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Film and the Arts
July '22 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 13 July 2022 21:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Downton Abbey—A New Era
(Universal)
The second big-screen drama from the popular PBS series plays like the earlier film, as a two-hour episode of the show, but creator-writer Julian Fellowes adds enough wrinkles and variations to make it more enjoyable: there’s a trek to the south of France, where Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) might discover a surprise about his paternity; and the family has allowed a film crew to shoot a silent feature at Downton (it’s 1928) to help fund needed mansion upkeep.
The large cast is perfect, as always, with a sardonic Maggie Smith, in her swan song as matriarch Dowager Countess, leading the way. The mansion and its grounds look spectacular in ultra hi-def; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews, along with director Richard Curtis’ chatty commentary.
(Warner Bros)
I doubt I’m the first to label Doug Liman’s 2014 Tom Cruise vehicle as a sci-fi Groundhog Day: Cruise is part of a conscripted army slated to fight an extraterrestrial invasion force that’s annihilating Earth’s human population, and he must replay the training for the battle with the toughest soldier (played by Emily Blunt).
It’s flashily done, and quite exciting at times, but there’s a sense that, even at a lean 110 minutes, it spins its wheels at about the hour mark; Liman, Cruise and Blunt keep pushing until it finally reaches the finish line. There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the accompanying Blu-ray includes the original extras from the initial release: featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.
Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week
Dreaming Walls—Inside the Chelsea Hotel
(Magnolia)
Using an elliptical, visually eccentric style that mirrors the many famous and infamous inhabitants (from Dylan Thomas to Bob Dylan) of the hallowed Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt have created an impressionistic, dream-like documentary about an indelible part of 20th century arts and pop culture.
We also hear from several current residents, who are dealing with the hotel renovations going on through amusing interactions with some of the workers. It all adds up to a lovely if melancholic journey through ghosts of the past and present.
(Dark Star Pictures)
This 1986 action flick harkens back to the exploitative B movies of the ‘70s like Jackson County Jail and Gator Bait, as a young woman must handle a trio of brutish male attackers, showing her wiles (and curves) as she does.
Director Mario Andreacchio, in his feature debut, has made a sleazy, silly adventure that displays the charms of leading lady Cassandra Delaney, who does the usual risible genre things but manages to fend off the men, who are even dumber than she. That Quentin Tarantino loves this movie tells you all you need to know about his taste.
Hallelujah—Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
(Sony Classics)
Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has become a sort of all-purpose hymn, sung at memorials for everyone from celebrities and politicians to mass shooting victims—but, as directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine demonstrate in this intriguing biography, the song is just one part of Cohen’s long artistic journey.
By following Cohen’s life and career, Hallelujah becomes a lot more than just an exploration of a single song, and that is the filmmakers’ finest achievement, using archival interviews with Cohen over decades as well as with friends, colleagues and to present a full-bodied portrait.
(Cohen Film Collection)
Another elegant, tense character study by French director Patrice Leconte, this 1989 chamber drama, based on a story by the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon, follows a loner who spies on his attractive female neighbor later finding himself a suspect in the murder of another young woman.
With Leconte’s stylish direction and sublime acting by Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, you nearly forget that this minutely detailed film is just a 79-minute shaggy-dog story that hinges on an implausible plot point. Here's hoping that we also get re-releases of Leconte’s dazzling followup features, The Hairdresser’s Husband and The Perfume of Yvonne.
Rubikon
(IFC Midnight)
It’s the year 2056, and the earth has suddenly become largely uninhabitable due to a toxic fog, and those onboard an orbiting space station must decide whether to return and search for survivors or stay onboard and safe.
Director Magdalena Lauritsch and her cowriter Jessica Lind set up their ambitious but derivative sci-fi adventure nicely, but although the characters populating the movie are interestingly differentiated (and well-acted by the cast), there’s soon nowhere to go—literally and figuratively.
