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      Eleonore Von Trapp Campbell, of the ‘Sound of Music’ Family, Dies at 90

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      She was a member of the Trapp Family Singers, which toured internationally, though she herself was not depicted in the musical or the film.Eleonore von Trapp Campbell, the second daughter of Maria von Trapp, whose Austrian family was depicted in the stage musical and the beloved movie “The Sound of Music,” died on Sunday in Northfield, Vt. She was 90.The death was confirmed by Day Funeral Home in Randolph, Vt.Ms. Campbell was a younger half sister to the von Trapp children who were depicted in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music” and its hugely successful 1965 movie adaptation. Both were based loosely on a 1949 autobiographical book by Maria von Trapp, who died in 1987.“The Sound of Music” tells the story of an Austrian governess (played by Julie Andrews in the film) who marries her employer, a widower (Christopher Plummer in the film), and then teaches his seven children music. The movie won the Academy Award for best picture.Ms. Campbell’s father, Capt. Georg von Trapp, and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, had the seven children who were the basis for the singing family. Maria Kutschera married the captain after Agathe von Trapp died.Georg and Maria von Trapp had three children, who were not depicted in the movie; Ms. Campbell was the second. Early on, she sang soprano as a member of the Trapp Family Singers, who performed in Europe before World War II and, after fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, continued to do so in the United States and internationally.“The life of singing on tour is one that involves an extraordinary amount of discipline and hard work,” Ms. Campbell’s daughter Elizabeth Peters said, “and my mother lived as a teenager singing lead soprano, night after night after night, and toured much of the year, and it really shaped who she was.”Ms. Campbell stopped touring in 1954 when she married Hugh David Campbell, a coach and teacher. They lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where she raised seven daughters, teaching them to cook, bake, garden, sew, knit, darn and make butter and ice cream from scratch. In 1975, the family moved to Waitsfield, Vt.Later in life she traveled to festivals with her instruments and told children about her music career.Eleonore von Trapp, who went by Lorli, was born on May 14, 1931, in Salzburg, Austria, on the border of Germany. After fleeing the country, her family settled in Vermont in the early 1940s and opened a ski lodge in Stowe, where Ms. Campbell’s two surviving siblings, Johannes and Rosmarie von Trapp, live.In 1996 the family became engaged in a bitter dispute over money and control of the lodge, a 93-room Austrian-style resort on 2,200 acres. Johannes and several siblings bought out the others in 1995; Ms. Campbell and the rest said their shares were worth more than the price they had received.“He acts as though I’m the chief instigator, and I’m not,” Ms. Campbell told Vanity Fair in 1998, speaking of her brother. “I’m sad at the situation, which was completely unnecessary.”In addition to her two siblings and Ms. Peters, Ms. Campbell’s survivors include five other daughters, 18 grandchildren and six great-grandsons.One daughter, Hope McAndrew, said that while she and her siblings knew every word from “The Sound of Music” as they were growing up, they also knew the songs the Trapp Family Singers had sung on tour long before the musical.The New York Times contributed reporting. More

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      ‘How They Got Over’ Review: How Gospel Begat Rock

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      In the director Robert Clem’s documentary about gospel quartets and their undeniable influence on rock ’n’ roll, Sister Rosetta Tharpe has competition.Sister Rosetta Tharpe nearly steals the show in “How They Got Over,” the director Robert Clem’s documentary about the gospel quartets of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s and their undeniable influence on rock ’n’ roll. But she has competition.Among those who championed the quartets, Tharpe, the first gospel artist to sign with a major label, was instrumental in introducing her audience to groups like the Dixie Hummingbirds. The longtime lead of that group, Ira Tucker, bookends the documentary with reminiscences that gently touch on faith, economics and craft.The singer Dennis Edwards explains the shifts in the genre. But it’s a clip featuring Joe Ligon of the Mighty Clouds of Joy stylishly spinning and sliding that draws a smile-inducing connection from the spiritual to the secular, from the quartet Edwards performed in to the group he became a frontman for: The Temptations.Other interviewees include Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama, Isaac Freeman of the Fairfield Four, and JoJo Wallace of the Sensational Nightingales.
      “How They Got Over” traces the music from its exquisite jubilee-style harmonies to tugging “smooth gospel.” (The singer Sam Cooke was among the smooth gospel singers who crossed over to mainstream success.)Joyce Jackson, a historian, and the roots music chronicler Jerry Zolten offer insights into a devotional art form that often responded to the energy of churchgoers. With a trove of archival performance footage, much of it from the television show TV Gospel Time, and the wisdom to let those images breathe, the film leans into the maxim about showing not telling. Among the highlights: the Blind Boys of Mississippi joined by the Barrett Sisters in a hand-clapping rendition of “I’ll Be Singing Up There” and Inez Andrews pressing hard on the pedal of her wail and prophesying the rock to come.How They Got OverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘Speer Goes to Hollywood’ Review: Expert Rebranding

