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      ‘Mutt’ Review: Surviving Reconciliation

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      A newly out transgender man meets with his estranged father, his ex-boyfriend and his sister for the first time since his transition in this drama.Playing out over the course of one New Yorker’s notably difficult day, the drama “Mutt” follows its protagonist, Feña (Lío Mehiel), as he has surprise encounters with three important figures from his life — his sister, his ex-boyfriend and his estranged father. For anyone, this lineup would represent a packed schedule, but it’s especially challenging for Feña, a newly out transgender man who hasn’t seen many loved ones since his transition.Feña’s father, Pablo (Alejandro Goic), is the first to call and the last to arrive in the film. There’s a cultural divide between Feña and Pablo, who is planning a visit from Chile. Feña doesn’t speak perfect Spanish, and in turn, his father refuses to speak to Feña respectfully about his gender. But before that visit, Feña is bowled over by another disruption. He runs into his ex-boyfriend, John (Cole Doman), at a club. While the two still have chemistry, John is reticent to rekindle their relationship, afraid of the chaos that Feña unleashes into his life. Feña has barely had a chance to recover from this surprise rendezvous, when his younger sister, Zoe (MiMi Ryder), abruptly appears at Feña’s work, having run away from school and from the home she shares with Feña’s abusive mother.The writer and director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz uses elegant observations of urban life to pass the narrative between the three central relationships. Feña juggles his responsibilities through phone calls and borrowed cars; his lifelines are doorbell speakers and public restrooms. These features of city life feed a sense of realism, as does the film’s warmly-lit and intimately framed cinematography. But that realism here is exhausting, even if it is well-intentioned — by the film’s end, even Feña seems ready to escape from the trial of his packed plotlines.MuttNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Adults’ Review: Oh, Brother

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      Michael Cera’s latest misfit is a poker addict unable to communicate with his sisters in Dustin Guy Defa’s keen-eyed dramedy.The adults of Dustin Guy Defa’s keen-eyed dramedy probably wouldn’t realize that the movie’s title refers to them. These three emotionally stunted siblings — Eric (Michael Cera), Rachel (Hannah Gross) and Maggie (Sophia Lillis) — are more like suspicious alley cats. What went awry in their home where Eric, a loner with patchy mutton chops and a poker addiction, has arrived for the shortest visit he can get away with? Like his characters, Defa keeps mum. The film is about this family’s inability to talk, so he’s obeying their limits.Defa’s tight and tidy focus on communication — mostly verbal, sometimes role play (“Hug me like you haven’t seen me for three years,” Rachel instructs Eric) — adds a smart layer to this otherwise familiar tale of estrangement. The trio is only sincere when reverting to the stage acts they invented as children, a showcase of vaudeville comics and singers. (The lyrics, by Defa, have an off-kilter cadence that fits the tone better than the sentimental pop-folk soundtrack.) Gross is saddled with the flattest role: a dour cynic who goes grim-faced whenever Cera enters a room. When she finally starts slinging insults in a witch’s squawk, it’s a treat to see her cut loose.Cera is known for playing misfits, but his inscrutable Eric is even more awkward about what he should and shouldn’t say. At the card table, Eric unnerves the gamblers, by, for once, blurting out exactly what he thinks. Later, he confounds a flirtatious girl (Kiah McKirnan) with a string of mixed signals. But nothing wounds him like a failed joke — his only form of connection. After yet another chilly meet-up, he sighs, “Was it my delivery?”The AdultsRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Madeleine Collins’ Review: A Duplicitous Mother

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      This clever, but disappointingly tame psychodrama sees Virginie Efira as a professional translator secretly living with two families; one in Switzerland, the other in France.The French psychodrama “Madeleine Collins” feels like a domesticated version of a Hitchcock movie, with all the frenzied longing and perversion leashed up and reined in. It’s too bad, considering the film’s novel premise. Usually, the man plays the two-timer, but in the film’s “don’t worry, it’s just business travel” swindle, it’s the woman who dares to have it both ways.Judith (Virginie Efira), a professional translator, shifts between households just as easily as she does between languages. In Switzerland, she lives with her boyfriend, Abdel (Quim Gutierrez), and their little girl; in France, with her husband, Melvil (Bruno Salomone), a celebrated conductor with whom she has two sons.The first part of “Madeleine Collins” plays like a straight drama about Judith’s balancing act. She takes the train between countries, seemingly gliding to and fro thanks to elegantly controlled camera movements by the cinematographer Gordon Spooner.Judith’s freakish skill for deception possesses a similar artistry. When her eldest son catches her whispering sweet nothings to her lover on the phone, Judith quickly pivots from the accusation, and turns the face-off into a discussion about her kid’s sexuality.In heated moments like these, Judith’s lies feel startlingly natural, which asks the question: Just how much of her own Kool-Aid is she sipping?Directed by Antoine Barraud, the film withholds crucial details about the true nature of Judith’s relationship with Abdel, and cleverly fills out the picture through tiny hints and glances, creating suspense through fresh turns of ambiguity in each scene.But the payoff from such fog-clearing doesn’t quite grip the way it should. Despite Efira’s efforts, Judith’s inevitable breakdown never hits a satisfyingly deranged register. Her motivations turn out to be less spicy, and more blandly sympathetic than one had hoped from this pressure cooker of a film.Madeleine CollinsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bella!’ Review: Taking the Fight to the Streets and the House

