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      ‘Kokomo City’ Review: Dispatches From the Down Low

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      The director D. Smith’s new documentary follows four Black transgender women, who talk about how they got into sex work.The documentary “Kokomo City” features interviews with people who aren’t often given the chance to publicly share their life stories. The film follows four Black transgender women, who speak directly to the camera about how they got into sex work and what they learned about human nature once they got there.The film’s vivacious interviews take place in personal, bare settings, as the film’s subjects put on makeup and get dressed. One by one, the interviewees — Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell and Dominique Silver — share candid stories of how they sustain themselves in a profession whose clients can quickly turn toward violence.In a tragic reminder of the film’s life-or-death stakes, one of the documentary subjects, Koko Da Doll, was fatally shot in April, just months after the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. But here, Koko brims with vitality, ambition and insight. This is not a maudlin film; instead it is a movie with heroines who fight tooth and nail for their lives and their self-worth.The director D. Smith, who is also transgender, shoots her subjects in black and white. She uses music to emphasize episodes of their stories, with comic record scratches and jaunty melodies underlying their madcap recollections. Smith also utilizes actors for re-enactments — unnamed performers roll down car windows and peel off waistbands as the film’s subjects describe their work in voice-over.Smith’s style doesn’t break new ground in documentary filmmaking. At times, her movie feels diminished by comparison to landmarks from queer documentary history, films like “Portrait of Jason” (1967) and “Paris is Burning” (1990), both of which used surreal images, experimental editing and offscreen sound to complicate the relationship between performance and reality. By comparison, Smith’s style is more slickly commercial, at the cost of artistic power, with a run time that feels too short for the amount of insight its subjects offer. What feels fresh, though, is the palpable trust between the person asking the questions and the people answering them. Smith’s approach grants respect to women who are often dehumanized, even in their most intimate settings.Each woman proves herself to be a marvelous investigator, a theoretician of human sexuality with a lifetime of evidence to report. Their stories range from reflections on clients who prefer to remain unseen to memories of near murder to the economic benefits of gender-affirming surgery. But most important, Daniella, Koko, Liyah and Dominique provide a record of their own extraordinary lives, one that resonates with clarity and compassion.Kokomo CityRated R for nudity, sexual content, language and references to violence. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bobi Wine: The People’s President’ Review: A Pop Star Turns Politician

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      Uganda has been under authoritarian rule for decades. Wine has doggedly challenged its leader, and this documentary shows the price he’s paid.The pop-culture personage turned politician is not so novel a figure as it used to be. But the Ugandan pop singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, who goes by the stage name Bobi Wine, has earned, by way of his courage and resilience, the special consideration this documentary affords him.“Bobi Wine: The People’s President” opens by laying out the situation in Wine’s East African country: its leader, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, having seized power in 1986 (several years after the military strongman sank the country into civil war), has shown no inclination to give it up. Wine was vocal in his opposition to the regime, but after the 2015 election, when Museveni engineered an amendment to the Constitution rescinding the presidential age limit, the pop singer-turned-politician decided to run for office.Wine the campaigner is cheerful and stylish. He and his cadre dress all in red. He cuts songs whose lyrics function as policy planks: “To free ghetto people we must educate/but education is expensive.”By 2017, Wine is an elected member of Parliament and votes against Museveni’s scheme. The autocrat’s vindictive response is relentless, and lasts years. Wine is jailed, emerging sick and limping. He flies to the States in 2018 to seek treatment — he claims his jailers poisoned him — and gain publicity. When he runs for president against Museveni, in 2021, things really ramp up.The directors Moses Bwayo and Christopher Sharp seem to have had intimate access to Wine and his family, and this, along with their clear admiration for the crusader, doesn’t always work in the movie’s favor. The documentary’s raw material arguably could have yielded a more powerful fit with a tighter edit. Nevertheless, this is a mostly engaging portrait.Bobi Wine: The People’s PresidentRated PG-13 for violence. In English and Swahili with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Happiness for Beginners’ Review: Live, Laugh, Hike

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      Ellie Kemper and Luke Grimes star in “Happiness for Beginners,” an outdoorsy rom-com that’s inoffensive to a fault.In Happiness for Beginners,” directed by Vicky Wight, the “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” star Ellie Kemper portrays a divorced 30-something, Helen, on a journey of self-discovery and romance. Wight’s second adaptation of a novel by Katherine Center (after the 2020 drama “The Lost Husband”), the movie trades in warm-and-fuzzy predictability, where the most uprooting event imaginable for Kemper’s character is falling in love with her brother’s best friend, Jake (Luke Grimes), on a group hiking excursion along the Appalachian Trail.“Happiness for Beginners” is inoffensive to a fault. Its gestures toward comedy largely stem from the ragtag, Patagonia-vested team of hikers surrounding the two lovers. Guided by a zealous leader, Beckett (Ben Cook), the group falls into stock stereotypes — an overconfident hunk, a self-deprecating gay man — who act as a ho-hum Greek chorus to Helen and Jake’s budding relationship. The movie is earnest when it wants to be, like when Jake recites poetry to Helen, but consistently backpedals to jokes about the hikers’ ineptitude and getting freaky in the woods. It’s as if the film is apologizing for its own tenderness.Kemper and Grimes have enough chemistry to keep the plot afloat, when it doesn’t feel like it’s gingerly treading water. Rather than shooting for the fences in grand gestures or raunchy humor, as so many rom-coms do, “Happiness for Beginners” stays polite. It’s destined to be thrown on in the background of a well-kept Airbnb after a long day of hiking in the Northeast.Happiness for BeginnersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘El Agua’ Review: After the Flood, the Legends

