4K Release of the Week 

The showdown between two of the biggest screen monsters of all time is disappointingly predictable and tame, especially after director Adam Wingard doesn’t fumble what was an unnecessarily prolonged setup. It’s not the setup that hurts, it’s what comes after, as the highly touted battle royale between the title creatures is a repetitious and, quite frankly, thuddingly dull spectacle whose flashy special effects never transcend their digital origins.

 

 

Of course, it all looks quite spectacular in 4K; the feature is also included on a Blu-ray disc, and extras include director’s commentary and 10 making-of featurettes (on the Blu-Ray disc).

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming/Virtual Cinema/VOD Releases of the Week

After her dynamic performance in the Netflix series Unorthodox, Shira Haas consolidates her strength as a powerhouse actress in this unbearably touching drama about how the fraught relationship between rebellious teenager Vika (Haas) and her single young mother Asia (Alena Yiv, equally good) takes an unexpected turn when Vika is diagnosed with a debilitating condition.

 

 

Director-writer Ruthy Pribar never flinches throughout her thoughtful character study about a painfully believable mother-daughter relationship, right until the devastating final moments.  

 

 

 

 

 

Rita Moreno—Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It 

When I was a kid, Rita Moreno on The Electric Company was my first celebrity crush, and Mariem Pérez Riera’s intimate and frank documentary about the legendary stage, screen and TV actress and singer demonstrates how Moreno’s life and art are intertwined. As a Cuban immigrant, Moreno had more obstacles to stardom than usual, especially in the ‘50s.

 

 

But talent, charm, beauty and perseverance won out, as proven by her Tony for the play The Ritz and Oscar for the musical West Side Story, among other awards. Her on-and-off romance with Marlon Brando (characterized by domestic violence and an unwanted abortion) is an eye-opener, but Moreno never exudes negativity: instead, radiating optimism as she prepares for her 87th birthday celebration, it looks like Rita Moreno will live forever. (She’s 89 now.) We can only hope.

 

 

 

 

Take Me Somewhere Nice 

In Ena Sendijarević’s serious comedy, teenager Alma travels from her home in the Netherlands back to Bosnia to introduce herself to the father she has never met—but, of course, all kinds of misadventures ensue, some patently absurd, others more realistic, but all serving to toughen up Alma and broaden her view, both personal and—unsurprisingly in the Balkans—political.

 

 

Ena Sendijarević has an occasional heavy hand as she too cleverly traces Alma’s journey, filled with detours both literal and metaphorical, but she’s gifted by the fearless young actress Sara Luna Zorić, who makes every moment, every word, every silence, every gesture of Alma meaningful and humane.

 

 

 

 

 

Truman & Tennessee—An Intimate Conversation 

Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams—two of America’s greatest and most distinctive artists during the heyday of celebrity for writers—are brought to vivid, parallel life by Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s documentary, which dives into their early friendship and later falling-out as well as providing their insights into subjects as disparate as their addictions, successes and failures, all through their own words, written and spoken.

 

 

Along with many clips of them talking with Dick Cavett and David Frost, among other TV interviewers, we hear them through the voices of Jim Parsons (Capote) and Zachary Quinto (Williams), who translate their wicked humor and regional uniqueness winningly.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Husband-and-wife team Roma Downey and Mark Burnett, who have bankrolled several Christian projects, now dramatize the final days of Jesus and what happened to his apostles after he rose from the dead, despite the Romans’ desperate attempts to quell his support.

 

 

It’s manufactured efficiently enough by director Ciaran Donnelly, with an almost risibly bloody crucifixion scene, followed by some less than idiomatic sequences of the disciples—led by Peter and Thomas—being threatened for their association. Most welcome is the presence of Joanne Whalley and Greta Scacchi as Pilate’s wife and Jesus’ mother, respectively; their presence lifts up an otherwise grounded project for a few moments. There’s a superb hi-def transfer.

