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      ‘Snack Shack’ Review: The Kids Are Alright

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      Performances from the two main characters elevate this boisterous teen comedy to the level of raunchy art.On the face of it, Adam Rehmeier’s “Snack Shack” is a fairly standard-issue teenage stoner comedy: Lifelong friends in small-town Nebraska spend a summer avoiding town bullies, hustling for cash and competing for the affections of a dreamy neighbor, while boozing, toking and amply cursing in their spare time. But with its rambling momentum and quick-witted, almost musical dialogue, it feels less like “Superbad” than a Robert Altman movie, sort of like a pint-size “California Split.” As if to drive home the comparison, “Snack Shack” starts at an off-track betting parlor.The friends are A.J. (Conor Sherry), the bashful straight man, and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle), the easygoing party animal. It’s a familiar dynamic, but it’s made fresh by the performances, which are exemplary. Sherry plays A.J. with cringing self-loathing, inherited and desperate to be cast off. LaBelle, by contrast, is a whirlwind of manic adolescent enthusiasm: Brash and boisterous, a cross between Kevin McCallister and Steve Stifler, he’s the movie’s bawdy M.V.P. As he delivers the most artful swearing since Peter Capaldi in “In the Loop,” it’s hard to believe that this is the same LaBelle who was recently so wide-eyed and tender as Sammy Fabelman.Rehmeier maintains a good handle on compelling if straightforward material, and he demonstrates commendable restraint: He avoids the easy period jokes that come with the movie’s early ’90s setting, and as the plot takes a dramatic turn in the last act, he keeps clear of sentimentality. He also has a keen sense of what to emphasize and what to downplay. He rushes through the stuff with the bullies, as if wary of clichés, but takes time to linger on moments that matter, like A.J. and his father (the great David Costabile) sharing a well-deserved beer.Snack ShackRated R for strong language, drug and alcohol use, mild violence, some sexual content and wall-to-wall raunchiness. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In Theaters. More

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      ‘Knox Goes Away’ Review: A Not-So-Simple Plan

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      Michael Keaton is quietly compelling as a beleaguered hit man in this downbeat thriller.Movies rarely pause to simply watch a character think, and not all actors can withstand the scrutiny. Michael Keaton, however, has always been uncommonly adept at telegraphing intent with minimum dialogue. So when, early in “Knox Goes Away,” his character, a contract killer named John Knox, is warned by his doctor of an imminent mental health crisis, Keaton’s control is more eloquent than any breakdown.Unfolding over seven weeks, “Knox Goes Away” is, like its antihero, smart, unconventional and almost obsessively careful. Its unhurried pacing and mood of quiet deliberation won’t be for everyone; but this low-key thriller resolves its shockingly high stakes with a twisty intelligence. Knox is a creature of habit, a lover of philosophy (his longtime Polish escort — the wonderful Joanna Kulig, of Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 romance, “Cold War” — calls him Aristotle) — and a prized professional. But when his final job goes very wrong, and the blast radius threatens to enclose his criminal associates, Knox must accelerate his retirement plan. Of course his long-estranged son (James Marsden) chooses just this moment to beg for help in resolving an emergency of his own.The pleasure of “Knox Goes Away” lies in the tension between Knox’s rapidly deteriorating mental faculties and his meticulously devious plan to solve both predicaments, all while hoodwinking the cunning detective (Suzy Nakamura) following behind. Both Al Pacino and Marcia Gay Harden are perfectly understated in small, crucial roles, and the film (Keaton’s second as director, after his similarly brooding 2009 drama, “The Merry Gentleman” ) relishes their restraint.At a time when too many actors are cosmetically prohibited from raising an eyebrow or wrinkling a nose, Keaton reminds us that an expressive face is still a movie’s most valuable asset.Knox Goes AwayRated R for cold blood and a hot temper. Running time 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘French Girl’ Review: Cuckold au Vin

