Blu-rays of the Week 

(Criterion)

In Marcel Pagnol’s hilarious and affecting 1938 classic, a baker in a French village stops making bread after his beloved wife leaves him for a local shepherd; meanwhile, desperate villagers decide to find her and bring her back so the baking can continue as before. As silly as it sounds, it’s also profoundly funny and serious, with that extraordinary actor Raimu nothing less than perfect as the baker. Pagnol, whose Fanny trilogy is a masterpiece, very nearly repeats that feat here.

 

 

 

The B&W film has been dazzlingly restored in hi-def; extras are Pagnol expert Brett Bowles’ commentary; 1966 Pagnol interview; 1967 TV intro by Pagnol; and 1977 French TV segment about Le Castellet, the village where the film was shot.

 

Breakthrough 

(Fox)

When John, a rebellious teenager, falls through the ice and isn’t rescued for a good 15 minutes, it appears improbable that he can survive: but his mother, congregation and schoolmates are praying for him, so who knows?

 

 

 

This earnest if clumsily handled religious drama has its moments—especially the tense ice rescue sequence—and emotional performances by Chrissy Metz (mom), Josh Lucas (dad), Dennis Haysbert (doctor) and Topher Grace (pastor), which help alleviate the nearly unrelenting sanctimony. There’s a splendid Blu-ray transfer; extras include a commentary, featurettes and deleted scene with optional commentary. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buster Keaton Collection, Volume 2—Sherlock Jr./The Navigator 

Two more restored Buster Keaton classics make up the second volume of Cohen’s Keaton Collection, starting with Sherlock Jr., the hilarious and wizardly 1924 comedy whose dazzling visual inventiveness has influenced filmmakers from Luis Bunuel to Woody Allen (whose lovely The Purple Rose of Cairo directly lifts from this). 

 

 

 

The Navigator (also 1924) suffers by comparison from padding and unevenness, but some of its set pieces are as funny and daring as anything Keaton ever did. Both films look immaculate in hi-def; extras include featurettes and scores by Timothy Brock (Sherlock) and Robert Israel (Navigator).

 

Critters Attack!

(Warner Bros)

Warner Bros. provided me with a free copy of this disc for review.

The title says it all in this tongue-in-cheek horror flick about a litter of gremlin-like creatures who tear apart everyone in sight, except for a bunch of resourceful teens who finally beat back their invasion.

 

 

 

There are truly hilarious moments amid the encroaching goofiness and blood spurting, but director Bobby Miller knows that 89 minutes is about the furthest he can stretch this, and he does that job efficiently, with an assist from Dee Wallace (the mom from E.T.), having a blast blasting away critters. The hi-def transfer looks good; extras comprise Miller’s commentary and featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

DVD of the Week 

(Warner Bros)

In this tense series, passengers on a plane that took off in 2013 land in 2018, yet they feel that it was only a few hours. From this Twilight Zone premise comes myriad plot strands both personal and professional, including deaths in families, new relationships and marriages, and other rude intrusions of life.

 

 

 

Throughout these 16 episodes, the seeds of an involving drama are planted, and if some subplots end up as dead ends, there’s enough of interest here to make the trip worthwhile—at least until the survivors return to the airport to look at the fateful plane. 

 

CDs of the Week

Berlioz Odyssey—The Complete Sir Colin Davis Recordings 

(LSO)

Colin Davis, who died in 2013, was the go-to conductor for the big, sweeping music of the great French composer Hector Berlioz. This essential 16-disc set includes Davis’ final recordings of several Berlioz masterpieces, including his operas—the towering epic Les Troyens, the gorgeous-sounding bio Benvenuto Cellini and the gossamer Shakespearean adaptation Beatrice et Benedict—and his massive orchestral and choral works, from the ubiquitous Symphonie fantastique and beautiful Harold in Italy to the thunderous Messe des morts. 

 

 

 

Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra, various choruses and soloists bring this Romantic (with a capital “R”) music to thrillingly vivid life, and the recordings (supervised by James Mallinson, who died last year, a great to loss to the industry) are amazingly detailed, especially the discs that are also SACDs.

Blu-rays of the Week 

(Warner Bros)

David F. Sandberg’s dopey but disarming superhero movie smartly doesn’t take itself too seriously—except when it annoyingly piles on endless false endings, dragging things out 20 minutes longer than they should be, and threatening an inevitable sequel during the end credits.

 

 

 

Asher Angel and Zachary Levi are in fine form as teenage Billy and his superhero alter ego, Mark Strong is amusingly villainous as Dr. Sivana and Jack Dylan Grazer is a born scene-stealer as Billy’s foster brother Freddy. It all looks splendid on Blu; extras include a commentary, gag reel, featurettes, deleted scenes, and alternate opening and closing.

