February '26 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

All the President’s Men 

(Warner Bros)

Alan Pakula’s classic 1976 paranoia thriller is scarier than his earlier The Parallax View because it’s true! Pakula’s low-key documentary style perfectly fits this look at Woodward and Bernstein doggedly pursuing the Watergate story no one cared about, eventually toppling Nixon’s White House. Of course, since the current administration engages in Watergate-style corruption on a regular basis, this story now seems sadly quaint. There’s superb acting by Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Martin Balsam and Hal Holbrook down to the tiniest parts. The UHD transfer retains the grain that underscores the film’s effectiveness as a shadowy mystery. Extras include several vintage featurettes but, strangely, Redford’s commentary from an earlier Blu-ray edition has not been included. Who knows why? 

Ben-Hur 

(Warner Bros)

William Wyler’s costume epic swept the 1959 Oscars with 11 wins, more than any other film before or since. Despite stretches of clunky exposition and dull characterizations, there are many breathtaking moments, like that still heart-stopping chariot race. Charlton Heston won Best Actor for his solid, workmanlike performance, but it’s the color photography, sets, costumes, editing and Miklos Rosza score that make it memorable. Warner has given this jewel another deluxe treatment, with a splendid UHD transfer (smartly spread out over two discs) that features a Heston commentary and music-only track; a Blu-ray disc of extras includes two new featurettes along with a vintage full-length Heston documentary, making-of and screen tests. 

In-Theater Release of the Week 

By Design 

(Music Box)

In Amanda Kramer’s tedious one-note movie, Juliette Lewis plays Camille, a middle-aged woman with a couple of good friends, Lisa (Samantha Mathis) and Irene (Robin Tunney), whose obsession with a chair at a consignment shop has unintended consequences. It’s as bizarre and enervating as it sounds, and Kramer’s single-minded direction heavy-handedly underlines (and undermines) her metaphor of objectification. Lewis is game but overwhelmed, and the supporting cast—the always reliable Mathis, Tunney, Betty Buckley, Udo Kier and Melanie Griffith as narrator—can’t help making this any less wooden.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Lubitsch Musicals 

(Criterion/Eclipse)

Early in director Ernest Lubitsch’s Hollywood career, he made charming pre-code musicals that still (mostly) hold up, as this compilation of four entries, made between 1929 and 1932, starring luminaries as Jeannette MacDonald (all four), Maurice Chevalier (three) and even Claudette Colbert (who brightens The Smiling Lieutenant with her presence) shows. The other titles—The Love Parade, Monte Carlo and One Hour With You—have that distinctive Lubitsch touch, even if there’s occasional creakiness, especially in the overlong Parade (which was Lubitsch’s first sound picture). The films look decent for being nearly a century old. Too bad Eclipse sets still have no contextualizing extras. 

Heaven 

(Lightyear)

The untimely recent death of Diane Keaton at age 75 started an evaluation of her legendary screen career, from her indelible Woody Allen collaborations to her powerful performances in Reds and Shoot the Moon. But Keaton was also an idiosyncratic filmmaker, and her first feature—this weirdly beguiling 1987 documentary—shows off her singular style in ways that are equally affecting and annoying. The 75-minute Heaven rounds up interviews with people (including members of Keaton’s family) who discuss their ideas of an afterlife alongside dozens of carefully chosen clips from movies including Metropolis and A Matter of Life and Death. The film looks fine on Blu, although the old film clips still look ancient.

Song Sung Blue 

(Universal/Focus)

The true story of Mike and Claire, aka Thunder and Lightning, a Neil Diamond tribute duo who went through personal tragedies, was the subject of Greg Kos’ tidy 85-minute documentary in 2008. This new biopic, directed with a sledgehammer by Craig Brewer, lumbers on for 133 minutes with Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as the couple—both are persuasive, but only Jackman transcends the shopworn material to be heartrendingly real. At least Brewer doesn’t condescend to these characters, but he piles on enough melodramatic sappiness and awful dialogue to sabotage his own film. Kudos also to Ella Anderson and King Princess, both excellent as Claire’s and Mike’s daughters from previous marriages. The film looks fine on Blu; extras are extended musical performances, featurettes and interviews.

Trifole 

(Cohen Media)

What starts as an absorbing and insightful character study of Igor (Umberto Orsini), a lone elderly man who lives in the Piedmont region of Italy and digs for truffles with Birba, his trusty little dog, and the slow maturation of his relationship with Dalia (Ydalie Turk), his visiting grown granddaughter, morphs into something completely different when Dalia takes Birba to find a fabled truffle—and what was a realistically melancholic drama becomes a bizarre fairy tale. Director/cowriter Daniele Fabbro and cowriter Turk—who makes a sublime Dalia—cannot satisfactorily control their tonal shift, but the first hour remains memorable. Brandon Lattman’s glistening photography shimmers on Blu; extras comprise a making-of featurette and interviews with Fabbro, Turk, Orsini and composer Alberto Mandarini.

