This week’s roundup includes reviews of Paul McCartney’s new album, “The Boys of Dungeon Lane,” as well as new films “Late Fame” (in theaters) and “The Drama,” with Zendaya (now streaming) and the UHD release of Tum Burton’s “Mars Attacks!”
CD Release of the Week
Paul McCartney—The Boys of Dungeon Lane (Capitol Records)
Now 84, Paul McCartney has released his first album since 2020’s lively “McCartney III,” which he recorded during the COVID lockdown. “The Boys of Dungeon Lane” has gotten some of the best reviews of McCartney’s storied career, although to these ears it’s an unsurprisingly tuneful but occasionally stolid attempt that doesn’t approach his best work, from “Ram” and “Band on the Run” to “Tug of War” and “Electric Arguments.” But it sits comfortably ahead of lesser efforts like “Wild Life,” “Pipes of Peace” and “Off the Ground.”
The album’s title is a line from “Days We Left Behind,” the most nakedly autobiographical of Paul’s compositions here, a beautifully realized reminiscence of earlier times that uses his aged, cracked but still formidable voice to great advantage. Not far behind in the nostalgia sweepstakes is “Home to Us,” a charming if slight duet with Ringo Starr (who also drums on the track, and whose jam with producer Andrew Watt was the genesis of this song) about growing up in a run-down part of Liverpool, with cute backing vocals from, of all people, the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde and Texas’ Sharleen Spiteri. “Down South,” describing a bus trip out of Liverpool, revisits the observations of two songs from McCartney’s 2013 album “New”: “On My Way to Work” and “Early Days.”
It all goes down very smoothly and often indelibly in the mostly one-man-band approach McCartney and Watt employ; the jam on the opening “As You Lie There” is a good example of Paul’s genius at arranging—although, as usual, it’s his effortlessly melodic bass playing on songs as disparate as “Ripples in a Pond,” “We Two” and the insanely catchy “Never Know” that makes The Boys of Dungeon Lane a cut above other legacy artists’ new music.
When we get to the quartet of melancholic but powerful ballads that ends the album—“Life Can Be Hard,” “First Star of the Night,” “Salesman Saint” and “Momma Gets By”—we realize that, if these are the final songs Paul has recorded in an unparalleled six-decade-plus career, it’s quite an unabashedly emotional statement to go out on.
In-Theater Release of the Week
Late Fame (Magnolia Pictures)
Based, of all things, on a posthumously published novella by the great Viennese author Arthur Schnitzler (who also wrote “Traumnovelle,” which Stanley Kubrick adapted as his last film “Eyes Wide Shut”), this low-key character study stars a perfectly cast Willem Dafoe as Ed Saxberger, who wrote a forgotten book of poems decades earlier and who’s been an anonymous post office employee since then—until he is recognized by a group of pretentious young artists that want to give him the long-awaited notoriety they think he deserves. Kent Jones directs economically, Samy Burch’s script has finely-etched characterizations and dialogue, and the rest of the cast—especially a dazzling Greta Lee—superbly backs Dafoe. But there’s simply not enough here for a 95-minute feature, which spreads everything—and everyone—thin.
4K/UHD Release of the Week
Mars Attacks! (Warner Bros)
Director Tim Burton could never be accused of coddling the masses, as his cheerfully cheesy 1996 spoof of sci-fi movies—which was released several months after the insipidly self-serious alien invasion blockbuster “Independence Day”—delightfully demonstrates. In a large and jokey cast, Jack Nicholson shows off his unique ability to be hilariously over the top in the dual roles of the harried U.S. president and a shady Vegas casino owner, while there are also delicious turns by Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Pierce Brosnan and Michael J. Fox. Even the goofily gory special effects help make this a dopey but hip satire. The film’s bright colors explode in 4K; extras are two new featurettes with screenwriter Jonathan Gems and some of the film’s technical crew.
Streaming Releases of the Week
The Drama (A24)
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s darkly comic look at Emma and Charlie, an engaged couple navigating pre-wedding jitters, has some insightful and funny moments, but when Emma confesses to the worst thing she’s ever done, contrivance precariously hangs over the rest of the film. Zendaya and Robert Pattinson make this couple charming, vindictive, self-pitying and impassioned, but they fight an uphill battle as Borgli directs with a sledgehammer, making what happens during the preparations and reception more obvious and less pointed as the film goes along. When their photographer keeps saying she’ll “shoot” them or when Emma’s dad gives a reception speech that makes clear he doesn’t know how she became deaf in one ear, you know you’re dealing with a director who stacks the deck, which for a film like this, is fatal.
Blu-ray Release of the Week
Good Manners (Distrib Films US)
In Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra’s disturbing modern 2018 fairy tale, nanny and housekeeper Clara becomes quite close to her boss, single mom-to-be Ana, and as their relationship grows more intimate, she discovers that Ana might have been impregnated by a werewolf. That revelation is the jumping-off point for a film that, after switching gears halfway through, turns out to be startling, unsettling and risible simultaneously. Even though it outstays its welcome—and could be shorn of 20 minutes, particularly scenes like a young boy being stalked as prey—it’s brilliantly done. The film’s colorfully unnerving look shines on Blu-ray; extras are a two-minute making-of featurette; the shorts “A Stem” (2007), directed by Rojas and Dutras, and “Doppelganger” (2012), directed by Rojas; and commentary by critics Shelagh Rowan-Legg and Carolyn Mauricette.
