June '23 Digital Week III

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Revoir Paris 

(Music Box Films)

Alice Winocour’s latest psychological study of individuals under duress (following Augustine, Disorder and Mustang) alternates between being perceptive and merely cursory as it follows Mia, a Russian translator who survives a horrific mass shooting in a Parisian café and tries to deal with its disastrous emotional and physical aftermath. As Mia, Virginie Efira won the best actress Cesar for her devastating performance, which goes a long way toward making Winocour’s hit-or-miss drama seem more penetrating than it is.

Barbie Nation—An Authorized Tour 

(Bernal Beach Films) 

In anticipation of this summer’s Barbie movie by the overrated Greta Gerwig that stars Margot Robbie (whose 2022 appearances were in the huge bombs Amsterdam and Babylon), Susan Stern’s 1998 documentary exploring the history and legacy of the famous doll returns. It clocks in at less than an hour, yet Stern brings up many facets—sexism, misogyny, empowerment—and includes interesting takes from Ruth Handler and her husband, Elliot, who founded Mattel, and others who have collected, enjoyed or hated the doll over the decades. 

Loren and Rose 

(Wise Lars LLC)

Similar to a sit-down chatfest like My Dinner with Andre, Russell Brown’s three-act film follows Rose, a former star hoping to plot her comeback, and Loren, an up-and-coming director hoping to help her out. In a series of conversations framed by a device out of Citizen Kane, the pair discusses the movie industry, her long career and other issues, none of which are given much depth but at least are colored by the presence of the still glamorous Jacqueline Bisset. Kelly Blatz comes off less well opposite Bisset in this engaging but slight 90 minutes.

Make Me Famous 

(Red Splat) 

The New York art scene of the 1980s is given a thorough run-through by director Brian Vincent in his documentary about artist Edward Brezinski, who ran in the same downtown circles as Basquiat and Keith Haring but who never achieved their public and critical renown, dying forgotten in Cannes, France, in 2007. Vincent dissects Brezinski’s life and career through an array of chatty subjects, including art historians, gallery owners, photographers and fellow painters, along with much valuable archival footage that puts Brezinski’s work and legacy into perspective.

Umberto Eco—A Library of the World 

(Cinema Guild) 

Umberto Eco was a polymath, author, intellectual, and philosopher whose library—which contains thousands of volumes in several languages and on a myriad of subjects—may be his greatest and lasting posthumous legacy, according to director Davide Ferrario’s fascinating documentary. Through archival interviews with Eco and discussions with family members, associates and close friends, Ferrario presents a complex portrait of a multifaceted individual whose rigorous intelligence, pointed humor and best-selling novels mark him as a giant of the 20th century.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

Evil Dead Rise 

(Warner Bros) 

This exceptionally icky reboot of another horror franchise is base and unimaginative: a malevolent spirit causes people to mercilessly butcher others and then reincarnates to continue the butchering. If that sounds appealing—I know some will sign up for it immediately—then go for it; too bad that writer-director Lee Cronin only finds a few different ways to keep blood spurting and gore flowing (and does it flow, opening with a young woman being scalped and ending with a wood chipper vaporizing a multi-headed monster) and the 90 minutes seems mercilessly padded. On UHD, the color is vividly present; no extras, which seems a recent trend for new releases.

National Lampoon’s Vacation 

(Warner Bros)

This genial 1983 comedy is a very bumpy ride, with mainly cheap and obvious laughs and crude sexism: we see Beverly d’Angelo nude in the shower for no reason and Christie Brinkley’s available/unavailable supermodel entices Chevy Chase to skinny dip in a hotel pool. Harold Ramis’ slapdash directing and John Hughes’ sloppy script don’t help, while Chase sleepwalks through the laconic persona that serves him much better in Fletch. At least it has Lindsey Buckingham’s hummable “Holiday Road” and small but fun parts for John Candy, Brian Doyle-Murray and Imogene Coca. The film looks sharp in 4K; lone extra is an audio commentary. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Horowitz in Moscow 

(C Major)

When superstar pianist Vladimir Horowitz, at age 82, returned to his native Russia for the first time in six decades in 1986, cameras followed him while meeting with people he hadn’t seen in years and performing an emotional recital in Moscow. This absorbing documentary intercuts moments of intimacy between the pianist and others with his penetrating performances of pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Schubert and Schumann. The film looks fine if a little ragged on Blu, with decent audio. 

