Blu-rays of the Week
Adriana Lecouvreur (Decca)
Francesco Cilea’s tragic romance was a huge operatic hit when first performed in 1904—and David McVicar’s staging at London’s Covent Garden is the first time it’s been performed there since 1906! Despite its …
Blu-rays of the Week
ExistenZ/Malevolent/B Monkey
(Miramax)
A trio of forgettable thrillers comes to Blu-ray: David Cronenberg’s mad eXistenZ (1999) stars Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law in a convoluted ride through a lethal video game; Malevolent (2002) is a …
The most memorable part of Ghost, the 1990 romantic fantasy with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze, was the song “Unchained Melody,” which accompanied the scene the movie’s fans swoon over: the heroine doing pottery while her dead husband’s spirit wraps …
Blu-rays of the Week
Birdsong (PBS)
Sebastian Faulks’ panoramic novel about the doomed relationship between a British soldier and married French woman during World War I becomes another sophisticated “Masterpiece” entry from PBS, but without the book’s framing device, taking …
Blu-rays of the Week
America Revealed (PBS)
Host Yul Kwon takes what initially seems a mash-up of themes that could pass for what America looks like in the 21st century–food, transportation, electricity, manufacturing–and, with the help of stunning aerial and …
Blu-rays of the Week
Conversation Piece (Raro)
Luchino Visconti–the Italian director whose best films (Bellissima, La Terra Trema) were smaller-scaled than his more celebrated, but less good, operatic ones (Rocco and His Brothers, Death in Venice, The Damned)–made this 1974 …
Disney’s latest Broadway endeavor is Newsies, based on Kenny Ortega’s 1992 movie musical about an 1899 newsboys’ strike in New York City that pitted poor, young newspaper sellers against publishing titans like Joseph Pulitzer, who raised prices under the …
Blu-rays of the Week
Angels Crest (Magnolia)
Strong performances distinguish Gaby Dellal’s relentlessly downbeat drama, based on Catherine Treischmann’s novel about the accidental death of a toddler thanks to his young father’s carelessness. But despite its cast (Lynn Collins as …
Now we have the return to Broadway of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s biggest hits together: 1970’s Jesus Christ Superstar and 1978’s Evita. If the new stagings aren’t genuine cause for celebration, they provide interesting comparisons between the works.…
Blu-rays of the Week
Corman’s World (Anchor Bay)
Alex Stapleton’s engaging documentary about the “King of the B Movies,” producer-director extraordinaire Roger Corman, is as straightforward and unpretentious as its subject, who made trashy fun like The Little Shop of …
