Aurelia Butler

This intimate drama gives a moving, if imperfect, look at a Korean immigrant mother’s struggle to raise her son in 1990s Canada.A few minutes into “Riceboy Sleeps,” an imperfect but ultimately moving drama written and directed by Anthony Shim, the film falls into that dreaded trope of immigrant stories: the smelly lunchbox moment. The experience comes for young Dong-hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang) when he opens the Korean meal his mom packed him and is taunted by elementary school classmates.Later, he asks his single mother, So-young (Choi Seung-yoon), who emigrated from Korea to Canada with Dong-hyun after the father died by suicide, to pack him a less conspicuous lunch. It’s one of a few ways that Shim’s film, which eventually flashes forward to track So-young’s struggle to raise and connect with her son during his teenage years (when he is played by Ethan Hwang), emphasizes in an almost perfunctory way the racism and hardship the pair faces in a new country in the ‘90s.Even while it’s hampered by these rough edges, the movie is terrifically scored and beautifully shot. (Though the cinematographer Christopher Lew’s astute camerawork is too often left to do heavy emotional lifting that the writing can’t.) Most of all, the film is elevated by Choi, who naturally communicates the strength, tenderness and pain of So-young’s life.It’s not until the spectacular third act of the film, when mother and son travel to Korea, that everything clicks more fully into place, as Shim lets the landscape and his actors take over. The camera finally sits still, capturing small moments of connection that further contour unspeakable wounds — giving a window into a past life that So-young could never fully escape.Riceboy SleepsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

The French public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy travels to different parts of Ukraine in this dispatch-documentary, shot in the second half of 2022.The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy does not pretend that “Slava Ukraini,” a war dispatch that he directed with Marc Roussel, is a polished documentary. In his closing narration, he describes it as an “unfinished film that we deliver as such, from the road.”For better and worse, that is how it plays. Lévy’s second documentary on the war in Ukraine (the first, “Why Ukraine,” aired on television in Europe) follows his travels to cities around the battered country in the second half of 2022. He meets with soldiers and civilians to capture the human stakes of the fight, with the goal of rallying the world against complacency in the face of the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin’s aggression.Lévy’s effort demands respect. Public intellectuals in the United States seldom travel through war zones with a camera running. (For that, we have Sean Penn.) They do not head into the center of a still-smoldering Bakhmut as the rumble of combat echoes in the background. Nor do they stand across the Dnipro River from an active Russian military position, in apparent view of a sniper. “For the time being, there is only sporadic fire,” Lévy explains over footage of himself hastening back to a car.It is also facile to dismiss Lévy, as some have, as a conflict-chasing opportunist. He’s been at this long enough. Lévy first wrote as a war correspondent in the early 1970s. His documentary “Peshmerga,” on Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraqi Kurdistan, and its follow-up, “The Battle of Mosul,” were released here in 2020.Yet Lévy does not make especially cohesive documentaries, and “Slava Ukraini” consists, like the Iraq films, of a disjointed, often insufficiently contextualized collection of interviews and interactions from his travels. It is hard not to wish for a version of “Slava Ukraini” in which Lévy played a less central onscreen role, or at least one without so much obtrusive scoring or voice-over.Occasionally his commentary is poetic. A breathtaking hand-held shot shows him trudging through a trench with soldiers as he reflects in narration “on this archaic habit of men burying themselves so not to die.” Yet more often, at least as subtitled, his words are so florid (“And we walk, under an insolently blue sky, looking for miraculous survivors”) that they risk trivializing his encounters. The camera says a lot without him.But artistic values aren’t really the point, which is to meet Ukrainians and to see different corners of the bombarded country, where residents, Lévy suggests, have in many cases become inured to the sight of a bombed office building or to the sound of warning sirens. “If there’s an evacuation, where will I go?” says a woman making borscht outdoors. Lévy visits a synagogue that sheltered outsiders, an act that he says serves as “a magnificent rebuttal to Putin’s propaganda about the inexpiable war between Ukraine and its Jews.” Survivors in liberated Kherson gather around generators to charge their phones, preparing to call people who may have been killed.Maybe Lévy didn’t need to be the one to put them in a movie. But he’s the one who did.Slava UkrainiNot rated. In French, Ukrainian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

