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      Oscars 2022 Predictions: Who Will Win Best Picture, Actor and Actress?

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      In an interesting year with a duel for the top award and some wide-open races, here’s how our expert is marking his ballot.Best PictureEmilia Jones and Troy Kotsur having a moment in “CODA.”Apple TV+, via Associated Press“Belfast”✓“CODA”“Don’t Look Up”“Drive My Car”“Dune”“King Richard”“Licorice Pizza”“Nightmare Alley”“The Power of the Dog”“West Side Story”In a novel twist, this race has become a face-off between the best picture candidate with the most Oscar nominations (“The Power of the Dog,” with 12) and the one tied for the least (“CODA,” with just three). Still, “CODA” has recently surged after key wins with the actors, writers and producers guilds, the sort of bounty that almost always points the way to best picture victory. Though it’s awfully rare for a film to win Hollywood’s top prize without nominations for editing and directing — in fact, it hasn’t happened since 1932’s “Grand Hotel” — “CODA” can bypass those statistical precedents with an appeal that goes straight to the heart. In a year when I think voters are desperate to crown a crowd-pleaser, “CODA” is the clear favorite.Still, “The Power of the Dog” shouldn’t be counted out: Netflix has spent heavily to try to earn the streamer’s first best picture win, and the film’s 12 nominations indicate broad strength across several different branches of the academy. The tricky part is that the Oscars use a preferential ballot, which asks voters to rank the 10 nominees and tends to produce a winner that consistently shows up in the No. 1 and No. 2 slots. That favors a likable consensus choice like “CODA” instead of the more polarizing “Power of the Dog,” which will have to net a whole lot of No. 1 votes to offset the ballots cast by voters who found Campion’s film a little too austere.Best DirectorJane Campion, right, with associate producer Phil Jones, during production.Kirsty Griffin/NetflixKenneth Branagh, “Belfast”Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car”Paul Thomas Anderson, “Licorice Pizza”✓ Jane Campion, “The Power of the Dog”Steven Spielberg, “West Side Story”Campion is the first woman to be nominated for best director twice, and her win could make even more Oscar history, since it would follow Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” victory and mark the first time this Oscar has gone to women two years in a row. It’s true that Campion stepped into a controversy of her own making at the Critics Choice Awards, where she compared herself to Venus and Serena Williams but said the tennis superstars had never had to compete against men like Campion had. That diminishment of the sisters’ accomplishments caused an internet furor, but the older-skewing academy rarely pays attention to social-media conflagrations, and Campion remains the prohibitive favorite.Best ActorWill Smith opposite Demi Singleton, left, and Saniyya Sidney in “King Richard.”Warner Bros. Javier Bardem, “Being the Ricardos”Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Power of the Dog”Andrew Garfield, “Tick, Tick … Boom!”✓ Will Smith, “King Richard”Denzel Washington, “The Tragedy of Macbeth”The best actor Oscar rarely goes to young men, and bankable movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey were only able to win it once they were on the other side of 40 and had paid an appropriate amount of dues. That’s why Smith is so perfectly situated: His two other nominations, for “Ali” and “The Pursuit of Happyness,” came when he was a superstar in his 30s, and now that he is a lightly grizzled 53-year-old who has proved himself over four decades, the timing is right for his first Academy Award win. All the better that in playing the father of the tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams in “King Richard,” Smith has found a character-actor role that he can animate with every ounce of his movie-star charisma.Best ActressJessica Chastain as the Christian broadcaster Tammy Faye Bakker.Fox Searchlight Pictures✓Jessica Chastain, “The Eyes of Tammy Faye”Olivia Colman, “The Lost Daughter”Penélope Cruz, “Parallel Mothers”Nicole Kidman, “Being the Ricardos”Kristen Stewart, “Spencer”Last year’s best actress winner, Frances McDormand, had a leg up on her competition by hailing from the best picture winner, “Nomadland.” This year, none of the best actress nominees come from movies in the best picture race at all, which gives you a sense of just how wide-open this field is. Chastain won the Screen Actors Guild Award for her role as the disgraced evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, but this could really go to any of the five nominees: Chastain, Stewart and Kidman all gave the kind of transformative biopic performances that Oscar voters love, while Colman and Cruz are critical favorites from much better-reviewed films. I’m going to play it safe by picking Chastain, but feel free to live dangerously in your own Oscar pool.Best