July '22 Digital Week III

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Angel Heart 

(Lionsgate)

Alan Parker’s brooding 1987 horror film, based on William Hjortsberg’s novel Falling Angel, has a labyrinthine plot consisting of demons, voodoo, murder, incest and madness that risks becoming silly and risible but somehow remains strong, even thrilling stuff. Mickey Rourke gives one of his most intense performances as a NYC private eye whose latest case unfolds strangely, culminating in a New Orleans that’s both unrecognizable and familiar; Robert DeNiro as the creepy antagonist and Lisa Bonet as the mysterious love interest (her and Rourke’s celebrated sex scene is present in all its glory in this unrated version) provide excellent support. Parker’s indelible visuals (Michael Seresin’s photography and Gerry Hambling’s editing are first-rate) look spectacular and unsettling in 4K; extras on the 4K and Blu-ray discs include Parker’s commentary and interviews; Rourke and Bonet archival interviews; deleted scenes; and making-of featurettes.

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Orders from Above 

(Gravitas Ventures)

Vir Srinivis’ dry, stagy account of war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s interrogation by Israeli police officer Avner Less after his capture in Argentina and return to Israel for trial doesn’t add much to what we already know about the infamous Nazi’s defense that he was just following orders. Peter J. Donnelly (Eichmann) and Richard Cotter (Less) are properly intense, but even with such built-in dramatic material, Srinivis doesn’t do much more with it than make it straightforward and less than compelling.

She Will 

(IFC Midnight) 

In Charlotte Colbert’s sporadically creepy horror debut, Alice Krige plays Veronica, an aging actress who checks into a remote Scottish retreat with her assistant to recover from major surgery and soon finds that the local area, where witches were burned centuries ago, triggers her own imaginings of vengeance. Writer-director Colbert’s tantalizing setup yields to a bumpy ride where only certain moments come alive in an original way—Krige and Kota Eberhardt (assistant) give full-throated portrayals, but the movie wastes such luminaries as Malcolm McDowell and Rupert Everett while falling back on familiar tropes from the likes of The Wicker Man.

Blu-Ray Releases of the Week

The Adventures of Don Juan 

(Warner Archive)

Of course, it’s Errol Flynn playing the swashbuckling, seductive Don Juan in this entertaining 1948 adventure, directed by Vincent Sherman, about how the great ladies’ man meets his match in the form of Queen Margaret of Spain, who assigns him to teach sword fighting when he returns home after a diplomatic fracas in England. This colorful and sweeping piece of fun finds Flynn—never the subtlest actor—in his element as a movie star, and the supporting cast includes Viveca Lindfors as the Queen. There’s a superb Blu-ray transfer whose colors really pop; extras include an audio commentary and vintage featurettes, short and cartoon.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands 

(Film Movement Classics)

In Bruno Barreto’s ramshackle 1976 romantic comedy, Sonia Braga burns a hole in the screen as a young widow who, while grieving her cheating but sexually fulfilling dead husband, gets remarried to a good but dull pharmacist, which causes dead hubby’s spirit to return and once again fulfill her sexually. Although way overlong at two hours, Barreto’s movie has an unabashed erotic spirit, and Braga began her multi-decade international career of renown with her sexy, free-spirited, uninhibited performance. Too bad the new hi-def transfer leaves something to be desired; extras are a Barreto commentary and vintage making-of featurette. 

Falstaff 

(Dynamic)

Giuseppe Verdi’s enchanting final opera, based on Shakespeare’s “Merry Wives of Windsor,” still holds the stage humorously in this 2021 Florence staging by director Sven-Eric Bechtolf. The great character of Falstaff’s comedic gravitas is well-acted by Michael Volle, but it’s the superb stable of women surrounding him that’s led by Ailyn Perez’s hilarious Alice Ford and Francesca Boncompagni’s bewitching Nannetta. John Eliot Gardiner ably leads the fine orchestra and chorus; both hi-def video and audio are exemplary.

Nathalie… 

(Cohen Film Collection)

In Anne Fontaine’s typically elegant 2003 drama, Fanny Ardant plays the wife of philanderer Gerard Depardieu; Ardant hires stripper/call girl Emmanuelle Beart to seduce her husband and report back to her with every detail. Beart complies—until Ardant realizes that the sexual manipulations may have spiraled beyond her control. Although there’s something familiar, even old-fashioned, about the setup, Fontaine’s execution is subtle and mature, and the three stars—particularly the alluring Beart—are in superb form throughout. There’s a fine hi-def transfer.

