June '12 Digital Week V

Blu-rays of the Week

And Everything Is Going Fine

and Gray’s Anatomy

(Criterion)

Spalding Gray’s unique theatrical contributions were his subversively funny monologues, and Steven Soderbergh’s films brilliantly take the measure of Gray as performer and human being. 1997’s Anatomy intercuts Gray’s incisive eye-operation monologue with others’ accounts of equally bizarre ocular problems; 2010’s Everything comprises footage of Gray—who killed himself in 2004—that serves as a fine memorial. Soderbergh’s affection for Gray (who starred in Soderbergh’s King of the Hill) is obvious in both movies and in his interviews on these typically superb Criterion Collection discs. The movies have flawless transfers and, as extras, interviews with his widow Kathleen Russo and ex-partner/producer Renee Shafranksy, and—most important—two of Gray’s early monologues, Sex and Death to Age 14 and A Personal History of American Theater.

Bullhead

(Drafthouse Films)

Writer-director Michael R. Roskam’s nifty psychological thriller—whose title refers to cattle steroids our hero injects—is too clever for its own good, especially when Roskam overexplains his hero’s behavior through flashbacks to a horrific injury suffered as a boy. Still, led by a hearty performance by Matthias Schornaerts as “Bullhead,” the movie is, if not unforgettable, at least quite diverting. There’s an impeccably detailed hi-def transfer; extras include Roskam’s commentary, Roskam and Schornaerts interviews, a making-of featurette and Roskam’s 2005 short, The One Thing to Do.

Deliverance

(Warners)

Although it’s inferior to James Dickey’s poetically disturbing novel of four businessmen on a weekend canoe trip gone wrong, John Boorman’s 1972 adaptation is rip-roaring entertainment that’s equally disturbing, superbly directed and starring a first-rate cast of then not-well-knowns (Burt Reynolds, Jon Voigt, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty). The prodigiously realized photography and editing look equally splendid on Blu-ray, thanks to a terrific transfer. Extras include a Boorman commentary, new featurette reuniting the four principals and vintage featurettes.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

(Cinema Guild)

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest begins as a group of officers travels to a remote area with murder suspects to find a body. Spending interminable time waiting, they engage in small talk (like buffalo yogurt!); we soon find those involved have their own ethical and personal problems. Magnificent compositions mask a disjointed narrative: would police be so inept and forget a body bag or not have room in vehicles for a body? Would an autopsy be conducted with the victim’s wife and son outside the room? The Blu-ray image is immaculate; voluminous extras include a 95-minute making-of documentary and 50 minutes of Cannes Film Festival footage.

Oranges and Sunshine

(Cohen Media Group)

The shocking true story of thousands of British children being sent to new, orphaned lives in Australia is brought to the screen with the humane anger of Ken Loach—er, that should be Jim Loach, the brilliant director’s talented son. As his father does, Loach fils smartly casts his central role, as Emily Watson (one of those rare actresses believable in anything) beautifully plays the woman who helps the now adult kids discover—or at least find out about—their real families. This nicely understated drama delivers an emotional punch in the usual Loach tradition. There’s a sturdy, understated hi-def transfer; extras include interviews with Loach, Watson, writer Rona Munro and other actors.

Pink Floyd—The Story of Wish You Were Here

(Eagle Vision)

The making of Pink Floyd’s compelling follow-up to the massive-selling Dark Side of the Moon is recounted in new interviews with the three surviving members, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, along with vintage studio and concert footage. Best of all—since much of the album comprises tributes and allusions to Floyd founder Syd Barrett—are the members’ touching reminiscences of him. The Blu-ray image is fine; extras include added interviews and “dueling” performances by Gilmour and Waters of “Wish You Were Here” and “Shine on You Crazy Diamond.”

21 Jump Street

(Sony)

I don’t get how Jonah Hill, basically a one-note amateur, has somehow become a big star. His non-talent is on display in this meretricious reboot of the late ‘80s TV show, with a game Channing Tatum as Hill’s inept cop sidekick who’s the only reason to watch this overlong action-cum-comedy flick. The movie is painful to watch, especially since it promises another unnecessary franchise; that the show’s original stars, Johnny Depp and Peter DeLuise, have cameos is depressing. The Blu-ray image looks decent enough; extras include commentary, gag reel, 20 deleted scenes and interviews.

Wrath of the Titans

(Warners)

This sequel to the Clash of the Titans remake has titanic talent—Sam Worthington, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson—and little imaginative drama. Once again, there are fantastic creatures, less than fantastic humans or gods and less than impressive special effects, despite the use of state-of-the-art CGI. At least Neeson and Fiennes try to keep straight faces throughout. The hi-def image, despite—or because of—the extensive CGI, looks a bit too unrealistic, more robotized than human in movement; extras include Maximum Movie Mode, storyboards and deleted scenes.

