4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Ryan Coogler’s ambitious epic, which marries African American and ethnic music history to a metaphorical vampire saga, is an often exhilarating—and quite often enervating—entertainment that’s a more successful popcorn movie than it is the dramatically incisive exploration of racism in the Jim Crow South that it aspires to.

 

 

Led by Michael B. Jordan’s superb dual performance as the Smokestack twins, the cast also features knockout turns by Hailee Steinfeld, Jack O’Connell, Lola Kirke, Miles Caton and Delroy Lindo—only blues legend Buddy Guy, in an unnecessary epilogue (shown after some of the end credits, a bizarrely awkward choice), comes off amateurishly. Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s magnificent cinematography, Michael Shawver’s razor-sharp editing and Ludwig Göransson’s savvily eclectic score contribute handsomely to making this a visceral thrill. The UHD imagery looks stunning; extras comprise more than an hour of on-set footage and interviews along with 18 minutes of deleted scenes.

 

 

 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Brad Pitt’s laconic charm is on display throughout this overlong commercial for Formula 1 racing: for two and a half hours, director Joseph Kosinski takes us on a relentlessly formulaic journey through several races, each of which writer Ehren Kruger tries his damnedest to make singular rather than repetitive.

 

 

Kosinski and Kruger fail, for the most part, while the off-track scenes of Pitt as retired daredevil driver Sonny (who comes out of retirement), Damson Idris as young hotshot driver Joshua, Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben (who talks Sonny into returning) and Kerry Condon as Kate, the brains of the outfit (who—of course—falls for Sonny against her better judgment) are pretty ordinary. It’s shot and paced efficiently and slickly, but if you’re a fan of cars flying around a track at 200 miles an hour, then your—um—mileage may vary.

 

 

40 Acres 

What begins as unsettling post-apocalyptic sci-fi whose plot follows an Afro-Indigenous family defending its valuable farm from hordes of cannibalistic marauders in a not-too-distant future of famine and anarchy turns into a standard-issue drama bogged down by the usual genre tropes.

 

 

It’s too bad that R.T. Thorne’s writing and directing debut doesn’t live up to its potential, for there are a lot of interesting ideas at work—but unsubtlety (the family’s name is Freeman, for example) and implausible characterizations/relationships mitigate the film’s more original moments. The impressively physical cast is led by Danielle Deadwyler and Kataem O’Connor.

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week

In this tepid twist on Fatal Attraction, Alicia Silverstone is Sophie, a successful executive who favors casual hookups, but after she hooks up with the younger Elliot (including a torrid Paris weekend), she can’t shake him, leading to serious consequences.

 

 

Silverstone is surprisingly good in the Michael Douglas role, but Karl Glusman is overwrought and hammy in the Glenn Close part, which—with Justin Kelly’s choppy direction and Jack Donnelly’s by-the-numbers script—makes this a watchable but routine revenge thriller.

 

 

 

Streaming Release of the Week 

Swiss director-cowriter Maxime Rappaz makes her feature debut with this intriguingly off-kilter study of Claudine, a middle-aged seamstress who cares for her mentally impaired adult son as well as regularly travels from her small town to a Geneva hotel where she hooks up with single male travelers for no-strings-attached trysts.

 

 

But she soon meets a German who upsets her well-ordered personal world. Rappaz’ offbeat character study ends up too reliant on cliches, but the film is helped immeasurably by Jeanne Balibar’s emotionally vulnerable portrayal of Claudine. 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Argentine master Alberto Ginastera (1916-83) might be best known for his tango music and its variations, but his works in forms ranging from orchestral music to operas to chamber pieces are notable for their originality and vigor. His three string quartets are prime examples of his virtuosity; written in three distinct styles, they respectively integrate his local folk-music studies, mid-century modernism and a distinctive late style of pure emotion. 

 

The Miró Quartet plays these thrillingly idiosyncratic works with the necessary power and finesse, while soprano Keira Duffy gives  beautifully ethereal voice to the Spanish-language poems that make up three movements of the third quartet, a remarkably haunting “hallucination,” in Ginastera’s own description.