CD Release of the Week

Ethel Smyth—Der Wald

(CPO)

I was predisposed against this one-act opera, written in 1902 by English composer Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), since her full-length opera The Wreckers was so middling when I saw it at Bard Summerscape in 2015. But maybe because Der Wald is more compact—barely over an hour—the intimacy of the drama and the Wagnerian and Brahmsian musical touches hit harder than in the other, more sprawling opera. Of course, this rendition helps too: a top cast of vocalists and the Wupperthal Symphony Orchestra and chorus under the baton of conductor Patrick Hahn provide a solid grounding for this terse, tense work. Fun fact: Der Wald was the first opera by a woman composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera, in 1903—it took more than a century for another woman to have an opera staged at the Met: L’amour de loin by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho.

August '25 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight 

(Sony Classics)

For her smart, often dazzling writing-directing debut, actress Embeth Davidtz has made a poignantly personal drama, based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir of the same name, about a white Zimbabwean family during the Rhodesian Bush War in 1980, from the point-of-view of 8-year-old Bobo who, along with her teenage sister Vanessa, lives with her parents Nicola and Tim on a sprawling family farm full of ghosts, real and imagined. Davidtz’ deeply felt drama of people clinging to a land that’s no longer theirs has a powerfully authentic sense of time, place and stifling atmosphere, and she gives a formidable portrayal of Nicola. But stealing the show is the astonishingly young Lexi Venter, who invests Bobo with a lively and precocious authenticity as our imperfect but captivating guide.

Night of the Juggler 

(Kino Lorber)

A true Manhattan time capsule, this vicious 1980 crime drama follows a former cop literally chasing the maniac who kidnaped his teenage daughter mistakenly thinking she’s a millionaire’s child through the streets is set in a seedy city about to burst from all the dirt, garbage and crime. Robert Butler took over the directorial duties after Sidney J. Furie left, and he pushes the boundaries of taste and logic with every insane chase sequence and bizarrely unrealistic bit of dialogue. The performances by James Brolin (as the dad), Dan Hedaya and Richard S. Castellano (as antagonistic cops) and especially a nutso Cliff Gorman (as the kidnaper) are dialed up to 11, which makes this simultaneously silly and must-see viewing.

Rebel With a Clause 

(Syntaxis Productions)

Only someone who loves language as much as Ellen Jovin would make—with her husband, Brandt Johnson—a documentary recording her visits to all 50 states, where she sits at a grammar desk to interact with curious people who discuss and ask questions about such things as past participles, the use of who/whom, ending a sentence with a preposition and, of course, the ubiquitous Oxford comma. Jovin puts everyone at ease with her easygoing manner; director Johnson’s camera catches the nuances of these interactions, even showing without commentary the state of homelessness in this country in a couple of heartrending scenes. But the emphasis is on community in an anything but communal society.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Black Tea 

(Cohen Media)

Malian director Abderrahmane Sissako comes a cropper with this contrived tale of young African woman Aya (a delightful Nina Mélo) who leaves her cheating fiancée at the altar to flee to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, which has a heavily African population and where she learns the subtleties of tea-making from Cai (the charming Chang Han), with whom she slowly falls in love. It’s certainly painless to watch, and Sissako’s eye is as ever precise in his observations, but there’s little here that hasn’t been done better by Sissako in films like Bamako and Timbuktu. The Blu-ray image looks luminous; lone extra is the Berlin Film Festival press conference featuring Sissako, Mélo and Han.

MacMillan Celebrated 

(Opus Arte)

Kenneth MacMillan was a legendary British choreographer whose dances dominated ballet stages for decades; this disc celebrates his exuberant and innovative work with stagings of his Danses concertantes (to the music of Stravinsky), Different Drum (to Webern and Schoenberg) and Requiem (to Fauré). These terrific 2024 performances were staged by the Royal Ballet at its Covent Garden home in London with a cast of exceptional dancers. The hi-def images and audio underline the onstage brilliance; extras include interviews with Benesh choreologists Gregory Mislin and Daniel Kraus as well as Macmillan’s widow Deborah.

