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Film and the Arts
October '25 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 09 October 2025 02:26
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Are We Good?
(Utopia)
Comedian and podcaster Marc Maron finds most of his material from his own life, however personal and tragic, and Steven Feinartz’s fly-on-the-wall documentary follows Maron during the COVID lockdown and tentative steps back onstage.
Informed by the biggest tragedy of his life, the sudden and unexpected death of his partner, director Lynn Shelton, at age 54 of leukemia in May 2020, Maron is shown at his most vulnerable—that is, if he can be even more vulnerable than he is onstage. This is a remarkably candid film about a remarkably candid man.
(Bleecker Street)
What begins as an unoriginal but enticing roundelay of two couples staying at a secluded B&B they apparently reserved at the same time soon devolves into a risible thriller comprising sex, jealousy, betrayal and survival after it’s revealed one couple is definitely not whom they seem.
Director Mercedes Bryce Morgan and writer Joshua Friedlander rely too much on cleverness, but right from the opening—the grisly killing of two nude people in the woods in what turns out to be a visualization of a character’s novel—they pile on lazy horror-flick clichés, which hampers the otherwise able acting by Maddie Hasson, Alex Roe, Andra Nechita and Marco Pigossi.
The Ice Tower
(Yellow Veil Pictures)
Not much happens in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s visually luminous but dramatically opaque drama about the unusual relationship between famous actress Cristina (the enchantingly chilly Marion Cotillard) and teenage orphan Jeanne (the excellent Clara Pacini) after they meet on the set of a new adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen.
As in her earlier films, Hadžihalilović psychoanalyzes her characters in symbolic surroundings; Jonathan Ricquebourg’s exquisite photography, Nassim Gordji Tehrani’s razor-sharp editing and Julia Irribarria’s alluring production design fill in the blanks in Hadžihalilović and Geoff Cox’s script. Admittedly, the final momentous shots say more in their brevity and silence than the previous 110 minutes.
(Rialto Pictures)
The combination of Bruce Joel Rubin’s script laden with Christian symbolism and director Adrian Lyne’s visuals that toggle between tantalizing and turgid makes this often soggy 1990 drama about a Vietnam vet whose postwar existence in New York City may or may not be real creepily effective.
The special effects have an old-school feel, Maurice Jarre’s score worms its way into your unconscious, Tim Robbins is a properly intense hero, Elizabeth Pena (who sadly died in 2014 of alcoholism at age 55) is perfectly cast as his uncomprehending girlfriend, and there’s a solid (and surprisingly uncredited) appearance by a pre-Home Alone Macaulay Culkin as Robbins’ son. It’s basically a 105-minute Twilight Zone episode with an unsurprising but potent twist.
Ju Dou
(Film Movement Classics)
This 1990 collaboration between Chinese master Zhang Yimou (who codirected with Yang Fengliang) and his then-muse Gong Li is an erotic, authentically grimy adaptation of a Liu Heng novel that nods to The Postman Always Rings Twice in its story of a young wife, saddled with an old and impotent husband, whose affair with one of their farm workers has moral and mortal repercussions.
Shot in the square Academy ratio that provides an ideally claustrophobic atmosphere, this blunt morality tale might be too on the nose in its color symbolism, but the magnificent presence of Gong Li as the title character is prime compensation.
(8 Above)
Kim A. Snyder’s timely exposé shows how fascist organizations like Moms for Liberty are destroying our country from within: under the guise of protecting kids, these groups—funded by dark right-wing money—are taking over school boards and helping ban books about subjects they don’t like, like LGBTQ+ and slavery, from school library shelves.
If there weren’t so many heroic librarians fighting back—including several who appear on camera, a couple of them anonymously—however pyrrhic some victories are, then this battle would have already been lost. But it might be too late, since Trump 2 is becoming even worse than Trump 1.
Streaming Release of the Week
Stella—A Life
(Film Movement)
Stella Goldschlag’s story is sobering: a German Jew who first used forged documents to help her family escape Nazi prosecution, she soon discovered survival depended on turning in Jews herself to keep the Nazis at bay. This sordid tale, dramatically and morally complicated, needs a subtle hand to explore its terrible but all too human consequences.
