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      ‘Last Resort’ Review: A Martial Arts Hostage Mission

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      In this action film set in Bangkok, a special forces guy goes in to rescue his wife and daughter.When first seen in this Bangkok-set action film, its hero, Michael, played by the martial-arts-conscious actor Jonathan Patrick Foo, seems a perfunctory sort of family man, to say the least. Parked on a sofa watching old Popeye cartoons, he all but sneers at his irritated wife, Kim, and whiny child, Anna, as they prepare to run errands. And he barely notices when Kim drops divorce papers in front of his face.So the biggest surprise in this woefully inept and threadbare picture is that when Michael discovers that Anna (Angelina Ismalone) and Kim (Julaluck Ismalone) are being held hostage at a locale actually called Saving Bank — nobody involved in this film will win any awards for inspired place-naming — he, instead of shrugging, instantly turns into a reasonably motivated killing machine. As it happens, he is on the couch because he’s one of those unspecified special forces guys, and his missions really take it out of him.Meanwhile, at Saving Bank, a team of what seems like dozens of black-masked mercenaries (to infer from the credits, they’re played by the same batch of guys in rotation) is trying to snatch a bio-weapon stashed in a safe deposit box. Their frantic leader is played by Clayton Norcross, who seems to be actively pursuing a multicount indictment for crimes against acting.The movie was written and directed by Jean-Marc Minéo, who is highly trained in martial arts. He could have stood some training in cinematic spatial relations. The Saving Bank occupies a single floor of what’s supposed to be a tall building (we never see it whole), and all the other floors are, conveniently enough, unoccupied raw space — the better for Foo to dutifully kick and shoot masked stuntmen. This endeavor might have tried the alternative title “Die Hard on a Budget,” except even that would have been hopelessly optimistic.Last ResortRated R for perfunctory kicking and shooting, and some language. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Old Way’ Review: Mild Mild West

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      Nicolas Cage phones it in as a deadly, taciturn gunslinger in this middling western.“The Old Way” is a cheap, run-of-the-mill western, which is an appealing quality. We don’t get a lot of westerns these days, and when we do, they tend to be serious and substantial, like “Wind River” or “The Power of the Dog.” In the 1930s and the 1940s, studios like RKO, Monogram and Republic were churning out dozens of low-budget westerns as B pictures annually, and though not all were great films, the cumulative impression was of a vibrant genre teeming with technical skill and creative brilliance. I can’t recommend “The Old Way” — so blandly written and listlessly directed — on the strength of its individual merits. At the same time, I wish we had 50 movies like it coming out every year.The director, Brett Donowho, previously directed “Acts of Violence” (2018), one of those dismal Bruce Willis shoot-em-ups that looks like the star strolled onto the set for an afternoon by accident. “The Old Way” has a similarly perfunctory feel, with Nicolas Cage sleepwalking through his role as the ruthless Montana cowboy Colton Briggs, roused from gunslinging retirement by a lackluster quest for revenge. Alongside his adolescent daughter Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), Briggs pursues a nondescript gang of black hats, led by the nefarious, speechifying James McCallister (Noah Le Gros).It’s a distinctly low-effort affair across the board, from the simplistic plotting (our heroes chase the bad guys, then find them) to Cage’s performance, absent any of the self-aware wit he demonstrated in last year’s “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” And while it’s true that a certain tepid aspect is common to most B westerns, those of the ’30s and ’40s were made with a baseline competence that “The Old Way” is woefully lacking.The Old WayRated R for some graphic violence, torture and strong language. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Candy Land’ Review: Truck-Stop Thrills

