July '26 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week 

Obsession 

(Universal)

The biggest surprise at this year’s box office so far has been this low-budget horror black comedy, written and directed by comedian/YouTuber Curry Barker, who turns a decent premise for a Twilight Zone episode into an interminable feature that is far less clever than it thinks. When music-store employee Bear makes a wish that his attractive coworker Nikki will fall for him, it leads to crudely shocking but entirely predictable consequences. There are a couple of cheap jump scares, including one telegraphed so blatantly I’m surprised anybody fell for it, while the haphazard plotting and nonexistent characterizations don’t help. Michael Johnston makes a one-note Bear, while Inde Navarrette’s shrill Nikki scores mainly because her opposite number is so invisible. Here’s hoping we don’t get a run on even worse low-budget horror comedies as producers attempt to chase box-office glory. 

In-Theater Releases of the Week

Couture 

(Vertical Releasing)

French director Anna Winocour’s new film brings together intimate stories of three women during Paris Fashion Week: Maxine, an American director making a video; Ada, an African model who’s left home to make her mark; and Angèle, a local makeup artist. As she jumps around this trio’s personal stories, there are moments of insight, but when Maxine gets a cancer diagnosis, the film gets knocked severely out of whack, and the travails of Ada and Angèle come off as relatively trivial. Still, it’s beautifully shot and acted, especially by Angelina Jolie, whose Maxine has a cancer scare that recalls her own decision to have a double mastectomy. It’s almost exploitative, but in Winocour and Jolie’s hands, it’s emotional without becoming melodramatic.

For the Love of a Woman 

(Panorama Films)

In this heavyhanded if earnest drama set in the 1970s, Esther travels to Israel after her mother dies to learn about a closely held family secret, which involves a free-spirited woman named Yehudit, a settler in a rural village in 1930s who affects the live of three local men. Director Guido Chiesa awkwardly handles the film’s flashback structure, and his and Nicoletta Micheli’s script injects sentimentality into what should have been a straightforwardly incisive study of hidden truths. Still, the performances of Mili Avital as Esther and Ana Elaru as the tough-as-nails Yehudit make this watchable throughout.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Maurice 

(Cohen Film Collection)

Following their international breakthrough, 1986’s A Room with a View, the next year director James Ivory and producer Ismael Merchant daringly tackled another Forster novel (with a script by Ivory and Kit Hesketh-Harvey), this one about the intimate relationship between Maurice and Clive, two young men in the stiflingly repressive culture of Edwardian England. The leisurely 140-minute film drags at times but the atmosphere and details are unerringly right. So is the acting from James Wilby (Maurice) and Hugh Grant (Clive) as well as Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow and Billie Whitelaw, among others in a superb supporting cast. The film looks ravishing in 4K; extras include a commentary on the 4K disc and, on the accompanying Blu-rays, the film, alternate takes/deleted scenes with Ivory commentary, interview/Q&A with Ivory and cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, making-of featurette and a conversation between Ivory and director Tom McCarthy. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Don’t Play With Fire 

(Cult Epics)

Hong Kong master Tsui Hark’s bleak 1980 drama follows three nihilistic teens who are blackmailed by a cunning young woman into committing further acts of violence after she witnesses them set off a bomb in a movie theater. And that’s just the beginning: be warned that there are scenes here that might make some viewers close their eyes, from the opening images of a mouse to a cat being thrown off a balcony—but Hark’s fast-paced immersion in this sordid world is ultimately impossible to look away from. Alongside the uncensored international version, this set includes the banned Chinese version and English dubbed version, a commentary, and interviews with Hark, two actors, an assistant director and Hark’s cowriter.

A Game for Six Lovers 

(Icarus Films)

Jacques Doniol-Valcroze’s 1960 roundelay, which follows three mostly mismatched couples at an imposing French chateau, proves that not all French New Wave directors were masters of their craft:  the director-writer crafted a dull-edged, often tone-deaf film that wavers between comedy and tragedy and wastes a game cast (especially Bernadette Lafont, Alexandra Stewart, and Francoise Brion, who was also Doniol-Valcroze’s wife), Roger Fellous’ lovely B&W cinematography and Serge Gainsbourg’s attractive score. The film looks great in hi-def; lone extra is a 1965 short also starring Lafont, The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora, directed by Jeanne Barbillon.

CD Release of the Week 

Nadia Boulanger—La ville morte 

(Pentatone)

Although French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger was an important teacher to countless prominent European and American composers, she was also a composer (as was her talented sister, Lili, whose death at age 24 in 1918 is one of the great tragedies in music history). Nadia—who died at age 92 in 1979—wrote this opera between 1909 and 1913 with fellow French composer Raoul Pugno (who may also have been her lover), based on the text of a play by Gabriele D’Annunzio. The opera follows an archeologist, his wife, his sister and a colleague amid Greek ruins—with more than a little thematic (and musical) resemblance to Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Since the orchestration did not survive, it’s been reconstructed, and this world-premiere recording by the Talea Ensemble led by Neal Goren gives a good sense of its intimacy and restraint. The impassioned vocal performances by the quartet of soloists—soprano Melissa Harvey, mezzo Laurie Rubin, tenor Joshua Dennis and baritone Jarell Williams—are unimpeachable.