DVDs of the Week

Damages—The Complete 4^th Season

(Sony)

Capable young lawyer Ellen comes into her own during the fourth season as she takes the lead in investigating the smug head of a private military organization, a la Blackwater, doing underhanded things in the Middle East. Damages smartly moves delectable Rose Byrne—by far the best reason to sit through Bridesmaids—into a true co-leading role with Glenn Close (Patty), and the two women’s complex relationship is the main interest of these 10 episodes, although John Goodman chews heavy scenery as the head thug. Extras include outtakes, deleted scenes and featurettes with cast and crew interviews.

The Hedgehog

(Neoclassics)

A real find, pre-teen actress Garance Le Guillermic is a natural as a young girl who’s planning to kill herself on her birthday, but instead builds an unlikely friendship with her family’s building’s concierge (the sweetly hard-headed Josiane Balasko). Writer-director Mona Achache’s engrossing character study never condescends; the result is a fascinating look at a real relationship that you wouldn’t see on our screens except as sappy melodrama. The lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Web Therapy—The Complete 1^st Season

(e one)

It’s a clever sitcom premise: a psychiatrist conducts sessions online. Lisa Kudrow is funny in the lead, and there are amusing special guests as her web patients: Courtney Cox, Jane Lynch, Alan Cumming and Rashida Jones. There’s even Victor Garber as her husband and Lily Tomlin as her mom. But despite everyone’s best intentions, the show is extremely hit-or-miss, and the laughs dwindle as the series wears on. Perhaps this could only work as an occasional web series with short episodes, a la Children’s Hospital. Extras include audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes featurette and outtakes.

CD of the Week

Rising: Music for Flute and Strings

(Bridge)

It’s always good news when famous musicians go beyond their comfort zone, and flutist Carol Wincenc’s new CD is a great example. The three flute quintets she plays with an excellent ensemble from the Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival are a cross-section of American composers. She begins with Joan Tower’s new Rising, an atmospheric and memorable work that shows off Wincenc’s formidable technique and the quartet’s sympathetic support. Also performed are two short but flavorful works by Arthur Foote from 1918, and Theme and Variations by the underrated Amy Beach (1867-1944), finally getting her due as a formidable American composer. 

New Films in Brief: Invisible War, Stella Days, Collaborator

The Invisible War

Directed by Kirby Dick

Opened June 22, 2012

invisiblewarmovie.com

Stella Days

Directed by Thaddeus O’Sullivan

Opened June 22, 2012; available on demand June 19

tribecafilm.com

Collaborator

Written and directed by Martin Donovan

Opens July 6, 2012; available on demand June 20

tribecafilm.com

One of the most important documentaries in years, The Invisible War powerfully gives voice to women who were raped or sexually abused while serving in the U.S. military, an outcome shockingly more possible than being shot by the enemy in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Despite our best and brightest women joining the armed forces due to patriotism or long family traditions, their lives have been unconscionably ruined by a strictly male-centered mentality that puts women under enormous added pressure just for being women. Being violated physically is just the beginning of the nightmare: what they endure afterward—if they decide to report the abuse, which many don’t for fear of reprisals—is as distressing emotionally as the rape was.

Director Kirby Dick—whose other valuable documentaries are This Film Is Not Yet Rated and Outrage—not only gets several women to recount their compelling but heartbreaking stories, showing what lies ahead for those still being abused, but also buttresses his argument with head-scratching statistics about how widespread the abuse is and how little the army has done to combat it. (Laughable examples of PSAs designed to raise awareness within the armed services do little but consolidate the “blame the victim” mentality still prevalent in wider society as well.)

The Invisible War lays bare how our otherwise estimable armed forces are tarnished by this horrific debasement of so many unfortunate victims (there are some males among them): in eye-opening interviews with senior members of the military both clued in and clueless, that disconnect remains, despite recent advances, post-screening for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, to try and remedy some of the injustices done to those who make claims against fellow soldiers.

Stella Days is based on Michael Doorley’s memoir of rural Ireland in the 1950s when a country still heavily influenced by the Catholic Church is taking baby steps to modernize, despite vociferous opposition by conservative leaders to remain in the dark ages.

Into the breach steps Father Daniel Barry, a liberal-leaning priest who, with the help of new school teacher Tim, to open a small movie theater for a population that’s barely seen any. Leading the anti-movie charge is Brendan, an ultra-conservative zealot running for office, hoping to keep his constituency from entering the 20^th century, even belatedly.

Although Stella Days is mainly a feel-good melodrama, director Thaddeus O’Sullivan keeps sentiment at bay by approaching the subject with humor, especially when showing the absurd convictions of Father Barry’s parishioners. However, although Father Barry is skeptical, he’s still a believer, and never does he or O’Sullivan mock such heartfelt sentiments.

