March 24, 2016
Ratings and running times are in parentheses; foreign films have English subtitles. Full reviews of all current releases: nytimes.com/movies[1].
'Anomalisa' (R, 1:30) Directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, this sad, stirringly painful stop-motion puppet whatsit centers on a floundering soul (voiced by David Thewlis) who, while on a business trip, has an affair with a stranger (Jennifer Jason Leigh). An invaluable Tom Noonan voices everyone else. (Manohla Dargis)
'The Birth of Sake' (No rating, 1:34, in Japanese) Erik Shirai's documentary examines the traditional brewing of sake at a small family-owned distillery in Japan, but its true focus is an endangered way of life. At 94 minutes, the film's pacing drags at times. Still, as Teruyuki Yamamoto, the head brewmaster, might say, you can't rush the process. (Daniel M. Gold)
'The Boy' (PG-13, 1:38) Lauren Cohan, of "The Walking Dead," plays Greta, an American nanny hired by a couple in a creepy British mansion to watch their son, who turns out to be a porcelain doll. For most of the way it's a psychological thriller, Greta wondering about her sanity as she begins to think the doll may indeed be alive. But a twist ending brings a sharp turn in tone. "The Boy" is still a reasonably engaging horror movie, but you may wonder what it might have been like had it stayed on course till the end. (Neil Genzlinger)
'The Brainwashing of My Dad' (No rating, 1:30) Jen Senko examines the ways right-wing radio, television news and Internet outlets transformed her once-reasonable father into an angry, hateful man. She throws in vignettes from other people with similar stories to tell. Especially with so much animosity now released by the presidential campaign, this documentary feels a little late to the discovery that listening to people like Rush Limbaugh all day can fuel our worst impulses. (Genzlinger)
'The Bronze' (R, 1:48) This sour comedy stars Melissa Rauch as a former Olympic bronze medalist in gymnastics who reluctantly agrees to coach her small Ohio town's next big star in the sport. Ms. Rauch's character, spoiled and vulgar, is so repellent that she's hard to stomach for the length of a feature film. (Genzlinger)
★ 'Brooklyn' (PG-13, 1:51) Saoirse Ronan gives a remarkably lively and subtle performance as Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates from Ireland to New York in the early 1950s, in John Crowley's lovely adaptation of the novel by Colm Toibin. (Scott)
'The Brothers Grimsby' (R, 1:18) Emphasis on the grim. (Dargis)
★ 'Carol' (R, 1:58) Todd Haynes's gorgeous adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel stars Rooney Mara as Therese Belivet, a young woman in early-1950s New York who falls for an older suburban housewife played by Cate Blanchett. The blossoming of their love affair is related in subdued colors and whispered words, and it lingers in the air like an old song. (Scott)
'Hail, Caesar!' (PG-13, 1:46) Joel and Ethan Coen lay siege to old Hollywood in this sly, off-center comedy set against the 1950s motion-picture business. One of those diversions that they turn out in between masterworks and duds, it features some wrangling over God, art and politics and a stable of frisky stars, including Josh Brolin, George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson. (Dargis)
'Cemetery of Splendour' (No rating, 2:02, in Thai) The latest feature from the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul ("Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives") is another quiet surprise; a slow-paced, enigmatic account of an ailing soldier and two women looking after him. It is moving, engaging, and strangely sad. (Glenn Kenny)
★ 'City of Gold' (R, 1:31) Laura Gabbert's documentary about the Los Angeles Times food writer Jonathan Gold is a smart, ardent love letter to his city, his appetite and his art. (Scott)
'The Clan' (R, 1:50) Pablo Trapero's film, based on a true story, is a troubling exploration of fascist psychology. Behind a facade of middle-class normalcy, an Argentine family, enabled by the military dictatorship of the 1980s, goes into the business of kidnapping, torture and murder. Guillermo Francella, as the patriarch, brilliantly portrays not only the banality of evil but the evil of banality. (Scott)
★ 'The Confirmation' (PG-13, 1:40) The pleasures are modest but rewarding in this drama written and directed by Bob Nelson. A handyman (Clive Owen) struggling with alcoholism spends a weekend with his son (Jaeden Lieberher), searching for stolen tools, while his ex (Maria Bello) is at a church-sponsored couples retreat with her new man (Matthew Modine). Though the boy will soon attend the religious rite of passage in the film's title, the gentle lessons from his weekend with Dad are the higher education. (Andy Webster)