The Passenger 

(Naxos)

Polish-Russian composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s shattering 1968 opera about the Holocaust’s devastating fallout on its survivors—particularly a former camp guard who recognizes one of the female  prisoners on board a cruise ship they are on—receives a fine 2021 staging from Austria’s Oper Graz by director Nadja Loschky. Weinberg’s emotional music rawly exposes the post-war wounds of characters precisely rendered from Zofia Posmysz’s original novella (also the basis of the great director Andrzej Munk’s last film before his premature death in 1961). The Grazer Orchestra, under conductor Roland Kluttig, and the singers, both the soloists and the Graz Chorus, are top-notch; hi-def video and audio are excellent.

DVD Release of the Week 

The Gilded Age 

(HBO/Warner Bros)

After his Downton Abbey triumph, Julian Fellowes returns with a series about the haves and have-nots in late 1880s New York City, following the young Marian (Louisa Jacobson, a Meryl Streep daughter), who arrives in Manhattan to be chaperoned by her aunts Agnes (Christine Baranski) and Ada (Cynthia Nixon), as much of the upper crust tries to keep the upwardly mobile upstart Bertha (Carrie Coon) from taking her place among the privileged. The 10-episode season’s sumptuous costumes and arresting set design notwithstanding, except for Baranski’s sardonic Agnes, those populating the mansions are relatively uninteresting. A slew of theater performers (Audra McDonald, Bill Irwin, Kelli O’Hara, Donna Murphy, and Michael Cerveris, for starters) unfortunately make little impact. There are several on-set featurettes and interviews.

Theater Review: Cirque du Soleil's New Ice Show, "Crystal"

Crystal 

Cirque du Soleil

July 21-24, 2022

UBS Arena, Elmont, L.I.

European tour, September 2022-February 2023

cirquedusoleil.com/crystal

I’ve previously seen two Cirque du Soleil shows—The Beatles LOVE, in Las Vegas in 2007, and Wintuk, the troupe’s ill-fated holiday show, in New York the following year—so I knew what to expect from Crystal, the Cirque’s first ice show: dazzling acrobatics, humorous clowns, impressive jugglers and marvelous stagecraft. And that is what we got—as my wife said, “This isn’t our mothers’ ice capades.”

The final "ballroom" sequence in Cirque du Soleil's Crystal
(photo: Matt Beard)

Crystal is about the eponymous creative girl with a tumultuous mind, and she dreams up (through writing, which may confuse some of the younger attendees, especially in a sequence featuring, of all things, typewriters) several fanciful, dream-like sequences that tumble one after another onto the ice. Though narratively choppy, it is, as usual with Cirque du Soleil performances, the visual dazzlement that matters: even if it seems to be too much, there’s no doubt you won’t be bored watching the two-plus hour show.

Cirque du Soleil shows have always been about astounding physical feats, and Crystal has the group’s usual incredible array of acrobats on swings or even precariously balanced chairs, jumping, teetering, twisting, and turning. (The final "ballroom" pas de deux, between Crystal and her suitor, on ropes above the ice, might be the single most memorable moment in any Cirque show I’ve seen.) 

The ice adds more excitement and danger, as the fast-skating performers leap through the air, spin around the rink with unbelievable agility, and even—in one silly but amusing sequence—play hockey, with Crystal skating around in an Islanders jersey at one point. And if you never thought you’d ever see tap dancing on skates, well, here’s your chance.

The hockey acrobats of Crystal 
(photo: Matt Beard)

Crystal is also an audiovisual bath to immerse oneself in. The atmospheric music—composed by Maxim Lepage—includes covers of pop songs by the likes of Rhianna and U2, whose “Beautiful Day” makes a satisfyingly upbeat closer. A violinist, guitarist and pianist all make on-ice appearances as well. Then there’s the visual design team, especially the costumes and lighting, which keeps wowing the audience with each subsequent scene. 

My first thought was that such an overstuffed show would be too much for the children in the audience, but to the contrary, they seemed enthralled and were watching intently throughout Crystal. Cirque du Soleil’s own motto could well be, to steal a phrase from the most famous of Cirque collaborators, “a splendid time is guaranteed for all.”

July '22 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Marx Can Wait 

(Strand Releasing) 

In this new documentary from Italian master Marco Bellocchio—who has made indelible films for the past six decades, from 1965’s Fists in the Pocket to 2019’s The Traitor—the director turns his camera on his own family, specifically his twin brother Camillo, who killed himself at age 29 in 1968. That devastating event still has reverberations for the entire family, as Bellocchio  interviews his surviving siblings—two sisters and two brothers—and, amid relevant clips from his films (several of which present fraught mother-son relationships), we discover that his entire career has been one long, penetrating psychological study of family complexities.

