Blu-rays of the Week 

The War of the Worlds 

(Criterion Collection)

Director Byron Haskin and producer George Pal’s 1953 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic 1897 sci-fi novel about a Martian invasion remains watchable even if it is cheesy and dated-looking: although, it must be admitted, for its time, the special effects are fairly dazzling.

Criterion’s smart package includes Paramount’s fantastic-looking and -sounding 4K/5.1 surround restoration; 2005 audio commentary and making-of featurette, The Sky Is Falling; new featurettes on the restoration and visual/sound effects; and—best of all—three audio extras: a 1970 Pal interview; Orson Welles’ infamous 1938 Mercury Theater radio version, which millions of listeners thought was real; and a 1940 radio discussion between Welles and Wells, recorded in San Antonio.

Cannery Row 

(Warner Archive)

John Steinbeck’s most famous novels were successfully turned into films (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden), but David S. Ward’s 1982 adaptation combines Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday to lesser effect.

Sven Nykvist’s gorgeous photography, Richard MacDonald’s stunning set design and John Huston’s craggy narration outpace the budding romance of Doc and Suzy, outsiders on Cannery Row. Despite the presence of Nick Nolte and (especially) Debra Winger, this overwhelming exercise in style—like fellow early ’80s flops One from the Heart and Popeye—is worth a watch as mainly eye-popping sketches for a story that hasn’t been supplied. The hi-def transfer is, unsurprisingly, transfixing to watch.

Romance on the High Seas 

(Warner Archive)

In this diverting 1948 romantic comedy set primarily on a cruise ship, a suspicious wife and husband hire a stand-in and a private eye, who promptly fall for each other, which leads to a satisfyingly silly finale of mistaken identities.

The two couples— Janis Paige (wife) and Don DeFore (husband), and Doris Day (in her effervescent movie debut as the stand-in) and Jack Carson (private eye)—are enjoyable enough to make this dated comedy a treat, along with Jule Styne’s songs; the bursting colors of director Michael Curtiz’s production—shown to great advantage on Blu-ray—also keep things percolating.

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week

Earth 

(KimStim)

In his latest documentary about how humans deal with their environment, director Nikolaus Geyrhalter provides eye-opening views of some of the most imposing terrain on the planet—mines, quarries and tunnels—to show how we are forever altering the planet, even more so, unbelievably, than natural forces.

Juxtaposing God’s-eye views of places in California, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Spain and Canada (which look like otherworldly abstract paintings) with trenchant interviews with those working at these sites, Earth displays the simultaneous beauty and horribleness that accompanies the changes that can irrevocably damage our one and only home.

John Lewis: Good Trouble 

(Magnolia Pictures)

This look at a truly great man might be somewhat hagiographic, but when the subject has done as much over the past six decades for civil rights and race relations as John Lewis has as a congressman from Georgia and as an associate of Martin Luther King—marching at Selma, speaking at the march on Washington, for starters, trying to end racism and prevent the loss of our democracy—then there’s nothing to criticize.

Lewis is still going strong at age 80, and Dawn Porter’s lovely portrait presents a humble but dedicated hero for so many still in pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

Suzi Q 

(Utopia Distribution)

A product of rock’n’roll haven Detroit, Suzi Quatro was a tiny woman with a big voice, a big bass and a big personality, all of which gave her a successful career outside of America, where she had a couple of mid/late ‘70s hits (“48 Crash,” the duet “Stumblin’ In” with Chris Norman) and a recurring role on TV’s Happy Days as Leather Toscadero.

Liam Firmager and Tait Brady’s documentary tells Quatro’s story from her teen days in a band with her sisters to current icon status. Quatro is still an unapologetic spitfire and others heard from in this well-rounded portrait are her sisters, brother, ex-manager, ex-producer/songwriter, ex-guitarist/ex-husband and superfans like Cherie Currie, Tina Weymouth and fellow Detroit native Alice Cooper.

DVD of the Week 

Evil—Complete 1st Season 

(CBS/Paramount)

This intriguingly twisty crime procedural pairs a forensic psychiatrist (skeptical of anything unscientific) with a Catholic seminarian and his assistant to search for (or rule out) supernatural answers to murders and other crimes.

It’s too bad that the series often takes the easy way out with cheap attempts at scares—like the pilot episode’s unintentionally funny night terrors subplot—because when concentrating on the psychology of supernatural vs. reality, it’s compelling. Katja Herbers, an effortlessly winning actress, could be Carey Mulligan’s doppelgänger (that would make a great episode), while Mike Colter, Aasif Mandvi and Christine Lahti provide excellent support. In addition to the series’ 13 episodes, extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.