'Creative Control' (R, 1:37) Benjamin Dickinson directs and stars in this frigid satire, set in Brooklyn in the near future, about a stressed-out adman whose obsession with a pair of reality-augmenting eyeglasses unwinds with heaps of style but only a smattering of substance. (Jeannette Catsoulis)
'Deadpool' (R, 1:48) Jokes and bullets are tossed like confetti in "Deadpool," a feverishly eager-to-please comic-book movie about a supervillain (Ryan Reynolds) who suits up like a superhero. Bang, boom, splatter. (Dargis)
'The Divergent Series: Allegiant' (PG-13, 2:00) A flaccid blend of eugenics, purloined children, memory-wiping gas and laughably unlikely scuffles, this third installment (directed by Robert Schwentke) is so lacking in narrative momentum that we can almost hear the hum of a plot idling in neutral. (Catsoulis)
'Eddie the Eagle' (PG-13, 1:16) This film is loosely based on the real-life story of Eddie Edwards, an improbable British ski jumper in the 1988 Winter Olympics, but it has been so loaded up with fictionalized clichés that it's a bit insulting to viewers; it doesn't trust them to recognize a good underdog story on their own. At least Taron Egerton, in the title role, and Hugh Jackman, as his reluctant coach, have charm. (Genzlinger)
★ 'Embrace of the Serpent' (Not rated, 2:05) This majestic, spellbinding film is a tragic cinematic elegy for vanished indigenous civilizations in the Amazon jungle. Viewed largely through the aggrieved eyes of a shaman whose tribe is on the verge of extinction at the hands of Colombian rubber barons in the 19th and 20th centuries, this complicated mixture of myth and historical reality shatters lingering illusions of first-world culture as more advanced than any other, except technologically. (Stephen Holden)
★ 'Everything Is Copy' (No rating, 1:29) Jacob Bernstein's gossipy tribute to his mother, the writer and director Nora Ephron, digs into the psychological space between her wildly public life and intensely private death to reveal a fiercely ambitious and instinctively empathic hustler — a pickle slathered in whipped cream. (Catsoulis)
★ 'Eye in the Sky' (R, 1:42) This suspenseful film about an American drone attack[2] on a terrorist meeting place in Nairobi, Kenya, is grim farce in which unpredictable human behavior repeatedly threatens an operation of astounding technological sophistication. Helen Mirren, in one of her fiercest screen performances, plays the chilly officer in charge of an operation to capture a radicalized Englishwoman she has been pursuing for years. But as the moment of capture arrives, her plans abruptly change when a cyborg beetle, a small surveilla nce device, reveals two inhabitants strapping on explosives for a suicide mission. (Holden)
★ '45 Years' (R, 1:35) Andrew Haigh's new film is a loving, devastating portrait of a long, happy marriage that encounters an unusual crisis. Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay play Kate and Geoff Mercer, whose plans for an anniversary party are disrupted by news about an old, long-dead girlfriend of Geoff's. (Scott)
'Gods of Egypt' (PG-13, 2:07) Come for the spectacle. Stay for the kitsch. (Dargis)
'Hello, My Name Is Doris' (R, 1:30) An irresistible, stealthily touching Sally Field plays an outwardly ridiculous woman in her 60s who falls in love with a much younger man (Max Greenfield). The director Michael Showalter oversells the goods, but resistance is futile. (Dargis)
'How to Be Single' (R, 1:50) In this film adaptation of Liz Tuccillo's book, an innocent postcollegiate newcomer to New York, named Alice (Dakota Johnson), disappears down a rabbit hole of deadening life lessons and half-baked screenwriting. This reheated "Sex and the City[3]" adventure flops, even with Leslie Mann and Rebel Wilson hard at work being funny. (Nicolas Rapold)
'Knight of Cups' (R, 1:58) In Terrence Malick's latest movie, Christian Bale plays a Hollywood screenwriter grappling with spiritual crisis in the company of beautiful women. The real star is the cinematographer, the three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, who infuses Los Angeles with a transcendental glow. (Scott)
★ 'Krisha' (R, 1:22) A family drama in alternately appalling and queasily hilarious extremis, this first feature takes place over an epically terrible Thanksgiving. The young director Trey Edward Shults cast family members in central roles, including an aunt, Krisha Fairchild, and together they turn this modest movie into an expressionistic tour de force. (Dargis)
'Ktown Cowboys' (R, 1:23) A group of friends pal around in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, experiencing crude adventures as they grope their way toward maturity. The film, an unfunny comedy, is based on a Web series. The idea was better in 10-minute doses. (Genzlinger)