From Where They Stood 

(Greenwich Entertainment) 

This artful documentary by Christophe Cognet is a different kind of Holocaust film, exploring a series of photographs taken by death camp inmates themselves, which sparks a subtle recounting of how these surreptitious photographs are vital evidence into brutal torture and murder. Some might find it difficult to watch these clinically fascinating explorations, especially the horrifically indelible opening and closing sequences of bone fragments, but this is an important addition to the necessary body of films that preserve such history.

Girls to Buy 

(VMI Worldwide)

In Maria Sadowska’s playful black comedy reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street, Paulina Galazka gives a star-making performance as Emi, a young woman from a small Polish town who becomes wealthy running an exclusive escort service for rich and powerful men. At 135 minutes, the movie wears out its welcome, repeatedly dramatizing debauched parties and the emotional difficulties and physical distress of the women: again, the obvious role model is the Scorsese film’s morally fuzzy display of immoral behavior as glorious, until it isn’t (and Galazka does look like Margot Robbie). But Scorsese did more with his story than Sadowska ultimately does with hers.

Living Wine 

(Abramamora) 

The pivot toward natural winemaking is the focus of Lori Miller’s illuminating documentary chronicle of four wine producers in California who decide that natural—using whatever grapes are grown annually, no additives, no pesticides, using traditional methods—is preferable and, it’s hoped, profitable. There are harrowing moments as wildfires come very close to destroying crops and even buildings, but there’s an underlying hope that climate change might be mitigated by the ways these wine producers are handling their businesses. 

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Raging Bull 

(Criterion)

Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro’s cinematic collaborations reached their apogee with the underrated The King of Comedy, but their previous film together, this 1980 biopic about boxer Jake LaMotta, got all the love, including an Oscar for DeNiro as best actor. However—and I know this is heresy—for all the technical brilliance on display, from the B&W camerawork to the razor-sharp editing and the towering performances by DeNiro and then-newcomers Joe Pesci and Cathy Moriarty, there remains a hollowness at its core, a cipher in search of illumination. Still, it certainly looks spectacular in all its gritty and grainy glory on this new Criterion 4K/UHD disc; there’s an accompanying Blu-ray disc and many extras including three audio commentaries, archival interviews and featurettes as well as new video essays.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Frisco Kid 

(Warner Archive)

Despite a sparkling pedigree—director Robert Aldrich, stars Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford and a great storyline—this 1979 western, about a Polish rabbi circa 1850 who comes to the U.S. to assume a San Francisco congregation but who falls in with a bank robber, misadventures ensuing, is fairly mild both comically and dramatically. There’s engaging byplay between Ford and Wilder (Wilder is a gem in a role that could have easily been a dull caricature) but Aldrich rarely coalesces the whole thing into a satisfying buddy story. There’s a superior hi-def transfer.

Summertime 

(Criterion)

In David Lean’s gorgeously-shot 1955 Technicolor romance, Katharine Hepburn gives a winning portrayal of a single, middle-aged American who doesn’t expect to find love while in Venice but who falls for a local antique shop owner, played charmingly by Rossano Brazzi. Lean’s ravishing use of color and Venice locations, along with Hepburn and Brazzi, make this far more entertaining and uplifting than one would expect. The colors of the film and of the Veneto shimmer on Blu-ray; extras include a 1963 Lean interview, 1988 audio interview with cinematographer Jack Hildyard and a new interview with historian Melanie Williams.

DVD Release of the Week

Yellowjackets—Complete 1st Season 

(CBS/Paramount)

While its premise is interesting—the survivors of a plane crash involving a girls’ high school soccer team are revisited more than two decades later—the execution of this series’ first season unearths seemingly every cliché imaginable, particularly the antagonisms between the characters that exist for mere purposes of dramatic irony. Although the cast is unbeatable—Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey and Juliette Lewis head the adult cast, while Sammi Hanratty and Sophie Nélisse superbly play the Ricci and Lynskey characters as teens—but the script and direction of these 10 episodes lacks originality and invention. Extras are two behind-the-scenes featurettes.

