Digital Week – May 21

The latest film by the world’s greatest living director, 84-year-old Italian master Marco Bellocchio, is yet another of his gripping and operatic dissections of historical subjects that touch on politics and religion—this time he tells the horrific but true story of a six-year-old Jewish boy torn from his parents’ grasp because a former Christian housekeeper said she baptized him when she thought he was dying as an infant. With his usual sweeping flair and acute observation, Bellocchio fills the screen with indelible images that not only cast a wide net on anti-Semitic mid-19th century Italian (read: Catholic) society but also the excruciating pain and loss felt by the Mortara family as their beloved son and brother remains just out of their reach. Bellocchio builds his film on two towering portrayals—by Barbara Ronchi as the boy’s mother and by Enea Sala as the young Edgardo, as strong a child performance I’ve ever seen. There’s also supremely well-chosen music by Rachmaninoff and Pärt to complement Fabio Massimo Capogrosso’s orchestral score. There’s also the haunting final split-screen of mother and son, as unforgettable an image as Bellocchio has ever shot.

Sam Taylor-Johnson, who made the intriguing misfire “Nowhere Boy” about John Lennon’s teenage years, has now done the same with this biopic about Amy Winehouse, the talented British singer who was lost her battle to the demons of fame, alcohol and drugs at age 27 (joining the so-called “27 Club,” populated by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain). The by-the-numbers script by Matt Greenhalgh follows Amy from teen obscurity to stardom, while Taylor-Johnson’s generally competent direction focuses on her songs—yet it never adds up to much, and even the final, desperate scenes come off haphazardly. Lesley Manville (her nan), Eddie Marsan (her dad) and Jack O’Connell (her husband) acquit themselves well, but it’s Marisa Aleba who makes this rote portrait watchable with a thrilling performance that is less an impersonation that a deeply-felt immersion.

If you thought that pairing Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt—both Oscar nominated for their supporting performances in last summer’s “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”—would be irresistible, then David Leitch’s overblown (particularly in the extended cut, an interminable 146 minutes) action comedy is here to dissuade you of that notion. There’s some fun early on, but the pointless action scenes pile up in mind-numbing fashion. Gosling is always game but Blunt seems out of her element (her best moment finds her singing karaoke to “Against All Odds,” quite a low bar) and the stunt men are unsurprisingly spectacular but it all adds up to very little, just a noisy misfire.

In Clint Eastwood’s superficial 2014 portrait of U.S. navy seal Chris Kyle, jingoism and anti-war sentiment battle for supremacy, with the American war hero coming out on top, even though it only nods at dealing with the psychological toll suffered by those who were there. Bradley Cooper’s sympathetic portrayal of Kyle goes a long way toward redeeming it, as does Sienna Miller, who does wonders with the underwritten role of Taya, Kyle’s wife, making her as fierce and real as Kyle. Perhaps Eastwood noticed too: a closeup of Miller is the last thing we see before an epilogue comprising real footage from Kyle’s funeral. The film looks sharp and focused in UHD; extras include several making-of featurettes.

This mild satire whose title says it all—there’s a club of Black people whose members’ sole function is to “rescue” needy whites—has its share of laughs but too few are incisive or notably uncomfortable; instead, it concentrates its energies on the sappily cute romance between Aren, the newest society member, and Lizzie, with whom he’s enamored. Writer-director Kobi Libii’s feature debut pulls his punches, and the result, while unfocused and unsatisfying, Justice Smith (Aren) and An-Li Bogan (Lizzie) make a charming couple. There’s a first-rate hi-def trnafer; extras include Libii’s commentary and a trio of featurettes.

Austrian director Jessica Hausner serves up her latest provocation: at an exclusive private school, Miss Novak arrives to teach students about responsible eating, innocuously at first but soon it dominates their lives to the point that their family relationships are damaged and their very lives endangered. It’s too studied and obvious to be effective, since Hausner and cowriter Géraldine Bajard stack the deck immediately and with no insight, just shock value (a student eats her own vomit). The sleepy performances add to the flatness, with good actors like Sidse Babett Knudsen and Mia Wasikowska reduced to poses. Hausner’s clean, unfussy filmmaking works against her this time. The film has a crisp look on Blu-ray; extras are interviews with Hausner and Wasikowska as well as a Hausner master class at the Munich Film Festival.

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, triggering her jealous husband’s radar, with fatal results. Woody foregoes the complexities of his masterpiece “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—which has a burnished glow on Blu-ray—and the fine performances, especially by the always winning Lou de Laâge as the wife.

What begins as a credible psychological thriller about the ways lonely children conjure up imaginary friends soon devolves into predictably lunatic attempts at supernatural horror for which director-writer Jaff Wadlow and his two cowriters must shoulder the blame, relying on lazy jump scares and unscary creatures instead. The promising cast, particularly DeWanda Wise in the lead and Betty Buckley in a certifiably crazy part, is defeated by the material. The film looks good on Blu; extras comprise a commentary and on-set featurettes.

The final two operas in Richard Wagner’s epic Ring cycle, seen and heard in these 2021 Berlin State Opera stagings by director Stefan Herheim that gain in dramatic force as they go along, provide maximum musical strength. Although “Siegfried” has some bumpy narrative stretches, “Götterdämmerung” has more consistently glorious music, including the overwhelming Immolation Scene. Donald Runnicles ably conducts the huge orchestral forces, while the singers are superb: Clay Hilley’s Siegfried is impressive throughout his namesake opera, and Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde carries the works’ emotional heft. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio; “Götterdämmerung” extras include a making-of and interviews.

Yasujiro Ozu was considered the “most Japanese” director because his films most realistically displayed how ordinary people lived their lives, as opposed to, say, Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi. Ozu rarely strayed from creating small-scaled character studies, such as these two films, the intimate 1934 silent original and its wise 1959 color remake, in which a theater troupe’s visit to a small village causes relationships to be formed, torn apart and reassembled. As usual with Ozu, there’s ample wit and insight along with laughter and tears. Criterion has included the restored hi-def transfers for both films, which look excellent; extras are Japanese film expert Donald Richie’s commentary on the original and critic Roger Ebert’s commentary on the remake.

In this 2016 supernatural thriller, directors Andy Milton and Jesse Holland try and make sense of the afterlife through their phobic protagonist who asks people for proof of life after death. But after narrowing it down to three candidates, he is soon dragged into the depths of a nightmare he’s never thought possible. It’s all hokum but it’s shot in well-chosen L.A. locations and features fine acting by Clark Freeman as the lead and Annette O’Toole as his naturally worried mother. The film looks decent on Blu; extras are three audio commentaries by cast and crew.

As estranged sisters Lola and Margaux—who reunite after Lola’s husband unexpectedly dies and they take off on a trip with her young son Gaspard—Alysson Paradis and the always magnetic Élodie Bouchez are memorable in Guillaume Gouix’s absorbing character study. The sisters are diametrically opposite, of course, and they have to deal with feelings they have kept at bay for awhile, along with Lola’s grief compounded by guilt and Margaux’s attempts to forge a relationship with an 8-year-old nephew that she barely knows. But Gouix, with help from his resourceful performers (Viggo Ferreira-Redier is a sympathetic Gaspard), creates an emotional journey that doesn’t become maudlin.