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      The jam-packed documentary “Bella!” hustles to chronicle the pioneering political career of the New York congresswoman Bella Abzug.Jeff L. Lieberman’s biographical documentary “Bella!” churns along at a hectic pace as if hustling to keep up with its subject. Bella Abzug fought ferociously for equal rights and against the Vietnam War in the U.S. Congress, bringing a New Yorker’s tenacity and a plain-spoken dedication to democratic ideals, akin to fellow pioneer Shirley Chisholm.The child of Russian Jewish immigrants, Abzug began her political path with pamphleteering in childhood, and later drew on organizer-style moxie and a Columbia legal education (defending Willie McGee in a notorious case in Jim Crow Mississippi). But it wasn’t until 1970 that she ran for a congressional seat, beating a longtime incumbent in Manhattan in the primary and kicking off a busy decade of legislative battling.Lieberman’s starry interviews — from Hillary Clinton to Gloria Steinem to Representative Maxine Waters to the avid Abzug fund-raiser Barbra Streisand — speak to the liberal, feminist revolution of which Abzug was a vital part. Abzug’s own words — drawing on audio diaries — provide the background to her political worldview: as a reaction to the “cocoon approach to living” of the 1950s, as a manifestation of Judaic notions of justice, and as a dedication to equal rights for all, leading to her sponsoring the Equality Act of 1974, intended to “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, and sexual orientation.”Aides and others recall that the tireless Abzug could be both a charmer and a screamer. After losing a 1976 Senate race to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she tried and failed to attain other offices before shifting to international activism; she died in 1998. Her never-say-die advocacy still inspires, but the film also illustrates the merciless challenges of electoral endurance even for the fiercest fighter.Bella!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Billion Dollar Heist’ Review: How to Rob a Bank, Digitally

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      This documentary chronicles a 2016 digital bank heist by pairing commentary from cybersecurity experts with a toolbox of visualization techniques.In 2016, a team of cyberthieves stole $81 million from a central bank in Bangladesh. The theft was meticulously executed: The hackers gained access to the bank’s financial transfer system through contaminated email attachments that allowed them to plant custom malware, which they used to worm through the office’s computer network until they reached the single server responsible for dispatching encrypted orders.If this sounds convoluted in writing, just imagine trying to spin its esoteric details into a true-crime yarn fit for neophytes. “Billion Dollar Heist,” directed by Daniel Gordon, attempts the task by leaning on a stable of cybersecurity experts to walk viewers through the operation. To further explain, Gordon whips out a toolbox of visualization techniques. When, for example, the subjects describe how the hackers navigated Bangladesh’s internal network, Gordon depicts the mission as a Super Mario-like video game.With so much action transpiring in the digital realm, the documentary is careful to milk its handful of terrestrial story beats: a critical typo in a transfer request, a multiday gambling spree at a Philippine casino, the wily scheduling of the attack on a national holiday to ensure that bank employees would be offline. These details ground the narrative, but their prominence contributes to the film feeling like predigested news — particularly when the more arcane aspects of the story remain undefined.“Billion Dollar Heist” is not totally bankrupt, but in mining its central cybercrime for tidbits while smoothing over its complexities, the film erodes its power both as seminar and spectacle.Billion Dollar HeistNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Back on the Strip’ Review: Just Some Mikes in Need of Magic

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      Wesley Snipes plays the leader of a has-been group of strippers vying for a second act in this ensemble comedy, which struggles to turn its gimmicky ideas into laughs.According to “Back on the Strip,” a tedious ensemble comedy from Chris Spencer, what makes a man a successful stripper is not good looks, the right moves, or a memorable stage persona: Being a true once-in-a-generation talent, it posits, requires a substantial endowment down south. That’s what gave Mr. Big (Wesley Snipes), the leader of a once-famous male revue crew, his legendary status, and it’s what allows him to see a prodigy in Merlin (Spence Moore II), a young man who accidentally reveals himself onstage during a disastrous magic show in Las Vegas.After Mr. Big spots this promise, he gets his old squad, the Chocolate Chips, back together, now with Merlin at the helm. But Merlin’s so-called gift is also the gimmicky curse at the heart of the movie. Traveling to Vegas at the behest of his mother (Tiffany Haddish, whose voice-over relentlessly narrates practically every scene), Merlin wants to become a professional magician, but his body puts him on a path that he feels is a compromise to that dream.It’s both a shame and a wonder that the film managed to assemble such a beefed-up roster of talent — Snipes, Haddish, J.B. Smoove, Faizon Love and, in a cameo, Kevin Hart — for what amounts to a stilted, factory-line comedy.Seeing Hart’s brief but flat cameo is a study in how even megawatt star power can be rendered lifeless without the right writing and direction. Snipes in particular gets lost in an overdone, confusingly drawn performance as a stud whose best days are behind him.Back on the StripRated R for sex stuff, language and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Landscape With Invisible Hand’ Review: Hit Subscribe, Alien Overlords