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      A high-ranking Nazi leader attempts to whitewash his legacy in this disturbing, if single-note, documentary by Vanessa Lapa.Albert Speer — one of Hitler’s closest advisers and his minister of Armaments and War Production — doesn’t actually go to Hollywood, but he does get bafflingly close. After serving 20 years in prison (he was the highest-ranking Nazi to avoid a death sentence at the Nuremberg Trials) Speer wrote “Inside the Third Reich,” a best-selling memoir that perked up the ears of the movie industry. In 1971, Paramount Pictures nearly took the bait and hired the screenwriter Andrew Birkin to hash out a script.Based on audio recordings of conversations between Speer and Birkin, rendered in voice-over narration by Anno Köhler and Jeremy Portnoi, “Speer Goes to Hollywood,” directed by Vanessa Lapa, relies on this chilling disparity: the grisly reality of the war and the guiltless, even cavalier attitude of one of its central architects.Speer repeatedly denies knowing that concentration camps existed, blaming his involvement with the Nazi party on his careerist objectives and his devotion to his work. His words stand in disturbing contrast to the onslaught of the visuals — a parade of striking (if haphazard) World War II archival images, material drawn from the Nuremberg Trials and footage from Speer’s European publicity tours for his book.Despite the power of this setup, the film is pockmarked with unanswered questions: Why did Birkin sign on to the project? How exactly did the production fall through? “Speer” is an intriguing document, highlighting the ease with which the most reprehensible figures are able to whitewash their legacies. But once you settle into its wavelength, the documentary begins to feel simplistic, like a one-track excuse to roll out rare film clips and testimony.Speer Goes to HollywoodNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Souvenir Part II’ Review: Life, as She Imagines It

