January '25 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

The Mother and the Whore 

(Criterion)

French director Jean Eustache’s 1973 masterpiece may be the greatest film his compatriots Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer or Jean-Luc Godard never made—its mammoth length (3 hours and 40 minutes) belies the simplicity of its subject and execution: it’s a look at a narcissistic young man’s relationships with his live-in lover and a new woman in his life. Although it’s nearly all talk, since it’s Eustache’s script—with supposedly no improvisation—it’s emotionally direct and honest. This is by far Jean-Pierre Leaud’s best performance, and Bernadette Lafont and Francoise Lebrun equal him as his eponymous lovers. The photography and editing are sublime, and the shattering ending reminds one of Ozu, which is high praise indeed. The B&W film looks stupendously sharp in UHD; extras comprise new interviews with Lebrun and filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin; archival interviews with Eustache, Leaud, Lafont and Lebrun; and a restoration featurette.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week

Wicked 

(Universal)

It starts with an ugly, CGI-drenched opening and ends more than two and a half hours later with the showstopper “Defying Gravity”—which is only the end of the first act of Steven Schwartz’s blockbuster Broadway musical. That means we have to sit through another two-plus hours next holiday season to finish this thing. So is it all worth it? Not really—it’s a mighty slog to get through, the songs are mainly negligible, the story isn’t as clever as it should be, and only Cynthia Erivo has the requisite vocal chops and acting prowess to make Elphaba soar into the stratosphere. Ariana Grande also has a powerhouse voice, but when she tries to act, she’s laughably inadequate. Further, Bowen Tang, Jeff Goldblum, and Michelle Yeoh are wincingly hammy, while Jon M. Chu’s direction consists of making things bigger, louder and more garish without settling on a consistent tone or style.

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Every Little Thing 

(Kino Lorber)

Sally Aitken’s heartwarming documentary is an intimate portrait of author Terry Masear, who diligently and lovingly rehabs hummingbirds out of her California home, taking in those that were orphaned or injured and meticulously nurses them back to health. Aitken’s camera follows Masear, who founded Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue 20 years ago and wrote the book Fastest Things on Wings in 2016, and also provides stunning views of the birds themselves—as Maseur notes, hummingbirds flap their wings 50 times a second, something that seems impossible to contemplate even as Aitken records it.  

Streaming/Blu-ray Release of the Week

Touristic Intents 

(First Run)

Prora, which was a huge resort complex on Germany’s Baltic Sea, was built but left unfinished by the Nazi regime, and Mat Rappaport’s informative and thoughtful documentary explores its postwar life: the East German government continued its construction, using the place for military operations as well as housing for conscientious objectors. Then there are the lasting implications of its history—through insightful interviews and on-location footage, Rappaport raises important questions exploring the dissection of tourism and politics. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer.   

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Mozart—Mitridate re di Ponto 

(Unitel)

One of Mozart’s early operas, a tragedy about a king and his two sons who are all in love with the same woman, comes off as stately and often static in director Satoshi Miyagi’s 2022 Berlin State Opera staging, despite Mozart’s often melodious music. The cast, led by Pene Pati, Ana Maria Labin, Angela Brower, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, Sarah Aristidou and Ken Sugiyama, is impeccable, while the Les Musiciens du Louvre under conductor Marc Minkowski provide solid support. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

DVD Release of the Week

Sisterhood 

(Distrib Films US)

Although the French title, HLM Pussy, gets right to the point—if too rudely for some, obviously— Nora El Hourch’s trenchant character study dramatizes how a close-knit group of teenage female friends becomes partially estranged when one calls out her brother’s best friend for sexual harassment. Bringing “MeToo” into a different arena, El Hourch finds space for sympathy and understanding as well as justified rage, and she has assembled a perfect cast of mostly unknown performers—I only recognized the elegant Berenice Bejo, who plays the mom of one of the teens—for a clear-eyed, truthful study that’s all the more remarkable for being El Hourch’s debut feature.

CD Release of the Week 

Ruth Gipps—Orchestral Works, Vol. 3 

(Chandos)

Englishwoman Ruth Gipps (1921-99), like many women composers of the 20th century, was automatically considered second class, despite having gotten a doctorate and showing the facility to write sophisticated works. Now, decades after her death, her works are have been justly resurrected, as this third volume in a series by conductor Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic of her orchestral works rewardingly shows. There are three shorter pieces: Coronation Procession is a sparkling opener, followed by the wistful Ambarvalia and the passionate pastoral Cringlemire Garden, whose lovely string writing is reminiscent of Gipps’ teacher Vaughan Williams. The two major works are Gipps at her most original: the Horn Concerto has a lyricism that soloist Martin Owen brings to the fore, while Gamba and the orchestra give the superb first symphony a vigorous workout in its first-ever recording.

