October '26 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Once Upon a Time in Harlem 

(Neon/Film at Lincoln Center, filmlinc.org)

Filmmaker William Greaves pointed his revealing camera at a starry group of dignitaries from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance—including musician Eubie Blake, lyricist Noble Sissle and artist Romare Bearden—whom he invited to Duke Ellington’s uptown townhouse in 1972 for honest,  informative and illuminating conversations about their memories of that era and how it helped to transform American culture. Greaves’ son David took his father’s footage and has made a compelling and fresh portrait that ensures that these artists and intellectuals not only get a chance to speak their minds but also to—even more importantly—be identified.

Fatherland 

(MUBI/Film at Lincoln Center, filmlinc.org)

In Pawel Pawlikowski’s chamber film, Nobel laureate Thomas Mann—the greatest German writer of the first half of the 20th century—returns home four years after Hitler’s defeat to claim plaudits from his native country with his daughter Erika—whose own demons include the suicide of her beloved brother, writer Klaus Mann—driving him in what becomes a metaphorical and poetic journey. There’s a lot stuffed into this 80-minute drama from German literary and cultural history to the fraught relationship of Mann and his children. Although Pawlikowski glosses over some of this rich ore, the excellent central performances of Hanns Zischler as Thomas and Sandra Hüller as Erika make this near-essential viewing. Too bad the resourceful August Diehl only gets one scene as Klaus, but it’s a dark scene-setter for this chronicle of a broken family and nation, beautifully photographed in rich greys by Łukasz Żal.

Streaming Release of the Week 

A Brief Affair 

(Breaking Glass Pictures)

Ludovica Rampoldi wrote and directed this a one-note comedy-drama about two people who meet cute one night and reluctantly fall into an adulterous affair, managing to keep their illicit encounters secret—at least until a couple of unsurprising plot twists end up bringing everything into the open. It’s all attractively acted by Pilar Fogliati, Adriano Giannini, Andrea Carpenzano and Valeria Golino, but Rampoldi’s derivative script and direction prevent this from becoming a true guilty pleasure. Too bad the costume film Primavera, directed by Damiano Michieletto from Rampoldi’s flavorful script, hasn’t been released yet hereabouts.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Eclipse Series 5—The First Films of Samuel Fuller 

(Criterion)

Samuel Fuller (1912–97) was a director who was best-known for making low-budget films in many different genres mainly outside studio interference, although his first three features (collected here) are primary examples of his takes on the western and the war film. His debut was the myth-busting western I Shot Jesse James (1949), followed by the darkly comic The Baron of Arizona (1950) and gritty Korean War drama The Steel Helmet (1951). Fuller’s films were raw and often crude but nearly as often original; on Blu-ray, these black and white films look vividly striking.

Rusalka 

(Naxos)

Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s most dramatic and enticing stage work is this “lyric fairy tale” about the titular mermaid who becomes human when she falls in love with a man but her decision leads to tragedy. Dvořák’s gorgeously melodic music includes one of the most stirring arias ever written, the “Song to the Moon,” sung here in Philipp Stölzl and Philipp M. Krenn’s otherwise misguided modern production by the beguiling Dutch soprano Johanni van Oostrum. Although the rest of the cast impresses—as is the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Dutch National Opera Chorus under conductor Joana Mallwitz—it’s van Oostrum who makes this strangely impersonal staging attractive. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week

George Enescu—Octet and Quintet 

(Chandos)

Romanian composer George Enescu (1881–1955) was a musical prodigy on the level of Mozart and Mendelssohn, as these remarkably mature chamber pieces, written when he was a teenager, can attest. Enescu composed his string quintet at age 15, but it’s an accomplished work that’s more than a bit reminiscent of Enescu’s musical hero, Brahms; but his octet for two string quartets, finished when he was just 19, is something else altogether: a thoroughgoing masterpiece that stuns with its breathtaking originality and endless variety. Members of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective perform both pieces with assurance and vitality, befitting the youthful zest in which they were written.

October '26 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Case 137 

(Film Movement)

The great French actress Léa Drucker adds another sharply etched characterization to her résumé as Stéphanie, an internal-affairs investigator in the Paris police force on a case of police brutality during the “yellow jacket” protests of 2018 in Dominic Moll’s low-key procedural that persuasively encompasses the complicated political aspects of class and race hanging over the investigation. Drucker is unwaveringly good whether subtly taking the temperature of those she’s looking into or handling her skeptical ex-husband (a fellow cop), loving young son, and cantankerous mother. A top-notch supporting cast and Moll’s documentary-like visuals also strongly contribute to this deeply moral, unnerving drama. 

