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Film and the Arts
January '16 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 05 January 2016 23:52
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Experimenter
(Magnolia)
While writer-director Michael Almereyda relies too heavily on gimmickry like rear projection, direct camera address and (literally) an elephant in the room, he has made an intelligent biopic about psychologist Stanley Milgram and his controversial behavioral experiments.
Peter Sarsgaard’s commandingly aloof and brooding Milgram, Winona Ryder’s welcome return as his faithful wife and nicely turned appearances by Jim Gaffigan, John Leguizamo, Anthony Edwards, Josh Hamilton and Taryn Manning greatly assist. The movie looks good on Blu; extras comprise featurettes and an interview with Milgram’s brother.
(Universal)
As usual, director Eli Roth takes a workable premise—naively idealistic students take a trip to the rainforest to defend tribes from greedy developers—and turns the horrors they discover to the most ridiculous extremes.
Fans of his movies may not squirm throughout the by-numbers plotting and extensively gory bloodlettings, but even they may shrug at Roth's final, tepid twist that places his heroine in an unflattering light. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; lone extra is a commentary.
Infinitely Polar Bear
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Mark Ruffalo gives a powerful and sympathetic portrayal of a husband and father whose bi-polar condition makes for fraught relationships with his loving daughters and wife in this sensitive but unsentimental drama based on writer-director Maya Forbes's own dad.
Although his full-bodied performance is anything but an obvious star turn, Ruffalo is superbly complemented by the wonderful Zoe Saldana as his wife and two remarkable young actresses as his daughters: Ashley Aufderheide and the director's own daughter Imogene Wolodarsky, basically playing her own mother dealing with her own grandfather's difficulties. The Blu-ray transfer is exceptional; extras are a commentary, deleted scenes and Q&A.
(Universal)
After many years (and films) in the wilderness following his breakout The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan has thrown in the towel and jumped on the found-footage bandwagon with this lukewarm thriller pitting two kids against their grandparents, whom they discover to be nothing like how their mother remembered them while she was growing up.
The problem, apart from this genre’s inherent silliness, is that the kids’ mom—who hadn’t seen her own parents since she left home years earlier—assumes that having them visit would have no complications: the movie proceeds to pile up implausibilities faster than you can spell Shyamalan. The film looks fine on Blu; extras are an alternate ending, deleted scenes, and a making-of featurette.
DVDs of the Week
Jenny's Wedding
(IFC)
For a movie that was dumped onto DVD with little fanfare, Mary Agnes Donoghue’s dramedy about a successful young woman who decides to out herself to her family by announcing her marriage to her long-time girlfriend is serviceable entertainment.
With a top cast—Tom Wilkinson and Linda Emond are unsurprisingly excellent as the parents, while Katherine Heigl gives a robust performance as Jenny—the movie passes by harmlessly, coming to a satisfying conclusion with minimal maudlin or sappiness. Lone extra is a making-of featurette.
Divide in Concord
(First Run)
In 1971, director Johanna Hamilton chronicles the break-in of a Pennsylvania FBI office during the height of the Vietnam War: those responsible not only made public secret documents about illegal surveillance, but they eluded authorities for the next four-plus decades.
Hamilton has caught up to them: her absorbing look at a politically fraught era features interviews with the men and women who did it, and raises still-pertinent questions about our own culture of paranoia and secrecy; the lone extra, an hour-long post-screening Q&A, features none other than Edward Snowden.
A microcosm of our society's widening societal gap, Kris Kaczor's Divide in Concord is a heartening documentary about Jean Hill, who in her ninth decade fights the good fight by spearheading a bill that bans water bottles from being sold in Concord, Mass: this plucky David goes up against many Goliaths, from local businesses and shrill activists to water bottle corporations themselves.
Tokyo Fiancée
(First Run)
Amelie arrives in Tokyo to teach French, fulfilling a cherished dream since she was young: and when she falls in love with her first (and seemingly only) student, it complicates many things both about their relationship and how she's decided to live her life.
Director Stefan Liberski's fey romantic comedy is too often forced, and the heroine’s name is too obviously a nod toward the Audrey Tautou Amelie that's the blueprint for this kind of you-either-love-it-or-hate-it movie. Even though it moves into darker territory, weird whimsy predominates, centered on Pauline Etienne's boyish appeal.