January '25 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Seven 

(Warner Bros)

Although at times quite gruesome, David Fincher’s 1995 serial-killer classic remains an intelligent, witty and unsettling drama 30 years on, eschewing the crassness of many films of its genre. The plot hinges on two cops brushing up on their Dante and Milton to ferret out a “deadly sin” murderer, and Fincher’s impeccably stylish directing keeps things on track until the genuinely—and logically—creepy denouement. The performances by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt are authentic and stabilizing, while Kevin Spacey enters in the last act and provides his customarily brilliant portrayal as the killer. Darius Khondji’s spectacularly moody cinematography looks superb in the UHD transfer; extras include four commentaries, deleted scenes, alternate endings and several featurettes. 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

The Brutalist 

(A24)

In Brady Corbet’s would-be American epic about a Jewish Hungarian architect who emigrates to the U.S. after surviving Dachau, the hero is named László Tóth—which has to be some kind of in-joke, since it’s also the name of the Hungarian geologist who took a hammer to Michelangelo’s Pieta in 1972—and he is put through physical and emotional ringers that leave him as scarred as by what he endured in Europe. Corbet and Mona Fastvold’s script is crammed with big gestures, little subtlety and empty platitudes, but Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley’s trusty camera dresses up the outsized dramatic ambition in gorgeous images, albeit often hackneyed or borrowed from better filmmakers. As Laszlo, Adrien Brody gives a towering performance, and he is sensitively supported by Felicity Jones as his physically frail wife Elszabet. But poor Guy Pearce, who starts out hammily amusing as the antagonist, millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren, is saddled with the most ludicrous dialogue and character arc, and he wears out his welcome long before the film ends with a ridiculously unnecessary epilogue that risibly sums up the preceding 3-1/2 hours—including intermission.

The Damned 

(Vertical)

Director Thordur Palsson’s brooding, slowburn horror film fashions many familiar tropes—isolation, darkness, xenophobia, madness—and into a stew that’s distinctly unnerving but not fully cooked. Set during winter in a cutoff Arctic outpost, the drama builds around a self-sufficient settlement that must deal with the moral issues of intervening when a ship sinks off the coast, knowing there aren’t enough foodstuffs to supply survivors. While enacted intensely by a cast led by Odessa Young as a widow, Palsson’s film never takes off, leading to a pseudo-Twilight Zone twist ending to cover up its shortcomings.

Hard Truths 

(Bleecker Street)

Mike Leigh has been making semi-improvised contemporary character studies for decades but, with a few exceptions (High Hopes, Life Is Sweet), I prefer his historical epics like Topsy Turvy, Mr. Turner and Peterloo. His latest is a disappointingly shallow study of Pansy, a middle-aged wife and mother whose anger—at her husband, son, family members, even store employees and customers—masks deeper psychological issues. Leigh and actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s second collaboration gets the particulars right but plausibility in characterization and relationships goes out the window whenever Pansy starts yelling…and yelling. The best scene, between Pansy and her loving but exasperated sister Chantelle (a pitch-perfect Michele Austin) at their mother’s gravesite, works beautifully because it is so understated. Too bad Leigh couldn’t maintain that restraint for the rest of the film.  

The Last Republican 

(MCDC)

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman who voted with Trump 90 percent of the time while both were in office, was lauded by right-thinking people when he joined the January 6 committee and voted for Trump’s impeachment in 2021. Steve Pink’s chummy documentary portrait further humanizes Kinzinger as he and his wife go through her pregnancy while he’s preparing to leave office in 2023 after being primaried by a vengeful Trumpian party. Pink gives us a sense of how otherwise unbridgeable differences between Kinzinger and, say, Liz Cheney on one side and Democrats on the other are closed by a need to save democracy. But despite such good vibes, we all know how it turned out: Trump is back, and things look worse than ever. So who really won?

Nickel Boys 

(Amazon MGM)

Colson Whitehead’s absorbing novel about two Black boys, Elwood and Turner, who met and bonded at a racist Florida boarding school in the early ‘60s has been made into a frustratingly diffuse film by first-time feature director RaMell Ross, who obviously struggled to come up with a visual equivalent to the book’s omniscient narrator and second half plot twist. Using the camera for the pair’s POV works in theory but not dramatically, as it keeps us at a remove from the characters; it also cheats, since camera movements are not the same as a person’s real POV and so several scenes, especially those that are intimate or shocking, play out choppily. When he cuts to one of the boys, now an adult and living in New York City, Ross uses an even more tortured form of POV in a desperate attempt to hide the twist’s inevitable shock. There are moments of power and emotion, and Ross brings his documentary skills to the fore in the final montages that juxtapose actual history with Elwood and Turner’s lives. Ethan Herisse (Elwood) and Brandon Wilson (Turner) are rarely onscreen, while others—like Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Hattie, Elwood’s beloved grandmother—play to the camera in an unnatural way, something that prods Hamish Linklater to give a cartoonish portrayal of the school’s corrupt and racist administrator.

Broadway Play Review—“Eureka Day” with Bill Irwin and Amber Gray

Eureka Day

Written by Jonathan Spector

Directed by Anna D. Shapiro

Through February 2, 2025

Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY

manhattantheatreclub.com

The cast of Eureka Day (photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Homing in on California antivax parents isn’t Swiftian satire, Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day proves despite moments of inspired hilarity. 

The setting is the Eureka Day private school in Berkeley, where the school board is dealing with a student’s case of the mumps. The meeting is led by the 60ish Don and includes 30ish parents Eli and Meiko—who are having an affair they think is masked by their children’s playdates—along with longtime board member Suzanne and the newest member, Carina, whose son attends the school.

