In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

When Anthony Bourdain committed suicide in 2016, it was a shock but not really a surprise—he  was a man who always lived by his own rules, and although he had a gregarious appetite for knowledge, travel and food, there was also a dark side, as Morgan Neville's powerful documentary shows.

 

 

There are many clips of Bourdain filming his various TV shows, along with glimpses of him interacting with friends and colleagues, sometimes generously, other times petulantly. And some of those close to him point to his final relationship with actress Asia Argento as a kind of breaking point (especially after she supposedly, and brazenly, cheated on him)—but there's no denying that despite his zest for living and fatherhood, he left it all behind and left many people (his daughter, ex-wife, colleagues and friends like Josh Homme, Eric Ripert and Rod Lurie—and millions of fans around the world) bereft. Roadrunner might not explain why Bourdain killed himself, but it does explain him—to an extent.

 

 

 

 

 

Ailey 

One of the most influential choreographers of the 20th century, Alvin Ailey was important in many ways: as the first Black American to found his own company, he and his legacy stretch far beyond modern dance.

 

 

Director Jamila Wignot shapes Ailey’s story (filled with innovation, originality, creativity, and also—almost inevitably—tragedy and sadness, since he died of AIDS in 1989 at age 58—through the prism of his singular achievements. But this is no hagiography: it’s an honest and accessible look at Ailey, the man and the artist. Including interviews with his colleagues, friends and admirers (in many cases, all three), Ailey leaves one feeling exhilarated.

 

 

 

 

 

Casanova, Last Love 

The life of the irascible seducer Casanova is perfect fodder for the movies, as directors like Federico Fellini and Lasse Hallstrom have told his story as either psychological fantasia or costume romp; now French director Benoit Jacquot enters the fray, with typically uneven results.

 

 

As usual with Jacquot, the film looks sumptuous, and Vincent Lindon is a perfect Casanova, a middle-aged libertine desperate to relive past glories with one final conquest, irresistibly played by the winning Stacy Martin. But Jacquot’s gaze is nearly always unsteady, and what might have been an incisive and even touching portrait of old age remains blurry, gauzy, distant.

 

 

 

 

 

Mama Weed 

Isabelle Huppert might be taken for granted since she always brings her A game, even to less original creations—which is not to say that Jean-Paul Salomé’s grittily involving comic policier about a police translator embroiled in an illegal drug trade right under the nose of her boyfriend the police chief is second-rate.

 

 

Huppert works hard and often hilariously to bring off this borderline implausible and densely plotted film, helped by Salomé’s assured and stylish direction, which hints at socioeconomic complexities that the inevitable American remake will most likely jettison.

 

 

 

 

 

Masquerade 

I don’t remember the last time I saw a movie so disingenuous and cynical that it enraged me, but this forgettable piece of masochistic filmmaking displaying sheerly irrational behavior—no one in this movie is remotely believable, not even the teenage heroine—did it.

 

 

In only 80 minutes, writer-director Shane Dax Taylor is so intent on being brutally awful to the victims (even allowing the young daughter of the couple whose home is invaded by a trio of art thieves to be tortured) that it seems 80 hours long. Poor Bella Thorne once again gives a credible performance in a lousy movie.

 

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The latest entry in the Saw franchise starts with an intriguing premise—corrupt cops are being offed by a copycat killer—but instead of making a twisty and clever thriller, director Darren Lynn Bousman follows earlier Saw flicks by wallowing in risible, gory deaths-by-torture that include cut-off tongues and fingers, skinned bodies, suffocation by scalding wax and being slowly bled to death.

 

 

It’s too bad, for Chris Rock’s confident jokiness works well in this context and his interactions with Max Minghella (his new partner) and Samuel Jackson (his retired police chief dad) are entertaining. Bousman and writers Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger are more interested in the blood quotient than in credibility or originality. The film looks great on UHD; extras include commentaries and a making-of on the 4K disc and other featurettes on the Blu-ray.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

In many ways, Andrei Tarkovsky's often inscrutable but always compelling 1974 memory piece is his most fully-realized film: rarely have the innocence of childhood and difficulties of aging been so powerfully evoked, especially in the Russian director's typically unbroken long takes and dream-like images.

