4K/UHD of the Week 

(Warner Bros)

In Guillermo del Toro’s labored parable of Spanish rule under Franco, a young girl—who may be the reincarnation of an underworld princess—escapes into a fantasy world after her mother marries one of the dictator’s most reliable generals.

Del Toro does, as always, show a staggeringly imaginative visual sense (which the impressive photography and special effects contribute mightily to), but this two-hour fable becomes more enervating as it goes along, even wasting two splendid Spanish actresses: Maribel Verdu as the rebel housekeeper and Ariadna Gil, who suffers nobly as the girl’s mother. The new 4K transfer looks unsurprisingly sumptuous; extras include del Toro’s commentary and video prologue and hours of materials in featurettes. 

Blu-rays of the Week

Annabelle Comes Home 

(Warner Bros)

This strange little horror entry continues the tale of the possessed doll that, for some insane reason (to make this movie, I guess), the investigators who have her put it in their home’s heavily-fortified artifacts room. Of course, when they go away, leaving their young daughter with her teenage babysitter, the doll’s presence awakens the other evil spirits to create some havoc.

There are a few decent eerie moments—mainly early on—but the bulk of the movie musters little energy or originality. There’s a crisp hi-def transfer; extras are deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

Child’s Play 

Here’s a reboot I don’t think anyone was pining for: Chuckie, the doll who programs itself to kill, returns in a brand spanking and shiny new box, and what the movie lacks in originality it partly makes up for in a few bizarrely executed murders, including an unfortunate man being scalped and skinned or others being killed in a mall melee.

Of the two new doll horror flicks (see above) movies, this is preferable—but not by much. The hi-def transfer looks fine; extras are featurettes and a making-of.

The Letter 

(Warner Archive)

In William Wyler’s tense 1940 melodrama about adultery and murder, Bette Davis chews the scenery spectacularly in her Oscar-nominated portrayal of Leslie Crosbie, who fatally shoots her lover and tells her husband (and lawyer) it was in self-defense because he forced himself on her.

W. Somerset Maugham’s solid stage play becomes a soapy but entertaining film, marred only by its era’s inability to allow more leeway in dealing with adult themes. The B&W images look vividly-realized in hi-def; extras comprise an alternate ending sequence and Lux Radio Theater adaptations starring Davis from 1941 and 1944.

Nekromantik 1 and 2 

German director Jörg Buttgereit’s necrophiliac romances, from 1987 and 1991, are the very definition of cult films: made on a shoestring with glaring deficiencies in the filmmaking process, storyline and acting. But even though the infamously grotesque gore-filled sequences are nearly Ed Wood-level fake—the nasty and demented mind at work leads to a disgusting but perfect ending when our necrophiliac heroine decapitates her lover during sex and gets impregnated by a corpse.

Of course, most viewers’ mileage may vary: but if you’ve gotten this far, you’re admittedly intrigued. Even on Blu, the movies still retain their cheap look, but that’s to their ultimate benefit. The films are enclosed in a slipcase; extras include commentaries, music video and shorts, making-of featurettes and even a 2011 concert featuring the sequel’s star Monika M.

The Wedding Guest 

(IFC)

Writer-director Michael Winterbottom’s mediocre thriller about the kidnapping of a Pakistani bride-to-be by a British Muslim and their complicated relationship is one of this usually interesting filmmaker’s rare missteps.

Despite his premise, Winterbottom has made an action flick almost completely devoid of tension; instead, its travelogue ride through picturesque locales in Pakistan and India mitigate the convincing performances of Dev Patel and Radhika Apte as the kidnapper and his hostage. The film does look sharp on Blu.

DVD of the Week 

(IFC)

Oliver Murray’s documentary about Bill Wyman, former Rolling Stone who surprisingly retired from the band in 1993, lets the famously reserved bassist narrate the details of his eventful life himself.

Although there are, somewhat disappointingly, no earth-shattering revelations or insights—even his romance of and short-lived marriage to Mandy Smith (whom he met when he was 47 and she 13) is dealt with quickly, waved away by Wyman’s comment that it was all about the heart, not mere lust—the liberal use of Wyman’s amazing collection of archival video and audio make this a worthwhile trip through Stones-related history.

Erich Korngold was a composing and performing prodigy who became one of the 20th century’s most versatile composers, from operas and chamber music to indelible scores for Hollywood films. This new disc also shows that he was an originator of ravishing orchestral colors and brilliant arrangements: his Symphony in F Sharp is about as skillful a 45-minute orchestral workout as one can write.

Even the disc’s so-called filler—Theme and Variations and Straussiana, a tribute to the waltz master Johann Strauss—is done with endlessly bubbly wit. John Wilson conducts a razor-sharp account of these works by the Sinfonia of London.

Devastating loss permeates Florian Zeller’s shallow memory play, The Height of the Storm, in which a long-married couple is shown in the last throes together. The mother, Madeleine, and father, André, now living in their former summer home outside of Paris, are seen together and each one of them alone. It’s a conceit that, on paper, allows for interesting ambiguities, but the unsubtle Zeller instead relies on platitudes and blatant effects to color his study of old age, dementia and death: rather than an affecting drama, the play remains curiously inert.

