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      ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’: What to Know Before Watching

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      After 13 years, James Cameron’s sequel, “Avatar: The Way of Water,” is finally opening in December. Here’s everything you need to know.What can be accomplished in 13 years? Given that much time, J.K. Rowling published all seven of the Harry Potter books — and helped turn the first six of them into movies. Taylor Swift cranked out eight studio albums — and rerecorded two of them. The Yankees won the World Series eight times.James Cameron made one film.“Avatar: The Way of Water,” a roughly three-hour sci-fi epic, is a sequel to his 2009 “Avatar,” which shattered box office records and garnered a devoted fan base. (The three Academy Awards — for art direction, cinematography and visual effects — didn’t hurt either.) It’s set for a holiday-season release on Dec. 16 in theaters.If you remember very little about Pandora, here’s a refresher on the “Avatar” plot, the phenomenon it became and the stakes a sequel faces.OK, I just need to make sure before I get my hopes up yet again: This is really, finally, actually happening?Yes.Why did it take so long?The short answer is that the dazzling — and costly — array of visual effects means these films spend forever and a day in preproduction. Also, a majority of the sequel was filmed underwater, and new motion-capture technology had to be developed to accomplish the feat.Thirteen years is a long time, but not long enough for me to have seen the original “Avatar.” Can I watch “The Way of Water” anyway?Well, yes, but it’d be like diving into the “Star Wars” franchise with “The Empire Strikes Back.” How did Han Solo get in that carbonite? And what’s the deal with him and Princess Leia?OK, got it, not optional. So where can I watch “Avatar”?You’ll no longer be able to find it on Disney+ after it was quietly removed from the streaming service in August. You can, however, see “Avatar” in theaters beginning Sept. 23, when Disney will rerelease it with remastered audio and picture.Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña in a scene from the original.20th Century FoxI don’t have time to rewatch a nearly three-hour film! Hit me with the highlights.It’s the middle of the 22nd century and humans have depleted Earth’s natural resources, so they are now colonizing a moon known as Pandora, which is home to both the valuable mineral unobtanium and a tribe of 10-foot-tall indigenous blue creatures known as Na’vi, who look like a mash-up of the Blue Man Group, centaurs, professional basketball players and armed supermodels. A group of specially trained humans inhabit genetically engineered Na’vi bodies, known as avatars, to interact with the tribe while their human bodies remain in a remote location.The protagonist is Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic ex-Marine who replaces his identical twin brother in the Avatar Program after his death. Power struggles ensue within the program about what is worth sacrificing to obtain the unobtanium, as well as the value of Na’vi life; within the forest, as Jake tries to convince the Na’vi to accept him as one of their own; and within Jake himself. He grapples with the ethics of what he is doing, which is complicated by the fact that he has fallen for one of the Na’vi women, Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña).After Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the head of the security force for the group mining the unobtanium, destroys the Na’vi’s gathering place, Hometree, and kills many of them, Jake confronts him in his Na’vi form. Quaritch almost kills Jake before Neytiri fatally shoots the colonel with two arrows to the chest. Jake, in love with Neytiri and having gained the trust of the Na’vi, chooses to transfer to his avatar form permanently. The film’s closing shot is of his eyes, waking up on Pandora.The visual effects in the film were a big deal, right?Oh, yes. Reviewers focused as much — if not more — on the images as on the plot, both explaining and lauding the use of performance capture, which was then a newfangled innovation that had been most notably used for Gollum in Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films.Wasn’t “Avatar” released in 3-D?Yes, it was shot with a 3-D camera system that gave Cameron an augmented-reality view in real time by integrating the live actors with computer-generated environments in the viewfinder. “Avatar” was one of the films that restarted a fad of 3-D cinematic releases, though you may not have actually seen it in 3-D: Many theaters didn’t yet have 3-D projection systems.What about the film itself? Was it any good?It brought in more than $2.8 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, not adjusted for inflation. Reviewing the film for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis named it a Critic’s Pick, calling it “glorious and goofy and blissfully deranged.”Both critics and audiences lauded the visuals and immersive world-building, but the story itself — which was familiar to anyone who had seen “Dances With Wolves” or “The Last Samurai” — won far less acclaim, with a large portion of reviewers dismissing it as generic or unoriginal. In her review, Dargis also criticized Cameron’s writing, particularly the dialogue, which she noted veered into “comically broad” territory at times (case in point: “Yeah, who’s bad?” Jake taunts a rhinolike creature).Jake Sully (Worthington) is back for the sequel, in which he’s now a father. 20th Century StudiosIs Cameron writing the sequel, too?Yes, though while he had sole script credit on “Avatar,” he co-wrote “The Way of Water” with Josh Friedman, who wrote the 2005 “War of the Worlds” adaptation that was directed by Steven Spielberg, and is co-writing the forthcoming “Star Trek 4” film.What do we know about “The Way of Water” so far?Cameron, who won an Academy Award for directing “Titanic,” is going back to the sea with the sequel, which is — as you may have guessed from the title — set primarily underwater. It takes place more than a decade after the events of the first film and focuses on Jake Sully and Neytiri and their preteen children. It also introduces a new tribe of reef-dwelling Na’vi known as the Metkayina.Is Zoe Saldaña back?Saldaña, who became a fan favorite for her performance as Neytiri and went on to play the green-skinned Gamora in Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” films, is back for “The Way of Water,” along with Worthington, Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Joel David Moore and CCH Pounder. Yes, some of their characters are apparently dead, and no, we haven’t figured out how that works yet.They’ll be joined by prominent newcomers, including Kate Winslet (the Na’vi leader Ronal), Cliff Curtis (Tonowari, a leader of the Metkayina clan), Edie Falco (a military officer) and Jemaine Clement (a marine biologist).Will the sequel be shown in 3-D?Yes, but good news for glasses-wearers: You won’t need two sets to take in the film; a newer laser system eliminates the need for special glasses. (Though many theaters, as was the case the first time around, do not yet have the necessary equipment.)Am I going to have to wait 13 more years for “Avatar 3”?Cameron has signed on to make three more sequels, and they’re currently set for release in 2024, 2026 and 2028.But maybe pencil in 2035, 2048 and 2061, just in case. More

