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      Ricardo Darín: Argentina’s Lucky Charm at the Oscars

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      When the country has a nominated film, it has usually starred this veteran. But the actor says other people have believed in his talent more than he has.WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Fortune has long favored Ricardo Darín. More than the subjective concept of talent, it is providence, manifested as other people’s unwavering confidence in his abilities, that the actor credits for his storied career as Argentina’s most celebrated film star internationally.“I’ve had all the luck that my parents didn’t have as actors,” he said in Spanish during a recent interview at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood. “Many times, people have valued me far more than I value myself, and I often think, ‘Do I deserve all that?’”The latest example of his relationship with Lady Luck is his turn as the real-life prosecutor Julio Strassera in “Argentina, 1985,” a historical courtroom drama about the Trial of the Juntas, when military leaders were tried for human rights violations during the former dictatorship. Directed by Santiago Mitre, it earned Argentina an Oscar nomination for best international feature film.Darín seems to be his country’s lucky charm when it comes to the Academy Awards. He has starred in all four movies to earn Argentina a nod this century, including “Son of the Bride,” “Wild Tales” and “The Secret in Their Eyes,” which took home the statuette in 2010. And Argentina has also submitted several other Darín-led productions to the academy over the years — meaning that even though they didn’t all make the cut, the films in which he appears are almost synonymous with the best of Argentine cinema.From the first handshake, Darín, 66, radiates a welcoming aura. Casually dressed in bluejeans and a navy sweater, he speaks with a warmth and candor that most people reserve for their closest friends. That temperament translates onscreen.“Ricardo has an immense power to elicit empathy from the audience, and that’s rare,” said the director Juan José Campanella, who has collaborated with Darín on four features.“Ricardo has an immense power to elicit empathy from the audience, and that’s rare,” said the director Juan José Campanella.David Billet for The New York TimesThough the actor inherited a passion for performance from his parents, who were both working actors in Buenos Aires, neither was enthusiastic about his carrying on the family’s craft. “They didn’t fight me on it, but they also didn’t encourage me to do it,” he recalled.Darín thinks of his path as preordained. He was a regular on film and TV sets and theater stages in childhood, first acting professionally at 3 years old in the 1960 series “Soledad Monsalvo.” At 10 he debuted onstage alongside his parents. By the time he attended his first theater workshop at 14, Darín felt like a seasoned veteran who had already experienced many facets of the job firsthand.For a time in adolescence, he contemplated becoming a veterinarian, a psychologist or even a lawyer. But in the end, the world he had always been familiar with persuaded him to stay. Doors opened easily for him, with frequent invitations to participate in a variety of projects.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Tom Cruise’s Gravitational Pull: Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.Hong Chau Interview: In a conversation with The Times, the actress, who is nominated for her supporting role in “The Whale,” says she still feels like an underdog.Andrea Riseborough Controversy: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why the “To Leslie” star’s nod was controversial.The Making of ‘Naatu Naatu’: The composers and choreographer from the Indian blockbuster “RRR” explain how they created the propulsive sequence that is nominated for best song.That trust from notable people in the industry is what he calls fortune. Darín has dear memories of the television director Diana Álvarez, who got into a fight with a network in 1982 so that he could be part of the show “Nosotros y Los Miedos.” She saw in him potential that others couldn’t.