Young people discuss their troubles with anxiety and panic in this unfocused advocacy documentary.Among American youth, anxiety is an epidemic. “Anxious Nation,” directed by Vanessa Roth (the short documentary “Freeheld,” which won an Oscar) and Laura Morton, persuasively argues as much. Yet when it comes to the causes of this mental health crisis or the precise ways in which it manifests, the documentary falters, unable to distill its empirical material into insights.The film opens with home-video footage of Morton and her teenage daughter, Sevey. In a voice-over, Morton explains that Sevey has suffered lifelong anxiety and near-daily meltdowns, and that the trials inspired Morton to explore adolescent anxiety in a film. She proceeds to talk to a handful of struggling teenagers and some of their parents, who describe distressing episodes that run the gamut and include tantrums during homework, compulsive behaviors and suicidal ideation.The sensation of panic or dread is not easy to describe, and the young subjects comport themselves exceptionally well. Rather than pair these accounts with observational footage, however, the directors reach for visual interest by interspersing scans of children’s artwork and lingering on the images with slow pans. (A title card at the end of the film reveals that the pieces were created by young people asked to illustrate their experiences with anxiety.)Interviews with psychologists offer a few concrete guidelines for parents: Steer clear of catastrophizing, for one, and avoid accommodating irrational anxieties. But as an advocacy documentary, “Anxious Nation” is unfocused, and ultimately feels like less than the sum of its parts.Anxious NationNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In select theaters and available to watch through virtual cinema. More

A factory worker joins with a group of anarchist watchmakers in this marvelously crisp drama.At the center of every mechanical clock is a spiral — the unrest as it’s known in Switzerland — and it’s a smart metaphor for Cyril Schäublin’s marvelously crisp study of anarchist watchmakers in the 1870s Saint-Imier valley. These women and men are aggrieved by long hours, dehumanizing labor, high taxes, health insurance costs, voting disenfranchisement, income inequality, surging nationalism and the pressures of an increasingly global economy. All of this while being distracted by an emerging mass-produced technology — the photograph — which allows them to stare at pocket-size images of influential strangers (executed rebels, mostly) like ye olde social media. This emboldened era believes its teetering system will collapse. We know it won’t. Time, Schäublin implies, is quite literally circular.The film punctures that airless sense of fate which can suffocate period pieces and restores this moment of upheaval to immediacy. Schäublin and the cinematographer Silvan Hillmann shoot scenes like a documentary. The camera lurks at a distance while the actors speak as casually as if they’re wearing hidden mics; the shot list could be transplanted as is to a fast fashion factory in present-day Bangladesh. Yet, to Schäublin, this story is more personal than his strictly anthropological movie lets on. His grandmother worked at a Swiss watch factory, and said her own grandmother had, too.Outside the building, the real-life Russian anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin (Alexei Evstratov) tangles politely with a smiling, implacable gendarme (Laurent Ferrero). Inside, a few more characters emerge: the politically ambitious factory owner (Valentin Merz), a handful of female employees (Clara Gostynski, Monika Stalder, Laurence Bretignier) and a series of bloodless managers who loom over the ladies’ hunched bodies with a stopwatch timing their productivity. There’s a bitter irony in the realization that the workers are constructing their own doom. Now that seconds can be measured, every one of them counts.UnrestNot rated. In Swiss German, Russian, French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

