Digital Week – April 10

For his 50th film, Woody Allen returns to the blunt morality tales of Match Point and Solitary Man, this time set in Paris—and spoken in French (a language he doesn’t speak): a beautiful young wife runs into an old schoolmate and begins an affair, which triggers her jealous husband’s radar, with ultimately fatal results. Woody foregoes the complex moral study of a masterpiece like Crimes and Misdemeanors for a straightforward story with an O. Henry twist; it’s minor but satisfying, thanks to his economical directing, Vittorio Storaro’s glistening photography and the persuasive performances, especially by the always winning Lou de Laâge.

French director Bertrand Bonello has tackled provocative subjects as disparate as pornography, prostitution, terrorism and zombies. His latest, though, is a loose, middling adaptation of a fascinating novella by Henry James (“The Beast in the Jungle”); Bonello follows Gabrielle, a young woman whose DNA has purified and emptied of emotions, and he shows her past lives, from 1910 to 2044. The 145-minute film is turgid and slow-paced, and even the myriad stylishness Bonello partakes in—split screens, changing aspect ratios, freeze frames, slow-motion, rewinding, voiceovers—are desperate stratagems to hide the lack of any compelling characterizations or insights. Even the usually magnetic Lea Seydoux at its center—and with fine support from George McKay, who reportedly learned French for the role—can’t keep this from becoming wan and moribund, except for a stunning underwater sequence halfway through.

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made several memorable films about family bonds and their complexities, and his latest is a riveting, potent drama about the ramifications of a bullying accusation made against a schoolteacher. As usual with Kore-eda, the plot is like a pebble being thrown into a pond: its reverberations take in superbly etched studies of several characters, with flashbacks and shifting points of view keeping us on edge and involved. The director has enormous sympathy for each of them in turn, his sensitive and insightful approach always paying dividends, and leading to a surprising, emotionally devastating finale. It goes without saying it’s exceptionally acted from a large cast. The film looks wonderful on Blu; lone extra is an English dub.

In this soggy spoof of and homage to silly ’80s horror comedies, writer Diablo Cody has fashioned an occasionally funny but ultimately derivative tale of teenager Lisa, who meets and starts a secret relationship with a male zombie from the Victorian era. It sounds icky and, for the most part, it is—neophyte director Zelda Williams and Cody lean into the goofiness of the era it’s set (1989), but that only goes so far: it’s up to Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse as the unlikely couple to make this enjoyable at times. The Blu-ray transfer is terrific; extras include Williams’ audio commentary, interview with Cody and Williams, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

This waterlogged attempt at a supernatural horror film is saddled with protagonists—a suburban family consisting of an ill, retired major leaguer, his wife, their son and daughter—that act moronically from the start, as the family buys the house even after the dad nearly drowns after falling into the seemingly haunted pool. Once strange things start happening—which we know about since we saw a girl drown in the pool in the film’s intro—it spirals into true risibility as it steals from better movies like “Jaws” and “Poltergeist.” As the parents, Wyatt Russell and especially Kerry Condon try but fail to keep their heads above water, and writer/director Bryce McGuire is unable to throw the cast a lifeline. It looks good on Blu; extras include several on-set featurettes.

The second opera of Richard Wagner’s fabled Ring cycle receives a 2021 Berlin State Opera staging by director Stefan Herheim that’s part perplexing and part powerful—here’s hoping that the production becomes clearer in the final two Ring operas, “Siegfried” and “Gotterdammerung.” Conductor Donald Runnicles nicely harnesses the massive orchestral forces, and the singers (especially Iain Paterson’s Wotan, Elisabeth Teige’s Sieglinde and Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde—handle the treacherous vocal writing spectacularly. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.