My Undesirable Friends, Part II: Exile 

(Film Forum, NYC)

Following up on her original monumental five-plus-hour documentary about the state of opposition journalists in Russia, director Julia Luktov returns with an even more mesmerizing six-hour chronicle that shows most of the same journalists leaving Russia as soon as Putin’s Ukraine invasion begins. We follow them as they head to places as far flung as Prague, Amsterdam, and New York City to continue their reporting on Putin’s authoritarianism in overdrive—which also takes the form of some of them being tried in absentia for treason. Their bravery in the public sphere is often infused with sadness or anger in private as they discuss their fears of wondering whether there will ever be a different Russia to return home to. Luktov’s extraordinary document of the precarious state of journalism—not just in Russia, but by design here too—is even more urgent than the first film.

Trust Me, I’m a Doctor 

(Briarcliff Entertainment)

The story of model Anna Nicole Smith’s 2007 death from an overdose of painkillers and the trial of her prescribing doctor Sandeep Kapoor is recounted in this scruffy but glib dramatization by writer-director Thane Economou, who relies on cutesiness and rib-nudging (direct address to the camera, TMZ recreations) instead of concentrating on the colorful personalities on hand. Kal Penn is a sympathetically goofy Kapoor and Linda Hamilton is solid as his attorney Ellyn Garofalo, but Abbie Cornish steals the film by humanizing instead of caricaturing Smith—she should have been given her own starring vehicle instead.

Winter of the Crow 

(Cohen Media)

Based on the succinct short story “Professor Andrews Goes to Warsaw” by Olga Tokarczuk, this tense, terse drama stars Lesley Manville as Joan Andrews, a British scholar who arrives in Poland for a conference the day before Russia cracks down with martial law, in 1981—and after she witnesses (and photographs) an extrajudicial killing, she finds that she is also in danger. Kasia Adamik directs persuasively from Sandra Buchta’s savvy script about the quotidian lunacy of authoritarianism through minions taking orders, and Manville’s tremendous performance of subtlety and strength climaxes with her suggestive glare at the camera.

Streaming Release of the Week 

Melt 

(Icarus Films)

Austrian director Nicholas Nikolaus Geyrhalter has been making rigorous documentaries about how humans are affecting the natural world for a few decades, and his latest, which showcases stunning and, at times, shocking glimpses at areas of the planet where snow is either melting too much or not enough, continues his streak of unsettling visual essays. Geyrhalter (who is also his own excellent cinematographer) visits Japan, Canada, France, Switzerland, Iceland, his native Austria and Antarctica to record proof in real time of how man-made climate change has changed these places irrevocably; he also allows local inhabitants to state their cases plainly and powerfully. 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Little Shop of Horrors 

(Warner Bros)

Frank Oz helmed this alternately silly and inspired adaptation of the off-Broadway musical, itself based on the schlocky 1960 Roger Corman quickie; man-eating plant Audrey II grows and becomes ravenously hungry for human flesh as the flower shop’s workers, Seymour and Audrey, engage in a budding relationship. The musical numbers are well-staged, Audrey II is a true scene-stealer (thanks to Lyle Conway’s awesome puppetry and Levi Stubbs’ one-of-a-kind voice) and Rick Moranis and Ellen Greene are delightful as our couple. Too bad Steve Martin did his lunatically evil character better in the infamous Sgt. Pepper movie. The film’s colors pop beautifully in 4K; extras include an Oz commentary, deleted and extended scenes with optional oz commentary, two featurettes with Oz and Greene and two vintage featurettes.

September '26 Digital Week IV

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

The Weight 

(Vertical Releasing)

In early 1930s Oregon, Murphy (Ethan Hawke), who made a wrong move against undercover policemen, finds himself on a brutal work gang and separated from his beloved young daughter—but the warden, Clancy (Russell Crowe), takes a shine to him and says he can get him an early release if he takes on a dangerous mission to smuggle gold through forbidding wilderness. This no-nonsense drama has its share of suspenseful moments, but the potentially intriguing relationship between a desperate Murphy and the shady Clancy never becomes momentous, despite both actors at their grim best. Director Padraic McKinley and writers Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines don’t make any of the characters (including Anna, an Indigenous woman played strikingly by Julia Jones) authentic enough to root for, so the story’s power somewhat dissipates.

Without Blood 

(Brainstorm Media)

Angelina Jolie certainly began her directorial career auspiciously with the intense historical dramas In the Land of Milk and Honey and Unbroken, but since then she’s floundered—this exploration of the closeness of grief, memory and vengeance was made in 2024 but sat on the shelf until now. It’s not hard to see why: this 85-minute film barely has enough time to sketch out its protagonists and their horrific histories, and even with committed performances by Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, Jolie is unable to provide anything more than earnest, clichéd and (yes) bloodless platitudes.