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      This film from Elena López Riera follows what happens when floods drench a village in southeastern Spain.In the southeastern Spanish village where the director Elena López Riera grew up — and where her debut feature, “El Agua,” is set — water is both a boon and a curse. This dry region doesn’t get enough rain for its lemon and orange crops, but when it does pour, there are frequently devastating floods. And as is often the case with forces we cannot control or understand, it’s the village’s women who are blamed for nature’s caprices.In “El Agua,” aquatic myths ensnare the teenage dreams of 17-year-old Ana (Luna Pamies). In a series of documentary interviews interspersed throughout the film, locals relate the myth of the women who have water “inside them,” who disappear whenever a flood arrives. Then there is the curse that supposedly afflicts Ana, her mother (Nieve de Medina) and her grandmother (Bárbara Lennie), three fiercely independent women who live together. Ana yearns to leave the stifling village and finds hope in the mysterious José (Alberto Olmo), who claims to have returned to the village after a trip abroad.The movie weaves together several threads, of which Ana’s coming-of-age is the weakest: Her adolescent rebellions and her fling with José play out rather predictably, never quite evoking the lust or portent that the film’s folklore suggests. But “El Agua” succeeds as a portrait of the village’s traditions, both manual and cultural, brought to life by a largely nonprofessional cast (including Pamies, a striking discovery). Scenes involving pigeon races, farmers working the land with their hands, and women caring for and grooming each other all glow with a tactile sense of naturalism, which makes the documentary footage of floods that closes the film all the more gutting.El AguaNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Zoey 102’ Review: Grown Up, Washed Up

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      15 Years after her Nickelodeon show, “Zoey 101,” ended, Jamie Lynn Spears returns in a serviceable movie sequel.When the Nickelodeon show “Zoey 101” ended its four-season run, in 2008, Zoey (Jamie Lynn Spears) finally got together with Chase (Sean Flynn), putting a fairy tale ending on a will-they-or-won’t-they relationship that fascinated a large slice of early-2000s tweens. A decade and a half later, in “Zoey 102,” a movie-length sequel to (and update of) the show, the two have become estranged. Years before, Zoey ghosted Chase during a trip to Hawaii.Yet the biggest surprise of this serviceable revival, directed by Nancy Hower (the show was created by Dan Schneider), is that Zoey has become a bit of a washed-up has-been. She used to be the pretty, popular center of attention at Pacific Coast Academy, where the original show was set; now, she’s an overworked television producer flailing in her love life. Zoey is forced to see many of her old friends again at the wedding of Quinn (Erin Sanders) and Logan (Matthew Underwood), the subjects of a B-plot romance in the original show. To impress Chase, Zoey hires a man (Dean Geyer) to pose as her boyfriend.It’s not an easy task to make a movie out of a kids’ show from a bygone era, but the film does a relatively smooth job of dipping into — but not overdoing — the nostalgia and retaining the lighthearted, wacky tone that was the show’s signature. It helps that the cast members, now older, are better performers. Even if there’s a ceiling to how much can be achieved here, returning fans wanting a reminder of their youths will get just enough of what they came for.Zoey 102Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      ‘North Circular’ Review: A Musical Tour of Dublin

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      In this black-and-white documentary by Luke McManus, the camera finds stories and songs near a road north of the city’s center.The discursive documentary “North Circular” takes viewers on a tour of the history, music and geography of Dublin. The title refers to North Circular Road, which forms an arc that passes north of the city’s center, and that offers a loose map for the film’s themes. Directed by Luke McManus and shot in a ghostly black-and-white, “North Circular” finds stories and songs near the thoroughfare’s path.The camera sits in on sessions of traditional Irish folk singing at the Cobblestone, a pub — not on the road, but five minutes away — that has been an important site for the revival of that musical genre. The folk musician John Francis Flynn says he believes that the scene owes something to people trying to root themselves in the city, “where everything’s been bought up around them.”Gentrification is a recurring subject. A woman reminisces about growing up in O’Devaney Gardens, a public-housing complex razed to make way for new apartments. A squatter reflects on the lonely death of the resident who lived in his building before he did. The singer Gemma Dunleavy strives to create a “sonic time capsule” of Sheriff Street, near the docks, where, she says, what was “built with broken hands” is being taken away by development.A man notes that North Circular Road is the last public road a person is on when entering or exiting Mountjoy Prison. Incarceration has a long history in the area: We hear, both in narration and in song, about the 19th-century practice of imprisoning women for petty offenses, and sending them to Van Diemen’s Land — present-day Tasmania — to help breed the colonizing populace.The songs, a mix of English and Irish, contribute to a plaintive, lulling mood. Not all the material is equally striking, but the film has an original and at times disarming approach to bearing witness.North CircularNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Beanie Bubble’ Review: Caught in a Fad Romance

