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Reviews
April '15 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 21 April 2015 20:53
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Echoes
(Anchor Bay)
When a young writer with nightmarish visions brought on by her inability to sleep stays at her boyfriend's glass house in the desert to get needed seclusion, her problem gets worse, as people begin dying...could she be the cause?
This stylishly superficial horror film makes scant sense, but that's part of the fun; there's also a committed lead performance by the excellent actress Kate French, who makes this far more watchable than it deserves to be. The movie looks sharp on Blu-ray.
(Anchor Bay/Radius)
In Joe Lynch's cartoonish action thriller, a steady stream of gun-toting men and women (and the occasional canine) comes to finish off a prostitute after her mobster boss gives the word, and for whom she devises new and ingenious ways to survive their attacks.
Such silliness overstays its welcome even at a scant 90 minutes, but there is literally bloody entertainment for awhile as Salma Hayek—sporting a huge back tattoo like any self-respecting femme fatale—explosively lights up the dozens of bad guys and gals. The Blu-ray transfer is good; extras comprise two commentaries and a music video.
Fortitude
(Sky Vision)
As bleak and cold as its Arctic locale, this multi-part series follows several morose characters tied together by a murder that upsets a quiet, dying title town trying to become economically relevant as a tourist destination. An outside detective brought in to lead the investigation is another thorn, but that's merely the tip of a messy soap-opera iceberg that opens a pandora's box of secrets, to mix metaphors.
A sterling cast, led by Michael Gambon, Christopher Eccleston, Sofie Grabol and a less than usually annoying Stanley Tucci, helps the beautifully shot series become more than just a dramatic oddity. The hi-def transfer is stunning; extras are cast and crew interviews.
Mark of the Devil
Day of Anger
(Arrow USA)
In his 1969 horror flick Mark of the Devil, director Michael Armstrong tackles religious hysteria with schlocky aplomb, and terrifically deadpan actors like Herbert Lom and Udo Kier as witch hunters and voluptuous beauties like Ingeborg Schoner and Oliviera Vico as potential victims keep this blood-spilling, body-burning thriller moving to its predictable but satisfying conclusion.
Too bad 1967's Day of Anger, Tonino Valerii's routine western, becomes more absurd as it goes along, never approaching Devil's "guilty pleasure" status; Valerii's directing is barely competent, and his mostly (dubbed) Italian cast doesn't interact believably with Lee Van Cleef's gunslinger. Both films look superbly grainy on Blu; extras comprise a Devil commentary, as well as featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.
Mysteries of the Unseen World in 3D
(Virgil Films)
This IMAX movie, plunging us into the midst of an amazing world we can't see with the naked eye, uses both time-lapse and high-speed photography to show the "nanoworld," where insects with dozens of eyes and creatures even tinier than they exist, like strains of bacteria (both beneficial and harmful) that live on our own bodies.
Forrest Whitaker narrates with the right balance of authority and awe; the 40 minutes' worth of incredible footage includes owls flying in slo-mo, grass growing right before our very eyes and God's eye views of the heretofore invisible traces of civilization on earth. The Blu-ray, in both 3D or 2D, looks spectacular; lone extra is a 15-minute making-of featurette.
Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed
(Strand Releasing)
David Trueba's engagingly nostalgic drama set in Spain in 1966 (when John Lennon was on location filming How I Won the War with director Richard Lester) is a subtle critique of the stifling Franco era that smartly plays as a sweet-natured character study.
An exceptional acting trio—Javier Camara as a middle-aged Fab Four-obsessed teacher wanting to meet Lennon, Fransesc Colomer as a teenager running away from his dictatorial dad, and (in the movie's most graceful performance) Natalia de Molina as a pregnant young woman who left her convent—provides endearing grace notes to keep the focus on the film's central relationships. Extras comprise deleted scenes and a featurette on Pat Metheny's acoustic guitar arrangements for the film.
Population Boom
(First Run)
Maker of the documentary Plastic Planet, Austrian director Werner Boote unleashes another provocation, this time bucking conventional wisdom coalesced around the belief that the world is overpopulated, and it's only a matter of time before we its irreversible effects.
Speaking with many experts in their fields from around the globe, Boote questions whether mankind must reduce its seven billion-plus inhabitants or else: will industrialized nations let go of their demand that developing nations stop developing? Whether one agrees or not, Boote raises necessary questions about our very survival.
