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Film and the Arts
April '22 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 06 April 2022 20:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Aline
(Roadside Attractions)
Céline Dion becomes Aline Dieu (“dieu” means God in French) in this weird biopic by director-writer-star Valérie Lemercier, who not only plays the Quebecois singer from childhood until superstardom but also imbues her film with a slippery mixture of adoration and condescension, which makes it a chore to sit through after the first hour.
Director Lemercier’s uncertain tone—which switches from mocking to affectionate to self-pitying to distanced, sometimes within the same sequence—doesn’t help actress Lemercier’s performance, which is technically agile but emotionally chilly. More on-target is Sylvain Marcel, who plays Aline/Celine’s much older manager/Svengali/husband with an authenticity missing from the rest of the film.
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(Sony Pictures Classics)
In Eva Husson’s precise, humane character study of a storied author who looks back at life-changing events in her own life, Odessa Young gives a supremely intelligent and emotionally fearless performance as Jane, who is a lowly chambermaid before events transpire to transform her into an artist of substance.
There’s impeccable support from Josh O’Connor as the young man whose destiny dovetails with Jane’s own as well as Colin Firth and Olivia Colman as the couple whose home she works in, but Husson keeps the focus on Young, who gives such subtle shadings to Jane that we watch her growth in stature, maturity and artistry right in front of our eyes.
The Rose Maker
(Music Box Films)
Director-cowriter Pierre Pinaud’s charmingly low-key comedy-drama about Eve, an eccentric boutique rose creator trying to keep her cherished father’s business afloat against imposingly large-scale corporations, gets the energy it needs from Catherine Frot’s exquisite portrayal of a woman used to doing things her way who slowly shifts her outlook after a trio of convicts arrives from a local rehab program to help out with her floundering business.
There’s nothing surprising about anything that happens among this mismatched quartet (quintet, actually: Olivia Côte winningly plays Eve’s exasperated assistant), but it’s done so effortlessly by Pinaud, Frot and the rest of the cast that the movie’s uplift is genuine, with no schmaltz or excess.
Siberia (Dynamic)
Idomeneo (Unitel)
Italian composer Umberto Giordano’s Siberia is a true rarity from a composer best known for Andrea Chénier, and its drama might be strained at times, but the music is lovely, and—in this 2021 performance from Florence—our heroine and hero, Stephana and Vissili, are brought to vivid life by Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva and Georgian tenor Giorgi Sturua.
Mozart’s pageant opera, Idomeneo, is not the popular success that The Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro are, but its stately musical procession has its adherents; this 2019 Vienna staging gives a good sense of what works, especially in the playing by the Vienna State Opera orchestra and choir under conductor Tomas Netopil and the elegant singing of Rachel Frenkel as Idamante and Valentina Nafornita as Ilia. Both operas have excellent hi-def video and audio.
The Long Night
(Well Go USA)
If only it wasn’t made so derivatively, Rich Ragsdale’s would-be thriller about a young woman, Grace, returning to her family’s home only to find herself and her boyfriend in the middle of a lethal battle with supernatural forces might have been truly terrifying.
But nearly everything has been done better in other films: using Krzysztof Penderecki’s unsettling musical work The Awakening of Jacob (which Stanley Kubrick appropriated so famously in The Shining) is only one example. Sherri Chung’s music is otherwise properly eerie, but neither Scout Taylor-Compton nor Nolan Gerard Funk can make anything out of their cardboard characters, and Deborah Kara Young barely registers as a pivotal character in Grace’s return.
CSI: Vegas—Complete 1st Season
(CBS/Paramount)
The ratings juggernaut that is the CSI franchise on CBS—which began in 2000 in Las Vegas, then went to Miami, New York City, and Washington DC over the next couple decades—now ends up in its original location, heralding the return of William Petersen and Jorja Fox as forensic experts Gil and Sara, who come out of retirement to help solve weekly crimes.
The series’ 10 episodes provide the usual dose of dramatics that CSI fans have come to love (or at least tolerate after all this time); three making-of featurettes and several deleted scenes round out the package.
CD Release of the Week
Debussy—Pelléas et Mélisande
(Harmonia Mundi)
Claude Debussy’s impressionistic masterpiece—which turned the opera world on its head when it premiered in 1902—is the ultimate tragic fairy tale and a romantic triangle that is both bracing and disturbing. And this latest recording, performed on instruments of the early 20th century by the adventurous ensemble Les Siècles and beautifully conducted by François-Xavier Roth, creates a spellbinding musical effect while spinning Debussy’s gossamer musical web. The exquisite singers are soprano Vannina Santoni (Mélisande), tenor Julien Behr (Pelléas) and Alexandre Duhamel (Golaud). All that’s missing are the visuals, but I don’t know if this audience-less staging was filmed for posterity.
