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      ‘Let It Be Morning’ Review: After the Wedding, the Siege

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      A Palestinian citizen of Israel returns to his hometown and encounters problems in this film from Eran Kolirin.Opening titles situate “Let It Be Morning” “in a place not far from here a short while before peace breaks out.” The outlook for that tongue-in-cheek prediction only seems bleaker after the movie, set in an Arab village in Israel at the doorstep of — but not in — the West Bank.Sami (Alex Bakri), a Palestinian citizen of Israel, has returned to the village, his hometown, for his brother’s wedding. The evening is an annoyance for Sami, who works in software development in Jerusalem and looks down on family and friends who have stayed. But when he and his wife (Juna Suleiman) and son (Maruan Hamdan) try to leave that night, they encounter a blockade. The Israeli military has cut off the village, for reasons that officials never clarify.Adapting a Hebrew-language novel by the Palestinian author Sayed Kashua, the screenwriter-director Eran Kolirin uses the escalating absurdity and anger to illuminate social divisions. With the cellphone signal down in the village, Sami tries to make pals with an Israeli soldier whose brother he turns out to have known in school. Some villagers think they can end the siege by handing over workers who have come from the West Bank — a move Sami’s father sees as a betrayal. A cabdriver (Ehab Elias Salami) wants to organize a protest, but in Sami’s words, the locals can’t even pull together two people for backgammon.Despite flashes of droll humor, the film builds up an undercurrent of suspense, with the prospect of violence always near. Kolirin (the movie version of “The Band’s Visit”) orchestrates the proceedings with confidence and significant subtlety, never letting political diagnoses overwhelm character.Let It Be MorningNot rated. In Arabic and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Baby Ruby’ Review: Enfant Terrible

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      This psychological horror movie stars Noémie Merlant as a new mother experiencing delusions and paranoia.As moody and messy as its eponym, “Baby Ruby” aspires to demonstrate how postpartum psychosis can feel like a horror movie. It just fails to make the condition feel like a particularly convincing or cohesive horror movie.The film begins with Jo (Noémie Merlant), a successful blogger, throwing her own baby shower at the chic upstate cabin she shares with her husband, Spencer (Kit Harington). Jo makes it plain that she intends to be a modern mommy who has it all: the affectionate marriage, the elegant home, the prosperous career and the angelic baby.In the weeks after she delivers Ruby, however, Jo experiences an onset of delusions and paranoia. Ruby is a colicky baby, and as Jo strives to summon up soothing techniques, she seesaws between the compulsive urge to safeguard the infant and the uncomfortable sensation of begrudging her existence.It was once considered taboo to even suggest that new motherhood was not all sunshine onesies and rainbow mobiles, and “Baby Ruby” arrives on a welcome wave of contemporary movies exploring how the joys of child rearing can commingle with misery.Yet the film, directed by Bess Wohl, often defaults to telling us about these emotional states rather than showing them. We learn that Jo is a control freak only through quarrels with Spencer’s overbearing mother (Jayne Atkinson) and chit chats with her new pal (Meredith Hagner, a riot offering respite from the gloom). Retro visual flair, such as repeat cuts and mirror effects, add some aesthetic interest to Jo’s spiraling. But “Baby Ruby” hardly whimpers, let alone screams.Baby RubyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Knock at the Cabin’ Review: Who’s There? The Apocalypse.

