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      ‘Klondike’ Review: Domestic Violence

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      In a film set in 2014, a couple in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine try to maintain normality as war rocks their home.“Klondike” takes place nine years ago and had its premiere one month before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but its relevance hasn’t dimmed. It is set in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine in July 2014, when an antiaircraft missile downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, killing the 298 people on board. Russian-backed separatists were widely presumed to be responsible. Last year, a Dutch court handed down three convictions in the case.That crash occurs about 20 minutes into “Klondike,” and it’s actually the second major act of violence in the film. In the opening shot, Tolik (Serhii Shadrin) tries to convince his pregnant wife, Irka (Oksana Cherkashyna), that she needs to get away to “where there is no war.” The moment he says that, a blast rocks their home, destroying a side of the house. The dwelling will remain open to the elements while Irka and Tolik continue to live there, despite the hostilities outside.Irka is staunchly anti-separatist and refuses to acquiesce or leave. Tolik, while not expressly pro-separatist, favors the path of least resistance; he even slaughters a cow Irka likes to feed the men controlling the area. The director, Maryna Er Gorbach, portrays the nearby plane crash obliquely: The wreckage is seen piecemeal — on the news, as a distant smoke plume, as detached wings and, most horrifyingly, as a corpse still in a plane seat that lands on the couple’s property.“Klondike” underlines the cognitive dissonance of wishing that context away. The director favors absurdist tableaus (Irka watches soccer on TV while the gaping hole in the house looms in the background), placid camera moves counterpointed by brutality and shots held so long that it almost seems as if the filmmaker is the one being cruel. It’s a grimly effective strategy for a harsh but powerful movie.KlondikeNot rated. In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen and Dutch, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Air Bud: World Pup’ Keeps Winning Fans for the 1999 World Cup Stars

