April '26 Digital Week III

In-Theater Release of the Week 

The Seduction of Mimi 

(Kino Lorber)

Italian director Lina Wertmuller—who died in 2021 at age 93—made frantic and garish but intelligent and humane movies for nearly five decades, like this raucous but perceptively comic portrait of Mimi, a loutish chauvinist who dumps his wife for a new woman whom he impregnates, all while trying to finesse being a Communist while trying to hold onto a job in a fraught political climate. Wertmuller always kicks her characters in the rear as she simultaneously laughs with and at them; if there’s a certain rawness to her filmmaking—which would get progressively more confident, culminating in her all-time masterpiece, 1976’s Seven Beauties—she always is great with her actors, and Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, in their first of their three Wertmuller pictures as costars, respond with indelible performances.

Streaming Release of the Week

Late Shift 

(Music Box)

In Swiss writer-director Petra Volpe’s taut and often urgent drama, harried nurse Floria works a typical hospital night shift, running from patient to patient—some grateful, others not—desperately trying to get other colleagues’ help, even confronting a doctor about to leave (and does), all while doing whatever she can, which includes, at one point, making a mistake in medication. In her screed against woefully understaffed hospitals, Volpe often lays it on too thick, but as her camera records the interactions of Floria and others, it becomes quite clear that Leonie Benesch gives an effortless but intense portrayal that even triumphs over a slightly sentimental final shot that damages but doesn’t destroy all that has gone before.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Girls 

(Cult Epics)

French director Just Jaeckin (1940-2022), known for softcore like the original Emmanuelle (1974) and The Story of O (1975), made this 1980 comedy-drama that’s also sex-centered but more character-centered as it chronicles four teen girls’ dealings with boys as well as older men while navigating themselves, their friendships and family life. Although it’s a bit choppy, and the score by Eric Stewart of the band 10cc (whose “I’m Not in Love” makes an egregious appearance) is often misapplied, the energy and charm of its acting quartet—Anne Parillaud (who later became a star in La Femme Nikita), Zoé Chauveau, Charlotte Walior and Isabelle Mejias—make this an enjoyable romp. The UHD transfer has a nicely grainy look; extras include a commentary by Jeremy Richey and (on the accompanying Blu-ray) 2025 interview with Mejias, 2022 interview with Jaeckin and 1982 interview with Jaeckin, Parillaud, Cahuveau and Walior.

Sleepers 

(Warner Bros)

The initial controversy over Barry Levinson’s 1996 movie as well as the Lorenzo Carcaterra book it was based on—is this story about several men whose deadly prank as young friends informs the rest of their lives true or not?—might have faded but watching the film makes one aware of how manipulative the entire thing is. Still, your mileage may vary on whether that makes the storyline itself any less compelling, especially since it’s been expertly done by writer-director Levinson and his accomplished cast, from the big star names (DeNiro, Hoffman, Pitt, Bacon, Patric) to the mainly unknown youngsters. The film looks great in UHD; extras are two new featurettes with Levinson interviews.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

La Juive 

(Naxos)

This grand opera by French composer Fromental Halévy (1799-1862), which dramatizes a then-impossible love between a Jewish woman and a Christian man, was once hugely popular but has since faded from the repertory with only sporadic revivals; this 2024 staging in Frankfurt, Germany, was directed by Tatjana Gürbaca, who does well by the work’s large scale and outsized emotions. An excellent cast is led by Ambur Braid, John Osborne, Gerard Schneider and Monika Buczkowska in four demanding roles for big voices, and the orchestra and chorus are superbly led by conductor Henrik Nánási. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week

Blackbirds 

(Alpha Classics)

This disc would be invaluable if it only included Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz’ Cello Concerto No. 2—a remarkable work that should be in the regular repertoire alongside Dvořák and Elgar—which soloist Nicolas Altstaedt plays brilliantly, with Maxim Emelyanychev sensitively conducting the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. But Alstaedt had the inspired idea to include other modern works from the 1960s (the Bacewicz piece was composed in 1963, just six years before the composer’s untimely death a few weeks before she turned 60) to round out the disc, small-scale works illuminating the era’s cello sounds. Morton Feldman’s Durations II and Benjamin Britten’s Cello Sonata—both with Emelyanychev on piano—are expansive and enveloping, as is Sándor Veress’ Sonata for Solo Violincello, another piece that needs wider exposure. And the coup de grace is a version of the Beatles’ “Blackbird” for cello, lute and vocal (the latter two by Thomas Dunford) that gives Alstaedt’s album the perfect title.

