Was Leni Riefenstahl, director of the Third Reich-commissioned documentary Triumph of the Will, a card-carrying Nazi? Or just an artist who seized a fulfilling opportunity? German director Andres Veiel, with lucid patience and a questing curiosity, probes the controversial filmmaker in Riefenstahl (Kino Lorber, $23.96 Blu-ray), a documentary borne out of the bequeathing, in … [Read more...]
‘Die My Love’: Lawrence riveting in harrowing post-partum tale
The setting of Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s dread-inducing new film Die My Love is a country house in Montana. It’s not a huge place, but it’s a sizable upgrade for a young, artistic couple from New York City to create, to make love, to refashion in their image. It’s the perfect, isolated space for him to make music, and for her to write the next Great American Novel. Maybe … [Read more...]
‘Blue Moon’: Hawke triumphs in tale of the last days of lyricist Hart
Lorenz Hart is singing in the rain. Seconds later, he’s collapsed in an alley, no longer with a song in his heart, abandoned with the rest of the Broadway trash. He’ll perish from pneumonia hours later in a nearby hospital, at age 48. That’s how Richard Linklater opens his new film Blue Moon, spoilers be damned, and it neatly summarizes, in one pitiless tracking sequence, … [Read more...]
The View From Home: A trio of films that do better leaving noir in the shadows
Kino Lorber’s ongoing drip-drip release of Universal’s seemingly endless archive of Golden Age film noirs continued with its most recent box set, The Dark Side of Cinema XXVI ($24.99 Blu-ray), the latest entry in this library of classic crime cinema. But as its three titles reveal, one person’s noir is another’s romance, and is another’s gilded literary adaptation, films that … [Read more...]
‘Relay’: A compelling thriller grounded in regular tech
Tom, Riz Ahmed’s single-named protagonist in the moody thriller Relay, is adept at disappearing in crowds. He seldom speaks and is a master of disguise, whether masquerading around cities and airports as a Muslim cleric, a beat cop, a construction worker. His default is that of a phantom in a hoodie — an urban ninja eluding the prying cameras of even the most determined … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Consciousness is for the birds
The subtitle of Judy Irving’s tender and soulful 2003 documentary The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (Kino, Blu-ray, $23.96) could be In Defense of Anthropomorphism. And it’s a pretty darn effective one. Mark Bittner, the doc’s subject, doesn’t see himself as an eccentric for the hobby that became his passion: feeding and caring for the countless feral parrots — nonnative … [Read more...]
The View From Home: ‘Eephus’ tallies more than the loss of a baseball game
The men who arrive at a soon-to-be-demolished baseball field for a final recreational matchup in Carson Lund’s directorial debut Eephus (Music Box, $34.95 Blu-ray, $29.95 DVD) are not soon for the majors, or even the minor leagues. These characters creak and smoke and curse. Many are boomers, or close to it. “I think we could all use some medical work,” one player says, in a … [Read more...]
The View From Home: An elusive masterpiece from a world-cinema auteur
Master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s films were many things, but “plotty” wasn’t one of them. His 1999 gem The Wind Will Carry Us, released in a ravishing new 4K restoration from the Criterion Collection ($31.96 Blu-ray), is a perfect example of his experiential approach to moviemaking, one that’s liberated from the structural shackles of narrative. Instead, it’s a movie as … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Mogwai doc celebrates fan-forward legacy of Scottish post-rock icons
Twenty-two years later, I remember one thing from the first and only time I’ve seen the Scottish post-rock band Mogwai live, in Orlando, in September 2003: the feedback. After the band played its one presumably epic encore track and departed the stage, they left behind an intentional assault of sound — an elliptic pas de deux of guitar and amplifier reverberating into eternity. … [Read more...]
The View From Home: Sean Baker’s hurtling, empathetic early-career gem
Winning an Oscar isn’t only a boon for a director going forward. Just as fresh interest and scrutiny will accompany the filmmaker’s future works, so too will his archive prompt a re-evaluation. This month, Criterion, striking while the iron is hot, released not just the definitive home-video edition of Sean Baker’s 2025 Oscar mega-winner Anora ($27.99 Blu-ray, $20.99 DVD), but … [Read more...]