Yet director-cowriter Kilian Riedhof and cowriters Marc Blöbaum and Jan Braren only skim the surface of this rich ore; there’s a complexity and richness that’s missing, which makes the admittedly striking final image less powerful that it should be. Paula Beer’s tremendously nuanced portrayal of Stella—she is impossible to look away from—helps ground the drama in her flawed but fascinating humanity.
Lohengrin
(C Major)
Though German composer Richard Wagner (1813-83) was best known for his Ring cycle, this earlier opera is among his finest—it follows Lohengrin, a mysterious knight, who defends Elsa when she’s under suspicion for her brother’s death in a town rent by political upheaval and hostility. In this 2024 Vienna State Opera staging by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, Elsa is not the innocent love interest Wagner created her as.
But even a risible ending doesn’t ruin a magisterial music drama, with supple orchestra and choral work under Christian Thielemann’s baton and accomplished lead performances by British tenor David Butt Philip (Lohengrin), Swedish soprano Malin Byström (Elsa), German baritone Martin Gantner (villain Telramund) and Italian soprano Anja Kempe (Telramund’s wife Ortrud). There’s topnotch hi-def video and audio.
CD Release of the Week
Bach Cello Suites—Anastasia Kobekina
(Sony Classical)
The cover of Anastasia Kobekina’s superb new disc of the complete Bach unaccompanied cello suites—whose towering influence has only grown in the three centuries since they’ve been written—sums up how she performs these works: she sits holding a camera as if about to take a selfie.
That’s how she approaches the six suites, as a self-portrait, since playing them tells as much about the performer as about the master who created them. And it tells us that the 31-year-old Russian cellist is the perfect artist to both draw out the mysteries at the heart of these suites as well as leave their ultimate interpretations to the listener.
New York Philharmonic Turn on the "Devil's Radio" at Lincoln Center
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 06 October 2025 13:59
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Photo by Chris Lee
At Lincoln Center’s excellent David Geffen Hall, on the night of Saturday, September 27th, I had the pleasure to attend a fine concert presented by the New York Philharmonic under the distinguished direction of conductor David Robertson, here replacing Marta Gadolińska who had to withdraw on account of illness.
The event began auspiciously with the beautifully realized New York premiere of the engaging Devil’s Radio from 2014 by Mason Bates—who was present to receive the audience’s acclaim—the title of which, according to the note on the program, references an old Southern phrase, “Rumor is the Devil’s radio.” In his score for the work, the composer includes the following comment on the piece:
Sometimes the music is coldly propulsive, as at the opening, which uses a kind of sparkling “musical lure” in the upper woodwinds. But this is soon undercut by a bluesy bass line and energetic percussion, ultimately building into a soaring melody that's best described as vainglorious. Indeed, the work has ample brightness to counter its dark corners, and in this way it can be heard as a fanfare our villain might write for himself, complete with grandiose flourishes and an infectious swing section. But this lightness quickly evaporates in the work's final minutes, when thunderous hits in the low brass suggest a Goliath-sized figure throwing his weight around. He bows out with a wink and nod, ever the gentleman.
A remarkable soloist, Leila Josefowicz—who wore a flamboyant, elaborate, dark gown—then entered the stage for an admirable version of Karol Szymanowski’s imposing, undervalued Concerto No. 2 for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 61, which was finished in 1933. The work begins, with a tempo of Moderato molto tranquillo, almost lugubriously, eventually becoming more agitated, although with more reflective passages. A solemn, protracted cadenza—composed and credited to Paweł Kochański, the violinist that premiered the piece and who is its dedicatee—precedes more music of a high seriousness before the composition turns more sprightly as well as lyrical and impassioned, then rising to a powerful climax and closing triumphantly. Enthusiastic applause elicited an impressive, even dazzling, encore from the soloist: an excerpt from Lachen verlernt by Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, who will be conducting this ensemble in several performances during the following two weeks.
