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      ‘Expend4bles’ Review: Band of Meatheads

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      Sylvester Stallone leads an all-star mercenary squadron composed of ’80s-to-aughts brutes in the fourth installment of this franchise.The tone of “Expend4bles” can be summarized in a single close-up: a corpse’s severed hand flipping the bird. To its director, Scott Waugh, and all those responsible for resurrecting this dormant action franchise, the middle finger gestures toward this fourth installment’s intended style: macho, smirky and defiant. At its best, the film is all three. This all-star mercenary squadron composed of ’80s-to-aughts brutes is the cinematic equivalent to Slash’s Snakepit, a supergroup throwback to an era when men were meatheads and we in the audience merrily cheered them on.I’ll admit I still did, at least for some of this swaggering inanity. Why resist the impossible physics of Curtis Jackson (better known as 50 Cent) body-slamming a baddie back and forth like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum with his dolly? Or Dolph Lundgren lampooning his aging vision by screwing a prescription lens onto his sniper rifle? Or Sylvester Stallone grumbling about a thumb-wrestling injury that he’s chosen to nurse with a tiny custom leather sling? Or Jason Statham, the comically gifted bruiser now promoted to the series’ lead, doing, well, pretty much anything?In an even earlier era, Statham’s nimble skills would have awarded him a career like Jimmy Cagney’s. But he’s stuck working in ours, with a script that offers a few enjoyable quips — he calls an enemy “a sneaky little sausage” — but mostly lets him down. The screenwriters Kurt Wimmer, Tad Daggerhart and Max Adams seem to share a mutual disinterest in the plot, intoning the words “detonator” and “World War 3” until the threats become background static.These high jinks would be more fun if the actors didn’t look so unflappable. Nothing breaks their composure. Not explosions or blood spatters, not beheadings or nuclear bombs, not even the sight of a warship careening in the Sea of Japan. (Perhaps because all of the above have been cheaply rendered in post.) Even a back-flipping, insult-slinging seduction scene between Statham and a new teammate, played by Megan Fox, climaxes without a lip-gloss smudge. It’s just one more artificial palpitation.The energy sputters along on throwaway gags, like when Jacob Scipio, as a motor-mouthed young Expendable, sips a cocktail with a pink umbrella at a wake. There’s an absurdly enjoyable detour with a lecherous internet influencer (Samuel Black) and a shootout interrupted by a stereo blasting 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.,” which is just plain absurd. Is Jackson the rapper in the same universe as Jackson the assassin? Does he moonlight in carnage?Andy Garcia, Randy Couture, Levy Tran and the great martial artist Tony Jaa round out our cast of protagonists while Iko Uwais heads up a generic goon squad, giving all the intensity he can to a villain written with no identifiable traits other than a scar. When things get dull, there’s always Lundgren in the background, playing up his character’s nearsightedness with the daffy charm of Marilyn Monroe. But the film’s last reel is so awful — so sneeringly contemptuous of our good-faith efforts to play along with these shenanigans — that we leave the theater still thinking of that middle finger. It sure seemed pointed at us.Expend4blesRated R for curses and extravagantly digitalized carnage. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Trial’ Review: Seeking Justice for Argentina

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      Ulises de la Orden carves a documentary from film of the 1985 prosecution of the military leaders who had seized control of the government.Crafted entirely out of the televised 1985 trial of Argentina’s military junta, “The Trial” lays bare horrific crimes while showing the courage of victims, survivors and their families. Ulises de la Orden’s conscientious documentary is a necessary act of memory — for such is the only way justice truly endures — and it reminds viewers of the Dante-esque extent of the abuses beyond the stories of “the disappeared,” the thousands who were snatched and killed because they were labeled left-wing opponents or on other pretexts.De la Orden’s respectful, smartly abridged account draws on the 530 hours recorded by public television to compile a kind of oral history, rather than tracking the legal arguments. The testimony by dignified witnesses from all walks of life is gripping, even when viewed obliquely because of the camera placement. Cutaway shots show the smug-looking military brass who are on trial, the judges watching as impassively as they can manage and a rapt crowd in the courtroom.The director rightly recognizes that nothing is to be gained by smoothing over the facts. The military junta that seized power (from President Isabel Perón) in 1976, and its cronies and followers raped, murdered, tortured and kidnapped. They trafficked orphans of “subversives,” and stole (real estate and cash, while also raiding homes for everything from cookbooks to women’s underwear). We hear all about their mafialike behavior — throwing their victims out of airplanes into the sea — and how they made a grisly mockery of the rule of law.The 177-minute film concludes with the dramatic sentencing of the regime’s de facto president, Jorge Rafael Videla, and others. The document might resemble an artifact from another era. But it offers a stirring universal example of justice served, at a time when so many American voters fear the prospect of an authoritarian president already impeached once for inciting an insurrection.The TrialNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Storms of Jeremy Thomas’ Review: A Transgressive Producer