“In our profession, luck is very important,” Darín said. “There are very talented people out there with lots to tell who can’t find opportunities.”In the 1990s, Darín found immense success as the co-star of the sitcom “Mi Cuñado” (“My Brother-in-Law”), playing an impertinent but charming screw-up. His contract restricted him from other TV ventures but allowed him to pursue films. Among them was his first outing with Campanella, “The Same Love, the Same Rain” (1999), which helped other directors see beyond his TV persona.Darín’s academy-nominated films, clockwise from top left: “Argentina, 1985,” “Son of the Bride,” “The Secret in Their Eyes” and “Wild Tales.” Amazon Prime (“Argentina, 1985)”; Sony Pictures Classics (“Son of the Bride,” “Wild Tales”); María Antolini/Sony Pictures Classics (“The Secret in Their Eyes”)One of them, Fabián Bielinsky, cast him in the thriller “Nine Queens” (released in Argentina in 2000) as a sleazy con man. “He told me, ‘I hadn’t thought about you for this role. You are too charismatic, and I don’t want the audience to have any empathy for him,’” Darín recalled.In Campanella’s view, “There’s only one thing Ricardo cannot be, and that is unlikable. The clearest proof is ‘Nine Queens,’ where he plays an amoral crook, but we still root for him.”Campanella’s heartfelt “Son of the Bride” arrived the next year and mined Darín’s comic sensibilities for the role of a restaurant owner dealing with his aging parents.“Once an Argentine critic called him ‘our Henry Fonda’ because he projects great integrity,” Campanella said. “But he has something that Fonda didn’t, which is a great sense of humor.”Darín maintains that it was the one-two punch of “Nine Queens” and “Son of the Bride” that cemented his film career.“It was a great calling card for an actor to have the possibility of showing two absolutely opposite facets almost at once,” Darín said. “Even though I was already well known for TV and theater, that’s when I started to feel my colleagues were seeing me in a better light.”Since then, Darín has enjoyed his choice of roles, including Campanella’s acclaimed “The Secret in Their Eyes,” in which he starred as an investigator haunted by a gruesome, unresolved case.Another of Darín’s personal favorites is the dramedy “Truman” (2017), centered on a terminally ill man spending his final days alongside his best friends — one human and one canine. His wry character reminded Darín of his late father, also named Ricardo Darín, whom he described as a peculiar Renaissance man with an acid sense of humor and wild ideas that others found difficult to digest.Hollywood has reached out a handful of times, but he has declined, mostly because the most difficult thing for an actor to do is to think in another language, he said, adding that close-ups reveal when someone is reciting from memory rather than inhabiting an emotion.“I’ve always trusted my gut, more than my heart or my head,” Darín explained, then added, motioning to his stomach, “I trust in how the material hits me right here.”Hollywood has come calling, but Darín is largely uninterested because, he said, thinking in another language is the most difficult thing for an actor to do.David Billet for The New York TimesIn Argentina, his turn in Damián Szifron’s “Wild Tales” (released stateside in 2015) as a frustrated citizen who fights back against oppressive bureaucracy was widely embraced by audiences. “Ricardo has a lucid outlook on the realities that affect his country,” Szifron said. “He is a popular figure while at the same time being a sophisticated actor.”For “Argentina, 1985,” Mitre and Darín agreed not to mimic the voice or exact mannerisms of the real Strassera, but instead took a degree of artistic liberty in their re-creation.Mitre, who had directed Darín as a fictional Argentine president in the 2017 political saga “The Summit,” said he admired how the actor produces a truthful performance through a synthesis of his own sensibilities and the character’s.“It’s as if the camera could capture him in his entirety, show him in all his complexity,” Mitre said. “Whenever you see Ricardo act, you know there will be great honesty onscreen.”Beyond the positive critical reception of “Argentina, 1985” — and its Golden Globe win — Darín said the film’s most significant effect was making a younger generation aware of a sorrowful chapter in the country’s history.“We can’t forget that behind this reclaiming of the historical event that has brought us a lot of praise and happiness, there’s a deeply painful story about the kind of suffering for which there is no balm,” Darín noted with a solemn expression.His family’s acting tradition is being carried on by his son, Chino Darín, with whom he has formed a production company. The two starred in and produced the 2019 comedy “Heroic Losers.” The elder Darín never opposed his child’s interest in the craft, only advising him to follow the path that would bring the most satisfaction.“I’m one of those people who believe the most important thing in life is to try to be happy,” Darín said. “The closer you are to your vocation, the better chance you have at being happy.” More

