and forceful advocacy for these splendid creatures is heartwarming, and that there’s a happy ending of sorts is a bonus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Austrian Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) composed this hybrid stage work in 1926: subtitled a “cult drama for dancers, soloists and chorus,” Die Opferung is a curious but often powerful mix of set arias, recitatives and choral sections that are interspersed with alternately beguiling and harsh-sounding dance interludes.

 

 

Despite nearly going off the rails, it holds together dramatically in this superlative 1995 performance led by conductor Fredrich Cerha; the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Concert Choir and five vocal soloists are unimpeachable. The only drawback of this audio-only recording is that the dancers, so important to the overall structure, are missing; here’s hoping that there will be a new staging at some point that be filmed.