You Had to Be There 

(Greenwich Entertainment)

In 1972, a Toronto production of the musical Godspell was populated by several future comedy legends: Gilda Radner, Paul Shaffer, Eugene Levy, Martin Short, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber, etc., and director Nick Davis brings many of them back for an often hilarious (and equally touching) reminiscence. Also on hand are Godspell composer Steven Schwartz and fans like Mike Myers and Lin-Manuel Miranda, who expound on the singular talents of these performers, many of whom would go onto fame on SCTV and SNL. This terrific trip down memory lane climaxes when the surviving group gets together in a NYC apartment and sings songs from the show like “Day by Day.”  

My Brother’s Wedding 

(Kino Lorber)

Director Charles Burnett’s sophomore feature was this compassionate 1980 drama that centers around Pierce, who lives in a South Central L.A. neighborhood that remains a close-knit community despite the often miserable reality of everyday existence. This authentic slice-of-life culminates when Pierce must decide whether to attend the wedding of his brother Wendell or the funeral of his good friend Soldier. Although the film has its share of amateurish performances, Burnett’s script and direction have a clarity that makes this a still meaningful glimpse into ordinary Black lives. 

4K Releases of the Week 

Interview with the Vampire—The Vampire Chronicles 

(Warner Bros)

Anne Rice’s 1976 novel was an anomaly in its time: an intelligent gothic romance about New Orleans vampires that paved the way (or is that can be blamed) for the later undead craze. In Neil Jordan’s atmospheric 1994 adaptation, the master Phillipe Rousselot’s glistening photography and Dante Ferretti’s gorgeous set design are the real stars, even with memorable performances by Brad Pitt, Stephen Rea and a young Kirsten Dunst. Too bad the film is saddled by Tom Cruise’s unmenacing Lestat along with an unrelieved seriousness that doesn’t seem aware of the campiness of the material. The film looks exquisite in 4K; extras include a Jordan commentary as well as new and vintage featurettes with interviews with the cast, Rousselot, Ferretti, Jordan and Rice.

Supergirl 

(Warner Bros)

In the latest superhero reboot, Kara Zor-el—female cousin of Superman from the planet Krypton—gets her own origin story as she travels across the galaxy to make sure the villain who hurt her dog Krypto gets his comeuppance. Unfortunately, director Craig Gillespie’s adventure is as simple and pedestrian as it sounds, as Supergirl meets an assortment of bizarre characters that seem to have emerged from a Mad Max sequel. Milly Alcock is a winning performer, but she ends up battling a mediocre script and pedestrian direction to differentiate this from other comic-book flicks. Unfortunately, she fails. It all looks great on UHD; extras are several featurettes and deleted scenes.

September '26 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Kwaidan 

(Janus Films/Film Forum)

Japanese director Mitsuo Kobayashi’s 1964 classic is unlike other ghost stories, since he is not concerned at all with actual scares or things that go bump in the night (predating Kubrick’s The Shining), and deliberately has made one-dimensional characters who are lacking in motivation throughout these four weird tales. Instead, Kobayashi concentrates on stylized atmosphere above all else: each story’s setting is brilliantly evoked, beautiful and haunting trappings for these eerie meanderings. Stylishness has never been so spectacular, and Kobayashi’s cinematographer Yoshio Miyajima, editor Hisashi Sagara, art director Shigemasa Toda, costume designer Masahiro Katô and composer Toru Takemitsu are up to the formidable task. 

The Oldest Person in the World 

(Assembly Releasing)

For Sam Green, the premise was simple but daunting—track down and interview the world’s oldest person. But since that person inevitably keeps changing, Green has to keep moving, traveling from Brooklyn to Europe and back to the U.S. to talk with centenarians who hold the Guinness age record, however briefly. But that premise is just the beginning of this beguiling documentary, for Green also discovers that mortality is a large part of a 50-year-old filmmaker’s life as well, when he is diagnosed with multiple myeloma (which has been kept under control so far). But Green never loses his sense of humor: while making the film, he and his partner welcome a baby boy, whom Green slyly calls “the youngest person in the world”—if only for a brief moment, until the next baby is born somewhere else.

On a String 

(Joke Zero)

Isabel Hagen, a Juilliard-trained violist turned comedian and filmmaker, has mined her own experiences for the core of this often amusingly grating glimpse at Isabel, a freelance New York City musician who still lives with her overbearing parents and brother while navigating the cutthroat world of musicmaking, where even a friend will betray you, like a fellow quartet member also going to a New York Philharmonic audition and getting a callback instead of her. Hagen writes, directs and also stars as Isabel—she comes off as a less enervating Greta Gerwig, which works well for her jaundiced semi-autobiographical self-portrait. There are also solid turns by New York acting veterans like Dylan Baker, Eric Bogosian and Fred Weller.