Theater Reviews—Broadway Musical “The Color Purple”; Off-Broadway Play “Steve”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 28 December 2015 23:58
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Color Purple
Music & lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis & Stephen Bray; book by Marsha Norman
Directed by John Doyle
Opened December 10, 2015
Steve
Written by Mark Gerrard; Directed by Cynthia Nixon
Closes January 3, 2016
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| The cast of The Color Purple (photo by Matthew Murphy) |
There didn't seem to be any compelling reason to revive the musicalThe Color Purple—especially in John Doyle's typically sterile staging—at least until British actress Cynthia Erivo, as Celie, the downtrodden but resourceful heroine of Alice Walker's tough but poetic novel and Steven Spielberg's more sentimental movie adaptation, holds forth for her 11 o'clock number, “I’m Here.”
Erivo—who gives a poignant portrayal of a woman who has been impregnated by her father, had her babies taken away from her, has been beaten and dehumanized by her abusive husband Mister and has had her beloved sister Nettie banned from ever seeing her again—slowly builds Celie's declaration of independence until she belts out the liberating words the audience has wanted to hear for more than two hours. Erivo delivers the goods, bringing the dramatically bumpy show to a rousing, and cathartic, climax.
Thanks mainly to Erivo, The Color Purple works as well onstage as onscreen. Although Marsha Norman's book adroitly streamlines events in Walker's novel—primarily written in Celie’s voice as letters to God, obviously tough to recreate in the film or in the theater—the story as shown never entirely escapes its soap opera-ish leanings. The songs of Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray skillfully range across a variety of genres, from gospel to blues to jazz to romantic balladry, with occasional moments of heartfelt power.
Director John Doyle came to prominence through gimmicky Sondheim revivals with performers playing their own instruments onstage; shrewdly, he then changed to productions set against foreboding, often massive backdrops, from the ugly wall overwhelming his disastrous Metropolitan Opera Peter Grimes to the grey, decaying city of Broadway’s The Visit last spring.
For Purple, Doyle has designed an imposing wall made of wooden planks, with several chairs jutting out from it at different heights. Other chairs are the only furniture available for the characters to sit on; what this has to do with Celie’s drama is anyone's guess: and, although it quickly gets tiresome, for a few moments the set does have a pleasing look.
In an accomplished cast—of the men, Kyle Scatliffe stands out as a sympathetic Harpo, Mister's grown son—the spectacular voices make the music and drama soar. As Harpo's wife Sofia (Oprah Winfrey’s role in the movie), Danielle Brooks is over the top but never gratuitously so, with a powerhouse voice to match; as famed singer Shug Avery, who bewitches Mister and Celie and everyone in between, Jennifer Hudson shows off her amazingly controlled vocals, even if her ability to act like a sex symbol leaves something to be desired. And, as mentioned before, Erivo is a flat-out unstoppable Celie, equaling LaChanze and Fantasia’s turns in the initial Broadway production.
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| The cast of Steve (photo by Monique Carboni) |
Steve—Mark Gerrard's comedy and the second play this fall to track gay fathers through the minefields of contemporary Manhattan (after the wiser and less wisecracking Dada Woof Papa Hot)—is simply too clever for its own good.
The main couple, Stephen and Steven, have a young kleptomaniac son, whose theft of Stephen's cell phone allows Steven to discover that Stephen has been sexting with one of their closest friends, Brian, long-time lover of another close friend, Matt; this causes Steven to have a dalliance with a younger, gorgeous dancer/waiter Esteban. In addition, the main quartet's lesbian BFF, the endlessly snarky Carrie, is dying of cancer.
All of this allows Gerrard the chance to display gallows humor, which at times is funny but is mostly gratuitous. And the play must also set some kind of record for how many inside theater jokes and insults can be flung in 90 minutes. Again, some of these sting amusingly while others simply wither and die.