Broadway Play Review—“Dog Day Afternoon”

Dog Day Afternoon

Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Directed by Rupert Goold

Performances through June 28, 2026

August Wilson Theatre, 245 West 52nd Street, New York, NY

dogdayafternoon.com

John Ortiz (center) in Dog Day Afternoon (photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman)

There are several problems with the stage adaptation of Dog Day Afternoon, the classic 1975 film directed by Sidney Lumet with Al Pacino as bungling bank robber Sonny centering a richly and blackly comic portrait of New York in 1972. The biggest flaw is that the flavorful New York atmosphere of which Lumet was a master is almost completely missing. 

Of course, that’s because the stage cannot replicate what Lumet could show: a Brooklyn neighborhood where dozens of police and reporters—including news helicopters—and hundreds of locals showed up. In the film, the crowd is another character, hooting and hollering, at first cheering on Sonny—who exhorts them to yell “Attica!” to mock the police (mere months after prisoners there were killed during rioting)—before turning on him as the day drags on and it comes out that he needs money for his partner Leon’s gender-reassignment surgery. The “Attica” moment becomes the big first-act finale, with the audience taking over as the Brooklyn crowd while Sonny yells out those three syllables, which isn’t a very compelling replacement.

Otherwise, the play is well-staged by Rupert Goold on David Korins’ terrific set of the bank’s interior and exterior, which swings adroitly back and forth depending on wherever we are in the scene. But aside from sound effects that blast “New York” to the audience, the authenticity of early ’70s Brooklyn is absent. Stephen Adly Guirgis has written plays that drip with the exciting if sordid atmosphere of New York City that’s not usually captured elsewhere, like his Pulitzer Prize-winning Between Riverside and Crazy, so he might have seemed a logical choice for Dog Day. 

His dialogue has the usual rat-a-tat of the city; even though large chunks come from Frank Pierson’s Oscar-winning screenplay, lots of other dialogue is new to the show. Guirgis even invents an amusing scene of a TV reporter talking to a gay-rights advocate after the disclosure of Sonny’s and Leon’s relationship, but this seems shoehorned in. But perhaps a few more such moments would have better taken the pulse of snarky local press coverage and local people’s reactions.

Guirgis too often coasts, though, as cheap humor prevails over incisive dialogue. Even outing Sonny to the others in the bank is played for laughs, which seems rather ironic in this context. Guirgis even changes the name of the cop in charge from Moretti (played so memorably by Charles Durning in the movie) to Fucco, which occasions repetitive mispronunciations of his name as Fucko. It’s to John Ortiz’s credit that, as Fucco, he gives the most sympathetic and well-rounded portrayal in the show. 

Lumet also had Al Pacino, John Cazale and Chris Sarandon to further make this tragicomic tale riveting and unforgettable. Onstage, Jon Bernthal tries so hard not to act like Pacino that he ends up doing it anyway as Sonny; as his partner in crime Sal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach is as effectively low-key as Cazale was, but in his own sardonic way. As head teller Colleen, Jessica Hecht is not as irritatingly mannered as she usually is, but I would have liked to have seen what Andrea Syglowski—a trenchant actress who plays one of the tellers—could have done with that part. Esteban Andres Cruz doesn’t have a chance to make Leon as believable in his brief appearance as Sarandon did in the film, since—again—Guirgis plays Leon’s stay at Bellevue for easy yucks. And the phone call between Leon and Sonny (one of the highlights of the film) doesn’t have the same heartbreaking weight.

