September '21 Digital Week IV

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

A Clockwork Orange 

(Warner Bros)

Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 classic remains as unsettling and provocative as it was when released 50 years ago. With a spectacular physical performance from Malcolm McDowell as the ultimate anti-hero, Kubrick revs up his sardonic sense of humor and dazzling visual and aural bravura (the soundtrack is one of the most eclectic yet appropriate ever cobbled together, from electronically enhanced Beethoven to McDowell’s seminal take on “Singing in the Rain”) to make the ultimate adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ cautionary novel. This anniversary release’s UHD upgrade looks spectacular; extras on the accompanying Blu-ray disc include several retrospective featurettes ported over from the 2011 40th anniversary release, but both the feature-length career overview Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures and the documentary about McDowell have been dropped.

 

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Chernobyl 1986

(Capelight/MPI) 

If it’s possible to make a sentimental melodrama about the horrific happenings at Chernobyl—site of the nuclear disaster that was criminally covered up by the Soviet government—then actor-director Danila Kozlovsky has done so: his film centers on Alexey, a local fireman who bravely enters the smoldering radioactive ruins after rekindling his relationship with Olga, a former lover who is now a single mother whose only son has been radiated by the accident and is seriously ill. Admittedly, Kozlovsky (Alexey) and Oksana Akinshina (Olga) provide persuasive chemistry as the couple, and the sequences inside the crippled plant are filmed impressively and tensely. But at 135 minutes, the syrup overwhelms the central tragedy.

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World 

(Juno Films)

At first, Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri’s documentary about Björn Andrésen—who, at age 15 was cast as the “beautiful boy” in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s 1971 adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice—seems an intriguing glimpse at someone whose life went far afield from the glamor he experienced as a teenager during a  short window of stardom. Then, we discover what’s happened in Andrésen’s life in the ensuing half-century (marriage, divorce, deaths of an infant child and his mother) and the film morphs into a sad exploration of a real-life tragic character that’s far more honest than anything Visconti could have conjured. 

Savior for Sale 

(Greenwich Entertainment)

The second documentary this summer about the purported Leonardo da Vinci painting Salvator Mundi—which sold for $450 million at auction in 2017—covers much the same ground as The Last Leonardo, but there’s so much to this cautionary tale of the perils of the art world, especially when it comes to authenticating, buying and selling Old Master paintings, that it remains fascinating and informative. Director Antoine Vitkine highlights much the same cast of characters—Russian oligarch, Saudi royal, French go-between, British and American experts—to incisively chronicle the moral failings of a business with admittedly few scruples.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Atys 

(Naxos)

Buffalo-born conductor William Christie and his renowned period-instrument ensemble Les Arts Florissants helped transform baroque opera into a goldmine with their 1989 tour of a sumptuous production of Jean-Baptiste Lully’s 1676 “tragedy with music,” a five-act behemoth highlighted by sensitive playing and wondrous singing. More than 20 years later, Christie and his ensemble returned to Paris to revive the opera, with much the same musical and dramatic result. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio. 

Dementia 13—Director's Cut 

(Lionsgate) 

Anything but auspicious, Francis Coppola’s 1963 feature debut—a shoestring Roger Corman production about an axe-wielding murderer—is fascinating mainly for how Coppola does little right, showing a scarcity of the talent that would flourish in the ’70s. Shot in B&W, the shoestring movie has a few interesting moments, but Patrick Magee’s florid line readings take precedence over the other wooden performers and the 69-minute feature disappears from memory immediately. There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are Coppola’s commentary and short intro, along with the six-minute prologue originally attached to the film (this “director’s cut” reflects Coppola returning to his original cut that was “fattened” by Corman with added scenes).

Love & Basketball 

(Criterion Collection)

Sanaa Lathan’s portrayal of Monica, a world-class athlete who has an off-again, on-again relationship with Quincy (Omar Epps), her basketball-playing neighbor since they were kids, is the emotional center of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 romance that’s become a touchstone for fans of sports movies with a fresh perspective. Although overlong and soap opera-ish at times, there’s a realism and frankness in the performances of Lathan, Epps and Alfre Woodard as Monica’s mother that keeps it all centered. Criterion’s hi-def release has an excellent Blu-ray transfer; two commentaries; deleted scenes with commentary; Prince-Bythewood’s early shorts, Stitches (1991) and Progress (1997), with her intro; conversation among Prince-Bythewood, WNBA star Sheryl Swoopes and writer-actor Lena Waithe; and new interviews with Prince-Bythewood, Lathan, Epps and Woodard.

Mona Lisa 

(Criterion Collection)

This gritty and flavorful 1986 crime drama, writer-director Neil Jordan’s breakthrough, stars Bob Hoskins as the ex-con turned chauffeur of a mob boss (Michael Caine) who gets involved with a glamorous call girl (an incandescent Cathy Tyson). Jordan’s gift for quotable dialogue and razor-sharp characterization is on display, and the great Hoskins—with valuable assists from Caine and Tyson—carries the drama on his prodigious shoulders. The film looks superb on Blu-ray; Criterion’s extras comprise Jordan and Hoskins’ commentary; 1986 Cannes Film Festival interviews with Jordan and Hoskins; 2015 interviews with cowriter David Leland and producer Stephen Woolley; and new interviews with Jordan and Tyson. 