 

 

 

 

There Was a Crooked Man 

In his first and only western, Joseph Mankiewicz—director of such classics as A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve and Sleuth—leisurely spins a battle of wits between an armed robber and the new warden in a frontier prison in the Arizona Territory.

 

 

There’s star power aplenty here, from Kirk Douglas (robber) and Henry Fonda (warden) to Burgess Meredith, Hume Cronyn and Warren Oates (prisoners), and Mankiewicz’ solid direction and Robert Benton and David Newman’s clever script are also assets, but this 1970 film’s sheer length (two hours) and snail’s pace sorely test one’s patience, and the meager punch line at the end is too little, too late. The film looks splendid on Blu; lone extra is a vintage making-of featurette.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week

To discover new insights into the life and work of surrealist Salvador Dali, director David Pujol went to the source: the heads of the two Dali museums in his hometown of Valencia, who enlighten us about the man, the mythic celebrity and the serious—if underestimated—artist.

 

 

There are glimpses of many of his most colorful works, archival footage of Dali and his beloved wife and muse Gala speaking about art and their relationship and a look at his home studio and handpicked museum, both of which look like the places a man with Dali’s prodigious imagination would create. It’s all beautifully shot, accentuating Dali’s uniquely frenzied and disturbing artworks.

 

 

 

 

 

True Mothers 

In Naomi Kawase’s moving chamber drama, the lives of two different mothers—a teen who gave up her baby for adoption and the middle-class wife who adopted him—are illustrated by the inevitable difficulties that crop up when the young mom wants to reenter her child’s life, followed by an unexpected and bittersweet resolution.

 

 

Kawase walks a tightrope of sentimentality and contrived plotting, but her honest characterizations transform this far above the soap opera it might have become. There’s immeasurably strong acting by the leads, Hiromi Nagasaku (adoptive mother) and Aju Makita (real mother), who embody these women with unaffected naturalness. Extras are a Kawase interview by Juliette Binoche and a short film, Return to Toyama, by Japanese director Atsushi Hirai.

 

 

 

 

 

Your Honor 

If you can get past the enervating first episode—in which the entire storyline is set up so laboriously, implausibly and at times risibly (no one with asthma like the teenager in this series has would forget his inhaler no matter how stressed he is, among other howlers)—then this 10-part drama series about the lengths a respected New Orleans judge will go to protect his guilty son will do quite nicely.

 

 

As long as you’re don’t look too closely at all the coincidences and lucky breaks, then the acting of Bryan Cranston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Hope Davis, Hunter Doohan, Carmen Ejoho and Isiah Whitlock Jr. helps smooth over the many rough spots. Lone extra is a series of deleted scenes.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

Recorded live last fall at the Buffalo Philharmonic’s glorious home, Kleinhans Music Hall, this disc showcases one of the best American orchestras in its element, with JoAnn Falletta leading a sparkling account of the old Vivaldi warhorse, The Four Seasons, making it sound so fresh and it’s like it was just composed.

 

 

Even better is Argentine master Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, not so much a riff on the Vivaldi but an update to 20th century Argentina, where the tango and jazz music are prominent. Tessa Lark shines as the violin soloist in the Piazzolla, while BPO concertmaster Nikki Chooi does the honors in the Vivaldi. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Made between 1959 and 1961, Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi’s massive, three-part masterpiece is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. Don’t be put off by the inordinate length (nine hours—just think of it as a nine-episode Netflix series, and quite superior to all of them!) and grim subject matter (a pacifistic Japanese soldier becomes a Soviet POW during World War II): Kobayashi, a truly humanist artist, has made a powerful, transcendent character study of one man’s struggle to make sense of inhumanity that features several momentous, extraordinarily cinematic set pieces.