Mysteries/Pastorale 1943 

(Cult Epics)

This pair of Dutch films from the 1970s features the estimable pairing of Sylvia Kristel (best known for the Emmanuelle films) and Rudger Hauer (who became a star as an early ’80s villain in Nighthawks and Blade Runner) but are of varying quality— Paul de Lussanet’s Mysteries, in which they play the leads, is a slog of a drama from a Knut Hamsun novel that’s lensed by the great Robby Muller. Krisel and Hauer are excellent, at least. Wim Verstappen’s Pastorale 1943, by contrast, is a hard-hitting drama about Dutch resistance during World War II, with Kristel and Hauer in small supporting roles. In the lead as a Dutchman whose loyalties are murky is the excellent Frederik de Groot. Both films look good and grainy on Blu; extras include commentaries and vintage interviews with Kristel, Hauer, de Laussanet and actor Derek de Lint.

CD Release of the Week 

Tamar Sagiv—Shades of Mourning 

(Sono Luminus)

Israeli cellist Tamar Sagiv’s debut recording is an intensely personal disc that takes the artist—and the listener—through various stages of grief and mourning as well as love and acceptance; the nine short pieces (all original compositions) were inspired by losses in Sagiv’s life along with the precarious state of today’s world. Her playing on solo pieces Shades of Mourning, Roots, Intermezzo and Prelude is starkly expressive and nakedly emotional, while her cluster of works for trio (violin, viola, cello) explores sound worlds both familiar and new. The last piece, In My Blue, is a cello quintet in which Sagiv layers all the parts into a lovely and, finally, moving whole.

January '25 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

The Room Next Door 

(Sony Classics)

For his first English-language feature, veteran Spanish director Pedro Almodovar cast Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton to headline a maudlin drama about how the relationship between two women who haven’t seen each other in years is tested when one, stricken by a rare and fatal cancer, asks the other to assist in her suicide. It’s beautifully shot by Edu Grau and Almodovar’s eye is as sharp as ever, but the script is crammed with cliched and occasionally laughable dialogue—still, it’s always worth watching Swinton and Moore do their stuff both together and apart, excepting the wincingly bad sequence when Swinton play her character’s daughter.

Rose 

(Cohen Media)

In actress and screenwriter Aurélie Saada’s pithy 2021 directorial debut, the great Françoise Fabian takes on the title role of the Goldberg family’s matriarch, whose life changes profoundly when her beloved husband of many decades suddenly dies and she must face widowhood and her judgmental adult children. Even if some of what Saada shows of Rose not acting her age is borderline soap opera, but no matter what, Fabian commands the screen as she did as the irresistible Maud in Eric Rohmer’s 1969 My Night at Maud’s—right up until the very last image of Rose (and Fabian) fiercely looking directly at the camera…and us.

Girls Town 

(Film Movement Classics)

Jim McKay’s low-budget, fiercely independent study of a group of high school girls debuted at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and now returns in a new transfer; it was rehearsed extensively by the cast, written by McKay and shot in suburban New Jersey. The result has a pleasing authenticity of place and character, but the situations and dialogue remain on a superficial level. Still, Lily Taylor, Anna Grace and Bruklin Harris make a forceful trio—and Aunjanue Ellis, seen at the beginning, is equally good—letting us care about these young women.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week

Night Call 

(Magnolia Pictures)

When young locksmith Mady answers an evening call in a Brussels apartment, he finds himself mixed up with violent thug Yannick, whose money was taken from the place and who blames Mady—the locksmith spends the rest of the night trying to track down the cash and clear his name, all while the city bursts with violent protests and civil unrest. Michiel Blanchart’s tautly made thriller is quite exciting, but the chase scenes—like a ridiculous one after our hero steals a bike—become risible. Still, setting the action during a single night works well, and with a charismatic lead performance by Jonathan Feltre as Mady and a forceful turn by Romain Duris as Yannick, Night Call’s 95 minutes fly by.

Streaming Release of the Week 

La Pietà 

(Film Movement Plus)

Spanish writer-director Eduardo Casanova’s surreal journey into the toxic relationship between smothering mother Libertad and her teenage son Mateo has its arresting moments but provides diminishing dramatic returns as it splinters into plots that follow Mateo’s dying dad Roberto and his pregnant wife as well as a family in Kim Jong-Il’s Korea. The latter subplot feels dragged in for reasons known only to the director, who also introduces a sympathetic psychiatrist and a brain tumor, both triggering more horrible actions from Libertad for unearned shock value. Ángela Molina, who plays Libertad, also starred in That Obscure Object of Desire, the final film of surrealist master Luis Buñuel, to whom La Pietà may be an homage, but Casanova’s own powers of provocation are stretched beyond endurance.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock 

(Cohen Media)

Outside of Steven Spielberg, there’s not a more familiar filmmaker than Alfred Hitchcock, instantly recognizable in his film cameos and the distinctive voice and dry humor heard in interviews. Director Mark Cousins uses those traits for his latest idiosyncratic documentary, with British actor Alistair McGowan giving an uncanny voice impression. The problem is, though it sounds like Hitchcock, it’s enough not like him to sound just off each time you hear it. Otherwise, Cousins provides a master class in focusing on thematic strands in Hitchcock’s imposing body of work (more than 50 feature films, from the 1920s silent era to 1976’s Family Plot), divided into six chapters mainly as an excuse to dazzle viewers once again with some of the most celebrated sequences in film history, including Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Psycho and The Birds. The Blu-ray looks terrific; extras include an alternate trailer with Cousin’ narration, McGowan’s voice test, a Cousins interview and Cousins’ intros for Hitch’s Notorious, Rope and Saboteur.

