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      ‘G20’ Review: Madam President or Rambo?

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      Viola Davis raises the bar on sheer brawniness in this action film where an American president has to fight Australian crypto-terrorists.The action spectacle “G20” offers up an absurd fantasy: What if the President of the United States were a gunslinging, martial-arts hero? “Air Force One” (1997) may be the ur-text of this shamelessly jingoistic subgenre, but Viola Davis’s President Danielle Sutton raises the bar on sheer brawniness.The script, in any case, aims for relevance. The bulk of the story takes place in a digitally-enhanced hillside hotel in Cape Town, where President Sutton and her family — including her doting husband, Derek (Anthony Anderson), teenage daughter, Serena (Marsai Martin), and son, Demetrius (Christopher Farrar) — have arrived for the Group of 20 economic summit.Chaos ensues when Rutledge (Antony Starr), a jacked crypto-terrorist from Australia, infiltrates the hotel with a group of military-trained lackeys with extremist right-wing views. Rutledge and his crew take most of the attending world leaders hostage, forcing them to record videos of themselves that he uses to create deepfakes meant to cause global stock markets to plunge.This master plan hinges on discrediting Sutton — though as a female politician, she’s used to the scrutiny.The film, directed by Patricia Riggen, clicks into place when Sutton and her top bodyguard Manny (Ramón Rodríguez) evade capture, navigating the hotel complex in search of her escape vehicle while knocking out Rutledge’s minions in cramped set pieces (like an elevator and a kitchen). Additional plot twists and cutesy comic touches come courtesy of the elderly South Korean first lady (Han Min-seo), the chauvinistic British Prime Minister (Douglas Hodge), and a top Italian delegate in high heels (Sabrina Impacciatore, who played the prickly hotel manager in the second season of “The White Lotus,” gets a fine spotlight moment during a missile-heavy getaway scene). This group latches onto Sutton for protection, while elsewhere Derek, Demetrius, and Serena play their own cat-and-mouse games.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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      ‘Warfare’ Review: A Combat Movie That Refuses to Entertain

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      In Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s film about an American platoon in Iraq, there is no admirably staged bloodshed or witty repartee. That’s the point.The highest praise I can offer “Warfare,” a tough, relentless movie about life and death in battle, is that it isn’t thrilling. It is, rather, a purposely sad, angry movie, and as much a lament as a warning. That’s to the point of this factually informed fiction, which tracks a platoon of U.S. Navy SEALs during a calamitous mission in Iraq. There, under cover of an otherwise still night, the troops take over a seemingly ordinary home, place the inhabitants under guard and stake out the area. Then the men watch and wait while sitting, standing and sometimes agitatedly peering out windows in the name of a cause that no one ever explains outright.Among those not explaining any of this — the mission, its averred rationale and its carnage — are the writers-directors Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza. Garland’s last movie was “Civil War” (2024), an eerie, uncomfortably realistic slice of speculative fiction set in a war-torn United States that Mendoza, a former member of the SEALs, worked on as the military adviser. That experience led to a friendship and now to “Warfare,” which is based on a real operation in 2006 that Mendoza took part in; at the time, the Americans were attempting to take control of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. The war was three years old by then, an estimated 600,000 Iraqis were dead and American fatalities would soon reach 3,000.Much of “Warfare” takes place in real time inside a blocky, two-story building where the inhabitants, including several children, are sleeping when the Americans enter. Crowded into a bedroom where they’re watched over by a rotation of guards, the Iraqis aren’t named (not that I remember, at least) and are scarcely individualized. The military men are more distinct, largely because they’re either played by somewhat familiar faces — including Will Poulter, as Captain Erik, the head of the initial operation — or have distinguishing features, like the mustache on Elliott (Cosmo Jarvis), the head sniper. (The movie is dedicated to the real Elliott Miller, who somehow survived the operation.)Garland is very good at building suspense, and he’s especially adept at turning quiet spaces into unrelenting zones of dread. “Warfare” opens with a burst of raucous silliness as uniformed men crowded around a monitor in a small room watch a risibly tacky music video for the dance tune “Call on Me.” Set in what’s meant to be an aerobics studio circa the 1980s, the video features a throng of big-haired, tight-thighed hotties (and one pitiful dude), stretching and pumping as if warming up for an orgiastic marathon. It’s a spectacle that the guys watch with collective pleasure and much whooping, and which underscores that you’ve entered a specific world of men that, minutes later, goes spookily quiet in an unnamed town.The SEAL unit takes over the Iraqi house quickly, breaking through a bricked-off upper floor, where most of them position themselves. In one room, Elliott, eyes squinting and face slicked with sweat, lies on his belly on a makeshift platform watching the street through a large, jagged peephole punched in the wall. As the minutes tick off, the men continue waiting as they listen to radio commands and watch surveillance footage. Every so often, Elliott scribbles a note as does a second sniper, Frank (Taylor John Smith). Frank briefly takes over when Elliott needs a break to replace his chewing tobacco and to relieve himself, which he does by urinating in an empty water bottle, something that I doubt that John Wayne did.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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      ‘The Uninvited’ Review: A Surprise Guest at the Garden Party

