With her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill, 21-year-old Canadian singer Alanis Morissette was catapulted into the stratosphere. However cringeworthy many of her lyrics were, the songs were raw and angry, instantly memorable and singular, so it’s no surprise that she never approached that level of creativity or success again.

But making a dozen impassioned tunes of post-teen angst the basis of a musical would appear to be foolhardy—and after seeing Jagged Little Pill on Broadway, I realized that my fears were confirmed. It might not have been dramatic enough to put onstage a young woman trying to make sense of relationships; but that might have been more honest than what we get: Diablo Cody’s book concerns a superficially “perfect” middle-class Connecticut family surrounded by seemingly every conceivable social issue in the news recently.

We’re introduced to the Healy (for “healing”—get it?) family: there’s smiling mom Mary Jane, who’s hooked on painkillers and nearly dies from an OD. There’s Frankie, the smart high school daughter who’s adopted, bisexual and black, the progressive trifecta. There’s older brother Nick, the favorite, who witnesses a date rape at a drunken party and doesn’t do the right thing. And there’s dad Steve, who watches porn at work and is generally oblivious to what’s really going on under his roof.

The problem isn’t that Jagged Little Pill tackles heavy-duty issues, it’s that it does so without delving even semi-deeply into them; after bringing up one, it moves quickly onto the next. This creates a jagged little tonal problem for the show, most obviously when Morissette’s still-powerful smash hit “You Oughta Know”—turned into a brilliant showstopper by Lauren Patten as Jo, Frankie’s former girlfriend who discovered that Frankie slept with a male classmate—brings down the house, immediately followed by a harrowing account of the school-party date rape, a moment as awkward as Morissette’s teen-diary lyrics. Putting a teen’s anger over her girlfriend cheating on the same level as date rape is false equivalence of the highest order.

The bright spot of Cody’s book is “Ironic,” with its infamously ill-chosen lyrics about events that actually aren’t ironic. One day in class, Frankie reads from her own short story, which comprises the song’s lyrics. As she sings, other students—and the teacher—pipe in exasperatedly about the unironic nature of her passages. But that amusing self-reference only undermines the rest of the musical’s surface-level exploration.

Jagged Little Pill has been brashly directed by Diane Paulus, whose visual tour de force is a clever rewinding of the action during the song “Smiling,” one of Morissette and Glen Ballard’s two new songs, showing Mary Jane’s desperately buying her pills from a dealer after she can’t get a new prescription. Paulus has been immeasurably helped by marvelously suggestive sets by Riccardo Hernandez and insinuatingly evocative lighting by Justin Townsend. 

Songs old and new are well-handled by a cast that’s otherwise unable to create real characters out of ciphers. Along with Patten’s formidable Jo, the show’s standouts are Celia Rose Gooding’s Frankie and Elizabeth Stanley’s Mary Jane, all of whom at least nod toward complexity in an otherwise mainly cartoonish 2-1/2 hours.

(Criterion)

Jean-Luc Godard made his second film immediately after his breakthrough debut, 1959’s Breathless, but the incendiary material—the director scaldingly indicts both the French and the Algerians’ use of torture in the then-current Algerian War—caused its ban in France and it was not shown elsewhere until 1963.

Its elliptical narrative is typically Godardian, but Godard’s political urgency, the sharp B&W Raoul Coutard photography, and the first appearance of his then-muse, Anna Karina, make Soldat pointed and still relevant. Criterion has provided its usual superb hi-def transfer; the interesting if skimpy extras comprise two Godard interviews—a 1961 audio one and a 1965 video one—and a 1963 interview with actor Michel Subor.

London Kills—Series 2

Doc Martin—Series 9

(Acorn TV)

In the second series of London Kills, the team investigates the killing of an elderly man whose nine-year-old grandson called in the killing. Soon child abuse and other cover-ups dominate in this taut, tantalizing and extremely well-plotted follow-up to last season’s auspicious debut.

By now, Doc Martin is as comfortable as an old shoe, but series 9 throws a curve ball: the good doc is being hounded by officials unpersuaded by his unorthodox methods, even though it’s been good enough for the locals for years. Both series feature tremendous acting to go along with the fine writing. There are first-rate hi-def transfers; extras include interviews and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Primal 

Even by the standards of recent Nicolas Cage fare, this is a doozy: he plays a big-game hunter whose treasured catch, a white panther, is cargo on a ship heading back from Africa to America. Also on board is a dangerous prisoner who, of course, gets loose and causes trouble, especially when he frees the panther and other dangerous animals of Cage’s including—of course—deadly snakes.

