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      ‘Art of Love’ Review: An Erotic Male Fantasy in Puerto Rico

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      A disillusioned college professor develops a relationship with a young Chinese woman, in a familiar and worn-out narrative.You know the story: A disenchanted writer and college professor is seduced by a younger woman, snapping him out of an existential lull and helping him reconnect with his creativity. It’s a narrative that lands clumsily in 2022, romanticizing a problematic power dynamic and casting women as mere accessories to a man’s personal growth.“Art of Love,” directed by Betty Kaplan, is a male fantasy. Called only the Writer (Esai Morales), the film’s lead is an enigmatic older man surrounded by women who fawn over him, despite his apathy. When he starts receiving cryptic messages from an admirer — slipped to him by a young woman on a skateboard, etched on the sidewalk in chalk or hidden in the pages of a book — the Writer is seemingly invigorated for the first time. He soon finds out the messages are from a young Chinese immigrant named Li Chao (Kunjue Li), eager to escape the confines of her situation. The two set off on a giggly, disturbing and confusing journey through the city, placing art installations, having pseudo-deep talks and eventually becoming physical, despite Li’s early proclamation that she is a lesbian.The film is rife with tropes and stereotypes: Li’s character is a model of demureness and subservience who serves as a mouthpiece for problematic beliefs, at one point noting that her “irregular choice” to read makes her an anomaly in her insular Chinese community. Lesbianism is treated as a matter of circumstance rather than a full identity.And the film reinforces the fiction that it is often younger women who seduce older men and not the other way around. The writing, which leaves much to be desired, underscores these issues. Tortured by Li’s elusiveness, the Writer ponders during one of his solipsistic reflections why Li “was so insistent in possessing me.” It’s a tired and male-serving narrative one wishes might be retired.Art of LoveRated R for graphic sexual content, nudity and some language. In Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 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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      Nolan Ryan Had a Softer Side. He Just Hid It (Very) Well.

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      A new documentary explores the unique challenge of facing Ryan, the game’s most prolific strikeout artist, but also shows off a gentler version of the Ryan Express.Like the Beatles did shortly before him, Nolan Ryan performed at Shea Stadium and sang on the Ed Sullivan Show.The former is a well-known and well-told part of Ryan’s life, the early days of a Hall of Fame career that eventually launched the Ryan Express as if by rocket fuel. The latter, when he and the entire 1969 Mets World Series-winning roster sang “You Gotta Have Heart” to a national television audience, is less known and one of the many surprising parts of a new documentary, “Facing Nolan,” that surely will elicit smiles.“I thought that was the worst suit I’ve ever seen,” Reid Ryan, the oldest of Nolan and Ruth’s three children and an executive producer of the film, said. Reid laughed and added: “I’m not sure the mustard suit was ever in. I know he can’t sing, but that was funny.”Nolan Ryan said that though it might look as if he and his teammates were lip-syncing, they really were singing.“We were all plenty excited about being on that show and the honor it was to be on it,” Ryan said during a recent telephone conversation. “But the highlight of the evening for me was that Eddy Arnold was there. I was a big Eddy Arnold fan, and that made the night special.”What is both charming and disarming about the film, which began streaming on multiple services this week, is the surprising humility shown by Ryan. A Hall of Fame pitcher that still owns 51 major-league records — according to the film’s count — Ryan has a legend that easily fills his native Texas, but to some of his on-screen co-stars he is simply grandpa, who tells corny jokes and who, yes, cannot sing. And he loves it.The high praise for Ryan comes in interviews with his fellow Hall of Famers. George Brett, Rod Carew and Dave Winfield are among those who offer keen insight into the challenge that is described in the film’s title. Pete Rose, too. Upon being reminded that Ryan finished second to Baltimore’s Jim Palmer in the 1973 American League Cy Young Award voting after a record-setting 383 strikeouts — of course, Ryan also led the league that year with 162 walks — Carew reacts as if hearing it for the first time.“You’ve got to be kidding!” Carew exclaims when told Ryan never did win a Cy Young.Says Brett: “Nolan never won a Cy Young Award? I thought he won three, four, five.” More

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      ‘Anything’s Possible’ Review: Teenagers’ Romance Flowers

