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      ‘Gladiator II’ Review: Denzel Washington and Paul Mescal Entertain

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      Denzel Washington’s performance shows skill, intensity and absolute confidence in Ridley Scott’s pleasurably immersive epic about ancient Roman fighters.When Denzel Washington sweeps into “Gladiator II” — Ridley Scott’s epic about ancient Rome and men at war and sometimes in love — it’s with such easy grace that you may mistake his character’s loose bearing with indifference. What you’re seeing is power incarnate, power that’s so raw and so supremely self-possessed that it doesn’t announce itself. It just takes. And it keeps taking as warriors enter the Colosseum to fight and die in the blood sport that gives this sequel to Scott’s 2000 drama “Gladiator” its sober backdrop and much of its juice. It is a performance of charismatic evil and of mesmerizing stardom both.Like Scott’s filmmaking in this pleasurably immersive spectacle — with its foreign ancients and mentalities, exotic animals and equally unfamiliar calls to human nobility — Washington’s performance has skill, intensity and absolute confidence. Each man has an unqualified belief in entertainment as a value that’s essential to put over an old-fashioned, inherently audacious production like this, the kind that turns the past into a plaything and doesn’t ask you to worry about niceties like historical accuracy. Both director and performer are also veterans when it comes to popular audiences, and since neither has mellowed or slowed with age (Scott turns 87 this year and Washington 70), they still know how to put on a great show.The first “Gladiator” centers on a Roman general, Maximus (Russell Crowe), who circa 180 A.D. serves an aged emperor, incurs the wrath of a young usurper and ends up clanging swords in the Colosseum, where he quickly becomes a crowd favorite. Crowe, then at the height of his leading-man fame, delivered an appropriately muscular if characteristically sensitive lead performance that holds the screen even when challenged by the vulpine charisma of a scene-stealing Joaquin Phoenix as the new emperor. The two characters are dead by the end and Rome itself seems like it may follow rapidly in their wake; they and all the other ghosts from the original movie haunt the sequel, which is set 16 years later.“Gladiator II” tells the story of another righteous, ostensibly simple man, this time named Lucius (Paul Mescal) who is swept up by violent political forces seemingly beyond his control. The story opens in Numidia, a slice of land hugging the northernmost coast of the African continent. There, in a humming city, Lucius lives with his wife, and while their smiles suggest they’re happy enough, they are both soon suiting up to fight a flotilla of Roman invaders. Led by General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), the Romans make quick work of the Numidians. In this regard, the invaders are just as ruthlessly economic as Scott, who demonstrates a commensurate show of his power with the epically scaled, vividly staged and shot warfare.Fast, brutal and absorbing, the shocker opener sets the template for the rest of the movie, which plays — and often feels — like one long, inventively diverse, elaborately imaginative fight. As in the first film, the diversity of the casting here suggests the vastness of the Roman Empire, a variety that’s matched by the many ways characters die: trebuchet, arrow, sword and a (digital) menagerie that includes a saddled rhino and a troop of rampaging baboons. Every so often, the characters put down their weapons to indulge their other vices or to plot an uprising, diverting interludes that advance the narrative and add crucial rhythm, giving the characters enough time to unclench the jaws and for you to keep processing the story.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Witches’ Review: Redeeming the Wicked Witch

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      The director Elizabeth Sankey’s experience with postpartum depression anchors this documentary about the pop-cultural representation of witches.The arrival of “Witches,” a documentary streaming on Mubi, seems strategically timed. The director Elizabeth Sankey’s contribution is part essay film, part personal testimony, though like Jon M. Chu’s musical blockbuster “Wicked” she, too, starts in the land of Oz.As a child, Sankey explains in a voice-over, she wanted to be Glinda the good witch. But her experiences dealing with mental illness made her see an unsettling correlation between the wicked witches of the world and the women who, like her, have had trouble performing traditional domestic roles.The first part of Sankey’s documentary plays like a cultural history of the witch onscreen, weaving together clips from TV shows and movies across the decades to illustrate a somewhat stale point: that stigmas around women’s health have informed the characterization of witches. When Sankey shares her personal story — weaving in interviews with other women and experts who also have firsthand experience of postpartum psychosis — the details of her illness take on an eerie new light next to pop-cultural images of madwomen, like Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby” and Isabelle Adjani in “Possession.” Based on the real women’s accounts, the fictional renderings don’t seem outlandish — the satanic underpinnings of witchcraft, clearly a superstitious, and deeply misogynistic, justification.“Witches” eventually explores other parallels — for instance, the demonization of midwives and natural healers with the advent of modern medicine — but the maternal madness framework dominates the bulk of the run time to diminishing effect. The clips also veer from the occult and take on a more generalized creepiness that feels bleary and arbitrary. If all women behaving badly can be summed up as witchy, then Sankey’s documentary too often works like a game of associations.WitchesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Mubi. More