With on-target performances by Martin Sheen as Father Barry and Stephen Rea as Brendan, Stella Days is worth spending time with.

Martin Donovan first came to attention in Hal Hartley’s romantic comedy Trust (1990), in which Donovan and the late, great Adrienne Shelley traded quips in Hartley’s arch but affecting classic. So it’s no surprise that Collaborator, Donovan’s first film as writer and director, borrows from Hartley in its deadpan study of two men thrown together by unlikely circumstances.

Donovan plays Robert Longfellow, a playwright on the downside of his career and his marriage, who returns to L.A. from New York City to visit his mother. He also rekindles an affair with Emma, an actress who starred in several of his plays, and runs into Gus, a shady ex-felon from the neighborhood he’s known since they were kids: the men drink beers and kick around old times, and when Gus pulls a gun on Robert as the police surround Robert’s mother’s home, he finds his messy personal life is shown to a riveted television audience.

As writer, Donovan has created intriguingly bizarre characters of the sort Hartley did, as well as tart dialogue between the mismatched men compensating for the contrived relationships between Robert and Emma (underplayed sweetly by Olivia Williams) and his wife Alice (stiffly played by ex-Hole bassist Melissa auf der Maur).

As director, Donovan leans too heavily on the men’s absurd situation, and the title’s double entendre is too literally spelled out in the men’s final confrontation. As actor, Donovan doesn’t stretch himself as the put-upon hero, while David Morse persuasively portrays a loser grasping at anything resembling a life preserver. The actors provide the movie’s true collaboration.

June '12 Digital Week IV

Blu-rays of the Week

A Bag of Hammers

(MPI)

This indifferent comedy is another “who-cares” look at annoying people who act unlike anyone in the real world (at least I hope so, for our sake). They insult and cajole one another and other innocent people, but when the chips are down, director Brian Crano and co-writer Jake Sandvig desperately attempt to inject humanity to gain sympathy from viewers. However, I can’t see how any viewer cannot be left unmoved. The lone interest comes from Rebecca Hall, who creates a lovely character with no help from Crano and Sandvig. There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Eugene Onegin (Opus Arte)

and Lakme (Opera Australia)

A pair of 19^th century operatic masterpieces gets the hi-def treatment: Tchaikovsky’s greatest stage work Eugene Onegin and Hector Delibes’ lone hit Lakme. Onegin, from 2011 in Amsterdam, is hampered by director Stefan Herheim’s goofy concept, but the glorious music—conducted by Mariss Jansons—compensates. Lakme—filmed at Opera Australia last year—is more traditionally exotic, in keeping with the work’s mysticism, and sung beautifully by Emma and Dominica Matthews, who sing a duet on the famous “Flower Song.” The operas look and sound splendid on Blu-ray.

My Afternoons with Margueritte

(Cohen Media Group)

At age 77 in 2010, director Jean Becker created this affecting portrait of enduring friendship in this sweetly sentimental tale of two lonely people—middle-aged, barely literate laborer and elderly but vigorous woman—who bond over the glories of discovering new worlds through reading. As the mismatched pair, Gerard Depardieu (appropriately downtrodden) and Gisele Casadesus are wonderful, with a radiant assist by Maurane as Depardieu’s loving but confused girlfriend. The unassuming drama is matched by its subdued photography, which gets a first-rate hi-def transfer.

Nature: The White Lions

and Nova: Hunting the Elements

(PBS)

Another stunning PBS Nature program, Lions sympathetically chronicles the difficulties of two lionesses to survive in the wild with tell-tale white fur; Nova’s equally superb Elements provocatively shows the world of science harnessing elements from inert gold to malevolent phosphorus. Both programs utilize hi-def visuals to their full: Lions’ superlative nature photography and Elements’ engrossing breakdown of minute particles.

Project X

(Warners)

I know I’m not the target audience for this empty-headed flick about high school losers whose popularity rises when one of them hosts a huge party while his parents are away. Is there a shred of redeeming value to a movie that simply shows brainless teens doing what brainless teens have done since time immemorial? That hack director Todd Phillips produced this unwatchable mess is unsurprising; that several comely young women consented to take their clothes off for it is saddening: it’s a paycheck, I guess. Undoubtedly, Projects Y and Z are next. Extras comprise three featurettes with interviews.

Red Scorpion

(Synapse)

Dolph Lundgren became an action star in this mindless 1985 flick about a dirty rotten Commie who sees the light and helps defeat the pesky Russians (the same year he was as the ultimate Russian fighting machine in Rocky IV). While the movie is negligible, the Blu-ray is excellent: a terrific new hi-def transfer, new interviews with Lundgren and make-up ace Tom Saviani, on-set footage and a behind-the-scenes featurette.