Monstrous
(Screen Media)
In Chris Sivertson’s tantalizing but ultimately frustrating horror flick, Christina Ricci beautifully gives it her all as a woman who, escaping an abusive husband, takes her young son to try and start a new life—but the monster her son sees, and her own unsettling visions, make her question whether she can.
Siverton and writer Carol Chrest have made an unusually intimate thriller that measures a woman’s instability in the face of grief but too often takes half-measures that are only intermittently powerful—and the ending is easily guessed by anyone who’s seen similar movies. The film looks superb on Blu.
DVD Release of the Week
Summers with Picasso
(Icarus Films)
This disc pairs documentaries about Pablo Picasso in the south of France, where he spent summers with famous and not so famous friends, fellow artists and his muses: Francois Levy-Kuentz’s On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso recounts a 1937 trip to Mougins, and Christian Tran’s Picasso and Sima, Antibes, 1946 is set in another resort town nine years later.
Both films give rare glimpses of Picasso that are unusually intimate, a mixture of artistry and frivolity, with sympathetic portraits of mistresses Dora Maar (in 1937) and Francoise Gilot (who is interviewed for the Antibes film). There’s a plethora of stunning vintage photos, home movies and—most importantly—glimpses of colorful art. The lone extra is Guernica, Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens’ 1949 short about Picasso’s incendiary painting, also available on an Icarus Blu-ray with other Resnais shorts.
Boundless—Pablo Barragan and Sophie Pacini
(SWR2)
Spanish clarinetist Pablo Barragán and German pianist Sophie Pacini join forces for an illuminating, often exhilarating journey through 20th century chamber music. Each composer made the genre his own, from Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy 1941-2 work and Mieczysław Weinberg’s klezmer-inflected 1945 sonata to Francois Poulenc’s elegant, witty 1964 entry.
Sergei Prokofiev’s 1943 flute sonata—transcribed for clarinet by Barragán and Kent Kennan—is filled with the great Soviet composer’s inventiveness and memorable melodies. Unsurprisingly, Barragán and Pacini sound spectacular together, both of them obviously at home in this music.
Coleridge-Taylor—Chamber Works
(Chandos)
Finally published nearly a century after the composer’s untimely death at age 37 from pneumonia, these chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor were written in 1893-94 while he was a student at the Royal College of Music in London.
All three works—a piano trio, a piano quintet, and a nonet for piano, strings and winds that’s subtitled ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’—are indebted to Brahms and Schumann, but are no less attractive for that. They are performed with vigor and warmth by members of the versatile Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, bringing their most charming musical qualities to the fore.
The American Ballet Theater & "Swan Lake"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 06 July 2022 15:12
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Scene from Swan Lake. Photo: Gene Schiavone.
On the evening of Thursday, June 30th, at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, a thus far terrific season for the superb American Ballet Theater continued marvelously with an ultimately thrilling realization of the magnificent, exceedingly popular Swan Lake, with gorgeouschoreography by retiring Artistic Director, Kevin McKenzie, after that of the immortal Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov of the Imperial Russian Ballet. The glorious score is by Peter Tchaikovsky, which was ably conducted here by David LaMarche. The splendid sets and costumes were designed by Zack Brown, with beautiful lighting by Duane Schuler.
A fabulous cast was headed by Gillian Murphy—maybe the finest ballerina in the company—who was simply dazzling in the celebrated dual role of the Princess Odette and Odile, von Rothbart’s daughter. Her excellent partner—who was also effective as the male lead in the previous week’s remarkable Alexei Ratmansky production, Of Love and Rage—was Thomas Forster, who again succeeded as a matinee idol. Duncan Lyle and Jarod Curley were impressive as von Rothbart, the evil sorcerer. Sung Woo Han shone as Benno, the prince’s friend, as did his counterparts in the first act’s Pas de Trois: Sunmi Park and Chloe Misseldine. Equally fabulous, in the mesmerizing second act, were the four Cygnettes—Léa Fleytoux, Hannah Marshall, Erica Lall, and Rachel Richardson—and the Two Swans: Zhong-Jing Fang—who was stunning in the season’s opening week production of Don Quixote—and Paulina Waski, who also played the Spanish Princess in the third act.
