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      ‘Shepherd’ Review: Solitary Assignment

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      An island of ghosts and an ocean of guilt plague a grief-stricken widower in this moody horror movie.With “Shepherd,” the Welsh writer and director Russell Owen shows us how to accrue a great deal of atmosphere with very little fuss. Callum Donaldson’s marvelously icy soundscape might be doing much of the heavy lifting, but it’s Owen’s slow and steady directing style — favoring patient reveals over swift scares — that keeps this ominous horror tale firmly on track.The setup is simplicity itself. Eric (Tom Hughes, perfectly pallid and pained), a brooding widower haunted by vivid nightmares after his wife’s death, takes a job as a shepherd on a desolate Scottish island. When not huddling in a creaking, tumbledown cottage with unreliable phone service, Eric and his collie, Baxter, tend to a scattered herd of horned sheep. In a silence broken only by the howling wind and the clanging bell of a nearby lighthouse, Eric’s macabre hallucinations intensify. When, one morning, his estranged mother (Greta Scacchi) appears in his kitchen, ranting against the “ungodly woman” who was his wife, Eric fears he may be losing his mind.The creepy ferry operator with the milky eye (Kate Dickie) seems to know a thing or two about Eric’s past, but — like the larger narrative — she refuses to share. This withholding may irritate some viewers, but Owen, drawing from several Welsh ghost stories (including the inspiration for Robert Eggers’s 2019 fantasy, “The Lighthouse”) remains unapologetically enigmatic. Coaxing us to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion on the strength of Hughes’ potent central performance and the moldy richness of Richard Stoddard’s cinematography, the director displays an assuredness with Gothic tone that steadily strums our nerves.“Run, Mr. Black,” a chapter heading advises near the end of the movie. I was way ahead of it.ShepherdRated R for mental distress and mutilated animals. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Human Factors’ Review: Paranoia is the Family Business

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      This thriller, about the invasion of a fractured home, is elevated by a talented cast but hampered by a stubbornly intellectual tone.“Human Factors,” from the writer-director Ronny Trocker, is a chilly, airless home-invasion drama in which the threat is out of sight, like termites chewing at floorboards. The members of a disengaged German family — two parents, Jan (Mark Waschke) and Nina (Sabine Timoteo), their teenage daughter, Emma (Jule Hermann), and young son, Max (Wanja Valentin Kube) — are settling into their vacation house when strangers burst from an upstairs bedroom and escape out of the front door. Nothing is stolen and nobody is seriously hurt. But the film repeatedly relives the incident through each character’s point of view, piecing together the mystery and its aftershocks and exposing calamitous emotional fractures within the family.Paranoia is the point. Paranoia is also the family business. Jan and Nina own a marketing company whose new client is a politician who wants to campaign on provocation and fear. Wherever Trocker’s camera goes, it finds characters who seem to be afraid of all the wrong things. The lens skulks like a voyeur and does what it can to frazzle us, too. (Klemens Hufnagl is the director of photography.) A drunken brawl might be an assault or a prank. A locked door looks safe, but adds to the sorrow. At one point, Jan and Nina’s office windows are pelted by mysterious goo. Why? And by whom? Trocker refuses to answer, sustaining the unease until it becomes ennui.The tone is too rigidly intellectual for the movie to succeed as a tense thriller. But the actors are up to the challenge of not so much sharing scenes as coexisting within them, particularly Timoteo as the embittered wife who roils like a teakettle that has been welded shut. The most cleareyed observer, however, turns out to be a pet rat — evidence that this family, a microcosm of modern anxieties, is more imperiled by its silent dysfunction than by outside enemies.Human FactorsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘In a New York Minute’ Review: Love or Freedom?