As the group’s discussions start civilly but turn more argumentative, Spector raises the specter of ultraliberal parents acting selfishly under the guise of “protecting the kids” as well as dangling the threat of fascism due to stringent school rules. While funny, the play often resorts to obviousness, underlined in its most celebrated scene, an online town hall meeting in which the board members—and especially the bumbling Don—try but fail to preserve decorum as comments from parents keep popping up, exploding from mild disagreement to nastiness and conspiracy theories, even dropping the “n” word (Nazi) amid pointing out others’ ignorance.

In Anna D. Shapiro’s lively production, set on Todd Rosenthal’s skillfully decorated school library set, we read the comments scrolling by on a large screen above the five board members, who talk among themselves. It’s certainly amusing, like a decent Saturday Night Live sketch, but goes on too long as Spector tries to one up himself to diminishing returns. (Audiences don’t agree—they were practically falling out of their seats, as if the ushers had passed out laughing gas.) It also points up the fact that these five characters are bland stereotypes who literally fade into the background during this sequence. 

A couple of scenes do help humanize them. The first has Eli and Meiko at his son’s hospital room after contracting a severe case of the mumps, likely from Meiko’s daughter, which lays bare the adults’ tangled relationship, as when Meiko shows Eli texts his wife sent her: the word “whore,” over and over. (“She probably just like cut and pasted,” he weakly retorts.) In the second, Suzanne tells Carina about a long-ago family tragedy that forever colored her view of vaccines. It’s a commendable attempt by Spector to give Suzanne—fast becoming the play’s villain—a reason for her rejection of science, but it comes off as too neat and pat.

Shapiro’s savvy direction couches the increasingly surreal lunacy over vaccines in a much needed reality, and she stages Spector’s final, easy jokes—one visual, one verbal—with an economy that helps them land effectively. Too bad the overacting of Bill Irwin (Don), Thomas Middleditch (Eli) and especially Jessica Hecht (Suzanne) undermines the jokes, although it’s always fun seeing Irwin’s physical adroitness get a laugh when Don hesitantly follows Meiko after she storms out of a meeting. 

Happily, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz (Meiko) and especially Amber Gray (Carina) give focused, grounded performances that serve the comedy instead of themselves, keeping Eureka Day afloat.

December '24 Digital Week III

CD Releases of the Week 

Jon Batiste—Beethoven Blues 

(Verve/Interscope)

For his latest release, Jon Batiste utilizes his prodigious talent for improvisation with an album filled with mostly short piano pieces that take as their start various works by Beethoven, from the piano sonatas to the mighty symphonies (5, 7 and 9, of course). Batiste takes the seeds of Beethoven’s melodies and over the course of several minutes transforms them through his own unique stylings—as Batiste says in his liner note, Beethoven would have been playing the blues if that was a genre 200 years ago. The disc’s closing work, Für Elise—Reverie—15 imaginative and always invigorating minutes—is a master class of improv that reminds me of Batiste’s 2022 Carnegie Hall concert I attended where he played exhilarating piano improvisations for 90 thrilling minutes.

Ludwig van Beethoven—The Piano Concertos 

(ECM New Series)

In the increasingly crowded pool of complete Beethoven piano concerto recordings, German pianist and conductor Alexander Lonquich dives right in by doing double duty at the keyboard and on the podium, leading the Munich Chamber Orchestra in an impressive traversal of the most imposing concerto cycles ever composed. In addition to the sensitive orchestral accompaniment, Lonquich also displays his pianistic eloquence throughout, most memorably in the second and fifth (“Emperor”) concertos, which sound urgent and immediate in these fresh-sounding performances.

Benjamin Britten—The Prince of the Pagodas 

(Hallé)

Benjamin Britten’s lone full-length ballet score was commissioned by the Royal Ballet and premiered in 1962; it might be the only ballet inspired by both King Lear and Beauty and the Beast in its story of an Asian ruler who gives his kingdom to his bad daughter instead of the good one, with typically unsurprising results. Britten’s score is endlessly inventive, especially in the use of the Balinese gamelan, an instrument that provides authentic Eastern flavor. This first-rate recording, by the Hallé orchestra, is under the steady baton of conductor Kahchun Wong.

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—Contemporary Landscapes 

(Beau Fleuve)

JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) give more proof—if any were needed—that they are one of the most versatile orchestral ensembles around; this disc’s four premieres, all written in the past five years, were commissioned by the BPO. The wide-ranging works are Kenneth Fuchs’ Point of Tranquility (2020), inspired by a Morris Louis painting; Russell Platt’s Symphony in Three Movements (2019-20), dedicated to artist Clyfford Still, many of whose works are in the Buffalo AKG Museum; Randall Svane’s Oboe Concerto (2023), featuring the BPO’s excellent principal oboist Henry Ward; and Wang Jie’s The Winter That United Us (2022), which celebrates the city of Buffalo. They’re all performed with authority by Falletta and the orchestra. 

Simone Dinnerstein—The Eye Is the First Circle 

(Supertrain)

For her latest scintillating solo disc, Simone Dinnerstein tackles a true Everest of the piano repertoire, Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata—45 minutes of impressionistic portraits of four towering American thinkers (Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau)—in her usual inimitable fashion. The sonata was recorded in 2021 as part of an installation that paired her father Simon’s painting (reproduced in the disc’s jacket) with the music, as Dinnerstein plays with intense concentration throughout, giving Ives’ remarkably dichotomic work clarity and coherence.