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      Olivia Colman and Claire Foy on Playing Queen Elizabeth II on ‘The Crown’

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      Queen Elizabeth II was for most people unknowable, but there was one place where the curious could feel close to her: onscreen.And whether it was Helen Mirren in “The Queen,” a movie about the monarch’s life in the days after Princess Diana’s death, or Claire Foy and Olivia Colman in Netflix’s “The Crown,” the actors all took different approaches to try to get under the skin of such an enigmatic figure.Ms. Mirren told The New York Times in 2006 that she had not just relied on a gray wig and upper-crust accent but also had steeped herself in every aspect of Elizabeth’s life, reading biographies and watching old film clips to try to get a sense of the monarch’s character and even mannerisms, both on and off duty.Ms. Foy, who portrayed the young queen as she ascended the throne in the first two series of “The Crown,” said that she hadn’t been able to do much research because there were no accounts of what the monarch had really thought in those moments.“I just had to imagine what it was like, being a girl who wanted to live in the countryside with her husband and children and dogs and horses,” Ms. Foy said at a 2016 media event, according to the magazine Variety. “She was a shy, retiring type, very close to her lovely sister, and suddenly she’s given the top job, and she’s the most unlikely person to have it.”Ms. Foy portrayed the queen as distant from her children, but she said that Elizabeth shouldn’t be criticized for that. “She had a job to do, and if she was a man, no one would have questioned it,” the actress said in an interview in The Guardian in 2017.Ms. Colman seems to be the actor most affected by playing the monarch. “I’ve fallen in love with the queen,” she said in a 2019 interview with The Radio Times, a British magazine.Elizabeth was “the ultimate feminist,” she added, noting that the monarch was the family’s breadwinner at a time when few women were in Britain, and that in 1998, the queen drove King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia around her Balmoral estate in Scotland at a time when women were barred from driving in his country.“She’s extraordinary,” Ms. Colman said. “She’s changed my views on everything.” More

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      ‘About Fate’ Review: Love the One You’re With?