March '22 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 30 March 2022 17:07
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Alain Resnais—Five Short Films
(Icarus Films)
These short films—made between 1948 to 1957—by French master Alain Resnais (1922-2014) complement his brilliant, Holocaust-themed Night and Fog (1955), starting with a trio of shorts about painters: 1948’s Van Gogh and, from 1949, Paul Gauguin and Guernica, the latter powerfully juxtaposing and superimposing imagery from Picasso artworks as poet Paul Eldard’s impassioned narration addresses the ghastliness of war.
Then there’s a pair of classic Resnais shorts: 1956’s Tous la Memorie du Monde, a buoyantly inventive paean to France’s national library, and 1957’s La Chant du Styrene, Resnais’ first color film and a dazzlingly visual tribute to the world of plastics. All five films have been gloriously restored in hi-def.
(Unitel)
Considered the national opera of Poland, this 1847 masterpiece by Stanislaw Moniuszko combines tragic melodrama with compelling music to show the downfall of one of the most complex female characters in operatic history. In this stellar 2019 Vienna Opera staging, American soprano Corrine Winters plays the title character with all the finesse, ferocity, sensuality and sympathy she can muster, complementing her innate sense of drama and musicality.
Lukasz Borowicz conducts the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and Arnold Schoenberg Chorus in a potent reading of Moniuszko’s classic score. There are first-class hi-def video and audio.
Rick and Morty—Complete Seasons 1-5
(Warner Bros)
For a remarkable 5 seasons and 51 episodes, this blissfully nutty animated series about a mad scientist and his gleefully supportive grandson always reached new levels of insanity as its creators kept cramming more visual hijinks and verbal zaniness into the mix.
The show always threatened viewers with overload, but the crude jokes and eye-catching animation made granddad Rick and grandson Morty’s journeys to dozens of alternate realities a continuously entertaining trip. The entire series looks colorful and dazzling on Blu-ray; extras include commentaries, deleted scenes, featurettes and inside the episodes.
(Warner Archive)
This first telling—from 1937—of the soap-operaish story of a novice actress (Janet Gaynor) who meets, is groomed by and marries an actor on his way down (Frederic March) then becomes a big star herself is done effectively by director William A. Wellman.
Best of all, there’s none of the bloat that would resurface in subsequent adaptations: 1954’s with Judy Garland and James Mason; 1976’s with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; and 2018’s with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. The B&W film looks perfect on Blu-ray, and extras comprise two radio broadcasts of the story, from 1937 with Gaynor and Robert Montgomery and 1943 with Garland and Walter Pidgeon; cartoon A Star Is Hatched; and three shorts, Mal Hallett and His Orchestra, Taking the Count and Alibi Mark.
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
(Warner Archive)
In this sumptuous 1962 cinematic version of three stories created by the famous fairy-tale creators—“The Dancing Princess,” “The Cobbler and the Elves” and “The Singing Bone”—directors Henry Levin and George Pal used the Cinerama process, where three cameras show the images on a theater’s large curved screen.
On this Blu-ray edition, two cuts of the film are included: the regular widescreen letterbox version and the Smilebox version, which imitates the curved Cinerama screen appearance. It looks a little bizarre, but it’s fun watching both versions for maximum visual impact. The movie itself—with Laurence Harvey and Karl Boehm as the brothers and Yvette Mimieux, Barbra Eden and Claire Bloom as various damsels in distress—is an entertaining diversion, but the restorations look absolutely spectacular. Extras include announcement/theatrical trailers for both versions; radio interviews with Mimieux and actor Russ Tamblyn; featurettes The Epic Art of the Brothers Grimm, The Wonderful Career of George Pal and A Salute to William Forman; and the Rescuing a Fantasy Classic documentary.
Bronco Bullfrog
(Seventy-Seven)
Directed by Barney Platts-Mills, this 1969 black-and-white drama about teenagers traversing the rough neighborhoods of East London is an unpolished gem, a spiritual sibling of the vigorous and humane character studies of Ken Loach that explores the relationships among Del and his friends Roy and Jo (known as Bronco Bullfrog), who partake in petty robberies.
The exceptional no-name cast is led by Del Walker as Del, Anne Gooding as Irene, Sam Shepherd as Jo and Roy Haywood as Roy, and Platts-Mills (who died in October) chronicles the teens’ attempts to escape their dead-end existence—particularly Del and Irene—with sympathetic accuracy and no condescension.