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      ‘We Have a Ghost’ Review: Me and My Boo

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      David Harbour stars as an apparition haunting a family’s home in this supernatural Netflix comedy.The screenwriter and director Christopher Landon (“Happy Death Day”) will nevermore shudder at a bump in the night. Henceforth, it will just be specters thanking him for “We Have a Ghost,” a cheery kids comedy heavily syruped with pro-ghoul propaganda. Gauging from his appearance, Ernest (David Harbour) — a kindly, nonverbal ghost so named for the embroidery on his bowling shirt — died during the Nixon administration. Since then, Ernest has done spirit fingers in the attic of a cartoonishly spooky three-story Queen Anne, although the creepiest thing about him is his combover.The gag is that Ernest’s scares are no match for the Presleys, a modern family of the internet age — the demographic of the film’s intended audience, although its ideal viewers will dial down their cynicism and play along. When a Realtor (Faith Ford) hoodwinks the Presley clan into buying the place — “Nothing a little landscaping couldn’t fix,” she coos — the younger son, a shy teenager named Kevin (Jahi Winston), embraces Ernest like a rescue mutt. Kevin’s father, Frank (Anthony Mackie), and older brother, Fulton (Niles Fitch), however, want to use him to get rich and famous. Frank’s rap sheet of cash-grab gimmicks has already dissipated respect for him in the home; even so, he fares better than the kids’ mother, a character so underwritten she’s practically vapor. (Worse, the lead part of Kevin is almost as lifeless.)Landon’s tale, based on a snarkier short story by Geoff Manaugh, presents Ernest as the first viral video proof-of-afterlife — an odd situation for an unassuming chap who passed away before the invention of Pong. Before you can say “Boo!” Ernest becomes a meme, a stunt challenge, and a cause célèbre among TikTok do-gooders (“Just because you’re not made of matter, it doesn’t mean you don’t matter”). He’s also a target for a C.I.A.-connected paranormal researcher, Dr. Monroe (Tig Notaro), out to boost her own clout.The film grasps onto anything that will amuse itself for a scene: a stalker dressed like Jesus, a nifty car chase, an unconvincing romance between Kevin and his wacky neighbor Joy (Isabella Russo), who blasts energy into the film as soon as she enters blaring a slide trombone. Jennifer Coolidge also has a cameo as a blasé cable TV medium who visits the house and waves off Ernest as a hologram until he rattles the furniture and melts the skin off his face. These high jinks are so carefree about coherence that during this rampage, we hear the screech of a terrified cat. Do the Presleys own a cat? No.Conveniently, Ernest’s personality has been wiped by a case of necrotic amnesia that allows this Greatest Generation ghost to pal around with today’s teenagers. In life, Ernest might not have been their first choice to babysit. In death, he’s graced with the empathy of E.T. — and when he makes contact with Notaro’s character, the world-weary doctor melts into a state of wonder as dewy as when Sam Neill made goo-goo eyes at a brachiosaur. How delightfully morbid to give the netherworld a Spielbergian gloss. For his next trick, Ernest can study some scare tactics in the Temple of Doom.We Have a GhostRated PG-13 for language, suggestive references and violence tied to Ernest’s untimely death. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘God’s Time’ Review: Saving Her From Herself

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      Instead of making a thriller, the writer and director Daniel Antebi opts for a boho buddy comedy, with mixed results.In most 12-step programs, attendees are advised to keep private what happens in the meetings. But what if somebody in the room announced an intention to commit murder? Such a conundrum might make for a good thriller.With “God’s Time,” the writer and director Daniel Antebi instead opts to make a boho buddy comedy that eventually becomes a grim parable of violence and presumptive heroism.Dev (Ben Groh), the fourth-wall-breaking narrator of this story set in Lower Manhattan, is an aspiring actor who goes to 12-step gatherings with his best friend, Luca (Dion Costelloe), and the volatile beauty Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra). It’s clear that Dev is crushing hard on Regina. When she announces in a meeting that she intends to murder her apparent dirtbag ex-boyfriend, Dev goes manic and enlists Luca on a quest to save Regina from herself.The movie’s nods to genre pictures (such as when Dev imagines himself as a superhero), occasional forays into rough-around-the-edges animation, and quasi-Rabelaisian humor suggest what one might call “Daniels energy” (as in the creators of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”) on a microbudget. The payoff is mixed.The three principal actors, particularly Sierra, are appealing. But the story is thin, and the jokes are more cute than funny. What initially looks to be an amiably bouncy cinematic journey turns kind of pedestrian in distressingly little time. By the end, Antebi seems to pad the movie with outtakes and a pharma ad parody to get the picture up to a reasonable feature length.God’s TimeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Christoph Waltz Has Some Thoughts

