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      ‘The Line’ Review: Family Boundaries

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      This emotionally probing, if occasionally unfocused, drama explores the dynamics among an egocentric mother and her three daughters.The brawl at the beginning of Ursula Meier’s “The Line” makes for a fitting start to a film about damage — the kind that only family can cause.In operatic slow-motion, Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) assaults her mother, Christina (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), banging her head against the keys of a grand piano. Relatives intervene, casting the aggressor out into the snowy backyard where she’ll remain, in a sense, throughout the rest of this emotionally probing French-language drama.How did it come to this? The simple answer is banal — something to do with a mean comment Christina had made — but the bigger picture fills out as Meier tracks Margaret’s efforts to reconnect with her family.It’s no easy task considering the temporary restraining order filed against Margaret, which prohibits her from coming within 100 meters of the family home, a perimeter demarcated in baby-blue paint by her younger sister Marion (Elli Spagnolo). Most days, Margaret — a musician with anger issues and the eldest of Christina’s three daughters — loiters just outside this boundary, occasionally helping Marion practice her singing. A pariah with a pixie cut, Blanchoud’s Margaret is a brooding, Marlon Brando-esque loner, her eyes perpetually radiating hurt.Fascinating as Margaret is, the film keeps us mostly in the dark about her life beyond the family. The character study turns out to be half-baked as Meier turns her attention to the group dynamics that might have produced Margaret’s instability.Christina, a single mother and pianist whose career was sidelined by Margaret’s birth, is a squawking tornado of egotism and resentment. The fight leaves her partly deaf in one ear, which she uses to justify her petty behavior, giving Margaret the silent treatment and forcing her other daughters, Marion and pregnant Louise (India Hair), to put up with her prima donna theatrics.The cinematographer Agnès Godard shoots the wintry Swiss setting in desiccated blue tones, making the empty field between the line and the house look particularly purgatorial. Similarly, the film is at its strongest when it focuses, in its more understated scenes, on a distressing human tendency: to create distance between ourselves and those who know us best.The LineNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kill Boksoon’ Review: It’s a Deadly Job for a Busy Single Mom

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      An assassin must choose between the murderous career she loves and the daughter she’s been hiding it from.The top hired gun in South Korea, Gil Boksoon, never worries about the authorities. Instead, Boksoon (a brutal Jeon Do-yeon), a middle-aged single mother, fears the day her detached 15-year-old daughter, Jae-young (Kim Si-A), learns of her secret assassin career.The inventively slick “Kill Boksoon,” from the writer and director Byun Sung-hyun, bears several similarities to another recent thriller about a hit woman, “Gunpowder Milkshake.” In “Kill Boksoon,” trained killers work for individual mercenary companies, where they are ranked based on their proficiency. The biggest outfit, MK Enterprises, run by a cunning and remorseless brother and sister, Chairman Cha (Sul Kyung-gu) and Director Cha (Esom), even trains children as assassins through internships.It’s an unforgiving world, shot with uncanny style by the cinematographer Cho Hyung-rae: Balletic fights aren’t shown head-on, but reflected in puddles and mirrors, or seen through the blurred windows of a fast-moving train. Because Boksoon can anticipate her opponents’ moves, we see her mental simulation of each fight as she keenly plots her strategy. These confrontations are so thoughtfully staged that you wish the same care had been extended to the sound design and score, which lack the ferocity necessary for such a vicious action-thriller.As Boksoon struggles with whether to give up the career she loves, her employers betray her. Beneath the gore that ensues is a story about understanding. Jae-young wants to reveal to her mother that she’s a lesbian; Boksoon longs to stop killing and be an ideal mom. From the two characters’ search for acceptance emerges a tender mother-daughter bond worth its weight in blood.Kill BoksoonNot rated. In Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis’ Review: Serene Demeanor, Bracing Message

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      The Pontiff travels well. Gianfranco Rosi’s new documentary chronicles his visits to Catholic communities the world over, and he never seems to tire.There’s a sense of quietude one may slip into while viewing this documentary made by Gianfranco Rosi. Perhaps it has to do with the serene demeanor of its subject, Pope Francis, the leader and international voice of the Roman Catholic Church. In most documentaries depicting what musicians and entertainers call road work, the person putting in the hours can get irritable. In his first nine years as Pope (he was elected in 2013), Francis made 37 trips from the Vatican, and visited almost 60 countries. “In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope Francis,” assembled from footage shot over those years, never betrays a jet-lagged pontiff.Rosi made his name with the urgent 2016 documentary “Fire at Sea,” about Italy’s — and Europe’s — migrant crisis. Some dire imagery and sound reminiscent of that picture turns up here: radio antennas spinning as audio of S.O.S. messages play on the soundtrack, shots of overturned passenger boats. After one mass drowning, Pope Francis spoke on the island of Lampedusa, where he bemoaned “the globalization of indifference.” The speech, which Rosi shot, is moving, its message bracing even as the Pope avoids a strident tone.But as the movie goes on, without narration or any talking-head interviews, a pattern emerges. The Pope suits up, shows up, says the right thing, and the world just keeps getting worse. There is one instance where he doesn’t say the right thing: Speaking offhand to his followers in Chile, he appears dismissive of abuse charges against a bishop there, one who subsequently resigned. The tact with which Francis walks back his words is impressive. So, too, is the way he manages to appear well-informed on the variety of injustices he speaks against as he tries to build bridges in places like the United Arab Emirates. But beyond that, a repetitious feel begins to take over. For some viewers, quietude may yield to boredom.In Viaggio: The Travels of Pope FrancisNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Smoking Causes Coughing’ Review: A Superteam Saga With a Demented Twist

