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Reviews
June '15 Digital Week I
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 02 June 2015 22:15
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Cymbeline
Tracers
(Lionsgate)
Shakespeare's Cymbeline—a complex, problematic but ultimately rewarding play—has been transformed by director Michael Almereyda into an obtuse and pointless drama about outlaw bikers and even worse cops: it should be seen by anyone who wants to hear the Bard butchered by Ed Harris, Ethan Hawke, Milla Jovavich, John Leguizamo and others: it must ve said that Dakota Johnson makes her Imogen sound poetic in this company.
In Tracers, Taylor Lautner and Marie Avgeropoulos make goo-goo eyes at each other for 90 minutes as a gang of shifty acrobats jump all over New York in a fast and brainless action flick. Both movies have first-rate transfers; Cymbeline extras are a commentary, featurettes and interviews, and Tracers extras are two featurettes.
Focus
(Warner Bros)
In this colorful, slickly inconsequential ride, Will Smith and a dazzling Margot Robbie (resembling a more glamorous Jaime Pressley) are con artists who fall in love while taking advantage of other easy—and not so easy—targets...and even each other.
Although there are far too many unbelievable twists, Smith is his usual laconic self and the talanted Robbie proves herself, even with such flimsy material, among our most winning young actresses. The movie's glamor translates well to Blu-ray; extras are featurettes, deleted scenes and alternate opening.
Lear
(Arthaus Musik)
In this monumental 1978 opera based on King Lear, German composer Aribert Reimann's huge chunks of atonal blocks of modernist sound bring out the epic, inexorable tragedy Shakespeare's towering masterpiece.
In this 2014 Munich production, baritone Bo Skovhus makes an imposing Lear, and soprano Siobhan Stagg a symapthetic Cordelia; too bad Karoline Gruber's foolish modern-dress staging is at odds with the material itself. Simone Young conducts a lucid, penetrating version of Reimann's powerful score. Extras are Reimann and Young interviews.
Lost Songs—The Basement Tapes Continued
(Eagle Rock)
Take a bunch of old, circa 1967 Dylan lyrics never set to music; add Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford to turrn them into new songs with producer T Bone Burnett at the legendary Capitol Records studio in Hollywood and you have an endlessly watchable music documentary.
For nearly two hours, these artists fashion intriguing new ways of digging into Dylan's words, and the finished product, while variable, soars when Giddens sings. The hi-def image is good; extras comprise full performances of six of the songs, including Giddens' wonderful "Hidee Hidee Ho #16."
Macbeth
(Dynamic)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(Opus Arte)
And here's even more Shakespeare. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Macbeth is not one of his best works, and horror movie schlockmeister Dario Argento's diffuse 2013 staging from Novara, Italy, doesn't clarify matters: in the leads, Giuseppe Altomare and Dimitra Theodossiou are unable to transcend Argento's banal direction or Verdi's unimaginative score, which conductor Giuseppe Sabbatini and his players are also hampered by.
In Stratford-upon-Avon's new staging of Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Bard's early and bumpy comedy is played as if it's a forerunner of the TV sitcom, which isn't so far wrong; happily, there's a pivotally fine peformance by Pearl Chanda as heroine Julia. Both discs have good transfers; lone extra on Verona is director Simon Goodwin's commentary.
Mortdecai
(Lionsgate)
Sure, Johnny Depp's unctuous British accent is perfect, but since David Koepp's spy spoof is otherwise DOA, that's not a compelling reason to watch such an aggressively unfunny movie: the real question is, who thought that this would be an entertaining way to spend 105 minutes?
Depp is insufferable in a role he hams up more than in his last few Tim Burton movies, while Gwyneth Paltrow is her usual dull self, gorgeous Olivia Munn has little to do, and poor Ewan MacGregor seems all too aware how hamfisted it all is. The Blu-ray looks fine; extras comprise two featurettes.
DVDs of the Week
Blindsided
(Cinedigm/Dimension)
Michael Keaton is the only one on the box cover for Joseph Ruben's routine thriller that steals from Wait Until Dark in its story of Sara, blinded while a photojournalist in Iraq, who must use every ounce of her wits to overcome two lethal killers looking for diamonds and cash her boyfriend has been hiding.
But it's Michelle Monaghan as Sara who comes up aces, bringing intensity and realism to make us root for her despite the cliched twists that develop as the bad guys (played broadly by Keaton and Barry Sloane) close in on her.
