Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

One of the most iconic titles to join the Criterion Collection, Amy Heckerling’s 1982 comedy set in a suburban high school not only has clusters of memorable lines and scenes but also several future stars in leading roles, from Jennifer Jason Leigh and Phoebe Cates to Judge Rinehold and Sean Penn, whose Spicoli is laugh-out-loud funny—plus there’s the great Ray Walston as the bemused but unamused teacher Mr. Hand.

 

 

Screenwriter Cameron Crowe, who got his start in Hollywood here, in some ways never equaled the combined innocence, cynicism and acute observation throughout. The film looks superb in a new 4K transfer; extras include a 1999 Heckerling/Crowe commentary; new Heckerling/Crowe interview; 1999 making-of documentary; and the re-edited network TV version, with several deleted and alternate scenes.

 

 

 

 

 

Bachelor in Paradise 

When Bob Hope was in his prime, he could shoot off zingers with the best of them—when you watch one of his movies, you can see his influence on Woody Allen’s jokey patter—and even movies he made later, like Jack Arnold’s silly 1961 comedy about a writer who poses as a bachelor in a new suburban community to research a new book, has moments of sublime comedy only Hope could pull off.

 

 

Too bad the rest is so disjointed and unfocused: Lana Turner, as Hope’s romantic interest, is mercilessly wasted, while Janis Paige deserves more screen time as the resident cougar. The film looks quite good on Blu.

 

 

 

 

 

The Cool Lakes of Death 

When Cult Epics recently released two films by Nouchka van Brakel on Blu-ray—The Debut and A Woman Like Eve—it was like discovering a female director almost criminally neglected if not outright forgotten. But a third release, this stunning 1982 adaptation of a novel about a 19th century bourgeois woman whose confused sexuality spirals her into drugs, adultery, poverty and prostitution, shows van Brakel as a major filmmaker.

 

 

Renee Soutendijk—who was so memorable in the Dutch films The Fourth Man and Spetters—is heartbreaking in the lead, and her fearless performance dominates van Brakel’s daring as she turns the historical drama on its head. The film looks fine on Blu; lone extra is a vintage newsreel.

 

 

 

 

 

The Go-Gos 

In her documentary about the first all-female group that play its own instruments and write its own songs to be hugely successful, director Allison Ellwood tells an engrossing musical story that doesn’t stint on the many pitfalls faced by the band members, individually and collectively: sexism in the business, plentiful drugs, and personal and psychological problems.

 

 

Ellwood unearths a lot of vintage footage of the band pre-fame, and the fab five—Belinda Carlisle, Kathy Valentine, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin and Gina Schock—are all upfront about their careers together and apart. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

 

 

 

 

 

It Happened Tomorrow 

French director Rene Clair went to Hollywood in the mid-‘40s and turned out some enjoyable if slight fantasies: 1942’s I Married a Witch with Veronica Lake and this 1944 feature with Dick Powell as a newspaper reporter who gets advance copies of the paper that allow him many scoops—until he sees his own death is foretold.

 

 

Powell and Linda Darnell are wonderfully frisky together and Clair makes this offbeat subject—which predates Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone by 15 years—delightfully modest in its telling; after all, it’s simply an elaborate comic conceit. There’s a sparkling hi-def transfer. 

 

 

 

 

 

Merrily We Go to Hell 

The year 1932 brought daringly adult treatments of taboo subjects than Hollywood was unable to create a few years later thanks to the strict motion picture code, which codified tame dramatic treatments for decades. Dorothy Arzner, an all but forgotten director of the pre-code era, made this fascinating melodrama about an upper-crust couple torn apart by his alcoholism and womanizing; she soon decides to allow him to sow his wild oats, as long as she can too.

 

 

Frederic March and Sylvia Sidney make a volatile pair in Arzner’s frank look at high-class hypocrisy. Criterion’s new hi-def transfer is impressive; extras include a video essay about Arzner and a 1983 documentary about the director, Dorothy Arzner: Longing for Women.