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      Quentin Dupieux’s gift for surreal comedy is in full bloom in this nutty tale of heroes named after tobacco’s toxic components.As befits its name, the Tobacco Force is an unusual superteam: Its five Power Rangers-type members harness the “negative energy” of tobacco to fight evil, and they are named after some of cigarette smoke’s toxic components, like Méthanol (Vincent Lacoste), Nicotine (Anaïs Demoustier) and Benzène (Gilles Lellouche).Welcome back to the zany world of Quentin Dupieux, a French director who cranks out (his previous film, the time-travel fable “Incredible But True,” came out just months ago) low-budget absurdist comedies with preposterous premises that he always takes at face value, no matter how demented. His latest might be his funniest yet, as the worn-out Tobacco Force must attend a retreat to rebuild its team spirit before facing the galactic menace Lézardin (Benoît Poelvoorde).Instead of building to a giant battle, Dupieux, as is his wont, goes off on multiple detours as the characters — including a random little girl and a barracuda fished from a nearby lake — take turns telling scary, often gory stories by a campfire. Those culminate with a ghoulish tale in which a woman (the comedian Blanche Gardin) keeps up a conversation with her nephew as he slowly gets absorbed into — hush, sharing causes spoiling.As if this weren’t enough, the force’s female members are distracted by their boss, a womanizing rat. That is not a euphemism, by the way: Didier actually is a giant rodent, portrayed by a mangy puppet (voiced by Alain Chabat). You will not forget the sight of him making out with his latest conquest.Smoking Causes CoughingNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Tetris’ Review: Falling Blocks and Rising Freedom

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      Like it’s namesake, this film is clever, crafty and shockingly entertaining.When the Communist Party bans your video game from state computers because it’s lowering workers’ productivity, you know you have a hit on your hands. But in 1988, few people outside the Iron Curtain were even aware of the existence of Tetris, never mind its potential to enchant millions. While its Russian creator, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov), was giving away copies for free, a savvy programmer named Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton) was witnessing a demonstration of the game at a Las Vegas trade show and having his mind blown.Like its namesake, Jon S. Baird’s “Tetris” is clever, crafty and shockingly entertaining. Both origin story and underdog dramedy, the movie presents a fictionalized account of Henk’s epic quest to obtain licensing rights to multiplatform versions of the game. Assembling a story that’s equal parts astonishing and bamboozling, Baird and his screenwriter, Noah Pink, pit communism against capitalism and individual passion against corporate greed. Hacking gleefully into the deal-making weeds, the filmmakers refuse to shy away from wordy conference-room negotiations and head-spinning double-crosses as Henk bets his home, and at one point his freedom, on a long shot.While the Tetris player competes only with herself, Henk — played by Egerton with bushy-tailed zeal — must battle multiple, more powerful adversaries. There’s the weaselly Robert Stein (Toby Jones) of Andromeda Software; the infamous publishing magnate Robert Maxwell (the great Roger Allam), friend of Mikhail Gorbachev (and father of Ghislaine Maxwell), who would go on to pillage his companies’ pension funds; and, not least, the Soviet authorities who own the game, including a cartoonish K.G.B. goon seeking to line his own pockets.There are enough characters here for an entire television series, and Pink sweats blood to cram them all in. At times, the film’s sheer complexity can muddy its identity and stymie its merry momentum. To counter the denseness, Baird works vintage color graphics into pixelated animations that illustrate the movie’s chapters, and some location shooting in Aberdeen, Scotland (Baird’s hometown), doubles ably for Moscow. As Henk racks up frequent-flier miles on three continents (he has an ultrapatient wife and a brood of adorable children in Tokyo), Baird remains staunchly by his superhero’s side. He even gives him an 11th-hour car chase.Though too goofy to work as a Cold War thriller — the unveiling of Nintendo’s revolutionary Game Boy console presents like the discovery of penicillin — “Tetris” is alert to the restrictions and dangers of a Soviet Union on the brink of implosion. In one of its most enjoyable sequences, Alexey takes Henk to an underground nightclub, where a reveler excitedly screams that the Estonians have declared independence. The blocks have begun to fall.Fast and fizzy and relentlessly buoyant, “Tetris” finds its heart in the connection between these two men, the game’s modest creator and its tenacious evangelist. (Hang out for a few minutes during the end credits to see their real-life counterparts interact.) When we watch them play together, we see Henk, for the first time, relax; maybe he’s realizing that in business, the only person you can trust is the one who has nothing to gain.TetrisRated R for blue language, red scares and dirty money. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Space Oddity’ Review: Failure to Launch

