Whatever its other merits, Remember This—The Lesson of Jan Karski is the most important show in New York right now. A monologue performed by actor David Strathairn, it’s a plea for truth amid the chaos of a fractured world, as much an indictment of today as of the inaction of western governments (notably Britain and the U.S.) during Hitler’s reign of terror.

 

It is also, not coincidentally, a way to keep memories alive of the millions who perished—another truth needed today, when polls say young people have little or no knowledge of the Holocaust. But it’s most heartening to report that the play is an impressively dramatic work, a riveting 90-minute monologue performed brilliantly by David Strathairn.

 

Written by Clark Young and Derek Goldman (who also directs), Remember This underlines its intentions in its very title. Jan Kozielewski was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1914. He was a soldier in the Polish army on September 1, 1939, when the German blitzkrieg began WWII; after his capture by the Red army, he was transferred to the Nazis in an exchange and soon escaped, becoming—now known as Jan Karski—a courier for the Polish resistance, going to occupied France and London and even the U.S., where he visited FDR in the Oval Office. 

 

The Catholic Karski had a single message, from his own eyewitness testimony of seeing how Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and a nearby concentration camp lived—and died. But would leaders like Churchill and Roosevelt listen to his message? They did—to a point. But Karski believed much more could have been done. Six million dead by the end of the war is damning evidence of a lack of Allied leaders’ urgency.

 

Out of this rich dramatic ore, director Goldman has fashioned a breathless but emotional 90-minute journey, given special zest by Zach Blaine’s magisterial and subtle lighting and Roc Lee’s haunting music and sound effects. On Misha Kachman’s spare set of a table and two chairs, however, it’s Strathairn who makes Remember This unforgettable. The 73-year-old actor gives a physically imposing performance that’s simply jaw-dropping to watch: stalking around the stage, jumping off the table, rolling around the floor, changing clothes almost as much as he changes his accents (he not only voices Karski but the other characters, from Nazis and Polish Jewish leaders to FDR himself). 

 

Far from being merely technically demanding, Strathairn’s remarkable acting vividly embodies Karski’s incredible story, making Remember This must-see theater—and a moving memorial to a man whose life is a profound testament to human goodness.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

In Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic 1943 anti-Nazi fable (the English title is “The Raven”), a small French town is ripped apart by anonymous letters accusing people of various sins (some real, some not) until the entire populace is caught up in a toxic stew of mistrust and informing on one another.

 

 

Banned in Vichy France, the film is still potent today (and has unsurprising parallels to current events) and remains a visceral and vividly realized drama that is gripping to the end reveal. Criterion’s usual splendid release includes a beautiful hi-def transfer, an interview with master director and film historian Bertrand Tavernier, and a 1975 French film history documentary featuring Clouzot. 

 

 

 

 

 

Abe Lincoln in Illinois 

Although it’s dated quite badly, John Cromwell’s 1940 drama features a superb Raymond Massey portrayal of Honest Abe in the years before he became president: meeting (and losing) the love of his life, becoming a lawyer, entering politics, marrying Mary Todd and—at the end—winning the 1860 election.

 

 

Massey has the folksy homeliness that Lincoln had by all accounts; his presence helps steady the bumpy ride in Grover Jones’ adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood’s play. The B&W film looks stunning on Blu; lone extra is a 1940 radio adaptation also starring Massey.

 

 

 

 

 

The Amusement Park 

George Romero was known for his zombie trilogy (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead), but his scariest movie might have been one no one knows about: this 55-minute, surreal feature made in 1973, but barely seen after a 1975 festival premiere, concerning the legitimate fears of elder abuse.

 

 

Memorable visual imagery accompanies this honest and heartfelt plea for tolerance and fair treatment, made on the lowest of low budgets. It’s been lovingly restored in hi-def, and there’s a fine array of contextualizing extras, including an audio commentary, interviews and featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

“They’re here” is all you need to hear to know what’s coming—this scary, funny and supremely entertaining 1982 thriller about paranormal forces hounding an innocent family in its home in the depths of American suburbia was primarily directed by Tobe Hooper, although the unceasing rumors that producer-writer Steven Spielberg actually helmed some sequernces sure seems possible considering how much of this looks and feels like a Spielberg film.