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      The latest film from Cory Finley follows two teens on an alien-controlled earth who stream their love life to an extraterrestrial audience.“Landscape With Invisible Hand” mashes up the teen romantic comedy and alien-invasion horror genres to campy, mixed results. In an opening montage of paintings created by one of our high-school-age heroes, Adam (Asante Blackk), we’re introduced to a near-future in which an alien race known as the Vuvv has taken over Earth, not by force but through salacious dealings with the planet’s most enterprising capitalists. Over time, the Vuvv — who, far from ferocious creatures, resemble hermit crabs without shells and communicate by rubbing their paddle-like hands together — have rendered most Earth jobs obsolete with advanced technology, forcing humans to find creative ways to scrape together enough money to survive.While in art class, Adam falls for the new girl at school, Chloe (Kylie Rogers), and invites her struggling family to stay in the rundown house where he, his mother, Beth (Tiffany Haddish), and sister, Natalie (Brooklynn MacKinzie), are living. Tensions arise between Beth and Chloe’s father (Josh Hamilton) and brother (Michael Gandolfini) because the new arrivals can’t pay rent. This leads Chloe to suggest a “courtship broadcast,” where she and Adam stream their dating life to a paying alien audience — a sort of intergalactic Twitch channel, broadcast through futuristic implants. The Vuvv, who reproduce asexually, have a fixation on human dating culture and romance. It’s as unnerving and darkly funny as it sounds.Based on a young-adult novel by M.T. Anderson, “Landscape With Invisible Hand” is the director Cory Finley’s third feature after “Thoroughbreds,” and “Bad Education,” and like those prior films, it relishes in eerie discontent punctuated by oddball humor. But the plot never fully gels; characters ebb and flow in and out of the spotlight, and soon Adam and Chloe’s get-rich-quick scheme — and its strain on their relationship — falls by the wayside for a much stranger charade involving Beth and a young Vuvv who wants to play the role of a nuclear-family father. The one constant is Adam’s beautifully rendered artwork, which depicts the gradual creep of Vuvv control over human life through a teenager’s eyes.Finley’s allegorical gestures toward issues of class, race and authoritarianism are more than apparent, but the film’s tonal inconsistencies make the satire wobble. There’s certainly intention in the way Finley depicts the Vuvv’s injection of propaganda into the human school curriculum, and how he shows certain Earthlings, like Chloe’s father, eagerly prostrating themselves in front of the alien invaders. But despite real-world parallels, these thematic elements contain no bite. The Vuvv, with their blatant lack of empathy and outdated perception of human society, are treated as jokes from the beginning. As a result, even their most alarming threats to Adam and his family come across as slight and inconsequential, undercutting the film’s central theme of resiliency.Landscape With Invisible HandRated R for science-fiction violence and a space alien’s idea of intimacy. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Birth/Rebirth’ Review: Staying (Not Quite) Alive

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      Two women nurture a reanimated child in this grisly gynecological horror movie.Motherhood is both mad and monstrous in “Birth/Rebirth,” Laura Moss’s ultrasmart, ferociously feminist take on the Frankenstein myth. Yet while the story (by Moss and Brendan J. O’Brien) surges to corporeal extremes, the movie is most resonant when — like Prime Video’s “Dead Ringers” and the harrowing AMC+ drama “This Is Going to Hurt” — it resolutely records the gross indignities of everyday procreation.For Dr. Rose Casper (Marin Ireland), a chilly morgue technician, dead tissue is infinitely more interesting than living. In her dingy apartment in the Bronx, Rose experiments obsessively with reanimation, using embryonic stem cells. (How she obtains them involves a sick joke which I refuse to spoil.) A snuffling pig called Muriel has so far been Rose’s sole success.Elsewhere in Rose’s hospital, an overworked maternity nurse named Celie (a terrific Judy Reyes), struggles to find time for her lively six-year-old daughter, Lila (A.J. Lister). But after Lila succumbs to a deadly infection, a guilt-wracked Celie and an avid Rose will find common purpose in revivifying the child’s corpse. What follows is a quietly freakish, slyly humorous tale of devoted co-parenting, with Lila serving as daughter to one woman and science experiment to the other.Wrapped in drab locations and jaundiced lighting (Chananun Chotrungroj’s photography is brilliantly bleak), this grisly gynecological horror movie is not for the squeamish. Pregnancy hasn’t been this perverse since the underappreciated “Alien 3” (1992); yet as the women’s behavior grows ever more shocking — and Ariel Marx’s nerve-plucking score intensifies — Moss offers no rebuke to their heedless amorality. There is only the audience to judge.And, perhaps, Lila. “I’m not getting enough attention,” she whispers to her mother early in the film. Little did she know that all she had to do was die.Birth/RebirthRated R for purloined placentas and stolen semen. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More