 

 

The Criterion Collection's superb package comprises a first-rate hi-def transfer and a plethora of contextualizing extras that include Tarkovsky’s son Andrei A. Tarkovsky’s 2019 documentary, Andrei Tarkovsky: A Cinema Prayer; new documentary The Dream in the Mirror; 2007 documentary Islands: Georgy Rerberg, about Tarkovsky’s cinematographer; new interview with composer Eduard Artemyev; and archival interviews with Tarkovsky and screenwriter Alexander Misharin.

 

 

 

 

 

Objective Burma 

Although it takes liberties with the historical facts—like having U.S. armed forces as heroes instead of what was mainly a British and Indian force—this 1945 World War II film effectively dramatizes the dangerous heroics by soldiers stranded in Burma with the Japanese right behind them.

 

 

Led by a gritty Errol Flynn as their leader, the men are portrayed as realistically as possible given the fact that director Raoul Walsh made the film (shot in California, of all places, by the distinguished cinematographer James Wong Howe) very soon after the events it depicts happened. The B&W images look terrific on Blu-ray; extras are two vintage wartime shorts: 1941’s The Tanks Are Coming with Gig Young and 1943’s The Rear Gunner with Burgess Meredith.

 

 

 

 

 

Rolling Stones—A Bigger Bang Live on Copacabana Beach 

As part of its over-the-top 2006 A Bigger Bang tour, the Rolling Stones played one of the most massive concerts of their decades-long career on the famed Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro to an audience of more than 1.5 million, by some accounts.

 

 

Mick and the boys are in fine fettle throughout the nearly two-hour performance, with highlights being a powerhouse "Wild Horses," a chugging "Miss You" and a stirring "You Can't Always Get What You Want." This set includes the entire concert on two CDs and one Blu-ray, with deluxe surround sound on the latter disc; both hi-def video and audio look and sound great.

 

 

 

 

 

Take Me Out to the Ball Game 

Apparently, although this frothy 1949 musical comedy about turn of the century vaudevillians who moonlight as players on the world champion baseball team the Wolves was nominally directed by the legendary Busby Berkley, it really was helmed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly.

 

 

The latter also engagingly plays one of the stars alongside Frank Sinatra, who outsings Kelly but is outclassed in the dancing department. Rounding out the romantic foursome are Esther Williams and Betty Garrett, both game but sadly underused. The colorful musical looks bright on Blu; extras are two deleted musical numbers and a vintage cartoon.

 

 

 

 

 

Wrath of Man 

Fast-paced—almost dizzyingly so—Guy Ritchie’s latest testosterone-fueled caper is filled with so many dead bodies that it may set some sort of record for shootings and amount of ammo used, which seems an obvious ruse to make viewers ignore the repetitious plot about armored vehicle thefts that are inside jobs which go spectacularly wrong.

 

 

Ritchie plays around with showing the events from various points-of-view, but to little avail; the main problem is Jason Stratham’s usual granite personality masquerading as nonchalance. There’s a fine hi-def transfer.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week

The year 2020 was supposed to be a banner one for New York’s jewel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art: it was its 150th birthday, after all, and director Ian Denyer’s cameras were welcomed inside the institution to record the celebrations and commemorations as well as to see what makes the Met tick.

 

 

Then COVID-19 hit and the Met was forced to shut its doors for months for the very first time, and this engrossing three-part documentary follows along as various strategies are put into place to deal with the initial shutdown and the gradual reopening. It might not have been a year worth celebrating, but 2020 became one of the most memorable in the Met’s storied history. 

