This summer’s final Encores! Off-Center offering, Stephen Sondheim’s Road Show, resurrected the composer’s biggest problem child.

Road Show—which has, in earlier incarnations beginning in 1997, been variously titled Bounce, Wise Guys, and Gold!—follows the real-life exploits of two brothers, Addison and Wilson Mizner, who initially worked together then went their separate ways, since Addison, an architect, was not the con artist Wilson was. Sondheim and book writer John Weidman’s 100-minute intermissionless journey follows the brothers from California to Alaska to New York—with quick stops in Hawaii, India, Hong Kong and Guatemala—until winding up in Florida, where Wilson’s get-rich(er) scheme at a new development named Boca Raton fails.

As in their earlier collaboration Assassins, Sondheim and Weidman wittily but with a relentless cynicism explore the seamy underside of the American success story. But—if a perusal of the brothers’ bios online is any guide—the Mizners’ lives were even more incredible and stranger than fiction than what we get here, as the show dispenses with real insights for amusing asides and a faux sentimentality that keeps our interest but only intermittently gives either of these worthy characters any depth or dramatic aliveness.

Sondheim’s score begins with a stunning opener, “Waste,” then contents itself with mainly accomplished but less remarkable tunes like the boys’ mother extolling her absent Wilson in the heartfelt ballad, “Isn’t He Something!” (sung beautifully by Mary Beth Peil) or their father’s lone contribution, “It’s in Your Hands Now” (dispatched powerfully by Chuck Cooper). If the relationship between Addison and his (fictionalized) partner/lover, Hollis (played by the ingratiating Jin Ha) isn’t presented as enough of a counterweight to the brothers’ oft-broken bond, at least Sondheim has given the lovers the show’s best song: the indescribably moving “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened.”

As the brothers, Raúl Esparza (Wilson) and Brandon Uranowitz (Addison) can’t be bettered. Uranowitz gives Addison a fervent yearning quality to complement Esparza, whose natural charisma is on display to proclaim Wilson’s ability to talk anybody into anything—including his own brother. Will Davis’ savvy directing gives added notice that, even though it remains problematic, Road Show deserves a fully-staged future production.

4K/UHD of the Week 

(Lionsgate)

Oliver Stone’s 1991 biopic tries to turn the Doors lead singer Jim Morrison’s drug-fueled personality—which culminated in his death at age 27 in a Paris bathtub—into something more than a simple biopic, but its ambition might be more of a liability, since Stone’s visual busyness at times overshadows Val Kilmer’s superb central performance as Morrison (unsurprisingly ignored by the Oscars).

For this 4K release, Stone has fashioned a new “final cut” three minutes shorter than his earlier director’s cut (included on the accompanying Blu-ray disc). The film looks—and sounds—great in ultra hi-def; extras comprise a commentary by and new interview with Stone and new interview with sound engineer Lon Bender.

Blu-rays of the Week

Body at Brighton Rock 

(Magnet)

Writer-director Roxanne Benjamin’s would-be intense drama pits Wendy, a green national park ranger, at the mercy of the elements after she gets lost…and must remain overnight with a dead body she discovered in a remote area of the park.

At first, it seems that Benjamin is setting us up for a comedy about stupidity—Wendy does the exact things to make her predicament worse—but by the end, after Wendy fends off a crazed visitor and a bear, it’s obvious that Benjamin’s movie is about heroism arriving when least expected. Karina Fontes does wonders making Wendy relatable even in her benightedness. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are interviews and a Benjamin and Fontes commentary.

Bronco Billy 

This 1980 feature about a traveling Wild West show is considered one of star-director Clint Eastwood’s most lighthearted films, and it may well be—but also, thanks to Billy’s horrible mistreatment of a jilted wife Antoinette (whom he lets join his crew and share his bed), which she of course loves, is awfully misogynistic and unfortunately played for laughs.

Sondra Locke’s amateurish acting doesn’t help, and Eastwood and she have no chemistry. At least there’s the always welcome presence of Scatman Crothers—and a superior hi-def transfer.

Domino 

(Lionsgate)

Brian De Palma’s latest thriller plods along with static and stagnant action sequences that are as static and stagnant as his earlier ones were fast-paced and even occasionally thrilling.

This ISIS-infused drama is set in Copenhagen and includes several fine Scandinavian actors (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Paprika Steen and Søren Malling) and the great Dutch actress Carice van Houten, but with a flimsy script, derivative directing and Pino Donaggio’s old-hat score, one of America’s former preeminent stylists has delivered a clinker. There’s a terrific hi-def transfer.