CD of the Week

Jules Massenet—Thaïs 

(Chandos)

Massenet’s “exotic” opera, about an Egyptian courtesan whose true purity is revealed, but with tragic consequences, is best known for its lilting Méditation, an intermezzo for violin—which, in this recording, is dispatched beautifully by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, Jonathan Crow.

Massenet’s music is otherwise appropriately (if too obviously) dramatic and romantic; conductor Sir Andrew Davis summons a vivid reading of the shimmering score. Soprano Erin Wall makes a vocally glamorous and enticing heroine, and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir provides stellar support.

VOD/Virtual Cinema Releases of the Week  

The King of Staten Island 

(Universal)

I’m no fan of Pete Davidson or Judd Apatow so I unsurprisingly found their collaboration—all two hours and fifteen minutes—insufferable. Davidson basically (and monotonously) plays himself if he never joined SNL, just a tattooed goof-off; shoehorning his own tragic back story (Davidson’s real father, a firefighter, died on Sept. 11) into this crude, forgettable attempt at comedy—another of Apatow’s paeans to losers—borders on the unseemly.

On the positive side, Marisa Tomei is a delight as Pete’s mom, Steve Buscemi is fine as a fireman, and Bill Burr is agreeable in a one-note part as Mom’s new boyfriend (another fireman)—but they only partially compensate for long stretches of choppy, self-indulgent moviemaking and empty, laughless space.

(Rialto)

French director Claude Sautet’s sophomore feature, this 1960 crime drama is a taut, tight exploration of a wanted man’s desperate attempts to remain free—by film’s end, his wife is dead, he’s separated from his two young sons and the law is right behind him.

Lino Ventura gives a blistering performance as the flawed protagonist and has fine support by Jean-Paul Belmondo as his latest—and likely last—partner and Sandra Milo as a young woman who assists them. Superbly shot in stark B&W by Ghislain Cloquet, Sautet’s best film was followed by increasingly more erratic features, unfortunately. 

My Darling Vivian 

(Film Collaborative)

Usually erased from accounts of Johnny Cash’s life and career is his first wife Vivian Liberto—mother of his four daughters, including singer Rosanne—in favor of the obvious June Carter Cash/second wife angle; Matt Riddlehoover’s illuminating documentary corrects the by-now cemented historical record.

Emotional interviews with Vivian’s daughters are interspersed with an eye-opening and quite touching look at Vivian with and without Johnny: after their divorce, she remarried while admitting that Johnny was the love of her life. 

(Blue Fox Entertainment)

Bill Nighy displays his usual snarky persona as a respected tailor damaged after one of his sons stormed out during a tense game of Scrabble in Carl Hunter’s by-the-numbers study of a man more interested in words than in other people, including his own family.

The always watchable Nighy can do sort of thing in his sleep, which means there’s little surprise to his character arc, while even an actress as dependable as Jenny Agutter is unable to create many sparks as a woman who enters the tailor’s life after meeting him at the morgue, of all places.

Blu-rays of the Week 

Corpus Christi 

(Film Movement)

Polish director Jan Kosama’s provocative study of a 20-year-old jailbird posing as a village priest and how it changes him and his parishioners—especially after he looks into past sins that have been swept under the rug—might be contrived but it’s a powerful statement on the uneasy intersection of criminality, religion and redemption.

Bartosz Bielenia gives a phenomenally effective performance in the lead role while Eliza Rycembel leads an excellent supporting cast as a local woman he befriends. The film looks terrific on Blu; extras are a making-of featurette and Kosama’s 2003 short, Nice to See You.

(Film Movement Classics)

Polish director Andrzej Zulawski made several films about unhinged characters in difficult relationships, but he’s in relatively muted mode in this disjointed 1974 portrait of a struggling actress juggling her personal and professional lives.

Romy Schneider’s incendiary portrayal of a married woman who falls in love with a photographer provides some searing and intense moments; too bad these are exceptions in Zulawski’s wan glimpse at artists’ difficulties. There’s a very good hi-def transfer; lone extra is a Zulawski interview.

Mahler—Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” 

(Unitel)

Gustav Mahler’s massive “Resurrection” symphony—for large orchestra, chorus and two female soloists—is given a forceful rendition by conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Munich Philharmonic and chorus and singers Tamara Mumford and Chen Reiss.

Performed in the gorgeously cathedral-like Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona, Mahler’s mammoth work comes off brilliantly, from its quiet beginnings to its stirring finale, much like Beethoven’s ninth (see DVD reviews below). There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

(Magnolia)

Director Daniel Roher engagingly recounts the eventful musical life of Robbie Robertson, leader of the Band, the original roots-rock group whose classic tunes “The Weight,” “The Night They Drove Ol’ Dixie Down” and “Up on Cripple Creek” remain staples of classic rock playlists.