Like Water for Chocolate 

(Opus Arte)

This new ballet, scored by Joby Talbot and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon (and based on the beloved novel by Laura Esquivel, which spawned the hit 1992 movie adaptation) was filmed at last year’s world premiere staging in London’s Royal Opera House. The Royal Ballet’s principal dancers—especially the incandescent Francesca Hayward as the heroine Tita—are unimpeachable, as is Wheeldon’s expressive choreography. Talbot’s conventional music is led by the terrific conductor Alondra de la Perra, who teams with the orchestra to give it more warmth. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras are interviews with the principals.

DVD Release of the Week

Matter Out of Place 

(Icarus Films) 

In his latest provocative visual essay, Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter chronicles how our planet has pretty much become a gigantic garbage dump, and travels to various places—Switzerland, Albania, Nepal, Maldives, Austria, Greece and Nevada’s “Burning Man”—to record how our massive amounts of trash have reached all corners of the earth, even far-flung areas, and the sheer struggle it is to try and get it under control. Exceptionally beautiful, as all of Geyrhalter’s films are, it’s also extremely unsettling to watch as our only home is overtaken by refuse—even under the sea.

June '23 Digital Week II

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Munch 

(Juno Films) 

The complicated, tragic life and singular artistry of master Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is dramatized by director Henrik M. Dahlsbakken through an intriguing structure: four actors play Munch at ages 21, 29, 45 and 80, with the 29-year-old artist wandering through modern-day Berlin and the elderly Munch played by Anne V. Krigsvoll in unconvincing makeup and wig that make her look more like Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s nicely filmed and well-acted by the Munchian quartet—although Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, as journalist Milly Thaulow, with whom the 21-year-old Munch has an affair one summer, is the movie’s liveliest presence—but it ultimately amounts to mere snapshots of a life. Peter Watkins’ masterly 1974 epic, Edvard Munch, is still the film that vividly delves into the artist’s many-faceted creativity.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

John Wick—Chapter 4 

(Lionsgate)

It’s the last go-round for Keanu Reeves’ zen-like hitman who must survive the latest attacks from all corners, including a blind assassin who comes out of retirement as well as the Marquis, a member of the High table who ends up dueling him. Director Chad Stahelski keeps the pace frenetic, but at nearly three hours, an exhaustion factor creeps in despite such dazzling Paris set pieces as a spectacularly ludicrous shootout on the Arc de Triomphe roundabout and the final showdown in front of the Sacre Coeur. Through it all, Reeves’ stoicism makes Clint Eastwood’s western heroes seem positively manic. There’s a superb UHD transfer; extras include featurettes and interviews.

Time Bandits 

(Criterion)

Terry Gilliam’s first solo extravaganza behind the camera—his co-directing debut with fellow Monty Python alum Terry Jones was the best-forgotten 1977 Jabberwocky—is this delightfully demented 1981 fantasy about a young boy and group of dwarves who fall through holes in time, meeting characters like Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery). Gilliam’s imaginative movie is a wondrous prelude to his even more extravagant Brazil and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Criterion's 4K transfer is especially luminous; extras comprise a commentary, critical featurette, 1998 Gilliam interview and 1981 Shelley Duvall appearance on Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow talk show.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Covenant 

(Warner Bros)

Based on true stories of Afghan interpreters being left behind in mortal danger after U.S. forces’ botched 2021 retreat, Guy Ritchie’s drama chronicles the relationship between U.S. Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhall) and his interpreter/translator Ahmed (Dar Salim), who saves Kinley’s life during an ambush but who hides from the Taliban with his wife and young child after the Americans leave. Recovering stateside, Kinley returns to get Ahmed and family out of danger. For a Ritchie film, this is surprisingly not that frantically ham-fisted; he ratchets up the tension well, even though Christopher Benstead’s music too obviously underscores some sequences. Still, this effective film contains a sympathetic portrayal by Salim. The film looks excellent on Blu; it’s too bad that there are no contextual extras of any kind.