Supporting ActorTroy Kotsur opposite Marlee Matlin as his wife in “CODA.”Apple TV+, via Associated PressCiaran Hinds, “Belfast”✓ Troy Kotsur, “CODA”Jesse Plemons, “The Power of the Dog”J.K. Simmons, “Being the Ricardos”Kodi Smit-McPhee, “The Power of the Dog”Smit-McPhee was recognized by year-end critics’ groups for his performance as Kirsten Dunst’s crafty son in “The Power of the Dog,” but once the televised awards shows began to weigh in, Kotsur cleaned up at SAG, the Indie Spirits and BAFTA. With his warm and funny acceptance speeches at those ceremonies, Kotsur has become this season’s breakout performer, and the Oscars can surely count on him for a winning moment that is both heartfelt and historic, since Kotsur would be the first deaf man to earn an acting Oscar. He is instrumental to the tear-jerking third act of “CODA,” and he has a personal narrative every bit as compelling as what you see on the screen. This is Kotsur’s to lose.Explore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage. Hollywood Legend: Danny Glover will receive an honorary Oscar for his activism. He spoke to The Times about his life in movies and social justice.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?Return to the Playground: For his Oscar-nominated short film “When We Were Bullies,” Jay Rosenblatt tracked down his fifth-grade classmates.Secret Sounds: Denis Villeneuve and the “Dune” sound team explain how far they went to create an aural experience that felt familiar.Best Supporting ActressAriana DeBose, with David Alvarez, in “West Side Story.”Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosJessie Buckley, “The Lost Daughter”✓ Ariana DeBose, “West Side Story”Judi Dench, “Belfast”Kirsten Dunst, “The Power of the Dog”Aunjanue Ellis, “King Richard”It’s Anita’s America, and we’re just living in it. The key supporting role in “West Side Story” has proved to be catnip for Oscar voters across decades: Rita Moreno won the Oscar for her Anita in the 1961 film, and DeBose is well-positioned to repeat for playing the part in Steven Spielberg’s reimagining. Musical performances often do quite well in this category, as previous winners Anne Hathaway (“Les Misérables”) and Jennifer Hudson (“Dreamgirls”) can attest, but if there’s a dark horse in the race, I’d look to Dunst: She’s worked with a lot of academy members who can appreciate the hard-earned awards breakthrough she managed with “The Power of the Dog.”Best Original ScreenplayLeonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence in “Don’t Look Up.”Niko Tavernise/Netflix“Belfast”✓“Don’t Look Up”“King Richard”“Licorice Pizza”“The Worst Person in the World”This is one of the night’s toughest races. Many of my fellow pundits are picking Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” but if it couldn’t win in this category at the BAFTAs despite being a box-office hit in Britain, I don’t expect a sudden reversal from the academy. Besides, Oscar voters tend to take the “original” part of this category very seriously, voting for films that feel sui generis. To my mind, that leaves “Licorice Pizza” (which won the BAFTA), “Don’t Look Up” (which won the WGA Award) and “The Worst Person in the World,” which could earn votes here in a race where it doesn’t face “Drive My Car.” Ultimately, I think that the environmental satire “Don’t Look Up” prevails because of its topical, urgent subject matter.Best Adapted ScreenplayEmilia Jones as the hearing daughter of deaf parents in “CODA.”Apple TV+✓ “CODA”“Drive My Car”“Dune”“The Lost Daughter”“The Power of the Dog”The path to best picture almost always cuts through the screenplay categories, so this race could provide a crucial sneak preview of the night’s ultimate winner, especially because it contains another face-off between “The Power of the Dog” and “CODA.” The latter film won at the Writers Guild, where “The Power of the Dog” wasn’t eligible for a nomination — but at BAFTA, where both films competed, “CODA” still pulled out a victory. If “CODA” (adapted from the French film “La Famille Bélier”) can win over a snobby bunch of British voters, there’s no reason to think it will fall short with the academy.Best Animated FeatureA scene from “Encanto,” with Stephanie Beatriz voicing the central character, Mirabel. Disney✓ “Encanto”“Flee”“Luca”“The Mitchells vs. the Machines”“Raya and the Last Dragon”“The Mitchells vs. the Machines” has won most of the awards doled out by the animation industry, and it shares an innovative elan — as well as the producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller — with “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” which previously triumphed in this category. Still, it will be tough for any film to beat “Encanto,” which has the year’s most viral song, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” as well as a popular pitchman in the songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Mitchells may have triumphed in their battle against the Machines, but “Encanto” boasts even heavier artillery.Best Documentary FeatureNina Simone, as seen