The second half of the evening was comparable in merit: an accomplished reading of Witold Lutosławski’s striking, too seldom played Concerto for Orchestra, that was completed in 1954. (The piece is especially reminiscent of the music of Igor Stravinsky and Béla Bartók.) The initial, Allegro maestoso movement, titled Intrada, starts portentously, sustaining a sense of dramatic tension across most of its length, until an extended, quiet episode. The ensuing Capriccio notturno e arioso movement, marked Vivace, is more playful, even insistently so, with a somber, commanding, even ominous Trio; it concludes softly. The weighty finale—Passacaglia, toccata e corale—is often turbulent but again with subdued, as well as ludic, interludes; it intensifies before ending forcefully and suddenly.
The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.
September '25 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 30 September 2025 21:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Release of the Week
One Battle After Another
(Warner Bros)
Each Paul Thomas Anderson film is treated as an Event, but his latest magnum opus cobbles together themes and characters he’s worked on for decades—this loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland is a flashy, convoluted, crude and cartoonish take on an America comprising left-wing terrorists and right-wing authoritarians. There’s some good material here, but Anderson throws everything against the wall to see what will stick, resulting in a tonally unbalanced and unwieldy 160 minutes.
The acting is all over the map—Leonardo DiCaprio’s wild-eyed terrorist hero stops just short of caricature, while Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti are solid if unspectacular as his wife and daughter, both of whom however (especially Taylor) are shortchanged by the script. Then there’s Sean Penn’s villainous Colonel Lockjaw—a failed attempt to channel Dr. Strangelove’s Jack D. Ripper and General Turgidson—which is wincingly embarrassing, likely the worst performance of a storied career. Anderson’s bombast reaches its nadir when he kills off Lockjaw three times in a couple of dragged-out, pedestrian sequences that add nothing to an already overstuffed vehicle. Finally, the less said about Jonny Greenwood’s typically excessive score—whose rhythmic drive is more repetitious than tense—the better.
Infinite Summer
(Indiepix)
Miguel Llansó’s often imaginative sci-fi hybrid follows a trio of bored young women in the Estonian capital of Talinn one summer whose meeting with a man named Dr. Mindfulness who introduces them to the wonders of a new app that promises a meditative experience but ends up being much more than they bargained for.
Llansó’s film adroitly balances everyday relationships with fantastical dream-like interactions that become a fascinating exploration of bodily autonomy and the lure of change. A top cast led by actresses Hannah Gross, Johanna Aurelia Rosin and Teele Kaljuvee-O'Brock sells it.
4K/UHD Release of the Week
Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride
(Warner Bros)
This enjoyable 2005 follow-up to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, codirected by Burton with Mike Johnson, is another dazzling stop-motion animated feature cleverly visualizing the director’s darkly tongue-in-cheek themes, here following a young man about to be married who’s whisked away by the title character.
There’s ample mordant humor, decent thrills and a marvelously dreadful visual sense along with a terrific voice cast led by Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson and Albert Finney. The film looks spectacular in 4K; there are several vintage featurettes and two new making-of featurettes.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
(Criterion)
In Jacques Audiard’s bracing remake of James Toback’s messy 1978 drama Fingers, small-time Parisian hood Thomas (a magnetic Roman Duris) tries resurrecting a lost musical career as a classical pianist. Unlike Toback, whose film never felt organic, just willfully contrived, Audiard makes the disparate parts—the scuzzy characters and their motivations alongside beautiful music making—snap together as perfectly as a Bach or Chopin piano piece.
The film looks grittily authentic on Blu; extras include a new Audiard interview, vintage interviews with cowriter Tonino Benacquista and composer Alexandre Desplat, 2005 Berlin Film Festival press conference, rehearsal footage and deleted scenes with Audiard’s commentary.
