Since I first saw Sandra Bernhard, in 1984 at Buffalo's old Tralfamadore Café (now the Tralf Music Hall), she has used her sardonic wit and pop savvy to comment knowingly and hilariously on our deadened celebrity culture. Her concert last week at City Winery in Manhattan proved that, nearly four decades later, Bernhard has lost none of her unique insights into what is wrong with…well, everything.

 

Of course, Bernhard is a terrific singer as well, always choosing the perfect songs that both underscore her humor and work well musically. Her City Winery opener, “Make Your Own Kind of Music”—a minor hit for Mama Cass in 1969—stated Bernhard’s case from the start as an original and always honest performer. 

 

Bernhard doesn’t tell jokes, of course, but colorful anecdotes of the absurdities that permeate her life—and, by extension, ours. The pandemic hit the resident of the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan quite hard (as anyone who listens to her weekly Sirius show, Sandyland, can attest), so listening to her describing life during lockdown is both painful and bracingly funny. 

 

For those of us who were in attendance at her comeback show last August (also at City Winery), some of these COVID tales were familiar, but she always adds the kind of telling details that mark her genius as a storyteller.

 

For 90 minutes, Bernhard alternated her perfectly pitched stories with a selection of tunes performed with her crack band, led by pianist and music director Mitch Kaplan, from the Stone Poneys’ “Different Drum” and Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” to LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” and Rod Stewart’s “Mandolin Wind.” 

 

In between were her priceless observations, like recounting this Chelsea rooftop conversation: “I’m writing the definitive biography of Chopin”—“Sean Penn? I love Sean Penn!” 

 

In this fraught moment in our history, after the Buffalo and Texas massacres and with the Supreme Court about to return women to the pre-Roe vs. Wade dark ages, Bernard ended her show with her soulful take on Prince’s “Little Red Corvette.” 

 

It was interspersed with musings about the direction of our country that she witnessed on a recent drive to and from a performance in Philadelphia. “We found pieces of America—not free—barely brave,” she said, closing with the incisive comment, “If you find America, let me know where it is.”

4K Release of the Week 

In this latest unnecessary reboot, director Matt Reeves adds a definite article—to distinguish this one from “a” Batman, apparently—but little else: this relentlessly dank, dour, wet, dingy, nearly three-hour opus instead comes to a specious conclusion as Batman and the Riddler (a ridiculously over the top Paul Dano) are merely two sides of the same coin, and there’s even a brief appearance of the Joker at the end to foreshadow the sequel.

 

 

Robert Pattinson is decent if unexciting as the Caped Crusader (it’s time we admit that, of the big-screen Batmans, Michael Keaton was the most memorable), Zoë Kravitz has charisma to burn as Catwoman—there’s an inevitable spinoff coming, most likely—there’s a witty use of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” and an insanely lunatic car chase with an unrecognizable Colin Farrell as the Penguin. The ultra hi-def transfer looks exceptionally good; the accompanying Blu-ray includes two hours of extras, mainly on-set and behind-the-scenes featurettes as well as deleted scenes with Reeves’ commentary.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week

In writer-director Iris K. Shim’s tense psychological thriller, Sandra Oh plays Amanda, a woman haunted by the spirit of her abusive mother whom she left in Korea for the U.S. many years ago; Amanda desperately tries to avoid having the same fractured relationship with her own teenage daughter.

 

 

Shim effectively dramatizes how family traumas encroach on succeeding generations, and even when the inevitable supernatural horrors emerge, Umma is a splendidly paced tug-of-war between a protective mother and those malevolent forces. It looks great on Blu-ray.

 

 

 

 

 

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week 

In John Andreas Andersen’s entertaining environmental disaster movie, Sofia (Kristine Kujath Thorp) and Stian (Henrik Bjelland)—who’ve recently begun a relationship—are recruited to save the world (or, at least, Norway) when an unknown entity causes widespread destruction among several offshore oil rigs.

 

 

Andersen doesn’t have a light or subtle touch, but he knows how to shoot action, ratcheting up the tension whether on a burning oil rig or in a boardroom where suits make life-changing decisions. Thorp’s and Bjelland’s raw portrayals help push this over the finish line. 

 

 

 

 

 

Cane Fire 

Anthony Banua-Simon’s very personal documentary shows how the people of Hawaii—and specifically those who live on the island of Kaua’i—have been exploited for decades by American industries, especially by Hollywood, whose movies have planted the seed in viewer’s minds that it is a paradise for white men and women at the expense of the natives.

 

 

Banua-Simon incisively burrows into how movies have romanticized Kauaʻi at the same time that they have been racist, sometimes explicitly, other times implicitly: from White Heat (1934) and Diamond Head (1963) to Elvis in Blue Hawaii (1961) and the right-wing John Wayne polemic Big Jim McLain (1952). Banua-Simon also bitingly chronicles the realities of living on Kauaʻi today, as the friction between the hugely important tourism industry and the cherished traditions of natives continues, seemingly unabated.

 

 

 

 

 

The French 

Director William Klein covered the 1981 French Open by showcasing the many intimate and memorable on-court moments but also by focusing on revelatory behind-the-scenes glimpses of locker room drama and levity, comradeship and rivalry throughout the two-week Grand Slam tournament.