Seeking Justice

(Anchor Bay)

Old pro Roger Donaldson directed this flimsy thriller with welcome verve, despite its silly story about a mild-mannered teacher (Nicolas Cage, of all people) who consents to have his wife’s rapist be offed in exchange for “future payment,” which comes when he must kill someone he doesn’t know. Cage is surprisingly subdued, January Jones (the wife) is gorgeous, and the action competently done; but it falls apart at the end. The Blu-ray image is fine; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.

Stone Temple Pilots: Alive in the Windy City

(Eagle Vision)

This 2010 reunion concert on the heels of the band’s lackluster eponymous CD shows off STP at its hard-rocking best, with Dean DeLeo’s charged guitar stylings, brother Robert’s booming bottom end on bass and Eric Kretz’s blistering drums. Vocalist Scott Weiland is agile physically—his non-stop movement is on display—and vocally, hitting every note and then some. New tunes “Between the Lines” and “Huckleberry Crumble” stand alongside classics like “Big Empty,” Plush” and “Interstate Love Song,” which has one of the all-time great hooks. The hi-def image is good; a 15-minute interview is included.

DVDs of the Week

Attenberg

(Strand)

Athina Rachel Tsangari’s deadpan study of a young woman’s sexual inexperience gets much right about the terrifying world of adulthood. But despite the artistry of her rigorous compositions and the strikingly natural performances by Ariane Labed in the lead and Evangelia Randou as her best friend, Tsangari’s film hits an artistic dead end after making its points early, then recycles them for 97 minutes to mute their power.

How Much Does That Building Weigh, Mr. Foster?

(First Run)

The cantankerously inventive British architect Norman Foster’s artsy profile by directors Norberto Lopez Amado and Carlos Carcas does the job in a succinct 80 minutes. Many of Foster’s brilliantly original designs—like the Hearst Tower in midtown Manhattan and the stunning, towering Millau Viaduct in France—are shown with spectacular aerial photography, while we get to know what makes such a unique artist tick. (Shockingly, the DVD’s back cover notes that the movie is “honing,” not “homing,” in on Foster’s works.)

A Matter of Taste

(First Run)

Paul Liebrandt, wunderkind chef, is profiled in this entertaining documentary covering nearly a decade in the career of a temperamental genius whose goal is to get three stars from the NY Times for his first restaurant venture as a co-owner. Considering her film’s only 69 minutes, director Sally Rowe covers a lot of ground, interviewing Liebrandt, other chefs and even the Times’ reviewers William Grimes and Frank Bruni. The result is a gastronomic feast that reveals the pressure these people put themselves under in such a rarefied world. Extras include additional chef interviews and two shorts.

CD of the Week

Dmitri Shostakovich: Orango

(Deutsche Grammophon)

Dmitri Shostakovich never finished his satirical opera Orango, only getting through the prologue. In Simon McBurney’s orchestration, it’s a daffy, derivative piece of fluff by one of the 20^th century’s Soviet masters. The 30 minutes of music are rarely original but always fun to listen to. Both Orango and a compelling account of Shostakovich’s massive Fourth Symphony—written in the mid-‘30s but not premiered until 1961—are performed by the L.A. Philharmonic under conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Theater Roundup: Shanley in the Bronx & Shakespeare in the Park

Storefront Church

Starring Bob Dishy, Giancarlo Esposito, Zach Grenier, Ron Cephas Jones, Jordan Lage, Tonya Pinkins

Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley
Performances began May 16, 2012; opened June 11; closes June 24

Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20^th Street, New York, NY

atlantictheater.org

As You Like It

Starring Andre Braugher, Donna Lynne Champlin, Jon DeVries, Susannah Flood, David Furr, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Robert Joy, Oliver Platt, Lily Rabe, Will Rogers, Stephen Spinella

Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Daniel Sullivan

Previews began June 5, 2012; opened June 21; closes June 30

Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, New York, NY

shakespeareinthepark.org

Storefront Church (photo: Kevin Thomas Garcia)

The final play in his “Church and State” trilogy which began with the masterly Doubt and brittle Defiance, John Patrick Shanley’s Storefront Church displays his virtues and vices in abundance. Notably, there’s Shanley’s uncanny ability to not only believably differentiate his characters from one another but allow them their dignity, whether it’s Bronx Borough President Donaldo Calderon or middle-aged neighborhood resident Jessie Cortez, losing her house to foreclosure.

They are just two of a half-dozen characters, all shot through with Shanley’s characteristic humanity. But that’s also where Shanley stumbles. He crams so many of their individual idiosyncrasies into a two-hour running time—along with other interests related to “Church and State” (both institutions interconnect more here than in the other plays)—that the drama is shortchanged.