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      This dramatic comedy about Beanie Babies, starring Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks and Sarah Snook, arrives at the tail end of a summer of corporate biopics.John Updike once described writing as a matter of “taking a deep breath, leaning out over the typewriter and trying to drive a little deeper than the first words that come to mind.” Unfortunately, the writing in “The Beanie Bubble,” a dramatic comedy based loosely on the true story of the short-lived Beanie Baby toy craze, sits on the surface.This is a movie that uses stock footage of the Bill Clinton inauguration and the O.J. Simpson trial to demonstrate that it’s the 1990s, and which, to show a flashback to the ’80s, has a character ask, “Did you pick up any Tab?” It deploys every storytelling cliché in the book, from “you’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation”-style voice-overs to pat last-act monologues that reiterate the themes.The story of Beanie Babies is not especially interesting: In 1993, Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis), the creator of Beanie Babies, introduced the plush animal dolls for $5, and then, owing to a confluence of opportune internet savvy and a nascent secondary market on the web, they became coveted for their scarcity.“The Beanie Bubble” contrives to add intrigue by embellishing various personal dramas behind the scenes at the company, including infidelities, a fraught love triangle and the ethical quandaries of three women who worked with Warner and in some cases were involved with him romantically: Robbie (Elizabeth Banks), Sheila (Sarah Snook) and Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan).Each of these women has exactly one defining feature — they’re eager to get rich; they love their children; they know a lot about computers — and they mention this feature every single time they’re onscreen. The directors, Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash, Jr., make several embarrassing efforts to cast them as feminist superheroes at odds with the cluelessly patriarchal Warner, which might have been more effective had they been fleshed out as anything more than paper-thin Girl Boss caricatures. As it stands, the celebratory montages that herald these women’s professional triumphs are about as rousing as a Sheryl Sandberg TED Talk.Much of the film’s running time is dedicated to graphics detailing Beanie Baby sales figures, archival news footage showing mall shoppers going crazy and oversimplified explanations of Beanie-related milestones and achievements, such as how the company became an early pioneer of e-commerce.These elements are, of course, reminiscent of “Air,” “Tetris,” “Flamin’ Hot” and “Blackberry,” among other recent making-of marketing pictures. It’s not the fault of “The Beanie Bubble” that it arrives at the tail end of a summer of similar corporate biopics, but seen after so many other marketing making-of dramas, the familiar beats of novel invention to overnight phenomenon can’t help but feel all the more hackneyed.Like those films, “The Beanie Bubble” attempts to extrapolate some more substantive social meaning from what is otherwise an amusing but ultimately insignificant moment in time. The best it can do is to conclude, feebly, that there will “always be another fad,” with references to cryptocurrency and NFTs. This conclusion is hard to square with the movie’s earlier claim that the Beanie Baby craze ushered in “a new era of capitalism,” but that paradox is typical of its shaky approach. In any given moment, the movie is either overstating the importance of its subject or trivializing it.Can we learn anything from this? “The Beanie Bubble” proves that there will always be movie fads, but some of them will be worse than others.The Beanie BubbleRated R for strong language and some mild sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘The Beasts’ Review: Bad Neighbors

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      Class tensions and masculine power games abound in this engrossing rural thriller from Spain.“The Beasts,” an engrossing rural thriller by the Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, has a deeper take on the class tensions of most hill-people horror movies. Antoine (Denis Mé nochet) and Olga (Marina Foïs), a middle-class French couple, have recently settled in the Galician village of Ourense, where they run a modest farm and spend their surplus of free time rebuilding dilapidated homes. Their neighbors, Xan (Luis Zahera) and Lorenzo (Diego Anido), a tetchy pair of middle-aged brothers, despise them. A Swedish wind-turbine company has offered to pay out the village’s residents should they approve the installment of an energy farm on the land — by voting “no,” Antoine and Olga deny the impoverished brothers what for them would be a considerable sum.From here unfolds a slow-burn saga of murder and vengeance that draws inspiration from “Deliverance” and its crisis of masculinity — though “The Beasts,” a piece of art-house social-realism as well as a nail-biter, isn’t big on explicit violence. Tensions build as Antoine butts heads with the brothers at the local watering hole, the divide between outsiders and locals accentuated by their language barrier (Antoine’s Spanish is shaky). The brothers are definitely crooks, yet the script by Isabel Peña and Sorogoyen captures an unexpectedly complex balance of power. Xan and Lorenzo may be two, but they’re like scrawny hyenas next to Antoine’s mammoth frame.A second-act twist shifts the story to Olga’s perspective. The sharp social commentary peters out in place of hackneyed parent-child friction when the couple’s daughter, Marie (Marie Colomb), pays an extended visit. The stately Foïs carries the film as it devolves into a restrained drama about familial loyalty and womanly fortitude, its change of gears not entirely clicking into place.The BeastsNot rated. In Spanish, Galician and French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 17 minutes. In theaters. More