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      ‘Remember This’ Review: A Stark Portrait of Resilience

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      This film, featuring a captivating performance from David Strathairn as the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski, is a straightforward adaptation of the play of the same name.Last fall, David Strathairn captivated Brooklyn theatergoers with his solo performance in “Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski,” depicting the Polish resistance fighter’s harrowing journey through exile during World War II. Originally produced by Theater for a New Audience as part of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics at Georgetown University, “Remember This” took inspiration from the documentaries in which the real-life Karski appeared — 1985’s “Shoah” and 2010’s “The Karski Report” — along with Karski’s own writings and lectures from his decades as a Georgetown professor. The result was a stark, minimalist set in which Strathairn recreated the horrors that Karski, who died in 2000 at age 86, endured using nothing more than a table, two chairs and a suit jacket.The film version of “Remember This,” opening this Friday at the Quad Cinema, in Manhattan, adapts the stage play with little change in its presentation. Derek Goldman returns as director alongside Jeff Hutchens, and Strathairn is once again a one-man tour de force. Now with the benefit of editing, his transitions between the devastating and triumphant scenes of Karski’s life are punctuated with camera tilts upward into dramatic lighting cues, allowing for subtle cuts in what still resembles a one-take performance.Despite this, “Remember This” is, quite literally, a filmed play, and Goldman and Hutchens don’t make any attempts to define or elevate itself outside the confines of the stage. That can start to feel claustrophobic at 90 minutes long, but perhaps the directors saw that as a necessary trade-off, as Karski’s numerous and poignant monologues performed to the camera — on the nature of evil, on Holocaust denial, on how one chooses to retell the truth — would have felt out of stylistically place in a cinematic version. As it is, they’re the element most likely to be remembered.Remember ThisNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Mission’ Review: A Substantial Service Undertaking

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      Mormon teenagers travel to Finland for missionary service in this documentary that struggles to offer new insights.American Mormon adolescents trek to Finland for missionary service in the pallid documentary “The Mission.” Directed by Tania Anderson, the film opens with its young subjects preparing for their travels, and then tracks their two-year journeys and the challenges that attend the substantial undertaking.One hopes that such access to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would yield new insights into the religion. But as the events unspool, the film struggles to crystallize more than a handful of compelling points.The documentary spends time with four missionaries in particular: Sister Bills, Sister Field, Elder Davis and Elder Pauole. (The Church frowns upon the use of first names.) The young women are sunny. The young men are stolid. Beyond their general dispositions and their aptitude for Finnish, which each of them are asked to study, the film fails to bring them to life as individuals.Upon arrival in Finland, the missionaries receive companions who serve as their roommates and proselytizing partners. The kids are instructed not to leave one another’s sight, a rule that we later learn is meant to prime the adolescents for marriage, which awaits them at home. This vital detail is obscured, however, by our surface-level time with the pairs. We see them pray side by side and knock on Finns’ doors, but before the camera, the companions default to reticence.Being a teenager is tough enough, and living for years in a foreign city must add stress to the usual malaise. Unfortunately, Anderson’s camera feels like an outsider to this unease, less a window into a demanding time than an obstacle to our understanding.The MissionNot rated. In English and Finnish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Maybe I Do’ Review: Lukewarm Liaisons

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      Looking at the seasoned cast — Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy — you might think you want to see this movie. Hold that thought.A romantic comedy starring Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy would kill as a Nancy Meyers movie. Unfortunately, the rom-com “Maybe I Do” was written and directed by the television veteran Michael Jacobs.“Maybe I Do” not only lacks the luscious locations of a Meyers picture, it’s got nothing in the realm of her medium-sharp writing either. For the first section of the movie, three story threads are intercut in a ham-handed, arrhythmical way.The picture begins with its only funny bit, in which Sam (Macy), alone in a movie theater watching a downer art picture and losing his mind, tears up his Twizzlers and mixes them with his popcorn. He’s about to throw in some Peanut M&M’s when he’s interrupted by Grace (Keaton), another lonely senior at the movies. A spark occurs and the two, who are unhappily married to other people, begin to fan the flame.Then, in a luxe hotel room, Howard (Gere) and Monica (Sarandon) grit their teeth through a dysfunctional adulterous tryst. “You’re pressuring me with your availability,” Howard says.And … elsewhere there’s a wedding. Michelle (Emma Roberts), a bridesmaid, is eager to catch the bouquet, while her boyfriend, Allen (Luke Bracey), is so terrified of her doing so that he actually intercepts the flowers, N.F.L. style. Inevitably, this leads to a fight over commitment, and an ultimatum that requires the couple to introduce their parents to one another. Guess who the parents are?For the climactic parental summit, Jacobs, who previously worked on TV shows such as “Boy Meets World” and “Charles in Charge,” settles on a mode that wobbles between stage play and multicamera sitcom.The ostensible comedic bits in which the oldsters duck each other soon give way to musty monologues on marriage — material that even the seasoned cast is unable to freshen up.Maybe I DoRated PG-13 for language and themes. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Nostalgia’ Review: Leave Now and Never Come Back