It might seem unfair to compare the play to the film, but this production keeps inviting it, mostly to its detriment. The stage version even uses a snippet of Elton John’s “Amoreena,” a rollicking deep cut from Tumbleweed Connection that’s played over the film’s opening credits, to begin act two. My most pressing thought after seeing this was, now that three 1975 best picture Oscar nominees have had stage adaptations (also One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Jaws, by way of The Shark Is Broken), when will we get to see Nashville and Barry Lyndon onstage?

Book Reviews—Wings, Scorsese, Miyazaki, Hirschfeld's Sondheim

Wings—The Story of a Band on the Run 

(Liveright)

As part of Paul McCartney’s ongoing Wings reclamation project—which began with the music compilation and documentary Wingspan back in 2002 and continues this year with the release of the Amazon Prime documentary Man on the Run—this first-person account chronicles Paul’s entire ’70s trajectory, from leaving the Beatles and releasing two initially derided but now beloved albums, McCartney and Ram, before he and Linda embarked on putting together a new band with—aside from ever-loyal Denny Laine—a revolving cast of drummers and lead guitarists. 

Editor Ted Widmer judiciously compiled new and archival interviews with Paul, Linda, Denny, other band members, the McCartneys’ children, Paul’s brother Mike, and others like Dustin Hoffman—who relates the famous anecdote of Paul whipping out an acoustic guitar and conjuring up “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” right in front of the actor—to present a thorough decade-long history of Wings. After Paul’s 1979 Japanese drug bust came the unceremonious dissolution of one of the biggest hitmaking groups of the decade and led to Paul’s resurgence as a formidable solo artist and as a keeper of the Beatles’—and, of course, Wings’—flame. 

Martin Scorsese—The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work 

(White Lion)

Now six decades into a career that still continues to surprise, director Martin Scorsese has been tagged with the label as a maker of mainly gangster pictures, since GoodFellas looms so large in his oeuvre. But, as Ian Nathan’s closely argued appreciation of his more than two dozen films (so far—he’s currently making What Happens at Night, once again starring his favorite late-career actor, Leonardo DiCaprio) adroitly demonstrates, there’s much more to Scorsese than that. 

After all, he’s adapted novels by Edith Wharton (The Age of Innocence), Nikos Kazantzakis (The Last Temptation of Christ) and Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island), along with creating music documentaries about the Band, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and George Harrison. Then there’s that startling character study, the underappreciated The King of Comedy, which may well be his most enduring film. OK sure, for every Mean Streets, Taxi Driver or Raging Bull, there are busts like New York New York, Cape Fear or Bringing Out the Dead, but Nathan skillfully chronicles Scorsese’s wide-ranging oeuvre as unique in American movies, with plentiful color images from the films underscoring his points. 

The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki 

(Frances Lincoln) 

Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki has made a dozen features over 45 years, and his elegantly artful onscreen stories are simultaneous mythic and humane, starting with his feature debut, 1979’s The Castle of Cagliostro, and continuing with his international breakthrough, 1988’s Princess Mononoke, all the way up to his—supposedly—final feature, 2023’s The Boy and the Heron. This beautifully designed volume, which includes a plethora of color film stills alongside Miyazaki’s own sketches for projects made and unmade, thematically groups the auteur’s subjects by section. 

Nicolas Rapold’s text nicely weaves the many threads of Miyazaki’s influences and inspirations (as the subtitle makes clear) and the sheer beauty of the filmmaker’s fantastical imagery—often centering on anthropomorphic creatures who befriend intelligent but lonely young children—is what is most memorable in a splendid career that’s filled with highlights like the wrenchingly autobiographical The Wind Rises (2013).