Serpent’s Path 

(KimStim)

Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa remakes his own sinister 1998 thriller, about child exploitation and organ trafficking, in France, and it’s another compelling exploration of grief checkered by revenge and ultimately betrayal. Heroes and villains are a slippery concept in Kurosawa’s hands, and he is masterly at transforming ordinary situations that devolve into chaotic cruelty. It might go on a bit too long, especially in a finale as conventional as it is implausible but, led by an excellent group of French and Japanese actors like Damien Bonnard, Ko Shibasaki, Mathieu Amalric and Grégoire Colin, this is a rough but riveting watch. 

Streaming Release of the Week 

Mutiny 

(Lionsgate)

If there’s a Jason Statham vehicle blueprint, it’s this tautly executed, single-minded action flick in which our hero, who plays Cole Reed, a former commando whose life is in danger after he’s accused of murdering his rich boss and stows away on a ship involved in human trafficking. Director Jean-François Richet and writers Lindsay Michel and J. P. Davis waste no time on niceties like characterization or believable dialogue, but they give Statham—and costar Annabelle Wallis as his unlikely but effective sidekick—the chance to continually overwhelm the dastardly bad guys. Special credit goes to Adrian Lester, whose U.S. military ship captain becomes more entertainingly bemused as he gets a fuller picture of what’s happening aboard the rogue boat.

DVD Release of the Week

Colors of Time 

(Distrib Films)

In French director Cédric Klapisch’s latest drama, four cousins meeting for the first time explore their celebrated ancestor Adèle’s home—we meet Adèle herself (a fine Suzanne Lindon) as she leaves the sticks for Paris at the zenith of the 1890s Belle Époque and befriends artists like Claude Monet, who ends up having more to do with the cousins’ extended family than expected. Typically flavorful and spirited, lavish but not overstuffed, Klapisch’s film might be schematic in how it crosscuts between the present-day cousins’ endless zoom calls about Adèle’s valuables—including a painting that may have a surprising provenance—and her adventures in the dazzling city of lights, but it’s a delight from start to finish. Too bad there’s no hi-def release, since the visual wonders Klapisch conjures aren’t seen to their fullest effect on DVD.

September '26 Digital Week II

Streaming Releases of the Week 

Sherman’s March 

(Music Box Films)

Ross McElwee has been making personal chronicles masquerading as documentaries for nearly 50 years, carrying a camera around filming his own life—and those of his loved ones—through several feature films, the most famous of which is this 1986 masterpiece that has been rereleased in a restored version for its 40th anniversary. Ostensibly an excuse for McElwee to follow General Sherman’s infamous Civil War “march to the sea” as Union forces pillaged and burned everything in their path on their way to destroying the Confederates’ spirit, the film is a fascinatingly offbeat glimpse at the director’s own relationships with various young Southern women, all with the then-still horrifyingly real specter of nuclear war hanging over everyone and everything. (The film’s memorably long subtitle is A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love in the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation.)

Remake 

(Music Box Films)

Russ McElwee’s new film, coming 15 years after his last feature, Photographic Memory, is his most personal, chronicling his grief after his son Adrian died of a fentanyl overdose on Christmas Eve, 2016, at age 27. Another insightful, self-reflective and even self-lacerating McElwee self-portrait, Remake illustrates a difficult relationship with Adrian, who, as he got older, also became interested in filmmaking and began making visual records of events in his own life. McElwee uses his own voluminous footage along with that shot by Adrian to grab hold of his son’s memory, as he says, to make sure he lived and is now gone. There’s also a parallel plotline as Hollywood comes calling with an absurd request to turn his classic Sherman’s March into a fiction feature. But Remake’s heart is McElwee working out his grief over and pride in his son through footage from his earlier films, where we see his children as youngsters. Touchingly, McElwee gives his mother’s mantra as his own: “Everything begins and ends with family.” 

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

American Summer 

(Blue Harbor Entertainment)

In Michael W. Gray’s comedy-drama, nostalgia becomes sentimentality as young Mikey plays baseball, chases girls, and deals with his absent military dad and harried mom during a tumultuous teenage summer. There’s good acting by Logan Gray as our protagonist and Mia Talerico as Kelly, the object of his teen desire, but Gray also had the not-so-great idea to show older Mikey, played decently by Steve Guttenberg, who’s our onscreen narrator—and when older Kelly shows up at the end, she’s played amateurishly by Christie Brinkley. It would have been better to focus on the kids—Mikey’s friends are a Benetton ad—whose antics are at least diverting.