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      Thomas’s dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary.If you’re familiar with a certain streak of transgressive independent cinema, you’re likely familiar with the films of the producer Jeremy Thomas, even if you don’t know his name: Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” with David Bowie, and several works byDavid Cronenberg and Nicolas Roeg, including Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel “Crash.”Thomas is, by all accounts, a filmmaker’s producer, and his dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.”Cousins, the man behind the behemoth documentary series on the history of cinema, “The Story of Film,: An Odyssey,” seems more than determined to make Thomas into a household name.Presented as a road movie, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” follows the two men as they wind their way through France toward the Cannes Film Festival, where Thomas is promoting his latest project, Takashi Miike’s 2019 crime thriller “First Love.” Cousins presents the audio of his interviews with Thomas over footage of their travels — in subject-focused chapters titled “Sex,” “Politics,” and the like — edited together with clips from the films Thomas has produced and a plethora of other cinematic references and influences.The whole effort comes across more as an advertisement for Thomas’s genius — and Cousins’s obsession with him — than a true portrait of a discerning producer of outsider cinema. Even Tilda Swinton, a star of the Thomas-produced Jim Jarmusch film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” can only offer platitudes, characterizing Thomas as a “storm” within the industry.You may come away from “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” thinking of him as a fascinating man, but perhaps not as the cinematic prince that Cousins insists on crowning him.The Storms of Jeremy ThomasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Still Film’ Review: Hollywood on Trial

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      James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s eloquently argued experimental film warns of a contemporary Hollywood dangerously obsessed with the past.“Have you ever had a memory of a memory?” The question comes from an unseen prosecutor. His beleaguered witness, flummoxed, recalls once taking a friend’s story (a bizarre tale about a pervert giving away free bologna on a street corner) and presenting it as his own. Juxtaposed with the dialogue is a still from “The Sandlot,” the 1993 family comedy.Composed of numerous other provocations — clipped questioning about the industry paired with 35-millimeter publicity stills from many major films, including “Apollo 13” and “Bamboozled” — the writer-director James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s “Still Film” is a stunning, acute critique of the regressive artistic sensibilities that plague contemporary Hollywood.The challenging, experimental movie is presented in the loose form of a trial. It involves four unseen characters: prosecutor, defendant, witness and recorder. Each is voiced by the director. The players offer conspiracy theories about an evil Tom Hanks, and salient talking points about the erosion of the cinematic experience. Movie stills placidly shimmer, like old vacation photos beamed through a slide projector.Eventually, the circular dialogue finds a center: The film posits that Hollywood, through a reliance on existing intellectual property, indulges our desire for an uncomplicated past, imposing suffocating limits on artists and crushing audiences’ collective imagination. Wilkins demands that we make new cinematic memories, lest we lose ourselves.Still FilmNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 12 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ Review: Exhumation at Sea

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      A 1970s submarine recovery operation by the C.I.A. is the subject of this documentary, which prioritizes the excitement of undercover work over any serious consideration of the agency’s legacy.The C.I.A. mission recalled in “Neither Confirm Nor Deny,” Philip Carter’s neat and steadily paced documentary, sounds like the stuff of a Tom Clancy Cold War thriller. In the film, C.I.A. veterans and journalists recount a 1974 U.S. operation to recover a Soviet nuclear submarine that had sunk in the Pacific six years earlier. It’s a high-risk mission made more suspenseful by technical challenges, the looming specter of Watergate and a need for secrecy in the face of scrutiny from Russia and the press.The story assembles before our eyes like an illustration in a manual for superspies. The goal: obtain valuable nuke data. The tool for the job: a big ship with the ability to snatch the sub and sneak it away to American shores. The cover story: an undersea mining operation fronted by Howard Hughes.David Sharp, who directed the mission and wrote a book about it, is the most prominently featured of the wonky talking heads here. He relates amazing details — like what the U.S. did with bodies of Soviet sailors that were discovered — in the understated manner of a kind science teacher. The Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour M. Hersh, who wrote about the operation for The New York Times in the 1970s, offers a salty insider perspective.Almost in passing, we hear of the C.I.A.’s role in the bloody 1973 overthrow of the socialist government of Salvador Allende, who was then the democratically elected leader of Chile. In that light, the documentary, with its triumphant account, feels a little too selective in presenting the agency’s legacy, and its title — which seems to celebrate the government’s concealment of its actions from the public — comes across as misjudged.Neither Confirm Nor DenyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘It Lives Inside’ Review: The Horrors of Building Self-Acceptance