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      Self-preservation and allyship are also wrapped up in this sweet young adult romantic comedy, which is Billy Porter’s feature film directorial debut.The high school senior Kelsa (Eva Reign) finds pleasure in discussing the animals she loves on her YouTube channel, seeking comfort in the fact that their names tend to be derived from what makes them unique. The detail sticks out in the actor, singer and author Billy Porter’s pleasant and diverting feature film directorial debut, “Anything’s Possible,” which is now streaming on Amazon Prime. Both intentionally and otherwise, the young adult romantic comedy scuffles with — and tries to unpack the implication of — uniqueness.It’s on YouTube that Kelsa also discusses and documents her experiences transitioning, and while she is nominally out at school, she feels most comfortable talking about this facet of her life on camera. Kelsa’s mother (Renée Elise Goldsberry) loves and supports her, but out of fear that her transness will define her or she’ll be instrumentalized for “woke points,” she usually avoids talking about it.That starts to change when she meets a cool, cute, and sensitive artist boy, Khal (Abubakr Ali). As romance blossoms, their relationship forces them to examine their responsibilities, and what they can and cannot elide in the real world, where there is friction between self-preservation, allyship, community and (the implication of) harmful political contexts. At times, it feels like Reign and Ali are struggling to make their charming chemistry discernible under Porter’s internet-addled but unremarkable hand. Both are able to play naturally to the camera, Reign with a bewitching smirk and Ali with pensive eyes. Yet what could be sharply defined in their performances is more rough hewed.The movie gets bogged down in contradiction, like its protagonist: Uncertain of how central its identity politics and their impact should be, it wants its stakes to be high enough to be a believable teen watch, but it also just wants to let the human quality of its story shine. Unlike its lead characters, “Anything’s Possible” never quite figures out if it wants to be distinctive or just another kid at school.Anything’s PossibleRated PG-13 for language, thematic material, sexual material and brief teenage drinking. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      ‘Skies of Lebanon’ Review: A Beautiful Life, for a While

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      A woman’s journey to Beirut leads to a storybook romance in the debut feature from the director Chloé Mazlo.In the popular imagination of the West, Lebanon is most frequently invoked as a place of ruin and strife, not romance and enchantment. The debut feature from the filmmaker Chloé Mazlo, “Skies of Lebanon,” is, among other things, an intriguing swing of the pendulum of depiction.Starring the Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, the movie opens in 1977, as Alice, her character, is leaving the country. On board a ship, she begins writing a letter. In the first of many visual surprises, the movie switches modes, to stop-motion animation, as Alice recounts an oppressive 1950s childhood in Switzerland. After training to become an au pair, she takes an assignment as far from home as available: to Beirut.The Lebanese capital is here depicted via diorama-like frames with vintage photos for backgrounds. The effect is storybook. So is the narrative, for a while: Every day Alice takes her infant charge to a small cafe, and there she meets Joseph (Wajdi Mouawad), a charming rocket engineer whom she’ll fall in love with and marry.
      Their life is beautiful, for a while. Alice’s extended family is delightful and the couple’s daughter, Mona, is sensitive and talented. The movie’s treatment of the civil war that rips Lebanon apart, and eventually shatters Alice’s world, is mixed. The depiction of how ordinary people try to insulate themselves from civic strife (a scene in which a pajama party is interrupted by an air raid, for instance) is sharp. Showing the warring factions as two small gangs on a street corner — divided by a pile of sandbags, with fighters costumed in masks and in one case a feather boa — feels glib. The movie’s openheartedness eventually wins the day, though.Skies of LebanonNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Wheel’ Review: Songs of Love and Hate

