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      ‘Delia’s Gone’ Review: A False Conviction in a Hardscrabble Town

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      A man aims to find his sister’s real killer.Over the final credits of the movie “Delia’s Gone,” the traditional blues song “Delia” by Blind Willie McTell plays. Loosely speaking, the song is the tale of a gambling woman who meets a bad end. Johnny Cash’s variation on it, from which this movie takes its title, depicts Delia as the victim of a jealous suitor.Directed by Robert Budreau, this “Delia’s Gone” tells neither of those stories. The movie is about a pair of siblings, Louis and Delia, living in a hardscrabble rural town populated mostly by surly white people. They themselves are Black. Louis has an intellectual disability that affects his speech and judgment, while his sister, Delia, unemployed and more than a little desperate to get away, takes a cavalier approach to Louis’s care.When Delia winds up dead on their kitchen floor, Louis is tried for her killing — a crime he insists he did not commit — and is convicted. He serves a short sentence and then goes to a halfway house.There, a visitor from the past compels Louis to walk out and seek Delia’s real killers. As Louis, Stephan James conveys the character’s increasing emotion by way of much lip-trembling. Trying to rein Louis in are Marisa Tomei, as a former sheriff who is still resentful that she wasn’t taken seriously on account of being a woman, and Paul Walter Hauser, as the current sheriff who is mocked by Tomei’s character because he is overweight.One watches this movie with a persistent “this is just … wrong” feeling. It’s not just the superficial depiction of Louis’s condition, or the facile depiction of racial dynamics, although those factors don’t help. Maybe it’s the pervasive self-seriousness in pursuit of what turns out to be nothing much at all.Delia’s GoneRated R for violence, language, themes. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Territory’ Review: Saving the Amazon, One Camera at a Time

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      This documentary is a thrilling look at an Indigenous group’s fight to keep illegal settlers from destroying their land in the Amazon rainforest.“Save the rainforest” has been a constant refrain among environmentalist groups for the past half-century, but no recent film captures the immediacy of the threat better than “The Territory,” Alex Pritz’s documentary feature debut, which had its premiere earlier this year at Sundance.National Geographic Documentary Films acquired the rights to the movie after it screened, and given the distributor’s current interest in gripping thrillers (“Free Solo,” “Fire of Love”), it’s no surprise that this feature, covering the embittered conflict between Brazilian cattle ranchers and an Indigenous group in the Amazon rainforest, fits right into its lineup. But “The Territory” is more than meets the eye, revealing its most profound observations in stages across its running time. The film’s luscious cinematography captures the sun-dappled island of jungle where the Uru Eu Wau Wau reside, a land slowly being consumed by flames as farmers and other settlers illegally raze the forest for pastures, with few repercussions.While the two opposing groups are given near-equal amounts of screen time, Pritz does not draw a false equivalency between the two; in fact, the longer time is spent with the farmers, the more alarming their gap of understanding toward the Uru Eu Wau Wau becomes. A particularly zealous cattle rancher, whom Pritz repeatedly returns to, describes his settlement as a divine right and bemoans the Indigenous group’s defense of their territory: “Why should they be allowed to stay? They do not work the land, they just live in it.”Pritz heightens the stakes with the story of Neidinha Bandeira, a Brazilian environmental activist who has received death threats because of her work. But it’s only after the Uru Eu Wau Wau choose to trek deeper into their land — a decision brought on by both a violent tragedy and the looming threat of the Covid-19 pandemic — that the film takes on a life of its own. Bitaté, a young leader for his people, works with other Uru Eu Wau Wau members to set up drones and additional cameras to document illegal settlers in their home. (When a journalist requests to send cameramen into the jungle to follow their guerrilla activism, Bitaté responds, “Send us the shot list — we’ve got it covered from here.”) Cinematography credit is shared between Pritz and Tangãi Uru Eu Wau Wau.To see the villagers take matters into their own hands, capturing proof of the encroachment on their land that the government chooses to ignore, is a special kind of thrill.The TerritoryRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Legend of Molly Johnson’ Review: Reclaiming the Australian Frontier

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      A stoic frontier woman harbors an Aboriginal fugitive in this earnest and didactic western.In the western drama, “The Legend of Molly Johnson,” the actress Leah Purcell directs and stars as the title character, a pregnant mother in the developing Australian town of Everton. Molly is a stoic woman. She’s skilled with a gun, and content in the dangerous hills despite the absence of her husband. But Molly’s seclusion is disturbed when an Aboriginal man stumbles to her doorstep.The man, Yadaka (Rob Collins), takes refuge in her home. He’s a fugitive, wanted for murder. But despite Molly’s initial caution in his presence, she finds much to discuss with her houseguest, who is proud of his background and his skin color. Yadaka bonds with Molly’s oldest child, Danny (Malachi Dower-Roberts), teaching him to use a spear, and telling him circus tales from his past. A tenuous bond forms between the trio, and the connection grows when secrets from Molly’s past are uncovered, revealing that the taciturn host and her stowaway guest share surprising similarities.“The Legend of Molly Johnson” is a reframing of the frontier in Australia, and Purcell’s direction is not subtle. Here, the lawmen are the violent vandals, while Aboriginal people defend their lives, their families and their land to the death. The music swells for Molly and Yadaka as they slowly warm up to each other. The grounded performances by Purcell and Collins stand out in contrast to the actors cast as townspeople, who recite their lines in wooden British accents. It’s an earnest film, one that glows with pride at Aboriginal resilience. But the impression it leaves is didactic, a saints and demons fable that meanders to foregone conclusions.The Legend of Molly JohnsonNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 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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      ‘Spin Me Round’ Review: Eat Pray Lust