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      In this romantic comedy featuring Zach Braff and Vanessa Hudgens, a New York man heads to Quebec City with his French Canadian girlfriend. Shenanigans ensue.“French Girl” is a love triangle farce that’s mostly set in Quebec City but takes place on Planet Rom-com where bipedal characters act out in ways that rarely resemble human behavior.In New York, a middle school teacher named Gordon (Zach Braff) yearns to measure up to his girlfriend, Sophie (Evelyne Brochu), a French Canadian chef and the kind of aspirational Francophile ingénue who, within the film’s first minutes, roams a farmers market in a print dress, blonde curls tumbling down to her straw basket of fresh produce. (What, no baguette?)Enter Sophie’s ex, Ruby (Vanessa Hudgens), a name-dropping celebrity restaurateur who engineers a ploy that brings all three past and present lovers up to Canada for a stomach-churning visit with Sophie’s noisy, knife-wielding, octagon-brawling family. Gordon is immediately attacked by a swan; worse, Ruby renders him to blubber as skillfully as if he were a roasted poulet.The filmmakers James A. Woods and Nicolas Wright push their script dangerously close to parody. But there are at least a dozen good zingers in here, particularly a three-part punchline from Alex Woods as a snobbish food critic that kicks off with, “Have you ever seen an emaciated dolphin?” The trouble is, none of the performances are on the same wavelength: Hudgens is an outrageously hilarious monster; Brochu, an earnest heroine; and the increasingly unhinged Braff tries too hard to be empathetic. The more he wants us to sympathize with his hapless character, the more unforgivable Gordon’s actions feel. By the climax, Gordon should be in relationship and criminal jail. And no amount of je suis désolés will make the ending taste sweeter than a poisoned mint at the end of a strange meal.French GirlRated R for language and steamy sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Arthur the King’ Review: Dog Days With Mark Wahlberg

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      Wahlberg stars in this drama directed by Simon Cellan Jones, based on the true story of a Swedish adventure racer and his beloved adopted dog.“Arthur the King” — part gooey dog drama, part survivalist joyride — stars Mark Wahlberg as Michael, an American version of the Swedish adventure racer Mikael Lindnord.In 2014, Lindnord was competing in the Adventure Racing World Championships in Ecuador when a stray dog, whom he named Arthur, decided to tag along. That meant trekking through the jungle, up mountains, and across rivers, surviving on rationed meatballs and gulps of water.The film, directed by Simon Cellan Jones, is a Wahlberg production through and through: Expect some brawny athleticism and a hotheaded family man on a quest for redemption.The movie begins with Michael acting like a hypercompetitive jerk; his arrogance costs his team a big race. Three years later, Michael’s gone domestic — but a “racer’s gotta race,” he tells his wife and former teammate, Helena (Juliet Rylance). The motto inadvertently recalls the satire of “Talladega Nights,” but “Arthur” plays it mostly straight, with his teammate Leo (Simu Liu), an Instagram celebrity, as the movie’s source of comic charisma.As Michael continues to recruit the members of his new team for another big race — the expert climber Olivia (Nathalie Emmanuel), the seasoned navigator Chik (Ali Suliman) — we see Arthur roaming the streets of Santo Domingo (the film was shot in the Dominican Republic), fending off bullies, and generally looking miserable. The dog and his future master don’t join forces until nearly halfway through the film, at which point Michael and his team have already braved several obstacles, including a bracing zip-line malfunction that leaves Olivia, and two bikes, dangling from Michael’s harness.Sure, the film plays like a tourism ad for the Dominican Republic, but at least the action is palpable. And the story is typical paint-by-numbers inspirational — some bids at emotion feel awfully forced. Still, Wahlberg and company manage to hold your attention, and not just because there’s a cute dog in the frame.Arthur the KingRated PG-13 for athletic suspense and dog injuries. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Shadowless Tower’ Review: Circling Regret in Old Beijing