The admirable dancers of the third act included: Emily Hayes as the Hungarian Princess; Virginia Lensi as the Italian Princess; Kathryn Boren as the Polish Princess; and Betsy McBride and Kento Sumitani, who executed the Czardas.The two couples of the Spanish Dance were Courtney Lavine with João Menegussi and Scout Forsythe with Patrick Frenette, while the Neapolitan dance was performed by Cameron McCune and Jonathan Klein. The corps de ballet was enchanting. The artists deservedly received an unusually enthusiastic ovation.
Music Review: "Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway" with Vanessa Williams
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 03 July 2022 20:20
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway with Vanessa Williams
June 20, 2022
The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, NYC
thetownhall.org
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| Vanessa Williams at Seth Rudetsky's Broadway (photo: Sachyn Mital) |
With a brilliant career that over the past three decades has seen her ascend to the top of the pop charts and star in several successful TV series and Broadway musicals, Vanessa Williams was a no-brainer as guest for the latest installment at the Town Hall of Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway. Both the host himself and the audience were in adoration mode for 90 minutes as Williams bantered easily with Rudetsky about her career and belted out several songs from her wide-ranging catalog.
Rudetsky is unequaled at being chatty, informative and always entertaining in his programs of conversation and musical performance with notable stage stars. Moving easily from the piano to the interlocutor’s chair and back, Rudetsky is knowledgeable, well-prepared and funny, putting his guests and audiences at ease. As a terrifically versatile pianist, he plays whatever is needed at the time. And with Williams, that ranged from Sondheim to Kander & Ebb to Disney.
The discussion—always enlightening, amusing, entertaining—ranged from Williams’ childhood (her mother, a music teacher, was in attendance, a few rows from the stage) and college years at Syracuse, where she majored in musical theater, to winning the Miss America pageant and, after being stripped of her crown with only a short while left in her reign thanks to nude photos that were published in Penthouse magazine, her slow but steady rise to a triple threat singer-actress-dancer onstage, onscreen, on records and on TV.
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| Seth Rudetsky and Vanessa Williams (photo: Sychan Mital) |
Punctuating the conservation were the irresistible songs: Rudetsky and Williams would walk over to the piano, and he would accompany her in, say, “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods (in which she played the Witch in 2002), the title song from her smashing Broadway debut, replacing Chita Rivera in 1994 as the lead in Kiss of the Spider Woman, “Colors of the Wind” from the Disney movie Pocahontas, and—unsurprisingly, the final song of the night—her biggest radio hit, “Save the Best for Last.”
Williams is currently starring in the silly but hilarious play, POTUS, on Broadway, and at one point she invited her costar, Lilli Cooper, onstage. Cooper took over the conversation before belting a show-stopping “The Oldest Profession” from the Cy Coleman musical The Life—Cooper was amazing, but I couldn’t help thinking that Williams should have done another song or two instead.
Although Cooper deserves her own showcase, next up for Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway at the Town Hall is the great Jane Krakowski on September 12.
June '22 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 30 June 2022 03:02
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week
Mr. Malcolm’s List
(Bleecker Street)
Based on a novel by Suzanne Allain (who also penned the screenplay), Emma Holly Jones’ feature debut divertingly plays with the conventions of 19th century novels—and their movie and TV adaptations—and gives its female characters agency in their own futures (including husbands).
Reminiscent of the recent Jane Austen adaptation of Emma with Anya Taylor-Joy, Mr. Malcolm’s List is light on its feet and unapologetically romantic, allowing two worthy if underused actresses—Zawe Ashton and Freida Pinto—the opportunity take center stage, and they take full advantage with delightful performances.