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      Christoph Waltz knows a few things about acting, and he has the Academy Awards to prove it. Yet in a recent conversation, he made light of the skills required.“I don’t believe in good actor, bad actor,” he said. “If you’re playing an interesting part in a worthwhile story and you’re cast properly, you’d have to be a complete idiot to not be good.”It is difficult to tell how serious Waltz is when he makes this type of deliciously arch grand statement, just as it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly drives his latest screen creation — the title character of the satirical new Amazon workplace thriller “The Consultant.”Adapted by the “Servant” creator Tony Basgallop from the 2015 novel by Bentley Little, the eight-episode series, debuting Friday on Prime Video, tells the story of a video game studio after the sudden, violent death of its young founder, which sends the company into a tailspin. Out of nowhere, an off-putting stranger named Regus Patoff (Waltz), who claims to be a hired consultant from Crimea, appears and takes over. It is obvious immediately that something is a little off — or maybe a lot.Like many of Waltz’s best known characters, Regus is unfailingly soft-spoken and courteous — even when firing a guy for how he smells — as was Waltz, himself, on a recent morning in the Drawing Room of the Greenwich Hotel, in Lower Manhattan. And yet there is usually a wry edge to what he does, which often plays as ruthless in his characters, not least the two for which he won Oscars: an SS officer in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” and a bounty hunter in Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”His character stays true to form in “The Consultant,” which he described as “the first series that I’ve done.” That isn’t entirely accurate — he has had many guest spots and he had regular roles in a few European series decades ago — but it is the first time Waltz, 66, has carried a modern Hollywood series, and with a role so thoroughly Waltz-like. (A series of Quibi short-shorts in which he starred, “Most Dangerous Game,” has since been condensed into a film.) Regus is as seductive as he is ominous, a frightening mix of outwardly pleasant and subtly menacing, a balance that Waltz has perfected over the years.“On the page the character is very harsh and forthright, but onscreen there’s only so far you can go in being nasty,” Basgallop, who is also the showrunner, said in a video conversation. “You also have to have a lot of charm, which I think Christoph brought to it,”“He never says, ‘I am the boss,’” Waltz said of his character in “The Consultant.” “He just acts like a boss and everybody immediately accepts it,” Waltz said. Michael Desmond/Prime VideoIn person, that edge Waltz brings to his roles is the furthest thing from menacing, but it does make for good sport. He is intellectual, playful, a little mischievous — as likely to challenge a question as to answer it. A man of wide-ranging interests, he quoted or paraphrased Stanley Kubrick, Charles Eames, Albert Einstein, Timothy Snyder, Aristotle and Stephen Sondheim in the course of an 80-minute conversation.In a typical rally, he hit a deceptively gentle lob back over the net after being asked if he had ever felt he nailed a scene or role.“All this market-economy vocabulary: ‘nailed it,’” he said. “Well, if you nail it, where do you nail it to? What kind of nail do you use? Why nail it in the first place? It can’t go anywhere anymore. Wouldn’t it be the goal to keep it flowing?”He leaned back in his seat, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.Born and raised in Vienna, Waltz spent decades bouncing around Europe in the workaday worlds of theater and television, doing the occasional film before landing his breakout role, in “Inglourious Basterds,” which debuted when he was 52. At the time, he told The New York Times that after acting in a lot of comedies, playing the villain had become “sort of the flavor of the past few years.”Most of it wasn’t particularly rewarding, but his relationship with Tarantino freed him to combine his facility for both comedy and villainy in more interesting ways — and to be choosier. It also brought him to Los Angeles, where he has been living full-time since the mid-2010s. (Just before the pandemic, he added American citizenship to his Austrian and German ones: “I very much believe in this old dictum of no taxation without representation,” he said, “and I wanted to be represented because I pay a lot of taxes here.”)With a successful run of films with some of the world’s biggest directors under his belt (Wes Anderson, Guillermo Del Toro and Cary Joji Fukunaga among the most recent), he hesitated, at first, to sign on for a TV show. Television requires a particular leap of faith, he said, that films do not.“They ask you to do a whole series but you don’t get anything but the pilot,” Waltz said. It was an experience he had never had before, and he described it with an unlikely metaphor.“The fastest animal is an alligator, but only for five meters,” he informed me. “So I thought, ‘What kind of alligator is that, jumping at me?’”Waltz has credited his analytical approach to acting, in part, to the technique of script interpretation taught by Stella Adler, to which he was exposed during a stint in New York beginning in the late 1970s. In his analysis, the power of his character in “The Consultant” rests in little more than people’s eagerness to follow someone who assumes an air of authority.“He never says, ‘I am the boss’ — he just acts like a boss and everybody immediately accepts it,” Waltz said.He segued to Representative George Santos of New York, who has built a career on brazen lies and self-confidence — but is still standing, even after being exposed.“He should be sitting in a quiet corner, hoping that this thing passes,” Waltz marveled with a gleam in his eye, like a gourmand about to dig into a particularly elaborate dessert. “Now it is pathology, clearly.”Waltz is interested in what makes people tick, but that doesn’t mean he wants to find an explanation or a meaning behind every decision he makes as an actor. Or at least he doesn’t want to dwell on it publicly.“I don’t talk about the process — or sometimes have a, let’s say, ironic distance to disclosing the process — because it’s a very personal thing,” he said. “You follow inklings that you don’t know where they’re coming from.”Regus is the latest in a line of roles in which Waltz deploys an unshowy virtuosity: He does a lot with little. (“It’s about the viewer, not the actor,” he said. “I’m not interested in seeing the actor work; I’m interested in forgetting about the actor altogether.”) Still, getting there takes plenty of experimentation and conversation that you don’t see onscreen. Waltz’s colleagues described him on set as collegial, honest and down to earth.Waltz takes an analytical approach to acting, preferring not to talk too much about his “process,” or at least to have “an ironic distance” when disclosing it. Erik Tanner for The New York Times“When he speaks, you listen because you know it’s heartfelt — you don’t think he’s trying to sell you something or trying to convince you of something,” Basgallop said. “He brings that to his characters as well — someone who has a very strong intellect but is also very calm and measured.“For some reason I think human beings find that terrifying: We’re programmed to be scared of someone like that because they can outthink us.”It’s tempting to draw parallels between Regus’s hold on the video game company’s staff and the one the best actors have on their audiences — and, evidently, on some of their colleagues.In a phone conversation, Nat Wolff, 28, who plays a coder, recalled shooting scenes in which his and Waltz’s characters take off on a bonding expedition. At the end of a busy day, Wolff said, Waltz volunteered some feedback.“He turned to me and he said, ‘You were …’ He took a long pause while I felt my anxiety rising, and then he went ‘ … exquisite today,’” he said. “I really wanted to get his approval, like a paternal figure.”The anecdote illustrates Waltz’s dry humor and precise timing, as well as the way he envisions the best conversations: as impish dialectic. Wolff recalled telling Waltz that he had wanted to get a puppy.“And he said, ‘Think about it from the puppy’s point of view,’” Wolff said, imitating his co-star’s German accent. “‘You’re going to be off on set and the puppy is going to be thinking, Where’s Nat?’”“So I didn’t get a puppy,” he added, laughing. “Whatever Christoph says, you listen to and you follow.” More