 

 

 

 

 

Unforgotten—Complete 4th Season 

The fourth season of the intelligent crime series Unforgotten follows investigators Cassie and Sunny as they attempt to break a 30-year-old murder case that involve four current police officers—including one about to be promoted; Nicola Walker (Cassie) and Sanjeev Bhaskar (Sunny) give persuasive portrayals of exasperated but laser-sharp detectives. 

 

 

Professor T, while yet another series about a crime-solver with OCD, transcends its now-clichéd limitations in the character of Jasper Tempest, a Cambridge criminologist who solves cases in each episode, and played by Ben Miller with serious wit. Both discs include several making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Releases of the Week

British composer Lennox Berkeley’s 1954 opera about the great British naval hero, Admiral Lord Nelson, contains much lovely music but isn’t the “grand opera” audiences might expect from such a titanic historical subject—instead, Berkeley has composed something akin to a chamber opera, as Alan Pryce-Jones’ libretto concentrates on the married Nelson’s scandalous love affair with the married Lady Emma Hamilton.

 

 

This excellent 1983 BBC recording commendably spotlights the complicated relationships involved through subtle orchestral playing and notable vocal portrayals by tenor David Johnston as Nelson and soprano Eiddwen Harrhy as Emma. 

 

 

 

 

 

George Gershwin—Porgy and Bess Highlights 

Soprano Angel Blue has already shown she can meet—and exceed—the vocal and dramatic demands of playing Bess in the recent Metropolitan Opera production, and so it’s not surprising that her lovely voice is the highlight of this disc of excerpts from George Gershwin’s emotionally powerful opera. Not only does Blue own Bess’ classic songs but she also sings Clara’s “Summertime” and Serena’s “My Man’s Gone Now” with equal parts power and finesse and an ability to grab the listener from the get-go.

 

 

Lester Lynch’s Porgy and Chauncey Packer’s Sportin’ Life provide superb vocal support and Marin Alsop conducts an expertly-chosen group of excerpts, strongly performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra and Morgan State University Choir. 

 

For its first post-pandemic blockbuster exhibition, the Museum of Modern Art chose an obvious name: French post-impressionist Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). But this isn’t the usual audience-pleaser: although Cézanne Drawing includes a handful of oil paintings—including one of the artist’s most famous, The Bather, from MOMA’s own collection—many of these works, from other institutions and private collections, are decidedly not among his most familiar.

 

But this isn’t to say the exhibit is second-rate: just the opposite, in fact. Cézanne Drawing is as revelatory as the comprehensive exhibit I saw in Philadelphia in 1996 by putting into context Cézanne’s entire output: these drawings—some mere sketches or just a few lines in pencil, while others beautifully realized watercolors—become the backbone of his entire oeuvre. 

 

Best of all are dazzling drawings like The Apotheosis of Delacroix (right), in which one great artist pays homage to another, as astonishing in its complexity as the finished canvas at London’s National Gallery. And there’s the seemingly offhand sketch of a plaster Cupid, endlessly charming and alive.

 

This exhibit, crammed with hundreds of artworks that some might consider lesser, or even inferior, is so full of the life, emotion, idiosyncrasies and vigor we associate with Cézanne that it truly earns the label “can’t-miss.”

4K Releases of the Week 

Akira Kurosawa’s black, bleak 1985 war drama is among the Japanese master’s greatest epics, poetically showing man’s inhumanity by compellingly welding Shakespeare’s King Lear to traditional Noh theater. Kurosawa’s masterly adaptation gives that tremendous actor Tatsuya Nakadai (mostly hidden behind amazing make-up) one of his best roles as the foolish king who destroys his empire by dividing it among his two older sons and banishing the youngest.

 

 

There’s much to admire—two unforgettable battle sequences, the despairing yet breathtaking final shots, Toru Takemitsu’s perfectly realized score—especially in a new 4K restoration that shows off Kurosawa’s stunning use of color, both realistically and symbolically.