CD Releases of the Week 

Grażyna Bacewicz—Orchestral Works, Vols. 2 and 3 

(CPO)

The first Polish female composer to earn recognition for her original, startlingly expressive scores, Grażyna Bacewicz (1909-69) is yet another accomplished classical artist who is earning belated but justified praise, as no less than two labels are in the process of recording and releasing her music. Chandos put out its first volume in 2023, comprising her superlative third and fourth symphonies. The enterprising CPO label has now just added to its series with the second and third volumes of Bacewicz’ orchestral works—the discs are anchored by the brilliant first and second symphonies, respectively, but also contain other formidable works like the Concerto for Large Symphony Orchestra and the Musica sinfonia in three movements. The WDR Symphony Orchestra under the able baton of Lukasz Borowicz performs this music as pointedly and vigorously as the BBC Symphony Orchestra did on the Chandos disc. Let’s hope that both of these superb editions continue to put a spotlight on Bacewicz’ masterly music.

November '24 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 

(Warner Bros)

It only took 36 years for the sequel to Tim Burton’s winsomely offbeat supernatural black comedy to finally arrive, and if it doesn’t reach the giddy heights of the original, it still has the potent satirical presence of Michael Keaton in the title role as well as the welcome return of both Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara as daughter and mother. Additionally, the disarming and winning Jenna Ortega plays Ryder’s daughter, and she, Keaton and Burton are enough to make this watchable. There’s an excellent UHD transfer; extras include Burton’s commentary and several behind the scenes featurettes. 

Blazing Saddles 

(Warner Bros)

The ultimate western parody is definitely not Mel Brooks’ best film—it has more dry patches and juvenile jokes than many of his other films—but the fact that this came out the same year (1974) as what is his best film, Young Frankenstein, is a miracle in itself. And, of course, it’s stuffed with legendary comic moments courtesy of Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens and Madeline Kahn. The film looks sparkling in 4K; extras include Brooks’ scene-specific commentary and several featurettes and additional scenes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Der Freischütz 

(Dynamic)

German composer Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) created this masterpiece of German romantic opera in 1821; even its rickety fairy-tale plot including the supernatural and a magic bullet doesn’t put a pall on it. This colorful production, on the lake at Austria’s Bregenz Festival this past summer, pulls together great musicmaking, singing and staging for a memorable viewing. The ace performances are led by sopranos Nikola Hillebrand and Katharina Ruckgaber, while Philipp Stölzl’s direction and set design are unimpeachable. The exemplary Vienna Philharmonic and Bregenz Festival Choir are led by conductor Enrique 

The Red Light Bandit 

(Severin)

Brazilian maverick director Rogério Sganzerla was part of the late 1960s’ Cinema Marginal movement, and this often dazzling 1968 entry about a celebrated Sao Paolo thief (based on a real-life incident) who steals from the rich, makes fools of the police and charms the public is a real hoot, despite the crudeness expected of a 21-year-old filmmaker. But it’s so energetic and confident—and the acting of Paulo Villaça and Helena Ignez is so winningly persuasive—that falling in with its rhythms is easy. Too bad there’s not a great print available, but even in this merely OK transfer, the startling B&W imagery comes through. Extras include an Ignez interview, several Sganzerla shorts and an interview with film conservationist Paulo Sacramento. 

Roseland 

(Cohen Film Collection)

One of director James Ivory, producer Ismael Merchant and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s lesser collaborations was this slight, almost amateurish 1977 omnibus film about several people, mainly older women and younger men, who meet and dance at the famed dance hall in midtown Manhattan. There are nicely observed scenes (notably in the first section with a wonderful Teresa Wright), but even though actors like Geraldine Chaplin and a young Christopher Walken try their hardest, there’s not much to this character study that works now as a time capsule of late ’70s NYC. The film looks decent on Blu; lone extra is a recent Ivory interview.

Speak No Evil 

(Universal)

The latest Blumhouse scarefest pillages Danish director Christian Tafdrup’s 2022 film to tell the story of a naïve family—mom, dad, teenage daughter—befriended by a strange couple and their mute son who are unable to leave when they visit and discover murder is in the offing. Director-writer James Watkins has softened the original’s nihilistic worldview (similar to the U.S. remake of that seminal psychological horror film The Vanishing) by dutifully putting these people through their paces until a bloody but obvious climax. James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Aisling Franciosi and Scoot McNairy as the adults and Alix West Lefler and Dan Hough as the kids are fine but can’t transcend the material. There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras include behind the scenes featurettes and interviews.