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      ‘Sabbath Queen’ Review: Capturing the Act of Questioning

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      Sandi DuBowski’s documentary about Rabbi Amichai Lau-Levie observes the making of a Jewish identity.When Amichai Lau-Lavie was ordained a rabbi, in 2016, he joined a family tradition that had been going on uninterrupted since the 11th century. And yet this had been a fraught process for Lau-Lavie, an Israel-born gay man who just a few years before entering New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary had been a pillar of a “God-optional” community. How he went from the Radical Faeries’ joyous, transgressive vision of queerness — which led to creating his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross — to embracing Conservative Judaism is the subject of Sandi DuBowski’s fascinating look at the act of questioning yourself and your family, your surroundings and your decisions.Shortly after completing his acclaimed documentary “Trembling Before G-d” (2001), about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, DuBowski started filming Lau-Lavie. He kept at it for the next 21 years, which gives “Sabbath Queen” the rare opportunity to capture its subject in flight, so to speak.Yes, Lau-Lavie reflects on his family’s history during World War II, as well as key points from his own past, like being outed in his 20s. But we also watch him talk about many events, like becoming a father or cofounding the aforementioned experimental Lab/Shul initiative, while he is still in the middle of experiencing them, rather than speaking with the benefit of hindsight.After Lau-Lavie makes a big decision that goes against his recent commitment to the Conservative movement, it becomes obvious that his restlessness has not abated, and his questing days may never be over. He understands all too well that life is just not that neat.Sabbath QueenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘A Traveler’s Needs’ Review: Language Lessons

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      Iris (Isabelle Huppert), a stranger who teaches French in Seoul, is at the center of an enigmatic film by Hong Sang-soo.“Why’d she come to Korea?” a man (Kwon Hae-hyo) asks his wife (Lee Hye-young) in the park, as Iris (Isabelle Huppert) is walking away from them. Iris is a stranger in Seoul who has started teaching French to the wife. Whether Iris is up to the task is uncertain. She has no background in instruction, and the only language that she and her pupils share is English, which is not a native tongue for any of them.Iris takes an oddball approach to acclimating her students to French: She extracts personal confessions from them in English, then writes wildly extrapolated versions of the French on index cards. “You’ll love your true emotion being expressed in a foreign language,” she says. Better that than to learn phrases from a textbook — something she declines to use. She is also a fiend for makgeolli, the Korean rice wine, of which she claims to drink one or two bottles every day.Is Iris for real? That question hangs over “A Traveler’s Needs,” just as it does over the career of the director Hong Sang-soo. Hong routinely turns out two features per year with methods nearly as baffling as Iris’s: His devotees see infinite subtlety in his use of theme and variation, while the skeptical can’t help but wonder if his movies have become increasingly repetitive and slapdash. In “A Traveler’s Needs,” which won second prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, the sunlit interiors often suggest a deliberately amateurish look.This is his third overall feature with Huppert, who adds drollery and an air of mystery. And there is just enough intrigue this time — one motif involves the difficulty of translating a work by Yoon Dong-ju, a Korean poet who died in 1945 after being imprisoned in Japan — to suggest hidden depths.A Traveler’s NeedsNot rated. In English, Korean (with subtitles) and French. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Porcelain War’ Review: A Defiant Dispatch From Ukraine

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      A new documentary follows artists in wartime, on and off the battlefield.The latest documentary dispatch from Ukraine, “Porcelain War,” brings a message of hope rooted in art. Making art does feel like an act of resistance during the Russian invasion, when Kremlin propaganda attacks the very existence of Ukrainian culture. But what’s intriguing is that the directors, Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, also celebrate Ukraine’s military defense, making for a jangly mix of idyll and warfare.Slava, who appears in the film, is both a ceramist and a member of a Ukraine special forces unit who gives weapons training to civilians turned soldiers. His partner, Anya, paints the whimsical figurines he creates, and the irrepressible couple weather the war in bombed-out Kharkiv with their more anxious pal Andrey, a painter and cameraman.Anya and Slava find some refuge in their house, and saccharine sequences show off tranquil fields and their cute dog. Some lovely animated moments set Anya’s finely wrought porcelain painting into motion; singing by the Ukrainian quartet DakhaBrakha rings out on the soundtrack.But then the focus shifts decisively to Slava’s army unit on the battlefield. Drone shots track bombs falling on Russian tanks and soldiers; Slava’s comrades hustle through ravaged buildings, equipped with GoPro cameras that give a first-person feel. Elsewhere, Andrey anguishes over spiriting his daughters away to Poland.Impressively, nearly everything was shot by the documentary’s subjects. Yet although their double duty is an awful fact of life in Ukraine, the film lurches between its varying components and tones. As the filmmakers repeatedly tie an inspirational bow on art and beauty, the good intentions yield cold comfort.Porcelain WarRated R for language and images of death. In Ukrainian, Russian and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Out of My Mind’ Review: Schooling a Teacher