in “Summer of Soul.”Searchlight Pictures, via Associated Press“Ascension”“Attica”“Flee”✓ “Summer of Soul”“Writing With Fire”This race is filled with worthy contenders, including the animated refugee story “Flee,” which made Oscar history when it was nominated in the documentary, animated and international categories. But “Flee” is up against juggernaut front-runners in all of those races, and here, that No. 1 pick has got to be “Summer of Soul,” the Questlove-directed documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Oscar voters often fall for music docs — past winners include “Searching for Sugar Man” and “20 Feet From Stardom” — and the previously lost concert footage of artists like Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder and Mahalia Jackson is catch-your-breath, stomp-your-feet wonderful.Best International FeatureReika Kirishima, left, and Hidetoshi Nishijima in “Drive My Car.”Sideshow and Janus Films“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” Bhutan“Flee,” Denmark“The Hand of God,” Italy✓ “Drive My Car,” Japan“The Worst Person in the World,” NorwayThis should be a no-brainer, since voters gravitate to films in this category that have also made the best picture and best director lineups. (Think “Amour,” “Roma” and “Parasite.”) Therefore, the odds favor “Drive My Car,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s insightful three-hour drama about grief and art, which swept the major critics’ groups and kept amassing momentum as awards season continued. Still, I’d keep a watchful eye on the wonderful romantic dramedy “The Worst Person in the World,” which came out awfully late this season and has been winning a healthy share of Hollywood admirers. If enough voters gravitate to that Norwegian film because they think “Drive My Car” is taken care of, Hamaguchi’s breakthrough may run out of gas before reaching its destination.Best CinematographyBenedict Cumberbatch, left, and Kodi Smit-McPhee in “The Power of the Dog.”Kirsty Griffin/Netflix“Dune”“Nightmare Alley”✓“The Power of the Dog”“The Tragedy of Macbeth”“West Side Story”“Dune” won at BAFTA and with the cinematographers guild, and it’s probably the safer choice. But there have been several recent profiles of the “Power of the Dog” cinematographer Ari Wegner, who would become the first woman to win this Oscar. In a squeaker, that’s who I’m picking.Best ScoreZendaya in “Dune,” which has music by Hans Zimmer.Warner Bros. “Don’t Look Up”✓“Dune”“Encanto”“Parallel Mothers“The Power of the Dog”Even more than the powerhouse visuals, the rumbling, uneasy score of “Dune” makes the best case for watching the movie in a theater.Best SongDaniel Craig and Ana de Armas in “No Time to Die,” which is also the title of its nominated song.Nicola Dove/MGM, via Associated Press“Be Alive” (“King Richard”)“Dos Oruguitas” (“Encanto”)“Down to Joy” (“Belfast”)✓“No Time to Die” (“No Time to Die”)“Somehow You Do” (“Four Good Days”)If “Encanto” had submitted “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” instead of “Dos Oruguitas,” or if Beyoncé had done any campaigning for her rousing “King Richard” song, things might be different. But since they didn’t, expect a victory for Billie Eilish and Finneas for “No Time to Die,” the third James Bond theme to win in a row.Best Sound“Dune” is nominated for audible effects like sand crunching. Warner Bros. “Belfast”✓“Dune”“No Time to Die”“The Power of the Dog”“West Side Story”The sounds of “Dune” are designed to hit you in the solar plexus, and they bleed into the score and the edit in all sorts of memorable ways. Plus, the story behind crafting those sounds is fascinating: Who knew it involved Rice Krispies?Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      ‘Infinite Storm’ Review: Climb Every Mountain, Ford Every Extreme

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      Naomi Watts stars in a true-life drama about a woman who hiked up a mountain alone and returned with some heavy, unexpected cargo.When performers sign on as producers of their movies it can feel like a statement of intent. That’s the case with the true-life drama “Infinite Storm,” starring Naomi Watts as a grieving woman on an unexpected rescue mission. The movie has an appealing, streamlined trajectory: The woman hikes up and down a mountain, pausing to save a lost soul. With this role, Watts is reminding us that she can hold the screen by herself and without saying a word tell you everything you need to know about a character — and all the while looking fantastic.Early on Oct. 17, 2010, a New Hampshire woman named Pam Bales set off on a six-mile hike up Mount Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast. The temperature was expected to hit the high 20s, with winds reaching 80 m.p.h. Bales, though, was a lifelong hiker and a search-and-rescue volunteer. So she stashed extra layers and snow goggles in her pack before heading into an area she called an office and playground. “At 5,000 feet, about three miles in,” she later wrote in Backpacker magazine, “the wind began to pick up around