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      The 2000 movie used the franchise’s furry hero along with members of the actual U.S. women’s team to reimagine the penalty shootout that led to the win.In 1999, the United States women’s national team won its second World Cup title and ushered in a new era of women’s soccer, currently on display in the Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.What made the 1999 final a cultural hit came down to a confluence of factors: The tournament was played on home soil in the United States, the team was talented and the games were staged at major arenas and widely broadcast. When the United States beat China in a penalty shootout at the Rose Bowl, 40 million people tuned in to watch.Brandi Chastain celebrating the World Cup win in 1999. She helped recreate the moment for “Air Bud: World Pup.”Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressThe images of that triumphant World Cup run are now synonymous with women’s soccer: Brandi Chastain celebrating in a sports bra, Briana Scurry in her all-navy goalkeeper’s uniform, a baby-faced Mia Hamm and … a golden retriever?In 2000, the year after the women’s historic win, the Air Bud film franchise — in which an athletically gifted dog saves various sports teams — turned its focus to soccer. Air Bud did as Air Bud does, saving a children’s soccer team and scoring the winning goal.But the final six minutes or so of “Air Bud: World Pup,” a straight-to-video effort now available on most major platforms, feature something different: a re-creation, or reimagining, of that 1999 World Cup win, complete with its famous players. Except this time, they face Norway. And this time, they have Air Bud, who comes to Scurry’s rescue and takes over in goal after Scurry injures her shoulder saving a penalty. Naturally, heroism ensues.“When the women won the World Cup, they were such a force,” said Robert Vince, an executive producer of the Air Bud franchise. “They didn’t just win it, they dominated it. They became an obvious choice for us. We also felt that there was a real opportunity to elevate the game for girls as well. It was just such a moment.”That moment thrust the stars of the 1999 team onto the national and even international stage. Chastain earned the nickname “Hollywood” because of her comfort in front of the camera and her willingness to promote the sport. She said in a recent interview that she and her teammates were flooded with requests for commercials and other collaborations. But then she, Scurry and fellow “99er” Tisha Venturini were invited to Vancouver to film a movie about a dog saving soccer.“I’m a sucker for dogs anyway,” Chastain said, noting that she was a fan of Air Bud before the offer came in. “But I thought that women’s soccer being a part of something like that is reaching out to more of the population that maybe wouldn’t have access or wouldn’t particularly come to women’s soccer.”Chastain said that recreating a World Cup-like environment was no small feat. She and her teammates weren’t actors, but had to tap into their feelings at the Rose Bowl in 1999 and “re-enact something that was so genuine and so in the moment.”They filmed their six-minute sequence over three eight-hour days, Scurry said, and most of the crowd was C.G.I. Buddy, the star, of course wasn’t, but, Scurry revealed, “there are like six dogs.”Scurry explained that each Buddy had different skills: some were calmer; some were better at jumping in the air and heading the ball; and some just wouldn’t be in the mood. But Scurry emphasized that she had long treated Air Bud like Santa Claus: “I never tell kids about the six Buddies,” she said solemnly.As a male, how did Buddy compete for the women’s national team? “Good question,” Chastain said. “Gosh, I don’t know.”For years, befuddled fans have raised this question on social media. After being told about it, Scurry burst out laughing. “I was not aware of this conspiracy. That never crossed my mind.”Vince, however, has a diplomatic answer: “I don’t think it was a gender-specific thing, I think it was just that he was a dog,” Vince said. “Little kids don’t really think of their pet or their dog as a gender.”There have been five Air Bud movies followed by nine Air Buddies films. (Air Bud is a proud father.) But Vince said that his company’s research showed that women remember “Air Bud: World Pup” more than any other installment.“Millennials, who are themselves having children, are the generation of Air Bud,” Vince said. “What movies do is they reflect the time that they were made, but also what is old becomes new again, because it gets rediscovered by new generations.”For Scurry, “Air Bud: World Pup” is a way for her to introduce herself to an entire generation of fans who didn’t see the 1999 World Cup. She said children still ask for her autograph — as the goalkeeper from “Air Bud.”“These kids would know the players that have now taken the reins from us, that were in the crowd watching us play in 1999, but they wouldn’t have known the history of the 99ers or where that came from,” Scurry said. “That movie did a lot for the legacy of the 99ers for the younger generation.” More

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      ‘Charm Circle’ Review: Welcome to Queens

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      In this tender and funny documentary, Nira Burstein films her parents in their house in Queens without making excuses about their unsettled lives.Not many documentaries about families are truly able to get into the unkempt reality of home life, without tidy explanations and dramatic beats. In the touching and funny “Charm Circle,” Nira Burstein films her parents in their shambolic house in Queens with a persistent, loving curiosity about their relationship with each other and with their three adult daughters.Burstein lets us see her parents, Raya and Uri, for the people they are, rather than simply diagnosing their situation, which is only part of their story. Each of them faces psychiatric issues, as does their daughter Judy, who is developmentally disabled. Financial troubles also loom. But with a skill that’s easy to take for granted, the filmmaker portrays the matter-of-fact eccentricities of their personalities and their love, anger, and confusion — the emotional weather system of it all.Raya gazes at the hilariously quotable Uri with adoration, but can’t stand his temper. Uri was a real estate agent until a “nervous breakdown,” he says; Raya’s psychiatric challenges led her to be hospitalized. Home videos show how some habits and disputes have persisted for years. One daughter, Adina, fled to live on the West Coast, and is planning to marry two women, which Uri finds at odds with Jewish law.Uri and Raya (who have disarmingly direct affects) show a mix of insight and innocence that also feels like a faithful rendering of the vulnerability within a relationship. The nickname for their residence, “The Glass House,” recalls the famously troubled family of J.D. Salinger’s stories — an apt echo for this film’s rumpled intimacy.Charm CircleNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch on the Criterion Channel. More

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      ‘A Compassionate Spy’ Review: Back to the U.S.S.R.