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      The Italian director Mario Martone creates an expressive, economic depiction of crime and longing in this drama about a man coming home to Naples.In the Italian drama “Nostalgia,” strangers watch the streets from their windows, closing the shutters when the comings and goings become too dangerous to witness. This is Naples, where shadows flit along the rooftops and curtains close after dark. The only figure who seems to move freely through the streets is Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino), a businessman who abandoned the city as a teenager, and who has returned for the first time in 40 years.In his time away from Naples, Felice made a life for himself in Cairo. He’s married; he runs a successful business. But when his mother’s failing health brings him back to Naples, there is no hometown greeting cold enough to distract Felice from the warmth of his memories. In flashbacks, Felice recalls his misspent youth, which was passed alongside his best friend, Oreste. They raced motorcycles and swam in the sea. They committed petty crimes. These escalated to an act of murder. Now, Oreste (played as an adult by Tommaso Ragno) has become the kingpin of a Camorra criminal clan in Naples, and despite all warnings, Felice is desperate to find him.The director Mario Martone cannily depicts Naples as a city that depends on furtive criminal codes, and he mixes elements of the thriller genre into his depiction of Felice’s return. Teenage sentinels maintain their fixed stations in the streets, but their eyes follow Felice. When Felice speaks, his questions are met with silence. Doors only seem to close and never open, and the residents of the city seem to reflexively hunch, as if straighter posture would mark them as targets. Martone’s depiction of crime is at once expressive and economic, a world of danger boiled down to pregnant pauses and minute gestures.NostalgiaNot rated. In Italian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Cairo Conspiracy’ Review: There Are No Angels

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      The election of a grand imam is the backdrop for this tense drama of innocence and corruption set at an esteemed Islamic university.“Cairo Conspiracy” was Sweden’s entry in this year’s Academy Awards race for best international feature, but it does not have a single word of Swedish in it, nor is it set anywhere near the Nordic country. The film (which did not receive an Oscar nomination) is a European coproduction written and directed by Tarik Saleh, a Swedish director whose father is Egyptian. It was shot largely in Turkey. And like Saleh’s 2017 film “The Nile Hilton Incident,” it takes aim at corruption in the title city.Adam (Tawfeek Barhom), a young man from a remote Egyptian province, receives the glad news that he’s won a scholarship to Al-Azhar University, an eminent, Islamic institution in Cairo. As Adam gets accustomed to campus life, the movie introduces another character, Colonel Ibrahim (Fares Fares). He’s tasked by a military committee with fixing the election for the university’s new grand imam. The ideal cleric’s interests should, naturally, align with the state’s.Ibrahim is a shaggy fellow, but he’s hardly avuncular. He uses students as informants. When his current pigeon, Zizo (Mehdi Dehbi), is exposed, Ibrahim tells him to find a “new angel.” Zizo tags Adam. He takes the freshman clubbing, and shares a forbidden smoke with him, telling him: “Your soul is still pure. But every second in this place will corrupt it.” Soon, Zizo is dead and Adam is betraying his fellow students and helping Ibrahim blackmail his teachers. In this cutthroat environment, Adam looks more and more like a lamb headed to slaughter.“Cairo Conspiracy” is a measured but unsparing portrait of corruption perpetrated by people who, across the board, are utterly confident of their own rectitude. Its denouement offers some mercy, but zero hope that the rot depicted can be corrected.Cairo ConspiracyNot rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Filmmakers for the Prosecution’ Review: Exposing Third Reich Atrocities

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      Jean-Christophe Klotz’s documentary retraces the steps of two men tasked with gathering evidence for the Nuremberg trials.After the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, evidence of its crimes still had to be systematically gathered for the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. Jean-Christophe Klotz’s methodical documentary “Filmmakers for the Prosecution” retraces the steps of two Office of Strategic Services members tasked with this enormous responsibility: Stuart Schulberg (later a TV producer) and his brother, Budd (who went on to his own storied career in Hollywood).Part of the movie recounts the travails of documenting the Third Reich in the war’s ruinous aftermath and the challenge of tracking down Nazi records before they could be destroyed. Stuart Schulberg’s nervous letters home express the difficulty of completing the project in time for the trials, which aimed to damn the Nazis with their own imagery. To this point Klotz’s film (which has the feel of a teaching aid) largely belongs to the documentary category of archival adventure, with stories of journeys into a salt mine and encounters with the director Leni Riefenstahl and a high-ranking Soviet fan of John Ford.But Stuart Schulberg was also commissioned to film the tribunal for the U.S., and so Klotz’s documentary becomes the mother of all “making of” features. Technical ingenuity was required to shoot and light the courtroom and its infamous defendants, who watched the evidence of Third Reich atrocities during the proceedings.The trial footage became part of Stuart Schulberg’s nearly lost 1948 documentary “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today,” which was delayed as American priorities shifted to helping Europe rebuild. It’s all a reminder of the labor and risks that go into creating and preserving essential imagery of the past, even for the most notorious events in history.Filmmakers for the ProsecutionNot rated. In English and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour. In theaters. More

