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Reviews
February '18 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 21:26
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
An Actor’s Revenge
(Criterion)
In Kon Ichikawa’s strangely affecting 1963 drama, a renowned kabuki performer tracks down the three men responsible for the death of his parents when he was young.
Although parts of this oft-dazzling film are dated, Ichikawa’s singular artistry and the splendid acting by Kazuo Hasegawa in an extremely demanding role make this a singular experience, further enriched by Setsuo Kobayashi’s atmospheric color cinematography. The new hi-def transfer is superb, and extras include an hour-long 1999 Ichikawa interview and a video essay by critic Tony Rayns.
The Florida Project
(A24/Lionsgate)
Willem Dafoe gives his most sympathetic performance since Platoon as the manager of a rundown Orlando motel where wild young kids run all over the place, especially Moonee, left alone by a single mom desperate to make a few bucks and survive however she can.
Director Sean Baker’s interesting look at a segment of the population rarely seen onscreen has tremendous young actors (especially Brooklynn Prince as Moonee), but at nearly two hours the film becomes repetitive and collapses long before the admittedly emotional final sequences. The hi-def transfer is fine; extras comprise a making-of featurette, cast-crew interviews and outtakes.
Wonder
(Lionsgate)
This shamelessly manipulative tearjerker based on R.J. Palacio’s novel about a young boy with a facial deformity (and a close-knit family) attending public school for the first time hits the mark thanks to credible acting by Jacob Tremblay as the boy, Izabela Vidovic as his older sister and Danielle Rose Russell as her best friend.
Director Stephen Chbosky tends toward the obvious—close-ups of the family’s cute dog portend something awful—but gets the sentimental job done. There’s a flawless hi-def transfer; extras include making-of featurette, commentary, music video, and an hour’s worth of interviews and on-set footage.
Off-Broadway Review—Eve Ensler’s “In the Body of the World”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 18 February 2018 02:50
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In the Body of the World
Written and performed by Eve Ensler
Directed by Diane Paulus
Performances through March 25, 2018
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Eve Ensler in In the Body of the World (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Eve Ensler’s talent for witty and thought-provoking solo shows (notably The Vagina Monologues and The Good Body) continues with her latest, In the Body of the World, which may even be her most intimate and personal work yet.
After describing the steadfast determination of women (horribly scarred physically and psychologically) whom she met while visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ensler then admits that something came along to knock her down: cancer. She initially reacted as many do when something bad happens: she blamed herself, even going so far as to ask whether, instead of having a baby, she ended up growing a tumor instead?
Despite the bleak prognosis, Ensler keeps her sense of humor as she describes what she went through—chemo, pain, hope, despair, even a visit from her alternatingly enervating and helpful sister—as she kept tabs on the African women creating a City of Joy for those who’ve been abused. Her humor is laced with heartbreak: she movingly reenacts her final moments with her dying mother, a woman with whom she wasn’t close but who responded to Eve’s overtures at the end.
There’s a lot to digest in In the Body of the World, some of it uncomfortably stark, but Ensler has always bravely blended the personal and the universal (and the political and cultural and…). Diane Paulus directs sympathetically on Myung Hee Cho’s wonderfully evocative set—which morphs into an astonishing garden that Ensler invites the audience onstage to explore after the play ends—visualizing the beauty in our world, explored by Ensler as potently as anything she’s done.
In the Body of the World
Manhattan Theater Club, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheaterclub.org
Off-Broadway Review—Greg Pierce’s “Cardinal”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 14 February 2018 20:18
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Cardinal
Written by Greg Pierce; directed by Kate Whoriskey
Performances through February 25, 2018
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Anna Chlumsky and Adam Pally in Cardinal (photo: Joan Marcus) |
In Greg Pierce’s affably modest comedy Cardinal, Anna Chlumsky puts her years of batting snide comments back and forth on Veep to good use as Lydia Lensky, who returns to her upstate New York hometown with an idea she’s sure will make the sleepy hamlet the toast of travel agencies everywhere: literally paint the (down)town red—a color that gives the play its title—and sit back as hordes come to visit and help resuscitate not only the moribund business district but also anyone left in a burg that’s been shedding population for decades.
Lydia is a talker, buzzing through everyone with her incessant machine-gun delivery. The only plausible reason Pierce provides for why the red paint idea becomes popular is because it’s a new thing, but he also reveals that the town’s mayor Jeff has a crush on Lydia because she reminds him of her sister, who dumped him way back in high school. Although Lydia initially uses that to her advantage, things conspire against her in a way she hadn’t expected.
Some local business people—embodied by no-nonsense Nancy and her autistic son Nat, who run a local bakery/gift shop—are not happy everything has turned red, while Manhattan developer Li-Wei starts tours that bring in visitors while guides like his son Jason tell tales about the town made out of whole cloth.
And there’s Jeff himself who, after sleeping with Lydia for awhile, realizes that her fast talk and charitable bedroom manner obscure what he really feels is right for the area, which is not a downtown painted red.
None of this is presented with any sense of urgency; in fact, its breeziness makes it resemble a direct-to-Netflix rom-com at times. And the play turns downright desperate toward the end, as a gun appears out of nowhere and ends up in Nat’s hands before being inadvertently fired by Jason.
But Cardinal does mirror the tenor of our times, when there’s a con man in the Oval Office who has answers for everything but is unable to do anything, and where coats of paint only temporarily cover up crumbling infrastructure and a systematic inability to modernize left-behind towns.
Under Kate Whoriskey’s understated direction, Chlumsky’s Lydia is an appealing whirlwind, and Alan Pally’s Jeff makes an amusingly befuddled straight man. Too bad the rest of the cast—Becky Ann Baker (Nancy), Alex Hurt (Nat), Stephen Park (Li-Wei) and Eugene Young (Jason)—gets little chance to humanize the cardboard characters. Like its heroine, Cardinal handles a bright idea inelegantly.
Cardinal
Second Stage Theater, 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
2st.com
February '18 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 13 February 2018 18:54
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Orchestra Rehearsal
(Arrow Academy)
Made for Italian television in 1978, Federico Fellini’s faux-documentary satirizes Italian politics with a contagious zest, even if it’s occasionally too on the nose as it shows an orchestra rehearsal that degenerates into in-fighting among musicians, the conductor’s dictatorial behavior, lunatic union demands and climaxing with a wrecking ball. Obvious and didactic at times, it’s magically Fellinian at others, with the great Nina Rota’s beguiling final score (he died soon after composing it).
At 72 minutes, the film ends before it wears out its welcome, unlike some of the other later Fellini works. It all looks spectacular in a restored hi-def transfer; extras are a Richard Dyer interview about Rota’s and Fellini’s relationship and Fellini biographer John Baxter’s video essay.
The Aftermath
(VCI)
In this relentlessly second-rate post-apocalyptic adventure, cowriter-director Steve Barkett plays an astronaut who crash-lands on earth only to discover there’s been a nuclear war and Los Angeles has been destroyed—all that’s left are ragtag bands of mutant survivors.
Acting, writing, directing and plotting are amateurish, but B movie fans might find enough of interest to make it a true guilty pleasure. The film looks decent on Blu; extras include Barkett’s commentary and short film Night Caller, along with interviews.
The Deuce—Complete 1st Season
(HBO)
Everything about this deep dive into the sordid world of prostitution and pornography in early ‘70s New York City is impeccably mounted, from the sets and costumes to the lingo and seedy Times Square atmosphere. But the converging stories are written and handled without much adroitness, and the acting is surprisingly uneven.
Maggie Gyllenhaal does what she can with the whore (and later porn director) with the heart of gold and James Franco makes a hash of the twins he plays; even the appealing and gifted Margarita Levieva—who’s definitely an actress to watch—is defeated by the underwritten role of a smart college student mixed up with shady characters. The series’ eight episodes look splendid in hi-def; extras include commentaries and interviews.
DVD of the Week
Finding Your Roots—Complete 4th Season
(PBS)
For the latest 10-episode season of discovering celebrities’ lineages, Dr. Henry Louis Gates takes 28 guests—running the gamut from Bryant Gumbel and Lupita Nyong’o to Christopher Walken and Ana Navarro—on a highly emotional journey into their families’ pasts, which chronicles our nation’s long and checkered immigration history.
There are even some lighter moments in this fascinating glimpse at American identity: the look on Amy Schumer’s face (and her response) when she finds out that she and Gates are distant cousins is priceless.