 

 

 

BRD Trilogy

(Criterion Collection)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s three melodramas about postwar Germany are highlighted by three great actresses: Hanna Schygulla (1979’s The Marriage of Maria Braun), Barbara Sukowa (1981’s Lola) and Rosel Zech (1982’s Veronika Voss) give glorious performances that raise the level of these otherwise strident films.

 

 

 

There’s also visual luster in the rich cinematography of Michael Ballhaus (Braun) and Xaver Schwarzenberger (Lola and Voss, with its enticing B&W images). Criterion’s hi-def transfers look tremendous; voluminous extras include commentaries, interviews, archival footage of Fassbinder interviews and on-set workings, and I Don't Just Want You to Love Me, a full-length career-spanning doc about the director.

 

 

 

 

 

Fast Color 

Cowriter-director Julia Hart’s pretentious sci-fi drama, set in an arid Midwest in a near-future, follows a young woman with supernatural powers, on the run from the shadowy authorities, who returns home to see her estranged mother and young daughter.

 

 

 

Despite inventive flashes, Fast Color bogs down in confusion in lieu of interesting character development; luckily, the cast—led by the extraordinarily compelling Gugu Mbatha-Raw—provides the humanity the script and direction lack. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; extras are a commentary and making-of featurette.

 

 

 

DVD of the Week

Dogman 

(Magnolia)

In Italian director Matteo Garrone’s latest, vengeance takes the form of a put-upon dog groomer who finally has enough of the town bully, after spending a year in jail for refusing to implicate him in a robbery.

 

 

 

Despite Marcello Fonte’s entirely believable performance in the title role, Dogman is an entirely predictable fantasy that contents itself with scenes of vicious but repetitive violence, set in a crumbling town where I doubt such a dog grooming saloon could stay in business. Fonte won Best Actor at Cannes last year, but his intensity isn’t enough to rescue Dogman from the dog house.

 

 

 

 

 

CD of the Week 

(Decca)

Composer Clara Schumann (best known as the wife of 19th century master Robert Schumann) is on a roll! This disc—played with beauty and precision by Isata Kanneh-Mason—is the third in the last few months containing her romantic music that I’ve reviewed, but it’s the first that’s all Clara from start to finish.

 

 

 

Kanneh-Mason delicately tackles several lovely miniatures (Romances for piano and for piano/violin, along with two transcriptions of Robert’s lieder), but reserves her greatest strengths for traversing Clara’s A Minor concerto and G Minor sonata, both substantive, engrossing works which deserve wider currency.

 

Surely one of the most enjoyable events in the New York area this season will prove to be the appearance of the fabulous singer and actress, Laura Benanti, at the Caramoor Summer Music Festival in Katonah—on the evening of Saturday, July 6th—with the artist presenting the latest version of her cabaret act, “Tales from Soprano Isle,” accompanied by a trio featuring Anne Klein on guitar, Michael Thurber on bass, and music director Todd Almond on piano.

 

Looking characteristically lovely in a beautiful, short, orange dress and sporting an adorable bob, Benanti opened hilariously with a fifteen-minute compression of her part as Eliza Doolittle in the extraordinary My Fair Lady by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, the triumphant Broadway run of which she is just completing. She thrillingly performed such magnificent songs as “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” “Just You Wait,” “The Rain in Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Show Me,” and “Without You,” in quick succession, channeling the spirit of Julie Andrews who originated the role onstage. She then sang a duet with Almond of his pleasurable mashup of two Tin Pan Alley classics: George and Ira Gershwin’s “Love Is Here to Stay” and Irving Berlin’s “Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me,” written for the film, White Christmas, where it was performed by Rosemary Clooney, another of Benanti’s idols.

 

Benanti segued into music of a more contemporary idiom with a beautiful rendition of the unforgettable Joni Mitchell song, “Conversation,” from her album, Ladies of the Canyon, followed by “Take to the Sky,” by Tori Amos, Mitchell‘s “Carey” (from her seminal album, Blue), and “Mr. Tanner” by Harry Chapin. Another highlight of the show was her version of the wonderful “Vanilla Ice Cream”—a song made famous by the legendary Barbara Cook—from the underrated musical comedy, Jerome Bock and Sheldon Harnick’s She Loves Me—an adaptation of the same play that was the source for the unforgettable Ernst Lubitsch film, The Shop Around the Corner—in which Benanti played on Broadway.

 

She exited the stage for Almond’s performance of his mashup of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Benanti then sang an uproarious medley of popular hits: Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” Sisqo's “Thong Song,” Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe,” Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” (written by Otis Redding), and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”

 

She concluded the concert with the incomparable title song from The Sound of Music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, her first Broadway show. She performed a moving encore—ana cappellarendition of Morgana King’s “It’s a Quiet Thing,” an exquisite finish to a dazzling evening.