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      Zhang Lu’s quiet film follows a man touched by nostalgia and loss, lending a melancholic air to this modern city of steel and glass.Time can have a curious ebb and flow in “The Shadowless Tower,” a ruminative Chinese drama in which the past intrudes on — and at times overwhelms — the present. For its middle-age protagonist, time can seem to drift, much as he does. On occasion, it almost stops dead, partly because he seems stuck in limbo. A poet turned filmmaker, a husband turned divorcé, a son turned orphan, our hero is caught between who he once was and who he has become.It seems fitting then that the first time you see Gu Wentong (Xin Baiqing) it’s at a cemetery, a space where the living visit the dead (and sometimes vice versa). He has come with several relatives, including his young daughter, to honor his mother. On reaching her grave, though, they are surprised to see that someone has left a bouquet of yellow flowers on it, a flash of bright color (one that the movie associates with family) and an act that confounds them, given she didn’t have other relatives. The bouquet soon becomes the first piece in a larger puzzle involving Gu Wentong’s long-estranged parents as well as his own sense of self.Set in contemporary Beijing, the story emerges elliptically, as does Gu Wentong. He’s a quiet, somewhat reserved man with glasses and a stooped posture that suggest he’s read most of the books in the cramped, near-monastic bedroom that serves as his primary living space. It’s one of two bedrooms in his mother’s old apartment, a spartan space that he shares with a renter, a younger, openly unhappy man who’s trying to make it as a model. It’s instructive that there doesn’t seem to be a place for Gu Wentong’s daughter to sleep (there’s a bunk bed in the renter’s room); she’s being reared by his sister and brother-in-law.The despondent renter is one of a number of doubles that materialize in “The Shadowless Tower” as the story takes shape. The writer-director Zhang Lu (“Yanagawa,” “Desert Dream”) touches on a number of pungent, interconnected themes here, including family, nostalgia and loss. The movie offers a snapshot of present-day Beijing, for instance, with its washes of gray-blue, brightly lit nights and soaring glass-and-steel high rises. Yet even as that modern city comes into hazy view, another, Beijing does, too, creating what is effectively a superimposed picture of the capital, one that features old brick buildings, human-scaled narrow streets and the dazzling white 13th-century Buddhist temple that gives “The Shadowless Tower” its title.The temple towers above Gu Wentong’s neighborhood, functioning as a reminder of his childhood — he grew up in the district — and as an emblem of the permanence missing from his life. Despite flashes of humor, the movie is saturated with a sense of loss. Some of this has to do with his father, Gu Yunlai (sensitively played by the great Chinese filmmaker Tian Zhuangzhuang), who re-enters his son’s life after a painful, decades-long separation. The son doesn’t approach the father at first, but instead sneaks into his apartment, which turns out to be a shabbier, lonelier, even sadder twin of Gu Wentong’s own place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus’: A Parting Gift From a Master Musician

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      The final concert of the Japanese virtuoso is captured in an aching meditation on mortality and legacy.The twin themes of “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus” are art and mortality, and they’re twisted so tightly together that they become inextricable. Shot in black and white to match the keys of the piano, the film entirely consists of the influential Japanese musician’s final concert. One might say it was a performance for nobody — Sakamoto filmed alone in a studio, with only the crew there as audience. But it’s more correct to say it’s for us, a gift from a master.Sakamoto’s long career covered techno-pop, scores for movies like “The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant,” and experimental and instrumental albums that stretch and play with the full range of sound. The songs he plays in “Opus” — 20 in all — span his career. For the fan, it’s an intensely moving experience.But even for the viewer without much knowledge of Sakamoto’s work, “Opus” holds its own as the rare cinematic space for contemplation. There’s no context given, no attempt to create a narrative. Instead, the visual space is carefully filmed and the lighting manipulated to subtly shift the mood. Light and shadow are equally important. Everything from the panels on the studio wall to the inside of the piano to the leg of the stool on which the musician is perched becomes significant, all part of the performance. Sakamoto plays like a dancer, or a conductor; his hands shape the sound on the keys, but also take flight at times, as if he’s coaxing a tone out of the instrument, or himself.Sakamoto filmed the concert over a week in September 2022. He and the film’s director, his son, Neo Sora, meticulously designed the look of the movie, including storyboards to show how the lighting would change. It is a kind of monochromatic take on the shifting of light as morning turns to afternoon, then evening. By the end, Sakamoto appears to be playing in inky blackness, with one light standing in for the moon shining over his left shoulder.The reason for this interest in invoking the passage of time is simple: Sakamoto knew his days were numbered. In 2014, he was diagnosed with throat cancer. His recovery was documented in the 2018 film “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda,” but in 2021 he was diagnosed with rectal cancer. He died in March 2023, about six months after filming “Opus,” at age 71.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘One Life’ Review: One Man’s Rescue of Children in Wartime