Smiling Through the Apocalypse—Esquire in the '60s
(First Run)
In his account of his father Harold Hayes's time as editor of Esquire magazine in the 1960s, director Tom Hayes has made a heartfelt but dispassionate reminiscence of one of the great mag men in an era when writing for magazines was considered an exalted cultural position, as breaking news and hard-hitting features presaged a great if controversial era.
Archival and new interviews galore with many of those who worked for the magazine, like Gore Vidal, Tom Wolfe, Nora Ephron, Robert Benton and Candice Bergen, don't elbow out Hayes, who rightly remains the central figure. Extras comprise bonus interviews.
So Bright Is the View
(Indiepix)
The new Romanian cinema, dominated by slow-moving but intelligent character studies, has another winner: brothers Joel Levy Florescu and Michael Levy Florescu wrote and directed this engrossing drama about a preganant young woman dealing with her boyfriend, the possible loss of her job and her deciding to move to either America or to Israel where her mother lives.
Formal concision reigns (the movie comprises a few dozen shots and few camera movements), but Bianca Valea's subtly incisive characterization of the young woman that makes this unforgettable. Lone extra is a director interview.
May '15 Digital Week IV
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 26 May 2015 22:29
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Ballet 422
(Magnolia)
Jason Peck, choreographing the New York City Ballet's 422nd ballet at age 24, is seen in Jody Lee Lipes' intriguing documentary creating his new work (and humbly dealing with his star dancers, sets, costume designs and music) while the company—in which he dances as a corps member—continues its season all around him.
Lipes' relaxed direction serves his fly-on-the-wall style quite well, the dancing is glorious (and strenuous), and it's heartening that Peck chose Bohuslav Martinu's underrated music to set his ballet, Paz de la Jolla, to. The Blu-ray looks fine; extras include a Lipes and Peck commentary, deleted scenes and interviews.
Limelight
(Criterion)
Charlie Chaplin's 1952 drama about a has-been vaudeville star and his heartwarming friendship with a young ballerina came five years after his final comic masterpiece, Monsieur Verdoux, and shows off a sentimental, self-pitying side amid his ongoing troubles with the U.S. government.
The rough-around-the-edges film has poignant moments galore, including Chaplin's interactions with a fresh-faced Claire Bloom and his final appearance with fellow master comedian Buster Keaton. The 137-minute Limelight is surely overlong, but that's ultimately a minor quibble. Criterion's hi-def transfer is, once again, immaculate; extras comprise Chaplin shorts and audio reading; interviews with Bloom and actor Norman Lloyd; a video essay and documentary featurette on the film.
Magician
(Cohen Media)
The multifaceted genius of Orson Welles, brought back to life in this engaging 91-minute documentary by director Chuck Workman, is shown in the man's fascinating life, from his early days as a child prodigy to his initial theater triumphs, the radio War of the Worlds shocker and his arrival in Hollywood, where he made Citizen Kane: then came 40-plus years of various film projects, some finished, most not.
The tragedy of Welles' bad luck is a questionable supposition, but Workman paints a provocative and often amusing portrait of a true American renaissance man; many interviews include collaborators and associates, film historians and others, and there are excerpts galore from many of Welles' projects, even the many unfinished ones. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; lone extra is a Workman interview.
(Anchor Bay)
Sex, drugs, violence and pulsating music are the order of the day in this fast-paced crime drama about "Ghost," a celebrated New York entrepreneur who's using his hot new nightclub Truth as a front for his lucrative drug trade.
The atmosphere of the city is palpable, the killings and adulterous escapades are legion, and the stylish cast (led by Omari Hardwick and Lela Loren as Ghost and his wife) makes it all go down smoothly. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras are brief featurettes.
Richard Strauss—The End of the Rainbow
(C Major)
In Eric Schulz's engrossing documentary of the last great classical composer—who died in 1949 at age 85—it emerges that Strauss felt he was last in line of a group of Germanic composers from Mozart and Beethoven to Wagner and Strauss himself. Alongside illuminating interviews with admiring experts and musicians, there are wonderful glimpses of Strauss on the conductor's podium, displaying his minimal technique in front of an orchestra.
There are also snippets of his gorgeous music, from his operatic masterpieces to his tone poems and lieder (sung beautifully by a rising young Australian singer, Emma Moore), rounding out a revealing look at a master artist. The movie looks good on Blu-ray.
(Criterion)
In Costa-Gavras' tensely directed 1973 propaganda film, the real-life murder of an American in Central America by a group of left-wing revolutionaries is the jumping-off point for a story that all but sanctions political assassination for the greater good: in other words, the triumph of Communist ideology over U.S. imperialism.