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      The scientist and spy Theodore Hall is profiled in this warm, low-key documentary.The subject of the absorbing documentary “A Compassionate Spy” might be the brilliant atomic physicist Theodore Alvin Hall, but its star is his nonagenarian widow, Joan. Funny, candid and eager to share, this delightful woman — and her unwavering support for her husband’s espionage during World War II — sets the tone for a film that leaves no doubt as to the location of its sympathies.These will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the work of the film’s writer and director, Steve James, whose empathy for his subjects has always been evident. And by placing Hall’s leaking of nuclear secrets to the Soviets within the context of the couple’s romantic and robust marriage, James gently wraps the viewer in the warmth of Joan’s memories. The effect is sneakily disarming.“I felt so proud of him,” she confesses to James during one of several interviews. “Ted was trying to prevent a holocaust.” Recruited by the Manhattan Project in 1944 at the age of 18, Hall was the youngest scientist working on the development of an atomic bomb and eager to win a race against the Nazis. Later, fearing the consequences of a single country’s monopoly on such a terrible weapon, he decided (with the help and encouragement of his best friend, the poet Saville Sax) to pass classified nuclear details to the Soviet Union. Despite being subjected to F.B.I. interrogations and decades of surveillance, Hall was never prosecuted, his spying concealed from the public until a few years before his death in 1999.Ensconced in her cozy home outside Cambridge, England, Joan (who died last month) is an entertaining booster of her husband’s legacy. Recalling her close postwar friendship with Hall and Sax at the University of Chicago (in nostalgic re-enactments, we see the threesome gamboling on the grass like well-fed puppies), she cheekily hints at a youthful love triangle and reveals that Hall confessed his spying before their marriage. She was unfazed.Hall’s own feelings about the espionage — expressed in clips from various interviews, including the 1998 docuseries “Cold War” and excerpts from a VHS tape belonging to Joan — would grow more nuanced. (The film’s title comes from his citing of compassion as a “major factor” in his decision to leak.) Strangely, he admits no fear for his own safety, and even had to be dissuaded from trying to prevent the 1953 executions of the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.Noting America’s political about-face from pro-Russian propaganda (like Michael Curtiz’s 1943 movie “Mission to Moscow”) to Red-scare paranoia, James keeps his camera calm and the talking heads to a minimum. The dramatizations are nicely filmed, if a little hokey, and the overall velvety tone is peppered with piquant details, like Hall communicating with the Russians in a code derived from Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”Wry, shy and fragile-looking, Hall gets off lightly here, with little interrogation of his patriotism, personal ethics or fears of a nuclear world’s potential for catastrophic error. (He candidly describes working on the bomb as “exhilarating.”) The general impression given by this warm, low-key film is that the spying was a simple act of pacifism. Countervailing voices are faint and few; anyone seeking more vigorous pushback will have to look elsewhere.A Compassionate SpyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Notebook’ Musical to Land on Broadway in the Spring

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      The adaptation of the popular Nicholas Sparks romance novel, with music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, had a well-reviewed run last year in Chicago.“The Notebook,” Nicholas Sparks’s best-selling 1996 novel about a star-crossed couple’s lifelong romance, which was adapted into a 2004 film starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, will soon arrive in New York in another form: a Broadway musical.The production had a well-reviewed world premiere at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater last fall. Steven Oxman of The Chicago Sun-Times wrote that it represented “a significant leap in artistic quality over its sources, which it respects, while also providing a clear, resonant and unique voice of its own.” He had particular praise for the “poetic” songs, by the indie singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson, and the “impressive” onstage rainstorm.Previews are scheduled to begin Feb. 6, and the opening is set for March 14 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, most recently home to “Life of Pi.”The story of the couple, Noah and Allie, is relayed in flashbacks that come to life as the older Noah reads from a notebook detailing their love story to the older Allie, who has dementia. (In a change from the book and the film, the story now begins in the 1960s instead of the 1940s.)In the Chicago production, Allie and Noah were each played by three different actors, who embodied them at various ages. The younger and older versions of the characters often share the stage, with the older couple watching as scenes from their past unfold. (Jordan Tyson and John Cardoza played the teenage Allie and Noah; Joy Woods and Ryan Vasquez depicted them in their late 20s; and Maryann Plunkett and John Beasley played the older versions.)Casting for Broadway has not yet been announced, but one casting change is certain: Beasley, who played the older incarnation of Noah, died in May at 79.The Chicago creative team will return for the Broadway run: Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen,” “Rent”) and Schele Williams (“Aida,” “The Wiz”) will direct, with choreography by Katie Spelman (associate choreographer of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”). Bekah Brunstetter (“This Is Us”) wrote the book, with music and lyrics by Michaelson, a first-time theater composer. It will be produced by Kevin McCollum (“Six,” “The Devil Wears Prada”) and Kurt Deutsch, an executive at Warner Music Group.“The Notebook,” which was Sparks’s first published novel, consistently ranks among the most popular of his more than 20 books. Though the film adaptation — directed by Nick Cassavetes from a screenplay by Jeremy Leven and adapted by Jan Sardi from the novel — received mixed reviews, it became one of the highest-grossing romantic dramas of all time. More