Hirschfeld’s Sondheim 

(Abrams Comic Arts)

Last fall, Strokes of Genius, a superb exhibition of caricatures by the great Al Hirschfeld, was on display last September at the Oak Room in Manhattan’s fabled Algonquin Hotel. The small exhibit was populated by classic Hirschfeld sketches of entertainment legends from Louis Armstrong to Aerosmith. Also included were several of his drawings that were the highlights of so many Sunday New York Times’ Arts and Leisure sections, including several works illustrating shows by Stephen Sondheim.

This slim but elegant volume (the first of what is purported to be many “poster books” of Hirschfeld drawings) collects more than 50 sketches of Sondheim’s Broadway triumphs (and misfires), including those that were part of the exhibit: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sunday in the Park With George, Passion, and Putting It Together. More than two dozen images that take up entire pages can be removed from the book as ready-made frameable prints. David Leopold, creative director of the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, has written a nicely focused commentary on the drawings and shows; the book’s introduction is by none other than Sondheim veteran Bernadette Peters and the foreword is by theater reviewer Ben Brantley.

A new exhibition, Hirschfeld's Icons, which features his indelible caricatures of superstars from Liza Minnelli to the Beatles, will be on view at the Algonquin Hotel April 28 to May 8.

April '26 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Hamlet 

(Vertical Releasing) 

Updating Shakespeare has become such a mania that it’s rare to find an adaptation that takes the text at face value—unfortunately, director Aneil Karia and writer Michael Lesslie’s modern take, set among London’s South Asian upper-crust, is not that adaptation. If English colonial history of subjugation over South Asia is a subtext, it has little to say about it, while eye-rollingly literal tropes like our hero (a game Riz Ahmed) speeding on a highway in his sports car while contemplating the suicidal “To be or not to be” are misguided. Morfydd Clark makes a perfectly pitiable Ophelia, but her sincere performance might have had greater resonance in a better film. 

Fiume o morte! 

(Icarus Films)

In this endlessly fascinating history lesson, Igor Bezinović’s documentary about Italian fascist writer Gabriele D’Annunzio’s year-long occupation (1919 to 1920) of what is now the Croatian city of Rijeka. Actually, the irony is that most of those who live there today barely know anything about D’Annunzio and what ideas and actions wrought. So Bezinović tells the whole cautionary tale through their eyes—locals reenact the takeover and its aftermath with a combination of bemusement and good humor, which is what Bezinović has said he was looking to do, present history in an entertaining but not dumbed-down way.

Steal This Story, Please! 

(Elsewhere Films)

Journalist Amy Goodman has been fighting the good fight for decades as founder and main face of Democracy Now, one of the few self-sustaining news organizations grappling with tough issues here and abroad. Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s rage-inducing documentary portrait shows that Goodman’s doggedness and fairness are being increasingly marginalized by a hostile media environment. Several well-chosen clips include one that shows Goodman’s legendary ability to remain independent and hold leaders’ feet to the fire: then-President Clinton is so upset by her tough questions that he stays on the phone talking to her but his team blames her for ambushing him. Of course, the Trump administration’s assault on all norms sweeps away all who came before, but Goodman will continue to fight.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Macbeth 

(Dynamic)

Giuseppe Verdi’s first adaptation of a Shakespeare play came in the middle of his career, and although it’s a tautly told operatic transposition, it’s nowhere near the later masterpieces Otello and Falstaff. Pierre Audi’s absorbing production, from Parma, Italy’s Verdi Festival in 2024, uses the 1865 French version that’s more spectacular and includes ballet music that are among the opera’s highlights. Ernesto Petti is a fine Macbeth but Lidia Fridman steals the show as Lady Macbeth—hers is the juicier role, of course, but Fridman is gripping every time she appears onstage. Roberto Abbado persuasively conducts the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini and Parma Teatro Regio Chorus; hi-def video and audio are well-done. 