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      In this film adaptation of Sharon M. Draper’s novel, a nonverbal sixth-grader with cerebral palsy holds her own.Like many a self-respecting tween, Melody Brooks has a thing or two to say about this and that, and a need to be heard. But that need has a particular urgency: Melody, the central character in “Out of My Mind,” has cerebral palsy and is unable to speak.Her story, set in the early aughts and based on a novel by Sharon M. Draper, arrives onscreen with a family-friendly brightness, buoyed by upbeat montages. The director, Amber Sealey, and the strong cast keep things grounded, though, honoring the serious undercurrents while having some fun.As the ultrasmart girl using a wheelchair who longs for sparkly shoes and escape from educational segregation, Phoebe-Rae Taylor (making her screen debut and infusing the part with her experience of CP) has an expressive, knowing gaze, alive with eagerness as well as exasperation. A fan of “Friends,” Melody imagines her thoughts voiced by Jennifer Aniston and, in an effectively used narrative device, Aniston delivers the 12-year-old’s openhearted and playfully snark-tinged observations. Two effortlessly charismatic performers, Rosemarie DeWitt and Luke Kirby, play Melody’s loving, charmingly harried and ever so slightly cool parents, who battle the insurance company for access to a machine, the Medi-Talker, that enables their daughter to converse with others.One of Melody’s fiercest advocates, a sweet buttinsky neighbor (Judith Light), delivers a searing piece of wisdom in plain language. Melody takes the advice to heart when given a chance to “mainstream” with other sixth graders. She holds her own with the mean girls and schools a wisenheimer teacher (Michael Chernus). Her story is told in an uncomplicated way but not without subtlety. She’s easy to root for.Out of My MindNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Joy’ Review: The Humans Behind I.V.F.

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      Thomasin McKenzie plays an unheralded pioneer of in vitro fertilization in a new biography.In vitro fertilization is considered by many to be a miracle. It’s still controversial in some circles, as was seen in the recent election, when politicians made often contradictory pronouncements about it.But “Joy,” a biographical treatment of Jean Purdy, one of the pioneers of the science, while certainly waving the flag for the procedure, is primarily concerned with the human story behind the creation of I.V.F. It sets out to redress an imbalance — that the real-life Purdy, a nurse, was long unacknowledged for her work.This is one of those pictures where the actors outdo the conventional material they are given to work with. Thomasin McKenzie plays Purdy in a scenario that plays out over a decade. It begins in a British medical school with Purdy intrigued by the unorthodox theories on infertility put forth by Bill Nighy as Dr. Patrick Steptoe. Purdy, Steptoe and another doctor played with agreeable masculinity by James Norton team up and begin experimenting, understanding that their approach would attract disapprobation from religious and societal factions.And so it does — Jean is anonymously sent a doll with the word “sinner” scrawled across it in red marker. But she persists.The director, Ben Taylor, keeps the momentum up despite his weakness for marking the passage of time with eyebrow-raising needle drops. The movie is most effective in creating a rooting interest for Purdy’s character, while the maestro Nighy gets a nice juicy monologue at the end that he of course makes a meal of.JoyRated PG-13 for language and themes. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Flow’ Review: A Cat’s Life

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      A cat, a dog and a capybara embark on an epic adventure in this earnest and refreshingly unconventional animated film.“Flow,” an animated adventure film with a touch of magical realism, is a welcome entrant in the cat-movie canon, exuding a profound affection for our four-legged friends.Its hero, a plucky black cat with round, expressive eyes, doesn’t speak a word of dialogue, and acts more or less like a domestic house cat, but under the Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’s doting gaze, he’s as well-developed as Atticus Finch, a noble character you can’t help but root for. Purring, scratching and scrabbling up walls, this cat virtually leaps off the screen.“Flow,” written by Zilbalodis and Matiss Kaza, concerns the cat’s survival during a flood of almost biblical proportions. The story, simple but compelling, unfolds as a kind of feline picaresque, as he clambers aboard a passing sailboat that drifts from one scenic exploit to another. He soon encounters other stranded animals, including a guileless Labrador retriever and a benevolent secretary bird, who tag along to form what eventually resembles a charming, ragtag menagerie. Their adventures together range from hair raising, as when a thunderstorm threatens to capsize their ship, to endearingly mundane, like when a rotund capybara helps a lemur gather a collection of knickknacks.It sounds saccharine, but Zilbalodis largely avoids the sort of whimsy and sentimentality that might plague, say, a Disney movie with the same premise. The animals act like real animals, not like cartoons or humans, and that restraint gives their adventure an authenticity that, in moments of both delight and peril, makes the emotion that much more powerful. With the caveat that I’m a cat lover, I was deeply moved.FlowRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More