A Question of Silence 

(Cult Epics)

Dutch writer-director Marlene Gorris’ provocative 1982 drama about Janine, a criminal psychiatrist investigating the brutal random murder of a shopkeeper by three women who are strangers, finds its center in her attempts to understand what happened and why. As Janine concludes that the patriarchy is partly to blame and puts her controversial thesis before the court, Gorris’ sharp feminist tract is humanized by a terrific Cox Habbema, who gives a remarkable performance as Janine, arguing with the patriarchal pillars (including her lawyer husband) or tries to uncover the women’s motivations. The film looks fine if a bit battered on Blu; extras include an audio commentary and archival interviews with Gorris and Habbema.

The Tulsa King—Complete 1st Season 

(Paramount)

Talk about “high-concept” programming: Sylvester Stallone plays a New York made man who, out of prison after serving a 25-year sentence, is sent by his mob boss to set up shop in Tulsa, where he’s immediately seen as a fish out of water by the locals, who happen to include an available (and willing) woman whose part of the local ATF. It’s as one-note as it sounds, but Stallone and a surfeit of fine supporting actors, from Andrea Savage and Dana Delaney to Jay Will and Annabella Sciorra, assure that the first season has “guilty pleasure” written all over it. But can it continue in season two? There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are making-ofs and interviews.

DVD Releases of the Week 

How to Be a Good Wife 

(Icarus Films)

In Martin Provost’s at times subversive comedy, Juliette Binoche is her usual commanding self as the head of a French girls’ school in 1968 teaching her charges how to please husbands and be devoted, dutiful wives as the world goes to hell, both personally and politically, around her. Provost belabors his point about conservatives dealing with a progressive new world, and dropping in a concluding song-and-dance number is dubious. But happily, alongside Binoche, there’s excellent acting by Yolande Moreau as the sister-in-law, Noémie Lvovsky as the head nun and Marie Zabukovec and Anamaria Vartolomei as a couple of rebellious students.

Moko Jumbie 

(Indiepix)

It’s too bad that this engaging 2017 romantic comedy, made by Brooklyn-based Vashti Anderson in Trinidad and Tobago, has been overshadowed by the tragedy that befell its leading lady, local actress Vanna Girod, who drowned in January 2022 while with her family at a Tobago resort. As Asha, a young woman who returns to visit family and falls for a local young man of a questionable reputation, Girod has a shining presence that makes this familiar “opposites attract” romance a beguiling 90 minutes. Extras are Anderson’s commentary and her 2005 short, Jeffrey’s Calypso.

A Radiant Girl 

(Film Movement)

For her writing/directing debut, French actress Sandrine Kiberlain introduces Irene, a 19-year-old Jewish woman in 1942 Paris who wants to become a stage actress, seemingly oblivious to what is happening around her in the Nazi-occupied capital. Through the lovely and nuanced presence of Rebecca Marder as Irene, Kiberlain understatedly explores the fateful dichotomy between the heroine’s joy in her personal life—she falls in love for the first time as well as getting to realize her dream of acting—and the everyday occurrences that are slowly constricting the lives of French Jews. This low-key drama concludes with a simple cut to black that is horrifying in its implications. The lone extra is a Q&A with Kiberlain and Marder.

CD Release of the Week

Rautavaara/Martinů—Piano Concertos Nos. 3 

(BIS)

This enticing disc pairs the third piano concertos by two masters—Finland’s Einojuhani Rautavaara (1928-2016) and Czechoslovakia’s Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)—works separated by a half-century in composition but that are highly expressive, vibrant, even complementary. At least that’s how they sound when played so eloquently by soloist Olli Mustonen, accompanied by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under the sensitive baton of conductor Dalia Stasevska. Rautavaara’s 1999 concerto, subtitled Gift of Dreams, shimmers in an array of musical colors, and Martinů’s 1948 third, which has a foot in both Romantic and modern styles, is eclectic in the best sense.

Broadway Musical Review—“Camelot” Revival

Camelot

Music by Frederick Loewe; lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner

Book by Aaron Sorkin, based on Lerner’s original book

Directed by Bartlett Sher

Opened April 13, 2023

Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, NYC

lct.org

Phillipa Soo in Camelot (photo: Joan Marcus)

Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot has not been seen on Broadway in 30 years—I saw Robert Longbottom’s modestly silly staging at the 2012 Glimmerglass Festival, with a wondrous trio of leads: David Pittsinger’s King Arthur, Andriana Chuchman’s Guenevere and Nathan Gunn’s Lancelot—and Bartlett Sher’s uneven new staging, hampered by Aaron Sorkin’s new book, likely won’t help its cause. 