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      Men will literally contemplate traveling to Mars instead of going to therapy in “Space Oddity,” directed by Kyra Sedgwick.In “Space Oddity,” an emotionally guarded young man named Alex (Kyle Allen) gathers his sister and parents to inform them that, in 10 years, he will be traveling to Mars on a one-way ticket, and that they should spend time together before he goes into isolation for training. He claims to be participating in a private space program that is years ahead of NASA. His sister (Madeline Brewer) is skeptical, but his parents (Kevin Bacon and Carrie Preston) humor him. “After the accident, he spent months just lying in his room,” his mother says. At least Mars is outdoors.It does not take an astrophysics degree to figure out what is actually going on, or to determine that “Space Oddity,” directed by the actress Kyra Sedgwick, is not science fiction at all, but an earnest movie about grieving and guilt, with the prospect of life on Mars (and a second David Bowie song, sang here by Brandi Carlile, as a title) held out as a vaguely commercial hook.There’s also a romance: Alex meets cute with an insurance sales rep, Daisy (Alexandra Shipp), who conveniently falls for him just when he needs a personal breakthrough. Daisy exists alongside other sounding boards — a doctor played by Alfre Woodard, a Russian gardener played by Simon Helberg — that the screenwriter Rebecca Banner has contrived in place of characters.Life seldom offers such overworked metaphors. Not only does Alex want to escape Earth; his father actually works with the earth, growing and selling flowers (but not daisies!), in a business he hopes Alex will take over. Serious subject matter aside, the movie is as bogus as Alex’s prospects of being an astronaut.Space OddityRated PG-13 for, among other things, “thematic elements.” Danger, children! Themes! Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Giraffe’ Review: Introspection in the Danish Countryside

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      In the pensive drama “Giraffe,” an ethnologist researching an abandoned cottage wonders whether her own life could or should change.In “Giraffe,” an ethnologist is tasked with inventorying an abandoned cottage in the Danish countryside: books, photos, journals. Who was the solitary woman who once lived there, writing about her projects, her lovers and the changing seasons? The questions seem to lead the researcher, Dara (Lisa Loven Kongsli), to her own musings: What makes up a life? And what could or should her own life be?The director of this pensive, insightful film, Anna Sofie Hartmann, doesn’t set up scenes in a manner as pointed as these queries. Instead, we observe Dara — commuting by ferry, interviewing an older couple displaced by tunnel construction, chatting up a cute Polish road worker (Jakub Gierszal). Dara likes her work, in sunlit surroundings that have the crisply vivid colors of a photorealist oil painting, but something is shifting within her.Dara gets involved with the young Pole, and on the cusp of 40, she grows ambivalent about her partner back in Berlin (whom she visits, with a sense of detachment). But the movie also sits in with some middle-aged road workers and their travails. And Dara has a friend on the ferry, who speculates on the inner lives of passengers.It’s an essayistic approach to drama, which it’s fair to identify as a subgenre of 21st-century art film: picturesque movies about displacement and drift that eschew traditional narrative drive. At one point, Dara quotes from Rebecca Solnit’s “A Field Guide to Getting Lost,” and it’s a useful touchstone. Hartmann is reflecting on how we find and lose ourselves amid life’s changing paths and many models for living.GiraffeNot rated. In Danish, Norwegian, Polish, English and German with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Watch on Film Movement Plus. More

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      ‘Fugue’ Review: Lost Time

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      This psychological thriller about a woman experiencing amnesia poses an essentially cinematic question: Who are we without our memories?In the opening minutes of “Fugue,” a blond-haired figure stumbles through a dark train tunnel in heels, climbs onto the platform and then squats to urinate in full public view. It’s a striking vision of a Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, though Agnieszka Smoczynska’s film is less about its heroine’s unraveling than about the pained process of her respooling.The film soon skips two years ahead, as Alicja (Gabriela Muskala), now sporting a spiky brunette bob, is paraded on TV by a state psychiatrist. She has no documents or memories, no idea of who she is, until her family calls in and claims her as Kinga Slowika: a beloved daughter and wife, and the mother of a young son.
      “Fugue” — named for Alicja/Kinga’s dissociative condition — follows its protagonist as she adjusts to an old life in the Polish suburbs that she no longer recognizes. Smoczynska builds a psychological puzzle out of subtle shocks to the system: quick reflexes that reveal Alicja’s muscle memories; gestures of love that don’t quite feel like love itself. Muskala turns in a gripping performance, pitched on the razor’s edge of the film’s central mystery: whether Kinga became Alicja by accident, or because her past life gave her reason to want to be someone else.“Fugue” takes on an essentially cinematic inquiry: Who are we without our memories? When Kinga finally has a revelation, it’s triggered by home videos, records of the past untouched by the caprices of the mind. It doesn’t matter that the facts turn out to be underwhelming, because it doesn’t matter why Alicja left. The gutting question “Fugue” poses is whether any of us can ever go back to being who we once were.FugueNot rated. In Polish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More