 

 

 

 

 

S#!%House 

Insufferably self-indulgent, first-time writer-director-star Cooper Raiff’s relationship dramedy about a college freshman and sophomore who hit it off one night—which he takes to be more special than she—has scant insight or wit in 100 increasingly desperate minutes.

 

 

There’s a surfeit of cleverness in Raiff’s script that tries to pass itself off as something more, but the dialogue is devoid of personality or originality, and Raiff’s Alex is singularly unappetizing. Dylan Gelula, as Maggie the sophomore RA, is better at constructing a character, but even she can’t elevate such mundane material. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; extras are deleted scenes and Raiff’s hour-long feature, Madeline & Cooper, which preceded this one.

 

 

 

 

 

They Won’t Believe Me 

Marcus Welby, M.D. fans may not recognize Robert Young in this taut 1946 film noir about a conniver who leeches off his wealthy wife and juggles two other women—and when his murder plot is thwarted, fate intervenes and he’s accused of a crime he hasn’t committed.

 

 

Young is excellent in a hugely unsympathetic role, and the women in his life are superbly played by Rita Johnson (wife), Jane Greer (other woman #1) and Susan Hayward (other woman #2). Irving Pichel bluntly directs Jonathan Latimer’s cynical script, which ends with a twisty denouement that’s blatant but effective. The gritty B&W movie looks terrific on Blu.

 

 

 

 

 

The Yearling 

One of the most beloved animal movies ever made, this 1946 tale of a young frontier boy and his devoted deer, based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, is unabashedly sentimental but tempers that with an unflinching view of living on the frontier, as director Clarence Brown does not prettify things.

 

 

Of course, the skillful color photography makes nature look colorfully realistic, and young Claude Jarman Jr. is about as natural as one can get playing opposite a fawn. Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman give fine, workmanlike portrayals of the boy’s bemused parents. The hi-def transfer of the bright color film looks luminous; extras comprise a radio adaptation starring the same cast and the classic cartoon Cat Concerto.

 

 

 

 

 

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

Composer/musician Stephen Warbeck makes his directorial debut with this bit of forced whimsy, an awkwardly shapeless comedy that tries too hard to approach a Jacques Tati-like flow to its visual comedy and physical grace but only partially succeeds.

 

 

This tale of an anonymous character on a journey in France has moments of nicely understated musical pleasure—notably a sequence starring British tenor Mark Padmore—but Warbeck runs out of ideas halfway through the 95-minute running time. A game cast is led by Ciarán Hinds, and it’s always nice to see French actresses like Maïwenn and Brigitte Roüan, but they (and many others) have little to do.

 

 

 

 

 

The Perfect Candidate 

In her intelligent study of how the old Saudi guard might lose its grip on power, Haifaa al-Mansour follows Maryam, a female doctor who decides to run for local office after her pleas for the government to pave the horrible road outside her clinic go unanswered.

 

 

She soon finds herself as a celebrity of sorts—taken seriously by some, brushed off by others and seen as dangerous by those who feel she should keep quiet—but perseveres, as much for her own well-being as that of the memory of her beloved late mother. Mila Al Zahrani’s winning portrayal of Maryam helps smooth over some of the bumps in her director’s script, which turns didactic and obvious at times.

 

 

 

 

 

Rockfield—The Studio on the Farm 

Who knew that a farm in Wales was the bucolic setting for the recording of much memorable popular music in the past half-century? Hannah Berryman’s breezily diverting documentary about Rockfield, the studio that’s hosted everyone from Black Sabbath and Queen to Robert Plant and Oasis, introduces a galley of colorful characters, including the studio’s founders, brothers Charles and Kingsley Ward, as well as chatty artists from Ozzy to the always sour Liam Gallagher.

 

 

Only caveat: too much time is given to more recent occupants like Coldplay at the expense of seminal acts from the ‘70s and ‘80s.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Releases of the Week 

Whether or not it’s accurate in its depiction of the relationship between FDR and the Crown Princess of Norway, who arrived in D.C. with her children to convince the reluctant but charmed president to help her troubled country against the Nazis, this eight-part miniseries compellingly recreates the behind the scenes skirmishing during a fraught period in history.