Although siding with terrorists, Costa-Gavras is no fool: by having the patsy-turned-sacrifical lamb played by the suavely urbane Yves Montand, the American gets automatic sympathy that's nowhere in Costa-Gavras and Franco Solinas's script. Criterion's new release features its usual stellar-looking hi-def transfer, a new Costa-Gavras interview and NBC Nightly News excerpts about the real-life kidnaping and killing of American Dan A. Mitrione, upon whom the film is based.
DVDs of the Week
The Blue Room
(MPI/Sundance Selects)
For his latest directorial effort, French actor Mathieu Amalric daringly transforms Belgian mystery writer Georges Simenon's novella into a tense, nail-biting thriller all the more remarkable for what Amalric crams into a 76-minute running time. A devoted father and husband has an affair with an old flame; when their spouses meet untimely ends, suspicion naturally falls on them.
As in the book, Amalric avoids linear plot progression to enter the man's confused mindset: is he culpable or a dupe? There's sublime acting by Amalric, his real-life paramour—and cowriter—Stephanie Cleau as his mistress and Lea Drucker as his wife; a brittle chamber score by Gregoire Hetzel adroitly gives way (at the chilling ending) to a perfectly chosen Bach-Busoni piano piece. Why this sublime film is not on Blu-ray is a mystery.
(MHZ Networks)
After the first series ended with a shocking murder, a new case brings Asperger's suffering Swedish detective Saga and no-nonsense Danish detective Martin back together: although these always gripping ten episodes involve left-wing terrorists whose methods become increasingly more lethal, the relationship between Saga and Martin remains smartly at the center.
And the performances by Kim Bodnia (best known to American audiences as the Iranian villain in Jon Stewart's directorial debut Rosewater) as Martin and Sofia Helin as Saga, whose deeply sympathetic portrait of a seemingly icy and distant woman who is anything but is no mere Rainman stunt, keep The Bridge firing on all cylinders.
Glee—Complete Final Season
(Fox)
Masters of Sex—Complete 2nd Season
(Sony)
Glee goes out on a bittersweet note in its last season, with its high school alumni moving on with their lives. Still, the sheer fun of the show's unapologetically goofy musical numbers remains, as does the powerhouse presence of Lea Michele, who should return to Broadway for real as soon as possible.
In the second season of Masters of Sex, researchers Masters and Johnson continue their professional and personal explorations; although more fiction than fact, the series is entertaining if less than illuminating, with a solid Michael Sheen as Masters and an exceptional Lizzy Kaplan as Johnson. Extras include featurettes.
Guilty by Suspcion
(Warner Archive)
Bruce Berseford's 1989 comic romance Her Alibi remains a distinctly minor piece of fluff, especially coming in the midst of several of Beresford's greatest artistic and commercial successes—Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe, Mister Johnson—with a stolid Tom Selleck and game Paulina Porizkova in the leads: at least William Daniels retains his usual sophistication.
In 1990's Guilty by Suspicion, Irwin Winkler's well-meaning but hackneyed dramatization of the supposed Communist infiltration of Hollywood in the McCarthy era, Robert DeNiro is fatally miscast as a top director brought down by tenuous Commie links; in support, Annette Bening is her usual effortlessly natural self, while George Wendt and Martin Scorsese bluster unpersuasively—rather like Winkler's script.
The Sleepwalker
(MPI/Sundance Selects)
Director-cowriter Mona Fastvold's psychological character study of a couple, Kaia and Andrew who, while renovating her family's old country house, must deal with the arrival of her troubled younger sister Christine and her boyfriend Ira is initially tightly controlled and tautly effective—if downright weird.
But as the behavior of the four principals becomes ever stranger, Fastvole and cowriter Brady Corbet (who plays Ira) allow contrivance to overtake plausibility, and the movie limps to a preposterous ending. Lone extra is a director/cast interview.
New Broadway Reviews—"The King and I" and "Wolf Hall, Parts I & II"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 22 May 2015 13:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The King and I
Book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; music by Richard Rodgers
Directed by Bartlett Sher
Opened April 16, 2015
Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2
Adapted by Mike Poulton from Hilary Mantel's novels
Directed by Jeremy Herrin
Opened April 9, 2015
 |
| Watanabe and O'Hara in The King and I (photo: Paul Kolnik) |
Best known as the 1956 movie starring the immortal Yul Brynner, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I has brilliantly melodic songs that do the heavy lifting of creating character and moving the story forward: "Getting to Know You," "I Whistle a Happy Tune" and "Shall We Dance?" are only a few numbers in what's among Broadway's greatest hit parades.