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      In the sequel to her art-house favorite “The Souvenir,” Joanna Hogg picks up the story of a young woman’s journey to becoming an artist.Deep into “The Souvenir Part II,” a young woman walks through a hall of mirrors as if in a dream. It is a freighted moment for the character, a film student whose lover died not long ago. After struggling with her grief and her art, she seems on the cusp of a creative breakthrough: She’s made her graduate movie and her mother, father and friends are there to see it. As she walks among her mirrored reflections, she also seems to be passing her many different selves — the dutiful daughter, the drifting student, the bereft survivor — now all in service to her role as an artist.The latest from the British filmmaker Joanna Hogg, “Souvenir Part II” is a portrait of a young artist. It’s about life and art, inspiration and process, growing and becoming. And while it is familiar in many ways, it also isn’t the usual bleating about art and artists partly because most such stories are about men, those tortured, mad geniuses whose work dominates culture, filling museums and biopics. This, by contrast, is the story of a recognizably faltering young woman who tells her disapproving male professors that her film will be about “life as I imagine it” — and then makes good on her statement of intent.“Part II” picks up more or less where Hogg’s 2019 art-house favorite “The Souvenir” ends. Set in Britain in the early 1980s, the first movie finds Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) in film school, generously supported by her parents. The story’s focus, though, and much of her energy and time are dedicated to her exciting, progressively fraught affair with an enigmatic dissembler, Anthony (Tom Burke), who charms, seduces and robs her. Ultimately, he overdoses on heroin in a bathroom of the museum where he showed her the Fragonard painting that gives the film its title. “Souvenir” ends with a snippet of romantic poetry and Julie walking off a soundstage into the day.That first story has its obvious attractions, notably the irresistible appeal of tragic love, with its messy beds and broken hearts. But it is Hogg’s filmmaking — her narrative and stylistic choices, the precision of her framing, the stillness of her images and how she withholds information — that distinguishes “Souvenir” and her other movies. She’s found her own way at the crossroads of art cinema and the mainstream, and particularly striking is how she handles time and transitions. Most filmmakers smooth out scenes so they seamlessly flow into a whole; Hogg likes to cut off songs, as if snapping off a radio, and abruptly shift from here to there — just as we do in life.When the sequel opens, Julie is lying in bed, back at her parents’ immaculately appointed country home. She’s still in mourning and still seeking refuge with her father, William (James Spencer Ashworth), and her mother, Rosalind (a brilliant Tilda Swinton, Swinton Byrne’s real mother). They’re slightly baffled by their daughter’s life but are kind, gentle and unflaggingly supportive. Back in her own world, Julie hangs out with her friends, spends time on other people’s film shoots and works on her grad project. She also tries to make sense of Anthony, his life and death, and the churning, complex feelings that he left in his wake. She misses the intimacy of the man she calls a “mysterious leader.”“Part II” misses him, too — specifically it misses Burke’s charisma and talent, which worked with Swinton Byrne’s awkward hesitancy in the first film, creating a friction that suited the dynamics of their characters’ relationship. Swinton Byrne presents a likable, sympathetic figure (you’re certainly drawn to the character), and has a jutting, sculptural face that demands your attention. But she isn’t skilled enough to create a persuasive inner life for Julie, and because Hogg avoids scripted exposition, her actress can’t lean on the dialogue to help fill in the blanks. Julie’s uncertainty, her doubts and mistakes are crucial to “Souvenir Part II,” but Swinton Byrne’s wan performance is an uninteresting placeholder for an idea.Eventually and with much stumbling, Julie’s grad film comes into focus; she begins shooting it, basing it on her relationship with Anthony. Embracing a rigorous fidelity to her past, she builds an exact replica of her flat and dresses the male lead in Anthony’s housecoat. Movies about moviemaking are rarely as interesting as their makers think, but Julie’s process does illuminate the character and Hogg’s autobiographical intentions. Julie frets, worries, changes her mind, confusing her actors and (understandably) infuriating her cinematographer. But all of these efforts go on far too long and Julie wears out your patience, as does Hogg’s emphasis on this belabored interlude.Even so, Hogg’s filmmaking presents its own forceful draw and is the reason I watched “Souvenir Part II” again. The second time, I paid closer attention to Julie’s grad film, a fantastical dream of a movie that is a very serious, amusingly arty pastiche of overwrought symbolism and cinematic allusions (“The Lady From Shanghai,” “The Red Shoes”). It’s poignantly terrible, but its badness is immaterial to Hogg’s project. Julie has tapped everything that she has — her images and experiences, her being, seeing, feeling — and in doing so she’s irrevocably blurred the divide between life and art. She lived, made her movie, and will keep on doing both in all the Joanna Hogg movies to come.The Souvenir Part IIRated R for language and adult sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Roh’ Review: I See Dead People

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      This atmospheric and grisly horror movie from Malaysia sees a single mother and her children rattled by the arrival of mysterious strangers.When a ghoulish little girl caked in mud suddenly appears near the isolated hut of a single mother, Mak (Farah Ahmad), and her two children living in the Malaysian jungle, things take a turn for the sinister. Not that the family — impoverished and in denial of their father’s death — was doing particularly well before the arrival of the lost child, who rattles them with a morbid prophecy then slashes her own throat within the first fifteen minutes.Emir Ezwan’s feature directing debut, “Roh,” which translates to “soul” in Malaysian, belongs to a wave of homegrown, folklore-inspired horror films taking Southeast Asia by storm (see “Two Sisters,” also from Malaysia, or “Satan’s Slaves,” from Indonesia).A grisly ghost story set against a backdrop of scraggly, claustrophobic vegetation given an eerie vibrancy by the cinematographer Saifuddin Musa, “Roh” isn’t big on the details. The story unfolds at some unspecified point in the past as a distant war rages on, and Ezwan relies on vivid imagery — burning trees, mushy piles of blood — over a concrete narrative, which renders the entry of two additional strangers disorientingly opaque if acutely unsettling.As the indeterminate evil spreads, Mak’s children take cues from “The Exorcist” and a beguiling neighbor begins to wield inordinate levels of influence over the increasingly aghast mother. Symbolism overshadows characterization, or any sense of motive for that matter, nevertheless “Roh” succeeds as a spine-tingling baffler, hitting at nerves we can’t quite articulate but feel all the same.RohNot rated. In Malay, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. On virtual cinemas and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘A Mouthful of Air’ Review: Depression Clouds a Domestic Idyll