 

 

Although Kyle MacLachlan is not my idea of Roosevelt—he’s far too laidback—Harriet Harris is a colorful Eleanor and, in the lead, Sofia Helin is a three-dimensional Martha, the princess who must face her real feelings for the powerful leader of the free world as well as for her loving husband, the prince, and their young children. 

 

 

 

 

Beverly Hills—The Ultimate Collection 

The smash-hit series Beverly Hills 90210—which ran for 10 full seasons from 1990 to 2000—made household names out of Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty and even Tori Spelling, and became the blueprint for other nighttime soap operas aimed at younger audiences.

 

 

This colossal set of 74 discs not only includes all 293 episodes of the original series but also the entire first season of the latest reboot, 2019’s BH90210, which I doubt will have the staying power of its predecessor. Among the extras are behind-the-scenes featurettes, interviews, season recaps and a gag reel from the set of BH90210.

 

 

 

 

 

CSI: NY—The Complete Series 

One of the most successful CSI spinoffs, the New York City version ran for nine years (2004-13) and 197 episodes, all of which are present and accounted for on this 55-disc set.

 

 

Led by a no-nonsense Gary Sinise for its entire run, CSI: NY also starred a solid cast of rotating detectives and profilers including Melina Kanakaredes, Vanessa Ferlito and Sela Ward, and had an array of guest stars like Peter Fonda, Josh Groban, Edward James Olmos, Katharine McPhee, Kid Rock, Shaline Woodley, Judd Nelson and car racer Danica Patrick. Many extras include deleted scenes, audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurettes and gag reels.

 

 

 

 

 

Nina Wu 

Actress Wu Kei-Xi cowrote the script of this explosive drama about an actress dealing with exploitative and sexist behavior on the set of her latest film, which director Midi Z unflinchingly shows in a final, disturbing sequence.

 

 

Wu is sensational as the young actress navigating sudden notoriety and ongoing abuse, although the movie’s middle with a melodramatic subplot about Nina’s close relationship with another actress who enjoys working locally—she’s in a family-friendly staging of The Little Prince—instead of following in Nina’s footsteps toward a popular career. Surprisingly, this visually striking film has not been released on Blu-ray, only DVD; extras are several on-set featurettes.

 

 

 

 

 

CD Release of the Week 

When pianist Benjamin Grosvenor tackles the difficult piano music of Franz Liszt, he really goes all out: he starts this densely-packed recital disc—it’s nearly 85 minutes, which is the longest I’ve ever seen a CD last—with Liszt’s monumental Sonata in B Minor; and it is, as Grosvenor says himself in the program notes, “a wild ride,” but one that the performer is in complete control of throughout.

 

 

After that imposing mountain of a work, you’d think Grosvenor would take it easy, but instead he approaches the other pieces on this disc—which include three movements from Liszt’s colossal Annees de pelerinage, his “grand fantasy” on Bellini’s opera Norma and his “Ave Maria” transcription—with the same vigor and musicality, making this CD one of the only times I felt like I actually “got” Liszt.

 

When the Frick Collection announced its intention to shutter and renovate the venerable mansion housing its art and display some of its invaluable collection at the nearby Breuer building—longtime home of the Whitney Museum of American Art and most recently a satellite home of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s special exhibits—it seemed the opposite of what the Frick stands for: stunning art in a beautiful location to house it all.

 

Would that balance between what’s inside and the building itself be lost with the move to Frick Madison? Or would the new surroundings provide a chance to look at familiar artworks in a new way? The answer, unsurprisingly, is both. 

 

To start with the cavils: those gloriously pleasurable rooms in which the masterly series of paintings by Fragonard and Boucher reside are gone; although the dazzling Boucher quartet, The Four Seasons, remains together in the new digs, the same cannot be said for the 14 wondrous Fragonard paintings making up The Progress of Love. In the original Frick mansion, the four lovely large works and the ten smaller ones create a harmonious whole. Here, they are on the walls of two unrelated rooms, which lessens their impact.