Off-Broadway Play Review—“The Blood Quilt” by Katori Hall

The Blood Quilt

Written by Katori Hall

Directed by Lileana Blaine-Cruz

Performances through December 29, 2024

Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY

lct.org

The cast of The Blood Quilt (photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Family get-togethers have a way of reopening old wounds and spurring surprising revelations in plays like Long Day’s Journey Into Night and August: Osage County. Although it has a few loose stitches, Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is a welcome addition to this storied canon.

On Kwemera Island, off the coast of Georgia, the four Jernigan half-sisters—each has a different father—with their physical and emotional baggage in tow get together in the house where they all lived on the anniversary of the death of Mama, the matriarch, to create the latest of the family’s memory quilts. Clementine, the oldest sister, still lives there, having taken care of Mama until her final breath. Second oldest is Gio, a police officer, who’s in the middle of a nasty divorce. The third daughter, Cassan, an army nurse, brings along her teenage daughter Zambia, who’s an advertisement for TMI. The youngest—and Mama’s favorite, the others sneeringly intone—is Amber, attorney to Hollywood stars, who arrives from Southern California. 

Over a long weekend, the Jernigan women face down their own demons, confronting each other’s jaundiced memories and knocking the chips off the others’ shoulders. If their revelations sometimes have a contrived quality—Amber admitting that she has HIV at the close of the first act puts the play’s title in a very different light—Hall admirably never shies away from showing the resulting emotional fallout. 

The quilts are central to Hall’s play both as metaphor and as a living part of this family’s history. On Adam Rigg’s astonishing two-tiered set of the family home on the water, gorgeous multicolored quilts hang from every conceivable surface, visualizing the very complex fabric of the sisters’ relationships. The quilts also trigger the most dramatic subplot: after Mama’s will is read, Cassan and especially Gio are upset that Amber—the least deserving sister, in their eyes—has inherited the priceless set of these painstakingly handwoven quilts. 

But Clementine—who stayed next to their dying Mama while the others stayed away—has had enough, and she cuts to the chase about what being present or absent in others’ lives means; it’s Hall’s best monologue in a play filled with pregnant dialogue among this distaff quintet: 

Amber didn’t need to see mama like that. Nobody needed to see mama like that. I didn’t need to see mama like that. So don’t sit up there on that bull riding high and mighty thanking that just cause yo ass showed up at the funeral and cried and did yo little performance that you was a good daughter. No, unh, unh, nosiree. When folks living that’s when you need to see ‘em. Not when they DEAD. Not when they beginning to turn and whither in they graves. Y’all all left mama to die alone in this house.

If Hall provides one too many endings as more secrets are revealed (including a disturbing but essential scene describing statutory rape), through the mixture of tears and laughs, the real warmth of her generous portrait becomes clear. Director Lileana Blaine-Cruz, who understands the many textures of Hall’s poignant canvas, guides her marvelous cast to get to the nakedly honest emotional truth. Crystal Dickinson (Clementine), Adrienne C. Moore (Gio), Susan Kelechi Watson (Cassan), Lauren E. Banks (Amber) and Mirirai (Zambia) do extraordinarily affecting work separately and together—the most important stitches in this intricately woven Blood Quilt.

December '24 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Joker— Folie à Deux 

(Warner Bros)

Apparently, one self-important Joker movie wasn’t enough for Todd Phillips, who returns with a farrago that brings back Joaquin Phoenix as the most sullen Joker ever—and adds, pointlessly, Lady Gaga as an equally lunatic character who meets Joker cutely in prison (don’t ask) then becomes his biggest supporter when he’s on trial for the crimes of the previous movie. Phillips’ oppressively dark, often risible film bursts into song interludes of mostly old pop and showtunes warbled by Phoenix and Gaga that rarely further the narrative or comment on the duo’s psyches—Woody Allen’s 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You did this sort of thing far more shrewdly. The film looks impressive in UHD; extras comprise the making-of documentary Everything Must Go and several featurettes. 

Rolling Stones—Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush 

(Mercury Studios)

On their 1999 world tour, the Stones played mainly arenas and stadiums—with a notable exception for this 90-minute sprint through 35 years of hits at the relatively intimate Shepherd’s Bush in London. Everyone is in peak form, with Mick Jagger prancing around the stage and Keith Richards and Ron Wood playing those indelible guitar licks, except, weirdly, the opener “Shattered,” whose famous guitar riff never seems to be correctly duplicated live. Sheryl Crow joins for an energetic “Honky Tonk Women.” There’s superior UHD video and audio.

Stir of Echoes 

(Lionsgate)

In David Koepp’s 1999 horror entry—based on a novel by Richard Matheson—a working-class dad’s life is turned upside down after being hypnotized by his sister-in-law; he’s soon seeing visions of a local teenage girl who recently disappeared. The story is quite sturdy, thanks to Matheson’s original, but Koepp teases out the most unpleasant details, and after awhile it becomes rather dumbing to watch, despite good work from Kevin Bacon (dad), Kathryn Erbe (wife), Ileana Douglas (sister-in-law) and Zachary David Cope (young son). There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the special edition steelbook contains the film on Blu-ray and extras including new and vintage featurettes and interviews.