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      In M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thought experiment, Dave Bautista brings the end of the world to a peaceful country cottage.A little girl, out collecting grasshoppers in the forest, meets someone who might be described — if this were a picture book — as a friendly giant. His huge arms are covered in tattoos, and his demeanor walks a fine line between gentle and fearsome.His name is Leonard, and his new acquaintance, just about to turn 8, is called Wen. Since this is a movie by M. Night Shyamalan — and a pretty good one, all things considered — a sinister vibe creeps in around the edges of their first encounter. The colors are uncannily bright, the close-up shots unnervingly angled (Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer are responsible for the 35-millimeter cinematography). The music (by Herdis Stefansdottir) hums with menace. Something scary is about to happen.What happens is a version of what former philosophy students and debate-happy internet smarties will recognize as the Trolley Problem, a chestnut of hypothetical ethical disputation. Would you, the classic version goes, run over one person with a trolley if doing so meant you could save five people on the other track? The variation that Leonard (Dave Bautista) proposes to Wen (Kristen Cui) and her family is at once grander and more intimate. Would you sacrifice yourself or someone you loved to prevent a global apocalypse?Think fast! But don’t, maybe, think too hard about the premise and the narrative scaffolding of this itchy, claustrophobic, metaphysical thriller, which Shyamalan adapted (with Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman) from a novel by Paul Tremblay. Leonard is accompanied by three other believers in his end-times scenario: Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint). Strangers until very recently, they received identical visions of flood, plague and darkness. They believe this cascade of catastrophes will come to pass unless Wen or one of her dads, Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), volunteers to die.Why them? Is it because Eric and Andrew are a gay couple, or because they happen to have rented an unlucky vacation property? Surely not the first thing: Sabrina insists on behalf of the group that “we don’t have a homophobic bone in our bodies.” Even if that doesn’t turn out to be true (Redmond has some ugliness in his back story), the real estate seems like a more plausible explanation. The movie is called “Knock at the Cabin” (the book is called “The Cabin at the End of the World”), and the house, with its remote location, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, dark wood paneling and deep cellar, looks like a perfect place to host a horror movie.Is “Knock at the Cabin” one of those? That’s another topic for debate. Shyamalan is sometimes classified as a horror auteur, but the genre label doesn’t always fit with his themes and methods. While this movie is suspenseful and (discreetly) bloody, it is more interested in thoughts and tender sentiments than in fright or shock.The story isn’t coiled around a clever, rug-pulling twist — a sometimes tiresome, sometimes bracing Shyamalan signature — so much as balanced on a series of simple binaries. Either Leonard and his pals are telling the truth or they’re out of their minds. Andrew and Eric will believe them or not. The film’s effectiveness depends on what occurs on the way to the answers, and in this respect Shyamalan’s wit and sincerity serve him and the audience well.Granting the preposterousness of the whole idea, he is genuinely nonetheless curious about what it would be like to have this kind of experience. Whether Leonard is the kindly schoolteacher and reluctant prophet he claims to be or the leader of a small and lethal doomsday cult, he tries to be sensitive to the predicament of his captives. The rules of the vision forbid him or his colleagues from performing the sacrifice themselves, so they engage Eric and Andrew in a lengthy, sometimes brutal seminar, with occasional news broadcasts to emphasize their argument.A handful of flashbacks of Andrew and Eric’s life as a couple — including their adoption of Wen — makes them seem like more than panicked, generic victims, while also opening up the occasionally stagy action. Aldridge and Groff do what they can to overcome the blandness of the characters, but the movie really belongs to Bautista and Cui, who provide the danger, charm, wit and grit that it needs to be even remotely credible.I wish it were more than that. There is a grandiosity here that’s hard to swallow, and a final swell of emotion that isn’t quite earned. For all its skill and cunning, “Knock at the Cabin” is an overwrought quasi-theological melodrama that also manages to be a half-baked thought experiment. It’s a thrill ride in a toy trolley.Knock at the CabinRated R. You see dead people. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Full Time’ Review: No Rest for the Working Girl

