Digital Week – June 20

The complicated, tragic life and singular artistry of master Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is dramatized by director Henrik M. Dahlsbakken through an intriguing structure: four actors play Munch at ages 21, 29, 45 and 80, with the 29-year-old artist wandering through modern-day Berlin and the elderly Munch played by Anne V. Krigsvoll in unconvincing makeup and wig that make her look more like Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s nicely filmed and well-acted by the Munchian quartet—although Thea Lambrechts Vaulen, as journalist Milly Thaulow, with whom the 21-year-old Munch has an affair one summer, is the movie’s liveliest presence—but it ultimately amounts to mere snapshots of a life. Peter Watkins’ masterly 1974 epic, “Edvard Munch,” is still the film that vividly delves into the artist’s many-faceted creativity.

It’s the last go-round for Keanu Reeves’ zen-like hitman who must survive the latest attacks from all corners, including a blind assassin who comes out of retirement as well as the Marquis, a member of the High table who ends up dueling him. Director Chad Stahelski keeps the pace frenetic, but at nearly three hours, an exhaustion factor creeps in despite such dazzling Paris set pieces as a spectacularly ludicrous shootout on the Arc de Triomphe roundabout and the final showdown in front of the Sacre Coeur. Through it all, Reeves’ stoicism makes Clint Eastwood’s western heroes seem positively manic. There’s a superb UHD transfer; extras include featurettes and interviews.

Terry Gilliam’s first solo extravaganza behind the camera—his co-directing debut with fellow Monty Python alum Terry Jones was the best-forgotten 1977 “Jabberwocky”—is this delightfully demented 1981 fantasy about a young boy and group of dwarves who fall through holes in time, meeting characters like Napoleon (Ian Holm) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery). Gilliam’s imaginative movie is a wondrous prelude to his even more extravagant “Brazil” and “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” Criterion’s 4K transfer is especially luminous; extras comprise a commentary, critical featurette, 1998 Gilliam interview and 1981 Shelley Duvall appearance on Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” talk show.

Based on true stories of Afghan interpreters being left behind in mortal danger after U.S. forces’ botched 2021 retreat, Guy Ritchie’s drama chronicles the relationship between U.S. Army Sergeant John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhall) and his interpreter/translator Ahmed (Dar Salim), who saves Kinley’s life during an ambush but who hides from the Taliban with his wife and young child after the Americans leave. Recovering stateside, Kinley returns to get Ahmed and family out of danger. For a Ritchie film, this is surprisingly not that frantically ham-fisted; he ratchets up the tension well, even though Christopher Benstead’s music too obviously underscores some sequences. Still, this effective film contains a sympathetic portrayal by Salim. The film looks excellent on Blu; it’s too bad that there are no contextual extras of any kind.

Dutch writer-director Marlene Gorris’ provocative 1982 drama about Janine, a criminal psychiatrist investigating the brutal random murder of a shopkeeper by three women who are strangers, finds its center in her attempts to understand what happened and why. As Janine concludes that the patriarchy is partly to blame and puts her controversial thesis before the court, Gorris’ sharp feminist tract is humanized by a terrific Cox Habbema, who gives a remarkable performance as Janine, arguing with the patriarchal pillars (including her lawyer husband) or tries to uncover the women’s motivations. The film looks fine if a bit battered on Blu; extras include an audio commentary and archival interviews with Gorris and Habbema.

Talk about “high-concept” programming: Sylvester Stallone plays a New York made man who, out of prison after serving a 25-year sentence, is sent by his mob boss to set up shop in Tulsa, where he’s immediately seen as a fish out of water by the locals, who happen to include an available (and willing) woman whose part of the local ATF. It’s as one-note as it sounds, but Stallone and a surfeit of fine supporting actors, from Andrea Savage and Dana Delaney to Jay Will and Annabella Sciorra, assure that the first season has “guilty pleasure” written all over it. But can it continue in season two? There’s a fine hi-def transfer; extras are making-ofs and interviews.

In Martin Provost’s at times subversive comedy, Juliette Binoche is her usual commanding self as the head of a French girls’ school in 1968 teaching her charges how to please husbands and be devoted, dutiful wives as the world goes to hell, both personally and politically, around her. Provost belabors his point about conservatives dealing with a progressive new world, and dropping in a concluding song-and-dance number is dubious. But happily, alongside Binoche, there’s excellent acting by Yolande Moreau as the sister-in-law, Noémie Lvovsky as the head nun and Marie Zabukovec and Anamaria Vartolomei as a couple of rebellious students.

It’s too bad that this engaging 2017 romantic comedy, made by Brooklyn-based Vashti Anderson in Trinidad and Tobago, has been overshadowed by the tragedy that befell its leading lady, local actress Vanna Girod, who drowned in January 2022 while with her family at a Tobago resort. As Asha, a young woman who returns to visit family and falls for a local young man of a questionable reputation, Girod has a shining presence that makes this familiar “opposites attract” romance a beguiling 90 minutes. Extras are Anderson’s commentary and her 2005 short, “Jeffrey’s Calypso.”

For her writing/directing debut, French actress Sandrine Kiberlain introduces Irene, a 19-year-old Jewish woman in 1942 Paris who wants to become a stage actress, seemingly oblivious to what is happening around her in the Nazi-occupied capital. Through the lovely and nuanced presence of Rebecca Marder as Irene, Kiberlain understatedly explores the fateful dichotomy between the heroine’s joy in her personal life—she falls in love for the first time as well as getting to realize her dream of acting—and the everyday occurrences that are slowly constricting the lives of French Jews. This low-key drama concludes with a simple cut to black that is horrifying in its implications. The lone extra is a Q&A with Kiberlain and Marder.