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    ‘Interceptor’ Review: Failure to Launch

    A soldier defends a missile base in the Pacific nearly single-handedly in this clunky but enthusiastic nuclear thriller.The pell-mell plotting of “Interceptor” recalls the Onion parody interview with the excitable, 5-year-old screenwriter of “Fast Five.” This nuclear thriller from Matthew Reilly — the Australian author of numerous adventure novels — is clunky and barely coherent anytime there’s not a fight scene. But even the most stilted one-liner (“It’s the gig economy!”) boasts the weirdo zeal of someone having fun throwing action-movie nonsense at the screen.The fun is not always contagious, even for someone like me who grew up reading Tom Clancy’s wonky Cold War fantasias. “Fast and Furious” franchise player Elsa Pataky plays Captain Collins, a soldier on a missile defense rig in the Pacific. Sixteen rogue Russian missiles will hurtle at American cities if Alexander (Luke Bracey), a chatty terrorist, can disable the base’s control room with his cronies. Owing to murder and poor staffing choices, Collins must fend off the intruders nearly single-handedly.It’s a budget-conscious confined thriller with C.G.I. cutaways to missiles, a steady chatter of halfhearted rants and a big “LAUNCH” button. Pataky brings a steely determination to felling goons and shutting down Alexander (who complains about being the son of a talentless billionaire). Chris Hemsworth has a recurring bit as a shaggy Los Angeles store employee following along on TV.But nuke control-room suspense is tougher than it sounds. Where Robert Aldrich’s 1977 classic “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” pulls out all the stops for over two hours, the standoff of “Interceptor” feels prolonged. You might not mind an apocalypse if it meant a change of scenery.InterceptorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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    ‘The Score’ Review: Songs in the Key of Heist

    The singer-songwriter Johnny Flynn stars alongside Will Poulter and Naomi Ackie in an understated musical about two small-time crooks and a budding romance.The title of this small-scale existentialist musical from the writer-director Malachi Smyth refers to the bag of cash two shabby crooks have driven to a sleepy stretch of England. It is also a nod to the fact that the day’s misadventures will be partly told in song.Mike (Johnny Flynn), the leader of this criminal duo, and Troy (Will Poulter), the slap-happy muscle, are irritated to be stuck in a middle-of-nowhere cafe waiting for a dodgy exchange that could get violent. The squabbling pair aren’t in harmony about anything, though they do share a tendency to express themselves in baleful, restless tunes with hyper-literate lyrics. “I’m an idea of magnitude giving birth to itself ad infinitum,” Poulter warbles to the diner’s prickly waitress, Gloria (Naomi Ackie). She may or may not hear him, even as she adds her own layer of song to vent her frustration at being stuck serving coffee to a string of oddball customers, wishing she was anywhere else.Troy and Gloria must sing about their instant attraction, otherwise their fledgling love story would barely register. But glossy ballads, these aren’t. The songs are penned by Flynn who, when not acting, has released several albums of craggy, cerebral folk. (His latest, “Lost in the Cedar Wood,” a collaboration with the British writer Robert Macfarlane, took inspiration from “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”) The movie’s music has a pleasantly crumpled feel. It is lip-synced casually, as though the characters are bashful about belting their innermost thoughts. The songs can seem to operate on their own plane: When Flynn croons through a window, it’s almost surprising to see his breath mist the glass.The film is besotted by its own cleverness. The overwrought dialogue clashes with the rest of the movie’s naturalism. But Smyth’s very point is that ordinary folk have the right to strive for poetry — and his shaggy sincerity wins out in the end. With this promising ditty as his debut feature, the filmmaker introduces himself as a voice to be heard.The ScoreNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr.’ Review: A Volatile Band