(Opus Arte)
This terrifically mounted 2021 staging of one of the legendary musical duo’s characteristic works by the Scottish Opera works well thanks to Stuart Maunder persuasive direction, the colorful and witty costumes and sets, the superlative acting and singing by a large and distinguished cast, and the excellent music making by the Orchestra of the Scottish Opera and the Chorus of the Gondoliers under conductor Derek Clark’s baton.
Of course, it helps to be on the same musical wavelength as Gilbert & Sullivan for full appreciation—those who aren’t might think it’s much ado about not much. The hi-def video and audio are flawless.
(Unitel)
Russian-Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) died before his musical renaissance began with his emotionally shattering Holocaust opera The Passenger, several productions of which were soon followed by dozens of recordings of his varied orchestral and chamber music. Although not as affecting as The Passenger, his operatic adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s disturbing The Idiot is a major accomplishment, as this 2024 Salzburg staging by director Krzysztof Warlikowski—imaginatively done in a modern setting—demonstrates.
For more than three hours, Weinberg’s powerful reimagining of a great writer’s painfully intimate study holds us in thrall, and the remarkable vocal performances of Bogdan Volkov, Ausrine Stundyte and Vladislav Sulimsky—heading a flawless cast—along with the Vienna Philharmonic (led by Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla) and Vienna State Opera Chorus (led by Pawel Marcowicz) provide more musical and dramatic dividends. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio but unfortunately no contextualizing extras.
September '25 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 23 September 2025 21:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Superman
(Warner Bros)
James Gunn has rebooted the man of steel for a new generation, but it’s pretty much the same old, with many CGI sequences that become enervating of Superman fighting various foes (even a prehistoric monster of sorts) while trying to regain his rep—he’s considered a traitor to America since he’s (of course) an illegal alien—thanks to a devious Lex Luthor (an hilariously hammy Nicholas Hoult).
It’s choppy and diffuse as if Gunn makes it up as he goes along, climaxing with an anticlimax. David Corenswet is an OK if cardboard Superman/Clark Kent, while Rachel Brosnahan is a fiery Lois Lane—but even the appearance of superdog Krypto is more saccharine than saucy. The film looks great in UHD; extras are an hour-long making-of and other featurettes.
(Warner Bros)
The first HBO series that’s based on a video game, this often morbid dystopian thriller is filled with too-familiar visuals of a post-pandemic civilization destroyed by a too-familiar infection that begat hordes of too-familiar zombie-like victims.
If the directing often leans into survivalist drama clichés, the often clever writing and solid performances by the likes of Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna and Isabella Merced provide the sprinkling of humanity the show thrives on. There’s an excellent UHD transfer; extras comprise making-of featurettes, interviews and on-set footage.
M3GAN 2.0
(Universal)
Did we need a sequel to M3GAN, the forgettable evil AI doll flick from a few years ago? Writer-director Gerard Johnstone thinks so—just turn her from a program that went rogue to an ally of sorts of creator Gemma (a game Alison Williams) and teenage niece Katie (an enjoyable Violet McGraw), as reprogramming sets her up to take down a new, far more malevolent program called AMELIA.
It’s pretty ridiculous and unnecessarily convoluted—its two hours could be shorn of 20 minutes—but it is kind of fun watching M3GAN become good, kind of. It all looks great on UHD; extras comprise making-of featurettes and interviews.
Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round
(Ruby Pictures Inc.)
A little-known but transformative protest at the dawn of the civil rights movement is chronicled in Ilana Trachtman’s documentary, triggered by five Black students from Howard University who decide to ride the carousel at a segregated Maryland amusement park, Glen Echo, in 1960.
Trachtman (who uses a 1942 Langston Hughes poem for her evocative title) insightfully explores how local and college-student Blacks along with a group of progressive Jews from a nearby neighborhood made common cause to pressure authorities into desegregating the park. Along with illuminating interviews with those who took part and much archival footage, Trachtman also uses voiceovers from Mandy Patinkin, Bob Balaban and Jeffrey Wright on the soundtrack.