 

First, the good news: Jean Smart is killing it on Broadway. Now, the not-so-good news: the play she’s in, Call Me Izzy, is a creaky solo vehicle.

 

Call Me Izzy is narrated by the chipper and chatty Isabelle, a middle-aged wife living in a trailer park with her longtime husband Ferd, who—we come to discover—has been abusing her for years, physically and emotionally. Izzy was a smart student who loved to write; indeed, she could have attended college but since she—like so many other Southern belles of her generation—married immediately after high school, she had no choice but to be a stay-at-home wife and, soon, mother…although her son tragically died shortly after birth, further alienating Ferd from Izzy.

 

As the above shows, Max’s play follows a typical—even stereotypical—trajectory, as Izzy narrates a life that unfolds promisingly but is ultimately shut down by a dominating husband. Izzy gets another chance later in her marriage when she joins a free night writing class at the community college and her stories are entered in a contest to spend time at a New England writing retreat. She wins but realizes she’ll never convince Ferd to let her go, so she never mentions it. But soon the couple running the retreat comes to rural Louisiana to meet them for dinner and, they hope, convince her to join them. Unsurprisingly, Izzy pays dearly for that evening, despite Ferd and the husband and Izzy and the wife bonding for a moment. 

 

Will Izzy break free of Ferd or will she stay, petrified of his drunken rages? It’s all so predictably, sentimentally sketched out by Max, who is not above (or below) relying on such contrivances as Izzy locking herself in the bathroom to secretly write after Ferd destroys decades’ worth of her journals—she uses toilet paper and hides the contraband in a box she hides from Ferd. But would he really not find her latest musings after what he did earlier? And Izzy implausibly has an affair with her writing teacher in her own home, where they carry on merrily without getting caught. 

 

Call Me Izzy is rife with such inconsistencies, yet Max has written a juicy titular role that Smart dazzlingly makes her own, bringing the audience into her confidence and making us care about as well as laugh and cry along with her. Smart brings haunting heartbreak to the (unfortunately clichéd) final scene, which finds Izzy trapped between confinement and freedom. 

 

Despite Smart’s acting tour de force and Sarnia Lapine’s understated direction, Call Me Izzy never feels like a fully-formed play. Here’s hoping Smart will return to Broadway in a meatier role, something like Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Eva Victor—whom I knew only from her tart turn as a young hot shot in the Showtime series Billions—has made a very auspicious triple-threat debut as a director, writer and actor in an often funny but also heartfelt exploration of how a graduate student turned professor named Agnes deals with being sexually assaulted by her thesis advisor.

 

 

Divided into sections that go back and forth in time, the film unfolds as an intentionally messy but intimate look into the head space of someone whose emotional trauma doesn’t define her but still holds a powerful grip. At times, Victor’s deadpan delivery, dialogue and direction threaten to derail her carefully thought-out drama, but she is such a winning performer that she keeps viewers enveloped in an awkward but affectionate hug like the one Agnes shares with neighbor-lover Gavin (a lovely turn by Lucas Hedges).

 

 

 

 

The Last Class 

Elliot Kirschner’s fawning documentary follows Robert Reich—one-time U.S. secretary of labor and longtime professor of economics—as he prepares for his final class before retirement, having taught an estimated 40,000 students over his many-decade teaching career.

 

 

Kirschner mostly eschews politics to concentrate on Reich’s interactions with his students, which makes his 71-minute film often seem more a superficial glimpse at a “teacher of the year” instead of a deeper exploration of the complex legacy Reich leaves behind both in government and in academia.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The special effects are the undeniable star of this bizarre, sporadically entertaining adaptation of the legendary video game; if director Jared Hess isn’t able to corral a game cast—with Jack Black at his scenery-chewing worst/best—into a cohesive ensemble, he does allow them to interact with the often arresting creatures conjured by visual effects maven Dan Lemon.

 

 

Five writers labored on the lame script, whose ending will undoubtedly allow a sequel to spring forth; there’s a first-rate UHD transfer that shows off this otherworld in its many details, and extras are several featurettes.