 

Still, for every missed opportunity, other changes work nicely. The life-size Renoir portrait, La Promenade, always seemed out of reach in its original place, in an alcove under a set of stairs behind a rope barring visitors from getting near it. 

 

Here, it’s right in front of us, in all its radiant glory. That’s what’s best about the collection on view at the Breuer: several works are no longer in their usual places above or away from visitors and are now at eye level, easier to study and admire. 

 

 

Similarly, reorganizing the artworks was necessary, so now there’s a room containing only the Frick’s peerless trio of Vermeers, and another has four Goyas—three brilliant portraits and the astonishing The Forge—lined up together; the many Van Dycks and Rembrandts get rooms of their own. 

 

It’s useful to see one artist’s works in a single space, even if the sense of an art collector arranging his valuable works and furnishings where he wanted to place them is, regrettably, lost.

 

Lastly, it’s illuminating to see Holbein’s great portraits of Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell right in front of us, making it easier to discover subtleties in the brushstrokes; and—most memorably—the only room with a single painting: Bellini’s gorgeous St. Francis in the Desert, which was restored several years ago and now, taken down off the wall in Frick’s original living room, can be studied intensely as one marvels at such an imposing work of art that remains eminently graspable. 

 

This is where one must mention the lighting at the Breuer, which allows for better viewing of certain paintings than the original Frick mansion does.  

 

I don’t want the Frick Collection ensconced at the Breuer forever—it’s slated for a couple years—but this welcome diversion is a satisfying way to visit old, familiar friends.

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

(Film Movement) 

An often riotous blackly comic revenge picture for our social media age, Ivo van Aart’s deliriously demented look at how an online columnist deals with trolls and stalkers—many physically threatening her—manages the impressive feat of getting viewers to root for her style of vengeance.

 

 

Although it does go too far (she wouldn’t be able to pull off what she does without anyone catching on), Katja Herbers is perfect as the eponymous anti-heroine, and the director saves his best bit for a satisfyingly crazed ending. This is the movie that Promising Young Woman wanted to be (and that Herbers looks like Carey Mulligan is a wonderful coincidence).

 

 

 

 

 

Queen Marie 

It might just be a standard biopic, but Alexis Sweet Cahill’s study of how the queen of Romania went to Paris after World War I to try and convince, against huge odds, the leaders of the U.S., France, and Great Britain, that her country deserves a seat at the post-war table, is a sweeping entertainment in the best old-fashioned sense.

 

 

Roxana Lupu is exuberant as Marie, the backroom political chicanery is plausibly presented, and there just might be a history lesson hidden in the handsomely mounted film’s melodramatic excess.

 

 

 

 

 

Silo 

For those who don’t live on a farm, this tense drama might be an eye-opener: it shows how a silo accident can have lasting, even fatal, consequences. Director Marshall Josh Burnette smartly narrows his focus almost immediately and, in a fleet 76 minutes, he not only recounts the incident and its aftermath but brings individual characters to life in an area of the Midwest that’s quite religious; there’s no condescension, only sympathy for everyone—and with an added scary moment for me when the teen stuck in the silo cannot reach his asthma inhaler (my worst nightmare).

 

 

The movie might be too on the nose, but there’s no denying it’s accomplished filmmaking that also subtly rages against a loosely regulated industry.

 

 

 

 

 

Street Gang—How We Got to Sesame Street 

For more than 50 years, Sesame Street has been the gold standard of children’s television programming, but Marilyn Agrelo’s breezy and informative documentary displays how experimental, even risky, the show was when it first hit the airwaves in 1969.

 

 

Through interviews with many of the principals—creators, producers, directors, writers, performers (human and Muppet)—and a trove of archival footage from the show and behind the scenes, Street Gang celebrates one of the great American television success stories and is also a worthy memorial to the great Jim Henson, who died at age 53 in 1990.