Barbara Forever 

(Strand Releasing/Film Forum, NYC)

Barbara Hammer, who died in 2019 at 79 of cancer, was a pioneering lesbian filmmaker who made dozens of personal films, from shorts to features, that brought a discerning eye to her challenging explorations of (often explicit) female sexuality. Director Brydie O’Connor’s involving and ultimately moving portrait of this singular artist comprises Hammer’s own archival footage alongside sequences from her films, her own intelligent voiceover and the thoughts of her longtime partner, Florrie Burke.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Trial by Jury/A Matter of Misconduct! 

(Opus Arte)

This lively double bill of Gilbert & Sullivan’s first hit operetta, set in a courtroom that pits a jilted bride and her scheming groom, and a new operetta by composer Toby Hession and librettist Emma Jenkins, which takes the pulse of political corruption, mixes frivolousness and seriousness quite entertainingly. This 2025 Scottish Opera production has terrific singing from both casts and choruses, marvelous musicmaking by the Scottish Opera orchestra under conductor Hession, and colorful stagings by, respectively, directors John Savournin and Laura Attridge. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week

Mark Adamo—Lysistrata 

(Pentatone)

American composer Mark Adamo’s 2005 riff on the classic ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes has, in the past 20 years, gained even more relevance in a world riven by ethnic, sexual, gender and identity strife. Although Adamo’s rhyming libretto is quite wordy, it does reach Sondheim-like moments of witty eloquence, especially when married to Adamo’s own melodious music. In this excellent 2025 recording, Boston’s Odyssey Opera gives an enthusiastic performance that doesn’t overdo either the comedy or the politics—the formidable voice cast is led by the terrific soprano Anya Matanovič in the title role and tenor Dominic Armstrong as Lysistrata’s lover, Nico, who leads the men of Athenian men in trying to change the minds of begging Athenian women withholding sex until men stop waging war. Gil Rose adroitly conducts Adamo’s challenging score.

August '26 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

If These Walls Could Rock 

(Bungalow Media & Entertainment)

The Sunset Marquis, a hotel in Hollywood that’s become a haven and hangout for musicians, takes center stage in Tyler Measom and Craig A. Williams’ documentary in which diverting stories about sex, drugs and rock’n’roll are entertainingly told for 90 minutes. Billy Bob Thornton—who moonlights in a rock band in addition to being an award-winning actor and filmmaker—is our guide of sorts, while we hear priceless anecdotes from legendary music figures Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen, Slash, Dave Grohl and Gene Simmons, among others, along with those in and outside the family that’s been keeping the beloved Marquis going for decades. 

Center Stage 

(Film Movement Classics)

Director Stanley Kwan’s restored 1991 epic about Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu—who starred in silent films before killing herself at age 24 in 1935—provides a thoughtful portrait of a long-gone era of cinema history that comprises recreations of her film sets, clips from her final two films and meta-interviews with Kwan, his actors and people who knew Ruan. As the fated actress known as the “Chinese Garbo,” Maggie Cheung gives a colossally charismatic performance, and she’s nearly matched by Tony Leung as Cai Chusheng, one of Ruan’s most notable directors. 

Dead Souls 

(Kino Lorber)

For his first feature in nine years—since his Eastern/Western mashup, 2017’s Tombstone Rashomon—English filmmaker Alex Cox has made a madly offbeat adaptation of Russian Nikolai Gogol’s novel, transposed to the American West circa 1890, with Cox playing Strindler, a man compiling a list of dead Mexican laborers in Arizona. Cox has never been the most subtle director—his best-known films, Repo-Man and Sid & Nancy, are cult items—and Dead Souls follows suit, especially with an in-joke about Strindler’s list (ahem). Otherwise, Cox throws shade at U.S. politics and culture, something that’s surely needed but not, at least in his hands, on target.

Streaming Releases of the Week

Miroirs No. 3 

(1-2 Special)

In the latest from German director Christian Petzold, his muse Paula Beer is Laura, a depressed music student taken in and cared for by a nearby rural woman, Betty, after Laura’s in a car accident that claims her fiancé. As Petzold films go, this one is pretty slight: Laura’s presence makes things uncomfortable for Betty’s husband Richard and son Max, especially when it’s revealed that Laura reminds Betty of her daughter, who recently committed suicide. Beer is riveting, as always, but the familiar plot machinations trip up her writer-director, who only finds his footing at the very end, when Maurice Ravel’s piano piece that’s also the film’s title is heard. 

