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July '25 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Thursday, 03 July 2025 02:45
Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week 
Sorry, Baby 
(A24)
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 
(Abramorama)
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 
A Minecraft Movie 
(Warner Bros)
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 
(Warner Bros)
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 
(Music Box)
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 
(Dynamic)
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 
Vainilla 
(IndiePix)
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 
Bliss—The Composer Conducts
Poulenc Plays Poulenc and Satie 
(Somm Recordings)
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.

Antrópolis & More With the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Tuesday, 24 June 2025 13:53
Written by Jack Angstreich

Soprano Angel Blue with the MET Orchestra. Photo by Jennifer Taylor.

At the wonderful Stern Auditorium, on the night of Wednesday, June 18th, I had the exceptional privilege to attend a superb concert—the second of two in the space of six days—presented by Carnegie Hall, that featured the marvelous MET Orchestra under the masterly direction of its irrepressible Conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin. (This season has proven to be a noteworthy one.)

The event started thrillingly with a sterling account of Gabriela Ortiz’s ebullient, energetic, brilliantly orchestrated Antrópolis, of which the 2019 revision was played. (The music strongly recalls Leonard Bernstein’s scores of popular music.) In a useful note on the program by Harry Haskell, he records the following, citing the composer’s own words:

Describing her music as “brilliant and rather light-hulled,” Ortiz explains that “the word ‘antro’ has its origin in the Latin ‘antrum,’ meaning ‘grotto’ or ‘cavern.’” In Antrópolis, she “wanted to pay a very personal tribute to some of those ‘antros’ or emblematic dance halls of Mexico City that left a special sonorous imprint in my memory. These cabarets or dance halls that represent the nostalgia for rumberas and live dance orchestras, such as El Bombay, where it is said that Che Guevara would twirl; or the Salón Colonia, which seems to have come out of dreams taken from a film of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Who doesn’t remember the fun ballroom Los Infiernos, a perfect place for those who after a long day at work would leave their cubicles to go dancing, drink, and listen to music? Finally, the memory of the bar Tutti Frutti leaves an impression, where I first met the punk couple who own the antro and where you could listen to experimental music from the 1980s.”

The outstanding soprano, Angel Blue—who wore a fabulous, bright yellow gown—then entered the stage for a powerful rendition of Bernstein’s seldom performed Symphony No. 1, “Jeremiah,” completed in 1942. The annotator quotes the composer on this work:

His intention, he wrote, was to convey the “emotional quality” of the biblical admonition rather than its literal meaning: “Thus, the first movement (‘Prophecy’) aims only to parallel in feeling the intensity of the prophet’s pleas with his people; and the Scherzo (‘Profanation’) to give a general sense of the destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people. The third movement (‘Lamentation’), being a setting of poetic text, is naturally a more literary conception. It is the cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved Jerusalem, ruined, pillaged, and dishonored after his desperate efforts to save it.” 

The initial movement is solemn, even grave, while the second has a driving rhythm and playful elements. The finale is serious too, even urgent at times.

Even more remarkable, however, was the second half of the evening, beginning with an exemplary realization—and indeed the New York premiere—of Terence Blanchard’s terrific Suite—which was arranged in 2024 and is also notable for its impressive scoring–from his 2019 opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones. The concert’s pinnacle, however, may have been its closing selection: Antonín Dvořák’s astonishing Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, Op. 95, “From the New World,” finished in 1893, and heard here in an entrancing iteration. Haskell references the composer informatively here:

In an interview published to coincide with the New York Philharmonic’s premiere of the Symphony No. 9 at Carnegie Hall in December 1893, he made it clear that although he had “carefully studied a certain number of Indian melodies which a friend gave me,” he had not actually incorporated any of them in his new work. “I have simply written original themes embodying the peculiarities of the Indian music, and, using these themes as subjects, have developed them with all the resources of modern rhythms, harmony, counterpoint and orchestral color.”

He adds:

According to the composer, the Largo, with its haunting English horn melody (which one of his pupils later turned into the spiritual-like song “Goin’ Home”), was a preliminary study for an unrealized opera or cantata based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha, while the scherzo-like third movement depicted the wedding dance performed by the poet’s mischievous Pau-Puk-Keewis, “[w]hirling, spinning round in circles, / leaping o’er the guests assembled, / Eddying round and round the wigwam ...” 

Lastly, Dvořák asserted that the symphony was “an endeavor to portray characteristics, such as are distinctly American.”