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      ‘Passages’ Review: A Toxic Triangle

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      In Ira Sachs’ latest wince-inducing romance, Tomas (Franz Rogowski) has wedged himself into a love triangle with Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos.“Passages” takes its name from a film-within-a-film that we get one glimpse of at the start of Ira Sachs’ latest wince-inducing romance. It doesn’t look very good — an airless, stylized period piece, the kind of movie Sachs would never make himself. Worse, its fictional director, Tomas (Franz Rogowski), is so fixated on imperceptible details, and so unable to articulate his desires, that he eventually explodes on set. “It’s not that you have to come down the staircase, you want to come down the staircase!” he rages, aggrieved that no one is able to read his mind.Tomas is whiny, needy, petulant and selfish. (TikTok users could slap him with a dozen diagnoses or just settle on “toxic.”) He’d make a great reality show contestant, but here he’s wedged himself into a love triangle with his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), and his girlfriend, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Viewers naïve enough to expect that an Ira Sachs movie might resolve happily will be disappointed.Sachs has formed his own unconventional family. He and his husband, Boris Torres (an artist, as Martin sort-of is), share twins with the filmmaker Kirsten Johnson. “Passages” feels like Sachs and his longtime writing partner, Mauricio Zacharias, are questioning what his life would be if he’d gone about it all wrong: if he hadn’t been sensitive to others’ emotions, if he’d been slippery and noncommittal, if he’d made phonier films. Perhaps Tomas, performed by Rogowski with swivel-hipped, sulky charisma, is Sachs’ shadow self. But he’s like a lot of other people’s bad exes, too, which means that the bleakest moments often trigger a snort-laugh of schadenfreude at the fix his characters find themselves in.The misery unfurls in a straight timeline of dramatic scenes that leap over the lived-in moments that make up a relationship. We only get fleeting seconds of Martin and Agathe without Tomas dominating the conversation, or lack of one, as he tends to mutely prod them into an extended sex scene. (The film initially received an NC-17 rating, but is now unrated.) As a result, we barely know his partners at all. Agathe, in particular, might look powerful in Khadija Zeggaï’s striking costumes, but she’s so vaguely written that she barely seems to exist when Tomas isn’t in the room. She reminded me of a moment in Caity Weaver’s 2016 GQ profile of Justin Bieber where she and the music superstar walk in on his future wife, Hailey, “doing nothing — no TV, no book, no phone, no computer, no music, no oil paints, nothing.”Some of this indifference is deliberate. Sachs frames one talk between the spouses with Tomas’s body eclipsing Martin’s until he’s invisible; the camera reflects how little Tomas sees his partners, too. But capturing these truths leaves a void in the film. Exhausted (as we also become) by their fruitless, repetitive attempts to set boundaries, the wounded lovers reclaim their independence by receding so deeply into themselves that even Tomas can’t reach them anymore — and by that time, we’ve already given up.PassagesNot rated. In English and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Our Body’ Review: Patience