    This alt-rock trio is made up of three soft-spoken guys who generated a big noise, learned to hate one another and then made peace.This documentary opens with a credit sequence that will immediately bring nostalgia to its intended audience of alt-rock hounds: titles in a prefab type style in garish purple against a bright green background. The effects are redolent of the D.I.Y. videos of the late 1980s. The title song is an emblematic one for Dinosaur Jr., the movie’s subject. The band’s pre-grunge specialty was infectious tunes sung in a nasal drawl, nearly submerged in fuzzy guitars squalling and squealing.Directed by Philipp Reichenheim, the brother-in-law of the band member J. Mascis, the movie delivers exactly what the second half of its title promises: The story of the band. Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph, three punk-rock-besotted teenagers from Western Massachusetts, wend their way through various post-punk combos, until hitting on a distinct and ultimately influential sound. In interviews, luminaries from the era, such as Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar), contemplate the band’s talents and its members’ quirky personalities.In keeping with their time and its mien, these fellows were very anti-rock star. Describing the style of a similarly inclined musician, Donald Fagen, back in the 1970s, the critic Robert Christgau said Fagen looked “like he just got dressed to go out for the paper.” For Barlow in particular, going out for the paper seems Napoleon-level ambitious.For all that, the trio’s volatile history is the stuff of alt-rock lore. Stranded in a motel in Idaho on a tour, their fellowship melts down; the group loses Barlow, then Murph, and years later, in 2005, the guys all mend fences for a productive and still ongoing reunion.There’s nothing here about the later soundtrack work Mascis embarks on with the director Allison Anders, or about his side project Sweet Apple; Barlow’s own highly regarded band Sebadoh is barely mentioned. The movie is nothing if not relentlessly focused on Dinosaur Jr. itself. The band is a noteworthy one. But this treatment feels skimpy.Freakscene: The Story of Dinosaur Jr.Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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    ‘Benediction’ Review: A Poet’s Life, in Love and War

    Terence Davies’s latest film is a biography of Siegfried Sassoon, whose writing about World War I changed British literature.Since his first feature, “Distant Voices, Still Lives” in 1988, the British writer and director Terence Davies has made a handful of films that can be described — owing to their emotional subtlety and formal precision — as poetic. Recently, he has been making films about poets, which isn’t quite the same thing.“Biopic” is a clumsy word for a prosaic genre, and screen biographies of writers are more apt to be literal than lyrical. I thought “A Quiet Passion,” Davies’s 2017 rendering of the life of Emily Dickinson, was an exception, as attentive to its subject’s inner weather as to the details of her time and place. Some of Dickinson’s admirers felt otherwise, but I still insist that the movie and Cynthia Nixon’s central performance brought the poet’s idiosyncratic, indelible genius to life.“Benediction,” which is about the British poet Siegfried Sassoon, is in some ways a more conventional affair. Sassoon, whose life stretched from the late Victorian era into the 1960s, is primarily remembered as one of the War Poets. Their experience in the trenches of World War I inspired verse that changed the diction and direction of English literature, and Davies powerfully begins the film with archival images of slaughter accompanied by Sassoon’s unsparing words, drawn from poems, prose memoirs and letters.Similar words and images recur at various points in a narrative that occasionally jumps forward in time but that mostly recounts the chronology of Sassoon’s postwar life. He is played in his 30s and 40s by Jack Lowden and as an older, unhappier man by Peter Capaldi, whose resemblance to late photographs of Sassoon is uncanny.Having already acquired some fame as a writer while the war is still going on, Sassoon circulates a scathing antiwar statement in which he refuses further service on the grounds that “the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.” Expecting a court-martial and prepared, at least in principle, to face a firing squad, he is instead called before a medical board, thanks to the intervention of a well-placed older friend named Robbie Ross (Simon Russell Beale). His pacifism is classified as a psychological disorder, and he is sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, where he discloses his homosexuality to a sympathetic doctor (Julian Sands) and befriends Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson), a younger poet who will be killed in action a short time before the Armistice.Sassoon’s subsequent social and romantic activities occupy much of the second half of “Benediction,” which means that his writing fades into the background. The portrait of an anguished artist becomes a somewhat familiar tableau of Britain between the wars, with Bright Young Things coming and going and speaking in beautifully turned, terribly cruel phrases. (“That was perhaps a bit too acerbic,” Sassoon is told by the victim of one of his barbs. “Mordant would be a more accurate word,” Sassoon replies.) Winston Churchill is mentioned as a chap one knows. Edith Sitwell, Lady Ottoline Morrell and T.E. Lawrence all make brief appearances.Davies provides an unhurried tour of the privileged, educated gay circles that helped set the tone of the time. I realize that “gay” is a bit of an anachronism here, but many of Sassoon’s friends and lovers — including Ross, the composer and matinee idol Ivor Novello (Jeremy Irvine) and the legendary dilettante Stephen Tennant (Calam Lynch) — are conscious of belonging to a tradition that entwines sexuality with cultural attitudes and artistic pursuits. Oscar Wilde is invoked both as an idol and, because of his prosecution in the 1890s, as a cautionary figure.Sassoon and his cohort are committed to discretion, irony and the occasional strategic compromise with heterosexuality. Sassoon’s marriage to Hester Gatty (Kate Phillips, and then Gemma Jones) is affectionate and without illusions, producing a son named George (Richard Goulding), who endures the cranky conservatism of his father’s old age.Sassoon’s complaints about rock ’n’ roll and his conversion to Roman Catholicism feel more like duly noted biographical facts than expressions of character. Even the more intimate passages in “Benediction” — the affairs with Novello and Tennant, and the heartache that follows the end of each one — are more restrained than passionate. In part, this is a reflection of Sassoon’s own temperament, which he tells the doctor at Craiglockhart is marked by circumspection and detachment. But the film never quite conjures a link between the life and the work.Except for an extraordinary pair of scenes involving not Sassoon’s work, but Wilfred Owen’s. Sassoon confesses to looking down on Owen when they first met, for reasons of class as well as age, but comes to regard him as “the greater poet.” History has mostly upheld this judgment, and Davies brings it home with astonishing force.In the hospital, Owen asks Sassoon for his opinion of a poem called “Disabled,” which Sassoon pronounces brilliant after reading it silently. The audience will not hear Owen’s words until the final scene of the film, when the poem’s wrenching account of a young man maimed in battle is impressionistically depicted onscreen. Up until that moment, we’ve thought about the war, heard it rendered in poetry and caught glimpses of its brutality. And then, through the filter of Sassoon’s tormented memory, we feel it.BenedictionRated PG-13. Running time: 2 hour 17 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘18½’ Review: Watergate, Through a Fog