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      In this marriage drama, a young couple heads to the countryside to break out of a toxic cycle.Not many movies faithfully recreate just how awful (and interminable) some arguments between couples can feel, but “The Wheel” boldly makes the effort. In fact, the young couple at the film’s raw center — married in their teens, locked into toxic dysfunction in their 20s — could probably have been pulled out of their car wreck of a marriage long ago.Steve Pink’s short-but-not-sweet feature begins with a rescue attempt: Walker (Taylor Gray) drives Albee (Amber Midthunder) to a lakeside rental in the country to work on the marriage. The plan is to use a self-help manual. She is dismissive, then cutting; he is a wellspring of optimism, and soon a punching bag.Their scorched-earth/savior dynamic quickly spirals, and somewhat mortifyingly, they are not alone. The bright-eyed owner of their cabin, Carly (Bethany Anne Lind), lives steps away with her fiancé, Ben (Nelson Lee). She has some patience for the young marrieds, but he’s an Albee skeptic. Their doubts about their own relationship are also gently aired.What’s most bracing is how Albee’s put-downs and Walker’s persistence are largely denuded of comedic cushioning. (Pink previously directed “Hot Tub Time Machine” and was a co-writer on the “High Fidelity” screenplay.) Many similar independent dramas feel rife with hand-holding by comparison, though the “Wheel” screenplay takes other shortcuts. The movie also dips into a TV-drama style of soundtrack accompaniment that can sap moments of dramatic energy.The story ends with an ambitiously staged sequence that reaches for another level of feeling, but it’s hard for anything to match the bruising depiction of Albee and Walker’s rough road to that point.The WheelNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Reverend’ Review: A Beer With a Music Chaser

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      Get out of his way. With two decades of sharing worship and making music at a Brooklyn bar, the Rev. Vince Anderson appears to be unstoppable.When singing “Get Out of My Way,” the Rev. Vince Anderson takes no time getting to a growl and a wail. Anderson, the subject of the oft-rousing documentary “The Reverend,” and his band, the Love Choir, have had a 20-year residency at Union Pool, a bar in Williamsburg. And that brassy, organ-banging, sax-honking representative of what Anderson dubs “dirty gospel’’ has been the invocation to Monday evening gatherings.An acolyte of observational filmmaking, the director Nick Canfield follows Anderson as he jams; cooks pastrami at his home in Queens’s Ridgewood neighborhood; works with teen rappers in Bushwick; and barnstorms with Vote Common Good, an evangelical group focused on energizing religiously oriented voters to support progressive candidates during the 2018 midterm elections.Fond of caftans and straw hats, Anderson is a big guy with a burly singing voice but a storytelling cadence when sharing the spiritual journey that took him from a Lutheran childhood in California to New York’s Union Theological Seminary. He planned to become a minister but left. (He has since been ordained.)An early turning point came in college when he crossed a picket line of nuns to see “The Last Temptation of Christ,” with its depiction of “a beautifully human Jesus,” he says.The defining one came at Union when he crossed the street on, yes, Epiphany Sunday, and entered Riverside Church where the day’s sermon was “The Mystery of Christian Vocation.” The message, he recounts, was, “We’re all called to goodness and justice.” He embraced music as his ministry.The arrival of Millicent Souris was a boon. Of their first date, she of the equally splendid caftans said, “He’s got no moves. He’s got nothing.” They married in 2018. There are other amusing and thoughtful interviews (Questlove offers some choice words), as well as musings about grace. Canfield’s debut feature is infused with its own measure of that gentling spirit. It is also blessedly low on piousness.The ReverendNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘My Old School’ Review: An Impostor Makes the Honor Roll

