January '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Maestro 

(Netflix)

That Bradley Cooper’s biopic about conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein is a labor of love is not in doubt; details are right, from Cooper’s looking amazingly like Bernstein to his time spent on the podium, particularly an excerpt from Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony that was shot in Ely Cathedral in England, where it was actually performed. But concentrating on such minutiae sucks the life out of Maestro, since Cooper seems to be giving a Saturday Night Live impression of Lenny, and his film plays like a greatest-hits list of scenes only about his musical career and volatile marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre. That the film’s Lenny and Felicia are apolitical is inexcusable whitewashing; even a brief scene would have gone a long way toward making this portrait more honest. Still, Carey Mulligan gives another of her effortlessly spellbinding performances as Felicia, keeping the film on course whenever Cooper the director goes off the rails, visually and narratively.

Household Saints 

(Kino Lorber)

As long as she sticks to a realistic portrait of two immigrant families in New York’s Little Italy from the 1940 to the ’60s, Nancy Savoca’s 1993 film is richly illuminating. But when she attempts to get fancy after the main plot kicks in—the daughter, Teresa, of the main couple, Joseph Santangelo and Catherine, wants to devote the rest of her life to Jesus Christ—Savoca is unsure whether to play it straight or for laughs. She ends up trying to do both, but the combination makes for an uneasy and bumpy couple of hours. Fortunately, Savoca’s marvelous cast, headed by Tracey Ullmann (Catherine), Vincent d’Onofrio (Joseph) and particularly Lily Taylor (Teresa), rescues the movie from becoming too maudlin.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

The Devil’s Partner 

(Film Masters)

Another in a series of restored and rediscovered lost “classics” comprises two fun genre exercises, starting with Charles R. Rondeau’s The Devil’s Partner, a truly weird attempt at supernatural thriller about an old man whose pact with the devil allows him to return as a malevolent young man. There’s also another 1960 “gem,” Roger Corman’s Creature From the Haunted Sea, about a monster of the deep preying on divers and adventure seekers. Both films are cheaply made but entertaining in spite of their obvious shortcomings. They both look fine in hi-def; extras include the theatrical and TV versions of both films, commentaries on both films, an interview with Corman and the third episode in a series about Corman and his cohort, Hollywood Intruders: The Filmgroup Story.

DVD Release of the Week

Neil Diamond—The Thank You Australia Concert, Live 1976 

(Mercury)

Neil Diamond ended his 1976 Australian tour with an outdoor concert for tens of thousands of his fans that was televised on Australian TV; this DVD re-release of the nearly two-hour performance presents it mostly uncut (unlike its recent, much shorter showing on PBS). Many of Diamond’s most enduring songs are featured in energetic performances, including “Holly Holy,” “I Am I Said,” “Crackling Rosie,” and “Sweet Caroline”—the latter happily long before it was ruined by fans as a mindless singalong. The only dull moments come courtesy a suite of tunes from the Jonathan Livingston Seagull soundtrack, but that doesn’t dim the luster of an otherwise terrific concert. Video and audio are acceptable but unremarkable; extras are footage of Diamond performing the song “Morningside”; a substantial interview with Diamond for Australian TV; an intro by David Frost; and amusing on-stage commercials by Diamond during the show.

CD Release of the Week 

Ruby Hughes—End of My Days 

(BIS)

Welsh soprano Ruby Hughes returns with another beautifully curated collection of songs, following her strong recital disc Echo from 2022. This time, she and the members of the Manchester Collective (a shape-shifting ensemble) created this program during the first round of COVID lockdowns in hopes of performing it to uplift audiences. The songs, beginning with Errollyn Wallen’s mournful but sturdy “End of My Days,” are both reticent and hopeful, perfectly mirroring the conflicting emotions of that time. Composers as varied as John Dowland, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Mahler, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel are heard from, all brilliantly played by the collective and sung with her usual expressiveness by Hughes, especially on the benediction of a finale, Deborah Pritchard’s “Peace.”