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      This feature debut about a high schooler’s struggle with her cultural identity is promising, even if the allegory doesn’t always land.Why did you even come here, Samidha scoffs at her mother, if you were just going to be another Desi housewife? It’s about as piercing a jab as an American child could throw at their immigrant parent, and emblematic of the kind of disdain central to “It Lives Inside,” a social-horror movie from the writer-director Bishal Dutta, in his feature debut.As Samidha (Megan Suri), an Indian American teenager, has gotten older, she’s increasingly distanced herself from anything that might reveal her cultural identity. She goes by Sam to her peers, avoids speaking Hindi and had a mysterious break from Tamira (Mohana Krishnan), an Indian American classmate who used to be her best friend. When she lashes out at Tamira, she unwittingly unleashes a monster ripped from Hindu folklore.It’s a compelling premise. And as a horror movie with frights and an effective score, the film largely works. But the weightier themes around internalized racism and the immigrant experience fail to push beyond the basics, and the allegory doesn’t always succeed — a connection between the back story of the film’s monster and the idea of cultural self-acceptance is pretty flimsy.Still, it’s a promising debut from Dutta, who offers a fresh premise that proves a natural fit for the genre. The themes will feel familiar to the American children of any diaspora. High school is scary to begin with. But when there’s only one other classmate of your race, what’s worse than being mistaken for each other?It Lives InsideRated PG-13 for terror, violent content, bloody images, brief strong language and teen drug use. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Something You Said Last Night’ Review: They Holiday, but Can’t Get Away

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      In this too-languid drama, a young transgender woman and her family butt heads during a fraught beach vacation.The family in Luis De Filippis’s assiduous new film keeps busy during their beachside vacation. Not by swimming and sunbathing but by bickering and nit-picking, over slights both big (what it means to quit school) and small (what it means to lose a card game).Or maybe that’s just how Mona (Ramona Milano), her husband, Guido (Joey Parro), and their wayward 20-something daughters, Siena (Paige Evans) and Ren (Carmen Madonia), who is transgender, expresses love: by ending conversations with tears and exposed resentments, only to make nice and do it again the next day.Loosely based on the writer-director’s own Canadian-Italian family, this intimately observational film is in no rush to capture oversized dramatics but also small moments, like a birthday celebration at a kitchen table. Its only real emotional punch comes when the sisters accuse each other of being the family’s biggest disappointment.In the film’s press notes, De Filippis said she wanted to make a movie “where trans women are not vilified, sensationalized, or eroticized.” Mission accomplished. Ren, an aspiring writer, is decidedly human: impetuous, shy, silly — a victim of, if anything, insecurities.But she’s earthbound to a fault, dramatically. Unexceptional transgender characters are arguably markers of cinema’s progress; Trace Lysette’s understated performance is what made her prosaic transgender character so moving in “Monica.” (That film was also invested in bigger stakes.) But one can only watch Renata, and this film, do so little for so long before yearning for more than naturalism and tenderness to drive the slice-of-life story.Something You Said Last NightNot rated. In English and Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘26.2 to Life’ Review: Running in Circles

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      Christine Yoo’s new documentary follows the inmates of San Quentin Prison in California who train to run a grueling marathon inside its yard.Christine Yoo’s documentary “26.2 to Life” tells the story of a unique race: the San Quentin Prison Marathon, run by inmates of the maximum-security facility in California within the walls of its heavily guarded yard.As the film makes clear, with its deliberate, observational style, the mental fortitude required to endure this marathon is extraordinary: The competitors must trace the same tedious loop around a makeshift track more than 100 times to complete the 26.2-mile distance, with only their fellow inmates and a handful of volunteers to cheer them on. It’s not a setting that inspires a meditative state of mind.Many of these men are facing life sentences with little hope of parole, and training for the marathon enables them to derive some meaning from their time inside. “It allows you to feel like you’re doing something normal,” one runner describes. “Like you’re doing something that’s not prison.”Yoo was granted exceptional access to San Quentin, and when she depicts the mundane qualities of life there — inmates working odd jobs, writing letters, passing the time alone in their cells — the movie gains some of the penetrating clarity of one of Frederick Wiseman’s films. The in-prison material also has a lo-fi look that’s a refreshing change from the glossy style of many recent docs, and the various off-site interviews with family members of the inmates expand the scope of their stories in an enriching way.When the movie concentrates on the race, it verges on sentimental, trotting out heartfelt speeches and cloying musical cues — not entirely unjustified, considering the inmates’ tragic back stories and inspiring achievements. But it compromises an already compelling event.26.2 to LifeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More