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      A documentary uses animation and professional actors to tell the story of a once-notorious hoax.“What is a person?” It’s a profound and complicated philosophical question, posed by a man named Stefen during an interview in “My Old School.” Like most of the other people who appear on camera in this brisk, slippery documentary, Stefen has a particular person in mind, a student at Bearsden Academy in the early ’90s known to his classmates as Brandon Lee.Stefen, who is one of the few Black pupils at Bearsden, a school in an affluent section of Glasgow, remembers Brandon fondly as a friend who invited him to parties and protected him from racist bullying. Other Bearsden alums have more ambivalent memories, but they all describe a curly-haired young man who impressed his teachers, charmed his peers and wanted more than anything else to become a doctor.They also agree that their classmate, who showed up as a fifth-year student (roughly the equivalent of a high school junior) after the start of the academic year, could seem a little odd. He looked older than 16 — “he had old skin,” one of them recalls — and alluded to a mysterious and tragic family history. He also had a car and a fondness for ’80s pop music, neither of which was typical among Glaswegian teenagers in 1993.As it turned out, Brandon wasn’t a teenager at all. When Stefen and the others first met him, he was 32 years old, and the name he used was borrowed from a recently deceased celebrity. This isn’t a spoiler, even though “My Old School,” directed by Jono McLeod — a television journalist who was one of Brandon’s classmates — arranges the case into a teasingly suspenseful narrative. The hoax was widely reported in Scotland and beyond, and the news reports and talk-show interviews that McLeod folds into the story may jog dim recollections of a faded media frenzy. There have been so many other grifters and impostors to keep track of in the intervening years.“Brandon,” whose real identity comes out midway through the movie, is given the chance to explain himself, though it can’t quite be said that he reveals himself. The gray-haired, middle-aged man in a drab windbreaker who faces the camera is the actor Alan Cumming, who faultlessly lip-syncs a first-person tale, told in the “real” Brandon’s voice, that is by turns sad, strange and self-serving.The movie, in the end, doesn’t quite know what to make of it all, perhaps because of the director’s barely mentioned personal stake. In flashbacks, Brandon and his classmates are represented in brightly colored, simply drawn animation that evokes the MTV cartoons of the era. Some of their adolescent voices belong to actors and pop singers, emphasizing the gap between them and their grown-up, live-action selves.There’s a disjunction between the jaunty, can-you-believe-this tone of “My Old School” (which ends with a peppy cover of the Steely Dan song of the same name) and the darker implications of its story. The people who knew Brandon look back mostly with incredulity and amusement at his imposture and extend him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his motives. The film takes his words at face value — even though it doesn’t show his face — and takes for granted that his deceit was benign, motivated by his ambition to study medicine and overcome adversity.At the same time, surely there is something creepy about a grown man socializing with children half his age, not only in the halls of Bearsden but also at parties where he served them alcohol, and on a vacation he took with a few of them to Spain. The movie glances toward this moral gray area but mostly looks elsewhere, practicing a troubling kind of access journalism and falling back on a dubious epistemological relativism. Its fascination with Brandon becomes a kind of credulity, a willingness to accept uncritically the mystifications of a proven liar.My Old SchoolNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘My Donkey, My Lover & I’ Review: Three’s a Crowd

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      In this idiosyncratic comedy from France, a besotted schoolteacher crashes her married lover’s hiking trip and befriends a deeply opinionated donkey.“My Donkey, My Lover & I” is yet another story about a woman who ventures out into the wild and finds herself. But to the writer and director Caroline Vignal’s credit, this low-key romantic French comedy proves friskier and more idiosyncratic than its reliance on this trope of feminist empowerment would suggest.For one, there’s a donkey who is a kind of life coach, bellowing every time one particularly toxic man comes near.Laure Calamy, from the series “Call My Agent!,” plays Antoinette, a foolhardy and hopelessly romantic schoolteacher, whom we first see leading her students in a strangely committed group performance. They’re singing a love ballad, and, unbeknown to the kids and (most of) the audience members, the number doubles as a secret serenade to Antoinette’s lover, Vladimir (Benjamin Lavernhe), the married father of one of her pupils.Too bad Vlad the family man has to cancel the lovers’ retreat they had planned when his wife supposedly drags him on a weeklong hike through the Cévennes National Park. Antoinette responds by chasing after him, booking the same arduous trek in the hope of “stumbling” into her man — no matter her inexperience at hiking or her preference for heels.Like Vladimir, Antoinette rents a donkey, Patrick, whose name you won’t forget — our heroine screams it about a hundred times. Though Patrick initially refuses to walk, he turns out to be an excellent listener and judge of character.Delusionally ga-ga, but also girlishly naïve and sympathetic thanks to Calamy’s grounded performance, Antoinette encounters various kinds of people on her journey — angry moralizers, hiking know-it-alls, bored checkpoint employees who encourage her folly — and she eventually does manage an actual roll in the hay with Vlad.The film — and its blindly determined heroine — has more in common with “Legally Blonde” than it does with something like “Wild,” though its bright, beautifully craggy scenery and meandering rhythm creates an overall more chilled-out tone. Despite Vignal’s intentions, the drama feels less effective as a result — as do the bouts of physical comedy. No matter, sometimes simply pleasant journeys have their charms.My Donkey, My Lover & INot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More