Robertson candidly discusses his upbringing in Canada, his move to the U.S. and teaming up with his future Bandmates, working with Bob Dylan and, later—following the Last Waltz concert film—Martin Scorsese, for whom he has scored and compiled music for decades. The film looks and sounds great in hi-def.

Tokyo Olympiad 

(Criterion)

Japanese director Kon Ichikawa was chosen to create the official record of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Games, and the passionately filmed and involving result is—along with Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, about the infamous 1936 Berlin Games—the best-ever Olympic document.

From intimate moments of personal triumph and agony to expansive views of the playing fields and spectators, Ichikawa presents the human comedy on an epic canvas. Criterion’s stellar edition includes a quite good (but not great) hi-def transfer, commentary and introductions by Japanese film expert Peter Cowie, archival Ichikawa interviews, new featurette, and nearly an hour and a half of additional footage.

Beethoven’s Ninth—Symphony for the World 

(C Major)

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—the first symphony comprising a choir and solo vocalists—was a formidable challenge for those at its 1824 Vienna premiere. (Beethoven, deaf by that time and co-conducting the first performance, famously had to be turned around by one of the singers so he could see the applauding audience.)

Christian Berger’s captivating documentary demonstrates that Beethoven’s message of brotherhood and humanity has not faded in the past 200 years: we see orchestras, conductors, composers and soloists getting ready to perform the work all over the world, from Tokyo (where 10,000 people make up the chorus) to Africa. The symphony is still a stirring and daring work of art, which was Beethoven’s intent.

The Gene—A Personal History 

(PBS)

This fascinating multi-episode documentary from a book by Siddhartha Mukherjee precisely lays out how genetic science has grown into the complex and seemingly miraculous field responsible for so many important breakthroughs.

Personalizing the science—we are introduced to people with diseases yet to be tamed and watch if gene therapy can help—also humanizes the historical aspect, as the men and women working so heroically are discovering how to utilize constantly improving technology for the betterment of all.

(Distrib Films)

Based on the subtly unnerving novel by Leïla Slimani, Lucie Borleteau’s middling adaptation slowly builds predictable suspense after a well-to-do Parisian couple hires the so-called title character, then loses it all with a lazy finale that recalls mindless slasher flicks far more than more sophisticated thrillers.

As the nanny, the mostly persuasive Karin Viard is eventually undercut by Borleteau’s reliance on clichés, which mitigates the domestic horrors found in this all-too-real situation.

CDs of the Week 

Penderecki—St Luke Passion 

(BIS)

Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki—who died in March at age 86—was known for his tense, dissonant works, which are familiar to anyone who’s seen The Exorcist, The Shining, Shutter Island or fellow Pole Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn. But his St Luke Passion, which premiered in 1966, showed off a “new” Penderecki: blending atonality with baroque forms and a newfound talent for choral writing, this was the first of several large-scale vocal works based on religious texts.

This tremendous performance from the 2018 Salzburg Festival by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Krakow Philharmonic Choir, Warsaw Boys Choir and a quartet of esteemed soloists was conducted by Kent Nagano, whose affinity for Penderecki’s wide-ranging sound world is very much in evidence.

(Capriccio)

The most characteristic works of American composer Morton Feldman (1926-87) don’t lend themselves to either live performances or, especially, recordings: consider his marathon, six-hours-without-a-break String Quartet No 2.

But this recording shows that Feldman could work his singular magic—slowly evolving sounds, mostly quiet dynamics—in smaller forms: 1973’s String Quartet and Orchestra distills the essence of his music to 26 memorable minutes, while 1986’s Coptic Light (his last completed work before his death from cancer) further consolidates his aesthetic of musical calm, even with the extraordinarily large orchestral forces needed. The ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra plays both works brilliantly under the batons of Michael Boder (Coptic Light) and Emilio Pomarico (String Quartet and Orchestra, with the Arditti Quartet).

Blu-rays of the Week 

(Warner Archive)

In her breakthrough performance, Jennifer Lopez plays beloved Mexican singer Selena Quintanilla-Pérez with poise, grace and charm in Gregory Nava’s solid if unspectacular 1997 biopic that’s not entirely hagiographic, although it does show Selena as larger than life—which her fans would agree with—while not really demonstrating why she became so hugely popular.

But Lopez burns a hole through the screen in the many concert sequences and maintains our interest even when the drama or music sags. There’s a fine new hi-def transfer; extras are deleted scenes and two featurettes.

Sautet/Schneider 

(Film Movement Classics)

French director Claude Sautet never really hit it big on American shores, and the two films in this set—1970’s The Things of Life and 1972’s Cesar et Rosalie—provide a glimpse why. Although both films are exceptionally well-crafted and superbly acted (Romy Schneider in both films, Michel Piccoli in Things and Yves Montand and Sami Frey in Cesar), there’s an awkward distance Sautet maintains, particularly in Things, where the details of the pivotal car accident are dawdled over so obsessively (there’s even a glimpse of the stunt driver’s helmet in one shot) that the relationships—ostensibly the films’ point—are moot.