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      ‘Juniper’ Review: Bad Grandma

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      Starring Charlotte Rampling, this New Zealand-set drama is a portrait of intergenerational bonding with a heavy dose of cynicism.“Gin to here, water to here, and a squeeze of lemon,” says Charlotte Rampling’s wheelchair-using Ruth, pointing to an empty jug that she refills with her boozy cocktail of choice three or four times a day. In this scene, she’s gesturing to her scowling grandson, Sam (George Ferrier), a boarding school brat whose antics cause his father to send him to grandma’s rural abode as punishment.Set in 1990s New Zealand, “Juniper,” Matthew J. Saville’s debut feature, is half coming-of-age story, half swan song, anchored in a process of intergenerational bonding.Ruth and Sam have never really spent time together — and the first few days are particularly rough, filled with barbs and shattered glasses. Predictably, their relationship softens up, but the film nevertheless maintains some of its prickly charm, in no small part because of the feisty Rampling, whose ice-queen persona here straddles bone-dry humor and withering tragedy.Both Sam and Ruth are embittered by loss and a sense of alienation, thus their shared tendencies toward self-harm — Sam with his suicidal ideations and Ruth with her relentless drinking. Ruth would be an archetypal “cool” grandma were it not for her haughty bite and startling directness. Still, she winds up spoiling her grandson in the only ways she knows how: throwing Sam and his pals a kegger; buying him new clothes to improve his chances of scoring. Their eventual tenderness is palpable, though deepened by bleakness: Sam has to carry his grandmother to dance, because she will never be able to walk again. In the hospital, after a health scare, he brings her a pouch of gin — the taste of rubber adds a nice touch, Ruth claims.Less convincing is Saville’s scattered buildup to a resolution as Sam works through past dramas related to his absent father and his mother’s death. This balancing act between sentimentality and cynicism often feels wobbly. Nevertheless, Ruth’s send-off is a powerful one, and Rampling proves to be the ideal vessel for its provocative implications.JuniperNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Yanagawa’ Review: Her Spell