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      A British stockbroker quietly saved hundreds of lives by arranging for children in Prague to escape the Nazis by leaving for foster homes in England.When Nicholas Winton died in 2015 at 106, his obituary in The New York Times noted that, for decades, he had been startlingly reserved about what he achieved at the outbreak of World War II in Europe. Between the Munich Agreement in 1938 and Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Winton organized a rapidly moving operation that saved 669 children, most of them Jewish, by transporting them from Prague to Britain, where they were placed with foster families.The rescue didn’t receive wide public attention for 50 years, partly because, as the biographical feature “One Life” depicts, Winton (played by Johnny Flynn as a young man and Anthony Hopkins in scenes set later) was reluctant to acknowledge his heroism. In trying to capture this almost stoic modesty, the film, directed by James Hawes, falls into a dramaturgical trap.“One Life” is really two movies. It looks back on the wartime actions from 1987, when Winton considers what to do about a scrapbook of photos and documents he has kept. Flashbacks to the 1930s open a window on his plan to locate Jewish children in Prague, secure visas for each of them and find them temporary families in Britain. Time, financing and bureaucracy loomed as stubborn obstacles.The procedural complexities, and Winton’s efforts to gain the trust of the children’s parents, are compelling enough. They throw down a moral gauntlet to viewers, who must put themselves in his shoes. The motives of Winton, a British stockbroker and socialist with German-Jewish roots, are portrayed as pure altruism.By contrast, the 1980s thread — which builds to Winton’s appearances on the BBC program “That’s Life!” in 1988 — might have played discretely as a portrait of mental compartmentalization. But intercut with the weightier wartime scenes, this strand comes across as slight and, unlike Winton, self-congratulatory.One LifeRated PG. Running time 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Animal Kingdom’ Review: A Beastly Disease

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      This French sci-fi tale plunges us into a world where a mysterious sickness turns humans into strange, sometimes terrifying part-animal creatures.By the time “The Animal Kingdom” opens, the enigmatic disease troubling the world has been circulating for years. It’s unclear where and how it started, much less why or just how far it has spread. Is a virus or bacteria to blame, or is it something in the air, the water, our genes? If we’ve learned anything from our recent pandemic it is that sometimes the most urgent questions aren’t immediately answerable. The big freaky unknown here is why people have begun mutating into beguiling, sometimes terrifying part-human, part-animal creatures.The furred and the hoofed, the feathered and the chaotically tentacled roam, slither and sometimes howl in “The Animal Kingdom,” an amusing what-if French fantasy with a touch of comedy and some glints of horror. It’s all pretty confusing for the 16-year-old Émile (a poignant, delicate, open-faced Paul Kircher), who’s struggling to deal with his mother, Lana (Florence Deretz). Adolescence is tough on its own without a mother who now seems post-verbal and whose face is covered in fur. Her breathing is strangely labored, too, although she also sounds as if she’s warming up a growl. Living alongside other species has its joys; its perils, too.An off-kilter mystery that teasingly flirts with a larger metaphoric resonance, the movie follows Émile as he and his father, François (a jittery, sympathetic Romain Duris), navigate their wild new normal. Lana has been institutionalized in a government-run facility since she attacked Émile — the deep scratches on the walls of her room resemble the scars on his face — and is receiving some kind of care. She’s about to be transferred to another facility in the south, where Émile and François are going to move. “We’ve made real progress in deciphering this disease,” a doctor reassures them. Controlling it is another matter.The director Thomas Cailley takes a direct, unfussy approach to the story, smoothly plunging you into it without ceremony or much background. (He shares script credit with Pauline Munier.) Within minutes, various meticulously rendered creatures have entered and exited, and Émile and François’s loving, testy relationship has been established. What’s also evident is the matter-of-fact attitude that the characters express. Everyone has adjusted to this disordered reality and has taken for-or-against positions, which is eerily familiar. At the same time, because the characters know far more than you do, at least at first, this creates a sense of unease that nicely fuels the movie’s smoldering dread.A sense of low-key unquiet continues even as the story shifts into a coming-of-age groove. Émile enters a new school where he hangs with other kids, develops a crush and changes, as all living things must. (Adèle Exarchopoulos shows up in a subplot, presumably because she’s a recognizable name.) It’s banal yet unordinary, as evidenced by the teens’ opposing views of the creatures; the intolerant call them “critters” while others argue for their rights. Then, while in the woods, Émile meets the birdman, a quasi-raptor, Fix (an impressively avian Tom Mercier), with majestic wings and a bandage where a beak should be. After chatting and cawing — Fix is losing his ability to speak — they become friendly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More