In the first, Allegro molto movement, after a brief, quiet, Adagio introductory passage, the music rapidly becomes portentous but contrasting material is stirring and affirmative; it ends abruptly, if forcefully. The ensuing Largo has a somber beginning, preceding the hauntingly beautiful, lyrical theme mentioned above; subsequent passages with new melodies are also charming and memorable. The movement acquires a pastoral quality and concludes softly. The third movement, marked Molto vivace, is propulsive and dynamic, with gentle, pretty, leisurely interludes, and the Allegro con fuoco finale is exuberant and grand, but with song-like episodes.

Deservedly, the artists were very enthusiastically applauded.

Broadway Musical Review—Revival of Adam Guettel’s “Floyd Collins”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Monday, 23 June 2025 18:01
Written by Kevin Filipski
Floyd Collins
Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel; book and additional lyrics by Tina Landau
Directed by Tina Landau
Performances through June 29, 2025
Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, NYC
lct.org
 
Lizzy McAlpine and Jeremy Jordan in Floyd Collins (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
Daringly downbeat, Floyd Collins is the rare musical that takes chances musically and dramatically. When it premiered off-Broadway in 1996, the show got some raves but nobody was lining up to bring it to Broadway. Based on the one-third empty house the afternoon I saw it at Lincoln Center Theater, maybe they were right. The atypical musical plot is based on a real-life incident in Kentucky in 1925: our eponymous hero, a reckless spelunker, gets trapped in a mine while hoping to carve out a future tourist attraction (which it eventually became, as Mammoth Cave National Park).
 
Soon the locals hoping to rescue him are overtaken by outsiders who treat the entire tragic episode as a spectacular, media-driven nationwide circus with people hanging on every new development. Indeed, one of the reporters present, Skeets Miller of the Louisville Courier, begins by chasing a good story but finds himself getting personally involved in rescuing Floyd.
 
Composer Adam Guettel and book writer Tina Landau transform this flavorful bit of Americana into one of our most original musicals. Guettel’s music, powered by bluegrass, folk and Tin Pan Alley, is always in character, so to speak—like the thrilling chorus that opens the show, Floyd’s powerful laments, or his younger sister Nellie’s emotional solo. Landau’s book could be performed as a play without Guettel’s music, so intense is its drama and incisive its characterizations. That they meld together so persuasively is what makes the show a singular achievement. 
 
Landau directs this revival with a beautifully wrought elegance; she uses the Beaumont’s large stage to her advantage, creating a nearly cinematic dramatization of a story that always seems to have several events happening simultaneously. Landau is greatly assisted by the collective dots’ inventively abstract sets, Scott Zielinski’s subtle lighting, Anita Yavich’s on-target costumes, Dan Moses Schreier’s startling sound design and Ruey Horng Sun’s savvy projections. 
 
The cast is splendid. Taylor Trensch makes an engaging Skeets, Marc Kudisch is stentorian as Floyd’s father Lee, and Lizzy McAlpine—in a marvelous Broadway debut—is a heartbreaking Nellie whose second-act solo turn, “Through the Mountain,” is as understated a showstopper as you’ll ever hear. At the center of it all is Jeremy Jordan as Floyd, who is not only in imposingly great voice but is physically impressive—terrifically agile while sperlunking and spellbindingly dramatic even as he’s trapped in the cave. Jordan and company make the tragedy of Floyd Collins exhilarating. 

June '25 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts
Category: Reviews
Published on Friday, 20 June 2025 01:58
Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week 
Materialists 
(A24)
In her second feature—her debut Past Lives earned her an Oscar nomination for best screenplay—writer-director Celine Song again explores the intimate relationships of her protagonists, this time among a subset of Manhattan residents: Lucy, a matchmaker; John, her former boyfriend and struggling actor; and Harry, a charming billionaire she falls for.
 
 
As in the earlier film, Song’s dialogue is beautifully written—clever without being cloying and articulate without being overbearing; but she can’t completely break free of the rom-coms she is deconstructing, so the characters interact predictably and, in the end, conventionally. In the leads, Dakota Johnson (Lucy) has never been better, and Chris Evans (John) and Pedro Pascal (Harry) are equally good as the men in her lives. 
 
 
 
Sex 
(Strand Releasing)
The second film in Norwegian writer-director Dag Johan Haugerud’s triptych about nontraditional intimacy follows two married men who work together in Oslo—a chimney sweep and his supervisor—who discuss intimate subjects including their sex lives: the supervisor admits to having had pleasurable sex with another man.
 
