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      ‘War Game’ Review: It Can’t Happen Here (Right?)

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      This nail-biter of a documentary imagines it is Jan. 6, 2025, and armed supporters of the losing candidate are hatching a coup and maybe a civil war. What will the nation’s leaders do?“War Game,” a nail-biter of a documentary, asks a question a lot of us don’t want to even consider: What if there’s another Jan. 6, only bigger, better organized and more ideologically cohesive? To try and answer that question, on Jan. 6, 2023, two filmmakers turned their cameras on a nonpartisan group of politicians and intelligence and military advisers who were role-playing in a fake crisis like the assault on the Capitol. Like actors in a grim sequel — Steve Bullock, the ex-governor of Montana, plays the incumbent president — they were taking part in an unnervingly familiar scenario, racing to prevent a coup and maybe civil war.This war game was created by Vet Voice Foundation, a nonprofit advocacy group for veterans that was founded in 2009. As in other war games, exercises that simulate and prepare for wars (the U.S. Defense Department uses them), this one features sets of players. On one side is Bullock’s President John Hotham and his team white-knuckling through the unscripted scenario in the (fake) Situation Room; on the other is a fictional group of extremists, the Order of Columbus, who are loyal to the losing candidate, Gov. Robert Strickland (Chris Coffey, an actor). Among the rebels is a cool cat (Kris Goldsmith, an Army veteran), who, from another location, approves moves and disinformation while elsewhere the game’s designers and consultants observe the proceedings.This particular game had one overarching rule: The president and his team have six hours to quell the revolt and ensure the “peaceful transfer of power,” parameters that, as the clock runs out, give it mounting urgency. The movie’s directors, Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber, working with Vet Voice, built sets and, using moody lighting, sleek camerawork and brisk editing, gave the game dramatic shape and momentum, paring down its six hours into a fast-moving 94-minute intrigue. The players did their part, too, of course: Bullock is definitely leading man material, even if, as the crisis deepens, he’s upstaged by Heidi Heitkamp, a former U.S. senator from North Dakota who plays his tough-talking senior adviser.Vet Voice’s appealing C.E.O., Janessa Goldbeck, a former combat engineer officer in the Marine Corps, takes on dual roles here as the game’s onscreen no-nonsense producer and the voice of the offscreen governor of Arizona. When she’s not hovering with the other game producers and consultants — these include the retired Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and the conservative standard-bearer Bill Kristol — Goldbeck fills in some details. This war game, she explains, was inspired by a sobering 2021 Washington Post opinion piece by Paul D. Eaton, Antonio M. Taguba and Steven M. Anderson, all retired U.S. Army generals.“We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” the three wrote, urging the Defense Department to “war-game the next potential postelection insurrection.”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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      ‘Rob Peace’ Review: Risking the Future to Remedy the Past

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      The actor Chiwetel Ejiofor directs a cohesive ensemble — featuring Mary J. Blige, Michael Kelly, Mare Winningham, Camila Cabello and Jay Will — in a heart-wrenching tale based on a true story.In the coming-of-age drama “Rob Peace,” from the actor turned screenwriter and director Chiwetel Ejiofor, a promising science nerd from a poor section of Newark must navigate disparate realities: the privileged world of Yale and his private fight to free his father from prison. Jay Will ably portrays the gregarious Rob whose protective mother (Mary J. Blige) pleads with him to put down the burdens of his father (Ejiofor) and focus on his own future. Instead, Rob turns to fast money as a big-time weed dealer to cover legal fees, dogged in his sublimated quest to rescue his father.The cinematographer Ksenia Sereda adheres to a blend of low angle shots and varying close-ups, and the visuals help imbue Rob with power and vulnerability in equal measure. While the persistent voice-over of Rob reading his graduate school personal essay as narration seems tacked on rather than poignant, all told, the movie delivers a well-earned emotional gut punch that refreshingly does not come from perpetuating the physical and systemic violence it aims to shed light upon.In deviating from the source material written by Rob’s college roommate, Jeff Hobbs, Ejiofor walks a fine line between blind celebration and sobering truth telling about his protagonist, but he lands more often on the side of celebration. However, flattening some aspects of a more complicated story does effectively lay bare the emotional truth of Rob’s life: His circumstances too often put him in an impossible position. When the film’s version of Jeff says he would never have believed Rob’s story if they hadn’t been roommates for four years, we are indeed Jeff, perplexed by the ever shifting proximity of beauty and tragedy in the life of Robert DeShaun Peace.Rob PeaceRated R for language, drug use, violence and mild sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sebastian’ Review: Sex Speaks Louder Than Words