If that has to do with Christopher Hampton’s translation and Jonathan Kent’s direction, which keep the characters French even though the entire cast is British it’s impossible to say. But both of those add more layers of distance from these people, which further lessens the effect of an intimate chronicle about long-gestating emotional wreckage in a family weighed down by André’s notoriety (and infidelities) as a writer while Madeleine raised their now-grown daughters Anne and Élise, who have relationship problems of their own.

Zeller’s melodrama presents fragments of this couple’s alternate realities, while Kent’s fussy staging underlines the obvious point that sometimes Madeleine and other times André is not present. Of course, “not present” also means lacking mental capability, one sign of dementia, which is how André often appears, even while physically present. 

Such vacillation is less piercing than it might be; early on it already seems a mere gimmick rather than a salient way of displaying the ravages of dementia and old age. And despite a formidable cast—Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce are unimpeachable as Madeleine and André, with equal amounts of welcome humor to alleviate the tragic aspects, despite Pryce’s tendency to shout his lines—The Height of the Storm (whose heavyhanded title, from both a poem recited by André and a weather event that’s mentioned, is freighted with symbolic and actual weight) provokes neither tears nor empathy.

Now that fall is here, let’s backtrack to a summer of performances on both sides of the Atlantic. First, Bard Summerscape, Bard College’s annual summer arts festival on the bucolic shores of the Hudson River, two hours north of Manhattan, and the accompanying Bard Music Festival looked at Korngold and His World: the great Viennese composer Erich Korngold was best known for his fantastic film scores when he went to Hollywood during the golden era of the 1930s but, as artistic director Leon Botsein showed in his usual impeccable and provocative programming, Korngold and his music were so much more.

I caught two Korngold programs at Bard: a concert anchored by his orchestral music and a fully-staged production of his opera Das Wunder der Heliane, both conducted by Botstein and both equally accomplished and mesmerizing musically, if—in the opera’s case—less so dramatically. The orchestral concert, titled The Orchestral Imagination, was highlighted by Korngold’s dazzling piano concerto for the left hand, played with aplomb by stellar soloist Orion Weiss, even at times he and Botstein didn’t seem to be on the same musical page.

Also on the program were works by other underrated Viennese composers Franz Schreker (his Vom ewigen Leben comprises lovely settings of two Walt Whitman poems) and Alexander Zemlinsky, whose Lyric Symphony is a large-scale wonder. Botstein, despite bumpy patches, led the American Symphony Orchestra in a vivid reading of Zemlinsky’s masterpiece, with stellar vocal contributions by soprano Erica Petrocelli and baritone Michael J. Hawk. The same goes for the orchestra’s playing during Korngold’s Heliane, an opera filled with beautiful, memorable melodies but whose libretto—takes convolutedness to another level.

If director Christian Räth’s visuals are too extreme—but which still let Thomas C. Hase’s magisterial lighting come to the fore—the orchestra, chorus and the leads, particularly Lithuanian soprano Ausrine Stundyte’s virtuoso Heliane, give the audience a chance to concentrate on Korngold’s music, among his very best.

Closer to Manhattan, the summer festival at Caramoor (in Katonah) comprises orchestral and chamber concerts, jazz performances and sundry other events, including the appearance of Broadway diva Laura Benanti—one of the Great White Way’s brightest lights—and her fabulous new show, Tales from the Soprano Isle.

In addition to singing both Broadway standards and contemporary tunes, along with a marvelously delivered mini-suite of classics from My Fair Lady, in which she recently starred on Broadway, with her silvery, shimmery soprano, Benanti tells stories about her career and her life which now features her toddler daughter) with her singularly hilarious and pointed sarcasm. Accompanied by pianist Todd Almond, Benanti proves herself (once again) as a multi-threat hyphenate: singer-actor-comedian-storyteller extraordinaire.

The summer music season began early in June on a trip to London, which included terrific concerts at Wigmore Hall and the Church at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The latter hosted the formidable Kennedy Ensemble played Mendlessohn’s Octet in a fiery (and free!) performance that caught the playfulness and seriousness of purpose the 16-year-old composer corralled for one of his greatest works.

The storied and acoustically perfect Wigmore Hall was the setting for a superbly programmed recital by violinist Daniel Pioro. Opening with an exquisite version of Biber’s singular G Minor Passacaglia, Pioro was joined by pianist Roderick Chadwick for an arresting rendition of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 10 and then, finally and most thrillingly, was a breathtaking arrangement of Vaughan Williams’ yearning The Lark Ascending for violin, piano, cello and viola by cellist Clare O’Connell (who joined the men and violist Charlotte Bonneton for the performance). Pioro’s passionate playing of Vaughan Williams' lovely violin line allowed us to hear this familiar but gorgeous piece anew.