 

 

The acting is superb throughout, with JoBeth Williams giving a standout performance as the harried mother, but Craig T. Nelson as the father and Zelda Rubenstein as the ghost whisperer are also good. The film looks spectacularly good in UHD, especially in its dazzling light-dark imagery; extras on the accompanying Blu-ray are a vintage making-of featurette and two-part featurette about paranormal investigators.

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

(Magnolia) 

In the 1960s, the political and law enforcement establishment, spooked by the civil unrest growing throughout the U.S., actually set up fake towns that were named Riotsville that were used to help prepare the military and police for the next uprising in the inner cities.

 

 

Director Sierra Pettengill’s powerful documentary cannily utilizes archival footage—yes, the military brass filmed everything—to create a potent counter-narrative to what occurred during that volatile era in order to demonstrate the beginnings of the militarization of the police that has since become ubiquitous in cities across the country.

 

 

 

 

 

Unidentified 

Romanian director Bogdan George Apetri, who resides in New York City, returns with his second provocative drama in a matter of weeks, following his disturbing Miracle: this film, set in the same small Romanian town (where Apetri incidentally grew up), follows an unorthodox detective looking into a case that’s not his.

 

 

Apetri adroitly provides bits of pertinent information as the story moves along, until finally we realize just what the obsessed detective is doing. It’s admittedly engrossing, but the antihero (played by Liam Neesonesque actor Bogdan Farcas) is so vile that it’s difficult to stay with him for two hours.

 

 

 

 

 

Secret Defense 

I’ve never been a Jacques Rivette fan, but he did hit his stride in the ’90s, starting with 1991’s magnificent, four-hour La belle noiseuse and the longer but intimate two-part 1993 study of Joan of Arc, Joan the Maid. Two of his other ’90s features, Up, Down, Fragile and Secret Defense, are playing at Quad Cinema in Manhattan on September 21 and 28, respectively, as part of a month-long Rivette retrospective. 

 

 

Up, Down, Fragile is a sweetly entertaining look at a trio of women navigating romance and friendship in Paris; the tense Secret Defense stars a formidable Sandrine Bonnaire as a scientist searching for the facts behind her father’s death—both films are too long, as most Rivette films are, but they at least aren’t dull exercises filled with amateurish performances, which these features are happily devoid of.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

For the 20 episodes that make up the latest season of yet another beloved TV series reboot, the breezy chemistry of actors Jay Hernandez and Perdita Weeks, who are playing investigators Thomas Magnum and Juliet Higgins, makes these familiar stories of murder, blackmail and other crime cases set in always picturesque Hawaii watchable.

 

 

Extras on this five-disc set include the ubiquitous gag reel as well as deleted scenes from six of the episodes.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

Before becoming one of the grand old men of 20th-century British music, William Walton (1902-83) was a young enfant terrible, and his effortlessly witty and jazzy Façade, set to verses by his friend Edith Sitwell filled with delightful wordplay, disturbed polite London society after its 1923 premiere.

 

 

In this recording of not only the original work but also Walton’s follow-up (A Further Entertainment) and additional numbers that were for various reasons dropped, JoAnn Falletta leads musicians from the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber orchestra in a peerless performance that’s light on its feet, perfectly capturing Walton and Sitwell’s unique collaboration that puts equal emphasis on his music and her words. Hila Plitmann, Fred Child and Kevin Deas make for a compelling trio of narrators.

4K Release of the Week 

Director Baz Luhrmann has said this is NOT a biopic of Elvis Presley—instead, it’s a glimpse at American pop culture of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Well, if that’s true, why title the film Elvis? Why not something else, like Colonel Parker? After all, it’s Elvis’ conniving manger and mastermind (played disastrously by a ridiculously hammy Tom Hanks) who is the main character in this flashy, gaudy, empty spectacle.

 

 

That’s not to say that Austin Butler isn’t a bad Elvis—in fact, he’s quite good: personable, charismatic and not just a big impression of the King—but Butler is secondary to Luhrmann’s frantic style, which buries, for the most part, any humanity or sympathy. The film looks great in 4K; the accompanying Blu-ray also includes several making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

As Lóri, a grade-school teacher in her early 40s who enjoys unattached sexual relationships with men and women, Simone Spoladore gives a ferocious performance that’s simultaneously sexy and sorrowful, intelligent and intoxicating.