(Big World Pictures)
The second of French director Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons is this slight if sweet-natured 1992 study of a young woman who, five years after a fling (and a daughter), juggles two men while hoping that the father of her child will reappear.
As always with Rohmer's films, the talkiness is less penetrating and interesting than he thinks, while a bad French performance of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale brings the movie to a screeching halt for several minutes. Why Rohmer's women seem borderline dim-witted—the heroine gave the original paramour the wrong address, which is why they are apart—is a quirk others seem to appreciate more than I.
Whitney
(Lionsgate)
Actress Angela Bassett made her directorial debut with this Lifetime Channel biopic about Whitney Houston, who died of a drug overdose in 2012: recounting her problematic relationship with, marriage to and separation from fellow singer Bobby Brown, it's a surprisingly (semi) warts and all portrait.
At 88 minutes, it's nowhere near in-depth, but it's worth seeing thanks to Bassett's sincerity, Yaya DaCosta's canny portrayal of Whitney, and singer Deborah Cox's spot-on renditions of several of the star's biggest hits.
Off-Broadway Reviews—Ibsen's "Ghosts," Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 19 April 2015 21:05
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Ghosts
Written by Henrik Ibsen; adapted and directed by Richard Eyre
Performances through May 3, 2015
Hamlet
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Austin Pendleton
Performances through May 10, 2015
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| Howle, McKenna and Manville in Ibsen's Ghosts at BAM (photo: Stephanie Berger) |
Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, which scandalized audiences after its 1882 premiere by tackling such topics as sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate children, euthanasia and religious hypocrisy, is considered far milder stuff today, so directors and adapters make it more playable for modern audiences. Case in point is Richard Eyre's compelling version that took London by storm two years ago, which gives Ibsen's already fast-moving story an even greater urgency.
Ghosts concerns widow Helene Alving, who is making plans for her dead husband's memorial service, for which her beloved artist son Oswald has finally returned from Paris. Her long-ago paramour Pastor Manders arrives to discuss plans for an orphanage she built in her husband's memory, while her servant girl Regina tries avoiding her carpenter father Jacob, who wants her to live with him instead of staying in the Alving home.
When Helene confesses to a shocked Manders that her late husband was no paragon of virtue—in one of his many affairs, he fathered Regina, unbeknownst to Jacob or to Oswald, who wants to take her back to Paris and marry her—the family's symbolic ghosts break loose. Later, a metaphorical but very real blaze destroys the orphanage, which may be, as Manders says, a sign from God about the family's immorality. (Manders convinced Helene to forego insurance for the orphanage because God would take care of the place.)
Eyre's lucid adaptation and cogent directing aptly underline the anguished intimacy of Ibsen's drama: what might be musty and old-fashioned becomes simply spellbinding. This is helped immeasurably by Tim Hatley's striking set, which comprises translucent walls through which characters can be seen in a milky haze, and Peter Mumford's magisterial lighting, which makes such ghostly imagery plausible.
The strong cast comprises Charlene McKenna's Regina, Brian McCardie's Jacob, Will Keen's Manders and Billy Howle's Oswald, whose final scene is heartrending. And hovering above all is Lesley Manville as Helene Alving, an emotionally piercing performance by an actress known for her splendid work in several Mike Leigh films.
This is the second excellent staging of Ghosts I've seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, following Ingmar Bergman's intensely personal adaptation in 2003.
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| Allen and Sarsgaard in Shakespeare's Hamlet at CSC (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
Hamlet is often described as the tragedy of a man who couldn't make up his mind, but director Austin Pendleton and actor Peter Sarsgaard have turned it into the tragedy of a man who seems to have has lost his mind. From the moment Sarsgaard walks onstage, clean shaven and bald, it's as if he just escaped from a hospital ward (on the show's Playbill cover, he looks more Hamlet-like in a full beard and full head of hair).
What Sarsgaard does onstage—shrieking laugh, bizarre intonations, voice rising to a high-pitched squeal while speaking Shakespeare's glorious poetry—is at odds with his usual intelligence and naturalness onstage. That the ghost of Hamlet's father is never seen in this production reinforces the possibility that Hamlet's own mixed-up mind forces him into his actions.