Footlight Parade 

This classic 1933 musical might feature Jimmy Cagney, Dick Powell, Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler in a story of a desperate director trying to keep audiences’ spirits up during the dark days of the Depression, but there’s a much bigger star on hand: Busby Berkeley.

The dazzling set pieces Berkeley created are his very best, including the most breathtaking of all: a sequence of precisely synchronized movement in a swimming pool by dozens of female aquatic dancers that’s worth the price of admission all by itself. There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras are archival featurettes and cartoons.

Manhunt

(Acorn)

In this true-life crime tale, Martin Clunes gives a forceful portrayal of Detective Sergeant Inspector Colin Sutton, who becomes so wrapped up in solving the murders of young women by a serial killer that he all but neglects his home life and his loving but frustrated wife.

The three-part mini-series is done with vigor and intensity, even its secondary characters—like the grieving parents of a French victim—strongly felt. The hi-def transfer is excellent; lone extra is an interview with Clunes and executive producer (and Clunes’ wife) Philippa Braithwaite.

CD of the Week 

(Urania Records)

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) composed orchestral music striking in its vitality, variety and vigorousness, along with a deep appreciation of the German composers who preceded him.

These two discs—recorded with the eminent Philharmonia Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic in 1955 and 1956—feature exciting performances of his greatest works, from the extraordinary Mathis der Maler symphony (extracted from his brilliant opera of the same name) to the visionary sounds of Noblissima visione and what’s probably his most famous composition, Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber. Soloist Dennis Brain dynamically dispatches the enchanting Horn Concerto, while Hans Otte is the estimable piano soloist in the lively The Four Temperaments. 

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans, the unlikely sequel to Bruno Dumont’s unlikely first foray into comedy, L'il Quinquin, returns to the coast of Northern France to reprise the adventures of Quinquin, now the teenaged Coincoin, whose girlfriend Eve has found love with Corinne, prompting the borderline inept police captain Van Der Weyden to comment on Corinne’s androgyny with a bemused shrug. 

Unlike in the original 200-minute TV mini-series, which was a murder mystery, this time Van Der Weyden and his stunt-driving sidekick Carpentier are flummoxed by a goopy substance that occasionally rains down onto the picturesque landscape and its denizens. Soon there are alien doubles of several of the characters running around, including rather ridiculously Van Der Weyden himself; this invasion of the body snatchers is paralleled by an “invasion” of actual foreigners who reside in a nearby shantytown and cause uneasiness among the “real” (read: white) citizens by simply by their presence.

For more than three amusing but aimless hours, Dumont pitches frenzied physical comedy at the same level as he does his usual dour dramas (his recent feature fiasco, Slack Bay, with Juliette Binoche and Fabrice Luchini, no less, was also an out-and-out farce). Bernard Bruvost’s array of facial twitches and contortions as Van Der Weyden remain astonishing to watch, but when two Bruvosts start doubling up such tics onscreen, it’s less entertaining than enervating. 

With the arrival of a right-wing group, a la Marine Le Pen’s National Front, as a subplot, Dumont mocks the casual racism in today’s politics, but by the end—when the cops, the locals, and aliens both terrestrial and extraterrestrial dance awkwardly to a jaunty marching-band tune, an obvious reference to Fellini’s 8-1/2 finale—it’s clear that Coincoin and the Extrahumans has been one long, occasionally diverting shaggy-dog story.

Louis Garrel is the son of Philippe Garrel, one of the most dispensable French directors. Unfortunately, Garrel fils seems a chip off the old block. His latest directorial effort, A Faithful Man, strains to be an adult comedy but Garrel and his co-scenarist, the legendary Jean-Claude Carriere, are too coy and lazy to exploit the material for more than its shallow surface 

Garrel plays Abel, who is dumped by his girlfriend Marianne after she tells him she’s pregnant with the child of his best friend Paul. Some years later, Paul dies and Abel hopes to rekindle his relationship with Marianne when, look who appears: Paul’s younger sister Eve—all grown up and a looker, naturally—who has decided she wants Abel for herself. 

With so little at stake—Abel gets to move between two equally enticing women—A Faithful Man seems unnecessarily extended even with its short 75-minute running time, and Garrel isn’t a savvy enough director or magnetic enough screen presence to make his character’s “dilemma” diverting. It’s too bad, for Laeticia Casta as Marianne and Lily-Rose Depp (Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis’ daughter) as Eve give wonderfully frisky performances, making this love triangle dramatically, comically and romantically lopsided.