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      A breathlessly tense portrait of modern labor, this French drama stars Laure Calamy as a single mother who hits her breaking point during a nationwide strike.“Full Time,” the second feature by Éric Gravel, begins with a womblike moment of rest before pushing the pedal to the floor and launching us into the chaotic workweek of Julie (Laure Calamy), a single mother and the lead chambermaid of a 5-star hotel in Paris.Julie’s routine is demanding yet commonplace: She drops the kids at the nanny’s house, rushes to make the train, endures a lengthy shoulder-to-shoulder commute and settles into her shift tending to the whims of the hyper-wealthy. Then it’s back to the exurbs and the restless little ones, while the slivers of time she manages to carve out for herself are consumed by applying for a new job. Then repeat.The film is a portrait of modern labor that moves with the breathless tension of a Safdie brothers’ joint. But instead of gangsters and cocaine, it finds a flurried momentum in one ordinary woman’s everyday obligations, which threaten to break her when a nationwide strike throws her tenuous act off balance.Unpredictable public transport delays and cancellations get the worker bee in trouble with her snooty boss and septuagenarian nanny, while taxi rides that cost triple the rate of a regular ride drain her bank account. Her ex-husband hasn’t paid his alimony and hasn’t been answering his phone, and it’s their eldest child’s birthday this weekend. Improvisation is necessary, from hitchhiking to nudging the doorman for favors, but Julie — given anxious verve by the always-magnetic Calamy — isn’t a shameless hustler so much as she is acting sheepishly out of necessity.Julie isn’t in a position to throw off her uniform and hit the streets in protest, but the movement (and the inconveniences it causes) isn’t the problem — it’s a symptom. Worked to the bone because of her inability to find decent employment and child care, because her supervisor only values her insofar as she obeys like a robot, Julie is a veritable Everywoman, in thrall to a system that demands productivity at every turn. Such a life makes one brittle, but there are no breaks.Full TimeNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Locksmith’ Review: A Botched Job

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      Ryan Phillippe plays a lock picker trying to escape his past in this clunky, clichéd crime thriller.In the world of crime capers and thrillers, the “one last job” narrative framework has been used enough that it’s less of a trope than its very own genre — films of all stripes can play in the fun house, so long as they find a way to keep it fresh or winsome. Nicolas Harvard’s directorial debut “The Locksmith,” though, mostly takes stock characters and narrative turns and throws them into its basket, unable to fill the rest in with much color or nuance.The film’s only hope for a defining quality is an awkwardly forced one: the lock-picking abilities of its protagonist, Miller (Ryan Phillippe), serving as an avatar for the past he can’t outrun. After a break-in goes awry and leads to a corrupt cop killing his friend, Miller is framed for the murder and sent to prison for a decade. He comes out ready to make things right with his ex-girlfriend, Beth (Kate Bosworth) — who happens to work on the force alongside the corrupt cop — and his young daughter. But, soon enough, an old friend — naturally, the former lover of Miller’s dead comrade — pulls him into one more scheme that only entangles him in a larger web of crime.Most of the movie is told with big, rudimentary handwriting and slathered in clichés. Its actors, including Ving Rhames — typecast as a gruff mentor but nevertheless an easy comfort — and a nostalgic pair of early-aughts stars in Phillippe and Bosworth, can’t do much with what they’ve been given. Bosworth is perhaps the only one who finds room for some subtlety in what amounts to a stilted, botched job.The LocksmithNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Love in the Time of Fentanyl’ Review: Heartbreak, Death and Hope in Vancouver

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      To combat the overdose crisis, a group that includes former and current users open a safe consumption site where shooting up does not have to mean death.In 2016, in response to record high overdose deaths in Vancouver, a group of artists, activists, and current and former drug users in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood came together to form the Overdose Prevention Society, a renegade safe consumption site where drug users could safely consume drugs. The O.P.S. staff tests the drugs for fentanyl, provides clean needles and has Narcan on hand in case of an overdose. “Love in the Time of Fentanyl,” directed by Colin Askey, tenderly documents this community’s lifesaving efforts.The film follows Ronnie, a frontline worker struggling with burnout; Sarah, an activist who opened the site and works to raise awareness about the crisis; Trey, a graffiti artist who memorializes lost community members on the center’s surrounding walls; Norma, an Indigenous elder and former drug user who cooks meals for the staff; and Dana, who is struggling with active addiction while working at the center.Despite the harrowing overdose scenes, Askey manages to infuse “Love in the Time of Fentanyl” with scenes of joy, creativity and friendship — whether it’s staff members dancing after hours, a guitarist singing an original song about O.P.S. (“O.D., O.D., O.D., Overdose Prevention Society”) or drug users chatting as they prepare their injections. A veteran talks about the trauma he endured during deployment. Another man says that he began using drugs after his girlfriend was killed by a drunken driver. All speak plainly about the challenges of quitting and the dangers of stigmatization. Though at times the film’s narrative momentum and focus on its subjects is lacking, it shows that drug users, to whom the drug crisis is more than an abstract idea, are perhaps the most capable of creating solutions to the overdose epidemic.Love in the Time of FentanylNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters now and airing on PBS Independent Lens Feb. 13. More