August '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

The Beautiful Summer 

(Film Movement)

Director/co-writer Laura Luchetti’s empathetic and sensitive coming-of-age saga follows the introspective 17-year-old Ginia (played, in a starmaking turn, by the terrific Yile Yara Vianello), who is simultaneously confused and excited by her attraction to Amelia (persuasively embodied by Deva Cassel, daughter of Italian actress Monica Bellucci and French actor Vincent Cassel), who’s a headstrong model for local artists. With a 1938 Turin setting that is both evocative and quietly chilling—Il Duce Mussolini’s fascists are hovering in the background—Luchetti’s gorgeously realized feature was one of the happiest surprises of this year’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema series at New York’s Film at Lincoln Center in June.

Electric Lady Studios—A Jimi Hendrix Vision 

(Abramorama)

The creation of Electric Lady Studios—immortalized on Jimi Hendrix’s classic album Electric Ladyland—is the subject of John McDermott’s entertaining documentary, which lands us in late ’60s Greenwich Village alongside Hendrix’s legendary engineer-producer, Eddie Kramer, and others involved in the planning, construction and running of the first artist-owned music facility in rock. Hendrix music is generously played and the talking heads (which include John Storyk, the studios’ architect; and two of Jimi’s band members, Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox) are chatty and revealing in this valuable chronicle of an indispensable music studio, later populated by the likes of John Lennon, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and the Clash.

Modernism, Inc. 

(First Run)

Director Jason Cohn’s enlightening account that explores how architect Eliot Noyes transformed American design in the mid-20th century smartly condenses a knotted history of design into something digestible, spirited, but never dumbed down. Fond remembrances and paeans from his family members, colleagues and historians blend with well-chosen vintage footage to present this nuanced portrait of Noyes’ ongoing importance to contemporary design, from his playful but norm-shattering designs for IBM and Mobil to his family’s unique home.

War Game 

(Submarine Deluxe)

Although this documentary’s stated aims are lofty, even necessary—simulating a possible insurrection on January 6, 2025, four years after the real-life attempted coup to overturn a lawful presidential election, with many actual politicians and government insiders playing a fictional presidential cabinet and advisors—what we’re actually watching ends up less than the sum of its parts. Directors Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber turn this plausible doomsday scenario into an effective if derivative pulse-pounding thriller, but the reality of what happened on January 6, 2021 is still too raw to make this well-intentioned cautionary tale more than an intriguing but manipulative curio. The best moments are unfiltered comments by real veterans Chris Jones, Kris Goldsmith and Janessa Goldbeck (CEO of VetVoice, which originated the staging of this scenario), who emotionally discuss how imperative saving democracy is. More of their reality and less of the actual war game would have made this a more powerful—though, admittedly, entirely different—film. 

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

June Zero 

(Cohen Media)

In Jake Paltrow’s accomplished anthology feature, which tells the fragmented stories of several ordinary people on the periphery of the 1962 execution of Nazi Adolf Eichmann (which occurred just after midnight on June 1, hence the film’s title), is burnished by intelligence and sympathy. The three tales, which move from humor to horror, are followed by a bittersweet epilogue, as Paltrow takes the measure of a young nation grappling with shared traumas that nevertheless leave room for triumph over tragedy. Paltrow’s 16mm images look quite striking on Blu-ray; too bad there’s no interview or commentary that contextualizes this complex historical drama. 

CD Release of the Week

Gerhard—Don Quixote (Complete Ballet)

(Chandos)

Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) isn’t as well-known as fellow Catalan composers Xavier Montsalvatge and Federico Mompou, but his music is just as original, especially in his melding of popular and classical forms with a more rigid 12-tone method. His delightful zarzuela/operetta, The Duenna, might be the best example, but his other stage works have the same captivating variety. The works on this disc all originated in the 1940s, after Gerhard left his beloved Spain following the civil war and settled in England. There’s the attractive suite for the ballet Allegrias as well as the complete ballet Don Quixote, one of Gerhard’s most enchanting and gorgeous scores. Rounding out this recording is Pedrelliana, originally written in 1941 but revised 13 years later; it’s a heartfelt memorial to Gerhard’s beloved teacher Felipe Pedrell. Juanjo Mena leads the BBC Orchestra in vigorous renditions of this often exuberant music. 

