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      ‘The Old Guard 2’ Review: Uma Thurman vs. Charlize Theron

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      Uma Thurman joins the expanded cast in this sure-footed sequel to the action blockbuster about a team of immortal heroes.Five years ago, “The Old Guard” injected a tired genre of superhumans in capes with existential alienation and grit. The aim of that film, about a crew of immortal vigilantes who go on rescue missions to help mankind, was admirable but also frequently one note.What could another installment offer? The best that a sequel can: buff out those blemishes, expand the universe and subvert the genre again. In “The Old Guard 2,” superheroes saving humanity is out, gods beefing with gods is in. The film, directed by Victoria Mahoney, is a sure-footed romp that tightens the screws, most immediately by flexing a bigger cast and broadening the lore of the original comic book series. All this expansion starts right where the last one ended. Believed to be lost under the sea for centuries, Quynh (Veronica Ngo), a fellow immortal and lover of Andy (Charlize Theron), has returned. She’s discovered by Discord (Uma Thurman), another mysterious immortal who is opposed to Andy’s meddling in human affairs. Aggrieved and feeling abandoned by Andy, who is now mortal, Quynh then becomes a useful tool for Discord.Whereas the first film was focused on the arrival of a new immortal named Nile (KiKi Layne), this one has forgotten immortals popping up (like Tuah, played by Henry Golding). That means a lot of drama, and fertile ground for these supreme beings reckoning with the most human of experiences: love and betrayal, guilt and regret, all complicated by being alive for millenniums.Ngo is the key anchor to these feelings, providing a strong emotional counterpoint to Theron that was just present in flashbacks the first time around. The shared history in their gazes and the pain and recriminations of losing and finding each other again translates the wistful burden of immortality that the first film mostly said, but couldn’t really make you feel.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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      ‘Kill the Jockey’ Review: Backing the Wrong Horse

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      An equestrian suffers a brain injury that alters his identity in Luis Ortega’s stylized gangster movie.Like a marionette missing its strings, the equestrian Remo Manfredini spends much of the fickle dark comedy “Kill the Jockey” hanging inertly in center frame. The film opens on Remo (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), a onetime champion, enduring a midcareer crisis that finds him drinking and drugging before races. He seeks an antidote to his malaise in his romance with Abril (Úrsula Corberó), a fellow jockey, who serves as a plucky buffer for the self-saboteur against his ruffian boss, Sirena (Daniel Giménez Cacho).The director, Luis Ortega, doesn’t give much reason to care about Remo’s conflict — the protagonist’s catatonia inspires the same in the viewer — and instead exhausts his efforts on a mannered blankness of style and mood. The action unfolds in composed tableaux, with lines delivered inexpressively enough to void them of meaning. The exception to the rule is Abril, who claims the movie’s heart by dint of being the sole character with one.The movie’s second half finds Remo suffering a traumatic brain injury that inspires him to don a fur coat, old lady purse and smudged makeup, a decision that seems to have been driven less by narrative — as in a gender-bending Pedro Almodóvar tale — than aesthetic. As “Kill the Jockey” devolves into gangster mayhem, the whole story starts to feel unconsidered, almost perfunctory. Offering respite are scenes with Abril, especially one in which she and her friend Ana (the magnetic Mariana di Girólamo) shimmy and gyrate before a big race; their agility suggests that being a jockey is akin to dancing.Kill the JockeyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Returns to Theaters in 4K Restoration

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      Rob Reiner’s 1984 cult film about a British band past its prime returns to theaters in a new 4K restoration.Thank cinéma vérité for the rockumentary. D.A. Pennebaker’s 1967 “Dont Look Back” came first. And thank those for spawning the faux vérité mockumentary that arrived in the form of Rob Reiner’s 1984 “This Is Spinal Tap” — a parody which, legend has it, was taken by a credulous few for a vérité portrait of an actual rock band.First a critical favorite, then a VHS cult film (for rock bands in particular), and finally a Library of Congress certified classic, Reiner’s film returns for the holiday weekend in a new 4K restoration.Introducing himself as the filmmaker Marty DiBergi (and fatuously taking credit for the term “rockumentary,” already in circulation), Reiner expresses his longtime admiration for Spinal Tap, “one of England’s loudest bands,” a group of amiable dimwits touring the United States to promote their new LP, “Smell the Glove.”As documented by DiBergi and punctuated with bombastic, bare-chested performances of casually ludicrous (but catchy) numbers, their Tap Into America tour is rife with quarrels, snafus, canceled bookings, hissy fits and spectacular onstage malfunctions.The fictional band was created by boyhood pals David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and so in a sense was the film: McKean and Guest met at New York University and developed a riff that was picked up on by Reiner and Harry Shearer (who plays Derek Smalls, another band member) for an abortive TV comedy show and thereafter evolved into the movie.As such, “Spinal Tap” is a rich feast of clichés ranging from kinescopes of the band’s early incarnations to backstage shenanigans and ham-handed intrigue. The glibly incompetent manager (Tony Hendra) quits, leaving David’s pushy, astrology-minded girlfriend (June Chadwick) in charge as engagements drastically decline. Nigel departs in the wake of a U.S. Air Force base mixer, leaving the band without a lead guitarist for a gig at an amusement park second billed to a kiddie puppet show.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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      From No Home to a Perch in Hollywood, a Filmmaker Finally Breaks Through