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Endless Summer Syndrome 

(Altered Innocence)

Attorney Delphine gets an anonymous phone call from a colleague of her husband Antoine who says he’s having an affair with one of their adopted children, Adia and Aslan—taken aback, Delphine tries to discover if it’s true. It is, of course, but writer-director Kaveh Daneshmand has nowhere to go once it’s discovered, and what began as a compelling study structured as a whodunit ends up trivializing a serious subject. Still, strong performances, led by Sophie Colon (Delphine) and Frédérika Milano (Adia), give this more gravitas than Daneshmand’s writing and direction deserve.

The Man in the White Van 

(Relativity Media)

Based on a true story, Warren Skeels’ unsettling drama homes in on Annie, a Florida teenager who keeps seeing a suspicious van parked near school and home, but others scoff at her—even though other young women have been abducted and murdered in the past few years. After a tense and compelling first half, Skeels’ film turns into a rote slasher flick, with fake scares and people in movies doing dumb things. But Madison Wolfe, a winning young actress, makes this underbaked study steadily watchable.

Theater of Thought 

(Argot Pictures)

For my taste, omnivorous director Werner Herzog’s off-kilter documentaries are far more fascinating than his off-kilter features, and his latest doc is another intriguingly obsessive exploration—this time of neuroscience, a field laden with ethical and moral roadblocks that are ripe to be skirted. Herzog and Rafael Yuste (a professor at Columbia and the film’s advisor) travel around the U.S. for a typically refreshing look at another complex subject—complete with alternately bemusing and amusing interviews—made even more enjoyable by Herzog’s inimitable onscreen persona, endlessly curious and seeming unserious and ultra-serious simultaneously.

Streaming Release of the Week 

Her Body 

(Omnibus Entertainment)

The excruciatingly sad story of Andrea Absolonová—a talented Czech diver whose career was cut short when she was injured training for the Olympics, so she began a successful career making porn films until dying of a brain tumor at age 27—has been made into a frustratingly inert biopic by Natálie Císařovská. The director seems to be content with checking off events in Andrea’s life instead of diving more deeply—that Andrea starts her X-rated career as Lea De Mae after seeing porn tapes and magazines in her photographer lover’s apartment might be true, but in this context it’s presented as a dramatic shortcut. But there is a towering performance by Natalia Germani, intensely physical but also brittle and natural, making up for blurry storytelling.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Conclave 

(Focus/Universal)

Based on Robert Harris’ page-turning thriller about the political and moral machinations among a group of cardinals electing a new pope, Edward Berger’s adaptation is hampered by its structure—lots of voting in the Sistine Chapel and arguing in the cardinals’ private rooms for much of its two-hour length—but Harris’ wit and ability to enliven routine situations is much in evidence. Of course, there’s also a starry cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Stanley Tucci have enormous fun playing various liberal or conservative, pious or impious cardinals—it’s too bad Isabella Rossellini can’t do much with the lone female speaking role. Berger directs a little too close to the vest; a less literal director might have made this cracklingly good, not merely diverting. The Blu-ray transfer is fine; extras are Berger’s commentary and a making-of featurette.

Hard Wood 

(Severin)

Ed Wood was the inept filmmaker who made Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, two of the worst pictures ever—but at the end of his career, in the 1970s, he made a few X-rated sex flicks that this three-disc set collects. Straightforward and explicit, Necromania, The Only House in Town and The Young Marrieds show that maybe Wood missed out on his calling; he’s a competent pornographer, at least. The transfers are OK but nothing special; extras include softcore versions of the features, several porn loops, a non-sex feature, Shotgun Wedding, audio commentaries and interviews. 

Piece by Piece 

(Focus/Universal)

The eclectic career of music entrepreneur Pharrell Williams is recounted through animated Lego bricks by director Morgan Neville, who brings style and humor to this unique way of showcasing Williams’ own artistic path, of what Williams calls creating something new out of preexisting forms. There are beguiling sequences with cheeky voice actors playing themselves (among them Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Williams himself and even Neville) and if it never strays from the surface, the movie works as a fresh hybrid of biopic and documentary. The hi-def transfer is colorfully eye-popping; lone extra is a featurette of Williams and Neville interviews.

Scala! 

(Severin)

Scala, a beloved London repertory cinema from 1978 to 1993, showed films others didn’t—like an unauthorized screening of A Clockwork Orange, banned in England at the time—and Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s loving documentary portrait is a wistful but lively reminiscence for so many of the place’s employees and guests, people like directors John Waters and Mary Harron as well as artist Isaac Julien and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. Giles, who worked at the Scala, has access to a lot of memorabilia and other vintage footage that helps tell its long, winding and absorbing story. Two extra Blu-ray discs house several short films that were shown at Scala along with the documentary Splatterfest Exhumed as well as interviews and audio commentaries. 