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      ‘Body Parts’ Review: Even Sex Scenes Have Rules

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      The documentary features performers and filmmakers discussing onscreen nudity and sex, but offers little on the subject of sexual exploitation.Cinema’s first kiss was recorded in 1896, and the American film industry has been obsessed with desire and sex ever since. The documentary “Body Parts” is an attempt to account for cinema’s prurient interests. The documentarian Kristy Guevara-Flanagan interviews performers and filmmakers — including familiar faces like Jane Fonda and Karyn Kusama — on the topic of onscreen nudity and sex. Their stories of exploitation and negotiations are supported by archival clips from Hollywood movies of the present and past.The movie is strongest when it focuses on labor rules. Interview subjects explain the use of nudity riders, contractual documents that specify what acts an actor is willing to perform. Intimacy coordinators discuss their work as liaisons between actors and filmmakers, and the documentary shows them directing actors on how to touch appropriately. In these sequences, the film helpfully elucidates the practical side of filmmaking, and personal stories demonstrate how clear contractual practices can create a safer work environment.However, the movie is limited when it comes to deeper philosophical considerations, and its use of archival footage at times undermines comments from interview subjects. They describe the frustration of having intimate scenes posted online without context, on websites intended for pornography. But this documentary also includes decontextualized clips of nudity, with no onscreen reference to the process of informing the performers depicted. And pornographic performers are not interviewed about their work rules at all.It’s not that these omissions make the movie unethical, but their absence does suggest an intellectual laziness, a lack of precision or curiosity on the complex subject of sexual exploitation and how it relates to the work of making movies. Ironically, the film mirrors the callow cinematic dynamics it critiques: It titillates, even as it scolds.Body PartsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Amazing Maurice’ Review: A Cool Cat and His Band of Merry Rodents

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      Hugh Laurie voices a quippy, self-referential cat in this animated adaptation of a popular Terry Pratchett book.“You know, in many ways, I don’t think the plot of this adventure has been properly structured,” observes the droll Malicia Grim (voiced by Emilia Clarke) during a brief lull in the middle of “The Amazing Maurice.”An animated comedy based on Terry Pratchett’s semi-parodic children’s novel “The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents,” the film abounds with this style of flamboyant, self-congratulatory humor, as Malicia and the talking feline hero Maurice (voiced by Hugh Laurie) routinely break the fourth wall with satirical commentary and glib meta wisecracking.The effect is a kind of self-important distance, as if the director Toby Genkel and his co-creators considered the material beneath them. What should be a cute story about a mischievous orange tabby cat instead becomes an ironic, even vaguely smug movie in the vein of something like “Deadpool.”The foundation of the story derives from the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin — in particular the version made famous by the Brothers Grimm: Maurice and his band of friendly, intelligent rats (among them the voices of David Tennant and Gemma Arterton) travel from town to town feigning an infestation, then providing the helpful services of an ersatz pied piper, Keith (Himesh Patel), to clear it up.The modern, coolly sarcastic big-kid riff on a familiar fairy tale has been done before, most notably in “Shrek.” And while it might still have seemed somewhat fresh when Pratchett’s book was first published, in 2001, it now feels like a poor imitation — doubly so when one considers that the script for “The Amazing Maurice” was penned by the “Shrek” screenwriter Terry Rossio, who, with his constant gags about fairy tale clichés, does little to elevate the copy above the original.The Amazing MauriceRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More