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      In this sleazy slasher by the writer and director John Swab, a group of sex workers adopts a former member of a religious cult.In “Candy Land,” a group of truck-stop sex workers, or “lot lizards,” assembles daily by a gas-station bench, scarfing down Twinkies and Coca-Cola between sexual romps in the back seat or the bathroom stall. It’s not glamorous, but there is a certain allure to their world and its trailer-park chic, sustained by the patchwork heart of their found family. Girlfriends Sadie (Sam Quartin) and Liv (Virginia Rand), Riley (Eden Brolin), Levi (Owen Campbell), and Nora (Guinevere Turner), their madam of sorts, all live in a motel, but together they make it feel like home.The work is dangerous — at one point, Levi, the only male member of the crew, bludgeons a client to death in self-defense. But things soon get a little weirder: The bloodied body of a john turns up in the bathroom, his hands crossed over his chest in some kind of holy gesture; then Remy (Olivia Luccardi), a snaggletoothed virgin and a former member of a religious cult, appears at the bench, a bit too willing to be taken under the group’s wing.It’s a textbook setup for a sleazy slasher. Written and directed by John Swab, “Candy Land” is standard grindhouse fare — more serious and less conceptually adventurous than its recent counterparts, Ti West’s “X” and “Pearl” — though not without its fair share of pleasurable nastiness. Like West’s porn-meets-evangelicalism double feature, “Candy Land” mines its thrills from the intersection of sex, repression and brainwashing.It also pivots around the charms of its leading lady.Luccardi, a genre regular, has the twinkling eyes of a lunatic. Last year, in the indie horror film “Soft & Quiet,” she played the new girl in a club of white supremacists who reveals herself to be the most unhinged among them; as Remy, she gradually shows her cards in a similarly disturbing manner. She’s a scream queen in the making, and “Candy Land” is her liveliest showcase yet.Candy LandNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 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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      ‘Alcarràs’ Review: Labor of Love

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      In this naturalistic drama from Spain, a family confronts the impending loss of its generations-old farm.Inside a car at the edge of a peach orchard, three children shoot finger-pistols at imagined aliens, when a crane rumbles into view, interrupting their extraterrestrial fantasies with earthly terrors. In “Alcarràs,” the second feature from the Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón, a Catalan family’s loss of their farm is an upheaval of cosmic proportions.As the film opens, the Solé clan realizes that the neighborly handshake that sealed their ownership of the land decades ago no longer holds water; the current landowner plans to raze their trees and build a solar farm. As the family undertakes its final harvest, the middle-aged man of the house, Quimet (Jordi Pujol Dolcet), spirals into a manic frenzy and quarrels with his brother-in-law, who decides to take the landowner’s offer of a job. Tiffs break out between Quimet and his sisters, while his kids — including the tall, industrious Roger (Albert Bosch), and the teenage Mariona (Xènia Roset) — embark on their own small rebellions.Simón and her cast of nonprofessional actors achieve a luminous naturalism. Scenes rush and flow into each other, and subplots emerge and fade like ripples in a pond, as the focus floats languidly from one character to the other. The film is a flurry of chatter and labor — picking, digging, lifting, hunting — that drives home the centrality of the farm to the family’s sense of time and togetherness.If “Alcarràs” feels as delicate as a summer afternoon, it can also feel as slight: Simón only occasionally zooms out of the Solés’ tight-knit world to show us the political stakes of their predicament. Yet the film’s striking images — a girl’s made-up face, sullen amid a crowd of colorful revelers; solar panels gleaming sinisterly below a full moon — leave an indelible trail.AlcarràsNot rated. In Catalan, Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Mars One’ Review: Hope on the Horizon

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      This film from Gabriel Martins follows the dreams of a Black Brazilian family living on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte.The Brazilian director Gabriel Martins shot his tender-eyed family drama “Mars One” in 2018, shortly after the election of Jair Bolsonaro. Martins intended to hold up the billion-dollar space colonization project as a symbol of hope. Since then, it’s gone bankrupt, and the disillusionment only deepens this film about the struggle to feel satisfied on earth.Deivinho (Cícero Lucas), a working class kid on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, yearns to join the Mars One mission. His father, Wellington (Carlos Francisco), a maintenance worker, is all-in on a more lucrative plan to turn his shrimpy son into a soccer star. Deivinho’s sister, Eunice (Camilla Damião), hopes to afford an apartment with her girlfriend (Ana Hilário), while his mother, Tércia (Rejane Faria), a housekeeper, just wants a good night’s sleep after a bomb threat prank that her loved ones wave off as a joke. Though the family members are supportive of each other, the cinematographer Leonardo Feliciano prefers to shoot them in isolation, often from behind as they gaze out at the horizon. (They spend more time staring at the city than the stars.)Dreams are incubators for dissatisfaction, Martins seems to sigh. He’s not above leaning on cloying music and groaner contrivances to milk empathy. We predict before the characters catch on that Deivinho’s club tryouts will happen on the same day as a Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture. Yet, the film’s emotions are otherwise scrupulously fair — the dad might be blinkered, but he clearly loves his boy.While Bolsonaro’s victory celebration opens the film, these parents would call themselves contentedly apolitical. Never once do they express jealousy toward their wealthy clients, who include the soccer player Juan Pablo Sorín as himself. Instead, the audience takes up the burden of wanting more for these good people then they’re willing to imagine.Mars OneNot rated. In Portuguese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!’ Review: A Blunt Philosophy