 

 

 

 

 

Space Jam 

Re-released on UHD to coincide with the new Lebron James version arriving in theaters, Joe Pytka’s 1996 original starring Michael Jordan shooting hoops with Bugs Bunny and other animated characters is certainly no classic, but it does do the job entertainingly and succinctly.

 

 

I’m surprised it took a quarter-century for a reboot, but today’s quantum leap forward in visual effects might hinder the new version. Of course, this looks dazzling in 4K; the accompanying Blu-ray disc includes the film, and extras are a commentary with Pytka, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, vintage making-of and two music videos 

 

 

 

 

 

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory 

One of the most beloved movies ever makes the jump to 4K in a 50th anniversary edition: despite it softening the edges of Roald Dahl’s original story, there’s no denying Gene Wilder’s career-defining portrayal of Wonka, which dominates the movie despite not appearing nearly halfway through.

 

 

The movie, of course, looks lovely in ultra hi-def, and the accompanying Blu-ray disc also includes the film. Several interesting extras include some of the now-grown kid actors in an amusing and informative commentary; the documentary, Pure Imagination, with such priceless tidbits as why the title was changed from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (apparently because of tie-in chocolate “Wonka bars”); a vintage featurette; and four singalong songs.  

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Like the stars of recent feel-good senior citizen romantic comedies, such as Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn makes the most of her chance to display her continued vitality and charm well into her 80s as a stubborn widow who finally acquiesces to her harried daughter and loving grandson by moving into a retirement home, where she reluctantly makes new friends and even—surprise!—finds love.

 

 

Michael Lembeck directs and Donald Martin writes with a sledgehammer, but let’s face it, subtlety would be lost in such a cutesy concoction; at least Burstyn’s partners in crime are the equally winning Ann-Margret, Loretta Devine and Jane Curtin—these women leave the poor men, James Caan and Christopher Lloyd, far behind.

 

 

 

 

 

Till Death 

(Screen Media) 

If viewers swallow ignore the hypocrisy and the many howlers in the dialogue, plotting and plain common sense, S.K. Dale’s brittle chiller about a harried wife who is (literally) chained to her husband while the bad guys invade their remote winter hideaway is certainly an effective contraption.

 

 

That the glamorous Megan Fox, of all people, plays the wife with her usual self-assurance—always looking like a supermodel no matter how much blood has splattered or how long she runs in the snow and ice in her bare feet—makes this even more of a guilty pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Werewolves Within 

It’s not surprising that this less-than-clever horror parody is based on a video game: the characters are caricatures, the would-be scares are telegraphed mercilessly, and the rat-a-tat dialogue is smart-ass without being particularly smart.

 

 

Josh Ruben directs with his tongue firmly in cheek; it’s too bad that this particular style renders anything that’s potentially worthwhile into something that’s enervating, like the appealingly off-kilter performance of Milana Vayntrub as a postal worker assisting Sam Richardson—who unfortunately repeats the limited comedic effects we know from Veep.

 

 

 

 

 

The Witches of the Orient 

I knew nothing about the Japanese women’s volleyball team that won the gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics in front of a delighted home crowd, but Julien Faraut’s slyly satisfying documentary introduces us to several of the players today, and they discuss the team, their coach, their nicknames, the atmosphere, the racism they encountered, and their origins as Osaka factory workers.

 

 

Faraut cleverly shoots new interviews and shows vintage footage in the old-style Academy ratio: when the gold-medal match vs. Russia is in widescreen and vivid color, the effect is transforming. 

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

This creakily watchable B movie likely got a hi-def release since it stars Humphrey Bogart; in 1950, he was at the top of his profession, and even though the role of Lt. Colonel Matt Brennan—a former star aviator in the military who fearlessly tests the newest air technology—doesn’t fit him snugly, his charismatic appearance keeps director Stuart Heisler’s routine melodrama aloft, despite the dated aerial sequences.