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      Thomas Mann’s beguiling performance drives this Emma Roberts vehicle, but the romantic comedy creaks under the weight of its coincidences.A few coincidences can have their charms, but the romantic comedy “About Fate,” directed by Marius Vaysberg and written by Tiffany Paulsen (“Holidate”), creaks under the weight of a pile of improbabilities.Margot (Emma Roberts), a real estate agent, and Griffin (Thomas Mann), a public defender, each greet the day before New Year’s Eve with heightened hopes for their dates with their significant others that night. Their split-screen hopes about a wedding proposal lead us to believe that they are each other’s person. Those who have seen the trailer know better.At dinner, Margot is dumped by her boyfriend, Kip (the martial artist and action star Lewis Tan). The next day they are expected at the wedding of Margot’s judgy sister (a spiky Britt Robertson). Things go only slightly better for Griffin. Sitting nearby at the chain restaurant in Boston where his father and grandfather successfully popped the question, he proposes to his girlfriend, Clementine (a social media maven and model played by Madelaine Petsch). Excited, she cuts him off and insists Griffin do it again at their New Year’s Eve party so she can share the moment with her online following.Fate, or something like it, finds the nice guy accompanying the emotionally messy blonde gal to her sister’s nuptials, pretending to be Kip. Misunderstandings, mayhem and the tug of a deeper affection ensue. It would all be pretty boilerplate, but Mann’s anchoring appeal — his lean into Griffin’s modesty and decency — saves the movie from a sorrier fate.About FateRated R for some randy language and a toss-off line about a sex act. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘End of the Road’ Review: Thrill Ride

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      Queen Latifah and Chris Bridges anchor a predictable thriller that also manages to spin a charming tale of family unity.A family of four traverses an obstacle course of Wild West crime escapades in the charming caper “End of the Road.” Queen Latifah and Chris Bridges anchor the antics as Brenda, a mother of two teenagers, and Reggie, Brenda’s layabout younger brother. Their sibling alliance forms the heart of the movie, and the pair toggle credibly between a combative dynamic and a considerate one.When the movie begins, Brenda has resolved to move the brood from California to Texas following the death of her husband. Her children (Mychala Faith Lee and Shaun Dixon) are bitter about being uprooted from their home. The story takes place during their road trip across the Southwest, but what begins as a quiet journey through the desert spirals into a violent chase after the family become earwitnesses to a grisly motel murder.Despite its thriller structure, this crime story offers little surprise or intrigue. With a brief running time, the movie unspools simply: each beat is predictable, and even the identity of the unseen felon is a mystery easily solved.But this plainness of plot — and a sparsity of the action set pieces that often clog up such movies — ultimately proves a boon to “End of the Road,” leaving space for the director, Millicent Shelton, to nurture a comforting tale of family unity. Shelton also demonstrates a creative eye; check out her use of purple lighting during certain night scenes. Even when the movie wants for tension, it brims with playful style.End of the RoadRated R for drugs and danger. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Dos Estaciones’ Review: A Tequila Factory’s Story, Sip by Sip