December '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater Release of the Week 

Nightbitch 

(Searchlight)

Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s magical-realist novel about a mother whose post-partum depression manifests itself by transforming her into a raging canine at night literalizes this metaphorical conceit in such a way to make it risible rather than indelible. The movie often plays like the female version of the Mike Nichols-Jack Nicholson domesticated werewolf saga, Wolf, which is definitely not the intention. Amy Adams—who looks uncannily like Amy Schumer in several scenes—gives it her all, which isn’t enough; Scoot McNairy, as her husband, is barely tolerable, while the twins playing the terrible two-year-old, Arleigh and Emmett Snowden, are effective enough. Too bad Jessica Harper’s mysterious librarian isn’t given more screen time.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Chicago and Friends—Live at 55 

(Mercury Studios)

Once upon a time, there was a band named Chicago Transit Authority, and its first album, released in 1968, was a breath of fresh air in rock music, with a jazzy, bluesy, horn-oriented progressive sound. After a few more albums, the band morphed into the Chicago we know today, tuneful and musically elaborate hits giving way to sappy, MOR balladry thanks to singer Peter Cetera. This 2023 concert in Atlantic City celebrates that first album alongside all phases of the band’s career with a 2-1/2 hour set that features guest singers Robin Thicke, Chris Daughtry, Judith Hill and Voiceplay as well as slide guitarist-singer Robert Randolph and guitar slinger Steve Vai. The band—which still has a few original members left—is tight and well-oiled, and if some mawkishness is touched on (“Hard Habit to Break,” “You’re the Inspiration”), there are also sparkling versions of “Beginnings,” “Questions 67 and 68,” “25 or 6 to 4” and “Poem 58.” The hi-def video and audio are first-rate; extras include interviews with band members and guests.

Paris, Texas 

(Criterion)

Wim Wenders’ stylized 1984 road movie about a recluse who reconnects with his brother and son, then looks for his estranged wife in the bleak, wide landscapes of the American southwest, is a moody, one-of-a-kind masterpiece that’s alternatively introspective and expansive as well as intimate and detached. It’s also the summation of Wenders’ predilection for static longueurs, reaching its apogee in the final showdown between the hero (Harry Dean Stanton) and his wife (Nastassja Kinski)—this masterly sequence is perfectly written, directed, shot (by master cinematographer Robby Muller) and acted. Criterion’s UHD transfer, while flawed, gives Muller’s wondrous photography even further elevation; extras include Wenders’ commentary, deleted scenes, and interviews with Wenders, Muller, Stanton, composer Ry Cooder, novelist Patricia Highsmith and actors Peter Falk, Dennis Hopper and Hanns Zischler.

2020 Texas Gladiators 

(Severin)

Italian schlockmeister Joe D’Amato may have outdone himself with this elaborate 1983 futuristic farrago set in a postapocalyptic southwest U.S. populated by marauding gangs, with only small bands of brave rangers who can put up a fight against them. The action set pieces are competently handled, and it’s lively if exceedingly choppy throughout; there’s even a charming actress named Geretta Geretta, who unfortunately doesn’t get much screen time. The UHD transfer looks impressive; there’s also a Blu-ray of the film that includes interviews with Geretta and D’Aamto as well as a soundtrack CD.

The Wild Robot 

(Dreamworks/Universal)

Based on Peter Brown’s bestselling 2016 kids’ novel. writer-director Chris Sanders has fashioned a crowd-pleasing if sentimental sci-fi journey of discovery and tolerance as a robot is discovered on a distant island by wild animals of all kinds—it soon learns enough to survive and even live harmoniously with other creatures. The beautifully rendered animation looks simply spectacular in 4K; there’s a Blu-ray of the film included, and both discs have many extras, including a commentary, an alternate opening with Sanders commentary and several featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

All the Haunts Be Ours—A Compendium of Folk Horror, Volume 2 

(Severin)

This second volume of Severin’s boxed set series encompassing international folk-horror filmmaking is yet another tantalizing mixed bag: for every intriguing or disturbing entry, there are several that don’t reach their potential. The standouts are Slovak master Juraj Herz’s brilliant and unsettling double feature: Beauty and the Beast (1978), starring the exquisite Zdena Studenková as the naïve beauty, and The Ninth Heart (1979), set in a sinister world of marionettes. Also worthwhile are Polish director Marcin Wrona’s Demon (2015) and British director John Llewellyn Moxey’s The City of the Dead (1960), the latter starring Christopher Lee. There are 24 feature films on 13 discs, all lovingly restored, for the most part; voluminous extras include audio commentaries, interviews, short films, contextual intros and video essays.

Dario Argento’s Deep Cuts 

(Severin)

Giallo master Dario Argento—still around at age 84—made several horror classics, but this four-disc set contains works for Italian TV: discs one and two showcase Door Into Darkness, the 1973 anthology series for which he was producer and host, and whose episodes are of the hit-or-miss variety; disc three features segments from the mystery series Night Shift; and disc four comprises the TV movie Dario Argento’s Nightmares. Argento cultists and completists will love this, but others might rather stick with Suspiria or Opera. The quality of the transfers is variable, considering the video sources; the many extras include audio commentaries, interviews, and the feature documentaries Dario Argento: My Cinema I and II and Dario Argento: Master of Horror.

Never Let Go 

(Lionsgate)

This disappointingly schlocky horror film stars a game Halle Berry, who does what she can with the impossible role of Mother, a woman trying to protect her two young sons from something called the Evil while living in a remote shack in the woods—but are they really the lone survivors of an apocalypse or is she mad? Director Alexandre Aja and writers KC Coughlin and Ryan Grassby try and have it both ways as visits by malevolent spirits pile up, but the ending reveal is less purposeful than mechanical. Alongside Berry, both Percy Daggs IV and Anthony B. Jenkins are irreproachable as the boys, which helps a bit. There’s an excellent Blu-ray transfer; extras include featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.

Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus 

(Janus Contemporaries)

Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto—best known for his Oscar-winning score for The Last Emperor (1987) as well as music for films like Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) and Monster (2023), his final score—died in 2023 at age 71, and this intimate portrait by his son Neo Sora is a rewarding record of Sakamoto’s final performance, just him at the playing several of his meditative keyboard pieces. I personally find much of this music repetitive and anything but transfixing, but the context of a sick man playing one last time is undeniably moving, and, shot in exquisite B&W by cinematographer Bill Kirstein, this plays as the ultimate tribute to a beloved artist. The film looks superb on Blu; the lone extra is an interview with Sora and Kirstein.

Streaming Release of the Week

Mudbrick 

(Gravitas Ventures)

Nikola Petrović’s stark melodrama set in rural Serbia follows a prodigal son returning to his home village and finding that the ghosts of his family’s past are still present as an unbearable cycle of malevolence and tragedy continues, with fatal consequences. Although this irredeemably gloomy film is exceptionally well-made and acted, there’s only so much Slavic pain and treachery that can be endured—even 90 minutes is too much.

DVD Release of the Week 

Much Ado About Dying 

(First Run)

Simon Chambers’ moving and intensely personal documentary follows his eccentric Uncle David, whom Chambers chronicles for several years after he gets an email from David asking him to come over because he is “dying.” Chambers shows David as a lively, performative character who quotes Shakespeare speeches (King Lear is a special favorite) but remains riveting throughout. It’s an often difficult watch, but it’s filled with humor and empathy that makes this positively life-affirming, despite the fact that we are watching an elderly man suffering greatly, at least physically, before dying. 

Off-Broadway Review—Jessica Goldberg’s “Babe” with Marisa Tomei

Babe

Written by Jessica Goldberg; directed by Scott Elliott

Performances through December 22, 2024

The New Group @ Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

thenewgroup.org

Marisa Tomei in Babe (photo: Monique Carboni)

Jessica Goldberg’s Babe records the interaction among a trio of characters in an independent record label’s office. Gus is the infamously abrasive founder who pines for the good old days and shrugs off being #MeToo’ed; Abigail is his loyal right hand for decades who might be the power behind the throne; and Katharine is a young new hire who immediately becomes a thorn in their sides.

Goldberg touches on pertinent—and, sadly, prevalent—themes that still dog the music business, notably the good old boys’ network that someone like Abigail has had to delicately navigate. But, although Goldberg gives her a familiar backstory—Abigail signed and had an intimate relationship with a singer named Kat Wonder, who became a huge star in the ‘90s before succumbing to her demons and dying far too young—it remains on the surface, even with a few flashbacks shoehorned in that bring Kat back. 

That’s Babe’s biggest problem—all its characters are merely sketched in, underdeveloped. Their interactions and verbal showdowns are entertaining (Goldberg has an ear for clever dialogue) but dramatically insufficient; there’s never a feeling that something weighty is at stake. Katharine is simply a catalyst for Abigail to grapple with her professional relationship with Gus after he’s finally canned for blatant and unapologetic sexism. Abigail takes over but now must deal with the fallout, or even take the blame, for years of such policies. Yet even this potentially interesting twist is given short shrift. 

Scott Elliott’s adroit direction, on Derek McLane’s nicely appointed set, smooths out some of the rough edges yet can’t erase the sense that Babe is merely an 85-minute demo for a more in-depth, dare I say longer, study. As Gus, Arliss Howard is properly grotesque and frequently hilarious, while Gracie McGraw plays Katharine bluntly and without much distinction, which also describes her few scenes as Kat Wonder.

As for Marisa Tomei, this resourceful actress does much right, like subtly showing the effects of being Gus’ second in command for so long. Abigail also has cancer (of course she does!), and the short scenes of her post-chemo are the play’s most effective, thanks to Tomei’s ability to look genuinely sick and vulnerable. But only at the end, when Abigail exhilaratingly lets loose as another of Kat’s tunes (by the guitar-driven trio BETTY) plays, do character and performer finally transcend the material.

2024 New York Film Festival Roundup

62nd New York Film Festival 

September 27-October 14, 2024

filmlinc.org

At the 62nd annual New York Film Festival, both the opening night selection, RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys, and centerpiece entry, Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door, will open in theaters soon. I caught the closing night film (Steve McQueen’s Blitz) along with a selection of features and documentaries from the Main Slate and Spotlight sections. 

Blitz

Blitz (Apple +, now streaming)

Steve McQueen’s latest is a surprisingly conventional war movie about the travails of George (Elliott Heffernan), a young boy who hops off the train after his mother Rita (Saiorse Ronan) sends him away to keep him safe from the nightly Nazi bombing raids. What begins as an intimate look at a family separated by war soon morphs into a risible journey through the underbelly of a shattered London—the implausibilities begin when George escapes much too easily, and he witnesses far more extreme behavior than any young boy would be able to handle. At least Heffernan and Ronan (an actress incapable of a false note in her performances) give this disjointed and hysterical film a solid center, for what it’s worth.