 
The sweep is surprised, but when the supervisor confesses his escapade to his wife, she feels (not wrongly) that their entire relationship has shifted because he cheated, even if he says it was a one-off with no lasting repercussions. Like Love, Sex is an intriguing theoretical exercise masquerading as a deep dive into intimate relationships. Since Haugerud plays coy throughout, the film’s emotional and dramatic stakes of these endless conversations never seem genuine or urgent—what will the final film, Dreams, bring? 
 
 
 
In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week
Simple Minds—Everything Is Possible 
(Greenwich Entertainment)
Joss Crowley’s entertaining documentary about the Scottish rock band—founded by and still comprising singer Jim Kerr and guitarist Charlie Burchill—touches on its storied history, from forming in high school in the late ‘70s to still going today, in a fleet 87 minutes. Although it glosses over a lot, Kerr and Burchill are forthcoming, and their stories (and those of musical colleagues and friends) are often uproarious and even poignant.
 
 
Molly Ringwald is on hand to inform us that she told The Breakfast Club director John Hughes that Simple Minds should record what turned out to be the group’s biggest hit, “Don’t You Forget About Me.” Although Kerr and Burchill admit to being reluctant to record a song they didn’t write, they’ve since come to terms with it overshadowing the rest of their career—at least in America.
 
 
 
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Drop 
(Universal)
The latest Blumhouse horror is less horrific than occasionally unnerving: widowed mom Violet has a first date that goes wrong in every way, especially when someone begins drop-texting her, threatening her young son and babysitter sister if she doesn’t kill her date.
 
 
Director Christopher Landon and writers Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s lean thriller speeds through so many unlikely twists and turns that there’s no time to stop and say, “WTF.” It helps, too, to have a sympathetic and appealing lead like Meghann Fahy as the harried Violet. There’s a super UHD transfer; extras include featurettes and a director’s commentary.
 
 
 
The Wiz 
(Criterion)
When Sidney Lumet’s vivid cinematic adaptation of the hit Broadway show that tweaked L.L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz for a funky generation was released in 1978, it was met with either guffaws or indifference, despite its pedigree and starry cast led by Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor.
 
 
Yes, it’s overlong and overstuffed and Lumet doesn’t have a complete handle on the musical numbers, but it’s a riotously colorful snapshot of mid-’70s New York, especially in the finale at World Trade Center Plaza. Criterion’s restoration looks eye-poppingly impressive; too bad extras are so meager: short archival interviews with Lumet and Ross as well as an audio commentary.
 
 
 
A Working Man 
(Warner Bros)
In his latest routine action flick, Jason Statham plays a former black-ops soldier now working as a construction foreman who returns to his old job when his boss’ daughter is kidnaped by a group of violent Russian thugs.
 
 
Unsurprisingly, Statham and director David Ayers follow the blueprint of last year’s The Beekeeper, although to meager returns. But there is fun to be had in watching Statham do in so many bad guys (and gals), even if the thread of credibility is stretched thin to breaking. The film looks sharp in 4K; there are no extras.
 
 
 
CD Releases of the Week 
Ligeti—Concertos 
(Harmonia Mundi)
Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) is best known for his otherworldly music, which was so brilliantly used by Stanley Kubrick in three films: 2001, The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut. But Ligeti’s genius stems from his wide-ranging oeuvre, which makes up a singular musical vision.
 
 
The concertos on this disc bear that out, from the early Concert Românesc for small orchestra to the dizzying flights of fancy of his violin and piano concertos, fiendishly difficult to perform but still playful and light on their musical feet. The soloists—violinist Isabelle Faust and pianist Jean-Frédéric Neuburger—are more than up to the task, as is the ensemble Les Siècles led by François-Xavier Roth. 
 
 
 
Shostakovich—Suites and Concertos 
(Capriccio)
The great Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) was prolific in many genres, from chamber music to symphonies to operas; in fact, his cycles of 15 string quartets and 15 symphonies are among the most imposing of the 20th century.
 
 
This superb compilation of several recordings made between 1996 and 2005 contains three discs of some of his signature works for orchestra, like his Jazz Suite No. 2, suites from the ballets The Bolt and The Age of Gold, and two of his concerto masterworks: the Piano Concerto No. 1 (which includes the famous obbligato turn for a trumpet) and the Violin Concerto. Various orchestras and conductors acquit themselves well in these works, and the concerto soloists—pianist Thomas Duis, trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich and violinist Vladimir Spirakov—give estimable performances.

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