Prince of the City 

(Warner Archive)

Sidney Lumet’s 1981 epic drama, based on the true story of Robert Leuci—who blew the whistle on corruption among the ranks of the NYPD narcotics squad—is the apotheosis of his New York-based crime dramas, which include Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon. At nearly three hours, Prince is crammed with narrative detail and incident, and Lumet and his cast—led by Treat Williams in the lead—tell a sordid tale with artfulness and truth. The film looks splendid in hi-def; the lone extra is a half-hour-long retrospective featurette that includes interviews with Lumet, Williams and cowriter Jay Presson Allen.

DVD Release of the Week

Akhnaten

(Orange Mountain Media)

One of the Metropolitan Opera’s most visually imposing recent productions is Phelim McDermott’s colorfully inventive staging of Philip Glass’ opera, set in ancient Egypt and filled with the usual repetitive Glass arpeggios. Still, thanks to the terrific sets, costumes, lighting and a committed cast led by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, the nearly three-hour spectacle is  astonishing to behold, if not hear. Too bad that such a gorgeous-looking opera has only been released on DVD and not Blu-ray; it’s inexplicable that, although listed on the cover as Met Opera HD Live, it can only be watched in SD. Extras are between-acts interviews with cast and crew. 

Sibyl

(Music Box Films) 

For the first hour, director Justine Triet is in complete control of her often hilarious study of atherapist who gradually finds herself drawn into the world of moviemaking after neurotic actress Margot demands she become her therapist for her on-set difficulties with costar/on-set lover Igor and their director (Igor’s off-camera lover). The cast, featuring Virginie Efira as Sibyl, Gaspard Ulliel as Igor and Sandra Hüller as the director—who overdoes it, ruining some would-be funny sequences—is led by the exquisite Adèle Exarchopoulos as Margot, who breathes such luminous life into a mere caricature that she dominates the movie. But even she can’t save it after taking a bizarre turn into increasingly implausible territory that any therapist worth her salt wouldn’t be dragged into. Extras include interviews with Triet, Exarchopoulos, and Efira.

CD Release of the Week

Eric Tanguy—Concertos 

(Ondine)

Although he’s been among the most performed living composers for the past several years, Frenchman Eric Tanguy (b. 1968) still seems under the radar as far as name recognition—but this delightful disc of three of his characteristic orchestral works looks to get his music to a wider audience. Tanguy writes tuneful, accessible music with enough spikiness to prevent it from becoming schmaltzy: his concertos provide vivid platforms for virtuoso soloists, and clarinetist Pierre Genisson and violinist Julia Pusker take full advantage in their respective performances. Pusker, in Tanguy’s Violin Concerto No. 2, is a force of nature in the appropriately titled opening movement, “Intense et tres lyrique.”  In the concertos and propulsive Matka, Ville Matvejeff leads the excellent Jyvaskyla Sinfonia.

2021 Tribeca Film Festival Roundup

20th Tribeca Film Festival 

New York, NY 

June 9-20, 2021

tribecafilm.org

After going completely remote in 2020, the Tribeca Film Festival returned to public showings—all outdoors—in various locations throughout New York City, along with online screenings. But the festival remains a base to launch worthy documentaries, as it has for the past couple of decades.

Kubrick by Kubrick

By far the most memorable doc at this year’s fest was Kubrick by Kubrick, Gregory Munro’s too-short exploration of the greatest American director’s philosophies of filmmaking, spoken by Kubrick himself in a series of interviews conducted by the great French critic Michel Ciment over a 30-year span. As we listen to Kubrick’s Bronx-accented voice discuss matters of technique and subject matter in his unpretentious and straightforward way, Munro shows key moments from several of Kubrick’s classics, from Dr. Strangelove and 2001 to A Clockwork Orange and The Shining. Interspersed are pithy comments by close Kubrick collaborators like set designer Ken Adam, Steadicam operator Garrett Brown, actors Malcolm McDowell and Lee Ermey and actresses Marisa Berenson and Shelley Duvall, as well as his widow Christiane. At only 73 minutes, Kubrick by Kubrick leaves us wanting a lot more—perhaps there’s a Kubrick by Kubrick 2 in our future? 

The Conductor

In The Conductor, Bernadette Wegenstein gains unprecedented access to Marin Alsop, protégée of the legendary Leonard Bernstein and one of the first women to become music director of a major American orchestra (although JoAnn Falletta, music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic since 1999, also deserves to be in this conversation). Alsop engagingly and candidly describes her long and fraught journey from New York to leading conductor on world stages; her mentoring student conductors is given ample screen time. Wegenstein makes good use of vintage footage of Alsop as a child, a student and a young conductor, showing how her tenacity and talent gained her a foothold in the notoriously sexist and misogynistic classical world.