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      A woman tries to keep her family business running in this film that employs dreamlike rhythms and documentary-style realism.There is a startling moment in the soulful Mexican drama “Dos Estaciones” when it shifts from the protagonist to a secondary character. Movies often take detours, yet when they pop into a supporting player’s life or nose around the story’s periphery, it’s usually to expand on the main event. Here, though, the diversion is so imbued by the secondary character’s being, so organic and leisurely, that it feels like the beginning of another movie entirely.I’ve thought a lot about this detour the two times that I’ve watched “Dos Estaciones.” The story centers on María (Teresa Sánchez), who owns a failing tequila factory in Jalisco, Mexico. It takes a while to get a handle on her. She’s stolid, stoic and somewhat ambiguous — from a distance, she could pass for a man — and the writer-director Juan Pablo González doesn’t proffer chunks of explanation. You have to piece María together from where her gaze lands, how she walks, holds her head and stands next to others. You also have to listen to what she says and to the heaviness of her silences.The story tracks María through her day-to-day at the factory, which once belonged to her father. It’s a bright, spacious facility filled with gleaming modern equipment but no longer has enough workers to make it buzz. The reasons for its decline emerge piecemeal throughout the movie in worried references to a disease that’s affecting the agave, in the stack of unpaid bills in María’s office and, crucially, in references to foreign competitors who are threatening her patrimony. When she curses about “gringos” under her breath, it feels personal: González’s family runs the factory used in the movie.Things happen, quietly, and with scrupulous precision, and María’s life slowly fills in. Her truck doesn’t start; she samples tequila; confers with her employees. She’s habitually by herself, or almost — oftentimes some workers bustle nearby. At one point, she goes to a small party where she meets a friendly young woman, Rafaela (Rafaela Fuentes, one of several nonprofessional actors in the cast). Rafaela once worked in another tequila factory and is now looking for work. As the women chat, sliding into a natural, sympathetic vibe, María furtively looks at Rafaela and then offers her a job.As is true throughout the movie, nothing goes as expected. González has made a handful of documentaries, mostly shorts; I imagine that he’s watched his share of art films. The rhythms in “Dos Estaciones” are somewhat slower than those in contemporary industrial cinema, but the movie never drags, and González doesn’t indulge in excessive longueurs or pointless ambiguities. His most notable strategy (aesthetic and political) is to soften the line between fiction and nonfiction, incorporating documentary-style passages into the fiction that enrich its sense of place and of a people — its realism.The first scene is exemplary in this respect. It opens in a field of mature blue agave plants under a vivid blue sky where a man is using a shovel to shave off the large spiky leaves, exposing the heart of the plant, called the piña (Spanish for pineapple). It’s a mesmerizing interlude, partly because the man’s gestures are so exacting and relatively unfamiliar but also because the light and high-contrast colors are beautiful. If this were a different movie, say, a straight documentary, you might expect some exegesis to come next — cue the voice-over — but the scene has the quality of a dream, and it’s inviting.In time, the piñas are tossed into baskets carried by mules, loaded onto trucks and driven to the factory. There, they’re baked in enormous ovens and subsequently fermented, distilled and cask-aged under María’s direction. It can take up to 20 years to make tequila, an artisanal process that González reveals incrementally over the course of the movie. If he gives it so much attention, it’s partly because the manufacturing, in its quotidian textures and difficult work, offers a window onto María herself. With its modest means, painstaking labor and aggressive, industrial competition, it also mirrors this kind of independent artistic cinema.At once specific and expansive, “Dos Estaciones” can be described several ways: as a drama, a character study, a meditative exploration of the ravages of globalization. At the same time, part of the movie’s pleasure is how it avoids facile categorization, like when it takes that detour I mentioned earlier to follow María’s hairdresser, a trans woman, Tatín (Tatín Vera), as she goes out on the town, enjoys a one-night stand, talks about art and later goes shopping. As Tatín shops, she hails townspeople, and you grasp that these streets and this scene — along with the agave, the blazing sun and the rich red earth — describe, better than any genre label could, María, her world and this striking movie.Dos EstacionesNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Woman King’ and Intimate Moments Amid Epic Action