July '22 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Downton Abbey—A New Era 

(Universal)

The second big-screen drama from the popular PBS series plays like the earlier film, as a two-hour episode of the show, but creator-writer Julian Fellowes adds enough wrinkles and variations to make it more enjoyable: there’s a trek to the south of France, where Robert Crawley (Hugh Bonneville) might discover a surprise about his paternity; and the family has allowed a film crew to shoot a silent feature at Downton (it’s 1928) to help fund needed mansion upkeep. The large cast is perfect, as always, with a sardonic Maggie Smith, in her swan song as matriarch Dowager Countess, leading the way. The mansion and its grounds look spectacular in ultra hi-def; extras include on-set featurettes and interviews, along with director Richard Curtis’ chatty commentary.

Edge of Tomorrow 

(Warner Bros)

I doubt I’m  the first to label Doug Liman’s 2014 Tom Cruise vehicle as a sci-fi Groundhog Day: Cruise is part of a conscripted army slated to fight an extraterrestrial invasion force that’s annihilating Earth’s human population, and he must replay the training for the battle with the toughest soldier (played by Emily Blunt). It’s flashily done, and quite exciting at times, but there’s a sense that, even at a lean 110 minutes, it spins its wheels at about the hour mark; Liman, Cruise and Blunt keep pushing until it finally reaches the finish line. There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the accompanying Blu-ray includes the original extras from the initial release: featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Dreaming Walls—Inside the Chelsea Hotel 

(Magnolia)

Using an elliptical, visually eccentric style that mirrors the many famous and infamous inhabitants (from Dylan Thomas to  Bob Dylan) of the hallowed Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in Manhattan, directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt have created an impressionistic, dream-like documentary about an indelible part of 20th century arts and pop culture. We also hear from several current residents, who are dealing with the hotel renovations going on through amusing interactions with some of the workers. It all adds up to a lovely if melancholic journey through ghosts of the past and present.

Fair Game 

(Dark Star Pictures)

This 1986 action flick harkens back to the exploitative B movies of the ‘70s like Jackson County Jail and Gator Bait, as a young woman must handle a trio of brutish male attackers, showing her wiles (and curves) as she does. Director Mario Andreacchio, in his feature debut, has made a sleazy, silly adventure that displays the charms of leading lady Cassandra Delaney, who does the usual risible genre things but manages to fend off the men, who are even dumber than she. That Quentin Tarantino loves this movie tells you all you need to know about his taste.

Hallelujah—Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song 

(Sony Classics)

Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” has become a sort of all-purpose hymn, sung at memorials for everyone from celebrities and politicians to mass shooting victims—but, as directors Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine demonstrate in this intriguing biography, the song is just one part of Cohen’s long artistic journey. By following Cohen’s life and career, Hallelujah becomes a lot more than just an exploration of a single song, and that is the filmmakers’ finest achievement, using archival interviews with Cohen over decades as well as with friends, colleagues and to present a full-bodied portrait.

Monsieur Hire 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Another elegant, tense character study by French director Patrice Leconte, this 1989 chamber drama, based on a story by the great Belgian writer Georges Simenon, follows a loner who spies on his attractive female neighbor later finding himself a suspect in the murder of another young woman. With Leconte’s stylish direction and sublime acting by Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire, you nearly forget that this minutely detailed film is just a 79-minute shaggy-dog story that hinges on an implausible plot point. Here's hoping that we also get re-releases of Leconte’s dazzling followup features, The Hairdresser’s Husband and The Perfume of Yvonne.

Rubikon 

(IFC Midnight)

It’s the year 2056, and the earth has suddenly become largely uninhabitable due to a toxic fog, and those onboard an orbiting space station must decide whether to return and search for survivors or stay onboard and safe. Director Magdalena Lauritsch and her cowriter Jessica Lind set up their ambitious but derivative sci-fi adventure nicely, but although the characters populating the movie are interestingly differentiated (and well-acted by the cast), there’s soon nowhere to go—literally and figuratively. 

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Monstrous 

(Screen Media)

In Chris Sivertson’s tantalizing but ultimately frustrating horror flick, Christina Ricci beautifully gives it her all as a woman who, escaping an abusive husband, takes her young son to try and start a new life—but the monster her son sees, and her own unsettling visions, make her question whether she can. Siverton and writer Carol Chrest have made an unusually intimate thriller that measures a woman’s instability in the face of grief but too often takes half-measures that are only intermittently powerful—and the ending is easily guessed by anyone who’s seen similar movies. The film looks superb on Blu.