As schizophrenic as Gerrard's script is (there are actually four characters named some variation of Steve, including an unseen—but hot—trainer at the local gym with whom Brian and Matt end up cohabitating), director Cynthia Nixon shows a remarkable ability to orchestrate the madness into a semblance of coherence; when she can't, there are bouncy theater tunes that the cast performs with aplomb, even at the curtain call. Nixon’s harmonious cast—Matt McGrath (Steven), Malcolm Gets (Stephen), Mario Cantone (Matt), Jerry Dixon (Brian), Ashley Atkinson (Carrie)—goes above and beyond to make Steve broadly entertaining, if rarely insightful.
The Color Purple
Jacobs Theatre, 242 West 45th Street, New York, NY
colorpurple.com
Steve
Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org
December '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 23 December 2015 21:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Blood Rage
(Arrow)
Opening with a 10-year-old fatally stabbing a fornicating man at a drive-in, John Grissmer's 1987 slasher flick doesn't blink from the get-go, especially when the kid is released 10 years later: but was it he or his twin brother who's the real killer?
Gleefully gore-filled—Ed French's inventively cheesy effects culminate with a head split in two—Blood stars Louise Lasser, TV's Mary Hartman, as the boys' deranged mother, and features the usual sex leading to death, as it always does in these movies. An R-rated version, Nightmares at Shadow Woods, and a version comprising both cuts are included; the hi-def transfers look terrific, and extras include Grissmer’s commentary and interviews with Lasser, other actors and makeup artist French.
(Warner Bros)
This noisy, messy contraption purports to tell how Peter Pan met Captain Hook and took on Bluebeard before J.M. Barrie's original story begins. Although young Levi Miller makes an ingratiating Peter, Hugh Jackman is a hammy Bluebeard and Rooney Mara is as dull as ever as Tiger Lily.
Then there's director Joe Wright, whose tone wavers so that his movie uncomfortably swings between loud, lumbering set pieces and quiet moments that barely register. Too bad: in the right hands Pan could have been charming rather than something to be panned. On Blu-ray, it all looks incredible; extras include Wright’s commentary and featurettes.
Time Out of Mind
(IFC)
Oren Moverman's earnest homeless drama has its heart in the right place but ends up a feel-good film about a middle-aged man forced to wandering New York's streets and finding some hope in the form of his estranged daughter.
Richard Gere does his best to seem mentally and physically run-down, but he looks more like a man who simply hasn't shaved for a few days: in support, Ben Vereen and Kyra Sedgwick are far more persuasively homeless. The movie has a fine hi-def transfer; extras are a featurette and Gere PSA.
Queen of Earth
(IFC)
As a woman devastated by her father's death and boyfriend's unexpected betrayal, Elisabeth Moss is alternately exasperated and angry or docile and distant, but she can't turn such disparate elements into a coherent whole in Alex Ross Perry’s slender study content to display petty outbursts sans any psychological complexity.
Katharine Waterston is sensational as the best friend discovering how difficult it is to help our heroine recover, but despite both actresses, Perry relies too heavily on Keegan DeWitt's derivative score, uncomfortably reminiscent of Penderecki’s eerieShining music, which fails to transform Queen into a horror movie of the soul. Extras are a commentary by Perry and Moss and a making-of featurette.
Xmas Without China
(Icarus)
Can an American family celebrate Christmas without having anything in their house that was made in China? That question hangs over director Alicia Dwyer's lively, incisive documentary about how much cheap products are part of our daily lives: after awhile, the family talked into becoming part of this experiment openly questions why they are doing it, since it's basically ruining their holiday—and their lives.
Tom Xia, who came up with this challenge, also introduces his Chinese family, whose dual allegiances provide more sets of eyes open to the cultural clash of identity and consumerism.
The Wiz—Live!
(Masterworks/Broadway)
For its third live musical telecast, NBC resurrected the hip 1975 Wizard of Oz update that was a Broadway hit with Stephanie Mills as Dorothy and a bomb onscreen in 1978 with Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, despite director Sidney Lumet’s inventive use of familiar New York locations.
The latest version, populated by an eclectic but very able cast, has a cameo by Mills and the good sense not to give a disastrous Common any more screen time than he deserves. Happily, the singing is often on-target (Queen Latifah, Ne-Yo, Uzo Aduba) and sometimes more than that, especially from the powerhouse 19-year-old newcomer Shanice Williams.