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      Amanda Seyfried stars as a young mother suffering from postpartum depression in Amy Koppelman’s weepy adaptation of her novel.A young mother battles postpartum depression in the arid melodrama “A Mouthful of Air.” Living in Manhattan in the ’90s, Julie (Amanda Seyfried) is a vision of bliss. Sunlight pours through the windows of her vibrantly colored apartment as she lays sprawled beside her cherubic infant son. But minutes later, the domestic idyll cracks when Julie settles on the floor to slit her wrists.Directed by Amy Koppelman and based on her novel of the same name, “A Mouthful of Air” aspires to show how depression can sully even the loveliest of scenes. The scenes the movie chooses, however, play like a parody of white privilege: Julie and her husband Ethan (Finn Wittrock) are an affluent, affectionate couple whose greatest concern is whether they should relocate to Westchester. Julie’s pampered lifestyle is even such that, upon her suicide attempt, she is carried to an ambulance by her doting doorman.In the months following her rehabilitation, Julie suffers ongoing anxiety. Grocery shopping is fraught with indecision over food brands, and later, a discussion about Julie’s second child spurs a panic attack over whether the baby will like her hair. Koppelman uses jump cuts, a hand-held camera and sound effects to sketch Julie’s distress, but absent a more penetrative window into her character, the movie’s portrait of depression often feels as facile as its opening image: Julie’s wide blue eyes with a single tear trailing down her cheek.A Mouthful of AirRated R for language and inner turmoil. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Cicada’ Review: A New Relationship Buds as Old Wounds Reopen

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      Matthew Fifer writes and co-stars in this understated drama about a man struggling with his past as he forges a new bond.The camera in “Cicada” dwells on scars, literal and metaphorical. There’s a rough, discolored line running down the stomach of Sam (Sheldon D. Brown), the new boyfriend of Ben (Matthew Fifer). Ben drags his finger along that line while the two are in bed together. And there are the ambiguous nightmares that take Ben back to his Long Island childhood home and the beach nearby, the noise of cicadas and waves of the nearby ocean deafening.Ben is first introduced via an elliptical montage of alcohol-infused dates and hookups. But after these encounters, he often finds himself on the floor of his small room overcome with nausea or shaken awake by nightmares. An impromptu date with Sam, which does not lead to sex, unlocks new possibilities for healthy intimacy for Ben, but also reopens the old wounds he’s let scar over.“Cicada,” which is directed by Fifer and Kieran Mulcare, is a muted affair, with even its diffused and desaturated palette conveying a sense of understatement. Ben and Sam’s blossoming romance does a lot of telling and little showing. While there’s the occasional amusingly idiosyncratic section of dialogue that sounds like a series of stagily poetic non-sequiturs, much of the couple’s bonding feels straightforward and unremarkable.The sound design by Gisela Fulla-Silvestre and Travis Jones gives the film a modicum of thoughtful and detailed texture. Their calibrated and minimalist soundscape is subtle and graceful, offering insight into an ostensibly complex relationship informed by trauma when the rest of the film struggles to do so.CicadaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Snakehead’ Review: Nightmares on the Way to the American Dream

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      The writer and director Evan Jackson Leong sets a crime tale in New York City’s Chinatown.“Snakehead” is an unvarnished look at the seedy intersections between organized crime and human trafficking in present-day New York City’s Chinatown. In his welcome but oversimplified addition to the American crime family saga, the writer-director Evan Jackson Leong carves out unapologetic space for a villainous family with a strong bond.Telling the story through an intra-diasporic gaze, Leong positions the Chinese American kingpin Dai Mah (Jade Wu) and her sons against Sister Tse (Shuya Chang), a Chinese national who owes Dai Mah nearly $60,000 for smuggling her into the United States and is willing to become a human trafficker herself to clear the debt.The movie wants to be both an insider look at the global apparatus of human trafficking, including its tragic costs, and a redemptive tale about the women at the center of this criminal underworld. Leong is more successful at the former than the latter.Wu plays Dai Mah with a no-frills abandon that often makes her feel like the film’s protagonist, but even her performance can’t overcome the narrative missteps. The script flatly renders its female characters as either strong or weak, which fuels a stilted quest to prove themselves worthy of redemption in the eyes of the lackluster men around them. Leong confuses motherhood for a personality characteristic, and positions this fact as the reason Sister Tse is worthy of a hero’s pedestal despite her complicity in Dai Mah’s crimes. It is hollow and reductive. Add on the aimless voice-over, flashbacks overdone to the point of diluting their meaning and a couple of feeble fight scenes, and “Snakehead” tumbles all too quietly under the weight of its ambition.SnakeheadNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More