Despite being set in England during the Middle Ages when there was an obvious line of demarcation between exalted royals and plebian subjects, Camelot is not all earnest seriousness and masculine swordplay. Monty Python and the Holy Grail and its musical offspring Spamalot have made us think the original is eternally dated. Yet Lerner’s book and lyrics nicely balance drama, romance and humor, while Loewe’s songs are—as always—impossibly tuneful. But Sher and Sorkin, who have gone to great lengths to “improve” the show, only intermittently succeed. 

Sorkin has squeezed much of the juice out of a story that was simply, for all intents and purposes, a romantic triangle among Arthur, his queen Guenevere and the French Knight of the Round Table, Lancelot. Sorkin has also eliminated the magic, literally: old wise man Merlin is no longer a wizard, Morgan le Fay—the witch-like aunt of Mordred, Arthur’s illegitimate son—is now a scientist as well as Mordred’s mother, and Guenevere is a brash, enlightened heroine.  

Such “improvements” are often no worse than what’s in Lerner’s original book, but they’re not much better either. And Sorkin’s dialogue—which has the rat-a-tat rhythms of his TV and theater scripts—is too sitcomish, too crudely clever. In fact, swaths of this Camelot sound as if they were created by an Aaron Sorkin ChatBot.

Director Sher seems somewhat hamstrung by Sorkin’s book; interactions and conversations play out at the exaggerated pace of The West Wing or The Newsroom, which is at further odds with these characters. At least the sweep of Camelot’s setting remains, thanks to Michael Yeargan’s apt set design, Jennifer Moeller’s vibrant costumes, Lap Chi Chu’s expressive lighting and Marc Salzberg and Beth Lake’s imaginative sound design. 

Andrew Dunlap is a personable if somewhat callow Arthur and Philippa Soo is a beguiling and lovely-sounding Guenevere. As Lancelot—subbing for Tony-nominated Jordan Donica at the performance I saw—Christian Mark Gibbs has a muscular voice that’s appropriately reined in on the evergreen “If Ever I Would Leave You.” 

Too bad the show’s immortal title tune is made almost perfunctory by Sorkin and Sher at the beginning, as Guinevere rolls her eyes and complains while Arthur describes his kingdom’s metaphorical glories. But even they can’t “improve” it when it returns, battered but defiant, at the end.

Film Festival Roundup—2023 Tribeca Festival

2023 Tribeca Festival

Through June 18, 2023

Various locations in Manhattan

Tribecafilm.com/festival

Maggie Moore(s)

As usual, this year’s Tribeca Festival—which, although it has dropped “Film” from its title, remains movie-centric—is an interesting mix of new fiction features and documentaries. Among the former, Maggie Moore(s) (opening June 16)—which follows a small-town New Mexico sheriff (Jon Hamm) flummoxed by the murders of two women with the same name within days of each other—is hampered by director John Slattery’s insistence on making this black comedy something that the Coen brothers might have rejected: absurdist atmosphere punctuated by cartoonish violence. Hamm is charming, as always, and his scenes with Tina Fey as a nosy neighbor who enters his life are the best in an alternately enjoyable and enervating movie.

The Future

Israeli writer-director Noam Kaplan’s The Future, in which Yaffa, an Arab student from the West Bank who has murdered Israel’s minister of space and tourism, is interrogated by Nurit, a scientist and profiler whose new program, The Future Project, failed to predict this act of terrorism, asks probing questions about free will, motherhood and civilization’s advances (the first Israeli moon landing is happening while the interrogation plays out). In the leads, Samar Qupty (Yaffa) and Reymond Amsalem (Nurit) give powerful portrayals of these antagonistic but strong-willed women.

The Last Night of Amore

In The Last Night of Amore, that terrific actor Pierfrancesco Favino plays a cop who, after 35 years without firing his gun, is planning to retire. Of course, fate has other plans, and he spends his final hours on the force trying to clean up a fatal mess that he’s had a hand in creating (and yes, he does fire his gun). Andrea Di Stefano directs with assured elegance, although the too-twisty script leads him and his protagonist into contrived alleys. Still, it’s a taut thriller about how underpaid policemen are and how that might make them take a questionable or unethical side job. 