me.”Even for those who enjoy hiking (on level ground in lovely weather, thank you), this sounds like lunacy. The presence of a sympathetic performer like Watts, though, eases doubts even as it deepens the stakes. You’re already on Pam’s side when she wakes up at home in the gray early morning. Alone, she patters around her isolated house, which is filled with homey touches and picturesquely parked near a river. It’s quiet inside, which prompts you to wonder about the children smiling in the framed photographs. Mostly, you settle into the stillness and vibe on the methodical rhythms of Pam’s preparing for what looks like a very serious hike.The world comes into view and increasingly fills the silence. Pam stops by a restaurant, where she exchanges pleasantries with a friend (Denis O’Hare) and fills in some blanks. It’s a brief, outwardly perfunctory interlude: He tells her to be careful and she reminds him that it’s an anniversary of an unspoken event. The scene seeds the ground with questions (what is she commemorating and why?), but mostly seems construed to appease anyone who might be disturbed by all the quiet and a woman alone: She isn’t a nut, the scene reassures you, she has at least one friend and even a rationale for heading into the forbidding wilderness alone.Pam’s trek is the centerpiece of the movie, and it’s a doozy. The director Malgorzata Szumowska sketches in the forbidding lay of the land with sweeping aerial shots of the snowy mountain range that cut Pam down to speck size. Szumowska also shrewdly uses distance to accentuate Pam’s physicality, allowing you to see the character head to toe, just like when Fred Astaire danced. You see the labored exertion in Pam’s — and Watts’s — every step as clearly as the puffs of frigid air she exhales. As her efforts intensify, she warms up and strips off her shirt, revealing her midriff and the steady tensing of her muscled arms and shoulders.Watts is a supremely expressive actress and, like Astaire, a full-body performer. The image of her frolicking on a cliff for the giant ape in “King Kong” was the best part of that movie, and her character’s thrilling emotional workout in “Mulholland Drive” remains vivid. Watts is particularly brilliant at articulating a character’s inner being; she brings out what lies beneath so clearly and persuasively that you can see every thought and emotion fluttering into existence. That serves her character here beautifully, even if Pam’s goggles can get in the way. I could watch an entire movie of Pam — really Watts — going solo up this mountain.That Iron Woman trek takes a turn when the weather does, and Pam finds a man (Billy Howle) crouched in the snow and nearly frozen. She warms him up by stripping off his clothes (good to know!) and then vows to take him to safety. The going is agonizing, at times gripping, and is slowed down only by gauzy, explanatory flashbacks to Pam’s earlier life. These weaken the momentum; they’re also unnecessary. We don’t need to know anything about Pam’s past because her story is already evident in each step and every smile, and in a translucent performance that confirms watching Naomi Watts on this journey is destination enough.Infinite StormRated R for adult language and suicide ideation. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Wood and Water’ Review: The Distances Between Us

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      In this elegant feature debut about modern alienation, the German writer-director Jonas Bak casts his real-life mother as a retired secretary who travels to Hong Kong to visit her estranged son.“It’s really sinking in that time is gone, and it won’t return,” says Anke, a widow and retired church secretary, in reference to the life she led while raising a family. Even in her placid hometown in the Black Forest region of Germany, everything feels distant, rendered unrecognizable to her by the forces of modernization. “A sense of home,” Anke continues. “I don’t have that.”These feelings of alienation — and the kinds of connections that are forged in our increasingly globalized world — are subtly explored in “Wood and Water,” the poignant feature debut by the German writer-director Jonas Bak.Distressed by the three-year absence of her son, Max — whose most recent justification for not visiting are the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, where he lives — Anke takes matters into her own hands. She books a plane ticket, and makes her way to Max’s high-rise apartment. But he’s nowhere to be found.Casting his own mother (Anke Bak) in the leading role, the filmmaker uses elegant, fixed-camera compositions and melancholic long takes, opting for a contemplative mood that summons meaning from what’s left unsaid. With a kind of dissociative, jet lag-induced delirium, the film transitions — somehow fluidly — from the lush woodlands and desolate churches of southern Germany to the flickering lights and modernist textures of Hong Kong in the throes of mass demonstrations.Vulnerable in her solitude yet clearly drawing from an inner