That director Bartlett Sher and actress Kelli O'Hara already collaborated on a terrific Rodgers & Hammerstein show—South Pacific, at Lincoln Center in 2008—boded well for their reunion on another R&H spectacular. In 1996, a worthy King and I Broadway revival featured a smashing turn by Donna Murphy as Anna Leonowens, the English schoolteacher who arrives in the kingdom of Siam to teach the many school-age children of the brusque King, robustly played by Lou Diamond Phillips. But as good as Murphy was (she won a Tony), that production didn't have the internal coherence of the current one.
Bartlett Sher's directing is simultaneously expansive and intimate, once again (as in South Pacific) using the problematic Vivian Beaumont stage to great effect. From the opening scene of Anna and son Louis arriving to scenes of Anna teaching her charges and the climactic dance scene, Sher's sure hand effortlessly balances the musical-comedy tropes that underlie the serious, humane drama that's the core of the show, with help from his stellar collaborators: the fluidly sliding sets of Michael Yeargan, the spot-on costumes of Catherine Zuber, the magical lighting of Donald Holder, the peerless sound design of Scott Lehrer and the fine orchestrations of Robert Russell Bennett.
The magisterial acting, which runs from the two leads to the delightfully individual children (played by the most talented pack of kids on a Broadway stage) begins with Ruthie Ann Miles, who brightened the otherwise forgettable Here Lies Love; she brings emotional intensity to the King's wife Lady Thiang, especially during her dazzling rendition of "Something Wonderful." As the King's concubine Tuptim, Ashley Park splendidly displays young love's crushing disappointment, especially in her and, as Tuptim's beloved Lun Tham, Conrad Ricamora's haunting duet, "I Have Dreamed."
The King himself is played by Ken Watanabe with a brawny physicality and compelling charisma that easily overcomes his often garbled English and less than musical bearing. Watanabe also has an undeniable chemistry with Kelli O'Hara, whose Anna is another in this glowing actress's growing gallery of indelible characters. Like Nellie inSouth Pacific, O'Hara's Anna is more than the sum of its parts; her intelligent and nuanced portrayal stands comparison with Murphy's earlier triumph.
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| Miles and Leonard in Wolf Hall (photo: Johan Persson) |
Mike Poulton's adaptations, credible history and thrilling drama, concern Oliver Cromwell, who begins as Cardinal Woolsey's right-hand man, then soon becomes—after Woolsey is convicted of treason and executed—King Henry's must trusted advisor. Cromwell famously fashions a way for the King to head the Church of England (and be excommunicated by the Pope) when Henry divorces wife Katharine because she bore him no male heirs and marries Anne Boleyn. Of course, Anne also only gives him a daughter (the future Queen Elizabeth I), so her head too is soon on the chopping block, as Henry makes way for his latest conquest, Jane Seymour.
Even if it sometimes plays like a high-class soap opera—the occasionally soaring dialogue never approaches Shakespearean poetry—Wolf Hall is a sweeping historical pageant created by Jeremy Herrin, with valuable assists from Christopher Oram's elegant costumes and sets, Paule Constable and David Plater's lighting and Stephen Warbeck's appropriate music.
The actors are exemplary throughout, led by Peter Eyre's sardonic Woolsey, Nathaniel Parker's hearty Henry, Lydia Leonard's intelligent Anne and Ben Miles' dynamically engaged and aggressively caustic Cromwell. Compare Miles' Cromwell with Mark Rylance's on TV for a textbook case of how actors can play the same role totally differently yet equally compellingly. Rylance was quietly forceful while Miles literally stalks the stage; in Herrin's most theatrical invention, Cromwell is nearly always onstage prowling from one side to the other as he encounters new sets of antagonists.
Unlike the TV version, onstage Cromwell is often bedeviled by Woolsey's ghost, with whom he discusses important matters not unlike the soliloquies of Shakespearean drama; contrarily, a most pressing matter like Anne's execution, which is only alluded to onstage, is presented in all its drama and urgency in the mini-series.
These onstage versions of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodiesdefinitely stand on their own as brilliantly illuminated dramatizations of one of the most familiar, but endlessly fascinating, stories in English history.
The King and I
Lincoln Center Theater @ Vivian Beaumont, 65th Street & Broadway, New York, NY
lct.org
Wolf Hall: Parts 1 & 2
Winter GardenTheatre, 1634 Broadway between 50th & 51st Streets, New York, NY
wolfhallbroadway.com
May '15 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 19 May 2015 22:12
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
American Sniper
(Warner Brothers)
With this biopic about Chris Kyle, the lethal sniper who terrorized insurgents during his four tours of duty in Iraq, Clint Eastwood has made a surprisingly conventional war movie, flattening out any moral ambiguity by making Kyle a surprisingly one-dimensional hero whose inner struggles are dramatized on the level of a Lifetime Channel movie.