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      This drama from Ximan Li teases time in telling the stories of three Chinese women living in a city that tempts promise but delivers frustration.The promising first-time feature filmmaker Ximan Li embraces the twists of immigrant experiences in the drama “In a New York Minute.” Based on a short story by Yi Nan that Li adapted, the director braids the saga of three women living in New York City. While their situations are very different, the malaise dogging each of them overlaps. Visual intersectional hints and an errant at-home pregnancy test link the women in ways intriguing if occasionally, forced.The food writer Amy Chen (Amy Chang) continues to suffer a violent reaction to meals a year after a breakup. Her co-worker Peter (Jae Shin) plies her with eats and her mother (Cheng Pei Pei) pesters her about marriage. A blink-and-you-might-miss-it mention of Amy’s former “roommate” seems a little coy for this day and age but also may explain why the foodie’s story feels undercooked.The actress Angel Li (Yi Liu) can’t seem to get a break, even as the career of the writer (Ludi Lin) she is having an affair with is on the rise. Nina (a charismatic Celia Au) returns from her nighttime gig at a karaoke lounge — where customers retreat to private rooms for singing and more transactional pleasures — with designer bags and cash. She stashes them in her bedroom above the family restaurant in a move toward independence. At the same time, a food truck cook (Roger Yeh) courts Nina with a gentle clarity that confuses her.One character sums up the movie’s underlying quandary: “Which would you choose, love or freedom?” Time will tell whether this is the right question, or one based on a wrongheaded premise.In a New York MinuteNot rated. In English and Chinese, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Amazon and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Inbetween Girl’ Review: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman

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      Mei Makino’s coming-of-age drama depicts an artsy, biracial high school student grappling with the guilt of sleeping with another girl’s boyfriend.Angie Chen (Emma Galbraith) trudges through multiple gray areas in “Inbetween Girl,” an intelligent teenage drama by the writer and director Mei Makino.Half-Asian and half-white, Angie, 16, is the “token minority” student at her high school in Galveston, Texas, though she has never felt particularly Asian. Her identity crisis is exacerbated when her parents announce their divorce, and her father — who is originally from China — moves in with a Chinese woman and her Stanford-bound daughter.Then Angie’s crush, Liam (William Magnuson) — the school heartthrob — appears outside her bedroom window. Liam’s girlfriend, Sheryl (Emily Garrett), is an Instagram model, but her Catholic beliefs frustrate his desire for physical intimacy. Liam turns to Angie instead, and though their first romp is predictably awful, they begin to carry on regular trysts in secret. The two fall into something like love.Sheryl, it turns out, doesn’t lead the picture-perfect life Angie thinks she does, and complications ensue when Liam refuses to tell her the truth.Amid her sexual awakening, Angie begins to grapple with feelings of guilt. Makino tracks her evolution through dreamy, meditative transitions that weave examples of Angie’s artistic output with roaming shots of Galveston. In these moments, Angie reflects on her troubles in voice-over drawn from video diary entries; they’re corny, yes, and they spell out Angie’s emotions a little too directly, but her youthful wisdom and vulnerability feel honest.“Inbetween Girl” isn’t the only recent film to center the love life and inter-cultural hang-ups of a young Asian American woman (see “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” and “The Half of It”), but it might be the most profound. Though the dialogue is often hit-or-miss, this young adult drama doesn’t simply put a fresh spin on old tropes: It takes seriously the messiness of growing up, the hardest parts of which involve accepting life’s ambiguities.Inbetween GirlNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known’ Review: Rock ’n’ Roll High School

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      This film about the hit 2006 musical is a sure-handed blend of making-of explainer, theater-kid scrapbook, and jukebox documentary.The winner of eight Tonys in 2007 including best musical, “Spring Awakening” now gets an adoring documentary for a victory lap celebration. “Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known” does a suitably wide-eyed recap of the show’s success, on the occasion of a recent reunion concert with the endearingly jazzed cast. Michael John Warren’s film is a sure-handed blend of making-of explainer, theater-kid scrapbook and jukebox documentary, doling out hits from its theatrical run (through clips) and the reunion.Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik’s musical brought a tragic punch — and cathartic rock-outs and ballads — to the age-old story of adolescents grappling with desire, secret pain, and unforgiving parents and teachers. As adapted from the 1891 Frank Wedekind play, the strait-laced period setting raised the stakes on the anguish of transgression, featuring sex, suicide and the emo touch of characters whipping out anachronistic microphones.Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff, later both on “Glee,” rose up playing the romantic leads, Wendla and Melchior, and here share about their offstage bond. There’s an atmosphere of openness in keeping with the show’s self-expression: Groff discusses coming out after concluding his run, and his co-star Lauren Pritchard references childhood abuse. When it comes to Sater, Sheik and the director of the original production, Michael Mayer, their recalled jitters feel a tad warmed-over, but it’s intriguing to hear Sater note the 1999 Columbine shooting as an impetus.If the documentary feels more packaged than the “American Utopia” film or the vérité classic “Original Cast Album: Company,” it succeeds as a welcoming group hug.Spring Awakening: Those You’ve KnownNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on HBO platforms. More