July '24 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The Boy and the Heron 

(GKids/Studio Ghibli)

After the sublime 2013 memory piece The Wind Rises, the great animator Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement; but 10 years later, along comes this often inscrutable, heavily symbolic but tremendously affecting feature—don’t hold its Oscar for best animated feature against it! During WWII, young Mahito’s mother, a nurse, dies in a hospital fire—after his father marries her sister and they move to her country estate, Mahito’s grief and guilt are embodied in a talking heron, who takes him to an anthropomorphic world where he must fight for survival—and for closure with his mother. Only Miyazaki could make something so sentimental and borderline risible and make it funny, touching and trenchant simultaneously. Needless to say, the animation looks amazing in 4K; the accompanying Blu-ray’s extras comprise storyboards, music video for the song “Spinning Globe” and interviews with composer Joe Hisaishi, producer Toshio Suzuki and supervising animator Takeshi Honda. There’s also an English-dubbed version with the voices of Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe and Mark Hamill; stick with the original Japanese for authenticity.

Twister 

(Warner Bros)

This silly but watchable 1996 disaster thriller pits tornado chasers vs. Mother Nature—and, more often than not, nature wins: director Jan de Bont and writers Michael Crichton and Anne-Marie Martin (Crichton’s then wife) for the most part lose, especially when it comes to such howlers in the dialogue as, when a twister barrels down toward them, one character yells out, “Let’s run for it!” Well, duh. The $100 million budget obviously went to the vast array of technical effects, well-done but not overwhelmingly impressive (especially now, where some seams show in 30-year old technology). Actors like Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton, Jami Gertz, Todd Field, Cary Elwes, Lois Smith and Philip Seymour Hoffman try their best but are defeated by ridiculous plotting and the twisty effects. The 4K image looks quite detailed; extras include a new retrospective featurette and bonuses from earlier releases: three on-set featurettes, music video for Van Halen’s song “Humans Being” (Eddie and Alex also contribute a moody instrumental, “Respect the Wind”) and a commentary by du Bont and effects supervisor Stefen Fangmeier.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Challengers 

(Warner Bros)

If a menage a trois among a female tennis player turned coach and the male tennis pros in her life, each on opposing career trajectories, sounds like fun, director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes make sure to scuttle that possibility. This impossibly cutesy rom-com is crammed with flashbacks within flashbacks to try and present some variety, but even Guadagnino knows it doesn’t help, since he uses a surfeit of camera tricks and ridiculous angles to keep things bouncing. Then there’s the awful use of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pounding electronic score, always beginning or ending at the wrong time, as if the music cues are slightly off. The threesome enacted by Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist is more authentic on the court (they all look and move like tennis players) than off, where the trio is saddled with stilted dialogue and must deal with desperate symbolism like a windstorm of Biblical proportions that actually happens twice. It’s all about as sexy as a celebrity doubles match. The hi-def image looks excellent but, as with so many new releases, there are no extras.

Kidnapped—The Abduction Of Edgardo Mortara

(Cohen Media)

The latest film by the world’s greatest living director, 84-year-old Italian master Marco Bellocchio, is yet another of his gripping and operatic dissections of historical subjects that touch on politics and religion—this time he tells the horrific but true story of a six-year-old Jewish boy torn from his parents’ grasp because a former housekeeper said she baptized him when she thought he was dying as an infant. With his usual sweeping flair and acute observation, Bellocchio fills the screen with indelible images that not only cast a wide net on anti-Semitic mid-19th century Italian (read: Catholic) society but also the excruciating pain and loss felt by the Mortara family as their beloved son and brother remains forever out of their reach. Bellocchio builds his film on two towering performances—by Barbara Ronchi as the boy’s mother and Enea Sala as the young Edgardo, one of the strongest child performances I’ve ever seen. Supremely well-chosen music by Rachmaninoff and Pärt complement a superb original score by Fabio Massimo Capogrosso. The haunting but gorgeous final shot of mother and son is as unforgettable as the rest of this masterpiece; Francesco Di Giacomo’s glistening cinematography is accentuated beautifully on Blu-ray. Extras are a short Bellocchio intro and 20-minute director interview.

The Last Stop in Yuma County 

(Well Go USA)

I’ve never been a fan of the real Coen brothers’ films, so warmed-over Coens—which is what this aggressively, even nonsensically nihilistic drama about a bunch of nonentities who end up offing one another (along with several unfortunate bystanders) at a rate even the brothers wouldn’t countenance—comes off even more contrived. Too bad writer-director Francis Galluppi is more concerned with getting these people together and letting bad luck take care of them until it doesn’t matter who’s standing at the end. The film looks fine on Blu; lone extra is a making-of featurette.