 

 

Tatsuya Nakadai, who gives a staggering performance, also starred in other Kobayashi (and a few Kurosawa) films. The widescreen B&W photography, so integral to the film’s forcefulness, looks luminous in Criterion’s hi-def transfer; extras include a 1993 Kobayashi interview, new Nakadai interview and an appreciation of the film by director Masahiro Shinoda. All in all, it’s a remarkable package for a remarkable film.

 

 

 

 

 

Center Stage 

Taiwanese director Stanley Kwan made this intelligent 1991 biopic about Chinese silent-era actress Ruan Lingyu, who died by suicide at age 24. Kwan fascinatingly pieces together the remnants of her life, her career and her legacy by layering his film with several interviews with former colleagues, some lush recreations of scenes from her films—including titles which are lost—and discussing her artistry with Maggie Cheung, who commandingly plays her.

 

 

It’s challenging and lengthy (2-1/2 hours) but utterly absorbing, with an emotionally shattering final sequence that merges sorrowful film and personal history. There’s a first-rate Blu-ray transfer; extras include a Kwan intro and interview as well as a making-of featurette.

 

 

 

 

 

Falstaff 

Giuseppe Verdi’s enchanting final opera based on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor still enchants, even in this straining-to-be-hip, updated 2018 Berlin State Opera staging by director Mario Martone.

 

 

Even though the great character of Falstaff has lost some comedic gravitas in this production, Michael Volle plays him estimably—and hilariously—and he is supported by a superlative stable of the women surrounding him, led by Barbara Frittoli’s sublimely funny Alice Ford and Nadine Sierra’s bewitching Nannetta. Daniel Barenboim ably conducts the terrific State Opera Chorus and Orchestra; both hi-def video and audio are exemplary.

 

 

 

 

 

The Snow Maiden 

Would that the fairy-tale sweep of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s lovely fantasy opera wasn’t muted by director/designer Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2017 Paris Opera modern-dress production; at least the composer’s shimmeringly beautiful music conjures whatever the onstage action has blocked from view.

 

 

Rimsky’s score sounds gorgeous performed by conductor Mikhail Tatarnikov, the orchestra, chorus and cast—in which Aida Garifullina makes a touchingly vulnerable snow maiden. Hi-def video and audio looks and sounds superb.

 

 

 

 

 

In-Theater/Streaming/Virtual Cinema/VOD Releases of the Week 

These short films (from 1950) by the great French director Alain Resnais (1922-1914) might seem slight compared to the shattering, innovative films he would make—like the short Night and Fog and features Hiroshima Mon Amour, Muriel and Love Unto Death—but are springboards to a unique cinematic oeuvre. 

 

 

Paul Gauguin is an intriguing if unexceptional look at the French painter with an appropriately dramatic score by Darius Milhaud, but Guernica (also 1950) is something else entirely: how Resnais juxtaposes and superimposes imagery from Picasso paintings as the wonderful French actress Maria Cesares speaks poet Paul Eldard’s impassioned narration about the ghastliness of war, Guernica anticipates later Resnais masterpieces.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ancient Woods 

Mesmerizingly dream-like, Lithuanian director Mindaugas Survila’s astonishingly photographed documentary has been a pet project for decades, and it shows in its child-like wonder at the mysteries that pervade in nature.

 

 

Over a period of 10 years, Survila and his intrepid crew went into an old-growth forest in Lithuania and recorded life in all its forms, from the smallest ants and insects to owls, deer, wolves and other memorable creatures (even man). With no narration or music, Survila’s thrilling film is like discovering the glories of the natural world for the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

The Real Thing 

Like his previous film A Girl Missing but on a much larger scale, Japanese director Koji Fukada has made a slowly evolving drama about a young man who rescues a strange but compelling woman when her car stalls on railroad tracks and soon finds himself drawn to her increasingly messy existence while trying to balance his own relationships—including a sometime girlfriend, who’s not thrilled with this latest intrusion.

 

 

Based on a graphic novel, Fukada’s film contains a surfeit of melodrama, which he keeps mostly in check; but at nearly four hours, The Real Thing degenerates into occasional self-indulgent messiness. 