The Listener

Best known for playing the dutiful boxer’s wife in Creed and its sequels, Tessa Thompson gets a chance to stretch dramatically in The Listener, Steve Buscemi’s film about a suicide helpline volunteer that has Thompson onscreen for its entirety. Although it gets repetitious and obvious at times—each call she receives brings with it a new melodramatic hook—Thompson is magnetic, often quietly so as she alternates between talking and listening: in her silent moments, she is mesmerizing. Some of the voices may sound familiar: callers are voiced by the likes of Logan Marshall-Green, Margaret Cho and Rebecca Hall.

Marinette

Marinette Pichon, France’s first female soccer star, had to go to the U.S. and play for the short-lived Philadelphia Charge team in 2002 and 2003 to make money and get respect doing what she most loved, according to Virginie Verrier’s energetic, conventional but at times rousing and enraging biopic, Marinette. Pichon was gay at a time when she couldn’t safely come out, and her relationships with women culminate with Ingrid Moatti, the paraplegic basketball player whom she would marry and have a child after her retirement. Garance Marillier’s intensely physical and thoroughly honest performance carries the film, both on and off the field.

Against All Enemies

I caught a half-dozen documentaries at the festival, starting with the necessary but scary Against All Enemies, Charlie Sadoff’s incriminating study of how and why so many veterans of the U.S. armed forces gravitate toward militias and other white supremacist groups, which are looking ahead (or maybe looking forward) to what many of them consider the next civil war. Sadoff talks with military vets, generals and civilians, along with experts on the subjects (especially Kathleen Belew, who has written about the white power and paramilitary movements), who illuminate a subject that will probably be around indefinitely, unfortunately. But why Sadoff ends his film with the fact-free rantings of the unhinged Eric “General E” Braden is a real head-scratcher.

Chasing Chasing Amy

Chasing Chasing Amy is a labor of love for director Sav Rodgers who, as a queer 12-year-old, watched Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy over and over again—years later, Rodgers questions not only the film’s premise (a lesbian is “won over” by the perfect straight guy) but also his own relationship to it and how he feels now compared to when he was a confused youngster. Rodgers actually gets Smith himself to discuss his film’s legacy, and they become friends; Guinevere Turner, who co-wrote and starred in the breakthrough lesbian film Go Fish back when Smith made Amy, refreshingly gives her witty take on it as well, and Amy star Joey Lauren Adams opens up more candidly than maybe even she would have thought. Chasing Chasing Amy is, when all is said and done, a more important personal film than Smith’s sincere but gravely flawed original.

It's Basic

Guaranteed Basic Income, or GBI, which has been touted by Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon and, more recently, presidential candidate Andrew Yang, has yet to be part of the mainstream political and economic discourse. But, as director Marc Levin shows in his succinct documentary, It’s Basic, things are slowly changing. Levin follows several mayors who have begun a pilot program in their local municipalities as well as people who have received the monthly payments—these are not the “lazy” poor but people who are making the best of their financial boost. Just maybe, It’s Basic suggests, GBI’s time has come.

Richland

In Richland, director Irene Lusztig visits the eponymous town in Washington State that sprang up near the Hanford nuclear site for workers in WWII’s Manhattan Project who made weapons-grade plutonium to live with their families—and discovers an essential contradiction: pride in the nuclear accomplishments of 80 years ago and a sense that a reckoning with the past is overdue, i.e., the town was built on Native land. Lusztig chronicles those who are unapologetic about the town’s history (the high school football team still wears uniforms emblazoned with a mushroom cloud) and those who want to look to the future (environmental workers resoil areas that used to be contaminated by nuclear material). Most movingly, a Japanese woman whose grandparents were killed by the atom bomb in 1945 hangs a symbolic recreation of that weapon of mass destruction (see above photo) that perfectly encapsulates the subject’s complexities.

Rock Hudson—All That Heaven Allowed 

Hollywood’s ultimate masculine heartthrob, Rock Hudson broke both women’s and men’s hearts in a career that encompassed movies in the 50s and 60s and TV series in the ’70s and ’80s—then was the first celebrity to die during the early years of AIDS, in 1985. Stephen Kijak’s illustrative documentary Rock Hudson—All That Heaven Allowed (premieres June 28 on MAX) recounts how the Hollywood machine ensured that gay actors remained in the closet—Hudson even had a marriage of convenience to his agent’s assistant for a few years—and also delves unblinkingly into the actor’s same-sex relationships, a secret he kept from fans until he was on his death bed. In the process, Kijak attacks the hypocrisy of the entertainment industry that still exists, in some form, today.