CD Release of the Week
Chen Reiss—Fanny & Felix
(Onyx)
Siblings Fanny Hansel and Felix Mendelssohn were both accomplished composers—and Felix may have been the greatest prodigy in music history—and soprano Chen Reiss’ well-curated recital disc makes a compelling case for Fanny getting out of Felix’s musical shadow. Several of Fanny’s lovely leider are heard in orchestrated versions beautifully performed by the Jewish Chamber Orchestra Munich under conductor Daniel Grossman and sung gorgeously by Reiss.
They are complemented by a pair of Felix’s pieces: the orchestral overture Hebrides’ Cave and Infelice!, a glorious concert aria in which Reiss sounds spectacular. But Reiss’ real showcase is Fanny’s Hero und Leander, in which composer and singer pack a fearsome emotional punch in just over eight and a half minutes.
(Deutsche Grammophon)
Soprano Nadine Sierra has it all: a big, lustrous voice along with the looks, acting ability and personality to put it over onstage in whatever role she’s playing. On this excellent disc, Sierra tackles a trio of popular but punishing roles, all distinguished by the fact that, as Sierra says in her thoughtful liner notes, “they couldn’t choose their own destiny.”
Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata, Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Gounod’s Juliette in Romeo et Juliette give Sierra ample opportunities to show off the subtleties in her vocal colors, while she always reaches the high notes with powerful ease. There’s no reason Sierra shouldn’t be among the biggest names in the classical world right now, and with her upcoming run of Lucia at the Metropolitan Opera as well as this superb recital, she should be on her way to achieving that.
As Its Producer, Actor Jessica Chastain Creates “The 355” — A Female Secret Agent Power Team
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 26 March 2022 14:05
- Written by Brad Balfour
The 355
PG-13
2 hr 2 min
Director: Simon Kinberg
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing, Diane Kruger, Lupita Nyong’o, Édgar Ramírez, Sebastian Stan
“The 355” might not have warranted special attention as an action thriller if it had had a conventional cast of muscular, rock-hard, chiseled male actors fighting for truth, justice and the American way. It might then have fallen into the category of "fun film to see on a big screen but otherwise unremarkable." But by stuffing it with an unusual crew of women (both as a cast and as characters), this recently released movie deserved further consideration.
With its cast of four 40-something actresses (and one who’s nearly that age)— propelled by Oscar-nominated actor Jessica Chastain -- “The 355” makes its mark. Did they shape a team special enough to carve out a slot to establish a new franchise? With some cards stacked against it, it was great to see this film get made in any case.
Chastain proposed the idea of a female-led spy film in the same spirit as the Mission: Impossible and James Bond series to Simon Kinberg, her “Dark Phoenix” director, while that film was in production. The concept was built upon and, in May 2018, it was decided that Kinberg would direct with the veteran actor producing. In addition to Chastain as its lead, the film stars Marion Cotillard, Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing and Lupita Nyong’o. The title is derived from the appellation “Agent 355,” the codename of a female spy for the USA during the American Revolution.
The project —named “The 355” — details a group of international spies forced to work together to stop a terrorist organization from starting World War III using a stolen piece of technology. When this top-secret weapon falls into a mercenary’s possession, CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown (Chastain) join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Kruger, “In the Fade”) try to recover it before it can sold to a nefarious group.
Also enlisted for the cause are former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Oscar winner Nyong’o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Oscar winner Cruz). A mysterious Chinese agent Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing, “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) tracking their moves joins the quest as well. As they charge around the globe from Paris to Morocco to Shanghai, the women forge a shaky alliance especially given that their male associates (in particular played by Édgar Ramírez and Sebastian Stan) screw them up in one way or another, leaving them with little choice.
In the end, the team triumphs but they get betrayed, have friends and family members murdered and are severely beaten along the way. As the women go on their separate paths, it’s likely they will somehow reunite to fight the corruption of their various agencies.
Theatrically released in the United States, the film received mostly negative reviews, criticized for following a paint-by-numbers storyline. But the cast deserves praise for tryingto define their characters along the way for the future. In the end, a sequel would compel further definition of characters that deserve another opportunity to shine.
March '22 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 March 2022 17:05
- Written by Kevin Filipski
In-Theater Release of the Week
Vive l’Amour
(Film Movement)
One of the key films of the Taiwanese New Wave, Tsai Ming-liang’s 1994 drama follows a trio of alienated young people who are part of an at times enervating but mostly absorbing love triangle of sorts.