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      Fresh from a year of attending the prestigious Sundance labs and armed with a script that would become her first feature, the director Victoria Mahoney thought her life as a filmmaker was about to begin. It was 2006 and she was attending a party at the Sundance Film Festival for industry professionals to meet the new crop of lab graduates. Agents, producers and others were there to mine new talent for future collaborations.Mahoney and her pal, the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, stood in that room and waited to be approached. Crickets. Finally, an agent came over and asked about their involvement in the labs. They responded effusively. But instead of inquiring about their work, he asked if they could introduce him to one of their male colleagues. That agent signed that colleague in the room. Mahoney? Nothing. Not on the mountain. Not after the festival ended.It would take Mahoney 11 years to land an agent and 20 more to make her first studio film. That movie, “The Old Guard 2,” debuted this week on Netflix.Charlize Theron in “The Old Guard 2,” directed by Mahoney. (Theron reteams with Chiwetel Ejiofor, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts and others for this sequel.)Eli Joshua Ade/Netflix“We all believe the fables of what happens when you’re at Sundance and you’ve come through the labs; we’ve seen it,” Mahoney said in a recent interview. “We weren’t viable. We weren’t anything. It’s indicative of a thousand things.”Mahoney’s story is not unfamiliar. So many toil in the film industry and are not rewarded with sustainable careers even when they receive accolades early on. What makes Victoria Mahoney distinct is that there never was a Plan B. She lived without a safety net for a decade, couch surfing at friends’ homes, even experiencing true moments of homelessness — nights when she didn’t know where she would be resting her head. But her belief in herself that she was destined to be a filmmaker? That never ebbed, regardless of her setbacks.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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      ‘Videoheaven’ Review: Rewinding the Tape

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      A documentary by Alex Ross Perry examines how movies and TV have portrayed video store culture.Borrowing the format of “Los Angeles Plays Itself” (2004), Thom Andersen’s great, sprawling survey of how movies have depicted Los Angeles, Alex Ross Perry’s archival documentary “Videoheaven” takes on a topic that is considerably more niche: how movies have depicted video stores.The subject is more capacious than it might sound. For one thing, it is intriguingly time-bound. Video stores couldn’t have appeared in movies until the late 1970s, says Maya Hawke, who narrates, in a nod to her role as a video store employee on “Stranger Things.” Eventually, such stores will only be portrayed by people who never experienced them firsthand, she says, “like westerns or the World War II film.”Drawing on Daniel Herbert’s book “Videoland,” Perry traces how films and TV went from showing home viewing as exotic or dangerous (“Videodrome,” “Body Double”) to seeing it as routine. Onscreen, video stores became sites for romantic interaction or potential embarrassment. Pondering a television trope in which a person seeking to rent a pornographic movie is, without fail, shamed, “Videoheaven” describes “an extremely 1990s paradox wherein adults are interested in sexuality but unwilling to admit it.”The observations range from the incisive to the grandiose, and at nearly three hours, “Videoheaven” could stand a tighter edit. Early on, a line of voice-over is sloppily repeated verbatim. And Perry only needs so many clips of obnoxious clerks, even if it’s funny to see David Spade repeatedly typecast in that role.But the material will be irresistible to any cinephile who has spent countless hours in these spaces, and a critic would do well to admit susceptibility. I’ve met Perry a few times over the years, and the first time, he thought I looked familiar — I assume because I had frequented the Kim’s Video where he worked.VideoheavenNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 53 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Old Guard 2’ Review: Thurman vs. Theron

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      Uma Thurman joins the expanded cast in this sure-footed sequel to the action blockbuster about a team of immortal heroes.Five years ago, “The Old Guard” injected a tired genre of superhumans in capes with existential alienation and grit. The aim of that film, about a crew of immortal vigilantes who go on rescue missions to help mankind, was admirable but also frequently one note.What could another installment offer? The best that a sequel can: buff out those blemishes, expand the universe and subvert the genre again. In “The Old Guard 2,” superheroes saving humanity is out, gods beefing with gods is in. The film, directed by Victoria Mahoney, is a sure-footed romp that tightens the screws, most immediately by flexing a bigger cast and broadening the lore of the original comic book series. All this expansion starts right where the last one ended. Believed to be lost under the sea for centuries, Quynh (Veronica Ngo), a fellow immortal and lover of Andy (Charlize Theron), has returned. She’s discovered by Discord (Uma Thurman), another mysterious immortal who is opposed to Andy’s meddling in human affairs. Aggrieved and feeling abandoned by Andy, who is now mortal, Quynh then becomes a useful tool for Discord.Whereas the first film was focused on the arrival of a new immortal named Nile (KiKi Layne), this one has forgotten immortals popping up (like Tuah, played by Henry Golding). That means a lot of drama, and fertile ground for these supreme beings reckoning with the most human of experiences: love and betrayal, guilt and regret, all complicated by being alive for millenniums.Ngo is the key anchor to these feelings, providing a strong emotional counterpoint to Theron that was just present in flashbacks the first time around. The shared history in their gazes and the pain and recriminations of losing and finding each other again translates the wistful burden of immortality that the first film mostly said, but couldn’t really make you feel.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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      ‘Heads of State’ Review: John Cena and Idris Elba Are Assassins’ Targets