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      The French director Claire Simon’s profoundly humane documentary focuses on patients in the gynecology ward of a Paris hospital.Slightly past its midpoint, the nearly three-hour documentary “Our Body” hits its stride and never lets up, as the film sutures scenes of patients — younger and older, cisgender and trans — at the gynecological unit of a Paris hospital. In a potent and intimate sequence, the film goes from a midwife-aided birth to a C-section delivery, then to a mother who has experienced painful complications during her delivery and, finally, to a woman trying to navigate her pregnancy while in chemotherapy.After one mother uses a smartphone to record her newborn’s wails, our tears may already be warranted. But it is the leap from this sequence to a powerful doctor-patient consultation — one for the documentary’s director, Claire Simon — that adds a fresh layer of depth to this already profound meditation on patients, and women at large.“You see to the film,” the doctor tells Simon, as the filmmaker receives a cancer diagnosis. “I’ll see to you.”Simon’s own words to her care provider, about going from filmmaker to patient, seem to speak to the limits of cinema-forged empathy, even as the documentary provides another achingly human example of its power.“Our Body” includes footage of a vehement demonstration protesting gynecological violence that is staged outside the hospital. But there are more scenes of compassion than of medical arrogance. The patients often meet hard news with equanimity. How much the presence of a camera has to do with this, we can’t fully know. But Simon’s belief in the interconnectedness yet singularity of the varied patients is palpable. She rewards our patience with a deeper understanding of our bodies and ourselves.Our BodyNot rated. In French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Dreamin’ Wild’ Review: Casey Affleck’s Overlooked Musician Gets His Due

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      A new film dramatizes the true story of two brothers thrust into the spotlight 30 years after the album they recorded as teenagers is discovered.The story of Donnie and Joe Emerson is the kind of miracle that starry-eyed musicians dream of: In the late 1970s, the teenage brothers record an album on their father’s Washington farm. It goes nowhere, until a collector stumbles across the LP in a Spokane antiques shop some 30-odd years later. Soon, word gets around about the brilliance of their passion project and, with the help of a vinyl reissue and a New York Times profile, the Emersons are suddenly thrown into the spotlight they were chasing all those years ago.Bill Pohlad’s “Dreamin’ Wild,” in theaters on Friday, is named after Donnie and Joe’s album and dramatizes its rediscovery by the general public and its impact on the greater Emerson family. “Dreamin’ Wild” doesn’t shrink from the fact that Donnie (portrayed as an adult by Casey Affleck, who’s also a co-producer of the film) was the album’s true brainchild — the chief songwriter, singer, instrumentalist and producer, complemented by Joe’s inexperienced drumming. That much was clear after the initial album release, when Donnie was offered a solo record deal. But he struggled to make it in Hollywood, draining his family’s finances in the process. Renewed interest in the LP reignites his guilt, even as his desire for recognition fuels an unhealthy perfectionism that extends to those around him, particularly Joe.Affleck’s performance is the emotional crux of the film, but the supporting cast, including Zooey Deschanel (as Donnie’s wife, Nancy) and Beau Bridges (as the brothers’ self-sacrificing father, Don Sr.), rounds out Pohlad’s pensive vision of familial drama. It’s Walton Goggins, however, who shines, delivering a quiet, melancholic portrayal of the ever-supportive Joe, who stayed behind in Fruitland, Wash. Adding to the mood is the soundtrack, which features not only Donnie’s otherworldly, genre-fluid “Dreamin’ Wild” compositions, but also a selection of deep cuts from folk-rock greats like The Band and Linda Ronstadt.While it can occasionally seem as though Pohlad is eking out conflict to support a narrative, the film’s restraint ultimately works in its favor, offering a thoughtful meditation on music, creativity and what it really means for talent to be “overlooked.”Dreamin’ WildRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More