Andrea Bocelli—Because I Believe
(Trafalgar Releasing)
This endearing 105-minute portrait by director is not exactly a hagiography, even though it shows beloved Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli as someone just short of an angel on earth—of course, with a heavenly singing voice. It’s also a thoughtful look at a man who followed his dream and his talent assiduously after a horrible accident robbed him of his sight at age 12.
There are intimate glimpses of Bocelli at home, backstage and onstage with his wife, young daughter (who also sings), family and horses as well as wonderful musical interludes even nonfans might welcome.
(Vertigo Releasing)
Director-cowriter Piero Messina’s dour, self-serious exploration of grief about a company named Aeternum that lets survivors say goodbye to their dead loved ones in a way that keeps their spirits “alive” is expertly done but bafflingly distant.
Sal, who’s mourning his lover Zoe’s death in a car crash, is resisting attempts by his sister Ebe (who works at Aeternum) to submit to this last interaction with the love of his life. Even such excellent actors as Gael García Bernal (Sal) and the luminous Bérénice Bejo (Ebe) can do little with a soppy script Messina and three others concocted.
My Sunshine
(Film Movement)
In this gentle character study, mediocre young hockey player Takuya notices figure skaters at the rink and is soon paired with Sakura, a competitive skater, by her sympathetic but competitive coach Arakawa, and their relationship on and off the ice deepens.
Director-writer Hiroshi Okuyama’s drama has a surfeit of acute observation, subtle humor and sentiment that doesn’t fall into sticky sappiness—even Debussy’s overplayed Clair de Lune hits the right notes—and the two leads, Keitatsu Koshiyama (Takuya) and Kiara Nakanishi (Sakura), give lovely portrayals.
(Level 33 Entertainment)
Surprisingly, ‘70s porn star Vanessa Del Rio hasn’t gotten the biopic treatment until now—maybe because it’s a difficult role for an actress to pull off, as the voluptuous, sassy and seductive New Yorker needs to be believable or it falls apart.
Luckily for director-writer Thomas Mignone, Vivian Lamolli is sexy, funny, and totally persuasive—but the problem is she must carry an otherwise routine biopic, even with the vibe of the grimy ’70s sex-film industry present and decent support from Drea de Matteo, Taryn Manning and Elizabeth Rodriguez as the women in Del Rio’s life.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Dakota
(Cult Epics)
The life of a Dutch pilot who flies a small plane filled with contraband in the Caribbean islands is dramatized in this intriguing 1974 film by Dutch director Wim Verstappen.
There’s a lot of local color alongside humorous and tense moments in an effective if bumpy exploration of a man and his plane, centered by a nicely-shaded performance from Kees Brusse. The film’s gritty look, by cinematographers Jan de Bont and Theo van de Sande, is retained on Blu-ray; extras include a commentary and vintage featurettes.
(Opus Arte)
Sergei Prokofiev’s opera, based on Dostoyevsky’s novella, makes for riveting drama—filled as it is with the composer’s blistering orchestral barrage and memorable melodies—and its hard musical and histrionic edge matches the obsessives at the center of its story.
Too bad that Peter Sellars’ 2024 Salzburg production lacks definition, stranding a formidable cast led by Asmik Grigorian as Polina and Sean Panikkar as Alexey as well as the propulsive musicmaking of the Vienna Philharmonic and Choir under Timur Zangiev’s baton. There’s first-rate h-def video and audio.
CD Release of the Week
Boris Papandopulo—Hrvatska Misa (Croatian Mass)
(BR Klassik)
Croatian composer Boris Papandopulo (1906-91) wrote this mass, which premiered in 1942, as a sacred work that nodded to the style of historical Croatian music as an a capella piece suitable for amateurs (and was actually composed for the Croatian Choral Society Kolo, which he led twice from the 1920s to the 40s).
With the chorus and soloists singing a Croatian translation of the Roman Catholic mass, it’s a full-throated vocal work that—especially in this superlative recording by the Bavarian Radio Chorus and a quartet of Croatian soloists, all under the direction of conductor Ivan Repušić and chorus master Tomislav Fačini—is often hair-raisingly thrilling in its simplicity and power.
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