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      The writer Mark Manson is an onscreen guide in this visualization of his self-help book.In this docu-illustration of his popular self-help book, the author Mark Manson, as an onscreen guide, shares his philosophy of fulfillment. The ethos has a lot of parts, but much of it boils down to the idea that life is full of disappointments and that people can get better about accepting them. You have the power to choose how many hoots you give.That might sound like patronizing advice, but Manson delivers it in reassuring, Dude-like koans (he calls for a simple cultural acknowledgment that “most of us suck at most of the things we do — and that’s fine”) that make it go down easy.The director Nathan Price grasps at various ways to visualize Manson’s concepts. We see re-enactments of incidents and friendships that shaped the writer’s life; an animated, graphic novel-style version of the story of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who refused to believe that World War II had ended; and cameraphone videos of people lashing out. The last might be a slightly inapt choice, given that it comes sometime after Manson’s feelings on the negative effects of the “human highlight reel of social media.”Manson reveals his epiphanies without ever quite divulging the source of his expertise or filling out his career arc — there’s a bit of a gap between professing to have had only one real job and becoming a best-selling author. (Manson subsequently co-wrote Will Smith’s 2021 memoir.) But if “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!” helps people, its deficiencies as a movie don’t matter much.The Subtle Art of Not Giving a #@%!Rated R. It’s already pushing things with that title. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Wounded Man’: Dark Night, Lost Soul

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      In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s violent gay awakening, this 1983 film is among Patrice Chéreau’s most confrontational works.The radical director Patrice Chéreau was a triple-threat who earned praise and courted controversy with his risk-taking plays, operas and films. In its unflinching depiction of a French teenager’s gay awakening, “The Wounded Man” is among his most confrontational works.The film, which premiered in Cannes in 1983 and was released in the United States two years later, has a mainly underground reputation (unmentioned in Chéreau’s 2013 New York Times obituary) and so its current revival at Anthology Film Archives is something of an event.Set in a drab provincial city in France that, by the movie’s end, resembles a vast public loo, “The Wounded Man” signals its vanguard ambitions at the onset. The first head-on shot of a worn hausfrau packing a suitcase might have been lifted from “Jeanne Dielman”; a blast from avant-garde jazz artist Albert Ayler’s sax heralds Henri (Jean-Hugues Anglade) and his family racing for a bus to the train station from which his younger sister will leave for her student vacation.Leaving his family in the waiting room, Henri begins furtively cruising in the crowded terminal without exactly being sure of just what it is that he wants. His characteristic move is to stare, recoil, run and return. Dashing about like a mouse in a maze, he attracts the attention of Bosmans, a well-dressed, middle-aged masochist (Roland Bertin) who may be a doctor, and Jean, a charismatic roughneck (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) who gratifies Bosmans by beating him up in a toilet stall and seemingly pimps for the station’s abundant young hustlers.Bosmans and Henri are both obsessed with Jean, although Bosmans has a yen for Henri as well. Given the rough and tumble — physical as well as psychic — they absorb, any one of them could be the title character. All three are ruled by impulse but only Bosmans is the slightest bit introspective: “There are things you have to do to regret them later on,” he explains. Jean sets up Henri as bait in one appalling scene. He also brings him home to his long-suffering girlfriend (Lisa Kreuzer) after which Henri pilfers Jean’s outfit and begins living in the station.According to a profile of Chéreau published in The New York Times before the movie’s American release, “The Wounded Man” was inspired by Jean Genet’s quasi-autobiographical book “The Thief’s Journal.” Its obsessive characters, abrupt transitions, abstract narrative and hyper-naturalistic attention to detail also recall the French nouvelle romans of Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet.The movie is both stylized and visceral. “The Wounded Man” has nearly as much nudity (all of it male) and graphic sex as “Intimacy,” Chéreau’s “kitchen sink” riff on the anonymous coupling of “Last Tango in Paris.” Still, the careful framing of frenzied activity gives the movie a measure of detachment. (Janet Maslin’s Times review found it “solemn to a fault” and consequently “laced with a certain amount of inadvertent comedy.”)Appearing a couple of years into the AIDS epidemic, “The Wounded Man” was criticized both for its violence and its tormented vision of gay love. Henri’s approach-avoidance ballet inevitably climaxes in a dance of death. Chéreau’s willingness to plumb that abyss mirrors that of his protagonist.The Wounded ManJan. 5-12, Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan; anthologyfilmarchives.org. More

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      Will These Be the 10 Best Picture Oscar Nominees?

