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      “Youth (Homecoming)”: Review of Film by Wang Bing

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      In the finale of Wang Bing’s nonfiction trilogy, garment-factory workers return to their families and wrestle with the questions all young people do.What happens when young people with jobs in the big city return to the homes they left behind? It’s a question that powers a whole bevy of films, including Hallmark’s holiday offerings. But it’s perhaps less expected in a 152-minute Chinese documentary, the final installment in a trilogy stretching nearly 10 hours.“Youth (Homecoming)” (in theaters), directed by the eminent filmmaker Wang Bing, is shorter by at least an hour than its predecessors, “Youth (Spring)” and “Youth (Hard Times).” Wang shot the films over about five years, spending time with the myriad young people, mostly in their late teens and 20s, who travel to the city of Zhili to work in garment factories. No one subject is the main protagonist in the “Youth” trilogy; instead, we see a collage of faces and personalities, all of whom toil very long hours for very little pay.“Spring” is the most cheerful of the films, showing the laborers as they arrive and get busy at their machines, often singing to pop music and talking about love. “Hard Times,” which covers the winter months, shows them struggling to get paid by bosses who skip town or try to drive down wages. The workers begin to organize, but it’s a battle with little chance of victory.In “Homecoming,” as the title suggests, many young people return to their remote villages for the New Year’s break when the factories slow down. We travel with them on packed, long-haul trains and traverse muddy mountain paths. Now families enter the picture, identified in the film only by their relationships to the laborers. Two of the subjects, Shi Wei and Fang Lingping, marry their romantic partners during this downtime. Others converse with loved ones about their plans or other subjects. Eventually the young people go back to Zhili, only to discover that employment is not always easy to come by.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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      Clint Eastwood and the Power of a Squint

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      Shape-shifters by design, actors have their methods but many also have distinguishing features — sunburst smiles, rolling walks — that become their signatures. Memorable performers, after all, don’t simply catch our gaze, they seize it, holding and keeping it tight. And few performers have held us as powerfully as Clint Eastwood, who has cemented himself […] More

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      ‘The Last Rifleman’ Review: A World War II Veteran Hits the Road

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      Pierce Brosnan plays a man who sneaks out of his retirement home to attend the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings in this charming, but corny drama.“The Last Rifleman” is a sporadically affecting drama that stars Pierce Brosnan as a World War II veteran who sneaks out of his retirement home in Belfast to attend the 75th anniversary of D-Day in France. At 16, Artie (Brosnan) was petrified to be in Normandy; now 92 and three-quarters (he insists on the fraction), he’s hellbent on confronting his metaphorical ghosts.The story is lifted from the true adventures of an octogenarian British soldier in 2014, a caper also captured in the 2023 film “The Great Escaper” starring Michael Caine. This take by the director Terry Loane and the screenwriter Kevin Fitzpatrick is equal parts tenderhearted and heavy-handed. Artie absconds in a laundry truck to the ballad “Don’t Fence Me In” and, while on the lam, confesses his decades-old anguish to an American corporal audaciously named Lincoln Jefferson Adams (a touching John Amos in one of his final roles). Most strangers are kind, even a former member of the Hitler Youth (Jürgen Prochnow). For balance, in one scene some nasty teenagers play soccer with Artie’s underwear.Corny, yes. But charming, too, like when a nurse (Tara Lynne O’Neill) delivers a mini-monologue of reasons Artie’s too ill to travel that plays out like a clown car of ailments. Loane can also be cynical as he pans across a glut of tacky victory souvenirs. Brosnan, who is 71, gamely ages himself up and has fun rapping on cellphones with a cane and punctuating moments with a pained “Ooh! Ahh!” Yet, a climax where the humble survivor reels with emotions he’s never allowed himself to feel is truly sniffle-worthy.The Last RiflemanRated PG-13 for language and rather chintzy battle scenes. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Meanwhile on Earth’ Review: Outer Space and Inner Turmoil