'Kung Fu Panda 3' (PG, 1:35) Jack Black again voices Po, the panda who saves China, in this beautifully animated addition to the franchise. Po is reunited with the father (Bryan Cranston) he thought was long dead and has to rediscover his panda roots to stop a soul-stealing monster. Young viewers might find the themes a bit more disturbing than in the previous two installments, but of course they'll know who's going to triumph in the end. (Genzlinger)
'London Has Fallen' (R, 1:39) In this sequel to "Olympus Has Fallen," the president of the United States once again is snatched by terrorists, and only his favorite Secret Service agent can save the day. It's dumb and uninvolving, a collection of ugly sentiments served via clumsy dialogue. (Genzlinger)
★ 'Marguerite' (R, 2:07, in French) "The self-deception that believes the lie." That phrase from the Rodgers and Hart song "I Wish I Were In Love Again" distills the theme of Xavier Giannoli's satirical comedy "Marguerite," about a rich, tone-deaf would-be opera diva who thinks she can sing. The character, beautifully played by Catherine Frot, is inspired by the life of the American socialite and aspiring soprano Florence Foster Jenkins, who was the butt of a cruel joke that everyone got but her. (Holden)
★ 'The Mermaid' (Not rated, 1:34, in Mandarin) Stephen Chow, master of Hong Kong comedy, stays behind the camera to deliver a manic but charming sci-fi/fantasy/slapstick eco-fable/romcom. Head-spinning fun. (Kenny)
'Midnight Special' (PG-13, 1:51) The latest from Jeff Nichols ("Mud," "Take Shelter") is a lean and tense genre puzzle — a backwoods crime thriller that's also a heady science-fiction allegory. Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst give it emotional weight, playing the protective parents of an exceptional child. (Scott)
'Miracles From Heaven' (PG, 1:49) Jennifer Garner stars as a woman who loses her faith when one of her children falls ill. The movie smartly looks to be inspiring rather than preachy, and except for some mawkishness in its late scenes, comes off as unexpectedly watchable. (Ken Jaworowski)
★ 'Mustang' (PG-13, 1:37, in Turkish) Full of life, "Mustang" is a stunning debut feature by Deniz Gamze Ergüven about five sisters in rural Turkey. Confined to their grandmother's house, the girls bridle against losing their freedoms in a story grounded in both laughter and tears, and in the resilient strength of these girls against soul-deadening strictures. (Rapold)
★ 'My Golden Days' (R, 2:00) A must see, this latest from the brilliant French filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin is an elegy for young love and its lingering ache that turns on a man (the great Mathieu Amalric) who looks back at his life and the love he let slip away. Two exciting young newcomers, Quentin Dolmaire and the luminous Lou Roy-Lecollinet, costar. (Dargis)
'Perfect Match' (R, 1:26) A largely conventional but generally agreeable ensemble rom-com set in young, affluent L.A.; its most prominent thread is the old "player meets his match" gambit, enacted by the attractive performers Terrence J. and Cassie Ventura. (Kenny)
'The Preppie Connection' (No rating, 1:37) The film, inspired by actual events, should have delivered the excruciating tension an unsophisticated teenager might feel diving into Colombia's drug economy, but no. Except for a few minutes toward the end, "The Preppie Connection" fails to connect on most levels. (Helen Verongos)
'Race' (PG-13, 2:14) To its credit, this standard inspirational biopic of Jesse Owens, the track-and-field star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, doesn't soft-pedal the racism that Owens encountered at every turn. But this safe, by-the-numbers movie has no visual flair in showing his amazing athletic feats. (Holden)
'Remember' (R, 1:35) Christopher Plummer turns in a fine performance, and the director Atom Egoyan proves himself an expert button-pusher, in this psychological thriller. Mr. Plummer's character, Zev, who is slipping into and out of dementia, is sent in search of a Nazi who escaped justice. Martin Landau plays the friend who is pulling Zev's strings. The ending is a bit of a cop-out, but the tension builds efficiently throughout. (Genzlinger)
'The Revenant' (R, 2:36) By turns soaring and overblown, this American foundation story from the director Alejandro G. Iñárritu ("Birdman") features a battalion of very fine, hardworking actors. None are more diligently committed than Leonardo DiCaprio, as a 1823 mountain man who endures a crucible of suffering. (Dargis)