Ron Delsener Presents

Anyone who went to rock concerts in the New York City area since the late ’60s has probably noticed “Ron Delsener Presents” on the ticket—and this entertaining documentary, also titled Ron Delsener Presents and directed by Sting’s son, Jake Sumner, follows Delsener’s storied career as a concert promoter, from his early days working on the Beatles’ 1964 appearance in Forest Hills, through concerts at the Fillmore and the Palladium through today, where, at 85, he’s still going strong, sometimes attending several shows a night and keeping abreast everything he can. Sumner not only speaks with Delsener himself, his wife, and his children—and shows copious archival footage from many iconic concerts—but also colleagues from the business and an array of stars who touchingly remember his guiding hand, from Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel to Patti Smith and Paul Simon.

June '23 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Squaring the Circle 

(Raindog Films)

Probably the seminal rock music graphic design team, Hipgnosis—founded by Storm Thorgerson and Audrey Powell in the late ‘60s—designed some of the most famous album covers of all-time, like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here; Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy and Presence; and Wings’ Venus and Mars and Band on the Run. Director Anton Corbijn’s loving reminiscence of the team features a poignant new interview with Powell and an archival one with Thorgerson, who died in 2013. Also along for the ride—which includes wondrous vintage video footage and photographs of their many collaborations, the most memorable of which may be the infamous Pink Floyd Animals cover shoot—are the surviving Floyd members (David Gilmour, Nick Mason, Roger Waters), Led Zep’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and Paul McCartney, with many others, all paying homage to the team’s unique visual brilliance. 

Now playing at Film Forum in Manhattan; filmforum.org

Anonymous Sister 

(Long Shot Factory)

In this intensely personal, harrowing documentary, director Jamie Boyle recounts the hell her family went through when her sister (a talented figure skater whose pain from performing made her get hooked on painkillers) and her mother (whose arthritis also caused overprescribing of pain meds) became hooked on OxyContin, the drug that the loathsome Sackler family parlayed into billions of dollars in profits for them and an untold number of Americans’ deaths in the past three decades. Balancing plentiful home-movie footage the family took as she and her sister grew up with her difficult confessional interviews with sister, mom and dad (happily, all survived and are thriving), Boyle’s often moving and enraging chronicle shows how this epidemic surfaced among so many unsuspecting families and destroyed so many lives.

Blue Jean 

(Magnolia Pictures) 

It’s 1988, Margaret Thatcher’s awful conservatism is tightening its stranglehold over England, and closeted young Jean is teaching Phys Ed at a Newcastle school, frightfully (and rightfully) afraid of being outed. When a new student visits the local gay bar she herself frequents, Jean’s not-so-orderly world becomes even more disordered. Director-writer Georgia Oakley’s exquisitely restrained drama, as much political as it is personal, is—despite being set 35 years ago—equally relevant today here, unfortunately. And it’s all centered by Rosy McEwen’s formidable but quiet  performance as Jean. 

Mending the Line 

(Blue Fox Entertainment) 

How vets deal with returning home from war when friends don’t is compellingly if conventionally dramatized by director Joshua Caldwell and writer Stephen Camelio, who create sympathetic portraits of two veterans—one who served in Vietnam and the other in Afghanistan—and the fiancée of a soldier who was KIA. The fly-fishing metaphor, while initially effective, turns stilted, and the ending—while necessarily bittersweet—doesn’t really stick the landing. Still, the terrific acting by the great Brian Cox (Vietnam vet), Sinqua Walls (Afghanistan vet) and Perry Mattfeld (the widowed fiancée) provide more than enough reason to watch. 

Mercy 

(Paramount Global)

Luckily for the staff of a local hospital, when Irish gangsters take everyone hostage trying to get the patriarch’s wounded son out of there (it’s a long story), one of the doctors, Michelle, happens to be an Afghan war vet who can mow down the intruders with impunity. Director Tony Dean Smith and writer Alex Wright know their premise is ridiculous, but they run with it, their 85-minute movie is just an excuse to cheer on the resourceful Michelle (played by the physically impressive Canadian actress Leah Gibson) as she outsmarts the bad guys, barely pausing even when they use her teenage son as bait.  