source of great strength and curiosity, Anke explores the city on her own: she lunches with a security guard, gets her fortune told, strikes up a conversation with a disembodied voice sleeping in the top bunk of a shared hostel room. Though seemingly insignificant, these fleeting moments prove nourishing.Thankfully, this film never succumbs to the fish-out-of-water narrative of so many travel movies that use international settings as catalysts for self-discovery. Anke’s problems with her son aren’t exactly solved by the film’s end, but a change does occur, and it’s prompted not by the unknowns of a strange land, but by the recognition of a common struggle to adapt and find peace in the face of life’s endless upheavals.Wood and WaterNot rated. In Cantonese, English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Mothering Sunday’ Review: Sex, Death and Literature

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      A fine British cast is featured in this mildly transgressive love story set in the aftermath of World War I.It’s Mother’s Day in 1924, and England is a green and pleasant land of sturdy cars and bicycles, repressed emotions and class divisions. A familiar place, in other words, even — or especially — if your ideas about 20th-century Britain have been shaped by books, movies and prestige television.There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing egregiously amiss with “Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson’s adaptation (from a script by Alice Birch) of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel. Pirouetting backward and forward from its highly eventful titular day, the movie samples a buffet of tried-and-true narrative offerings. It’s a love story about the mildly transgressive romance between a servant and a son of the gentry; a chronicle of literary awakening; a reckoning with the awful legacy of World War I and a foreshadowing of the social transformation that was to follow.Living through all of it is Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young), an orphan who works in the household of the Nivens, a kind couple who wear their unhappiness like well-tailored tweed. They are played by Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, who appear in just a handful of scenes and stamp the rest with a seal of highest British quality. So does Glenda Jackson, in even fewer scenes as the famous novelist Jane will grow up to be.First, however, she must cycle off to meet her lover, Paul (Josh O’Connor, Prince Charles in “The Crown”), a privileged fellow whose parents are off at a picnic with the Nivens, who are part of their social circle. The servants are all given the day off, which means they can have sex and then sit around smoking with no clothes on.Paul, who is engaged to a young woman of his own caste, goes off to join the luncheon. Jane then spends a significant portion of the movie wandering naked through the house, gazing at family portraits, studying spines in the library and grabbing a snack in the kitchen. Her reverie, and the audience’s discreet voyeurism, is intercut with scenes that point toward the past and the future. Later, she will marry a philosopher named Donald (Sope Dirisu), whom she meets in a bookshop and encourages her writing, giving her a copy of Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own” on one of their dates.Earlier, the war took many of the young men in the area, including Paul’s two brothers and the Nivens’ only son. Mrs. Niven at one point tells Jane that she was lucky to have been “comprehensively bereaved” at a young age, as if that would inoculate her against further loss.But more tragedies lie in store, and they tear at the gauzy fabric of sensuality that Husson has woven. “Mothering Sunday” never conveys the intensity of erotic passion, the ardor of creative ambition or the agony of grief. Even though it is ostensibly about all of those feelings, it handles them with a tastefulness that is hard to distinguish from complacency.Mothering SundayRated R. Naked lunch. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Lost City’ Review: Raiders of the 1980s Blockbusters

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      Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum and a vamping Brad Pitt run around in a romantic adventure that you have seen before and will see again.If you don’t have a few hours to watch the cheerfully dumb comedy “The Lost City,” just stare at the poster. Almost everything you need to know about this nonsensical lark is crammed into the one sheet: the stars, the tropical location, the Bruckheimer-esque fireball. The poster is selling sex and violence and obvious laughs, with Sandra Bullock’s sequined purple onesie doing the heavy comic lifting. And while she and Channing Tatum are the headliners, the studio has hedged its bets by also cramming in a leering goat and a Fabio-ed Brad Pitt.The goat and Pitt are among the high points of the movie, a high-concept romp about a widowed writer, Loretta Sage (Bullock), making a tortuous re-entrance into