'Risen' (PG-13, 1:48) Framed as a tale of religious conversion, Kevin Reynolds's clunky biblical procedural confronts the Resurrection with flat photography and a stoic Joseph Fiennes as a Roman Army tribune hunting for the vanished body of the messiah. (Catsoulis)
'Room' (R, 1:58) Brie Larson and an exceptional child actor, Jacob Tremblay, play mother and son in the adaptation of Emma Donoghue's novel. Written by Ms. Donoghue and directed by Lenny Abrahamson, the movie flickers with grace and imagination during its initial half but devolves into a dreary, platitudinous therapy movie in its second. (Dargis)
'Son of Saul' (R, 1:47, in Hungarian, German, Yiddish and Polish) This debut feature from the 38-year-old Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes is a powerful but ungainly blend of allegory and thriller set in a Nazi death camp. Saul (Geza Rohrig) is a member of the Sonderkommando, Jewish inmates assigned to assist in the murder of their fellow prisoners in exchange for meager privileges. In his company, the viewer is given a tour of horror that is unnerving both for its harshness and for the sense of slick, self-congratulatory artifice that lurks around the edges of the frame. (Scott)
'A Space Program' (No rating, 1:12) As much installation video as documentary, Van Neistat's film is the record of a whimsical simulation of a mission to Mars by the artist Tom Sachs and a crew of assistants. From identity cards to excursion module to land vehicle, the project created the components from steel, plywood, Tyvek and found objects. A tribute to NASA and displaying D.I.Y. ingenuity, the movie recalls Georges Méliès and the early days of cinema. (Daniel M. Gold)
★ 'Spotlight' (R, 2:07) A team of Boston Globe investigative reporters — played by Michael Keaton, Brian d'Arcy James, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo — takes on the local archdiocese in this powerful fact-based newspaper procedural, directed by Tom McCarthy. The movie, with a superb cast and a tightly constructed script, is an unflinching investigation of systemic moral rot and a rousing defense of the values of professional journalism. (Scott)
'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' (PG-13, 2:15) It's good! (Dargis)
'Sweet Bean' (No rating, 1:53, in Japanese) This striking Japanese drama, directed by Naomi Kawase — about a jaded food-stall dessert chef reinvigorated by an older woman and the exceptional ingredient she adds to his recipe — confronts life's heartbreaks with genuine compassion. (Kenny)
'Take Me to the River' (No rating, 1:24) In Matt Sobel's Nebraska-set feature, a gay California teenager becomes enmeshed in scandal during a family reunion. An intriguing coming-of-age premise about identity and tradition is upended by a dubious plot involving the boy's suspected wrongdoing with a younger cousin. (Rapold)
★ '10 Cloverfield Lane' (PG-13, 1:46) Sneakily tweaking our fears of terrorism, Dan Trachtenberg's tale of a captive girl (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), her dour jailor (John Goodman) and whatever is lurking outside their shelter is a master class on narrative pacing and carefully managed jolts. (Catsoulis)
'Thank You for Playing' (No rating, 1:20) This documentary chronicles the efforts of a couple to create a video game about their young son's fight against fatal brain tumors. It's heartfelt, though not as powerful as other examples of the growing genre of films that capture personal loss. (Genzlinger)
'The Program' (R, 1:43) In Stephen Frears's patchy docudrama about the rise and fall of the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong, Ben Foster portrays Armstrong as a vindictive, egomaniacal con man and transparent liar. As a biography, it's sketchy at best. More than a takedown of what's left of his tattered reputation, it registers a cynical distaste for the myth making of sports heroism in general. (Holden)
'13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi' (R, 2:24) A pummeling slog, Michael Bay's latest revisits the 2012 attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Mr. Bay again proves that coherency (visual, etc.) isn't a prerequisite for his style of blunt-force cinema. (Dargis)
'Triple 9' (R, 1:55) This lurid genre exercise features a lot of bad men and one very bad woman (Kate Winslet as a Russian-Israeli mob wife) engaged in the usual criminal nastiness. The director John Hillcoat wastes his fine cast on nonsense spiked with questionable representations. (Dargis)