It's just too bad that Pendleton and Sarsgaard never make this a plausible or well thought-out interpretation. Pendleton's production, in fact, is a bumpy ride throughout; the small cast, cramped stage, minimalist set and modern costumes confuse, rather than illuminate, matters.
Alongside Sarsgaard's meandering performance, Penelope Allen makes an unregal Gertrude and Lisa Joyce a fetching but dull Ophelia; Stephen Spinella, an unpersuasive Polonius, resorts to hamminess in desperation. Best of all is Harris Yulin's dignified Claudius, but no staging of Hamlet should have as its focus the prince's murderous uncle and stepfather.
Ghosts
BAM Harvey Theatre, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY
bam.org
Hamlet
Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, New York, NY
classicstage.org
April '15 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 14 April 2015 22:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Big Eyes
(Anchor Bay/Weinstein Co)
In Tim Burton's most fully realized film since 2004's Big Fish, the stranger-than-fiction true story of Margaret Keane, who ghostpainted a series of popular (and infamous) works in the '50s and '60s, is brought to vividly outlandish life, helped by a solid script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (veterans of the equally weird biopics Ed Wood—Burton's best film—and The People vs. Larry Flynt).
Although Christoph Waltz is typically hammy as husband Walter Keane, who took credit for the paintings, Amy Adams sympathetically plays Margaret in a subtle characterization that fuels Burton's engrossing exploration of art, pseudo-art and popular culture. The colorful visuals look terrific on Blu; extras include a making-of featurette and Q&As with Burton, Adams, Margaret Keane and others.
(Alchemy)
A riveting real-life tale, director Daniel Alfredson's fast-paced, involving thriller recreates the kidnapping of a Heineken beer company heir in Amsterdam in 1983, when he and his driver were held for 23 days by a group of criminals who were paid $35 million in ransom; although all the men were eventually caught, very little of the money was recovered.
Anthony Hopkins makes a perfectly bemused Heineken, and Jim Sturgess and Sam Worthington are convincing as the gang's leaders. The hi-def transfer is immaculate; extras are deleted scenes.
Mad as Hell
(Oscilloscope)
The Young Turks is an internet phenomenon that's spawned a massive online presence and popularity, and its frank-talking founder Cenk Uygur is profiled in director Andrew Napier's examination of how politics and the media intersect in the 21st century.
With uncontrolled rage, Uygur goes after Republicans and Democrats indiscriminately, as he speaks truth to power online and on TV, where he had brief runs as host on both MSNBC and Current TV. The movie, primarily television/internet footage and talking-head interviews, looks decent enough on Blu; extras comprise several featurettes.
(Anchor Bay/Starz)
This tightly-wound eight-episode mystery drama recounts the unbearable pain and anger brought on husband Tony and wife Emily when their five-year-old Oliver disappears while on vacation in France (the series was shot on location in Belgium).
With menace in the air, The Missing slowly moves toward its shocking denouement, following the glacial pace of investigations and simultaneous deterioration of the relationship of the grieving Tony and Emily, played impeccably by James Nesbitt and Frances O'Connor. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras are short featurettes.
The Voices
(Lionsgate)
This almost jaw-dropping fiasco, which follows the adventures of an cheerful serial killer who has conversations with his cat and dog and, eventually, the severed heads of female co-workers whom he butchers, does nearly everything wrong.
Director Marjane Satrapi has an insistently strident tone (is she really the maker of Persepolisand Chicken with Plums?), Michael R. Perry has delivered a ham-fisted script and, most depressingly of all, several fine actors are called on to do their worst work, from Ryan Reynolds as the lovable anti-hero to the usually adorable Gemma Arterton and Anna Kendrick as two of his victims. The Blu-ray at least looks good; extras include featurettes. extended and deleted scenes.
(Icarus)
Considered the "merry pranksters of contemporary art," Peter Fischli and David Weiss collaborated on elaborately-scaled, dementedly crafted chaos that included an exquisitely wrought contraption that was filmed for posterity in 1987 for this endlessly entrancing 30-minute feature.
In an astonishing domino effect, the artists built up a 100-foot-long structure, comprising household and tool-shed items like tires, kettles, and pieces of wood that affect one another in a painstaking chain reaction of self-destruction that is worth watching again and again if only to continue asking yourself, "How (and why) did they do that?" The Blu-ray looks adequate, considering the source material (a DVD is also included).