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      A bereaved young woman faces terrible choices in this dreamily uncertain blend of science fiction and moral philosophy.The French filmmaker Jérémy Clapin seems drawn to stories of loss. His animated feature debut, “I Lost My Body” (2019), followed the vivid, sometimes gruesome journey of a severed hand seeking to reconnect with its owner. And though his new film is called “Meanwhile on Earth,” it might well be titled “I Lost My Brother,” the movie’s sense of dislocation and desire for reconnection so reminiscent of its predecessor.The brother in question is Franck (voiced by Sébastien Pouderoux), an astronaut who disappeared while on a mission three years earlier. Since then, his younger sister, Elsa (Megan Northam), has been frozen in place. A talented artist, she exists in a daze of bereavement, unable to move on from her temporary job as a caregiver at a retirement facility. At home with her parents and younger brother, she sketches the daydreams that consume her until, one day, she hears Franck’s distressed voice emanating from a hilltop antenna.Part science-fiction drama, part morality tale, “Meanwhile on Earth” works best as an offbeat scrutiny of the intersection of extreme grief and mental health. When an extraterrestrial (voiced by Dimitri Doré) telepathically informs Elsa that her brother can be returned to Earth only in exchange for five of her fellow humans, the movie shifts from feelings to philosophy. Whom should she sacrifice? Whose life has value?Small and strange, “Meanwhile on Earth” seduces with its soft, barren beauty (the chilled cinematography is by Robrecht Heyvaert) and Dan Levy’s surreal score. Wobbling uncertainly between the inside of Elsa’s head and Earth’s outer limits, the movie demurs. Are we experiencing Elsa’s breakdown, or an alien invasion? Even the director appears unsure.Meanwhile on EarthRated R for abduction by aliens and mutilation by chain saw. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point’ Review: Home for the Holidays

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      Tyler Taormina’s third theatrical feature is a lightly nostalgic ensemble piece set on Long Island.Not much happens plot-wise in “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” the third theatrical feature from Tyler Taormina, but it has, as they say, a lot going on. In this ensemble comedy, centered on the Christmas gathering of a family so large that theaters ought to hand out a genealogy chart, the movie is at once hyper-specific about place — western Suffolk County on Long Island — and intriguingly loose about time.Scored to a soundtrack of early-1960s hits, the film is set in the aughts, judging from the dialogue, the cellphone technology and the TV (with its built-in DVD and VHS players) on which some of the kids play video games. The details (a player piano, cherry affogatos for dessert) are quirky enough to feel remembered, and Paris Peterson’s production design makes the home look lived in. The scant overt drama involves disagreement among siblings about how to handle their mother’s decline and whether to sell the house.Those siblings include Kathleen (Maria Dizzia), whose daughter (Matilda Fleming) is giving her attitude and whose husband (Ben Shenkman) awkwardly tries to fit in, and Ray (Tony Savino), who is secretly writing a novel. A cousin, Bruce (Chris Lazzaro), is a firefighter who is cheered on by the others when he rides by on a festively decorated truck. Somehow the film finds roles for not one but two adult children of auteurs, Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg — though not as relatives, alas.As in his earlier features “Ham on Rye” and “Happer’s Comet,” Taormina gestures toward the surreal, especially once he steps outside the main location. Two police officers (Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington) spend much of the movie in stone-faced silence; their New York City uniforms suggest that they’re operating out of their jurisdiction. “Miller’s Point” is a Christmas movie more invested in atmosphere, and the qualities of wintry light, than in holiday cheer — and that somehow makes it all the more warm.Christmas Eve in Miller’s PointRated PG-13 for teenage mischief. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Il Grido’: Love and Loss in Italy’s Po River Valley

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      Long overshadowed by Michelangelo Antonioni’s later work, this feature, newly restored, is being revived at Film Forum, complete with once-censored scenes.Michelangelo Antonioni confounded the 1960 Cannes Film Festival with “L’Avventura,” but that high-modernist missing-person mystery did not emerge from a void. Three years before, the Italian master took the top prize at the Locarno festival with a scarcely less radical film, the existential love-story “Il Grido” (The Cry).Long overshadowed by Antonioni’s later work, “Il Grido” gets a rare revival run at Film Forum in a new restoration, complete with several once-censored scenes.Bracketed by the sounds of a hurdy-gurdy tarantella, “Il Grido” tracks the circular journey of the skilled factory worker Aldo (the rugged American actor Steve Cochran) who, rejected by his longtime common-law wife, Irma (Alida Valli), wanders heartbroken through northern Italy’s Po Valley.Aldo, initially accompanied by his 6-year-old daughter Rosina (Mirna Girardi), takes a few odd jobs and hooks up with several women. A not unattractive if glowering hunk, he first drops in on the fiancée he had jilted (the blacklisted American actress Betsy Blair) only to depart the next morning. Stuck in a nowheresville gas station, he briefly takes up with the proprietress, Virginia (Dorian Gray, her voice dubbed by Antonioni’s muse, Monica Vitti), a lusty widow with an alcoholic father.To please Virginia, Aldo sends Rosina home on a bus, but then takes off himself, eventually stumbling upon a vivacious prostitute, Andreina (the British actress Jacqueline Jones, under the name Lyn Shaw) who works an impoverished stretch of the river. Their brief liaison is less than satisfactory for both. Walking with her by the Po, Aldo starts explaining how he met Irma and lapses into confused silence. “What kind of story is that?” Andreina demands.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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      Cillian Murphy, from ‘Oppenheimer’ to ‘Small Things Like These’