 

 

There’s also solid support from Raymond Massey as Bogey’s new boss at the civilian company and Eleanor Parker as the woman on the ground he’s in love with. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras comprise a contemporary cartoon and short.

 

 

 

 

 

His Dark Materials—Complete 2nd Season 

The continuing cosmic adventures of Lyra and Will, the two youngsters who must navigate the multiple universes in this fantasy world created by novelist Philip Pullman once again conjure up many diverting sequences, especially the more fantastical ones. Even more so than in the first season, however, there’s never a sense that something personal is at stake, and the moribund earthbound sequences keep this technically superlative adaptation from really taking flight.

 

 

Luckily, Ruth Wilson gives a typically multi-layered performance as the enigmatic Mrs. Coulter, which keeps the series on track for much of its length. Unsurprisingly, all seven episodes look spectacular in hi-def; extras include on-set featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

Madame Curie 

While it’s certainly not good history, this romanticized 1943 biopic about Marie Curie, the pathbreaking Polish scientist whose discovery of radium with her French husband Pierre led to her early death, is as entertaining as Hollywood hokum can be without becoming risible.

 

 

Director Mervyn LeRoy gets tremendously affecting performances by Greer Garson as Marie and Walter Pidgeon as Pierre, which go a long way toward forgiving the willful distance from the facts. The B&W film looks luminous on Blu; the lone extra is a short, Romance of Radium.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week 

There’s something amusing in theory about a bunch of semi-recognizable celebrities trying to discuss important events in American history while under the influence of alcohol, but most memorable about this long-running Comedy Central series are the reenactments where other celebrities act out the events, even mouthing the exact slurred words.

 

 

Still, a little of this goes a long way: if you’re already a fan, you’ll gobble up all six seasons. Others might just sample a few episodes here and there. Extras are drunk outtakes, deleted scenes, extended clips and the “sober reveal,” where the previously inebriated talkers revisit their episodes while not under the influence.

 

 

 

 

 

Based on David Nicholls’ novel about Connie and Douglas, a couple about to divorce who still go on a long-awaited European vacation with their son, Albie, himself about to leave the nest for college, Us is an alternately insightful and clichéd glimpse at complicated relationships that doesn’t justify its four-hour running time.

 

 

Too often the series seems like a thinly veiled travelogue that visits places like Paris, Amsterdam and Venice—the family’s interactions with one another and others (with the exception of Freja, a lovely divorcee Douglas meets) are labored and overdone. Despite excellent performances by Tom Hollander (Douglas), Saskia Reeves (Connie), Tom Taylor (Albie) and Sofie Gråbøl (Freja), Us is much less than the sum of its parts. Extras are three making-of featurettes. 

 

 

 

 

 

Commemorating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Austrian composer Alexander Zemlinsky—who escaped Nazi persecution by emigrating to the U.S. in 1938, where he died four years later, his music neglected and his reputation virtually nil—the enterprising Capriccio label is re-releasing several of its acclaimed discs of his works, with a particular emphasis on his voluptuous orchestral compositions and emotionally stirring operas. 

 

 

An “Anniversary Edition” six-CD boxed set is a great introduction to the varied music by this undervalued composer: there are fine renditions of the beautiful “Lyric” symphony, the dazzling String Quartet No. 2, and excerpts from several of his operas, including his masterpiece, A Florentine Tragedy.

 

 

Two more Capriccio re-releases are vintage recordings of a pair of Zemlinsky’s lesser-known stage dramas: the lustrous fairy-tale opera Es war einmal (Once Upon a Time) and Der Konig Kandaules (King Candaules), an opera he never completed in his lifetime. These performances display Zemlinsky’s masterly orchestral arrangements and the lush lyrical music he wrote for his vocal soloists. Hans Graf leads a superb reading of Es war einmal, led by soprano Eva Johansson and tenor Kurt Westi as well as the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Danish National Radio Chorus; Gerd Albrecht conducts an engaging performance of Kandaules, with James O’Neal’s towering king front and center.