 

 

 

Lethal Weapon 

When Mel Gibson and Danny Glover teamed up in this clunky 1987 buddy picture about antagonistic cops who improbably mesh together, no one would have guessed it would be a smash hit that spawned three enervating sequels.

 

 

By that metric, this first entry is the most watchable: Gibson and Glover have an undeniable chemistry, while director Richard Donner sets the comic repartee against the increasing—and unnecessarily violent—mayhem. Both the theatrical and director’s cuts are included; extras include a Donner appreciation by cast and crew along with a featurette on Glover and Gibson, the latter of whom tellingly isn’t part of the new interviews.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week  Eephus 

As baseball movies go, Eephus doesn’t go for the mythmaking of Field of Dreams or sardonic humor of Bull Durham—rather, director/cowriter Carson Lund and cowriters Nate Fisher and Mike Basta tell an engagingly low-key story of amateur ballplayers playing one last game at the local ballfield before it’s scheduled to be bulldozed to make way for a new school.

 

 

The emphasis is on camaraderie and occasionally, flaring tempers—and if the movie at times is too meandering, it mirrors the characters’ sport of choice and is, finally, affecting in its slow-burn way. The film looks good on Blu; extras include commentaries, deleted scenes, blooper reel, interviews, a making-of and a dozen easter eggs.

 

 

 

Zoraida di Granata 

The 75 or so operas of Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848), highlighted by classics Lucia di Lammermoor, L’Elisir d’Amore and Anna Bolena, includes this 1822 opera seria about Zoraida, a woman betrothed to a tyrant, whose love for Abenamet—sentenced to death by the king—complicates things. The contrived opera clocks in at over three hours but has beautiful arias for its soloists.

 

 

Bruno Ravella’s production, seen at the Donizetti Opera Festival in Italy last November, comprises marvelous musicmaking from the orchestra and chorus under conductor Alberto Zanardi and chorus director Salvo Sgro, and the two lead roles are exquisitely sung by Zuzana Markova (Zoraida) and Cecilia Molinari (Abenamet). There are excellent hi-def video and audio. 

 

 

 

Streaming/DVD Release of the Week 

Argentine writer-director-actress Valeria Rowinski plays Alma, in her mid-30s and who has never been fully satisfied by a man; her latest boyfriend is as much of a boor and bore as the rest. But after attending a party that allowed her to shed her inhibitions, she allows herself to more fully explore intimacy on her terms.

 

 

Although Rowinski is an engaging screen presence, her work as writer and director is less developed: Alma is not as interesting as Rowinski imagines her to be.

 

 

 

CD Releases of the Week 

These valuable releases collect vintage recordings by two prominent 20th-century composers— Arthur Bliss (1891-1975) from England and Francis Poulenc (1891-1963) from France—that give another perspective on their artistry. In the two-disc Bliss set, the composer conducts several of his own works in performances from the 1960s, including BBC live broadcasts celebrating his 70th and 75th birthdays.

 

 

One of the more underrated of the crop of British composers that included Malcolm Arnold, Arnold Bax, Edmund Rubbra and Alan Rawsthorne, Bliss wrote varied and significant music in several genres, represented here by his vividly realized A Colour Symphony, the monumental oratorio Morning Heroes, his B-flat piano concerto (played brilliantly by John Ogdon) and his Concerto for Two Pianos. 

 

 

Poulenc was an expert pianist, and in this recording, he not only plays the solo parts in his own concerto for two pianos (with Jacques Fevier) and Aubade but also several of his eloquent solo keyboard works including Suite Francaise. As a sweetener, Poulenc also plays several piano pieces by his compatriot, Erik Satie, celebrating Satie’s experimental composing style in his Gymnopedie No. 1, Sarabande No. 2 and Gnossienne No. 3.

 

 

Although the bulk of both recordings are in mono (one Bliss piece is in stereo), everything sounds immediate and vivid, even the Poulenc recordings from 1930 and 1950.