DVDs of the Week
The Book of Negroes
(e one)
Based on a novel by Lawrence Hill, this extraordinarily detailed, often tough to watch mini-series might be seen as a Rootsfor a new generation, but after all, the sorrowful history of American slavery has literally thousands of individual stories, and Aunjanue Ellis's is as valid and as drama-worthy as any.
She was kidnapped by African slave traders as a young girl, taken to America and sold to South Carolina masters; years later, she ends up in England, where she becomes a leading proponent of abolition of the slave trade. Striking production values and superb acting—especially by Aunjanue Ellis as our valiant heroine—this mini-series is a must-watch. Extras include deleted scenes, interviews and a featurette.
Happy Valley
(Music Box)
The shameful Penn State scandal, in which beloved football coach Joe Paterno was excoriated then fired when he did the barest minimum when confronted with evidence that one of his long-time assistants, Jerry Sandusky, was a serial pedophile, is exasperatingly recounted by evenhanded director Amir Bar-Lev.
Everyone has his say, from those who defended Paterno and Penn State, like the coach's widow, to those, like Sandusky's adopted son, who first defends his father then admits to being molested and joins the other accusers. This is a chilling firsthand account of how a closely-knit community was torn apart and how it continues to deal with such heinous crimes. The lone extra is a director interview.
(First Run)
Audrey Tautou's eternal cuteness becomes a tragic mask for a severely damaged protagonist in writer-director Laetitia Colombani's unsettling, blackly comic thriller (from 2003) about an unhinged young woman, Angelique, in love with a doctor, Loic (Samuel Le Bihan), who has a pregnant wife (Isabelle Carre) whom Angelique feels is in the way of their happiness.
Colombani smartly balances Angelique's buoyant but clueless happiness with Loic's matter-of-fact uneasiness in a boldly unconventional drama that only missteps at the very end, when the mental-health profession is called into question in a cavalier way for the sake of a "shock" ending.
One Step Beyond
(Film Chest)
Even though it debuted on television a few months before the more celebrated Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond carved out its own niche with spellbinding half-hour stories of strange goings-on that ran the gamut from vaguely supernatural to outright inexplicable.
Narrator/host John Newland took on the Rod Serling role here, and sharp viewers will track down many stars just starting out or at the tail end of their careers, from Warren beatty, Suzanne Pleshette and Yvette Mimieux to Joan Fontaine and Norman Lloyd. The six discs contain 70 episodes of the series.
Broadway Reviews—Vanessa Hudgens in "Gigi" and the Gershwins' "An American in Paris"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 13 April 2015 21:25
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Gigi
Book/lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; adapted by Heidi Thomas; music by Frederick Loewe
Choreographed by Joshua Bergasse; directed by Eric Schaeffer
An American in Paris
Book by Craig Lucas; lyrics by Ira Gershwin; music by George Gershwin
Choreographed and directed by Christopher Wheeldon
It's only a coincidence, but two musicals opening on Broadway were once '50s movie musicals directed by Vincente Minnelli: the six-time Oscar-winning An American in Paris (1951) and nine-time Oscar-winning Gigi (1958).
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| Cott and Hudgens in Gigi (photo: Margot Schulman) |
Gigi was once a Broadway flop in 1973, when book writer-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe expanded the original movie into a stage version with additional songs. The new Gigi has an adaptation by Heidi Thomas that de-fangs the premise from French novelist Colette's 1944 story: the idea of a 15-year-old girl being prepped as a courtesan for rich older men won't fly in 2015, so it's been entirely flattened, its bubblyness excised, and the result, while entertaining, is like drinking sparkling cider, not Moet et Chandon, on New Year's Eve.
The retooling of Gigi was obviously done with an eye on the box office: it would be unseemly for preteens and teens to see High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens onstage and their parents having to explain lecherous oldsters ogling her. So Gigi has become a quite independent (and legal) 18 and is wooed by a Gaston barely a few years older; this makes for a cute rom-com a la High School Musical but destroys Gigi's going up against a society that allows its young women to become men's playthings.
