Courtesy of Universal Pictures UK
Downton Abbey (2019)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Downton Abbey, City on a Hill: Season One and That Pärt Feeling: The Universe of Arvo Pärt.
Downton Abbey (Universal)
The film picks up the PBS Masterpiece series’ story threads and weaves them in familiar patterns. The cast is reunited in time for a royal visit to everyone’s favorite English country manor. Disputes over inheritance simmer in the background. Aspects of Downton Abbey are silly, yet on the whole, the movie accommodates the stories of a wide expanse of characters of different classes, temperaments and even sexual persuasion. The downstairs servants’ quarters receive as much attention as the drawing rooms above.
Downton Abbey offers escape into a world where our own society is comfortably reflected amidst the baronial luxury of past times. Jealousy, class envy and condescension, family secrets, the possibility of reconciliation—the human stories are nicely drawn. Downton Abbey is a gilded palace of dreams where continuity is valued but change is acknowledged—where affairs of state are conducted with a dignity inconceivable in the America of now.
“City on a Hill: Season One” (Showtime/CBS)
Showtime’s “City a Hill” is a post-“Wire” cop-corruption-social drama loaded with grit and gratuitous sex. The action turns around a pair of compelling characters, reform-minded black Boston Assistant District Attorney Decourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge) and corrupt FBI agent Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon). They don’t get on—but will they find common cause while investigating an armored car heist-turned-murder scene? “City on a Hill” is set amidst the mythology of South Boston and the city’s Irish crime lords.
That Pärt Feeling: The Universe of Arvo Pärt (Film Movement)
Arvo Pärt’s music is deceptively simple yet hard for musicians to get their hands around. So says electronic composer Kara-Lis Coverdale in director Paul Hegeman’s documentary, That Pärt Feeling. She is among the conductors, musicians, choreographers and dancers interviewed for their response to his music—a minimalism with an affinity for Eastern Orthodox liturgical music. The reclusive Pärt is seen in the documentary, working the Cello Octet Amsterdam in a performance of his work.