 

 

 

 

 

Tove 

Creator of beloved children’s books about moomins, hippo-like characters having myriad adventures, Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson lived a complicated but fulfilling life as an artist and a free woman, dramatized in director Zaida Bergroth’s engrossing biopic.

 

 

Set during and after World War II—her formative years where she grew as both an artist and a woman—Tove recounts Jansson’s open marriage, relationships with other women and the growing respect she eventually won from the public and artistic community. There’s a sympathy and light touch paralleling the author’s delightful illustrations and stories, which is cemented by Alma Pöysti’s wonderfully multi-faceted performance in the lead role.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week 

Marco Bellocchio’s controversial 1986 film about Andrea, a high school student who gets involved with Giulia, an older, strong-willed and—as he soon discovers—psychologically disturbed woman is typically operatic, as Bellocchio allows his characters to act out their grand drama amid sweeping emotions, radical politics and robust sexuality.

 

 

Dutch actress Maruschka Detmers—who gives a fiercely committed (in all senses) portrayal of Giulia in what is truly a performance for the ages—was apparently the first mainstream performer to partake in a non-simulated sex act onscreen, but that sequence is remarkable for its casualness and restraint. It’s too bad the transfer on DVD and streaming looks even less good than the only adequate look of the 2005 No Shame release (which at least had an interesting interview with Bellocchio).

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week

Robert Schumann’s chamber music for piano is, with his songs, his best, and this exceptional recording by Trio Wanderer comprises the composer’s three piano trios, piano quartet, piano quintet—all masterpieces.

 

 

Although their readings of Schumann’s greatest chamber works, the piano quartet and the piano quintet—which include valuable collaborations by violist Christophe Gaugué and violinist Catherine Montier—are excellent, Trio Wanderer really shines in the trios, especially the one in F-major, the most immediately accessible of the three and the one that Schumann himself felt best showed off his mastery of this medium.

In-Theater/Streaming/Virtual Cinema/VOD Release of the Week 

Director Christian Petzold collaborated with that extraordinary actress Nina Hoss on several films, but without Hoss, he seems lost: his last film, Transit, was a disappointment, and he continues that trend with his newest, which is Petzold’s take on the mythic tale about a water spirit, here in the modern world and falling in love with an ordinary man.

 

 

He reteams his Transit costars, Paula Beer and Franz Rogowskis to middling returns: although Beer is no Hoss histrionically, she more than holds her own in a borderline ridiculous role (especially as filmed by Petzold), but Rogowski, a basically inexpressive performer, remains a disastrous cipher. Petzhold proves to have little affinity for fantasy, wasting the elegance of his visuals.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

One of the mildest romantic comedies of any era, this original 1954 musical is pretty much a dated relic in its story of two men, in love with two sisters, discover five more at home along with grandparents who have them all follow a strict health regimen.

 

 

Although ahead of its time in the “healthy” angle, but otherwise director Richard Thorpe doesn’t do much that’s original or interesting; despite likable performances by Vic Damone and Edmund Purdom as the guys and Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell as their gals, the movie meanders around to tunes by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. There’s a superb hi-def transfer; extras are three outtake musical numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

La bohème 

Two towering operas are given new life by terrific performers starring in Royal Opera House (London) stagings. In a 2020 performance of Puccini’s La bohème, Bulgarian soprano Sonya Yoncheva is a terrifically appealing Mimi and American tenor Charles Castronovo an equally fine Rodolfo who embody the tragically youthful romance of the story.

 

 

Mozart’s best opera, Cosi fan tutte, in director Jonathan Miller’s modern update—seen at a 2010 performance—is more a clever lark than a seriously comic exploration of relationships and their ambiguities, but the half-dozen cast members give it their all, led by the redoubtable Thomas Allen as Don Alfonso. Both discs have first-rate hi-def video and audio; Bohème has brief interview extras.