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      For inspiration, a writer moonlights as an escort in this drama from Mikko Makela.While sex drives “Sebastian,” the movie is stuck in foreplay mode. It follows Max (Ruaridh Mollica), a freelance writer, on a journey toward empowerment. Sex is the impetus for the book Max believes, at just 25, he’s getting too old to write. And so, for literary inspiration, he has more sex himself. Older men enjoy his company. And what’s a coming-of-age tale without an orgy?Then he ponders a question: Should this be a novel or a memoir? This central dilemma, probed by the writer-director Mikko Makela, comes down to authenticity, as Max grapples with his relationship to his sexuality while navigating a double life as an escort (who goes by Sebastian) in London. Mollica effectively captures Max’s wariness, as if he bears the weight of generations of sexual shame. As a sketch of a person, you may understand him if you’ve been him.But Makela places significant reliance on his audience to grasp the character’s background, including a long history of stigma about gay sexuality and prostitution. It’s admirable how “Sebastian” combats the lack of genuinely erotic depictions of queer sex throughout cinema history by ramping up its sex quotient, but the film chases its own tail, resulting in a foreseeable transformation that has the emotional resonance of an after-school special. Only when Max finds companionship with a retired professor, Nicholas (Jonathan Hyde, whose dignified role brings depth to a film lacking it), does the young writer come into clearer focus. Mostly, though, “Sebastian” is like seeing what Max sees on the gay hookup app he uses: a faceless picture.SebastianNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Peak Season’ Review: Continental Divides

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      In this modest second feature, a disillusioned business-school graduate, taking a breather in high-altitude Wyoming, meets a rugged fly-fishing instructor.Unimpeachable when it comes to scenery, “Peak Season,” the second feature from Steven Kanter and Henry Loevner, takes place in Jackson Hole, Wyo., where one of the protagonists, Loren (Derrick DeBlasis), lives out of his car and works an assortment of jobs: dishwasher, landscaper, fly-fishing instructor.He is scheduled to give a lesson to Amy (Claudia Restrepo) and her fiancé, Max (Ben Coleman), well-heeled New Yorkers who are staying at Max’s uncle’s luxe, barely used pad. But work prevents Max from going along, and apparently from paying even a modicum of attention to Amy; eventually it takes him away from Wyoming all together. And as Amy, who has soured on her career as a management consultant, spends time with Loren over the rest of her trip, she begins to warm to the freedom of his lifestyle and the blissed-out vibes of the area.She remains cleareyed, though. (When one of Loren’s friends considers moving to Grand Rapids, Mich., and Loren argues against it, she takes the friend’s side.) And “Peak Season” isn’t quite the simple-minded story of a city slicker who finds peace in the countryside that it initially appears to be.It also isn’t really a romance, although the chemistry between Restrepo and DeBlasis makes that prospect irresistible for a while. Kanter and Loevner also feint in that direction by stacking the deck against the unfailingly obnoxious Max, who can’t extract his head from his laptop and who opts for CrossFit over Grand Teton. But a lovely ending makes up for the filmmakers’ giving this triangle one blunt side.Peak SeasonNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kneecap’ Review: Beats Over Belfast

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      Members of the pioneering Irish-language rap group play versions of themselves in a gleefully chaotic film that casts them as tall-tale heroes.Hip-hop draws much of its power from the self-mythologizing impulses of its artists, and “Kneecap” most definitely heeds this call. In this gleefully chaotic quasi-biopic, the members of the hip-hop group of the film’s title are tall-tale heroes, the children of I.R.A. freedom fighters continuing the battle for Irish independence by other means: the reclamation of the Irish language, once actively suppressed, and only recently recognized by the United Kingdom as an official language in Northern Ireland.That might not sound like a very punk endeavor, but the film — based on the pioneers of Irish-language rap who broke out in 2017, and written and directed by Rich Peppiatt — makes a solid case, connecting the struggles of Irish speakers to American civil rights and Palestinian resistance movements.The gonzo dramedy is set in Belfast and stars the real-life band members as lightly fictionalized versions of themselves: Naoise (Naoise O Caireallain) and Liam Og (Liam Og O Hannaidh) are petty drug dealers and aspiring rappers. JJ (JJ O Dochartaigh) is a high school Irish teacher who happens upon a notebook of lyrics belonging to Liam and offers to produce the two younger men’s music in his garage. Wearing a balaclava knitted with the colors of the Irish flag, JJ becomes D.J. Provai by night, and the trio drink, smoke and snort up a storm before each increasingly packed show.These drug-addled antics give the film its snappy, surreal sense of humor, which clicks only half the time. Its lodestar in this regard is “Trainspotting,” though “Kneecap” feels forced by comparison. Good thing the Kneecap boys are genuinely unhinged and amusingly louche. They bring a nerve that offsets the film’s cringe attempts at badassery.There’s also a lackluster story line involving Naoise’s father, Arlo (Michael Fassbender), a Bobby Sands-like political leader who has lived in the shadows since faking his own death a decade earlier. Otherwise, we dip in and out of mini-intrigues that build out a portrait of life in Belfast — Liam falls for a Protestant girl (Jessica Reynolds), the crew is terrorized by a group of antidrug mobsters. The film, as a result, feels wildly uneven, though it cruises on the strength of its underdog narrative and its weird, sordid touches.KneecapRated R for sex scenes, profanity, drug use and violent archival footage. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Harold and the Purple Crayon’ Review: He’s a Big Kid Now