Donaldo is asked by the intensely religious Jessie to help her and “secular Jew” husband Ethan Goldklang—whose opening-scene heart attack in the office of the local bank’s uncaring loan officer Reed Van Druyten greases the play’s creaky dramatic wheels—in their battle with the bank, but since Donaldo is also teaming with the bank’s slick CEO Tom Raidenberg on a brand new mall that will bring lots of minimum-wage jobs to a borough desperate for them following the 2008 financial meltdown, he feels there might be a conflict of interest to intervene on Jessie’s behalf.

Also as a favor to Jessie, Donaldo confronts Chester Kimmich, a Pentecostal minister from New Orleans living rent-free in a storefront that Jessie has a second mortgage on; spiritually paralyzed by Hurricane Katrina, Charles cannot bring himself to sermonize, so he hasn’t opened the storefront church whose collection money would help him pay his back rent to Jessie.

Eventually, all six characters come together in the title place one Sunday morning, and many of their secrets come out in characteristically revealing ways. Shanley (who also directs) is helped by an immaculate cast led by Giancarlo Esposito’s wounded, weary portrait of a believer and politician realizing that politics and community service may be impossible to reconcile.

If Storefront Church ends with a forced but wearily jubilant finale, there’s much to chew on from our most consistently intelligent playwright.

As You Like It (photo: Joan Marcus)

Right before intermission of Daniel Sullivan’s otherwise lackluster As You Like It are five of the most memorable minutes I’ve encountered in 25 years of attending free Shakespeare in Central Park performances. Although Stephen Spinella’s sing-song recitation of the great “Seven Ages of Man” speech is awkwardly spoken, Sullivan stages the physical action with a welcome awareness of the text and an understanding of Shakespeare’s awesome humanity.

We are in a world of genius for a few fleeting moments, but such gracefulness is missing from the rest of the production, whose Forest of Arden—despite the surrounding foliage of the Delacorte Theater’s environs—is supplemented by a massive wooden fort at stage center whose lone function is to obscure the trees making up the rest of set designer John Lee Beatty’s forest.

Despite the play being nonsensically set in the Wild West (which accommodates Steve Martin’s appealing bluegrass music performed by a group of musicians including the talented Tony Trischka on banjo and vocals), the big problem is that Sullivan misses the big picture to concentrate on individual scenes.

The many comic interludes, led by a jolly Oliver Platt as the clown Touchstone and the invaluable Jon DeVries as the old shepherd Corin, receive the evening’s biggest applause—especially when supplemented by hijinks not written by Shakespeare, always a touchstone for Central Park audiences—but the main plot’s cross-dressing and comic romance featuring our heroine Rosalind, her cousin Celia and paramour Orlando are treated lackadaisically.

David Furr makes an appealing Orlando and Renee Elise Goldsberry is a decent Celia, but the show’s biggest disappointment is the Rosalind of Lily Rabe, an actress whose strident, piercing voice and bulldozing manner are all wrong for Shakespeare’s greatest female creation. Compare the one-note Rabe to Rebecca Hall at BAM in 2005, whose Rosalind I still remember for an affecting, slightly gawky quality that beautifully brought out her vulnerability while in disguise as the boy Ganymede.

At BAM, Rosalind’s audience-pleasing epilogue was spoken by Hall with a winning combination of humility and good humor, while in the Park, Rabe hammily underlines every word to ensure all “get it.” Audiences may eat it up, but the sublime As You Like It should not be treated as a mere rewrite of the crude Comedy of Errors.

June '12 Digital Week III

Blu-rays of the Week

Demoted 

(Anchor Bay)

Since the guys behind American Pie are behind Demoted, it’s no surprise that the new movie fails to reach that film’s gross-out heights of humor. Not coincidentally, it also fails to find any cleverness in its work situations as did Office Space. Do we really need to see a naked Robert Klein cavorting with strippers? The cast is definitely able, but the material is just not there, and comedic desperation sets in early and never leaves. At least there’s a decent hi-def transfer; no extras.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance 

(Sony)

Since Nicolas Cage has pretty much surrendered his career to bizarre script choices, this sequel actually seems less crazy than it should be. The pluses of this ludicrously plotted movie are that directors Neveldine/ Taylor throw caution to the wind and concentrate on superb set pieces that make one forget—at least momentarily—the lunacy of what’s happening onscreen. Unfortunately, the ending promises another sequel, which is definitely unnecessary. The overly digitized action has a less-than-warm look on Blu-ray; extras include featurettes and interviews.