 

 

The tennis greats of that era—John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl, Jimmy Connors, Guillermo Vilas and Bjorn Borg (the men’s champion); Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, 16-year-old Andrea Jaeger and Hana Mandlikova (the women’s champion)—are seen on and off the court, and Klein finds bits of insight among the players, as when Arthur Ashe, sitting courtside during a match, predicts what will happen.  

 

 

 

 

 

Hold Your Fire 

Stefan Forbes’ illuminating and shocking documentary recounts a 1973 Brooklyn robbery that goes tragically awry after cops, TV crews and gawkers show up in droves and the culprits take hostages—ultimately an NYPD member is killed and one robber is wounded—the outcome relatively benign despite the department’s tendency to shoot first, especially when it came to Black suspects.

 

 

Several of the principals, including the surviving robbers,  retired cops, hostages and their family members speak frankly on-camera, and Forbes also talks at length with Harvey Schlossberg, the policeman with a psychology degree who pioneered defusing such fraught situations through mediation—it helped keep the body count to a minimum in this instance, but Schlossberg’s methods have sadly gone out of fashion in recent years. (He died in 2021 at age 85.)

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

The irresistible rhythms of jazz are at the heart of these three compositions by three different composers writing in three distinct styles: Leonard Bernstein’s snazzy Prelude, Fugue and Riffs (1949), Igor Stravinsky’s spirited Ebony Concerto (1945) and Osvaldo Golijov’s brash Nazareno (2000) stir instruments such as saxophones, pianos and a battery of percussion instruments into the stylish mix.

 

 

Simon Rattle and the London Symphony orchestra provide the formidable musical backbone, and outstanding featured performers—including the great Labèque sisters on pianos in Nazareno—add immeasurably to the enticing texture.

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

In Chris Sivertson’s tantalizing but frustrating horror flick, Christina Ricci gives it her all beautifully 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Pleasure 

Sofia Kappel is sensational as Bella Cherry, a budding porn performer who arrives in southern California willing to do anything to become an adult-film star, in director Ninja Thyberg’s provocative character study of a young woman who discovers the misogynistic reality of the porn industry.

 

 

Although Thyberg has made sure to make this as authentic as possible without crossing the line into hardcore—we see Kappel gamely simulating several sex scenes—she loses her nerve about halfway through, and the film becomes a tried-and-true cautionary tale. The abrupt ending, however, properly ends Bella’s bumpy ride in more ways than one.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind) directed this gripping 1941 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel about the good doctor who turns into a frightening killer, with plenty of chillingly atmospheric sequences throughout this “duality of man” parable.

 

 

Spencer Tracy is in top form as both doctor and vicious alter ego, preying on the two women in his life/lives: Lana Turner at her most glamorous as Jekyll’s fiancée and Ingrid Bergman at her most seductive as the Hyde’s luckless mistress. The B&W film looks splendid in hi-def.

 

 

 

 

 

The Funeral 

Japanese director Juzo Itami’s anarchic style, perfected in the gloriously unkempt comic adventures Tampopo and A Taxing Woman, first came to vivid life in this 1984 black comedy satirizing the use of traditional Japanese funerals in modern society. Itami (who died suspiciously in 1997) was fond of his characters even though he delivered swift kicks to their backsides, and balancing of the hilarious and the heartfelt was something he was especially adept at, even in this occasionally choppy and overlong debut feature.

 

 

The film looks terrific on Blu-ray; extras include new interviews with his wife and muse, actress Nobuko Miyamoto, and his son, actor Manpei Ikeuchi; a featurette on Itami’s films; and a selection of commercials he directed.

 

 

 

 

 

Pushing Hands 

Ang Lee’s first film, this 1991 drama about the difficulties of assimilating for Mr. Chu, an elderly Chinese man who comes to the U.S. to stay with his son Alex and American daughter-in-law Martha, has its charms and insights yet is essentially a rough blueprint for the superior The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman.

 

 

Happily, there’s a lovely performance by Sihung Lung as Mr. Chu, which partly compensates for the weak acting of Bo Z. Wong (son) and Deb Snyder (daughter-in-law). The restored transfer looks quite good on Blu-ray; lone extra is an hour-long interview with co-writer/producer James Schamus, co-producer Ted Hope and co-editor Tim Squyres.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

This compelling and hilarious series continues chugging along, as the tension between the media corporation’s founder, Logan Roy, and his adult children, all of whom are in one way or another unworthy to succeed him—sons Kendall, Roman and Connor as well as daughter Shiv—reaches heights of tragicomedy worthy of Shakespeare.

 

 

The superb writing is complemented by the magisterial acting, from Brian Cox’s Lear-like Logan to Jeremy Strong (Kendall), Kieran Culkin (Roman), Sarah Snook (Shiv) and the scene-stealing J. Smith-Cameron as the shrewd associate Gerri. All nine episodes are included, along with several on-set featurettes and interviews, but it's too bad that so few TV series (all shot in hi-def) are released on Blu-ray.