Silent Friend 

(1-2 Special)

Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi has been making narratively fractured, visually dazzling, thought-provoking films since her stunning 1989 debut, My 20th Century. At the center of her latest is a large ginkgo tree, around which revolve three narrative threads that take place more than a century apart, between 1908 and the COVID year of 2020, all in the college town of Marburg, Germany. Enyedi, together with her magnificent cinematographer Gergely Pálos and editor Károly Szalai, have created indelible visuals to illustrate a meditative exploration of the connection of humans to the natural world, even though we might be unaware of it. The excellent cast, led by Léa Seydoux and Tony Leung, makes this at times inscrutable drama emotionally accessible.

August '26 Digital Week I

CD Release of the Week 

Paul McCartney—The Boys of Dungeon Lane 

(Capitol Records)

Now 84, Paul McCartney has released his first album since 2020’s lively McCartney III, which he recorded during the COVID lockdown. The Boys of Dungeon Lane has gotten some of the best reviews of McCartney’s storied career, although to these ears it’s an unsurprisingly tuneful but often familiar-sounding attempt that doesn’t approach his best work, from Ram and Band on the Run to Tug of War and Electric Arguments. But it sits comfortably ahead of lesser efforts like Wild Life, Pipes of Peace and Off the Ground. 

The album’s title is a line from “Days We Left Behind,” the most nakedly autobiographical of Paul’s compositions here, a beautifully realized reminiscence of earlier times that uses his aged, cracked but still formidable voice to great advantage. Not far behind in the nostalgia sweepstakes is “Home to Us,” a charming if slight duet with Ringo Starr (who also drums on the track, and whose jam with producer Andrew Watt was the genesis of this song) about growing up in a run-down part of Liverpool, with cute backing vocals from, of all people, the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri. “Down South,” describing a bus trip out of Liverpool, revisits the observations of two songs from McCartney’s 2013 album New: “On My Way to Work” and “Early Days.” 

It all goes down very smoothly and often indelibly in the mostly one-man-band approach McCartney and Watt employ; the jam on the opening “As You Lie There” is a good example of Paul’s genius at arranging—although, as usual, it’s his effortlessly melodic bass playing on songs as disparate as “Ripples in a Pond,” “We Two” and the insanely catchy “Never Know” that makes The Boys of Dungeon Lane a cut above other legacy artists’ new music. 

When we get to the quartet of melancholic but powerful ballads that ends the album—“Life Can Be Hard,” “First Star of the Night,” “Salesman Saint” and “Momma Gets By”—we realize that, if these are the final songs Paul has recorded in an unparalleled six-decade-plus career, it’s quite an unabashedly emotional statement to go out on.

In-Theater Release of the Week

Late Fame 

(Magnolia Pictures)

Based, of all things, on a posthumously published novella by the great Viennese author Arthur Schnitzler (who also wrote Traumnovelle, which Stanley Kubrick adapted as his last film Eyes Wide Shut), this low-key character study stars a perfectly cast Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, who wrote a forgotten book of poems decades earlier and who’s been an anonymous post office employee since then—until he is recognized by a group of pretentious young artists that want to give him the long-awaited notoriety they think he deserves. Kent Jones directs economically, Samy Burch’s script has finely-etched characterizations and dialogue, and the rest of the cast—especially a dazzling Greta Lee—superbly backs Dafoe. But there’s simply not enough here for a 95-minute feature, which spreads everything—and everyone—thin.

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Mars Attacks! 

(Warner Bros)

Director Tim Burton could never be accused of coddling the masses, as his cheerfully cheesy 1996 spoof of sci-fi movies—which was released several months after the insipidly self-serious alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day—delightfully demonstrates. In a large and jokey cast, Jack Nicholson shows off his unique ability to be hilariously over the top in the dual roles of the harried U.S. president and a shady Vegas casino owner, while there are also delicious turns by Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Pierce Brosnan and Michael J. Fox. Even the goofily gory special effects help make this a dopey but hip satire. The film’s bright colors explode in 4K; extras are two new featurettes with screenwriter Jonathan Gems and some of the film’s technical crew.