The Gold Rush 

(Criterion)

One of Charlie Chaplin’s immortal comedies is as humane and affecting as his other classics The Circus, Modern Times and City Lights. The set pieces—the dance of the rolls, the Tramp eating his shoe—are as ingenious as ever; the only quibble is that Chaplin’s inferior, re-edited 1942 talkie version is now considered definite. Luckily, The Criterion Collection includes both versions on this invaluable release, which are quite stupendous-looking on Blu-ray; extras include Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance commentary, interviews with Vance and historian Kevin Brownlow about restoring the 1925 version; and a 2002 featurette about the film’s importance and legacy.

In Darkness 

(Sony)

Director Agnieszka Holland pulls few punches in her real-life account of WWII Jewish refugees hiding in sewers under the Polish town of Lvov and a sewer worker keeping them from the Nazis. The film unflinchingly shows the awful conditions under which these desperate people survived; laced with bitter humor—especially its depiction of an unsaintly hero (a marvelous Robert Więckiewicz)—it also allows characters their humanity. The film is splendidly monochromatic (thanks to Joanta Dylewska’s photography, Michael Czarcecki’s editing and Erwin Prib’s production design); on Blu-ray, this brilliantly muted color scheme remains illuminated. Extras include a Holland interview and discussion between Holland and one of the real-life survivors.

Lina Wertmuller Collection: The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, All Screwed Up 

(Kino Classics)

It’s hard to believe, but in the mid-‘70s, Italian director Lina Wertmuller was considered among the world’s great filmmakers, culminating in her being the first woman nominated for a Best Director Oscar for her 1976 masterpiece, Seven Beauties. Too bad that brilliant, one-of-a-kind classic isn’t in this set (neither is her intelligent battle of the sexes comedy, 1975’s Swept Away…), but these three films give a good overview of this gifted artist’s singularly feminist point of view. The Seduction of Mimi (1972) and Love and Anarchy (1973)—starring her favorite screen couple, the extraordinary versatile Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato—are superior, blackly comic dramas; 1974’s All Screwed Up is much less interesting but still a worthy comedy. All three movies, despite less-than-optimal materials, have authentically film-like grain; unfortunately, no extras.

Machine Gun Preacher 

(Fox)

Gerard Butler’s committed portrayal of Sam Childers, a biker and criminal who becomes a preacher selflessly helping children in the dangerous areas of Sudan is reason enough to see Marc Forster’s compelling if preachy melodrama based on a true story. Accomplished turns by Michelle Monaghan (wife) and Michael Shannon (friend) back up Butler’s first-rate star turn. On Blu-ray, the movie looks stunning, particularly the African sequences; extras include a Forster interview, making-of featurette and video of Chris Cornell’s closing-credits song, “The Seeker.”

Meatballs 

(Lionsgate)

Bill Murray’s film debut, this cornball 1979 comedy was shot as he was making it big on Saturday Night Live. Ivan Reitman’s sketchy humor shows throughout the goofy summer camp story, while Murray does what he can: but even he hadn’t fully formed his onscreen persona, so the movie is heavy-going even for his biggest fans. The Blu-ray transfer, while soft, has a decent amount of grain; the lone extra is Reitman and writer Dan Goldberg’s commentary.

Sherlock Holmes: 
A Game of Shadows 

(Warners)

Guy Ritchie’s redundant sequel to his unnecessary—but profitable—reboot of the British detective franchise consolidates Holmes as a superhero, moving so far from whom Arthur Conan Doyle created and the rest of us envisioned that it’s no use getting upset over such a cynical film series this is becoming. Robert Downey and Jude Law keep their dignity, and it’s fun to see Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, however ill-used; but Ritchie’s routine action sequences kill his stars’ momentum. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras are Downey’s video commentary and on-set featurettes.

Vec Makropulos/The Makropulos Affair 

(Unitel Classica)

Leos Janacek’s masterly opera is a weird sci-fi tale about 300-year-old Emilia Marty—one of opera’s great soprano roles, here superbly enacted and sung by German soprano Angela Denoke—nearing the end of what should have been immortality. The knotty but affecting music is dramatically played by the Vienna Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s graceful baton. But Christoph Marthaler’s 2011 Salzburg staging pointlessly adds to Janacek’s terse libretto, bloating its taut structure. Still, Denoke, Salonen and Janacek ultimately triumph. The hi-def transfer gives added visual definition, while surround sound gives Janacek’s extraordinary music the breathing space it deserves.

DVDs of the Week

Desire 

(Strand)

This French soft-core feature has naked bodies and body parts galore: but when it comes to relationships, the clinical filmmaking is anything but triumphant. Laurent Bouhnik’s film attempts to explore the active sexuality of young men and—especially—women, but since he’s a trite psychological director, there’s lots of nudity and simulated sex but little else. Of course, the cast is terrifically attractive—particularly leads Déborah Révy and Helene Zimmer —but they don’t get to do much other than shed their clothes and inhibitions: the characters themselves remain wooden.