Anora

Anora (Neon, in theaters)

Sean Baker’s film won the Palme d’or at Cannes, which says more about the Cannes jury than it does about the film, an overlong and cartoonish rom-com about Brighton Beach stripper Anora, who falls for the supposed charms of Vanya, a Russian mobster’s immature son, who—after throwing money at her and giving her satisfying sex—flies her to Vegas for a quickie wedding. Back in his dad’s Brooklyn mansion, their ignorantly blissful life together comes crashing down. Baker plays much of this as a ridiculously vulgar and childish farce, especially when the bumbling gangsters and foul-mouthed Anora fight, then try and track down Vanya after he runs away. An excruciating 135 minutes, Baker’s film thinks it’s smarter than it is—and, even though Mikey Madison makes a lively Anora, even she can’t get this to the finish line, especially after Anora has sex with the only mobster who treats her halfway decently. There are some funny and even touching moments, but these are unfortunately hemmed in by so many less felicitous ones.

Transamazonia

Transamazonia 

The lone survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon rainforest years earlier, teenage Rebecca is a faith healer there under the aegis of her preacher dad Lawrence in Pia Marais’ often startling drama about morality, faith, environmentalism and exploitation. Things come to a head when loggers encroach on Indigenous lands and Rebecca is asked by the logging company manager to use her healing powers on his wife, who is in a coma. Helena Zengel’s mesmerizing portrayal of Rebecca is the complex center of this thought-provoking film, shot with moody chiaroscuro by Mathieu de Montgrand.

Emilia Pérez

Emilia Pérez (Netflix, now streaming)

Director Jacques Audiard has never shied away from overbaked premises: his latest follows a trans woman who was the leader of a Mexican crime cartel and wants to reenter her children’s lives after leaving them behind to explore her new life. It’s filled with typical Audiard flourishes, many of which are borderline risible, like the musical numbers that put a further strain on an already overstuffed film. It’s up to the cast to make something credible out of this, and Zoe Saldana (as Rita, the lawyer who helps Emilia) gives the best performance of her career, showing off a lithe expressiveness during her song and dance routines. Karla Sofía Gascón as Emilia is also quite a powerhouse, and even Selena Gomez—as Juan turned Emilia’s wife Jessi—gives a sympathetic portrayal. Audiard bites off more than he can chew, but despite the transgressions, his film remains a watchable mess.

A Traveler’s Needs 

A Traveler’s Needs (Cinema Guild, in theaters)

Korean director Hong Sangsoo is taste I’ve yet to acquire: his latest meandering, deadpan feature tells a wisp of a story about a middle-aged language tutor (the redoubtable Isabelle Huppert) who lives in a Seoul suburb and crosses paths with a variety of bemused locals. For 90 minutes, that’s pretty much all that happens, all so Sangsoo can make belabored, minor comic points and move on. The final sequence is lovely in its quiet way, but mostly the film wears out its welcome, even with Huppert at her most engaging.

TWST/Things We Said Today

TWST/Things We Said Today 

Romanian director Andrei Ujică transforms documentary footage into this quasi-fictional feature that takes as its starting point the Beatles’ record-breaking concert at Shea Stadium on a hot summer night in 1965. The footage includes the Fab Four giving as good as they get during an airport news conference along with the Watts riots in L.A., which also happened that week. Too bad Ujică can’t leave well enough alone; into this time capsule he inserts a silly story of two young people who fall for each other that fateful weekend. Superimposing these characters on the film frames has a ghost-like charm, yet it also detracts from the archival chronicle by allowing nonentities to elbow their way in.

Suburban Fury 

Suburban Fury 

Director Robinson Devor’s compelling portrait of Sara Jane Moore—who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975—is an audacious pseudo-documentary centered by an interview with Moore (still vital and outspoken in her 90s), who discusses how her extremist actions led to that horrible moment, for which she spent 32 years in prison. Devor might be too clever for his own good: his film is sometimes nearly as enervating as it is unnerving (especially its reenactments), but the off-kilter, hyper-realistic feel adroitly underscores Moore’s bizarre, uniquely American life. 

Dahomey

Dahomey (MUBI, in theaters)

Mati Diop’s extraordinarily original film follows the artistic treasures from the former West African kingdom of Dahomey (now Benin) being repatriated from the French museum that held them for more than a century. In 67 packed minutes, Diop’s themes of colonization and racism are married to her conceit to have a statue of Dahomey’s King Ghezo narrate with a deep, eerie, electronically enhanced voice, which allows the artifacts to be more than simply objects. Her closely observed study climaxes with a conservation among mostly young Benin natives, who argue whether this is mere tokenism (only 26 objects returned out of thousands?) or whether it’s a real opening to return more cultural treasures. 

Youth (Homecoming) 

Youth (Hard Times) 

Youth (Homecoming) (Icarus Films, in theaters)

Chinese director Wang Bing concludes his monumental documentary trilogy about life among young textile workers with the second and third parts of Youth—the first part, Spring, premiered last year. These perceptive chronicles show these people hard at work in the city of Zhili, far from their hometowns. Like Spring, Hard Times records the backbreaking repetition of their jobs and the casual exploitation by the shop owners. Homecoming records return visits to see family and friends (and even get married and have a baby) during the holidays. The cumulative power of these three vérité films—nearly nine hours in all—immerses viewers in this very specific world.