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      Alison Brie plays the manager of a restaurant chain whose trip to Italy for a training program does not go as expected.“Spin Me Round,” directed by Jeff Baena, is a kooky romp where unworldly travelers trip over their own fantasies of Europe. It follows the misadventures of Amber (Alison Brie), the manager of a chain spaghetti restaurant who has tasted so little of life that her dreams are an endless sea of factory-made Alfredo sauce. To Amber’s delight, she is selected for a work retreat where a small group of hand-selected employees (including Tim Heidecker, Zach Woods, Debby Ryan, Ayden Mayeri and Molly Shannon) will receive personal lessons in the identification of fresh herbs at the very Italian villa where the chain’s suave founder Nick Martucci (Alessandro Nivola) shoots commercials rhapsodizing about all-you-can-eat pasta.These rewards prove to be as inauthentic as the company’s food. Baena and Brie, the co-writers of the script, successfully merge their subversion of “Eat Pray Love” with an update on the sexual harassment screwball comedy that cycled out of favor shortly after Melanie Griffith stuck it to those Financial District suits. Brie, making full use of her doe eyes and innocent smile, plays her heroine as so glamour-starved that she’s willing to overlook clues that the local Lotharios — American expats, not Italians — view her as a cheap cut of meat. Amber is wooed and patronized in the same breath, most literally at an erotically charged soiree where the host (Fred Armisen) clocks her crimson gown and launches into a lip-synced rendition of “The Lady In Red.” His attention hits her like a corked Chianti, but she lacks the certainty to declare its bad taste.Baena calls upon Pino Donaggio, a composer whose credits stretch back to 1970s euro thrillers, and the cinematographer Sean McElwee to alert the audience not to take these shenanigans seriously. Amber’s arrival in Italy is hailed with the kind of sweeping symphony one might expect to hear in a World War I romance over a shot of a dumpster. Likewise, the film is ludicrous in its large strokes and pointed in its details, particularly Amber’s tense relationships with Deb (Molly Shannon), a clingy work colleague, and Kat (Aubrey Plaza), a jaded assistant who squires the American to dates with their boss. Although Plaza’s character makes it clear this is a story about complicity and manipulation, Baena keeps the tone silly, barely striving for scares even when creepy masks slink into view. He’s content to let the music take over — and so are we with its sly needle-drops that pull from heady italo disco and giallo horror scores.Spin Me RoundNot rated. Runing time: 1 hour 44 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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      ‘The Immaculate Room’ Review: A Blank Slate

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      In this drama, a couple tries to live in a stark room with no distractions for 50 days.When the sweethearts Kate (Kate Bosworth) and Mikey (Emile Hisrch) first enter the Immaculate Room, they see possibility in all its emptiness. All they have to do is spend 50 days in this space — so titled by the mysterious scientist spearheading the challenge — and they’ll win $5 million.Rational viewers will automatically see the Immaculate Room’s nightmarish potential. Kate and Mikey haven’t signed up for a vacation, they’ve volunteered themselves as lab rats. “The Immaculate Room,” written and directed by Mukunda Michael Dewil, is similarly unwilling to embrace its darkest depths. As a result, it delivers a moralistic ending that is as simple and bland as the titular room.Kate and Mikey are giving their relationship another shot, and have apparently decided that imprisoning themselves together will reignite the spark. Unfortunately, these opposites don’t attract. Kate is a rule-following pragmatist from humble beginnings. Mikey is a well-heeled vegan artist whose plans for the prize money include smoking weed with Elon Musk.The room changes lighting to simulate morning, midday and night; delivers three daily “meals” of a flavorless liquid labeled FOOD; and holds Kate and Mikey to a number of arbitrary rules. Kate would rather just play along, but Mikey becomes suspicious early on, first noting that he thinks the clock counting down their time is being manipulated.That seems worth exploring — after all, time is paramount in this challenge. But that plot thread never goes anywhere, much like key aspects of Kate and Mikey’s back stories. The film focuses more on one character’s moral defects than the sketchy project overall, leading to a conclusion that feels unsatisfying at best and pompous at worst.The Immaculate RoomRated R for bare breasts and ecstasy. Running time: 1 hour 32 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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      ‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ Review: A Ghost Story