'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot' (R, 1:52) Tina Fey plays a TV journalist thrust into war-ravaged Afghanistan in this adaptation of "The Taliban Shuffle," a memoir by Kim Barker, who is now a reporter for The New York Times. Directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, the episodic film plays like a more serious extension of Ms. Fey's best-known persona as a nerdy workaholic, on more treacherous terrain and with an Afghan culture clash. Her character's rise-and-fade arc is sympathetically rendered, but Ms. Fey, though a talented comic, seems to be holding back a bit with this material. (Rapold)
★ 'The Witch' (R, 1:32) This finely calibrated shiver of a movie from Robert Eggers follows a Puritan family that, in 1630, sets off to live alone in the New England wilderness. Something wicked this way comes. (Dargis)
'The Young Messiah' (PG-13, 1:51) An enervated adaptation of an Anne Rice best seller, "The Young Messiah" touches on New Testament basics in its story of the 7-year-old Jesus. But despite the addition of a Roman centurion character (Sean Bean) not in the novel, it fails to generate dramatic tension. (Webster)
'Zoolander 2' (PG-13, 1:42) The extravagantly overproduced, chaotic, not very funny comic circus that is the tepid sequel to the 2001 hit has enough plot for several movies. They are so sketchy and jammed together that they more or less cancel each other out. (Holden)
★ 'Zootopia' (PG, 1:48) This smart, funny animated film from Disney tells the story of a determined bunny named Judy Hopps who wants to become the first of her kind to be a police officer in Zootopia, a metropolis where animals live and work together, having set aside their genetic tendencies to eat one another. There are witty jokes for all ages and messages about inclusion and intolerance that are more nuanced than in most such fare. (Genzlinger)
Film Series
'The Last Movie' (Sunday) The success of "Easy Rider" and the freewheeling spirit of the late 1960s earned Dennis Hopper a chance to go to Peru to shoot this lunatic 1971 feature, a Hollywood-bankrolled movie that deconstructs itself as thoroughly as anything by Jean-Luc Godard. Evidently, Universal Pictures (and audiences) weren't expecting the avant-garde, but today the film's hall-of-mirrors qualities and reflections on cultural exploitation seem ahead of their time. The barely coherent plot features Mr. Hopper as a movie crew member who stays behind after a shoot. (The filmmaker Samuel Fuller appears briefly as the film-within-the-film's director.) The haphazard construction is filled with "scene missing" title cards and gratuitous reprises of "Me and Bobby McGee." Showing as part of "From the Third Eye: Evergreen Review on Film," a series dedicated to films promoted by that counterculture magazine, which ran a report from the unruly set. BAMcinématek, 30 Lafayette Avenue, at Ashland Place, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, 718-636-4100, bam.org[4]. (Kenigsberg)
Three Wiseman (Friday through April 14) The tireless documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman may be best known for his noninvolvement policy — he never asks questions or includes extraneous information — but he nevertheless shoots and cuts with an eye for the nightmarish qualities of American institutions. The Metrograph is screening three of his earliest features, including his debut, "Titicut Follies" (1967, showing April 1 through 7), a shocking portrait of the conditions at an institute for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, and the barely less grotesque "Hospital" (1970), shot at Metropolitan Hospital in New York City. Less harrowing (and self-explanatory) is the program's opening film, "High School" (1968, showing Friday through Thursday). 7 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, 212-660-0312, metrograph.com[5]. (Kenigsberg)
'Who's Crazy?' (Friday through Sunday) The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last year, supplied the score for this discordant black-and-white experimental film, which stars actors from New York's Living Theater troupe as escaped mental patients who engage in absurdist rituals at a farmhouse in Belgium — at least until society rudely disrupts the half-mad, half-utopian idyll. At times, this recently rediscovered 1966 feature suggests a more genuinely innovative correlative to the Alan Bates vehicle "King of Hearts," a cult hit from the same year that has a similar premise. Anthology Film Archives is billing its screenings of "Who's Crazy?" as the first showings in the city in nearly half a century. At 8 p.m., 32 Second Avenue, at Second Street, East Village, 212-505-5181, anthologyfilmarchives.org [6]. (Kenigsberg)
References
- ^ nytimes.com/movies (nytimes.com)
- ^ More articles about unmanned aerial vehicles. (topics.nytimes.com)
- ^ More articles about Sex and the City. (topics.nytimes.com)
- ^ bam.org (bam.org)
- ^ metrograph.com (metrograph.com)
- ^ anthologyfilmarchives.org (anthologyfilmarchives.org)