It's effective for what it is but could have been much more, especially considering the tremendous acting of Bradley Cooper as Kyle and the equally stunning Sienna Miller as his wife Tyla. The movie looks good on Blu; extras are two featurettes.
(Shout Factory)
This bumpy 1991 action flick, which pairs Don Johnson and Mickey Rourke as a modern-day cowboy and his biker buddy, has a ramshackle story over which director Simon Wincer displays little control, ultimately turning to desperate outbursts of cartoonish and realistic violence.
Rourke is already becoming a self-parody, Johnson gets points by playing it straight, and Vanessa Williams pops up to sing a couple of silky numbers in a nothing role. The hi-def transfer looks fine; lone extra is a vintage featurette.
Ladyhawke
(Warner Archive)
Richard Donner's 1985 medieval adventure yarn about cursed lovers transformed into a hawk by day (her) and a wolf by night (him) soars whenever Giuseppe Rotunno's glistening photography shows off incredible Italian locales and sunsets, but falls down whenever Matthew Broderick's utterly—and wrongly—contemporary petty thief is onscreen.
On the plus side, Michelle Pfeiffer has never looked more enchantingly lovely in Rotunno's golden-hued lighting, and the movie does work its spell for those in an unfinicky romantic mood. The Blu-ray transfer is first-rate.
(Arrow USA)
This brash, sardonic 1969 yakuza thriller follows a mobster just out of prison who finds that, with his boss near death and his gang broken up, there's a deadly rival for both a young woman and his very life.
Director Yasuharu Hasebe's widescreen black and white compositions allow this epic story to play out on an equally expansive canvas, and his unflagging pace glosses over any holes in plotting and flimsy character development. The hi-def transfer is excellent; extras include interviews.
The River
(Criterion)
In 1951, French director Jean Renoir traveled to India for his first color film, a visually opulent but dramatically inert adaptation of Rumer Godden's book about three sisters in Calcutta. Although Renoir's painterly eye—like his artist father's—was impeccable, The River lacks the narrative propulsion and wisdom about human behavior of his all-time masterpieces The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion.
Still, this ravishing film looks even more exquisite on Criterion's Blu-ray release, whose plethora of extras includes Renoir and Martin Scorsese intros, a video essay and a documentary, Around The River, on Renoir and the film.
CPO Sharkey—Complete 1st Season
(Time-Life)
It's hard to believe, but in 1976, when his insult humor ("you hockey puck" was one of his few inoffensive lines) was in vogue and he was a Tonight Show regular, Don Rickles actually starred in this alternately amusing and cringeworrthy sitcom as a long-time navy officer dealing with recruits who are bumpkins and ne'er-do-wells.
The first season, comprising 15 episodes, has decent laughs, most of them—and the warning on the box bears this out—instances of his usual sense of humor that is too politically incorrect for today's audiences. The lone extra is a hilarious bit on Carson in which, for once, Rickles himself is the butt of the joke.
Every Little Crook and Nanny
(Warner Archive)
Evan Hunter's rollicking farcical novel about a resourceful nanny pitted against a group of underworld criminals was turned into a plodding 1972 movie by director Cy Howard that fatally lacks the book's unsubtle but skewed humor.
Despite a formidable cast that includes Victor Mature, Lynn Redgrave, Dom DeLuise, Isabel Sanford, Pat Morita and Austin Pendleton, the pedestrian movie plods along for 100 minutes without ever settling into a comic groove.
(Seventh Art)
The recent exhibit Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs—showcasing the French master's final decade, when he created a startling series of richly colored paper cut-outs that underscored his dazzling creativity and originality—was a smash at London's Tate Modern and New York's Museum of Modern Art.
This smart but sober 90-minute documentary overview comprises close-up views of its many highlights, informative interviews with curators and experts, well-chosen excerpts of Matisse's own words and glimpses at his storied career.
A Year in Champagne
(First Run)
This stimulating documentary about the region of France where the original bubbly is made entertainingly explores the background of the world-renowned sparkling wine itself, including visits to some estates that have made the beloved stuff for centuries.
But director David Kennard also gives a valuable primer on the history of the hardscrabble land where grapes are grown, which is drenched with the blood of both World Wars. Extras are additional scenes and short films.
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