The claustrophobic ship setting isn’t really given a thorough workout by director Nick Powell, but it remains mindless (and relatively brief) entertainment. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

DVD of the Week

In Safe Hands

(Icarus)

Jeanne Henry has made an emotionally involving look at adoption, and how each person involved—would-be parents, temporary guardians and, of course, the agency workers themselves—rides a personally wrenching roller coaster as the bureaucracy’s slow machinery grinds its way forward.

Marrying insightful writing and precise directing with exemplary performances—particularly from that sorely underused actress Elodie Bouchez as the expectant mom and Sandrine Kilberlin as the lead agency rep—Henry’s drama is a memorable soap opera.

CD of the Week 

(SPPF)

The great composers of French song include Fauré, Chausson, Poulenc, Duparc—and Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947), whose own mastery of the French art song, the mélodie, was wide-ranging and impressive through several decades and dozens of songs.

This four-disc set collects everything that Hahn composed, from the early “Rêverie” and “Si mes vers avaient des ailes”—written at age 14 to words by Victor Hugo—to the posthumously published Neuf Mélodies retrouvées. All 107 songs—for which the lavish and illustrated booklet includes the French texts and English translations—are expressively sung by Greek baritone Tassis Christoyannis, who is beautifully accompanied by American pianist Jeff Cohen. 

4K of the Week 

(Warner Bros)

Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece, derided upon its 1980 release because it didn’t play by the genre’s arbitrary rules, has since taken its rightful place as one of our greatest directors’ greatest films, to say nothing of being superior to Stephen King’s novel in every way. The photography—featuring the most unnerving Steadicam ever—sets, editing, and music (by Bartok, Penderecki and Ligeti) are astonishing, and the performances by Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall and Danny Lloyd are appropriately over-the-top.

The ultra hi-def transfer looks fantastic; extras—same as previous releases—include an informative commentary by Kubrick biographer John Baxter and Steadicam inventor/operator Garrett Brown, daughter Vivian Kubrick’s playful yet insightful The Making of ‘The Shining’ documentary (with her own commentary) and two puffy retrospective featurettes.

Blu-rays of the Week

Krypton—Complete Final Season 

(Warner Bros)

(Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of this Blu-ray. The opinions I share are my own.)

In this sci-fi fantasy series’ second and final season, its clever alternative Superman origin story comes to an end: Seg-El, Superman’s future grandfather, tries to save his beloved eponymous home planet from the malign leadership of Zod by bringing together a group of passionate resisters.

The second season is fleeter, less self-serious than the first, and it goes without saying that it’s far more entertaining to watch. There’s a superior hi-def transfer; extras are two featurettes.

The Lighthouse 

(Lionsgate) 

Veep—Complete Final Season 

(HBO)

HBO’s political comedy jumped the shark a couple of seasons ago, despite what some have said: it was the same tired material regurgitated, and the performers, talented as they were, simply treaded water playing these caricatures.

Nothing much has changed in the final, abbreviated (seven-episode) season, even if there are still sparks of the old back-and-forth, especially among Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Anna Chlumsky and Timothy Simons. There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras are brief featurettes and cast interviews.

DVDs of the Week 

(Magnolia)

This mockumentary follows Tim Heidecker as he runs for the position of district attorney in San Bernadino County, California, as—get this—revenge for how he felt he was treated by the current DA when Heidecker was on trial for the deaths of 19 people at a festival he ran (it was a hung jury—there was a single holdout to convicting him).

Notwithstanding its clever setup, director Eric Notarnicola’s film makes it much too obvious that the egomaniacal Heidecker is tRump Jr. by another name as his campaign sputters before flaming out altogether. There are moments of potent satire, but too much of the running time is unfortunately given over to Heidecker’s clichéd arrogant jerk.

CD of the Week

Tony Banks—5 

(Naxos)

Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks—whose synthesizer sounds were one of the reasons why the band was a progressive-rock supergroup for decades, even when Phil Collins’ pop sensibilities took over for the band’s final years—tries his hand at symphonic music with these five works.

Unfortunately, there’s little variation to be heard as 5 mainly comprises washes of sound with nods to Philip Glass-like block chords; calling it unimaginative is putting it nicely. Nick Ingman’s orchestrations and arrangements do little to distinguish these five works from one another, and Ingman and his Czech National Symphony Orchestra and Choir forces follows suit.