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      Two brothers reconnect over a lost love in this drama from the Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu.In the first scene of “Yanagawa,” a free-spirited Beijing bachelor, Lidong (Zhang Luyi), bums a cigarette from a stranger and blurts out that he has stage four cancer. But the actor delivers this devastating news so blithely that it’s not clear whether he really means it. It’s the first in what becomes a series of confusing moments in this art house drama from the Chinese filmmaker Zhang Lu (“Desert Dream”). Lidong convinces his cocky, unhappily married brother, Lichun (Xin Baiqing), to reconnect for a trip to Yanagawa, Japan. What ensues is a meandering rehash of Lidong and Lichun’s mutual romantic obsession with a long-lost childhood friend, Chuan (Ni Ni), who has grown into a beautiful, mysterious singer living in Yanagawa.If you’re looking for character arcs, surprises or narrative coherence, you’re likely to be disappointed by “Yanagawa.” But this is a Haiku of a movie, so better to fix your eyes on the characters walking into and out of the edges of the frame, the precise blocking and the prolonged continuous shots where each cut blends seamlessly into the next — not to mention the picturesque immersion into the film’s eponymous town.The camera, driven by the resounding technical control of Zhang and the cinematographer Park Jung-hun, is all-knowing and all-important. It effectively assumes the omniscient voice of a silent narrator. You’ve probably never watched with more interest as someone walks down a long hallway with their back to the camera, a visual refrain that happens repeatedly in “Yanagawa” yet feels inventive each time. The beats of the plot, then, become tangential to the overall impact of the film: It’s a quiet, elemental nourishment of the senses.YanagawaNot rated. In Chinese and Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. Watch on Film Movement Plus. More

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      ‘Bruiser’ Review: Of Fathers and Fractures

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      A teenage boy is caught between the man who raised him and a new guiding figure in this affecting study of masculinity and coming of age.Three figures lie on the grass, their bodies splayed out as if unconscious, before one of them, the smallest of the trio, gets up and leaves. The shot, fading in at the start of “Bruiser,” is a visual metaphor of sorts — the image never recurs in the film, but serves as a tableau for this affecting study of masculinity, fatherhood and coming of age.A confident feature debut from the director Miles Warren, who adapted it with Ben Medina from a short film of the same name, the movie begins with the return of 14-year-old Darious (Jalyn Hall) from his new boarding school. He struggles to adjust, gets into a fight with a friend and, wanting to learn to protect himself, turns to Porter (Trevante Rhodes), a stranger he meets in the woods. We eventually learn that Porter grew up with Darious’s parents, Malcolm (Shamier Anderson) and Monica (Shinelle Azoroh), and in turn shares a complicated past with Darious.The connection that’s revealed about this man of the woods sounds more contrived on paper than in the film, which is buoyed by an often arresting score and strong performances from its cast, including the newcomer Hall. Warren uses an assured hand in treating the family melodrama with the tenderness of a tone poem. For most of the film, he avoids painting in broad strokes while ratcheting up the conflict between Porter, a tattooed veteran living on a boat, and the bespectacled, seemingly upright Malcolm.The two men’s rivalry becomes more of a struggle with the dark past they share and with how the terms of manhood often manifest in violence and domination. (These ideas take a somewhat uncreative, heavy-handed turn at the climax, though Warren partly justifies that approach by the end.) Darious ends up caught in the middle — it’s up to him to decide if he can get up and walk in a different direction.BruiserNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Linoleum’ Review: Rocket Plan

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      Jim Gaffigan plays a dual role as rival scientists in this mysterious yet surprisingly effective movie.“Linoleum,” the enigmatic feature from Colin West, is so determinedly coy in its early scenes that it risks losing the audience before the midway point. It’s well worth sticking around, though, as this sci-fi-flavored family drama more than repays our patience.The sky is falling on Cameron (Jim Gaffigan), a middle-aged scientist who once dreamed of being an astronaut. His wife (Rhea Seehorn) is divorcing him, his father’s dementia is worsening and he’s being removed as host of the children’s TV show he created. Worse, his replacement, Kent (also Gaffigan), is a former astronaut who looks like a harder, meaner version of himself — a resemblance Cameron notes right after Kent and his convertible crash out of the sky in front of him.The next object to rain from above is a satellite, from whose wreckage Cameron decides to build a rocket ship and reclaim his youthful ambitions. Yet “Linoleum” isn’t a generic, if bizarre midlife-crisis movie: For one thing, there’s a touching bond forming between Cameron’s daughter and Kent’s son (Katelyn Nacon and Gabriel Rush), misfits struggling to negotiate their sexual identities. Their scenes together are some of the loveliest in the film, and West handles them with a tenderness that tells us how much this relationship matters.As the story darkens and a growing chill freezes out its earlier whimsy, Ed Wu’s camera becomes increasingly distracted by the surreal: an eerily cracked astronaut’s helmet; a benign old woman loitering in the middle distance. And just when we’re wondering where all this is going, West executes a final act as devilish as it is emotionally potent. Maybe that tale of disappointment and abandoned dreams was really something else all along.LinoleumNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More