Don’t Go in the Woods 

(Tribeca)

What might have been a clever slasher movie parody instead is, in novice director Vincent D’Onofrio’s hands, lumbering and obvious. A rock band goes to the woods to write new material—we hear their new songs in between being terrorized by a killer—and that’s about it. At 83 minutes, the movie is barely credulous, and Sam Bisbee’s songs are derivative and humorless, the opposite of what’s needed to make this a memorable parody. The young cast seems camera-shy, and D’Onofrio doesn’t distinguish himself behind the camera. Extras include a D’Onofrio interview and making-of featurette.

Queen of Hearts 

(Film Movement)

This relentlessly cutesy rom-com-cum-musical is the brainchild of writer-director-star Julie Donzelli, a capable actress but less than thrilling filmmaker. She also cast her-then boyfriend, the lumpish actor Jeremie Elkaim—playing not one but four of the heroine’s boyfriends—and none of the performers is able to carry off this subtle feat very well, and the film soon turns leaden instead of whimsical, and fey rather than charming. The bonus short, Luis and Marta Work Together, made in the United Kingdom, is in Portuguese.

CDs of the Week

Alfredo Casella: 
Orchestral Works 

(Chandos)

Another unsung 20^th century Italian composer (alongside Lidebrando Pizzetti and Luigi Dellapiccola), Alfredo Casella was a master at atmospheric, colorful orchestral works, as this superlative disc—wonderfully  performed by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda—shows. The premiere recording of the solidly tuneful Concerto for Orchestra leads things off, followed by a piano concerto in all but name, A note alta, with scintillating soloist Martin Rosoce. Rounding out this satisfying foray into Casella’s music are two series of Symphonic Fragments from 'La donna serpent,' a Casella opera.

Dead Man Walking 

(Virgin Classics)

Jake Heggie’s first opera, which premiered in San Francisco in 2000, receives an emotional recording by Houston Grand Opera from 2011. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s book (adapted by Tim Robbins for his 1995 Oscar-winning film), Heggie’s opera adroitly uses spirituals, gospel numbers and other American musical genres. With a formidable cast led by Joyce DiDonato as Prejean and Philip Cutlip as death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, the tragic work—ably conducted by Patrick Summers—makes its case as a top American opera of the past 20 years.

Theater Roundup: Kahane's Musical, "February House"; Lonergan's "Medieval Play"; Gionfriddo's "Rapture, Blister, Burn"

February House

Starring Stanley Bahorek, Ken Barnett, Ken Clark, Julian Fleisher, Stephanie Hayes, Erik Lochtefeld, Kacie Sheik, A.J. Shively, Kristen Sieh

Music and lyrics by Gabriel Kahane; book by Seth Bockley
Directed by Davis McCallum
Performances began May 8, 2012; opened May 22; closes June 17

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Medieval Play

Starring Anthony Arkin, Heather Burns, Tate Donovan, Kevin Geer, Josh Hamilton, Halley Feiffer, John Pankow, C.J. Wilson

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan

Previews began May 15, 2012; opened June 7; closes June 24

Signature Theatre, 480 West 42^nd Street, New York, NY

signaturetheatre.org

Rapture, Blister, Burn

Starring Amy Brenneman, Beth Dixon, Virginia Kull, Kellie Overbey, Lee Tergesen

Written by Gina Gionfriddo; directed by Peter Dubois

Previews began May 18, 2012; opened June 12; closes June 24

Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42^nd Street, New York, NY

playwrightshorizons.org

February House (photo: Joan Marcus)

The ingredients are in place for a mature, serious musical: a fascinating story of colorful (and real) celebrities living in a Brooklyn boarding house during World War II. But February House, despite its pedigree, meanders when it should be tautly focused.

The frustrating result has a culprit: Seth Bockley’s book, which strains for significance, but is a cut and paste job that brings together the house’s inhabitants—editor George Davis, authors Carson McCullers and W. H. Auden, composer Benjamin Britten and his lover, tenor Peter Pears—and reduces them to uninteresting caricatures, none of whom get enough stage time to be anything more than cartoon versions of the actual people.

It’s a shame that two other famous occupants of the house, author/composer Paul Bowles and his wife, writer Jane Bowles, have been erased from the show: they’re as worthy as the others. If the objection is that the Bowleses would have made the onstage population too crowded: since the characterizations are superficial anyway, what’s another two?

Gabriel Kahane’s music, while accomplished, only occasionally lives up to the drama’s and characters’ demands. That Kahane isn’t in Britten’s league—even the “young” Britten (or Benjy, as he’s called)—is obvious; perhaps that’s another reason why Bowles was omitted: two superior composers onstage are too much for Kahane to go up against.