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      This action movie about U.S. and British leaders, also featuring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, plays like a silly version of a BBC political satire series.As the U.S. President (and former movie star) Will Derringer prepares to meet the British prime minister, Sam Clarke, he has something of a chip on his shoulder. Journalists and aides figure he’s holding a grudge; during his presidential campaign, Clarke took Derringer’s opponent out for fish and chips. Then, the two are thrown together in the run-up to a NATO summit; their determination to patch up their relationship, which isn’t terribly strong to begin with, is eventually enhanced when they’re forced to fend off varied explosive assassination attempts.Directed by Ilya Naishuller, who also made the absurdist action pictures “Hardcore Henry” and “Nobody,” “Heads of State” plays like a season of the BBC political satire series “The Thick of It.” (If the show had been crafted to satisfy the Second City Television characters Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok, whose approval of movies was contingent on things “blowing up real good.”) John Cena, the U.S. president, and Idris Elba, the British leader, craft their performances cannily — their characters don’t know they’re in a comedy, which makes things funnier. The way Cena’s face turns blank when his character doesn’t know what to do next (which is often) is particularly effective.The movie contains some intriguing, presumably deliberate nods to auteurist cinema. Like Lynne Ramsay’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin” (2011), it opens at the messy Tomatina (tomato festival) in Buñol, Spain, where a shooting aimed at a secret agent played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas is easily mistaken for an edible splat. As in Steven Soderbergh’s “KIMI,” a popular Beastie Boys tune is blared on a sound system during an action scene. And just like in Mike Judge’s “Office Space,” Stephen Root plays a functionary who is routinely humiliated by his boss. It’s loud albeit harmless japery, best appreciated with your air-conditioning cranked to movie theater levels.Heads of StateRated PG-13 for language and comedic violence. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘40 Acres’ Review: This Land Is Their Land

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      Danielle Deadwyler tussles with cannibals in a disturbing postapocalyptic thriller.“You think bullets grow on trees?” a perturbed Hailey Freeman (Danielle Deadwyler) asks her daughter. Eleven years into a global famine that has rendered farmland the most valuable resource of this near future, Hailey spends her days training her children to ward off the marauding bandits coveting the fertile family land she tirelessly works.The title of R.T. Thorne’s fierce and striking postapocalyptic thriller, “40 Acres,” is, of course, rife with symbolism. The name stems from Gen. William T. Sherman’s Civil War land promise to Black Americans freed from enslavement. Hailey’s lush rural Canadian property, whose familial ownership dates to 1875, is a fulfilled vow that never came to fruition in the United States. Tellingly, those who trespass on Hailey’s farm, such as a band of killers in the film’s gruesome opening skirmish, are exclusively white.To protect the area, Hailey and her Indigenous partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) — who’s also understandably sensitive to the preciousness of land — rely on their four children. A kindhearted Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) patrols; a perceptive Raine (Leenah Robinson) serves as a sniper; and the growing sisters Danis (Jaeda LeBlanc) and Cookie (Haile Amare) help where they can. Furthering fortifications include an electrified fence, A.T.V.s for roaming, a cache of guns in a fallout shelter and a network of subterranean tunnels suggesting an underground railroad. During the day they practice marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat, and at dinner, Raine presents a report on “The Proletarian Handbook.”Though Hailey prefers isolationism, new threats emerge testing her desire. Through her CB radio she learns that cannibals have massacred several surrounding farms. Her lone friend, Augusta (Elizabeth Saunders), is also missing. Unbeknown to Hailey, Emanuel, who’s desperate to find romance and others his age, takes in a wounded Dawn (Milcania Diaz-Rojas), who mysteriously appears in search of help.While we learn much about this family during the film’s five chapters, their surrounding world remains obscured. Hailey speaks about a military faction known as “Union,” but they’re never seen. Is a government still in place? Is there an opposition? Though these cannibals are a menacing presence, they also remain nameless and broad. By seeing the army and the cannibals as the same threat, Thorne limits the film’s dramatic potential to mix race with horror and history.Still, there’s a tense beauty to “40 Acres.” Deadwyler’s forceful energy fills the frame; through her rigid stature and her cleareyed speech, she lends power and humor to this lovingly stern mother. Through wide shots and sweeping tracks, the cinematographer Jeremy Benning juxtaposes this heartland’s soft golden hour magic with the hard violence necessary to defend it. A final freakout, taking place in multiple settings, helps to quench the viewer’s pent-up blood thirstiness, while Hailey’s last-act devotion to Emanuel adds warmth to a chilling apocalyptic story.40 AcresRated R for strong bloody violent content and language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More