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      Cillian Murphy of “Oppenheimer” fame plays an Irishman interrogating a system of abuse and forced labor, despite everyone’s warnings to look the other way.“Small Things Like These” plays just a little like a gangster film, except the web of power at its center is spun by nuns. Set in 1985 and based on Claire Keegan’s 2021 novel, it is a story about how people create and maintain control and the many shades of complicity that result. In this case, the setting is southeast Ireland, and the nuns’ control has woven its way into every aspect of life in a small town.Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy) sells and delivers coal and fuel in that town, an occupation that barely supports his wife, Eileen (Eileen Walsh), and a house full of daughters. But they’re doing OK. He can put food on the table, and they have a happy home life. One day, however, something changes inside Bill: He sees a young woman being nearly dragged into a building near the local convent, and it troubles him. He suspects that she is pregnant and unmarried, like his own mother was, and is being brought to the nuns by her horrified family. She is, quite literally, kicking and screaming. Bill can’t stop thinking about her.Much of “Small Things Like These,” directed by Tim Mielants from a screenplay by Enda Walsh, happens in flashbacks. After Bill sees the girl at the convent, he drives home and notices a small, hungry-looking boy by the side of the road, and these two sightings seem to trigger some memory in him that he can’t shake. Even his wife notices his change in mood. It’s Christmastime, but the customary comfort and joy seems beyond him; instead, he keeps dissociating, slipping into a reverie about his own childhood. It wasn’t all sad: His mother was able to keep him with her, thanks to a kind employer, which meant that Bill was, in a sense, lucky. Yet there were mysteries he never quite understood.Murphy, fresh off his “Oppenheimer” Oscar win, is both producer and star of this film. His performance is unsurprisingly searing and nuanced, especially since Bill is not much of a talker. A lot of his performance is in extreme close-up, his panic showing up like lava pooling below a thin surface, ready to burst through at any moment. He’s buried his grief and fear, but not nearly as far as he thinks, and the girl outside the convent has brought it all to a head. He’s a little bit like a synecdoche for his whole country.Slipping inside the convent one day to deliver an invoice, Bill starts to suspect that the nuns, led by Sister Mary (Emily Watson), are mistreating the young women waiting out their pregnancies there. His dissociation turns into panic attacks, especially when he realizes there’s very little he can do to change the situation.From the distance of history, it’s quickly obvious that this convent was one of the so-called Magdalen Laundries, institutions run by orders of Roman Catholic nuns as homes and profit-making laundry facilities. Text at the end of the film dedicates it to the more than 56,000 young women who were sent to the institutions between 1922 and 1998 for purposes of “penance and rehabilitation.”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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      ‘Heretic’ Review: Hugh Grant Puts His Charm to Fiendish Use

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      In wily, vamping style, the actor plays a friendly neighbor to two missionaries before turning his home into a horror-filled slaughterhouse.One of the great benefits of watching too many movies are all the life lessons they impart. For instance, if your host mentions that the walls of his house happened to be lined with metal, you should immediately feign a headache and split before he closes the front door. If the windows in his house look too small even for a child to squeeze through, you should also exit. And if there’s also a framed image of hell on a wall, you should definitely conk him on his head and run. That said, if the host is played by Hugh Grant, you may want to stick around. From the moment that the two young women in “Heretic” introduce themselves to Mr. Reed — played by a wily, exuberantly vamping Grant — it’s obvious that the smart thing would be for them to say, oops and sorry, wrong address. They don’t, of course, because they’re delectably juicy bait, and the horror genre demands at least a pound or two of ravaged flesh, just like life itself. So, the women enter the house smiling, and they keep on smiling, as if they were asking for the inevitable ultraviolence, the kind of splatter and spurt that can transform an outwardly ordinary home into dangerous ground and, in time, a bloody slaughterhouse.As soon as they appear onscreen, the women, a pair of missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, start warming up the movie — and your sympathies — with pleasantly innocuous talk. They’re sweet and eager, even if Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) has a wary mien and darting gaze that don’t jibe with her more incautious companion, Sister Paxton (Chloe East). Having been called to serve, the two have been wheeling their bikes around Anytown America and head over shortly to Mr. Reed’s. He’s requested some information about their church so before long they’re exchanging pleasantries in his home, a gloomy space with the yellowish, crepuscular lighting of a 1990s David Fincher film.The queasy lighting — like Mr. Reed’s oddly small windows and metal-lined walls — would give most sensible women pause, but the writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods haven’t designed Barnes and Paxton to be prudent. The women are prim, proper, outwardly trusting; they’re on a mission and true believers. They’re also women, so, you know, they’re built for niceness. For propriety’s sake, they don’t want to be alone with Mr. Reed — they politely ask him if his unseen, unheard wife can join them — but because they’re committed to teaching the gospel, they stay. Their faith makes them innocent or so they seem, which makes them catnip to Mr. Reed, whose wide smile and wild eyes quickly grow wider and wilder.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