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      From her debut feature, the rom-com classic “Love and Basketball,” to her most recent action hit, “The Old Guard,” Gina Prince-Bythewood is known for films with rich character introspection amid outward chaos. That touch is evident again this fall even as she widens her cinematic playing field with the fact-based battle epic “The Woman King.”The period film follows a troop of fierce woman warriors, the Agojie, as they defend the West African kingdom of Dahomey from slave traders, domestic and foreign. Led by Viola Davis as General Nanisca, the women live in their own corner of the palace of King Ghezo (John Boyega) in a man-free enclave as they hone their combat skills. Into this environment, Nawi (newcomer Thuso Mbedu), a young girl unceremoniously dumped at the palace, begins training alongside more experienced soldiers played by Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim.Davis brought the concept to Prince-Bythewood. “When we first met with her, she wept in the room,” Davis said of Prince-Bythewood. “When a director has that level of passion and vulnerability for the work, they’re going to treat it as their child. I understood that this was Gina’s magnum opus in the room.”In a video interview, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.Tell me about how the scale of this movie was different from things you’ve done before.When I met with Viola and Cathy [Schulman, a producer] to get the job, I said to them, I felt all my work until this point led me to be able to tell this story the right way and give it the epic scale it deserved, to do the action the right way, to showcase these women in the way they deserve to be showcased, given all the things I’ve learned, not only on “The Old Guard” with action but just in storytelling. Do you care about the characters? Do they feel real to you? That’s where every really good movie starts.Viola Davis as a general leading the Agojie into battle. The actress brought the material to the director, who wept when they first met to discuss it.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesHow did this production come to you?About five years ago, I read that Viola Davis was going to do a film about female warriors, and I said to myself, “Why didn’t they come to me for that?” [Laughs] But then they did; they had come to me as a writer-director, but the script had to be written. I think I was on “Silver & Black” [a superhero project that was ultimately canceled], so I couldn’t take on the writing, but I said, “Please come back to me when you have a script.” You say that a lot, but I really did mean it.And then they came back to me with the script [credited to Dana Stevens from a story by Stevens and Maria Bello]. At that point, “Black Panther” had come out, and I remember reading that the Dora Milaje in “Black Panther” were based on real-life warrior women. People were calling them Black Amazons, and they actually had a real name, which was Agojie — that’s when I first heard about them. As soon as I read the script, I knew in five pages that I had to do this movie. It was just excitement, excitement, excitement, because the story was entrenched in truth and a specific war that happened at a specific time, then led to a bigger war against colonizers. The more I learned about them, the more I got excited about putting this incredible culture — and us — onscreen in a way that we haven’t been able to see ourselves.I’m glad you mentioned the Dora Milaje before I did, because you’re definitely going to hear comparisons to them. How do you take that?I loved “Black Panther.” Loved it. You know, for me, “The Woman King” is where we started, and “Black Panther” is where we can go, so past and future — I think it’s a beautiful connection. I think it’s cool that people can now learn that this doesn’t have to be a fantasy, that we really were these women, we have this innate warrior within us.Based on “The Secret Life of Bees” and “Love and Basketball,” you like introspective character moments, especially with women. How did you achieve such moments within the scale and spectacle of “The Woman King”?I feel like the intimate moments were as important as the big set pieces. Set pieces and action do not matter if you don’t care about the characters. So I love to take the time to allow an audience to understand who people are, where they come from, their relationships with others. The sisterhood of this film was so important, the humanity of these women was so important: I wanted to take the time to establish that so when you see Viola fighting in the Oyo battle, you care. You’ve got to invest that time. I love doing action, but I love doing two people in a scene. [Lynch’s character] Izogie braiding [Nawi’s] hair and talking to her about, “You’re more powerful than you even know” — I get off doing that scene equally as I do doing a big battle scene.Do you find that action surrounding such internal scenes can threaten to overpower them?Great action magnifies who a character is. You can tell so much story within an action scene. But you’ve got to know who Izogie is from the outset and the way she fights. That was fun to create: What is your fighting style, and what does that say about your character? To be able to do that with the actors, that’s all the fun stuff.From left, Thusu Mbedu, Davis and Sheila Atim, who told the director she wished her 12-year-old self could have seen this film.Sony PicturesWhere did you film, and what were some of the challenges of being on location?We shot in South Africa, the majority in Cape Town. We built our entire palace there. But the first two weeks of filming was in KwaZulu-Natal, where we shot a lot of the deep jungle stuff. That was incredible to be in that environment; that’s also where Thuso is from, so the fact that her first movie she got to shoot where she was born and raised was amazing for her.When we got back to Cape Town, Omicron hit us, and that was really tough because we had to shut down for a couple weeks. Scariest thing, we were three weeks into shooting. I didn’t know if we were going to come back. Was Omicron going to keep doing this, or was it going to plateau?Was your fear that you’d have to scrap the film altogether, or just delay it?I thought we were going to have to scrap it.Sticking with South Africa, let’s talk about Thuso. You said this was her first film. What did she bring to the film that you had to have?She auditioned. The moment her face appeared on Zoom, I just cared about her before she even opened her mouth! And then she opened her mouth, and I cared about her even more. She just has this thing, this innate vulnerability, but also she’s a generational talent. She’s so good.She can go toe-to-toe with Viola Davis! Like, who can do that? She did that. Thuso’s so smart about character, she pays attention to everything — detail is so important to her. She’s so passionate and so good. I loved just watching her in scenes.Let’s talk about the fight scenes. The actors did some of their own fighting and stunts in a battle-heavy movie.To each one of them, including Viola, I had to look [them] in the eye and [say], “You’re going to do your own fighting and stunts. Are you willing to do everything you have to to embody these characters?” And everyone said yes. But it’s one thing to say yes, it’s another to really do it, and I’m talking months of work. You have to have an incredible mind-set to do that. The beauty of it is that type of training is part of the rehearsal process. It helps you build character, it helps bond them. But they have such great pride now when they get to see what they did. I mean, that’s really them fighting.It amazes me that there’s this narrative that women aren’t warriors, aren’t tough. These women put themselves through so much to be able to do what they did on set, and in an action film, you should never get injured, but you will get hurt at some point — a stray punch or you land wrong — and all of these women got hurt and would not stop. I love it, because I’m an athlete, and to see that from them was really beautiful.Another thing I think that’s going to be immediately appreciated and a fact that kept coming into my head is: Little girls are going to see all these natural hairstyles, and that is huge.Sheila is the one that said she wishes her 12-year-old self had this film. And, yeah, that’s the thing we’re most excited about: How can this change the way that we see ourselves, especially little girls? Do you get to now grow up and see yourself heroically, and can you take that in for yourself? I’m really hoping that for this film. More