Streaming Releases of the Week 

The Drama 

(A24)

Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s darkly comic look at Emma and Charlie, an engaged couple navigating pre-wedding jitters, has some insightful and funny moments, but when Emma confesses to the worst thing she’s ever done, contrivance precariously hangs over the rest of the film. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson make this couple charming, vindictive, self-pitying and impassioned, but they fight an uphill battle as Borgli directs with a sledgehammer, making what happens during the preparations and reception more obvious and less pointed as the film goes along. When their photographer keeps saying she’ll “shoot” them or when Emma’s dad gives a reception speech that makes clear he doesn’t know how she became deaf in one ear, you know you’re dealing with a director who stacks the deck, which for a film like this, is fatal.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Good Manners

(Distrib Films US)

In Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s disturbing modern 2018 fairy tale, nanny and housekeeper Clara becomes quite close to her boss, single mom-to-be Ana, and as their relationship grows more intimate, she discovers that Ana might have been impregnated by a werewolf. That revelation is the jumping-off point for a film that, after switching gears halfway through, turns out to be startling, unsettling and risible simultaneously. Even though it outstays its welcome—and could be shorn of 20 minutes, particularly scenes like a young boy being stalked as prey—it’s brilliantly done. The film’s colorfully unnerving look shines on Blu-ray; extras are a two-minute making-of featurette; the shorts A Stem (2007), directed by Rojas and Dutras, and Doppelganger (2012), directed by Rojas; and commentary by critics Shelagh Rowan-Legg and Carolyn Mauricette.

July '26 Digital Week IV

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

I Want Your Sex 

(Magnolia Pictures)

Gregg Araki has been making weirdly off-kilter sex comedies-cum-dramas for more than three decades, and his latest shows that, for better or worse, he’s still at it, combining trenchant social commentary and crude sexual antics, all wrapped in sentimentality. Olivia Wilde is intoxicating as Erika, a performance artist and dominatrix who makes her latest assistant, young and naïve Elliott (a well-cast Cooper Hoffman), her sexual slave. But that’s the only the tip of this provocatively ridiculous satire of sexual consent, modern art, social media and whatever else Araki and cowriter Karley Sciortino toss in—including possible murder. In the end, it’s both too much and not enough, its bullseyes weighed down shallow silliness. But Wilde gives an eye-opening performance that helps negotiate the bumpy parts.

Lost Chapters/Los capítulos perdidos 

(Several Futures)

This modest but affecting documentary/fiction hybrid was made by Venezuelan Lorena Alvarado, who cast her grandmother Adela, her father Ignacio and her sister Ena as versions of themselves to tell a poignant family-history story that is both introspective and universally accessible. The 67-minute feature shows the beauty in the everyday alongside the attempt to hang onto one’s cultural history, with neighborhoods of Caracas shown lovingly by Alvarado and her cinematographer José Ostos. (Alvarado also shot parts of her film, and she’s responsible for the subtle editing as well.)

Brunello—The Gracious Visionary 

(Blue Fox Entertainment)

While watching this hagiography of Italian designer Brunello Cucinelli by director Giuseppe Tornatore—best known for his Oscar-winning foreign film Cinema Paradiso—I kept thinking that there’s material for a decent documentary, but since Brunello is the producer as well as the “star,” there’s no way Tornatore had free rein to show the warts and all of Brunello’s life and career. There are beautifully cinematic moments, notably when Tornatore visualizes the world of the young Brunello through the older’s memory, but this basically sanitized look at a genial billionaire celebrity relies too heavily on reenactments and fawning interviews with family and celebrity cheerleaders like Oprah.

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Mortal Kombat II 

(Warner Bros)

Based on the hugely popular video-game series comes a sequel to the 2021 reboot that, despite its overlength (it’s nearly exhausting two hours), has some excitement in its well-paced martial-arts battle sequences, which help keep the dreary melodramatics among its characters to a minimum. Director Simon McQuoid (who also directed the reboot) and writer Jeremy Slater balance the inherent self-seriousness with a cleverness that makes it watchable and entertaining. The film looks fantastic in 4K; extras include several making-of featurettes.

Streaming Release of the Week 

Due West 

(Cineverse)

This earnest to a fault melodrama stars an appropriately stern-looking Adrianne Palicki as a bartender who desperately tries to have an abortion in one of the most repressive places on earth for women: rural West Texas. She asks for monetary help from her brother and gets a visit from the bothersome Pastor Mike, played by a game Henry Thomas, but the deck is stacked against her and even the very air carries around an aura of stifling masculinity. Director Evan Miller and cowriter Hardy Janson shrewdly underplay their heroine’s dilemma in a place where politics is never brought up, it’s Palicki’s memorably no-nonsense portrayal that makes this more than mere propaganda.