Manuela Martelli’s new film examines the Pinochet dictatorship through the eyes of a woman who never intended to play an active role.In 1973, the socialist government of Chile was overthrown by a military junta led by Gen‌‌. Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of the United States. Thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands fled the country under Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted for 17 years and was maintained through violence. ‌With the new film “Chile ’76,” the director Manuela Martelli joins the company of Chilean filmmakers like Pablo Larraín and Sebastián Leilo, who have made thought-provoking movies reflecting on the Pinochet regime and its impact on the lives of everyday people. Martelli’s initial inspiration for the story came from a source close to home. She imagined the loss felt by her grandmother, who died by suicide in 1976, one of the most violent years of the dictatorship, before Martelli was born.The protagonist of “Chile ’76” is Carmen (Aline Küppenheim), a regal woman of middle age. She’s a grandmother and a career flight attendant who now lives a comfortably bourgeois lifestyle with her husband in Santiago. When the story begins, she’s in the process of overseeing renovations to her family’s beachside vacation home. Carmen occupies her time alone with charitable work, guided by the sanguine priest of the town, Father Sánchez (Hugo Medina).Carmen is discomforted by the sanctioned brutality around her — early on, she witnesses distraught neighbors being dragged away in the streets. But Carmen’s comfortable existence is not directly disrupted until Father Sánchez asks her to care for a fugitive hidden in the church. She acquiesces, nursing Elías (Nicolás Sepúlveda), a wounded revolutionary, back to health. She transports antibiotics for his injuries, and lies to the suspicious authorities to cover her tracks. Anxiety becomes Carmen’s constant companion as telephones buzz on lines that might be tapped, and neighbors pry, posing inconvenient questions.Martelli’s film demonstrates remarkable skill in reconstructing he time period, giving consideration both to recreating the appearance of the era and its emotional tenor. She filmed in beach towns that have remained relatively unaltered since the ’70s, and she complements the look of crumbling building facades with wood-paneled interior sets. It’s a world that’s both worn and warm; even the wallpaper comes in cozy plaid.Yet Martelli’s detailed, beautiful frames aren’t signs of empty aestheticism. Her eye for composition mirrors that of her protagonist, a person of elegant tastes who is drawn into a political plot that intrudes upon her capacity to redesign. The film’s original score blends electronic and orchestral music, and acts as an indicator of Carmen’s justified paranoia, entering in moments when her routines are most disturbed. As an entrant into the growing canon of Chilean films responding to the Pinochet dictatorship, “Chile ’76” is a sly genre exercise, an example of how political repression can squeeze a domestic melodrama until it takes the shape of a spy thriller.Chile ’76Not rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

Those in picket lines at the headquarters of companies like Netflix were critical of working conditions that have become routine in the streaming era.Ellen Stutzman, a senior Writers Guild of America official, stood on a battered patch of grass outside Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles. She was calm — remarkably so, given the wild scene unfolding around her, and the role she had played in its creation.“Hey, Netflix! You’re no good! Pay your writers like you should!” hundreds of striking movie and television writers shouted in unison as they marched outside the Netflix complex. The spectacle had snarled traffic on Sunset Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, and numerous drivers blared horns in support of a strike. Undulating picket signs, a few of which were covered with expletives, added to the sense of chaos, as did a hovering news helicopter and a barking dog. “Wow,” a Netflix employee said as he inched his car out of the company’s driveway, which was blocked by writers.In February, unions representing 11,500 screenwriters selected Ms. Stutzman, 40, to be their chief negotiator in talks with studios and streaming services for a new contract. Negotiations broke off on Monday night, shortly before the contract expired. Ms. Stutzman and other union officials voted unanimously to call a strike, shattering 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood, and bringing the entertainment industry’s creative assembly lines to a grinding halt.“We told them there was a ton of pent-up anger,” Ms. Stutzman said, referring to the companies at the bargaining table, which included Amazon and Apple. “They didn’t seem to believe us.”The throng started a new chant, as if on cue. “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This corporate greed has got to go!”Similar scenes of solidarity unfolded across the entertainment capital. At Paramount Pictures, more than 400 writers — and a few supportive actors, including Rob Lowe — assembled to wave pickets with slogans like “Despicable You” and “Honk if you like words.” Screenwriting titans like Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “Lost”) and Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married,” “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”) marched outside Amazon Studios. Acrimony hung in the air outside Walt Disney Studios, where one writer played drums on empty buckets next to a sign that read, “What we are asking for is a drop in the bucket.”Another sign goaded Mickey Mouse directly: “I smell a rat.”But the strike, at least in its opening hours, seemed to burn hottest at Netflix, with some writers describing the company as “the scene of the crime.” That is because Netflix popularized and, in some cases, pioneered streaming-era practices that writers say have made their profession an unsustainable one — a job that had always been unstable, dependent on audience tastes and the whims of revolving sets of network executives, has become much more so.The streaming giant, for instance, has become known for “mini-rooms,” which is slang for hiring small groups of writers to map out a season before any official greenlight has been given. Because it isn’t a formal writers room, the pay is less. Writers in mini-rooms will sometimes work for as little as 10 weeks, and then have to scramble to find another job. (If the show is greenlit and goes into production, fewer writers are kept on board.)“If you only get a 10-week job, which a lot of people now do, you really have to start looking for a new job on day one,” said Alex Levy, who has written for Netflix shows like “Grace and Frankie.” “In my case, I haven’t been able to get a writing job for months. I’ve had to borrow money from my family to pay my rent.”Lawrence Dai, whose credits include “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “American Born Chinese,” a Disney+ series, echoed Ms. Levy’s frustration. “It feels like an existential moment because it’s becoming impossible to build a career,” he said. “The dream is dead.” More