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      ‘All My Puny Sorrows’ Review: Every Day, a Little Death

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      A sister tries to persuade a sibling that her life is worth living.Late in the often dour family drama “All My Puny Sorrows,” adapted from a book of the same name by Miriam Toews, Yoli (Alison Pill) asks her mother, Lottie (Mare Winningham), if she’s heard of the poet Fernando Pessoa. After a moment’s consideration, Yoli, a writer herself, remarks that the poet killed himself. Lottie replies from over her tabletop puzzle, “Oh brother, who hasn’t?”It’s a droll little joke for a film in which self-destruction is common enough to be referenced lightly.The movie follows Yoli; Lottie; and Yoli’s sister, the concert pianist Elf (Sarah Gadon). When the story begins, Elf, has just attempted to end her own life. Yoli visits Elf in the hospital, where she is recovering, and the pair face off in arguments about what should happen after Elf’s release. Supported by a stoic Lottie, Yoli wants to convince Elf that her life is worth living. Elf wants Yoli to take her to Switzerland, so she can legally pursue assisted suicide.This is a family, and by extension a film, that seriously contemplates suicide — and what is felt by the loved ones they leave behind. The director Michael McGowan allows their gray Canadian malaise to extend into wan cinematography and drab scenery. The washed-out images leave the characters little opportunity for expression outside their words, and the dialogue is sometimes stilted and overly literary.What’s fortunate then for this chamber drama is the commitment shown by Pill, Gadon and Winningham as the struggling family at the film’s heart. The ensemble builds believable chemistry as intimate family members, and when their characters deliver their arguments for life or death, the stakes feel appropriately high.All My Puny SorrowsRated R for language and references to sex and suicide. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Black Site’ Review: Stranger Danger

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      A murderous detainee and a damaged C.I.A. agent face off in this uninspired action movie.Perhaps the most depressing thing about Sophia Banks’s “Black Site” — a dreary, underwritten thriller — is an ending that suggests a sequel might already be in the works. For the sake of its beleaguered star, Michelle Monaghan, I can only hope not.Playing the bereaved C.I.A. Agent Abby Trent, Monaghan strives to add depth and humanity to a character that, like almost everyone else onscreen, is barely more than a margin note. Assigned to a secret underground facility in the Jordanian desert known as the Citadel (the collective brainchild, we learn, of five English-speaking democracies), Abby oversees the enthusiastic interrogation of suspected terrorists. Just as she’s about to be recalled to D.C., a team arrives with a high-value prisoner named Hatchet (Jason Clarke), a man whose questioning Abby has reason to take very personally.Whether it’s beefy brutes force-feeding an Arab detainee, or Abby locking horns with a pair of sadistic private contractors, Jinder Ho’s screenplay crumples beneath boilerplate dialogue (“These people are dangerous!”) and hackneyed setups. When, inevitably, Hatchet escapes and begins offing his captors, the movie briefly jolts with shamefaced energy before settling into a tedious chase through a warren of gray concrete. This involves much running around in the dark with guns and flashlights, while a string-heavy soundtrack sweats to conjure an excitement that remains stubbornly elusive.Cheap-looking and unpleasant — too many scenes boast a sickly green sheen, as if viewed through a haze of nausea — “Black Site” is a pointless rehash of war-on-terror tropes. The more bodies pile up, the less reason we have to care.Black SiteRated R for potty mouths and plasma-splattered murders. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Coming to HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More in May