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Eno 

(Film First)

In his eminently watchable documentary about legendary music producer Brian Eno, Gary Hustwit borrows Eno’s own way of creating for the film’s structure, as certain ideas, visuals or bits of music lead to other, sometimes not entirely successful tangents. Eno talks quite engagingly and candidly about his life, career and thoughts about the importance of art to nourish the human brain, both in new footage as well as vintage interviews. There’s also priceless footage of Eno at work, both alone doing his ambient music (like the original Windows 95 “jingle”) and with some of his biggest collaborators, from Roxy Music and David Bowie to U2 and the Talking Heads. One gimmick is that the film—at least in its first run at Film Forum in NYC—will never be the same twice, rearranged and completely different footage making a “new” film each time, a fitting metaphor for its enigmatic, endlessly fascinating subject.   

The Blue Rose 

(Dark Sky)

Anyone with fond—or not so fond—memories of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, in which two women sleepwalk through a surreal Hollywood, will relive that film during every minute of George Baron’s unabashed copy, which the director makes no bones about, even referencing Lynch in his discussions of his own film. The difference is that Lynch’s fully developed visual sense can make such dicey material work at times, whereas the best Baron can do is emerge as an instant epigone aping the Lynchian style without any substance. 

Janet Planet 

(A24)

Annie Baker, who has won awards for her (overrated) plays, makes her screen writing and directing debut with this at times insightful but mainly insufferable exploration of the relationship between Janet, a hippie-ish single mom, and Lacy, her restless 12-year-old daughter. As in her plays, Baker writes clever dialogue that’s not as meaningful as she intends; her assiduously oddish characters often claw at stretches of meaninglessness, whether in their words or silence. As a director, she alternates establishing shots and glaring closeups to snippets of music from Laurie Anderson to Bach that populate her eclectic soundtrack. Her distaff cast, comprising Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler and Sophie Okenedo, performs sensitively, while the men, embodied by Bill Paxton and Elias Koteas, are pretty much ciphers.

CD Release of the Week 

Czech Songs—Magdalena Kožená 

(Pentatone)

Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená, who has this music in her very bones, beautifully sings a smartly programmed recital disc of vocal works composed by her compatriots. As usual, she sounds natural and focused while performing cycles by the great but underappreciated Bohuslav Martinů and the great but more appreciated Antonin Dvořák, alongside a welcome taste of the unjustly obscure Hans Krása and Gideon Klein (who were both murdered in Nazi camps). Tastefully accompanying the always elegant Kožená is the Czech Philharmonic, under the baton of her husband, Simon Rattle.

June '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Robot Dreams 

(Neon)

In this tearjerking animated fantasy, a lonely dog builds a robot so he has a friend, but after he leaves it on the beach one summer, both of them find ultimately satisfying ways of going on with their lives. Director Pablo Berger has made a clever, even witty and touching fable about companionship and loneliness, set in a cool-looking ’80s NYC entirely populated by animals and the occasional robot. Kids will enjoy it, of course, but their parents might get even more out of it, especially since the animation is so refreshingly elegant in its simplicity.

Naughty 

(Capelight)

This Russian 50 Shades of Grey has a plot as implausible as the worst adult film: Elya, a beautiful, independent, headstrong (fill in the blank) college student, is an environmental activist and influencer shocked that a local forest is being cleared for more development. But when she meets the developer, she finds him gorgeous and charming; he bets her that after a week of romance, she will see the error of her ways. Does she succumb? Well, I’m not going to ruin the fun! (Yes, she does.) 50 Shades is actually referenced in the dialogue, and Anastasiya Reznik and Alexander Petrov certainly make a sexy pair, but getting through this will depend on your tolerance for the eye-rolling attempts at eroticism from director Dmitriy Suvorov.

Protocol 7 

(Abramorama)

It’s not enough that Andrew Wakefield, disgraced anti-vaxxer, has branched into badly slanted, unwatchable advocacy documentaries (2016’s Vaxxed: From Coverup to Conspiracy), but now he’s decided to write and direct a feature. This conspiracy thriller might even be worse than his doc, as a shady Big Pharma company pushes through an MMR vaccine that does irreparable harm to vaxxed infants. The political and moral positions are awful enough, but Wakefield compounds the problem by being an astonishingly inept director and writer: the film’s best performances come from actors who play a dumbfounded nurse and doctor in a scene where they are berated by a new dad upset they gave his newborn scheduled vaccines. Then there are the end credits, during which “facts” are shown onscreen, all sourced to a book cowritten by—of course—RFK Jr.

Rowdy Girl 

(Argot)

Jason Goldman’s straightforward documentary introduces Renee King-Sonnen, a Texas cattle rancher who’s now a vegan and wants to transform her husband Tommy’s huge, profitable ranch into a sanctuary (it’s named Rowdy Girl) that protects the animals at all costs. Goldman presents Renee and Tommy’s story matter-of-factly, without any needless editorializing, which makes it even more powerful when we listen to her speak about why she changed from killing cattle and eating meat to where she is today, along with touching moments of her bonding with the animals.