 

 

 

 

 

Escape from Fort Bravo 

The American Civil War is the backdrop for this tidy 1953 western set in a Union prison camp in in the desert lands of the Arizona Territory: when a woman named Carla (Eleanor Parker) visits, Union camp commander Roper (William Holden) falls for her, not realizing she’s in cahoots with the Confederate prisoners, led by their leader Marsh (John Forsythe).

 

 

Efficiently directed by John Sturges and superbly shot in the rugged confines of Monument Valley and Death Valley, the colors of Escape look bright and sharp on Blu-ray.

 

 

 

 

 

Romeo and Juliet 

Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet, one of the greatest ever created, is a masterly demonstration of how music is as powerful as Shakespeare’s own words in telling the timeless tragic tale of the “star-cross’d lovers.”

 

 

The 2019 revival of choreographer Kenneth MacMillan’s classic production—filmed at London’s Royal Opera House—is highlighted by the wonderfully agile Juliet of Yasmine Naghdi and the tough but tender Romeo of Matthew Ball; their dancing, along with the glorious playing of the Opera House Orchestra under conductor Pavel Sorokin, makes this a must for all ballet and Prokofiev fans. Hi-def video and audio are excellent; extras are short interviews.

 

 

 

 

 

The Tender Trap 

In the mid ‘50s, Frank Sinatra was a heartthrob with chart-topping songs and movies to his credit: this 1955 comedy, based on a routine stage play, relies on his charm to put across this tired tale of a bachelor who finally falls for a woman (Debbie Reynolds) but realizes it will end his single lifestyle.

 

 

The supporting cast—including David Wayne, Celeste Holm and Carolyn Jones—prods this along into watchable territory, and Sinatra and Reynolds are good if not combustible together, but in director Charles Walters’ hands, this never becomes anything more than competent and occasionally amusing. The film looks great on Blu; extras comprise Frank in the Fifties featurette and The MGM Parade excerpts.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week 

The latest entry in this invaluable art series surveys the path-breaking Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, who was unafraid to put her own physical and psychological difficulties on canvas—subtlety and softness be damned.

 

 

As director Ali Ray juxtaposes her paintings—awash in blood, dead bodies, and other uncomfortable images—with details of her eventful, too short life, Kahlo’s artistry in all its daring nakedness is intelligently displayed. It’s too bad that another Exhibition on Screen release isn’t on Blu-ray; hi-def would really show off her art in all its vividness and complexity.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Releases of the Week

Although Walter Braunfels (1882-1954) wrote a memorable opera, The Birds, that was so popular upon its 1920 premiere that, for awhile, he was the most performed opera composer in Germany after Richard Strauss, he’s nearly forgotten today, despite labels such as Capriccio recording much of his repertoire in recent years.

 

 

The latest Capriccio release collects four of his works for orchestra written between 1910 and 1930, and they make up a fine overview of his style: attractively scored, heartfelt and Romantic with a capital R. His 1929 Divertimento even shows hints of American jazz with the presence of two saxophones. Gregor Buhl leads the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in marvelous performances of these winning works. 

 

 

 

 

 

Lisette Oropesa— Ombra Compagna: Mozart Concert Arias 

She’s already shown off her golden voice in starring roles in Mozart operas, so this new recording by Cuban-American soprano Lisette Oropesa is a no-brainer for her to tackle: a series of standalone arias penned by Mozart, all shaped for the specific singers he had in mind to perform them. In spans of 8 to 15 minutes, Mozart poured everything he had into these pieces, turning them into vocal showcases as virtuosic as they come.

 

 

Oropesa dives into these arias unafraid of their torturous twists and turns, especially the stunning “Ah lo previdi,” easily the emotional high point of the album. Oropesa’s gorgeous singing is wonderfully accompanied by the Il Pomo d'Oro ensemble, led by the estimable Antonello Manacorda.