The performers don’t get a chance to create real characters, although Kristen Sieh’s McCullers and Erik Lochtefeld’s Auden come closest. And too bad that Britten and Pears are reduced to a Laurel and Hardy tag team by Stanley Bahorek and Ken Barnett, including a badly misconceived Act II curtain raiser, the unfunny “A Certain Itch,” concerning an infestation of bedbugs.

Medieval Play (photo: Joan Marcus)

Kenneth Lonergan’s messy but affecting character-driven explorations of contemporary individuals—which have populated his plays (This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero, The Starry Messenger) and movies (You Can Count on Me, Margaret)—are jettisoned for his latest stage work, Medieval Play.

This amusing but overlong farce has some good moments, but there are too many stretches where Lonergan simply treads water. It opens as two knights discuss their part in the ongoing Hundred Years War, with profanity and modern observations butting heads with a farcical attitude, and the rest of the play follows suit. Zany, sometimes funny horseplay, even zanier and sometimes very funny dialogue, and enough wall-to-wall anachronisms to make one think that Lonergan overdosed on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Love and Death and real old Saturday Night Live sketches.

Lonergan overplays his hand by too often having his characters talk about the absurdity and insanity of war, obviously mirroring our own era: even if he allows the delightful Heather Burns to narrate with winks to the audience about how hugely inconsequential the whole thing is, it starts to wear thin long before the curtain comes down.

As director, Lonergan (who stages the physical comedy quite effectively) has smartly cast real actors as his lead knights: Josh Hamilton and Tate Donovan never ham it up as, say, Nathan Kane or David Hyde Pierce would, all the better for the comedy to percolate. Walt Spangler’s cartoonish sets, Michael Krass’ cute costumes and Jason Lyons’ clever lighting keep Medieval Play on the right path when its author wanders far afield.

Rapture, Blister, Burn (photo: Carol Rosegg)

Gina Gionfriddo—whose last play was the unwieldy dark comedy Becky Shaw—returns with Rapture, Blister, Burn, which has the same strengths and weaknesses, although its characters’ motivations are somewhat more believable.

Catherine and Gwen, now in their mid-40s, had gone their separate ways after grad school: Gwen married Catherine’s boyfriend Don and is raising two sons; Catherine became a feminist writer and theorist famous enough to appear on Bill Maher. Catherine has returned home to care for her mother, who had a heart attack, and when she, Gwen and Don start catching up, it’s obvious nobody’s happy: homemaker Gwen finds her porn-watching husband—dean of a local high school—insufferably lazy, while Catherine feels that maybe she wrongly let Don go to Gwen many years ago.

Gionfriddo definitely has the pulse of her female characters’ shattered hopes and dreams, demonstratively shown in the Act I scene where Catherine, Gwen, Avery—Gwen and Don’s 21-year-old fired babysitter—and Alice, Catherine’s mom, talk about feminist and anti-feminist writings of the past few decades. But what begins as a shrewdly written and bitingly intelligent scene of women pointedly discussing intellectual matters soon degenerates into academic speechifying.

So it’s worrying that Gionfriddo actually lets her polar-opposite women switch places in Act II: Gwen goes to New York with her theater-loving teenage son and lives in Catherine’s apartment, while Catherine and Don start carrying on as if the two decades since their breakup never happened. It’s not that these people wouldn’t behave like that—although they probably wouldn’t—but that Gionfriddo never makes it believable that they would. Similar to her haphazard plotting and characterization in Becky Shaw, the people in Rapture, Blister, Burn are mere author’s pawns, lessening their dramatic—and comedic—impact.

Glaringly obvious too is Lee Tergesen’s turgid Don: sure, he’s supposed to be anything but a catch now, but there must be something in this unambitious and plainly exhausted man that causes a spark in his old girlfriend. But Tergesen plays Don so flatly it’s impossible to see what either Gwen or Catherine ever saw in him.

Happily compensating are Amy Brenneman’s Catherine, a shrewdly expert mix of heady intellect and emotional messiness; Kellie Overbey’s Gwen, a level-headed, extraordinarily ordinary woman; and Virginia Kull’s Avery, the playwright’s hilariously catty mouthpiece.

Peter DuBois efficiently directs on Alexander Dodge’s sharply defined set, but Rapture, Blister, Burn—a discordant title that paraphrases a Courtney Love lyric—ends tepidly rather than searingly.

February House

Performances began May 8, 2012; opened May 22; closes June 17

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY

http://publictheater.org

Medieval Play

Previews began May 15, 2012; opened June 7; closes June 24

Signature Theatre, 480 West 42^nd Street, New York, NY

http://signaturetheatre.org

Rapture, Blister, Burn

Previews began May 18, 2012; opened June 12; closes June 24

Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42^nd Street, New York, NY

http://playwrightshorizons.org