Rise 

(Blue Fox Entertainment) 

In Cédric Klapisch’s delicately told melodrama, real-life dancer Marion Barbeau plays ballerina Elise, whose serious injury while performing—as well as discovering that her boyfriend is cheating on her with a fellow dancer—throws her for a loop and makes her question her own relationships and goals, until she falls in with a group performing contemporary dance and discovers that new personal and professional paths are possible. As usual, Klapisch effortlessly harnesses several story strands and multiple characters, but Rise—beautifully shot by Alexis Kavyrchine, especially the varied dance sequences both on- and offstage—might seem superfluous if not for the presence of Barbeau, a wonderfully lithe dancer who also proves herself a natural and engaging actress.

Scarlet 

(Kino Lorber) 

As his followup to Martin Eden, the engrossing and richly nuanced adaptation of a Jack London story, Italian director Pietro Marcello tackles a 1923 Russian novella and conjures an often luminous, fantastical atmosphere in its chronicle of Juliette, a young French woman who has been alerted that she’ll fall for an aviator who falls from the sky—which promptly happens. Not nearly as resonant as Martin Eden, Scarlet is shot through with Marcello’s painterly and idiosyncratic eye, abetted by Marco Graziaplena’s sumptuous cinematography (shot in Academy ratio) and the winning presence of Juliette Jouan, whose natural unaffectedness as her namesake transforms this into a beguiling fable. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

A Good Person 

(Warner Bros) 

Zach Braff wrote and directed this earnest, soggy melodrama about repentance, forgiveness and starting over about a young woman whose stupid act while driving causes the death of her future brother- and sister-in-laws and who afterward crosses paths with the dead woman’s father and her orphaned daughter. It’s so cloying that if Braff’s name wasn’t attached, it probably wouldn’t have gotten made; it’s an OK 90-minute tearjerker padded to an unconscionable 128 minutes. Braff even wastes his excellent leads, Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman. The film looks fine on Blu.

Renfield 

(Universal)

Wherein Renfield (Nicolas Hoult), the ever-faithful companion of Count Dracula (Nicolas Cage) for the past few centuries, decides he needs to get out of a relationship that’s stifled him and made him codependent: Chris McKay’s wild ride blends vampires, rom-com, and ludicrous bloodletting into a fast-paced 90 minutes that doesn’t get the chance to wear out its welcome. Acted with wink-wink knowingness by Hoult and Cage, both performers unafraid to go too far, the flick also has fun appearances by Awkwafina, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Ben Schwartz, along with some of the reddest fake gore I’ve seen in awhile, all tongue-in-cheek, of course. It all looks smashing in hi-def; extras comprise deleted/extended scenes as well as making-of featurettes. 

CD Release of the Week

Anne Akiko Meyers—Mysterium 

(Avie Records)

Although this EP contains only four works that clock in at a total of 19 minutes, it plays both to Anne Akiko Meyers’ considerable strengths as a virtuoso violinist and to the lilting, gorgeous sounds produced by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The three arrangements of Bach works, beginning with Jesu, Joy of Man’s Suffering, are extraordinarily moving to hear when the chorale and Meyers combine forces, but it’s the world-premiere arrangement of Morten Lauridsen’s O Magnum Mysterium—an austere work about Christ’s birth that was premiered by the chorale in 1994—in which Meyers’ miraculous playing and the chorale’s sensational singing coalesce beautifully. It’s all sensitively led by the chorale’s artistic director Grant Gershon.  

Film Series Roundup: Open Roads—New Italian Cinema 2023

Open Roads—New Italian Cinema 2023

Through June 8, 2023

Film at Lincoln Center

165 West 65 Street, New York, NY

filmlinc.org

This year’s edition of Open Roads, Film at Lincoln Center’s annual survey of the latest films from Italy, includes the new feature from one of our greatest living directors, Gianni Amelio, along with a drama that imagines the genesis of the best-known play by one of the greatest 20th-century playwrights.