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      Hollywood types get skewered in this comedy of manners, starring Walton Goggins, Pedro Pascal and Elizabeth Reaser.The not-quite-comedy of manners “The Uninvited” begins with Rose (Elizabeth Reaser) fretting about her age in her walk-in closet. She and her husband Sammy (Walton Goggins), a talent agent plotting a big move, are about to throw a garden party, for which they are desperate to look successful.But really they’re just desperate. Or as desperate as affluent people can be while also being completely self-absorbed.The showbiz strivers of “The Uninvited,” written and directed by Nadia Conners, seem to have been created for the express purpose of being mocked. This is one of those self-hating Hollywood pictures. What’s new is its title hook.The uninvited guest is a confused older woman named Helen, played with painstaking expertise by Lois Smith, who shows up at the gate of Rose and Sammy’s house believing that it’s her home. Sammy just wants her gone — you get the feeling he might just toss her in the canyon if he could carry her that far — while Rose finds her better angels stirring up some compassion for her vulnerable guest.Of course Smith’s Helen is a fount of senior wisdom, telling one of her juniors, “You’re so angry — it will be the death of you.” About a half-hour in, Lucien (Pedro Pascal), a megastar and past romantic interest of Rose’s, shows up. His presence complicates matters and takes the focus off Helen, making this picture a very soft and indefinite satire.The UninvitedRated R for language, themes, sexual references. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Teacher’ Review: Harsh Lessons in the West Bank

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      A legal procedural, a family tragedy, a romance and a kidnapping plot are a lot to hang on one character in this debut film by Farah Nabulsi.The protagonist of “The Teacher” is at the nexus of several dramas at once.Basem (Saleh Bakri), a Palestinian who teaches English at a school in the West Bank, is focused on helping a student, Yacoub (Mahmoud Bakri), who has just returned from serving a two-year sentence related to a protest. Yacoub’s brother, Adam (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), is another of Basem’s pupils — the brains to Yacoub’s muscle, as Yacoub sees it. Early in the film, Israeli authorities demolish the siblings’ house. Soon after, a violent encounter with settlers leads Basem to encourage the family to seek justice in an Israeli court.Initially, Basem appears to favor a strategy of nonviolent, high-minded resistance, but he has a complicated history. Details about how his past activism affected his marriage and his son are teased out gradually, as he grows closer with Lisa (Imogen Poots), a British volunteer who works as a counselor at his school. Against this backdrop, Israeli investigators are searching for an Israeli American soldier who is being held hostage in the West Bank, and whose captors hope to trade him for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.This feature debut from the Palestinian British writer-director Farah Nabulsi had its premiere before the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In some ways, the movie suffers from an understandable impulse to streamline. Nabulsi uses Basem as a single fulcrum that she can pivot around as she highlights elements of an intractably complex geopolitical conflict.But a teacher-student bonding narrative, a legal procedural, a family tragedy, a romance and a kidnapping thriller are a lot to hang on one character. And while the threads all compel individually, the climax, in which Basem declares his determination to redress a past failure, is decidedly trite.The TeacherNot rated. In English, Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sacramento’ Review: Best Frenemies