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      Looking for something new to watch? Here’s a roundup of the most promising titles coming to most major U.S. streaming services (except Netflix) this month.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of May’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Bosch: Legacy’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 6It’s not often that a new TV series begins with a “previously on” recap; but so it goes for “Bosch: Legacy,” a sequel to Amazon’s long-running crime drama “Bosch,” which adapted several of Michael Connelly’s popular novels about the Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver). A flagship title for Amazon’s newly rebranded, ad-supported Amazon Freevee service (previously known as IMDb TV), “Bosch: Legacy” follows the title character after he quits the force and becomes a private investigator. While Bosch is working a case involving a dying billionaire (William Devane) who is looking for a living heir, his daughter, Maddie (Madison Lintz), follows in her dad’s footsteps and becomes a cop — although she struggles with the grind of being a lowly rookie on patrol.Also arriving:May 6“The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith”“The Wilds” Season 2May 13“The Kids in the Hall”May 18“Lovestruck High”May 19“Bang Bang Baby” Season 1May 20“Kids in the Hall: Comedy Punks”“Night Sky” Season 1“Troppo”May 27“Emergency”“Kick Like Tayla”Claire Danes and Tom Hiddleston in a scene from “The Essex Serpent.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Big Conn’Starts streaming: May 6The writer-director team of James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte follow up their offbeat true crime docu-series “McMillions” with another strange-but-true story: “The Big Conn,” a four-part documentary about a Kentucky lawyer who masterminded a half-billion dollar Social Security swindle. The attorney is Eric C. Conn, a media-savvy hustler who became something of a local celebrity thanks to his kooky commercials and his ability to get his clients paid quickly. All the while, he was burning through wives, running multiple barely legal vice dens and entangling the witting and the unwitting in a scheme to defraud the government. Hernandez and Lazarte capture the odd turns this tale took, with the help of the investigators and journalists involved with this case — many of whom question how and why Conn eluded justice for so long.‘The Essex Serpent’Starts streaming: May 13Based on the 2016 Sarah Perry novel, the mini-series “The Essex Serpent” stars Claire Danes as a late 19th century English widow whose scientific curiosity leads her to the countryside to investigate rumors of a lake-dwelling monster she thinks might actually be a dinosaur. Her fervor puts her at odds with two men: a progressive young doctor (Frank Dillane) and a congenial local minister (Tom Hiddleston), both of whom are skeptical of the creature’s existence but for different reasons. The screenwriter Anna Symon and the director Clio Barnard explore the eerie possibilities of their premise in a community prone to superstition and to mistrust of outsiders. The show is about the relationships between smart, well-meaning people who disagree about the very nature of the world.Also arriving:May 6“Tehran” Season 2May 20“Now and Then”May 23“Prehistoric Planet”“Obi-Wan Kenobi” (starring Ewan McGregor) tells a story set between Episode III and Episode IV of the “Star Wars” movies.Lucasfilm Ltd.New to Disney+‘The Quest’Starts streaming: May 11Although it ran for only one season on ABC in the fall of 2014, the sword-and-sorcery themed reality competition series “The Quest” is fondly remembered for its inventive concept, clever execution and lovably sincere contestants. The new Disney+ revival makes a few changes. The competitors are now can-do teenagers instead of earnestly geeky adults; and the show’s overall visual style looks more like a movie, obscuring the line between fantasy and the real-life game these kids are playing. But the basic contest remains the same. The participants are playacting as “paladins,” roaming through a fictional medieval world filled with magic and conflict, where they try to succeed at various challenges. Combine “Game of Thrones,” “Survivor” and an escape room, and that’s “The Quest.”‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’Starts streaming: May 27The latest addition to the “Star Wars” TV universe fills some of the gaps between the movie trilogies, telling a story set between Episode III and Episode IV. Ewan McGregor reprises his big-screen role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, a disillusioned Jedi Master living in hiding on the planet Tatooine, where he stews over the corruption of his student Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) and keeps a distant eye on Anakin’s young son, Luke. “Obi-Wan Kenobi” was originally developed as a stand-alone film, which later evolved into this six-episode mini-series. The show should answer some longstanding fan questions about what the eccentric old hermit Kenobi was up to for all those years in exile while waiting for Luke to grow up.Also arriving:May 13“Sneakerella”May 20“Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers”May 27“We Feed People”Theo James and Rose Leslie in a scene from “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”Macall B. Polay/HBONew to HBO Max‘Hacks’ Season 2Starts streaming: May 12In Season 1 of “Hacks,” we met Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), a hip comedy writer who landed a job writing jokes for the fading Las Vegas stand-up comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and then settled into a love-hate relationship with her wealthy but demanding new boss and mentor. In Season 2, Deborah will head out on tour to get back in touch with her roots as Ava caters to her whims, pushes her to try harder and tries to avoid making her too angry. In addition to the terrific performances by the leads, “Hacks” is often a frank interrogation of the cruelties of show business, as experienced by two talented women at different points in their careers.‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’Starts streaming: May 15Audrey Niffenegger’s best-selling 2003 novel “The Time Traveler’s Wife” has been adapted to the screen before, for a hit 2009 movie. But the new TV version — created by the “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock” producer Steven Moffat — has the room to sprawl out a bit and cover more of the premise’s metaphysical nuances. Theo James plays Henry, who has a genetic condition that yanks him unpredictably back and forth through time, often landing him near Clare (Rose Leslie), the woman he marries. The couple nearly always meet while they’re at wildly different places on their respective timelines, such that sometimes she knows more than he does about what’s happening, or vice versa. Moffat and his creative team lean into the humor, tension and irony of this situation while hewing to Niffenegger’s central idea that these two are inextricably linked because they are hopelessly in love.Also arriving:May 3“Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known”May 5“Las Bravas F.C.” Season 1“Queen Stars Brazil” Season 1“The Staircase”May 10“Catwoman: Hunted”May 12“Who’s by Your Side” Season 1May 26“Navalny”“That Damn Michael Che” Season 2“Tig ‘n’ Seek” Season 4Jessica Biel as the real-life murderer Candy Montgomery, in a scene from the Hulu series “Candy.”HuluNew to Hulu‘Candy’Starts streaming: May 9In June of 1980, a woman named Betty Gore was found murdered in her suburban Dallas home, with 41 ax wounds on her body. The prime suspect? One of her best friends, Candy Montgomery, who had an affair with Betty’s husband. The mini-series “Candy” begins on the day of the murder and compares the life of the charismatic, churchgoing Candy (Jessica Biel) with the depressed, exhausted Betty (Melanie Lynskey). The “Candy” creators Nick Antosca (best-known for his horror anthology “Channel Zero”) and Robin Veith (a multiple Emmy nominee for her work on “Mad Men”) cover the ensuing criminal investigation and trial while also flashing back to the years leading up the event, considering how these intertwined lives went so awry.Also arriving:May 6“Hatching”May 10“Breeders” Season 3May 15“Conversations With Friends”May 20“The Valet”May 26“A Taste of Hunger”May 27“Shoresy” Season 1May 31“GameStop: Rise of the Players”“Pistol”Ethan Peck as a young Spock in a scene from the new “Star Trek” series “Strange New Worlds.”Marni Grossman/Paramount+New to Paramount+‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Season 1Starts streaming: May 5In Season 2 of “Star Trek: Discovery,” that show’s starship crew had an adventure alongside some Federation comrades, including Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Science Officer Spock (Ethan Peck) of the U.S.S. Enterprise. “Star Trek” fans raved about Mount’s commanding and charming performance, playing a key character from the franchise’s mythology; so now he and Peck’s Spock are returning in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds,” which follows the journeys of the Enterprise in the years before Captain James T. Kirk (the hero of the original 1960s TV series) took command. “Strange New Worlds” retains the serialized elements that have become common to modern “Star Trek” series; but it also hearkens to the older shows by featuring more episodic stories.Also arriving:May 11“The Challenge: All Stars” Season 3May 15“Joe Pickett” Season 1May 20“RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars” Season 7From left, Busy Philipps, Sara Bareilles, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Paula Pell in a scene from the new season of “Girls5Eva.”PeacockNew to Peacock‘Girls5eva’ Season 2Starts streaming: May 5The first season of the delightful “Girls5eva” offered a witty and insightful peek inside the modern music business from the perspective of four middle-aged singers — formerly a chart-topping girl group — who attempt a comeback at a time when MTV matters less than TikTok. As Season 2 begins, the ladies seem to be on an upswing, ready to record a new album after a breakout moment at a national showcase. But family obligations and the limitations of their aging bodies threaten to stall their momentum. Once again, the creator Meredith Scardino and her writing staff keep the jokes and the savvy pop culture references flying while always honoring the dignity and the dreams of these four friends. The women of Girls5Eva are often ridiculous, but never hopeless.Also arriving:May 13“Firestarter”May 19“Angelyne”“Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky” Season 3May 24“Sins of the Amish” More