The Hummingbird

Francesca Archibugi’s adaptation of Sandro Veronesi’s prizewinning eponymous 2019 novel follows the decades-long relationships, triumphs and tragedies of several generations of a large family, either sentimental or melodramatic by turns. Archibugi films it all with her usual sophistication, and her superior soap opera owes its jumbled-chronology, everything-is-connected structure to the films of Julio Medem. Best of all is the acting: Nanni Moretti, Laura Morante, Kasia Smutniak, Sergio Albelli and, in the leads (and, at the end, pretty wretched old-age makeup), Pierfrancesco Favino and Bérénice Bejo, both adept at being attractive and exquisite no matter what’s happening. 

Lord of the Ants

Along with Marco Bellocchio, Gianni Amelio is a true living master of Italian cinema, with such memorable films as 1982’s A Blow to the Heart, 1989’s Open Doors and 1992’s Stolen Children. His latest, intelligently told, is the true story of Aldo Braibanti, a homosexual poet and author who ran afoul of Italy’s repressive laws in the 1960s, put on trial and jailed for “grooming” younger men. Although at times it’s simply a conventional courtroom drama, there’s a quiet urgency to Amelio’s filmmaking as well as Luigi Lo Cascio’s sensitive turn as Braibanti.  

Dry

In Paolo Virzì’s apocalyptic drama set in Rome, a variety of characters, from billionaires to scientists, unemployed actors, Uber drivers, hospital workers and prisoners, must deal with a severe water shortage—no rain for three years!—government rationing of available water and a mystery virus that might be from the roaches infesting the city. Shuttling among these people (and letting some come together at the end to wrap up loose ends), Virzì has made what amounts to an Italian Crash but without the surfeit of bludgeoning, ham-fisted pronouncements. Although it loses dramatic momentum, Dry is saved by a uniformly excellent cast that’s led by Sara Serraiocco as a heavily pregnant nurse whose absent father has inadvertently left jail and Claudia Pandolfi as a famous actor’s wife who’s reduced to working as a cashier to make ends meet.

Chiara

The life of Saint Claire, first woman follower of St. Francis of Assisi, is illuminated in Susanna Nicchiarelli’s steely period drama, which depicts the rough-hewn Middle Ages as no film has since Bertrand Tavernier’s 1987 Beatrice. Anchored by a beautifully unadorned performance by Margherita Mazzucco as the eponymous heroine who turned her back on her family to enter the convent and found the Order of Poor Ladies in homage to Francis (a fine Andrea Carpenzano), Nicchiarelli’s transfixing film intersperses musical numbers that add unexpected nuance and flavor to the story of this humble young woman’s eventful life.

Like Turtles

When her beloved husband Daniele decides to move out, humiliated mom Lisa decides to move in—to the bureau that’s now empty after he took all his clothes. Monica Dugo wrote, directed and stars in this often perceptive but equally one-note study about how a “perfect” life can crumble in an instant despite the support and love of our heroine’s teenage daughter, young son and judgmental mother. Actress Dugo is understatedly poignant as Lisa, but director Dugo seems to sense that there’s not much here: the movie lasts a bare 80 minutes without making a big impression, despite Dugo’s and her talented costars’ efforts.

Princess

A startlingly realistic look at marginal people barely noticed in Italy—Ethiopian sex workers barely scraping by, dealing with awful potential customers and the possibility of police chasing them (on horses yet)—director Roberto De Paolis’ drama follows a proud young woman, Princess, who finds kinship, and maybe more, with a charming misanthrope she meets while he’s picking mushrooms in the woods where she plies her trade. Skirting melodrama, De Paolis’ film is buoyed by its healthy sense of humor and the spellbinding discovery, Glory Kevin, who makes Princess’ plight compelling and humane.

Strangeness

How did Luigi Pirandello come to write his seminal play, Six Characters in Search of an Author? According to Roberto Andò’s faintly silly movie, it’s when Pirandello returned to his hometown in Sicily while mired in writer’s block, and became friends with offbeat members of a local theater troupe. While entertainingly crammed with allusions to Pirandello’s play and characters, Strangeness seems kind of a lesser Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s infinitely more lively riff on Hamlet. Toni Servillo carries himself brilliantly as Pirandello, but his talent would have been better used in a proper biopic. The final segment of the Taviani brothers’ best film, 1984’s Kaos, is a far more memorable paean to Pirandello’s greatness.