Christmas Music--New York Pops Concert and CDs
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 22 December 2015 16:10
- Written by Kevin Filipski
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| Brian d'Arcy James and Stephanie J. Block with conductor Steven Reineke and The New York Pops (photo: Richard Termine) |
This month's uncommonly mild weather has made it seem more like late spring rather than the holiday season, so the New York Pops’annual Christmas concerts at Carnegie Hall (December 18 and 19) were a needed antidote.
It’s Christmas Time in the City was a wonderfully festive display of great singing and music-making led by Pops music director Steven Reineke, featuring the orchestra, Broadway veterans Stephanie J. Block and Brian d’Arcy James and the chorus Essential Voices USA.
Although Block’s effusive personality threatened to overwhelm the show, happily she hammed it up only during the “Holiday Hits Medley” when she out-Mariahed Mariah Carey on “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
Her emotional rendition of Wesley Wheatley and Bill Schermerhorn’s affecting “Yes, Virginia” (in which she mentioned her own newborn daughter) was a highlight, as was her easy rapport with d’Arcy James on their duets “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”
D'Arcy James also brought his A game, with engagingly unadorned renditions of “The Christmas Song” and “Silver Bells,” but his best moment came with a song he wrote about his hometown of Saginaw, “Michigan Christmas,” which was heartfelt without being the least bit sentimental.
Essential Voices USA dominated from the opening, a rousing “Deck the Halls.” The evening's lone quibble was monstrously over-orchestrated versions of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “O Holy Night,” whose orchestral swellings all but buried the chorus’ excellent work (and in the latter, Block’s ringing high notes).
But orchestra and singers came together beautifully for a final singalong of sacred carols that sent the satisfied audience out into the uncharacteristically cold night humming, happy and ready for December 25.
Holiday CDs
Ann Hampton Callaway—The Hope of Christmas
(MCG Jazz)
Putting together a disc of all-new Christmas songs is a daring endeavor, so this collaboration of singer Ann Hampton Callaway and lyricist William Schermerhorn scores right off the bat. Schermerhorn's lyrics, spirited or wistful or amusing or romantic in turn, are the perfect complement to Callaway's warm singing on these 12 new tunes.
Callaway herself wrote the music for the hopeful title track and the personal final song, "Fly with the Angels." The whipsmart jazz arrangements, performed by an exemplary ensemble, give this recording a pleasing seasonal vibe.
(Pentatone)
This collection of new Christmas carols by seven American composers spans generations from William Bolcom, John Corigliano and Gordon Getty to Mark Adamo and Jake Heggie, whose song cycle On the Road to Christmas delightfully resurrects old tunes next to new ones that work well within the seasonal tradition.
Also memorable and likely to last are David Garner's Three Carols and Luna Pearl Woolf's How Bright the Darkness; soprano Lisa Delan and baritone Lester Lynch, conductor Dawn Harms and pianist Steven Bailey are the impeccable musicians.
Paul Hindemith—The Long Christmas Dinner
(Bridge)
In his melodious musicalization of Thornton Wilder's one-act drama of Americana, German composer Paul Hindemith created a miniature masterpiece that would turn out to be his last opera (he died in 1963, two years after its premiere), and its musical subtleties mirror those of Wilder's insightful play about one family over a period of nearly a century.
In this, astonishingly the opera's first English-language recording, conductor Leon Botstein leads an ideal reading that captures the work's emotions with gentle understatement.
(Carus)
Although there are motets for unaccompanied choir on this disc—including the four Francis Poulenc motets that are justly famous seasonal works—this recording's highlight is Ottorino Respighi's Lauda, a rarely-heard Christmas cantata of real substance and heightened dramatic power.
It was Respighi's lone sacred composition in a long and distinguished career.
Patty Smyth—Come on December
(Parallel 22)
For her first holiday album (actually more of an EP, since it's only eight songs), Scandal singer Patty Smyth confidently makes her way through five familiar classics and three new tunes, none of which will enter the canon of Christmas classics.
Smyth—a magnificently controlled singer who has never received the respect and admiration she deserves (compare that to the out-of-control panegyrics that greeted Adele's new album)—makes even the less memorable songs like "Walk with Me" and the title track shine, and she makes standards like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Christmas Song" her own.
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