July '26 Digital Week III

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

The Crying Game 

(Criterion Collection)

Neil Jordan’s best film is brilliantly directed and written (he won the 1992 Oscar for best original screenplay), starting out as a thriller, then shifting gears into a tentative romance until becoming a quasi-mystery for its startling finish. All these disparate parts are melded into a seamless whole by Jordan, who combines standard plot elements with refreshing twists and psychologically acute characterizations and motivations as well as uncannily juggling disparate moods and rhythms. And let’s not forget the estimable acting by Stephen Rea, Forrest Whittaker, Natasha Richardson and Jaye Davidson, right down to the smallest parts. Criterion’s UHD transfer superbly accentuates Ian Watson’s tangy cinematography; extras are Jordan’s 2005 commentary, new interviews with Jordan and Rea, 2005 making-of documentary and an alternate ending with Jordan’s commentary.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy 

(Warner Bros)

For 135 messy minutes, writer-director Lee Cronin slogs through several excruciatingly insipid storylines that tie standard mummy legend to obscure Egyptian mythmaking and, of all things, demonic possession films, especially The Exorcist, which could sue for defamation. Sequence after limp sequence marches in front of the camera, and it’s all sadly risible—and the end threatens a sequel. Including his name in the title is quite the flex, as if anyone else would want to take credit. The film does look impressive in UHD; extras comprise Cronin’s commentary, deleted scenes and three making-of featurettes.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

The Floaters 

(Brainstorm Media)

Director Rachel Israel and a cohort of writers concocted this genial comedy set in a Jewish summer camp that brings together former besties Nomi and Mara, who attended as kids; Nomi takes a job as a counselor from camp director Mara after being kicked out of her own rock band and is told to supervise the “floaters,” camp kids considered misfits. Those who are familiar with—or attended—summer camps might get more laughs and nods of recognition from this, but it is certainly likable, especially when the floaters unsurprisingly win over their critics, and nicely-acted by Jackie Tohn (Nomi), Sarah Podemski (Mara) and Judah Lewis, Nina Bloomgarden and Jake Ryan as the head floaters. 

Hadestown 

(Bleecker Street Media) 

Orpheus and Eurydice have been fodder for artists for centuries, but this musical—which opened on Broadway in 2019—by book writer-lyricist-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, isn’t a patch on Offenbach or Cocteau. Set in a Depression-era burg that recalls the French Quarter, the show at times spits out the swampy, jazzy Big Easy sounds; at its most original, Mitchell’s music grooves robustly. The men (Orpheus, Hades and Hermes) have more to work with vocally than the women (Eurydice and Persephone). That’s no slight on Eva Noblezada and Amber Gray, who sound comfortable in their middle range, but the male leads’ voices—Reeve Carney’s high tenor, Patrick Page’s rumblingly low bass and ageless Andre de Shields in between—go on a more satisfying vocal ride. Although Mitchell’s derivative music, lyrics and book don’t come close to their mythical forebears, director Rachel Chavkin makes the show move, literally—a trio of onstage turntables, combined with Rachel Hauck’s seedy set, Michael Krauss’s sober costumes and Bradley King’s savvy lighting, conjures a sweaty musical purgatory.  

Night Nurse 

(IFC Midnight)

Writer-director Georgia Bernstein’s glossy drama about Eleni, a young nurse at a retirement home who becomes entangled in a sordid emotional and criminal relationship with Douglas, one of her elderly patients, tries to be so many things at once—erotic thriller, crime drama, psychological character study—that it ends up flailing unsatisfactorily. As Bernstein loses control, the film’s moodiness becomes a liability, as scenes of Eleni and Douglas in various stages of their mutually harmful kinship start to become perfunctory and dull—even a surprising murder seems more a desperate way to end things. On the plus side, Cemre Paksoy gives a commanding performance as the needy Eleni and Bruce McKenzie is nearly as good as the dementia-addled but virile Douglas.

CD Releases of the Week

Ottorino Respighi—Chamber Music 

(Brilliant Classics)

Italian composer Ottorino Respighi’s prodigious and impressive output has been reduced over the decades to his best-known orchestral tone poems like Pines of Rome and Fountains of Rome; as this excellent disc shows, Respighi was much more than his most popular works. (He even composed several flavorful operas.) The DaVinci Ensemble plays two of Respighi’s string quartets and the masterly F-minor piano quintet—with an assurance that showcases the composer’s characteristic melodic sense and musical structure.

John Williams/Bernard Herrmann—Orchestral Works 

(Pentatone)

John Williams and Bernard Herrmann were two of the greatest film composers—Williams’ long collaboration with Steven Spielberg is equaled by Herrmann’s with Alfred Hitchcock—so this disc, comprising concert works by both composers, is an intriguing left turn. Williams’ Essay for Strings (1965) and Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion (1969) contain the attractive melodies and ear-catching rhythms associated with his later film scores. Herrmann’s 1967 Clarinet Quintet (subtitled Souvenirs de Voyage), adapted by Hans Sorensen for clarinet and string orchestra, is a pensive late work. The soloists (flutist Jin Ta and clarinetist Ma Yue) and Singapore Symphony Orchestra under conductors Darrell Ang and Joshua Tan play with sensitivity to both composers.