Still, these are interesting films that have been unavailable for awhile, and with excellent hi-def transfers and illuminating retrospective making-ofs, this is recommended to fans of Sautet and the gifted Schneider, who tragically died of a heart attack at age 43 in 1982.

Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) 

Alexander Zemlinsky’s unsettling opera about a dwarf whose unrequited love for a beautiful princess leads to an unsurprisingly tragic conclusion is tricky to cast, especially if, like director Tobias Kratzer, you want a real dwarf in the title role: his solution is to cast David Butt Philip to sing and Mick Morris Mehnert to act out the drama.

The Brechtian alienation effect occasionally works, but it’s more often enervating and unilluminating. Elena Tsallagova brings a welcome pathos to the princess. The curtain raiser, Arnold Schoenberg’s short, brooding Accompaniment to a Film Scene, is dramatized effectively. There are first-rate hi-def video and audio.

Virtual Cinema/VODs of the Week

Aviva 

(Outsider Pictures)

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

It’s too bad that Yakim is so heavyhanded—especially in the many, often repetitive and explicit sex scenes featuring the quartet of performers in various permutations—and that his dancers are, for the most part, inadequate actors: what could have been an insightful study of gender fluidity and sexual complexity is, ultimately, banal. Even the often thrilling choreography loses its luster in several superfluous dancing sequences, like the final one in Central Park. 

Tommaso 

Willem Dafoe gives one of his most fearless performances as an American filmmaker and recovering alcoholic living in Rome with his much younger foreign girlfriend and their young daughter in writer-director Abel Ferrara’s bluntly autobiographical film.

Ferrara’s usual crudeness is tempered by the sweetness of the relationship between Dafoe and Anna (Ferrara’s actual daughter by a much younger foreign actress, Cristina Chiriac, who plays—badly—Dafoe/Ferrara’s woman). Although it goes on far too long—as most Ferrara films do—this strained attempt to make art out of his own messy life is saved by Dafoe’s lacerating portrayal.

DVDs of the Week

Baptiste—Complete 1st Season 

(PBS Masterpiece)

Julien Baptiste, a French private eye in the recent series The Missing, returns for this taut if needlessly violent six-episode drama about a missing girl in Amsterdam and how the case puts many (including Baptiste’s family) in mortal danger.

Tcheky Karyo is persuasively haggard as the no-nonsense Baptiste, and there’s estimable support from Tom Hollander and Jessica Raine as characters who are not always quite what they seem. The show’s biggest flaw is a tendency to allow Baptiste to act stupidly at the most inopportune times, especially in one ludicrous moment when he leaves his car during an obvious setup that leads to disaster. The lone extras are cast and writers’ interviews.

Lost in America 

Former homeless teen Rotimi Rainwater’s documentary, despite its on-the-nose reportage, is necessary viewing for anyone who doubts that homeless children are a tragic black eye on our country today.

The film accumulates its power showing the heartbreaking and at times uplifting stories of children on the streets after leaving home because of abuse, being orphaned or placed in bad foster homes. Then there are the distressing stats and glimpses at Congress that does as little as possible; on the positive side are celebrities like Rosario Dawson, Halle Berry, Tiffany Haddish, and Jewel, who have taken the mantle of fighting for these voiceless people (and some of whom were homeless themselves).

CDs of the Week

Beethoven—Complete Symphonies 

(Ondine)

Tackling Beethoven’s nine symphonies for a complete recording is a mountain conductors and orchestras are thrilled to climb, and American Robert Trevino leads his Malmö Symphony Orchestra in this latest shot at the Mount Everest of symphonic music.

For the most part, these are engaging, impressive performances: best are the first, second, fourth, seventh and eighth, more conventional compared to the towering third, iconic fifth, impressionistic sixth and the indomitable ninth, which sounds most impressive in the final movement, as bass Derek Welton, tenor Tuomas Katajala, mezzo Christine Rice and soprano Kate Royal lead the joyous chorus.

Strauss—Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) 

Richard Strauss’ mammoth 1919 operatic fantasy has long been one of his most problematic stage works, but as the Met Opera’s 2001 production (which I saw, with Deborah Voigt in the title role) proved, it can make for scintillating musical theater.

So it’s too bad that we’re only getting an audio-only recording of this gorgeous-sounding 2019 Vienna State Opera performance starring Stephen Gould and Camila Nyland in two of the most vocally taxing roles in the repertoire. Strauss’ always luscious music is performed by the superlative Vienna State Opera orchestra and chorus, led by conductor Christian Thielemann (who also was in the pit during that 2001 run at the Met).