This week’s roundup includes reviews of the new album by the Mexican hard-rock sister trio, the Warning, along with several movies: the latest “Evil Dead,”, a documentary about Hollywood legend Kim Novak, and two ‘60s relics: Italian crime drama “Kriminal” and “Le Joli Mai,” a portrait of mid-60s Paris.
CD Release of the Week
The Warning—Everything’s Falling (Lava Records)
The fifth album by the immensely talented Mexican hard-rock trio follows four terrifically listenable albums, from the auspicious debut “21st Century Blood” and the disturbingly striking concept album “Queen of the Murder Scene” to the potent post-COVID LP “Error” and the wide-ranging “Keep Me Fed.” Too bad “Everything’s Falling” falls short of the Villarreal sisters’ earlier eclectic but powerful musical statements. It starts off strongly with “Ritual,” one of the band’s heaviest musical and lyrical statements, followed by “Perfect Daughter,” which caustically takes aim at the group’s longtime male fans who still consider them girls (the Warning has been a band for 13 years, and guitarist/lead singer Daniela is 26, drummer Paulina is 24, and bassist Alejandra is 21). The title track is powered by one of Daniela’s most impassioned vocals, but that “Comfortably Numb” is namechecked in the lyrics yet there’s no stirring guitar solo from Daniela is a missed opportunity.
“Ego,” the band’s fourth song in its first language, Spanish, hammers away as Daniela brushes off any naysayers of their musical worth. Would that several of the other songs—“Bite My Tongue,” “Bloodsport,” “Break,” “Bruises” (with the sisters’ intoning something that sounds more like “Bruces”)—were more than just catchy three-minute power-pop tunes that are the aural equivalent of B movies, cowritten by the Villarreal sisters, their producer Anton DeLost (whose aural gimmickry often buries the trio’s viscerally powerful sound) and a crew of faceless writers-for-hire. But it’s obviously worked: “Everything’s Falling” is the highest-charting album of the band’s career, and the first single, the irresistibly propulsive “Kerosene,” was number 1 on the mainstream rock charts. But the overall effect is of a vital hard-rock band chasing after mere pop stardom. No doubt these songs will sound better live, since the sisters are such an energetic onstage force—and I’ll be seeing them for the third time, in Brooklyn next spring—but here’s hoping that the Warning’s next album will not sound so formulaic.
4K/UHD Releases of the Week
Evil Dead Burn (Warner Bros)
The original “Evil Dead” movies were relatively straightforward horror films with gory passages that cleverly stitched each extermination to the next, but the recent reboots—including the latest, directed with verve if little originality by Sébastien Vaniček—seem to simply revel in ways to be disgusting at the expense of plotting and (dare I say it) characterization. Faces rot away and get split into pieces; this and more are shown in closeups that show off impressive makeup artistry but not much else. On 4K, it looks even more vividly extreme; extras comprise a trio of short making-of featurettes.
Kriminal (Cult Epics)
In this 1966 tongue-in-cheek action flick, a masked criminal mastermind is a menace to society through his daring heists and frustrates the detective tracking him after his escape from prison. Italian cult director Umberto Lenzi has made what is thought of as the zenith of pulp adaptations and it remains an entertaining time-capsule of a movie, kind of a 007-adjacent adventure, which looks colorfully eye-popping on UHD. There’s an audio commentary on the 4K disc, and the Blu-ray disc includes the film, a 90-minute doc on Lenzi’s career and legacy, “Armed to the Teeth,” and interviews with actor Glenn Saxson and archivist Pierpaolo De Sanctis.
Streaming Release of the Week
Kim Novak’s Vertigo (Kino Lorber)
Theoretically, a documentary based around an interview with nonagenarian Hollywood legend Kim Novak would seem a no-brainer: think of all her stories and observations about costars, directors—with Alfred Hitchcock front and center—and her decision to leave the movie business behind (for the most part) and take up painting in the Great Northwest. But director Alexandre O. Philippe fumbles this easy assignment, often simply marrying images of her films to her words. There’s a diverting section on “Vertigo,” of course, but otherwise it’s rarely incisive or illuminating.
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
La Fille Mal Gardée (Opus Arte)
This perfectly charming ballet, wittily choreographed by master Frederick Ashton, has been revived by London’s Royal Ballet, with director Kevin O’Hare restaging Ashton’s original dances and a cast of terrific performers—led by Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambé—bringing the requisite energy to the entire proceedings. With attractive music by Ferdinand Hérold, played by the opera house orchestra led by conductor Jonathan Lo, this is a breezy couple of hours. There’s excellent hi-def video and audio; extras include interviews with O’Hare, Heyward and Sambé.
Le Joli Mai (Icarus Films)
In Chris Marker and Pierre Llohme’s cinema verité portrait of Paris in May 1962 (post-Algerian War), dozens of Parisians wax philosophically about their lives and where they are headed as a society. But its 145 intellectually packed minutes are an endurance test because only some of the participants’ arguments and opinions are clearly articulated: judicious tightening would make this snapshot even stronger. Unlike the original DVD release, only Simone Signoret’s English narration is heard (Yves Montand’s original French narration and deleted scenes are not included); a 2016 Llohme interview and Playtime in Paris, a 1962 short film by Catherine Varlin.