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      In this warmly funny indie comedy, two friends with a complicated past confront their grief and anxieties on a California road trip.After Rickey (Michael Angarano), an adrift ne’er-do-well, ambushes his sort-of best friend Glenn (Michael Cera) in his backyard in “Sacramento,” he drags him on a road trip under the pretense of scattering his dead father’s ashes.Rickey is indeed mourning but also has ulterior motives involving an estranged lover (Maya Erskine), a mission that inadvertently forces Glenn to confront his own fears about the baby he’s having with his wife (Kristen Stewart) in this warmly funny indie comedy directed by Michael Angarano.The two can’t help but clash, scuffling clumsily at one point in a parking lot, before pausing in a panting stalemate. The pose they strike — one arm around the other man, the other arm holding steady to the ground — is a mixture of support and attack, a hug and a tackle. It’s an apt snapshot of their friendship.The film will immediately bring to mind parallels with last year’s “A Real Pain,” and for good reason: Like that film, this is a story of two men going on a trip clouded by grief, one of whom is the anxious, stable family man, the other a tactless extrovert constantly deflecting away from his own emotional baggage.But Angarano’s work stands capably in its own right; the central love-hate buddy dynamic is familiar, but it’s also imbued with a sweet and playful touch. Angarano is an anchor here, as charming as he is feckless. But it’s also a worthy showcase for Cera, who is given a role that is at once typecast — he is again the nebbishy and awkward straight man — and expansive, providing far more dimension than he’s typically afforded within that mold.SacramentoRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘One to One: John & Yoko’ Review: A Year in the Life

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      Kevin Macdonald’s immersive documentary follows the couple from their heady first days in New York to their galvanizing concert at Madison Square Garden in 1972.That John Lennon contained multitudes and mysteries was clear to anyone who listened to him when he was in the Beatles and after he discovered himself anew with Yoko Ono, who united with him mind, body and soul. They first met in 1966, kept in touch and finally shared a long night that ended with their making love at dawn. “It was very beautiful,” Lennon later said. They were still together in 1980 when he was fatally shot in New York. He was only 40. In the years since his death, Ono — who turned 92 in February and has retreated from public view — has helped keep him vividly present through her art, music and activism.Lennon and sometimes Ono are exhilaratingly present in “One to One: John & Yoko,” a documentary flooded with music and feeling that revisits a narrow if eventful period in the couple’s life. Directed by Kevin Macdonald and heroically edited by Sam Rice-Edwards (who’s also the co-director), the movie focuses on the early 1970s when Lennon and Ono were living in a modest apartment in the West Village amid clutter, clouds of smoke (cigarette and otherwise) and a hardworking television. “I just like TV,” an offscreen Lennon says in the documentary. “Whatever it is,” he adds, “that’s the image of ourselves that we’re portraying.”The image of Lennon and Ono in “One to One” is of an appealing, loving, creatively — and politically — fired-up couple who have happily lost and found themselves in the ferment of New York. By the time they landed in the city in 1971, Lennon and Ono were married, and the Beatles were no more. (The group made it legal in 1974.) When the couple met in 1966 it had been at one of her gallery shows. There, Lennon climbed a ladder featured in one of Ono’s artworks to read a single word that she had scribbled on the ceiling: “Yes.” Perhaps it was prophetic: They were married to other people, but soon said yes to each other, leading to a lot of ugliness directed at Ono, who was wrongly blamed for the Beatles’ breakup.For “One to One,” Macdonald has drawn from a wealth of engrossing, at times arresting archival material, including footage of Lennon and Ono at home, as well as never-before-released phone calls, for a movie that is as busy and as populated as their lives appeared to be. Allen Ginsberg pops up here, once while reciting best practices for anal hygiene. So do Angela Davis, Phil Spector, George Wallace and Jerry Rubin, who spoke about revolution alongside Lennon and Ono on “The Mike Douglas Show” in an eye-popping 1972 clip. Cinephile alert! The blond guest in that snippet is the filmmaker Barbara Loden, whose “Wanda” opened the year before. Lennon was right: TV was worth watching then.In making the documentary, Macdonald et al. have taken an immersive rather than an instructional approach, one that plunges viewers into a rushing stream of moving and still images, among them home movies, concert footage, news reports and far too many period commercials. There are no original voice-overs or talking-head interviews to help guide the way, and most of the text onscreen is transcripts of the phone calls. There are, less happily and helpfully, far too many shots of a re-creation of their apartment made specifically for the movie. (Ono and Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, served as the music producer.)The thread that winds throughout “One to One” is the Aug. 30, 1972, concert of the movie’s title that Lennon and Ono coordinated at Madison Square Garden alongside the likes of Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack. Earlier that year, the television reporter Geraldo Rivera had shocked the viewing public with a harrowing expose of the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, an institution for people with developmental disabilities where the children’s ward was crowded with grimly neglected boys and girls. Horrified, Lennon and Ono helped organize the event (they performed twice that day) to raise money for the children; it was, as the movie puts it, “the only full-length concert John gave after leaving the Beatles.”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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      ‘The King of Kings’ Review: A Remaking of the Christ