the world. A successful romance novelist, Loretta writes books featuring a hunky dreamboat and throbbing verbs. For strained reasons, she is kidnapped while on a promo tour with the cover model for her books, Alan (Tatum). He tries to rescue her and soon they’re joking through a jungle adventure featuring a lost treasure, and a deranged rich villain (Daniel Radcliffe) and his minions. Bullets and jokes fly, not always hitting their targets.That’s more or less the movie, which is basically a vehicle for Bullock to play her most enduring role: Sandra Bullock, your supremely likable BFF. Genuine yet packaged, challenged but unsinkable, the Bullock BFF has been a mainstay for decades. She’s endured rough patches, as in “Speed 2,” but has always bounced back, buoyed by a shrewdly deployed, indomitable persona that’s wholesome, sardonic and goofy, though not (usually) insultingly so. Although she can handle a range of genres, she excels at comedy partly because she can play off a wide range of performers: Like all BFFs, she makes a generous double act.That said, it takes a while for Bullock and Tatum to find their groove, in part because he isn’t as comfortable in his lunkhead role as he needs to be. He’s playing a conventional sweet dope, a cliché role he handles fluidly when in Alan’s exaggerated cover-model drag, complete with flowing hair and peekaboo waxed chest. But he is less facile when his character comes off as impossibly stupid, moments he plays by affecting a bit of a Mark Wahlberg whiny singsong. Is it homage, coincidence — who knows? Whatever the case, Tatum seems happier when his character fares better too, allowing him and Bullock to settle into a breezy intimacy.For the most part, “The Lost City” delivers exactly what it promises: A couple of highly polished avatars quipping and hitting their marks while occasionally being upstaged by their second bananas (Da’Vine Joy Randolph included). There are some accommodations to contemporary mores. Tatum bares more skin than Bullock does, flashing his sculpted hindquarters in a scene that, like the movie overall, isn’t as sharp or as funny as it should be. But while Loretta isn’t as helpless as she might have been back in the old studio days, this is still about a man rescuing a woman whose eye makeup never runs even when she does.The director brothers Adam and Aaron Nee handle the many moving parts capably, working from a script they wrote with Oren Uziel and Dana Fox. Everything looks bright and in focus, and there are moments when the physical comedy pops, mostly when Pitt swashbuckles in. It’s clear that someone involved in the making of this movie is a fan of Robert Zemeckis’s 1984 romp “Romancing the Stone,” one of several adventure pastiches made in the wake of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” While “Raiders” transcends its inspirations with wit and Steven Spielberg’s filmmaking and “Romancing” tries hard to do the same, “The Lost City” remains a copy of a copy.It’s too bad that “The Lost City” isn’t more ambitious, because a woman writing her dreams into reality is a potentially rich riff on the Pygmalion and Galatea myth. Like “Romancing the Stone,” “The Lost City” opens with a scene from a book — cue the purple prose and dashing hero — that its novelist heroine is writing. In “The Lost City,” Loretta deletes the scene because it doesn’t work, but she can’t erase the hero. He’s a fantasy but he’s all hers. That’s the appeal of movies like this, which at a minimum understand that some of us hunger for fairy tales, even those that promise the stars and deliver Channing Tatum mooning.The Lost CityRated PG-13 for bloodless violence and partial nudity. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘7 Days’ Review: Mothers’ Matchmaking Goes Awry

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      Two Indian American youngsters are set up on a date that takes an unexpected turn in this pandemic-themed comedy.There’s an endearing perversity to “7 Days,” Roshan Sethi’s bad-date-gone-wrong caper that updates rom-com clichés with cultural and topical details. For one, the date between the Indian American youngsters Rita (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Ravi (Karan Soni) is arranged by their mothers via a matrimonial website. “Her hobbies include caring for her future in-laws,” Rita’s profile reads in the film’s opening. If you think catfishing is bad, meet mom-fishing: The fibs are laced with parental disappointment.Then there’s the timing. It’s March 2020, at the cusp of the coronavirus pandemic. Ravi — who turns out to be just as nerdy, neurotic and rigidly traditional as his profile promised — arrives with masks and surgical gloves and cans of Hard Lemonade that he pours out in horror when he realizes they’re alcoholic. Rita’s homely good-girl avatar, on the other hand, belies a ring of falseness. Sure enough, when their phones explode with news of shutdowns, and they head back to Rita’s, Ravi receives a righteous shock: Beer bottles and chicken wings are strewn over a never-used kitchen stove, and when Rita takes a call from “Daddy” … it’s not what Ravi expected.The masks are off (so to speak), and the two are stuck together for a week until Ravi can get a car home. The bickering and bonding that ensue are predictable, but for the most part, “7 Days” resists easy rom-com wins. The eventual Bollywood-style happy ending notwithstanding, Ravi and Rita’s incompatibility is too real — and Soni and Viswanathan’s comic timing too sharp — to permit a mawkish tale of opposites who attract. Instead, “7 Days” takes a warm, witty look at the kinds of companionship that can emerge even — or especially — in the most unromantic, pragmatic of circumstances.7 DaysNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Superior’ Review: Double Fantasy