DVD Release of the Week 

Summers with Picasso 

(Icarus Films)

This disc pairs documentaries about Pablo Picasso in the south of France, where he spent summers with famous and not so famous friends, fellow artists and his muses: Francois Levy-Kuentz’s On the French Riviera with Man Ray and Picasso recounts a 1937 trip to Mougins, and Christian Tran’s Picasso and Sima, Antibes, 1946 is set in another resort town nine years later. Both films give rare glimpses of Picasso that are unusually intimate, a mixture of artistry and frivolity, with sympathetic portraits of mistresses Dora Maar (in 1937) and Francoise Gilot (who is interviewed for the Antibes film). There’s a plethora of stunning vintage photos, home movies and—most importantly—glimpses of colorful art. The lone extra is Guernica, Alain Resnais and Robert Hessens’ 1949 short about Picasso’s incendiary painting, also available on an Icarus Blu-ray with other Resnais shorts.

CD Releases of the Week

Boundless—Pablo Barragan and Sophie Pacini

(SWR2)

Spanish clarinetist Pablo Barragán and German pianist Sophie Pacini join forces for an illuminating, often exhilarating journey through 20th century chamber music. Each composer made the genre his own, from Leonard Bernstein’s jazzy 1941-2 work and Mieczysław Weinberg’s klezmer-inflected 1945 sonata to Francois Poulenc’s elegant, witty 1964 entry. Sergei Prokofiev’s 1943 flute sonata—transcribed for clarinet by Barragán and Kent Kennan—is filled with the great Soviet composer’s inventiveness and memorable melodies. Unsurprisingly, Barragán and Pacini sound spectacular together, both of them obviously at home in this music.

Coleridge-Taylor—Chamber Works 

(Chandos)

Finally published nearly a century after the composer’s untimely death at age 37 from pneumonia, these chamber works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor were written in 1893-94 while he was a student at the Royal College of Music in London. All three works—a piano trio, a piano quintet, and a nonet for piano, strings and winds that’s subtitled ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’—are indebted to Brahms and Schumann, but are no less attractive for that. They are performed with vigor and warmth by members of the versatile Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, bringing their most charming musical qualities to the fore.

Music Review: Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway with Vanessa Williams

Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway with Vanessa Williams

June 20, 2022

The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, NYC

thetownhall.org

Vanessa Williams at Seth Rudetsky's Broadway (photo: Sachyn Mital)

With a brilliant career that over the past three decades has seen her ascend to the top of the pop charts and star in several successful TV series and Broadway musicals, Vanessa Williams was a no-brainer as guest for the latest installment at the Town Hall of Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway. Both the host himself and the audience were in adoration mode for 90 minutes as Williams bantered easily with Rudetsky about her career and belted out several songs from her wide-ranging catalog.

Rudetsky is unequaled at being chatty, informative and always entertaining in his programs of conversation and musical performance with notable stage stars. Moving easily from the piano to the interlocutor’s chair and back, Rudetsky is knowledgeable, well-prepared and funny, putting his guests and audiences at ease. As a terrifically versatile pianist, he plays whatever is needed at the time. And with Williams, that ranged from Sondheim to Kander & Ebb to Disney.

The discussion—always enlightening, amusing, entertaining—ranged from Williams’ childhood (her mother, a music teacher, was in attendance a few rows from the stage) and college years at Syracuse, where she majored in musical theater, to winning the Miss America pageant and, after being stripped of her crown with only a short while left in her reign thanks to nude photos that were published in Penthouse magazine, her slow but steady rise to a triple threat singer-actress-dancer onstage, onscreen, on records and on TV.

Seth Rudetsky and Vanessa Williams (photo: Sychan Mital)

Punctuating the conservation were the irresistible songs: Rudetsky and Williams would walk over to the piano, and he would accompany her in, say, “Children Will Listen” from Into the Woods (in which she played the Witch in 2002), the title song from her smashing Broadway debut, replacing Chita Rivera in 1994 as the lead in Kiss of the Spider Woman, “Colors of the Wind” from the Disney movie Pocahontas, and—unsurprisingly, the final song of the night—her biggest radio hit, “Save the Best for Last.”

Williams is currently starring in the silly but hilarious play, POTUS, on Broadway, and at one point she invited her costar, Lilli Cooper, onstage. Cooper took over the conversation before belting a show-stopping “The Oldest Profession” from the Cy Coleman musical The Life—Cooper was amazing, but I couldn’t help thinking that Williams should have done another song or two instead. 

Although Cooper deserves her own showcase, next up for Seth Rudetsky’s Broadway at the Town Hall is the great Jane Krakowski on September 12.