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      ‘Infinity Pool’ Review: Body Trouble

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      A wealthy writer succumbs to the lure of consequence-free violence in this artfully potent blend of horror and science fiction.For several seconds at the beginning of Brandon Cronenberg’s third feature, “Infinity Pool,” there is nothing but a blank screen and a woman’s whispered question. The woman is Em Foster (Cleopatra Coleman), and it’s clear that her husband, James (Alexander Skarsgard), has been talking in his sleep. Two of the words we hear are “brain death,” and, as the movie glides forward, they feel more and more like a warning.Moneyed yet miserable, the couple has come to an upscale resort on a fictional island, their marriage as becalmed as James’s artistic inspiration. Years earlier, he wrote a poorly-reviewed novel, his inability to follow up — and a lifestyle financed by Em’s father — causing frustration and marital distance. Boredom is unexpectedly alleviated by an invitation to join two European guests, Gabi and Alban (Mia Goth and Jalil Lespert), on a forbidden excursion outside the resort’s strangely fortified compound. Exactly what are the barbed wire and heavily guarded gates trying to keep out?It is probably not what you think: Cronenberg has so far been less curious about external threats than whatever danger lurks inside us. So when a car accident leaves one islander dead and James in police custody, and he is offered a horrifying choice — accept execution or pay for a double to die in his stead — his decision will either transform him or simply activate a rot that was festering all along.The catch is that James must observe the killing. And that’s only the beginning of a movie that some might consider depraved, though its startlingly explicit imagery, including a phantasmagorical orgy, can sometimes distract from its cunning artistry. Soaked in an atmosphere of unrelenting dread, “Infinity Pool” works its canted camera angles and insistent, drumbeat-heavy score to transfixing effect. And when James joins a drugged-out cohort of rich revelers, all of whom are longtime members of the island’s get-out-of-jail-for-a-price program, his self-loathing climbs in tandem with the group’s escalating brutality.Like the gloriously viscous process of creating the replicants, much of “Infinity Pool” might be funny if it weren’t so disturbing. Skarsgard is marvelous, gobbling food like an animal as invigoration and arousal replace emasculation. And Goth (fresh from last year’s “Pearl”) is a human interrobang, silken and seductive one minute, banshee-like the next. The performances sync perfectly with a movie that, in common with its titular amenity, is without visible limits; but there’s more going on here than a nihilistic tableau of unrestrained privilege. Presenting violence as both entertainment and aphrodisiac (as the director’s father, David Cronenberg, did so nauseatingly in his 1997 film, “Crash”), “Infinity Pool” probes deeper into the psychological effects on the perpetrator. It’s a theme the younger director explored brilliantly in his 2020 film, “Possessor” (whose assassin can also kill with impunity), and it shows him grappling with a more twisted and complex morality.“Do you worry that they killed the wrong man?,” James is asked after one double is executed. Surreal, sophisticated and sometimes sickening, “Infinity Pool” suggests that while the elder Cronenberg might be fixated on the disintegration of our bodies, his son is more concerned with the destruction of our souls.Infinity PoolRated R for murderous tourists and militaristic genitals. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Life Upside Down’ Review: Lotharios, Unmasked

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      Couples try to navigate relationships in lockdown in this pandemic satire.Shot remotely over Zoom in May and June of 2020, “Life Upside Down” is among the last of a microgenre that won’t feel interesting for another decade. This tissue-thin social satire, written and directed by Cecilia Miniucchi, pokes its head into how the pandemic affected a wealthy strata of Angelenos. It’s a shallow look at shallow people.Paul (Danny Huston), an erudite writer, is forced to make conversation with his trophy wife, Rita (Rosie Fellner), who confuses Plato with Play-Doh. Elsewhere in this upper-class enclave, the art gallery owner Jonathan (Bob Odenkirk) struggles to maintain his affair with his avowed soul mate Clarissa (Radha Mitchell), sexting his longtime mistress whenever his actual wife ducks out for groceries.The premise has potential as a bit of wicked comeuppance. Odenkirk, in particular, is willing to go full louse. (One throwback joke that works is that his character lazily wears his mask halfway, his exposed nose as unwelcome a sight as a flasher on Hollywood Boulevard.) But this is a true time capsule of the earliest days of quarantine, a moment where prognosticators were torn between predicting that divorce rates would spike (in truth, they dipped 12%) or truly believing that this experience might make us all better people. Ultimately, and unconvincingly, Miniucchi cedes to optimism. The score thrums with the power chords of enlightenment and, in a grace note, Fellner’s supposed airhead lands the script’s most insightful line: “Real love is to be at peace with flawed love.”Life Upside DownNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More