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      Harold is an adult on a quest in this tale based on the beloved children’s book by Crockett Johnson.People have been threatening to make a movie out of the beloved children’s book “Harold and the Purple Crayon” for decades. When a visionary director like Spike Jonze was attached to a live-action screen adaptation of Crockett Johnson’s volume, the movie did sound more promising than threatening. (Jonze later left the project.)In any event, they’ve done it, and now “they” — the writers David Guion and Michael Handelman, and the director Carlos Saldanha — have gone and changed Harold from a cute baby into a cutesy adult. Or rather a child in adult form, played by Zachary Levi, whose Harold has two notes: a plucky grin and a furrowed brow.First, a narrated and animated prologue walks us through how the movie will shrug off the book. Then, the movie plods around awkwardly, trying to leech whatever charm it can from the remaining elements of the original (like that crayon): In Harold’s real-world quest for his “old man” — whose narration is cut off abruptly in the prologue — the old man does, indeed, turn out to be Johnson. (Johnson died in 1975 and his estate presumably and implausibly cooperated with this venture.) Along the way, Harold meets a family in need. There’s a standard-issue single mom (Zooey Deschanel, whose visible exhaustion here is actually a little too credible) and her boy, Mel (Benjamin Bottani), whose life is in need of wonder.This wonder will arrive through a tool of “pure imagination” (they really say that!). That is, Harold’s purple crayon, whose concoctions add some not-insubstantial visual interest to the proceedings. One scene in a department store, in which an actual puma and a too-functional kid’s helicopter ride contribute some anarchic slapstick, is a keeper. But it might have been better still as contrived by Terry Gilliam. Or Edgar Wright. Or Spike Jonze.Harold and the Purple CrayonRated PG for mild action and thematic elements. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Coup!’ Review: Pandemonium in a Pandemic — No, Not That One

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      In this obvious satire set amid the 1918 influenza, a wealthy, muckraking reporter hires a new chef who disrupts the estate’s hierarchy.The cook, a thief, a wife and her lover — in “Coup!,” these familiar players rub shoulders not in an elite eatery, but in a seaside manor.The film, written and directed by Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman, is an energetic satire of pandemic-era bourgeois hypocrisy. Its supposed innovation, though, is to set its quarantine-based rogueries a century before Covid, when another pandemic — the 1918 influenza — spurred familiar waves of business closures, resource shortages and desperate fears of contagion.It is amid these disasters that we meet the liberal journalist Jay (Billy Magnussen), his wife, Julie (Sarah Gadon), and their two children. The family is sheltering from the disease on their island estate, where domestic personnel tend to the cooking, cleaning and nannying. The help treasure their siloed haven, until Floyd Monk (Peter Sarsgaard), a new chef from the mainland, suggests that the staff deserve better working conditions.The movie seeks to pit Jay — a narcissist pretending to report from the ravaged mainland while being cosseted by staff — against Monk, a blue-collar worker. “Coup!” exaggerates the men’s difference by making Monk a swashbuckler (his dangly earrings evoke Captain Jack Sparrow) and Jay a pacifist, vegetarian and out-and-out drip.As Monk lifts the veil enshrouding the estate’s hierarchy, he also emasculates Jay in the eyes of the household. This implication that virility trumps effeteness is, amid an otherwise straightforward comedy, an uncomfortably regressive way to tell the story of how people vie for power in hard times.Coup!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Kneecap, Riotous Irish Rappers, Expect Their New Film to Shock

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      Kneecap’s Irish nationalist rap has drawn ire from pro-British politicians and commentators. A new film dramatizing the group’s story looks set to do the same.“He gave me his wallet,” joked D.J. Próvaí, a member of the Belfast-based rap trio Kneecap, to explain why the group trusted the British filmmaker Rich Peppiatt to tell their story.Kneecap’s blending of hip-hop beats with Irish-language rap lyrics championing republican politics — seeking unity for the Ireland’s north and south — has won it fans on both sides of Ireland’s internal border. The group has also drawn wrath from both British and Northern Irish politicians, who have accused it of inciting sectarianism. But this only made the trio a more attractive subject for his first scripted project, Peppiatt said, and “Kneecap” — a riotous fictionalized retelling of the rappers’ origins — comes to U.S. theaters Friday.“They deal with serious subjects in a hysterical way and made headlines for saying things that no one else seemed to be saying,” Peppiatt said in an interview alongside two group members. Last year, Kneecap unveiled a cartoonlike mural in Belfast of a police vehicle on fire, accompanied by an anti-police message in Irish.“They also played the media very well, drawing fire from the media and politicians, but always turning it to their own advantage,” Peppiatt added.A former journalist, Peppiatt resigned from the British tabloid newspaper The Daily Star in 2011 and then made the documentary “One Rogue Reporter” about unscrupulous newspaper editors. In the Kneecap lads, he found kindred rebellious spirits, and they were reassured by Peppiatt’s own turbulent experience with the news media.In the feature film “Kneecap,” the trio play fictionalized versions of themselves.Ryan Kernaghan/Sony Pictures ClassicsWe 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