Ascension

Winner of the festival’s best documentary award, Jessica Kingdon’s Ascension is an eye-opening look at how modern China grooms—literally and figuratively—its people for success in a way that is both warning and cautionary tale. In a series of pointed vignettes astonishing in their breadth and level of access (how did Kingdon get the OK to film so much of this?), we watch a workshop in which young women learn etiquette in English and how to eat western foods properly, factory workers making sex dolls, young men rehearsing filming how-to videos in front of the camera, and aspiring entrepreneurs discussing how many millions they expect to make soon. In her brilliantly observational style, Kingdon shows the complexity of the “Chinese dream”—from the working poor to the middle-class to the newly affluent—in a nation that remains stubbornly authoritarian as it transforms into a capitalist juggernaut. 

The Neutral Ground

The Neutral Ground (on PBS July 5; opens in select markets in July), comedian CJ Hunt attacks the loaded question of Confederate monuments, starting with his hometown of New Orleans. The question is: why do so many benighted people defend keeping monuments in the name of “history”? Hunt explores these and other reactions up to a point: his film is more successful as a guide through the historical wreckage of white supremacy and why it’s been so difficult to take the monuments down over the years. Always interesting if only occasionally illuminating, The Neutral Ground works best as a primer about a subject that, unfortunately, will likely remain with us for the foreseeable future.

Love Spreads

Among the festival’s fiction features, Love Spreads is a messy, self-indulgent drama about messy, self-indulgent artists: an all-female band is at a fabled, remote studio to record the follow-up to its smash debut, but the leader and main songwriter, Kelly, finds herself blocked. Writer-director Jamie Adams records the frustrations and irritations that mount among the women and their manager, Mick—including the guitarist’s departure and the arrival of a replacement, played with gusto by the always winning Eiza González —but very little of it feels organic or insightful. There’s also a fine portrayal of Kelly’s insecurity by Alia Shawkat in an otherwise familiar music tale that spreads itself thin.

In the Heights

Finally, there’s In the Heights (in theaters and on HBO Max), which opened the festival with screenings in all five city boroughs. Director Jon M. Chu’s exuberantly sentimental adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s breakthrough stage musical—which hit Broadway in 2008—retains much of its street vibe, especially the aura of Miranda’s musical mélange of hip-hop, musical theater and salsa in upper Manhattan. But at 143 minutes, the movie suffers from repetitiveness, including too many meandering storylines and climaxes. The cast is mainly good: Olga Merediz, the only major Broadway cast member to reprise her role, is a warm Claudia; Anthony Ramos takes on Miranda’s lead role of Usnavi with aplomb; and fresh-faced Leslie Grace is a better Nina than Mandy Gonzalez was onstage. As the vivacious Vanessa, Melissa Barberra is nearly the equal of the electrifying Karen Olivo on Broadway. Miranda himself is in fine fettle as Piragüero, the ice vendor, and Christopher Jackson—also an original cast member—has an amusing cameo as the Mister Softee driver.

NYC Film Exhibition—“Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey”

Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey 
Through July 19, 2020
Museum of Moving Image, 36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria, NY
movingimage.us

Now firmly on any reputable Greatest Films of All Time list, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the visionary director’s most inscrutable, puzzling and, paradoxically, satisfying films. The director’s peregrination from contacting author Arthur C. Clarke to collaborate on what was first titled Journey Beyond the Stars to premiering a nearly three-hour trip through time and space was one of many he took to bring his challenging, often polarizing ideas to fruition onscreen.

Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, until July 19, is a remarkably wide-ranging exhibition that takes visitors through Kubrick’s constant re-envisioning of what would become the greatest science-fiction film ever made and among the most complex narratives from a major studio to ever grace the screen.

Moonwatcher costume and space suits

The exhibit is filled with ephemera anyone with even a remote interest in 2001 would want to see—Kubrick’s voluminous correspondence; his detailed notes, many written (or typed) on index cards; models of several of the film’s space ships; examples of the costumes and set designs; audio interview with Dan Richter, who played the ape-man Moonwatcher in the Dawn of Man sequence; Moonwatcher’s head, the helmet of one of the astronauts, and even the cap of the Pan Am stewardess; and Kubrick’s lone Oscar statuette—he unbelievably never won for Best Director—for Best Special Effects. 

Kubrick’s singular brilliance dominates the exhibition, not least in his carefully-worded—some might say pedantic—letters filled with questions and anaylsis and trivia that he sent to space experts from NASA and others. Kubrick’s use of music, one of his greatest filmmaking innovations, arguably reached its apogee in 2001, whose uniqueness is seen and heard in a section of the exhibit where the famous opening sequence is shown with both Alex North’s original music—an effective but obvious Hollywood score—and Kubrick’s “temp” choice that became permanent, Richard Strauss’ rousing intro to Also sprach Zarathustra.

Spaceship Discovery

Kubrick’s genius also shines through in the film series accompanying Envisioning 2001, which comprises features that informed Kubrick’s approach as 2001 took shape, several of which will be screened during the exhibition: Polish director Jindřich Polák’s visionary 1963 sci-fi mystery Ikarie XB-1 and Ingmar Bergman’s classic psychological portraits Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring, among them. And, to top it off, 2001 itself will be screened monthly in a 70-millimeter print, providing more opportunities to take another exhilarating journey beyond the stars with Stanley Kubrick.