Setting his film primarily in a vacant apartment where a man and woman meet for anonymous trysts (while the other man watches), Ming-liang eschews conventional narrative—there’s scant motivation and only occasional dialogue, all recorded by long takes—to visually mirror his protagonists’ isolation in sleek, soulless Taipei, which is embodied by the final extended shot of actress Yang Kuei-mei in tears.
Captains of the Clouds
(Warner Archive)
In Michael Curtiz’s stirring 1942 action picture, James Cagney plays a rebellious pilot in Canada’s North Country who, along with his fellow flyers—including one whose fiancé Cagney steals—joins the Royal Canadian Air Force to fight the Nazis. Max Steiner’s blustery music is the perfect aural complement to Sol Polito’s glorious aerial Technicolor photography, while Cagney’s swagger is matched by Brenda Marshall as the irresistible bad girl and Dennis Morgan as her betrothed.
The vivid colors look spectacular on Blu; extras are a wartime Cagney newsreel, classic short Rocky Mountain Big Name and cartoons What’s Cookin’ Doc? and Hold the Lion, Please.
Dexter—New Blood
(Showtime/CBS)
Television’s most complicated serial killer drama, which drew to a close in 2013 after its eighth season, has returned with this reboot/sequel of sorts, in which everyone’s favorite murderer—who faked his death a decade ago—has settled in a small New York State town.
As in the original, plotting and motivation are skimpy, but the uniformly superior performances help cover up the flaws. Michael C. Hall’s conflicted antihero is, once again, beautifully complemented by the nicely delineated, subtle acting of Jennifer Carpenter as his beloved sister. The hi-def images look terrific; extras include featurettes and interviews.
(Unitel)
Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev’s powerhouse of an opera, based on a novel by Valery Bryusov, provides a formidably forbidding role for its lead actress: Renata, an ordinary young woman who is beset by visions that make others accuse her of cavorting with the devil himself.
In Andrea Breth’s intense 2019 staging in Vienna, Lithuanian soprano Aušrinė Stundytė’s disturbed Renata and Danish baritone Bo Skohvus’ noble Ruprecht, her knight errant, lead an excellent cast. But with Constantin Trinks ably conducting the orchestra and chorus, it’s Prokofiev’s frighteningly dramatic score is the real star. There are first-rate hi-def video and audio.
The Pilot
(Well Go USA)
It’s not the ideal time to review a Russian war film in the current climate, but The Pilot—tautly directed by Renat Davletyarov—is a compelling adventure, based on real events, of a Russian pilot shot down by the Nazis who tries to survive the wilderness, hopeful that he’ll see his loyal woman back at home.
Although not groundbreaking in any way, it’s been skillfully made, with earnest performances by Pyotr Fyodorov as the pilot hero and Anna Peskova as his worried lover. There’s a superb hi-def transfer.
(Bayerische Staatsoper)
Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s operatic version of the famous Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale is quite dark, both dramatically and musically; Andries Kriegenburg’s 2019 staging at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera adroitly visualizes the fascinating dichotomy of the unease pulsating underneath the “happily ever after” story.
Led by the always magnificent Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan—for whom Abrahamsen wrote the role of Gerta—the cast is pitch-perfect, and with Cornelius Meister conducting the orchestra and chorus with aplomb, these are satisfyingly jittery two hours of musical theater. Hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras are short featurettes.
Vikings—6th Season, Volume 2
(Warner Bros)
The final season of the explosive Vikings saga wraps things up in typically ruthless and bloody fashion, as the 10 gripping episodes—shown here in their extended international editions—provide worthwhile closure for fans.
Vikings has always looked particularly striking in hi-def, and that continues on this final release; extras include an audio commentary on the series finale by creator-writer Michael Hirst and his daughter, actress Georgina, along with featurettes and deleted scenes.
Bacewicz—Solo Piano Works
(Ondine)
Weinberg—Solo Violin Sonatas
(ECM New Series)
Two of the most original Polish composers of the 20th century—Grazyna Bacewicz and Mieczyslaw Weinberg—whose music is posthumously getting the respect it deserves, are represented by superior new discs comprising their excellent works for solo instruments.
Bacewicz (1909-69) composed several accomplished orchestral works, but her rarely heard piano music is given a terrific workout by Peter Jablonski, like her forward-looking Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2, which should be part of any self-respecting soloist’s repertoire. In Jablonski’s hands, though, it’s Bacewicz’s challenging Ten Concert Etudes that really shine.
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