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      Now that critics’ laurels and box office results are in, the race for the top honor is clearer. But there’s still room for an outside contender to slip in.Earlier this week, I got a text from a harried colleague. “I’m not ready for Oscar season,” she wrote.I blinked for a second before responding. Ready? This season has been going for months!Of course, I took her point: January ramps things up considerably, since we’re about to get televised awards shows (the Golden Globes on Tuesday followed by the Critics Choice Awards the following Sunday), nominations from the acting, directing and producing guilds, and then the all-important Oscar nominations, which will be announced Jan. 24.But we can already make an educated guess about the titles we’ll hear that day, since your Projectionist has spent the last few months weighing valuable factors like voter buzz, box office battles, laurels from critics groups, below-the-line Oscar shortlists, and influential citations like the Gothams and the American Film Institute Awards. With all that in mind, I’ve arrived at a list of 10 movies that I think currently have the greatest shot at making the best picture lineup.Still, this is an unusual year when even the strongest movies come with significant debits, which means there’s still room for big-budget entertainments (like “Babylon,” “Nope,” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”), foreign-language films (including “RRR,” “Decision to Leave” and “All Quiet on the Western Front”), and indie films with strong performances (like “The Whale,” “Till,” “She Said” and “Aftersun”) to pull through. At this time last year, “CODA” looked like a middle-of-the-road contender, but a few consequential weeks later, it won enough hearts to clinch the best picture Oscar.So consider these 10 films to merely be the starting lineup, ranked in descending order according to their certainty.Steven Spielberg Gets Personal in ‘The Fabelmans’The director’s latest movie, starring Michelle Williams, focuses on Sammy Fabelman, a budding filmmaker who is a lot like Spielberg himself.Review: “The Fabelmans” is “wonderful in both large and small ways, even if Spielberg can’t help but soften the rougher, potentially lacerating edges,” our critic writes.Michelle Williams: With her portrayal of Mitzi, Sammy’s mother, the actress moves from minor-key naturalism to more stylized performances.Judd Hirsch: The actor has been singled out for his rousing performance in the film. It’s the latest chapter in a career full of anecdotes.Making ‘The Fabelmans’: In working on this semi-autobiographical movie, Spielberg confronted painful family secrets and what it means to be Jewish in America today.‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Allyson Riggs/A24After making a film with sci-fi trappings and outlandish dildo fight scenes, the directors of “Everything Everywhere” never expected it to become an awards-season sensation. Still, if you look under the hood, this movie has everything Oscar voters typically spark to: It’s a critically acclaimed box office hit with a veteran star in a showcase role (Michelle Yeoh), a wildly rootable actor making his long-awaited comeback (Ke Huy Quan), and an original, inventive story that concludes with a series of heartwarming scenes. The only downside (and it could prove to be a potent one) is that many older voters just can’t get past the aforementioned sci-fi trappings and dildo fight scenes, and the film’s appeal is therefore lost on them. Will the passion of the academy’s younger and hipper voters be enough to make up that shortfall and push “Everything Everywhere” to the top?‘The Fabelmans’Though we may think of Steven Spielberg as an Oscar staple, it’s been more than two decades since he won his last statuette, for “Saving Private Ryan” (1998). If voters consider the most successful director of all time to be overdue for another little gold man, they might think it fitting to reward him for “The Fabelmans,” the most personal project he’s ever made. This semi-autobiographical family drama was hobbled by headlines about its meager box office take, but it’s hardly the only prestige drama to struggle in theaters this year. And once the nominations are sorted, the film should fare very well on the preferential ballot for best picture, which favors consensus crowd-pleasers.‘The Banshees of Inisherin’Could nearly half of the 20 acting nominations be sewn up by just two movies? If “Everything Everywhere” overperforms, Yeoh, Quan, and supporting actresses Stephanie Hsu and Jamie Lee Curtis could all be nominated. Ditto Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which I think has an even better shot at earning nominations for all four of its principal actors: leading man Colin Farrell and his supporting co-stars Brendan Gleeson, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon. (Sadly, Jenny the donkey was not eligible last time I checked.) And though McDonagh failed to make it into the best director lineup for his last film, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” the stunningly photographed vistas of “Inisherin” ought to put him over the top this time.