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      Using footage from a three-minute amateur movie shot in 1938, this rousing documentary about a Jewish town in Poland is a haunting meditation on the memory of the Holocaust.In 2009, the writer Glenn Kurtz discovered a badly-degraded three-minute film in the attic of his parents’ Florida home. That film, a kind of vacation home-movie shot in 1938 by Kurtz’s grandfather, David Kurtz, contains seemingly innocuous footage of the Polish town of Nasielsk — David’s birthplace as well as one of the hundreds of Jewish communities eventually devastated by the Holocaust.Not that the majority of us would be able to discern the film’s menacing context. Silent and grainy, it shows children crowding around the camera, bearded elders staring from a distance, people spilling out of a building that you might recognize is a synagogue — if you look carefully.“Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” by the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter, is committed to just that: looking carefully. The images from David’s three-minute film — at first shown from beginning to end, then chopped, screwed and colorized, with several moments rewound and played over and over again — comprise the entirety of Stigter’s stirring documentary.“Three Minutes” draws from Kurtz’s book, “Three Minutes in Poland,” which chronicles the author’s efforts to identify the people in the film, many of whom ultimately perished in concentration camps. Stigter’s documentary unfolds using voice-over narration by Helena Bonham Carter as well as voice-over testimony from Kurtz and some of the individuals who assisted his research.David’s three-minute film gives us access to a reality that hasn’t really been captured on camera, one of a regular Polish town during that prewar period when life was still normal and danger remained in the shadows. Stigter and Kurtz guide our gazes, revealing the vast universes contained in each frame — from neighborhood politics to the background of a local grocery store. “Three Minutes” is more than a documentary about the Holocaust — it is an investigative drama, a meditation on the ethics of moving images and a ghost story about people who might be forgotten should we take those images for granted.Three Minutes: A LengtheningRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 9 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Orphan: First Kill’ Review: Still Slashing After All These Years

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      Isabelle Fuhrman, who in “Orphan” had to be convincing as a child of age 9, reprises her role 13 years later in this prequel set two years earlier.While no classic, “Orphan” (2009), starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard as parents to a homicidal adoptee, deserves a place in the pantheon of bad-seed thrillers, both for Farmiga’s commitment to the assignment and one jolt so outrageously fatuous it somehow plays as brilliant.Now there is “Orphan: First Kill,” a belated prequel with a different director (the flat-footed William Brent Bell instead of the first movie’s Jaume Collet-Serra). Looking like it was shot on a cheap video format, it lacks the original’s scares and suavity, apart from an early escape set piece designed to resemble a fluid take. But the sheer derangement of its plot and a bizarre casting gambit make it more interesting than standard straight-to-streaming schlock.Start with the casting: How could Isabelle Fuhrman, who 13 years ago had to be convincing as a child of age 9, reprise the role in her 20s, on the heels of her acclaimed turn as a monomaniacal college rower in “The Novice”? Through a combination of doubles, stagecraft and sly tricks with framing and optics — Fuhrman’s face and feet are almost never clearly seen in the same shot — the filmmakers have metamorphosed her within license.The actress’s resurrection of her murderous character — who here sometimes edges into camp, playing piano with bloody hands or swigging vodka in an airplane lavatory — may be the movie’s most grounded aspect. The plot, set in 2007, follows Leena (as her real name turned out to be) as she worms her way from Estonia to Connecticut, where she impersonates the missing child of an affluent couple (Julia Stiles and Rossif Sutherland).If “Orphan” was an unlikely showcase for Farmiga, “Orphan: First Kill” gives red meat to Stiles, who plays a protective mother with surprising gusto.Orphan: First KillRated R. Kills, none of them Leena’s first. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Learn to Swim’ Review: A Tooth Ache and All This Jazz

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      The feature directing debut of Thyrone Tommy is a fractured romance between a young saxophonist and a chanteuse.At the start of “Learn to Swim,” Dezi (Thomas Antony Olajide) trembles slightly as puts his saxophone to his lips. The Canadian director Thyrone Tommy cuts from that opening image to a quintet flowing in beautiful sync at a club. The scene grooves. The band’s trumpet-playing leader, Sid (Christef Desir), and Dezi ply their onstage chemistry. A guest vocalist, Selma (Emma Ferreira), takes the microphone promising “I see you. I see you” in a spoken-word riff. And isn’t that the spark of many a romance: Being seen?Selma and Dezi begin an affair. Although begin is a tricky matter. Because their relationship is recounted through Dezi’s memories, which are themselves refracted through a prism of pain caused by heartbreak and the most mundane of ailments: a tooth ache.Dezi’s abscess and his swollen jaw signal when he is in the sullen present or occupies the potent, volatile past. Some of this drama’s hurts go beyond the romantic, carrying the weight of the African diaspora. Others come from mourning: Dezi shares a disquieting anecdote with Selma about his deceased mother. And the living, no-nonsense Black women here — Selma’s friend Jesse (Khadijah Salawu); neighbor Sal (Andrea Davis) — hint at a protagonist in need of nurturing.In this feature directing debut, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Marnie Van Dyk, Tommy works well with his ensemble and is clearly intrigued by emotional states. Or at least the idea of them. “Learn to Swim” is lovely to behold, but the sullen artist at the center feels too often like he’s drowning in melancholia and might take us down with him.Learn to SwimNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More