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      Two identical sisters reunite under mysterious circumstances in a compelling debut feature from Erin Vassilopoulos.Believe it or not, Alessandra Mesa and Ani Mesa may be one of the only identical-twin sister pairs to lead a theatrical feature since the Wilde twins, who romanced Andy Hardy in “Andy Hardy’s Blonde Trouble” in 1944. (Yes, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are — gasp — fraternal twins.) “Superior,” a compelling debut feature from Erin Vassilopoulos, casts the Mesas as Marian and Vivian, estranged siblings who reunite when Marian, a cagey chain-smoker, abruptly returns to their hometown claiming she’s just flown in from headlining a rock concert in Paris. “Kind of suspicious,” notes Vivian’s husband, Michael (Jake Hoffman), who grouses that Marian finished off his carton of milk.Outside of their matching faces, the sisters look like opposites. Hewing to the thriller’s manicured visual and sonic palette — it’s so tidy, the room tone sounds threatening — Marian slinks around in leather miniskirts while Vivian grocery shops in a beige trench coat. Yet the script, written by Vassilopoulos (the director) and Alessandra Mesa (the younger of the twin actresses by 14 minutes), reveals that the twins share one thing besides DNA: a terrible taste in men, whether a drag of a spouse who seeks a stay-at-home brood mare or a reptilian abuser (Pico Alexander) who prefers his women drugged and bound.The Mesas prove to be nimble, engaging performers. But for a long stretch, it’s unclear whether the menace of the movie that they are in is building toward anything. (There’s a limit to how often an audience is willing to fall for a hallucination.) When Vassilopoulos finally puts her characters in a squeeze, the tension remains oddly vaporous, as though she has tried to trap a thundercloud in a vice. The violence is presented with a deliberate languor that makes it feel insubstantial. Instead, it is the film’s shaggier pleasures that leave an impression, particularly its soundtrack of ’80s electro disco and a physically shaggy ice-cream parlor manager (played by Stanley Simons) who is too stoned to notice that his new employee is two different people.SuperiorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Outside Noise’ Review: Walking and Talking in Vienna and Berlin

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      Three women laze around German-speaking cities in the languid third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt.“Outside Noise,” a sleepy excursion around Vienna and Berlin, is the third feature from the indie director Ted Fendt (“Classical Period”), and his first to take place mostly in Europe. Its focal characters are young women listlessly pursuing various, indeterminate creative callings. Fendt is more interested in tracing the architecture of their ennui than considering its cause or consequences, and the movie observes their leisure with a warm gaze.We spend most of our time with Daniela (Daniela Zahlner), a literary type partial to flowing linen clothing and messy buns. Natural light filters into her petite Vienna flat, where she suffers insomnia by night and aimlessness by day. The movie begins with Daniela as a New York City tourist. Upon her return to Europe, she stays with her friend Mia (Mia Sellmann) in Berlin, where Daniela reads perched on a windowsill, strolls the city and meets Mia’s graduate-school classmate, Natascha (Natascha Manthe), who asks Daniela, perhaps inappropriately, to lend her some money.This may sound like the beginnings of a plot, but “Outside Noise” hardly revisits the episode. While Fendt previously powered films with awkward humor, here the mood is ruminative. (Alongside Fendt, Zahlner, Sellmann and Manthe are credited as writers.) Fendt shoots on lovely 16-millimeter and 35-millimeter film, and the movie’s texture, along with the women’s musings, at times recall several female-led features from the late 1970s and early ’80s: “Girlfriends,” “Smithereens” and “Variety.” Although less vibrant than those predecessors, Fendt’s film is equally committed to capturing the aura of an independent city dweller finding her way.Outside NoiseNot rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 1 minute. In theaters. More