DVD Release of the Week 

The Divine Sarah Bernhardt 

(Icarus Films)

The famous French dramatic actress Sarah Bernhardt was a larger-than-life character, and Guillaume Nicloux’s frisky biopic has an actress equal to the task: Sandrine Kiberlain, who hams it up mightily but—crucially—always in character, so her Sarah is not simply a blustering diva but a woman who loved the spotlight even when it came to her own offstage relationships (which were legion). There are many entertaining gossipy moments like her love affair with actor Lucien Guitry and the appearance of his son Sacha, who would later become a great theater and film director in own right. Nicloux also gets credit for well-chosen music of the era by the likes of Chopin, Franck, Ravel and Debussy, which appropriately underscore Kiberlain’s boisterous scenery-chewing.

April '26 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Forbidden Fruits 

(IFC)

In this bumpy but often stylish ride, a secret witch coven among employees at a flashy clothing store in a Dallas mall is filled with bitchy adrenaline that helps it overcome the more risible moments of ruthlessness. Director Meredith Alloway (who also cowrote the script with Lily Houghton based on the latter’s play) has gleeful fun showing the switching allegiances among these young women, and if the showdown on the mall escalator is too excessively bloody, there’s much fun to be had in the performances by Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain and—in the film’s standout portrayal—Lili Reinhart.

Kontinental ’25 

(1-2 Special)

Romanian auteur Radu Jude is definitely an acquired taste: his deadpan absurdism has taken on many obvious but necessary targets from hypocrisy to consumerism to the weight of history, and his new film, which centers on Orsolya, a bailiff who’s wracked with guilt after the homeless man she evicts from an empty building in Transylvania commits suicide, continues that trend. Jude’s dark sense of humor shines best on the insanity of modern life as his heroine (played with mordant humor by Eszter Tompa) interacts with an array of freakish but recognizable characters. 

Our Hero, Balthazar 

(Picturehouse)

For his directorial debut, Oscar Boyson (who cowrote the script with Ricky Camilleri) has chosen a difficult if timely subject: how young people deal with a world in which school shootings are not only normal but normalized by classroom drills and social media disinformation. When Balthazar thinks an online acquaintance is planning to shoot up a school, he travels from Manhattan to Texas to confront Solomon—they become friends, against the odds, but they also discover some uneasy truths about themselves. There are some good, perceptive moments but also a certain glibness in how Boyson treats such a serious subject. Still, the acting by Jaeden Martell as Balthazar and Asa Butterfield as Solomon helps smooths over the bumpier roads Boyson travels.

Streaming Release of the Week

The Mortuary Assistant 

(Shudder)

Another movie based on a video game, this at least has a properly creepy premise: mortuary assistant Rebecca finds herself involved in a weird supernatural world that finds her navigating traumatic situations that may or may not be dreams, while her boss Raymond seems to know more about it all than he should. Willa Holland’s committed performance as Rebecca makes the crazier aspects of Jeremiah Kipp’s film more palatable, if not more believable, while Paul Sparks has little to do as Raymond. 

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Greenland 2—Migration 

(Lionsgate)

As unnecessary sequels to lumbering disaster epics go, this one fills the bill decently by not getting overly bogged down in anything more than getting the lead family—stars Gerard Butler (dad), Morena Baccarin (mom) and Roman Griffin Davis (teenage son)—to somewhere safe in a little over 90 minutes. There are a few over-the-top set pieces, such as climbing rickety ladders over the dried-up English Channel that precipitates many deaths, but for the most part, director Ric Roman Waugh keeps his focus on the family with the result that there’s more heart here than in the previous spectacle. There’s a good Blu-ray transfer; extras include featurettes and interviews. 

New Year’s Concert with the Vienna Philharmonic 

(Sony Classical)

For its annual New Year’s concert, the Vienna Philharmonic plays its usual repertoire of classical baubles, polkas and other dance pieces that gets the Vienna audience in a festive mood; led by conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the memorable performance includes a work by Black American composer Florence Price—her Rainbow Waltz—for the first time, and it fits snugly among the Strauss family standards that are the orchestra’s bread and butter. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras include complete ballets performed with two of the evening’s pieces along with an entertaining featurette that combines art and music, The Magic of Art—250 Years of the Albertina Collection.