 

 

Director Marcela Lordy demonstrates a real gift for personalizing Lóri in this alternately amusing and dramatic character study, and the sex scenes—including one that climaxes the film with an exclamation point—are among the least gratuitous in any film in awhile. But it’s Spoladore who makes Lóri—and the film itself—utterly and humanly real.

 

 

 

 

 

Loving Highsmith 

Author Patricia Highsmith—best known for her haunting mystery novels that were made into films as disparate as Strangers on a Train, The American Friend and The Talented Mr. Ripley—had mainly love affairs with women, which are recounted and analyzed in Eva Vitija’s interesting if thin documentary.

 

 

Only 80 minutes—and crammed with clips from the film versions of her books—Vitjia’s documentary doesn’t have enough material for its worthwhile subject, although interviews with family members, friends and past lovers (along with archival footage of the writer herself) suggest some of the complexities in Highsmith’s personal life and work.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Joanne Woodward’s expressively subtle performance as a school marm living with her mother in a small New England town whose sexual awakening and pregnancy scare make her reevaluate her life is the main reason to see this 1968 drama, the first feature directed by Woodward’s husband, Paul Newman.

 

 

Newman’s direction is often impressive but sometimes serves up visual and narrative clichés: but with Woodward’s fiery portrayal at its center—and good supporting turns by Kate Harrington as her mom, James Olson as her first beau and Donald Moffat, seen in flashbacks, as her father—it’s a substantive character study. The film gets a nice-looking hi-def transfer yet looks a little soft; extras are silent promo footage and a trailer.

 

 

 

 

 

Sniper—The White Raven 

Set in the Donbass region of Ukraine during the 2014 conflict with Russia, Marian Bushan’s violent war movie follows a Ukrainian schoolteacher who, after his house is burned to the ground and his pregnant wife is shot dead by enemy invaders, joins the military and, after training, becomes a first-rate sniper.

 

 

This gives him the chance to take revenge on those who destroyed his life and also track down and eliminate the Russians’ greatest sniper. There’s no denying the skill that went into making the film, and there are some hair-raisingly exciting moments along the way. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week

In the latest spinoff of the vastly successful CBS drama franchise, NCIS: Hawai'i, Vanessa Lachey plays Jane Tennet, who becomes the first woman to be special agent in charge at the NCIS outpost in Pearl Harbor, where she and her cohorts investigate crimes of a sensitive nature throughout all 22 first-season episodes.

 

 

In the fifth season of Seal Team, David Boreanaz and Max Thieriot lead the Bravo Team in their exceedingly dangerous missions over 14 episodes, including tracking down terrorists close to home and in foreign lands. NCIS extras include a crossover episode, extended/deleted scenes, featurettes and a gag reel; Seal Team extras are featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel. 

 

 

 

 

 

The White Lotus—Complete 1st Season 

Pretentious and highly contrived, Mike White’s multipart series about a group of Americans—a family, newlywed couple, a lonely woman grieving her mom’s death—visiting a Hawaiian resort run by an arrogant Aussie too often stretches itself and its characters thin as it blatantly and obviously moves the sundry subplots from A to B.

 

 

Yet, even at an unnecessary six hours, it’s entertaining, thanks to standout acting by Connie Britton (mom), Alexandra Daddario (new wife), Murray Bartlett (manager) and Natasha Rothwell, as the spa manager who gets unexpectedly close to the grieving woman (overplayed by Jennifer Coolidge). Extras are on-set interviews.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Both Felix Mendelssohn and his older sister Fanny—who would go by Fanny Hensel when she got married—were childhood prodigies, as this first-rate recording of some of their piano-based chamber works attests. Felix is represented by his sextet for the unwieldy combination of piano, violin, viola, two cellos and a double bass, which he composed as a mere lad of 16. It’s one of his most dazzling works—full of youthful energy, obviously, but also with a canny sense of structure that makes it sound more like an orchestral concerto than a chamber piece for six players.

 

 

Fanny, meanwhile, wrote her own miraculous piano quartet when she was 17 and her final masterpiece, a piano trio, the same year she and her brother died, in 1847—both works ravishingly bookend a formidable career that was rarely acknowledged during her lifetime. All three pieces are exquisitely performed by members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective.