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      ‘Lamb’ Review: Oh No, Not My Baby!

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      A strange birth on an Icelandic farm bodes ill for a grieving couple in this eerie debut feature.If movies had smells, “Lamb” would reek of wet wool and dry hay, icy mist and animal breath. Bathed in the sort of unforgiving, glacial light that has actresses begging for a pink filter, this atmospheric debut feature from Valdimar Johannsson plays like a folk tale and thrums like a horror movie.Maria and Ingvar (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) are a childless couple who run an isolated sheep farm in rural Iceland. It’s lambing season, and a mysterious, initially unexplained melancholy hangs over the couple’s calm labors. When a pregnant ewe delivers something that’s neither man nor beast — a tiny hybrid, revealed to us only gradually — Maria and Ingvar are alarmingly unfazed, swaddling the creature and installing it in a crib in their bedroom. They name it Ada.Slow-moving and inarguably nutty, “Lamb” nevertheless wields its atavistic power with the straightest of faces, helped in no small measure by an Oscar-worthy cast of farm animals. (The determination of Ada’s real mother to reunite with her offspring is downright chilling.) With deadpan skill, Johannsson and his fellow writer, the Icelandic poet and novelist Sjon, spin an ominous warning about the danger of seeking happiness through delusion — a peril that Ingvar’s black-sheep brother (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson), arriving for a visit, tries unsuccessfully to avert. And as the movie creeps toward its shockingly appropriate climax, the filmmakers’ grip on tone is almost uncanny.Relishing the wild beauty of the location, the fantastic cinematographer Eli Arenson eyes foggy fields and frightened horses with unruffled awe. When he turns his camera on Ada (an impressive blend of actors, animals, puppetry and CGI), the sight is at once ludicrous and strangely touching. After all, doesn’t every parent think their child is perfect?LambRated R for matricide, patricide and kidnapping. In Icelandic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Jacinta’ Review: A Neverending Cycle of Hurt

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      This haunting documentary by Jessica Earnshaw traces the journey of a young woman struggling with addiction after her release from prison.When we first meet Jacinta — the 26-year-old subject of this distressing documentary portrait that bears her name — she’s on the verge of being released from her eight-month stint at the Maine Correctional Center. Jacinta’s mother, Rosemary, is also serving a sentence there; both women are recovering from drug addiction, and both have gone to prison multiple times. Oddly, the pair — scrappy soul sisters more than mother and daughter — seem at peace with their incarceration. And when it’s time for Jacinta to leave, both women teeter from ambivalence to desperation.The remainder of the film grapples with an issue that might seem counterintuitive to the average viewer: Why might Jacinta dread her freedom? It’s not a simple answer, but the director, Jessica Earnshaw — a photographer turned documentarian who followed Jacinta over three years — responds generously by unfurling a long history of inherited trauma and regret.Earnshaw’s lo-fi, vérité approach gives the documentary the impression of a collection of home videos tracing Jacinta’s post-prison journey. Though she strives to stay sober for the sake of her doting daughter, Caylynn, who lives with her grandparents in the New Hampshire suburbs, home is with her father in a mill town bursting with familiar faces tempting her to relapse. As Jacinta gradually succumbs, Earnshaw weaves in interviews, often in voice-over, with Jacinta’s close ones that explain her early run-ins with the law, her experiences with sexual abuse, and her unwavering admiration for her mother, who taught her to fight, shoplift, and use drugs.Though Earnshaw relies on a cloyingly sentimental score to underscore the tragedy of Jacinta’s situation, this durational portrait is undeniably affecting, highlighting as it does Caylynn’s gradual disillusionment with her mother and the jarring ease with which Jacinta falls back into her old ways. This is not a happy story. The lucidity with which these subjects speak to their own mistakes and sorrows will leave you haunted.JacintaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Golden Voices’ Review: In Tel Aviv, With an Unappreciated Talent

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      Two voice actors from Russia struggle for a fresh start.Among other things, the late-1980s collapse of the Soviet state brought about both the privatization of Russian industry and the government’s softening of laws forbidding Jews to emigrate from the land. “Golden Voices,” a winning comedy-drama directed by the Israeli filmmaker Evgeny Ruman, himself a son of immigrants from Belarus, locates its unusual narrative at the meeting point of those two post-U.S.S.R. circumstances.Victor and Raya, played by Vladimir Friedman and Maria Belkin, were top Russian-dubbing artists in the post-Stalin “thaw.” (“You turned Kirk Douglas into a great actor,” an old fan enthuses to Victor about his work on “Spartacus.”) Now, in 1990, the state film apparatus doesn’t need them anymore, as it has ceased to exist. The couple had long wanted to settle in Israel anyway. On arrival, they quickly learn that demand for their particular talents is scarce.These are warm, attractive, intelligent characters who believe in art, and Raya’s diffidence upon landing a job at a phone-sex warehouse is understandable. But she applies her talents aptly: She can be a “22-year-old virgin” on one call and a jaded, bored housewife on the next. Victor hooks up with some lo-fi video pirates, dubbing movies taped in theaters with a camcorder, but this messes with his sense of artistic integrity, not to mention his desire not to be arrested. Plus he’s plenty anxious over Iraq’s threatened missile attacks — which indeed arrive at the movie’s climax. Friedman and Belkin are dead-on credible at every turn.Job tensions hammer at the fault lines of the couple’s marriage, but the movie maintains an understated “I love ya, tomorrow” tone. A pleasant sit — the kind of picture that’s moving, but not too moving.Golden VoicesNot rated. In Russian and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Knocking’ Review: Domestic Disturbances

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      A character’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise turn into a thriller about the horrors of isolation.Grief has left Molly (Cecilia Milocco) in a fragile state in “Knocking,” a new psychological thriller from Sweden by the director Frida Kempff.After losing her lover in a tragic event at a beach, Molly spent time in a psychiatric ward, and her recovery in her new apartment is touch-and-go. Kempff spins Molly’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise into an insistent entry in the horrors of breakdown and isolation.Molly lives alone but her real solitude comes from having neighbors and a superintendent who look at her funny when she asks about the noises in the building. There’s a kindly grocer and a sympathetic police officer, but otherwise Molly is portrayed as living in a mental hellscape: First a depressive stultifying stillness, her curtains drawn and house cluttered, and then a panicked spiral played up with canted angles, tinted lighting and vertiginous camerawork (care of the Snorricam, a rig mounted directly on the actor).Pulling off this claustrophobic level of immersion requires better orchestration than Kempff’s drawn-out buildup. “Knocking” unnerves more when landing on singular imagery: a bird scrambling for footing on a metal railing, or, in one wild shot, blood droplets on a cellphone screen showing a yowling fox. Milocco’s face is a sea of balled-up tension but it’s tough for her to sustain this perpetually disbelieved character within a confining screenplay that retreads its beats.What could be described as a story about gaslighting is complicated by the liberal use of eccentric camera perspectives that seem less aligned with expressing Molly’s distress than with pushing suspense. The film does strike one long, nerve-jangling note, but the style leaves Molly with nowhere to run.KnockingNot rated. In Swedish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Justin Bieber: Our World’ Review: A Pop Star Enshrouded

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      Alternating like clockwork between live numbers and soft insight dulls this documentary’s rhythm.Justin Bieber’s life beyond pop stardom — namely his personal post-teen transformation — is almost completely obscured in “Justin Bieber: Our World.” The film opens with his supportive wife Hailey in bed with him just before he plays a New Year’s Eve gig in 2020, his first full concert in three years.But this show is different because it has to be: It takes place on the rooftop of the Beverly Hilton Hotel as Covid-19 cases were surging in Los Angeles. The doc encapsulates the shared exhilaration of watching Bieber perform during this socially distanced concert spectacle, but it’s only for the biggest Beliebers. And even they, too, may wish it didn’t play out in such tedious mechanical fashion. Alternating like clockwork between live numbers and soft insight dulls the film’s rhythm, diminishing the excitement it’s going for as it counts down the days to showtime.The director Michael D. Ratner only grazes the surface of a newly grounded and grateful Bieber; the star’s heartthrob-to-husband evolution is safely teased out in self-captured vlogs and calculated crew member testimonials. Mostly, Ratner stays fixed on pandemic-era concert planning, from daily swab tests to an infected crew member.Another obstacle comes in the form of bad weather just before the show — anything, it seems, to avoid a deeper, more personal look at Bieber (though we do learn he was a fan of the mustache, just not in certain pictures). If “Our World” has anything to say, it’s that the chaos caused by a global health crisis can be a guarded pop star’s greatest diversion.Justin Bieber: Our WorldRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘Ascension’ Review: A Symphony of Productivity

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      The contemporary Chinese economy is examined in this unconvincing, if hypnotizing documentary by Jessica Kingdon.Jessica Kingdon’s derivative but nevertheless hypnotizing documentary, “Ascension,” has its roots in the documentaries of Godfrey Reggio (“Koyaanisqatsi”) and Ron Fricke (“Samsara”), whose wordless, non-narrative montages plumbed the relationship between technology, nature and modernity with a near-mystical sensibility. “Ascension,” however, takes a slightly more focused approach by homing in on the contemporary Chinese economy.The film’s takeaways are hardly revelatory for anyone aware of the fact that China is the world’s largest manufacturer and an enormous market with massive purchasing power. Instead, “Ascension” concerns itself with impressive and frequently alienating images showcasing Chinese productivity, innovation and consumption across class lines, revealing everyone from the day laborers to the middle-class hustlers to the privileged elites to be mere cogs in a ridiculously well-oiled machine.Divided into three sections corresponding to these economic classes, the documentary begins with workers in Chinese factories churning out Keep America Great products on the assembly line, then fashioning sex dolls with surprising attention to detail. The relative decency of these blue-collar workplaces, which tout the availability of free, air-conditioned lodging and the option of sitting on the job, gestures at improving conditions on par with the nation’s rise, though the lack of context — the documentary is fully observational and devoid of narration or explanatory text — makes me wonder what kinds of places Kingdon had access to in the first place, and what was inevitably (or forcibly) left out of the frame.It’s not hard to be sucked in by Kingdon and the cinematographer Nathan Truesdell’s handsome imagery, which calls attention to the beauty, absurdity, and horror of Chinese capitalism with symphonic panache. At the same time, this aestheticization of Chinese society doesn’t exactly sit well with this viewer: one wonders if this counts as a kind of tourism.AscensionNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Is Moviegoing Undemocratic?

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      The plan to distribute the art-house film “Memoria” in one theater at a time has set off a heated debate over whether the idea is elitist or inspired.I saw “Memoria” during the New York Film Festival, projected on a screen in a room somewhere other than my house. It’s a strange, captivating movie, graceful and elusive, with a distinctive pedigree. Starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who is from Thailand, “Memoria” was shot in Colombia and will be that country’s official selection for the Academy Awards. At once emotionally resonant and tricky to describe, it’s the kind of challenging movie that critics embrace in the hope that it might find an audience beyond the festival circuit.It will have that chance, though not in the usual way. On Tuesday, Neon — the art-house distributor that brought the Cannes prizewinners “Parasite” and “Titane” to North American moviegoers — announced plans to release “Memoria” later this year. As first reported in IndieWire, Neon will open the film in New York in December, after which it will move “from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.” No itinerary has yet been released, but one place you will not be able to see Weerasethakul’s movie is in your living room. According to IndieWire, “it will not become available on DVD, on demand, or streaming platforms.”Never? I suspect there will be a Criterion Blu-ray one of these days. In the meantime, Neon’s news caused a predictable kerfuffle on film Twitter, whose denizens like nothing better than a heated argument about a movie very few people have seen. The set-to in this case was between those who applauded the “Memoria” strategy as a defense of the aesthetic superiority of going to the movies and those who scorned it as elitist and exclusionary.Here we go again. In general, I take a noncombatant position in the streaming wars. I’m in favor of people seeing movies in the best possible conditions, and I’m aware that sometimes those conditions will be fulfilled on the home screen. If you can’t make it to the cinema, the cinema can come to you. Clear sound, full screen — can’t lose.I also think that the terms of the streaming vs. theater debate are misguided. How is it that a quintessentially democratic cultural activity — buying a ticket and some popcorn and finding a seat in the dark — has been reclassified as a snobbish, specialized fetish? The answer, I think, is a form of pseudo-populist techno-triumphalism that takes what seems to be the easiest mode of consumption as, by definition, the most progressive. Loyalty to older ways of doing things looks at best quaint, at worst reactionary and in any case irrational. Why wouldn’t you put your movie out there where everyone could see it?Everyone, that is, who subscribes to a given streaming platform or pays retail for video on demand. Netflix is not a public utility. Furthermore, the universal accessibility that is part of the ideology of streaming looks in practice more like a kind of invisibility. If you can watch a given movie whenever you want, you never have to watch it at all. Or you can pause after a few minutes, check out something else and maybe come back the next night. A partially read book can shame you from the night stand, but an unstreamed movie drifts alone in the ether.That is the fate “Memoria” is resisting. As an object and an experience, it resists the rhythms of home viewing to begin with. Swinton’s character, an expatriate named Jessica, seems literally lost in space and time, experiencing the world in a way that alienates her from other people and her own consciousness. She hears noises inaudible to anyone else and finds companions who may not exist. We don’t know if the explanation is psychological or supernatural, or whether Weerasethakul is dabbling in science fiction, metaphysics or some of each. What we do know is that the streets of Bogotá and the lush slopes of the Andes look beautiful in 35 millimeter, and that the sounds and images cast a delicate spell.The magic may require a theatrical setting. Abstract, slow-moving films that aren’t propelled by dialogue or plot don’t lend themselves naturally to couch-bound, distraction-prone viewing. Weird movies are best seen in the company of strangers. Did you see what I saw? What was it, anyway? The algorithm won’t help you.“Memoria” is hardly alone in demanding a different kind of attention, and it’s unlikely that the week-by-week, one-theater-at-a-time release strategy will become a widespread business model. But there is something beautiful, even utopian in the idea that another way of looking is possible, that habits can be broken. That we might have to go find movies out in the world, where they are looking for us. More

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      James Bond Saved the World, but Can He Rescue U.K. Movie Theaters?

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      The 25th installment of the Bond franchise has brought record-breaking numbers of people back to British movie theaters, but pressures on the industry continue.LONDON — By the time the 25th James Bond movie, “No Time to Die,” premiered to an audience of stars, members of the royal family and key workers here last week, it seemed to have the full weight of Britain’s movie theater industry on its shoulders.The industry has endured 18 months of on-and-off closures while desperately trying to avoid running out of cash as Hollywood studios delayed would-be blockbusters because of coronavirus restrictions overseas, and sent movies to streaming platforms, sometimes bypassing a theatrical release entirely.Expectations and hopes for “No Time to Die,” therefore, were high: Daniel Craig’s two previous Bond films, “Skyfall” and “Spectre,” are the second and third highest-grossing films ever at the British box office, and the franchise is a beloved — if sometimes bemoaned — fixture in British cultural life.“We’ll look back on Bond as being a watershed moment for the industry,” said Tim Richards, the founder and chief executive of Vue, the third-largest movie theater chain in Britain.At the Vue theater in the West End of London, branded popcorn for opening night.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesTheaters were full for the 25th Bond film.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesA moviegoer dressed up in honor of the suave spy, sipping Champagne.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesBut with pressure from streaming services and the financial toll of the pandemic still in play, it remains to be seen in what direction this watershed moment will take the British movie theater industry in the longer term.After a thrice-delayed release, “No Time to Die” has successfully ushered people back into theaters. Over the opening weekend — from Thursday through Sunday — it made £26 million, or $35 million, at the box office, not just breaking pandemic records, but also surpassing the opening weekends of the two previous Bond films. This puts it in the top five opening weekends for movies in Britain ever, according to data from the British Film Institute.Across the country, movie theaters made a spectacle of the 163-minute, $250 million-budget film. Some London big chain theaters scheduled dozens of screenings a day, and others hosted live music to entertain viewers as they waited. There were opening night parties, which encouraged viewers to dress up in black tie for cocktails and canapés at £50, or $68, a person.Jack Piggott, 31, was among the first to watch the film at the 0:07 a.m. screening at the Curzon in Mayfair, part of a small chain of movie theaters, which was for the first time putting on midnight premieres. Not only is Bond a major moment in British film, it’s also Craig’s last outing as the spy and “you might as well go all in,” he said on Thursday as he waited for the movie to start.Despite the late hour, the lure of Bond pulled in passers-by like Canset Klasmeyer, who made an impromptu decision to see the film even though she had tickets booked for Monday. “It’s a big event,” she said.Even as ticket sales rise, there are many challenges, and Richards doesn’t expect Vue to be back to where it was in 2019 until late 2023.Some of London’s big chain theaters scheduled dozens of screenings a day.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesAcross the industry, British theaters will have to find ways to recover from the financial blow of the past 18 months, which saw them take on heavy loads of debt or ask shareholders for cash. It’s still unclear how much the pandemic might permanently change consumer behaviors, as people reconsider what types of leisure experiences they want to have outside their homes.And critically, the influence of streaming has fundamentally changed the industry as studios make big budget films available sooner through on-demand services. For years, movie theaters enjoyed a period of screening exclusivity that lasted about three months. That’s being cut in half by recent negotiations as streaming services balloon.In the two years before the pandemic, British movie theaters were experiencing their best years since the early 1970s, thanks to a flow of big budget films, as well as major investments into recliner seating and high-tech sound systems. Stopped in their tracks by lockdowns, companies tried to stem the outflow of cash by furloughing staff members and deferring rent payments.At the end of August 2020, during an interval in Britain’s lockdown, Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” was released in cinemas. It was just a fleeting moment of hope. Not long after that, as restrictions tightened, S&P Global downgraded the credit ratings of Vue and Cineworld, Britain’s largest movie theater chain — which also owns Regal Cinemas in the United States — and gave them a negative outlook. And the pandemic dragged on.It has been a painful time for all, including independent movie theaters like Peckhamplex, a southeast London institution that sells tickets for just £5. It used almost all of the government support on offer, including furlough, tax referrals and a grant for independent movie theaters, according to John Reiss, the chairman of Peckhamplex.But to stay afloat the movie theater also spent money that had been painstakingly set aside for more than a decade for major refurbishments, and it could take another year for the movie theater to return to prepandemic sales, Reiss said.At the Odeon theater in London’s West End, people queued to get into opening night screenings of “No Time to Die.”Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesFor some moviegoers, evening wear wasn’t enough: they also donned masks of Léa Seydoux and Daniel Craig, who star in the film.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York Times“It’s a big event,” said one viewer who saw the film on opening night.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesBond has given a meaningful boost to the industry — in one weekend it eclipsed the total box office earnings for the previously highest-grossing film of the pandemic, “Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway” — but “No Time to Die” is still just one film. The theater industry’s credit ratings and outlook are “very unlikely to change based on the great success of any particular movie release,” said Abigail Klimovich, a credit analyst at S&P Global. There is still an uncertain path to recovery for movie theater earnings, she said.Among the hurdles is the virus itself, which is especially troubling as the days get colder and it gets harder to keep physically distant. Britain has a high vaccination rate, but daily case numbers are averaging more than 30,000. At the same time, many households are expected to face a squeeze on their incomes from high energy prices, rising inflation and cuts to benefits and other income support.For Philip Knatchbull, the chief executive of Curzon, change in the industry couldn’t come soon enough. “There’s an existential threat to cinema generally, as we know it,” he said.For one, independent cinema has long been pushed out of many large movie theaters that had to make room for the long releases of big-budget films, Knatchbull said.Curzon has a different model, in which 14 plush movie theaters are just one of three strands of the business. It’s also a film distributor, releasing a catalog of predominantly independent and foreign language films, including Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” in Britain. And for the past decade, it has embraced streaming with its own on-demand service.Soon Knatchbull hopes to be offering movies on the Curzon on-demand service from other distributors like Sony, Paramount and Universal.Amid all of this upheaval, Vue’s Richards sounds relatively relaxed. The old exclusivity period was “prehistoric,” he said, adding that he hopes the new 45-day release window will encourage streaming services to release more of their movies in theaters.“I know it’s clichéd, but I do believe we are about to enter into a second golden age of cinema,” he said. Several factors are coalescing here: The audience has returned, there is a promising slate of new and delayed films to be released over the next year and having an exclusive, albeit, shorter release window works, Richards said.Knatchbull, speaking from Curzon’s more disruptive position in the industry, also seems optimistic. “During the pandemic, all the changes I anticipated happening over maybe over a five-year period were just accelerated,” he said.Now, he said, there’s “a lot of experimentation, a lot of hurt, a lot of anger, a lot of opportunity from different parts of the film industry.” More