‘Tár’Don’t be fooled by the recent best picture wins for simple-pleasure dramedies like “CODA” and “Green Book”: There is still a significant bloc of highbrow voters within the academy, and I suspect “Tár” will serve as their standard-bearer. Todd Field’s ruthlessly contemporary drama about a disgraced conductor has already entranced critics: The New York Film Critics Circle and Los Angeles Film Critics Association both awarded Cate Blanchett’s lead performance and voted “Tár” the best film of the year (though the West Coast group split the difference on the latter, claiming a tie between “Tár” and “Everything Everywhere”). Field made the best picture lineup back in 2002 for his first film, “In the Bedroom,” and voters will be pleased to see that their early bet on him has more than paid off.‘Avatar: The Way of Water’From left, Tsireya (Bailey Bass), Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña), Neteyam (Jamie Flatters), Lo’ak (Britain Dalton) and Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) in “Avatar: The Way of Water.”20th Century StudiosJames Cameron’s first “Avatar” was presumed to be the runner-up in 2010’s best picture race, which ultimately crowned his ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow’s military drama “The Hurt Locker.” Can “The Way of Water” succeed where the first film failed? I don’t think it’s got much of a chance at actually winning best picture, since Cameron has often said that the franchise is mapped out over five movies, and voters will probably wait until the far-off denouement to decide the ultimate worth of the series, as they did with the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Still, a long list of nominations is all but certain, since the movie is both a blockbuster triumph and a dazzling auteurist work that only Cameron could have pulled off.‘Elvis’It’s been 21 years since director Baz Luhrmann scored an Oscar breakthrough with the musical “Moulin Rouge” — which was nominated for eight Oscars and won two — and I expect he’ll be welcomed back in a big way for this glittery biopic of the iconic singer, played by surefire best actor nominee Austin Butler. One of the year’s only adult dramas to succeed in theaters, “Elvis” plays as though “Bohemian Rhapsody” were executed with actual panache, and Luhrmann’s maximalist aesthetic could even push him into the best director lineup, since that branch goes gaga for technical audacity.‘Top Gun: Maverick’If a well-reviewed action sequel becomes the biggest movie of the year and helps bolster struggling theaters, shouldn’t that be enough to cram it into the best picture race? Well, that argument didn’t get “Spider-Man: No Way Home” into last year’s lineup, but domestic box office champ “Top Gun: Maverick” is already off to a better start, picking up best film nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards that eluded Marvel’s web-slinger. But is this Tom Cruise star vehicle actually about something, or is it just a high-flying entertainment? Oscar voters tend to turn their nose up at action sequels — the only one nominated for best picture in the last 15 years was George Miller’s astonishing “Mad Max: Fury Road” — and the next phase of this awards campaign will have to convince them that there’s more to “Top Gun: Maverick” than meets the eye.‘Triangle of Sadness’After “Parasite” won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival nearly four years ago, the upstart film studio Neon successfully leveraged the movie’s international appeal and turned it into an awards-season darling. Can the studio pull off the same feat for Ruben Ostlund’s social satire “Triangle of Sadness,” which also took the Palme and similarly mines class warfare for big laughs and shocking set pieces? It helps that this cruise-ship comedy has a secret weapon in supporting-actress contender Dolly de Leon, who plays a maid-turned-despot: At a time when most contenders are still wary of ascribing too much weight to the controversial Golden Globes, the Filipina actress has drawn headlines for discussing how much the Globe nomination means to her, and many Oscar voters will be eager to extend her awards-season moment.‘Women Talking’Judith Ivey, left, and Claire Foy in “Women Talking.” Michael Gibson/Orion PicturesAfter a big fall-festival launch, Sarah Polley’s well-reviewed Mennonite drama may have waited a little too long to come out in theaters: It was swallowed in limited release over the Christmas weekend, and will have a rough go expanding into new locations until the Oscar nominations are announced. Still, Polley is a respected actress-turned-director, the ensemble is filled with awards-friendly ringers like Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, and the film’s bracing conversations about gender and sexual assault make a strong case for its relevance.‘The Woman King’Gina Prince-Bythewood’s well-mounted action epic about female warriors in 19th-century Africa has an Oscar-winning star in Viola Davis and a lot of handsome tech elements, though I’m concerned that it didn’t manage to make the Oscar shortlists for its superlative costume design and hair and makeup. (At least Terence Blanchard’s thundering score made the cut in its category.) Next week’s Producers Guild nominations could foretell the film’s ultimate fate, since that group likes to recognize rousing theatrical successes and “The Woman King,” which earned a worldwide gross nearly double its $50 million budget, will almost certainly show up there if it’s got the mettle to impress awards voters. More