Summer Camp 

(Roadside Attractions)

This latest by-the-numbers senior comedy stars Diane Keaton (who else?), along with Viola Davis and Kathy Bates, as longtime friends who met decades earlier at summer camp who decide to relive those experiences by attending a—you guessed it—summer camp reunion. It all plays out exactly as you’d expect, through laughter and tears, misunderstandings and making up, along with a couple of older guys thrown into the mix (Dennis Haysbert and Eugene Levy, who both look properly embarrassed) for our gals. Keaton, of course, is as irrepressible as ever, Woodard and Bates do decently enough, but it’s as instantly forgettable as a day at camp.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Cemetery Man 

(Severin)

You might not see a more bizarre and, yes, insane movie than this 1995 zombie entry from Italian director Michele Soavi: Rupert Everett (who looks amusingly bemused throughout) plays cemetery keeper Francesco, who must fend off all manner of reanimated corpses, including the gorgeous wife (Anna Falchi) of a recently buried elderly man—she died having sex with Francesco on hubby’s grave. The fun part is that Soavi gleefully leans into the craziness, and the blood, gore, sex and ridiculous performances and dialogue all add up to something breathtaking in its combined lunacy and chutzpah. The film’s explicit but tongue-in-cheek visuals look clearer than ever on UHD; the 4K disc has a commentary by Soavi and screenwriter Gianni Romli and the Blu-ray disc includes the film, new interviews with Soavi, Everett and Falchi as well as a vintage making-of.

Kung Fu Panda 4 

(Dreamworks)

In the fourth chapter of this smashingly successful animated franchise, our panda hero Po (the always manically-voiced Jack Black) goes on a journey with a wily fox, Zhen (Awkwafina), that finds them facing villains from previous installments. It’s all silly fun that’s powered by the chemistry between Black and Awkwafina and the weirdly entertaining voice cast that runs the gamut from Dustin Hoffman, Bryan Cranston and Ian MacShane to Ronny Chieng, James Hong and Viola Davis. The UHD transfer comprises eye-popping colors; extras include a new short, Dueling Dumplings, as well as deleted scenes, Meet the Cast, featurettes and a filmmaker’s commentary.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Fanny—The Other Mendelssohn 

(Mercury Studios)

Director Sheila Hayman takes a close look at Fanny Mendelssohn, an accomplished composer in her own right who was eclipsed both by an era that didn’t take women composers seriously and her brother Felix, also greatly accomplished and celebrated for his symphonies and chamber music. Hayman shows that Fanny was as equally masterly as Felix, but the demands of her marriage (despite husband Wilhelm being totally supportive) and 19th century misogyny held her back. There’s a subplot of sorts in which scholar Angela Mace resurrects Fanny’s “Easter” piano sonata, originally attributed to Felix but now considered one of her summit achievements, more than 150 years after her untimely death of a stroke at age 41. (Felix died six months later, also of a stroke.) There’s first-rate video and audio.

Io Capitano 

(Cohen Media Group)

In Italian director Matteo Garrone’s intense—if manipulative—drama, Senegalese teens Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall) take what little funds they have to try to get to Europe, little realizing the horrors that await them. They are captured, separated and tortured in Libya, abandoned but reunited in North Africa, and finally arrive via the Mediterranean in southern Italy—but only when 16-year-old novice Seydou must pilot the boat filled with dozens of migrants. Garrone captures the humanity of these people desperate for a new start alongside the inhumanity of many others. Manipulation and contrivance notwithstanding, Io Capitano is superior filmmaking, with a staggeringly moving final shot of Seydou, the face of non-actor Sarr going through so many conflicting emotions that he should have won every award there is. The Blu-ray image looks fantastically sharp; extras include Q&As with Garrone, Fall and Sarr as well as Mamadou Kouassi, whose story inspired the film.

CD Release of the Week

Gabriel Fauré—Song Cycles 

(Harmonia Mundi)

A master of intimately scaled works, French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was at his absolute best writing mélodies, or song settings, which he returned to throughout his long and varied composing career. This new disc of several of his masterly song cycles is sung by baritone Stéphane Degout with modest but supreme elegance, perfect for these jewels of vocal music. There’s the towering cycle La Bonne Chanson, set to Paul Verlaine poems and a highlight of the composer’s middle period, and the trio of late cycles—Le Jardin clos, Mirages and the magnificent closer, L'Horizon chimérique—are also expressively performed. Pianist Alain Planès is not only a sublime accompanist throughout but also shows off his own Fauré chops in a passionate reading of the great F-sharp major Ballade.