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      The story of Jesus, told through the eyes of Charles Dickens, that nobody asked for.“The King of Kings” is an animated film about the life of Jesus as narrated by Charles Dickens to his child and cat, which is not quite as Mad Libs-adjacent as it sounds. Dickens did, in fact, write a little book called “The Life of Our Lord,” a retelling of the very familiar story that he read aloud to his children every year. It wasn’t published until 1934, after the last of Dickens’s children had died, on its author’s orders.You can read it if you like — it’s freely available on the Internet Archive — and see that Dickens is, more or less, faithful to the Bible, albeit emphasizing Jesus as great moral teacher in language appropriate for English children in the mid-19th century. “I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ,” it begins. “For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was.”Dickens’s book feels very Victorian, in that its Jesus is mostly just a really good guy, and it ends with a little sermon about what Christianity is really about: “to do good, always even to those who do evil to us,” to “be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our hearts, and never make a boast of them,” and so on. Basically, to be Christian is to try to be kind and decent to all and thus hope that God will save us.“The King of Kings” opts for a different approach. Directed by Jang Seong-ho, best known for his pioneering visual effects work in Korean cinema, and distributed by the rising Christian movie superstar Angel Studios, the movie paints Jesus as a man who called everyone around him to test the “power of faith” — faith in God, presumably, though that remains largely unspecified. At times I found myself thinking of the more generic faith that practitioners of positive thinking and manifestation call us to. You can really read whatever you want into it, even though the movie makes clear that faith in God’s power is what it probably means.The tale begins with Ebenezer Scrooge staggering toward his own tombstone, which turns out to be in the mind of Charles Dickens (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) as he’s in the middle of delivering a dramatic reading of “A Christmas Carol” to a rapt audience. (I cannot decide if this device is merely a safeguard for audience members who don’t know who Dickens is without the Scrooge trigger, or has some larger significance.)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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      ‘Drop’ Review: The Ultimate Doomscroll

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      A first date turns hellish when a terrified woman’s phone is cloned by an anonymous psycho in this stylishly silly thriller.Modernizing the paranoid templates of thrillers like Joel Schumacher’s “Phone Booth” (2003) and Wes Craven’s “Red Eye” (2005), “Drop” invites us to observe a disastrous dinner date with a potentially fatal dessert.The unsuspecting diners are Violet (Meghann Fahy), a widowed therapist with a traumatic past, and Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a hunky photographer with a debatable future. After three months of skittish texting, Violet has finally agreed to meet Henry in person at a luxury restaurant atop a Chicago skyscraper. And just as she’s overcoming her first-date jitters — and the dizzying view from their window table — her phone beeps: Someone is sending anonymous, increasingly menacing messages using an AirDrop-style app that only operates within 50 feet. It would be easier to identify the culprit if every one of their fellow diners were not also staring at their phones.Like a Jenga tower with half the pieces removed, Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach’s wobbly script grows more preposterous by the minute. (Not least because no woman as cautious as Violet would be this careless with her phone’s privacy settings.) Which doesn’t mean that “Drop” isn’t fun: Park your left brain at the door and enjoy Ben Baudhuin’s snappy editing, Marc Spicer’s glowing, gliding images and the easy chemistry between the two leads. The mood might be more ick than eek, but Fahy is wickedly entertaining as a woman casting around for an escape from her online tormentor — if she fails to obey his commands, the sister and young son she left at home will be murdered — and charming the seemingly saintly Henry into finishing a date with someone he must believe to be at least a little nuts.While reprising the kicky, repetitive style that drove “Happy Death Day” in 2017 and, two years later, its less compelling sequel, the director Christopher Landon diverts us with visual gimmicks. Cell messages splay across the screen and inside a bathroom stall, and a shoal of brunette herrings swim through the movie. Apparently, almost every man in Chicago — including Violet’s date, her meter reader and a random encounter at the bar — sports brown hair and a beard. Just like her unidentified attacker in the film’s opening scene.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