 

 

 

 

 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

A double shot of British film noir, these B&W features are spiffily straightforward in their plotting, each following a killer just one step ahead of the authorities. In 1955’s Cast a Dark Shadow, curtly directed by Lewis Gilbert, Dirk Bogarde effectively plays a young man who kills his older wives for the money, but discovers too late that his latest diabolical plot has ensnared himself.

 

 

In 1946’s Wanted for Murder, directed gruffly by Lawrence Huntington, a strangler loose in London is right under the cops’ eyes, but they need more evidence to arrest him. Both of these by-the-numbers crime dramas at least look nice in new hi-def transfers.

 

 

 

 

 

Hemingway 

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s latest mega-documentary intelligently explores the life, career, artistry and legacy of one of America’s greatest—and most self-destructive—writers, Ernest Hemingway: his novels The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms are recognizable titles even to those who haven’t read his books, and he’s the last word in boozy, suicidal artists.

 

 

The six-hour series delves deeply into a troubled life filled with turbulence, much of it self-inflicted but also a lot of it most likely inherited. Although Jeff Daniels’s voice isn’t my idea of Hemingway’s, Peter Coyote is always a dependable narrator; there’s an excellent hi-def transfer but, disappointingly, no extra features.

 

 

 

 

 

Judas and the Black Messiah 

Daniel Kaluuya’s fiery, Oscar-winning portrayal of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton is the centerpiece of this occasionally clunky but engrossing docudrama about how the FBI infiltrated the Panthers in Illinois, leading to Hampton’s cold-blooded murder at age 21 in a 1969 raid.

 

 

As William O’Neal, the FBI informant, LaKeith Stanfield is nearly a match for Kaluuya’s passionate presence, but too much of the film is given over to the rote workings of the FBI, with Martin Sheen a caricatured J. Edgar Hoover. Director Shana King does get the atmosphere of paranoia amid the black power movement right. The film looks splendid on Blu-ray; extras are featurettes on Hampton and O’Neal.

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Things 

Although John Lee Hancock’s police procedural is unnecessarily convoluted—even by the standards of the genre—the director’s script does allow its three lead actors a chance to shine, individually and together.

 

 

As the main suspect, Jared Leto is appropriately creepy, while Denzel Washington and Remi Malek give the detective odd couple needed shading, with Washington’s seen-it-all worldweariness and Malek’s youthful swagger blending well enough to smooth over Hancock’s bumpy plotting and dialogue. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; extras are featurettes on Washington’s cop roles and the give-and-take between Washington and Malek.

 

 

 

 

 

Quick Change 

In a long TV and film career, this 1990 caper comedy is Bill Murray’s lone directorial credit: he co-directed with Howard Franklin, from Franklin’s script, about a daring daylight bank robbery that goes perfectly—until the robbers’ trek to JFK airport goes spectacularly wrong.

 

 

As a jaundiced love-hate letter to New York City, Quick Change is often uproariously funny, although too often it pushes the absurdity to After Hours levels; luckily, Murray is his usual perfectly deadpan self, Geena Davis is delightful as his girlfriend and Randy Quaid amusingly nutty as their third-wheel sidekick. Best of all is Jason Robards as the police chief who won’t stop until he tracks down the gang who escaped the bank from under his nose, a typical Robards performance of equal parts boisterous bellowing and canny understatement. The New York locations look sublimely ratty on Blu-ray.

 

 

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week

When luminaries from the pastry and dessert world, led by Israeli chef Yoham Ottolenghi,  converge on Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for an event celebrating the court of Versailles, the result is delectably eye-filling and mouth-watering, but what it took to get there—the mental stress, the long hours, the outside pressure—is recounted in director Laura Gabbert’s enjoyable documentary.

 

 

Although Ottolenghi is the star, he has surrounded himself with some of the best innovators in his culinary field, and the result is one scrumptious creation after another, all rendered beautifully by Gabbert’s camera.