More damagaing is director Eric Schaeffer's production, which is about as French as Starbucks coffee: although Derek McLane's belle epoque sets dazzle and Catherine Zuber's elegant costumes catch the eye, the hard-working cast huffs and puffs without ever finding that certain je ne sais quoi that should never be so strained. To start from the bottom, steely-voiced Corey Cott's Gaston is so whiny and charisma-starved that it's impossible to believe him as Paris's most eligible bachelor.
Likewise, Howard McGillin is too bland as his uncle Honore; he has none of Maurice Chevalier's effortless urbanity in the movie. In his defense, McGillin doesn't get to sing the movie Honore's signature song, "Thank Heaven for Little Girls," which has been given instead to Gigi's conniving grandmother Mamita and Aunt Alicia so the old man is no longer seen as a charming pedophile. The irrepressible Victoria Clark and Dee Hoty give much needed oomph and humor to Mamita and Alicia, even if Hoty overplays a bit too much.
How is Hudgens as Gigi? She's pretty, perky, plucky, polished and professional. She sings well, moves stylishly, looks sumptuous in her gorgeous gowns, and even does an impressive cartwheel in one of choreographer Joshua Bergasse's too-busy dance numbers. It's not her fault that she plays the watered-down 21st century Gigi perfectly: her fans will love it, while those partial to Lerner & Loewe (even though most of these songs are second-rate, especially coming soon after their classic My Fair Lady) probably won't.
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| A scene from An American in Paris (photo: Matthew Murphy) |
Far more satisfying is An American in Paris, which has staggeringly inventive choreography by the show's director, Christopher Wheeldon. Like Minnelli's movie, which starred Gene Kelly in the story of former American GI Jerry Mulligan—who stays in the French capital after World War II to be a painter, fall in love and dance to Gershwin music—Wheeldon's Paris is a vivacious delight from the start.
Craig Lucas's book retains the outlines of the movie's plot. Jerry falls for the lovely Lise, a shop clerk who here wants to be a ballet dancer—as does Adam Hochberg, an American expatriate tasked with composing a short dance work for Lise at the behest of Milo Davenport, a young American woman with money to throw at French culture, and who has own designs on Jerry's talent. Then there's Henri Baurel, whom the two American men befriend, who's trying to launch a song-and-dance career without his highbrow parents noticing, and who is (unbeknownst to both Jerry and Adam) kinda sorta engaged to Lise.
Lucas' book is far more overstuffed than it needs to be, but luckily Wheeldon covers the stage with so many visual and dancing delights that it doesn't really matter. It all starts with Bob Crowley's freewheeling and mobile set designs, an endless variety of panels and mirrors that are rolled, pulled and pushed around the stage, morphing into various Parisian landmarks and, with the help of 59 Productions' animated, impressionistic projections and Natasha Katz's resourceful lighting, can at one remove stand in for a romantic walk along the Seine or, in the musical's disturbing opening, the end of the Nazi occupation and the return of a free Paris.
Throughout all of this visual ingenuity—which runs dry in the second act, most likely to concentrate on the climactic ballet of the title—Wheeldon does not skimp on the dancing. His incredibly busy but always original choreography rarely comes up for air, especially in such exciting set pieces as the moody opening number set to Gershwin's Concerto in F or the first act's closing number to Gershwin's boisterous Second Rhapsody and Cuban Overture, not to mention the beautifully structured final ballet that smartly avoids what Gene Kelly did so sensationally in the movie.
Likewise, the many song interludes, which include such Gershwin staples as "S'Wonderful," "The Man I Love" and "Shall We Dance?" are staged stylishly, and are greatly helped by the intoxicating arrangements by Rob Fisher.
The large and talented supporting cast comprises such first-rate performers as Brandon Urbanowitz as self-deprecating narrator Adam, Jill Paice as Milo, Max von Essen as Henri, and a scene-stealing Veanne Cox as Henri's snooty mom. But, as good as they are, the leads are even better.
Robert Fairchild from the New York City Ballet plays Jerry and Leanne Cope from London's Royal Ballet plays Lise: that they are both phenomenal dancers is no surprise; that they are also exceptionally good singers and gifted actors is the icing on the very tasty cake that is An American in Paris.
Gigi
Performances through October 4, 2015
Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52nd Street, New York, NY
gigionbroadway.com
An American in Paris
Performances through November 22, 2015
Palace Theatre, Broadway & 47th Street, New York, NY
anamericaninparisbroadway.com
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