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      ‘Barbarian’ Review: This Rental is Hell

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      Two strangers explore the basement of their Detroit rental home in this gleefully twisty horror movie by Zach Cregger.“Barbarian,” a gleefully twisty horror movie by the writer-director Zach Cregger, is both a product of modern times and something of a throwback.Tess (Georgina Campbell) and Keith (Bill Skarsgard) meet-cute when they turn out to be the victims of a double booking scam, deciding, against the smitten Tess’s better instincts, to share the rental. The house, decked out in furniture straight out of West Elm, would seem innocuous enough, but it’s also located in the middle of an abandoned, post-apocalyptic-looking Detroit neighborhood whose only apparent inhabitant is an unhinged homeless man who terrorizes the streets.As expected from this kind of haunted-house thriller, the doors seem to open and close on their own, leading Tess to the one place any horror buff will know means trouble: the basement, where hidden passageways multiply and abominable crimes make themselves known.Cregger sets up dozens of clichés and pulls them in genuinely surprising directions, brandishing his touchstones: American horror films of the 80s and 90s in the vein of Wes Craven. The scares are tempered by a comic punching bag courtesy of Justin Long as a sleazy Hollywood director who pays a visit to his Detroit property after sexual assault charges drain his bank account.Cregger isn’t as concerned with making bold political points as he is with orchestrating a snappy spectacle that goes a mile a minute. #MeToo, gentrification, the brutal underbelly of the Reagan era — all these elements fit like puzzle pieces into a broader nightmare that lets the context speak for itself. “Barbarian” is all the more creepy — and fun — because of it.BarbarianRated R for nudity, bloodshed and sexual assault. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘True Things’ Review: Escape Routes

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      This character study from Harry Wootliff bottles the lightning of a torrid fling.Harry Wootliff’s “True Things” bottles the lightning of a torrid fling in its closely observed character study of Kate, a bored British social worker who feels stuck. Tom Burke plays a charming bloke, recently released from prison, who comes in for a benefits claim and ends up asking her out. “I will keep that in mind,” Kate (Ruth Wilson) responds, intrigued but trying not to smile.Wootliff and her superb leads fully inhabit what’s essentially an extended chapter in Kate’s life, at once pivotal and fleeting. She and her fellow have sex in a number of places; he earns a spot in her phone contacts as simply “Blond” because of his frosted hair. Kate gets attached, but (or is that because?) the man has a habit of disappearing. When he borrows her car for a week for unknown purposes, it seems to confirm the suspicions of Kate’s friend (a note-perfect Hayley Squires) that he’s a shady bounder.What makes the film’s episodic approach flow is the pulse-sensitive camerawork. It’s worth singling out, because it is the kind that is often described as “intimate” but rarely pulled off with such Maysles-esque aplomb. The cinematographer, Ashley Connor, knits together relations among bodies in space beautifully — and meaningfully — especially between Wilson and Burke, who exerts a similar hold here as his character in “The Souvenir” (in a different key and class).Wilson is able to bring a light touch to her teetering character, as we hold our breath and watch her face to see where Kate lands.True ThingsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theater and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More