(Magnolia)
In this creepy and understated horror film, a teenager, Char, subject to school bullying, also must deal with the difficult relationship between her grandmother, Rita, and her mother, Angela, especially after Angela disappears, then returns…or does she?
Director-writer Kate Dolan keeps things percolating as the women’s behavior and relationships are continuously scrambled, and if she loses control before the too-literal denouement, her film remains deeply unsettling and is superbly acted by Hazel Doupe (Char), Carolyn Bracken (Angela) and Ingrid Craigie (Rita).
4K Release of the Week
Shaft
(Criterion)
In Gordon Parks’ groundbreaking 1971 detective picture, Richard Roundtree set the macho blueprint for the Blaxploitation heroes of the early ‘70s for an unbeatable blend of crime drama, romance, comedy and good old NYC location shooting. The first sequel, 1972’s Shaft’s Big Score!, is just as entertaining, so it’s nice that Criterion included it on one of the two Blu-ray discs.
The original film looks supremely gritty and grainy in 4K, while the sequel looks good in hi-def. Many extras include vintage and new featurettes, including interviews with Roundtree, Parks and Oscar-winning composer Isaac Hayes (who did not return to score Shaft’s Big Score!, but did contribute a song), along with new video essays that put the movie in context, like the full-length 2019 documentary exploration, A Complicated Man: The "Shaft" Legacy.
Breathe In
(Cohen Media)
For exploring a near-taboo coupling—a married 40-ish father and a high school exchange student who attends classes with his daughter—director-cowriter Drake Doremus deserves credit for restraint; but since the 95-minute drama isn't interested in chronicling a strictly sexual relationship, the gradual reveal of an intimate relationship is slow and unrewarding.
Still, this intriguing character study has a strong cast: Guy Pearce (dad), Felicity Jones (student), Mackenzie Davis (daughter) and especially Amy Ryan (mom) provide credible character arcs throughout. The hi-def transfer is immaculate; extras are a making-of and director interview.
Mozart—Don Giovanni
(C Major)
Mozart’s masterpiece is given a conventional but powerful staging by director Michael Hampe at the 1987 Salzburg Festival, and the artists are even better: conducting the orchestra and chorus is none other than the great—if controversial—Herbert von Karajan, near the end of his life (he would die two years later) but still commanding on the podium.
The rakish Don is the imposing American bass-baritone Samuel Ramey; the Don’s conquests are sung and acted brilliantly by American soprano Kathleen Battle (Zerlina), Bulgarian soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow (Donna Anna) and German soprano Julia Varady (Donna Elvira); and the Don’s servant, Leporello, is the redoubtable Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto. The hi-def video and audio are acceptable.
(Music Box Films)
Set in 2035, when the government has the right to tax citizen’s dreams, this too-clever sci-fi romance follows a man who arrives at a senior citizen’s house to audit her VHS dream tapes. What follows is unsurprisingly surreal but also surprisingly forgettable, as codirectors/cowriters Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley fashion an arbitrary world that never coheres emotionally or histrionically.
It doesn’t help that Audley (who plays the auditor) isn’t much of an actor, so any soulfulness or sympathy toward the relationship is negated from the outset. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras include a directors’ commentary, deleted/extended scenes, making-of, test footage and Birney’s short films.
We Need to Do Something
(RLJE Films)
What begins as a tense drama set in a bathroom—a family is barricaded there during a strong storm—soon degenerates into a risible scarefest in which anything goes, particularly the convenient appearances of a poisonous (and symbolic) snake. Director Sean King O’Grady and writer Max Booth III have absorbed the lessons of countless horror flicks, but they forgot that the best ones know that a sense of inevitability is subordinate to plausibility.
Once the parents’ argument leads to the young son getting bitten by the snake, empathy is thrown out the window; the flashbacks setting up malevolence are similarly ham-fisted. The best thing about the film is Vinessa Shaw, who has been seen far too infrequently since Eyes Wide Shut nearly a quarter-century ago and who nearly makes the mother fully inhabited. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.
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