Off-Broadway Reviews—Two at the Public: “Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)” and “Public Charge”

Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)

Written by Anna Ziegler

Directed by Tyne Rafaeli

Performances through April 12, 2026

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Susannah Perkins in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School)
(photo: Joan Marcus)

It’s apparent from her subtitle that Anna Ziegler is not in the mood for nuance. Her Antigone (This Play I Read in High School) suggests an unconventional retelling of Sophocles’ classic, and Ziegler’s fiery, angry take drags it through the mud (and blood) in impressively tumultuous fashion.

Ziegler begins with Dicey, a woman who doubles as the Chorus and (maybe) the writer’s stand-in, someone who was deeply affected by Sophocles’ play in school. Now 40 and pregnant, Dicey meets a young woman named Antigone on a flight. Dicey ends up narrating Antigone’s story, set in a place both ancient and modern—early on, Antigone hooks up with a dive bar bartender named Achilles (no, not that one).

Pregnant by her first cousin and fiancé, Haemon, Antigone decides on an abortion to end her family’s incestuous lineage: her father, Oedipus, had four children with his own mother Jacosta. But her uncle Creon (Haemon’s father), who reluctantly became king of Thebes following Oedipus’ death, decrees that abortion is illegal; hence, his beloved niece could get the death penalty if she goes through with her decision.

Ziegler cleverly conflates Antigone’s and Dicey’s pregnancies, right up until the excessively—but necessarily—bloody climax. It’s simultaneously unnerving and bracing to watch Zeigler’s poetic polemic, aided by Tyne Rafaeli’s vigorous direction. Standing out in the cast are Celia Keenan-Bolger, truly heartrending as Dicey/Chorus; Haley Wong, a sadly fragile Ismene, Antigone’s sister; and Tony Shaloub, whose Creon mixes appealingness with appallingness. At the center in the treacherous title role, Susannah Perkins lets it all hang out, physically and emotionally, as she provides the human heart of this traumatic but touching tale.

Public Charge

Written by Julissa Reynoso and Michael J. Chepiga

Directed by Doug Hughes

Performances through April 12, 2026

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Zabryna Guevara in Public Charge (photo: Joan Marcus)

Julissa Reynoso’s story is an admirable and inspiring one. Born in the Dominican Republic, she came to America as a young girl, grew up in the Bronx, attended Harvard, Cambridge and Columbia, and became a Wall Street attorney. She was tapped to work in the Obama administration as one of Secretary of State Clinton’s diplomatic aides, taking part in the normalization of relations with Cuba as ambassador to Uruguay. However, on the basis of Public Charge, the play she wrote with Michael J. Chepiga, her fascinating life and unselfish public service does not fully translate to the stage.

The problem is not so much a matter of importance—which Reynoso’s life story has in spades—but rather its lack of urgency, even as it unfolds and covers plot threads of varying heft. Even a resourceful director like Doug Hughes can’t satisfyingly navigate threads that jump back and forth in time and move among a large cast of characters. It’s both too much and not enough, since there are a lot of intriguing ideas and complicated personalities that come and go—especially in the foreign service arena Reynoso moves around in—but it’s been sanitized to make it less messy than Reynoso’s time in government surely was. 

That’s too bad, for Reynoso’s is a story that needs telling. Here is the classic American tale of an immigrant making it good, living her American dream of working for the state department and trying to effect positive change. At least Reynoso and Chepiga never make her overly heroic; if anything, she’s made almost too naïve, seemingly always surprised at her own diplomatic career trajectory and the important roles she plays in so many difficult political episodes. That might have to do with Zabryna Guevara’s acting as Reynoso, who accentuates that naiveté too broadly, making our heroine wide-eyed more often than necessary.

There are interesting moments in Public Charge, especially when it shows that idealistic officials’ effecting positive change happens very slowly—if at all. But diplomacy is even more chaotic than we see onstage, as witness the insanity we hear about every day.