    This political thriller creates a fictional account of a lost Watergate tape by a White House typist.On June 20, 1972, three days after the arrests at the Watergate offices, President Richard Nixon held a meeting with his then chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. Nixon recorded his meetings, and the recording from that day became infamous when the White House informed federal judges that an 18 ½ minute tape had been erased. In the fictionalized and foggy political thriller “18 ½,” a typist in the Nixon White House, Connie (Willa Fitzgerald), discovers a rerecording of the missing tape, and she attempts to ferry the recording to a reporter, Paul (John Magaro).
    Concerned for her career, Connie insists Paul remain with her when he listens to the tape. It’s a plot contrivance that sends the characters through a heady maze of 1970s stereotypes as they pursue both a reel-to-reel record player and privacy to listen. They’re directed by a group of hippie types to a motel, where they masquerade as a couple to convince the fast-talking manager, Jack (Richard Kind), to book a room. The pair then track down a record player through their bossa nova-playing neighbors, a swinging couple who take a greater interest in Connie and Paul than the two might have hoped.The director, Dan Mirvish, makes visual references to ‘70s thrillers like “The Conversation,” which used long-distance zooms to suggest the era’s paranoia. But this isn’t quite a reverent recreation of past glories. The light seems to blur the image, leaving the film’s period appropriate wood paneling and flannel details in a haze. This cloudy cinematography, along with the taste for period kitsch, give the impression of a stoner’s memory of ‘70s cinema. The film’s referential pleasures feel insubstantial, diminished by the direct comparison to more meaningful works of the period.18½Rated PG-13 for brief violence and sexual content. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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    ‘Hollywood Stargirl’ Review: Starting Anew in La La Land

    Julia Hart’s bubbly sequel picks up the story in summertime and reframes around Stargirl, a character who in the first movie was auxiliary by design.After I read Jerry Spinelli’s best-selling Y.A. book “Stargirl,” titled for a quirky free spirit who spices up life for a diffident boy, I privately logged the name as a shorthand for stock female characters conjured to make men feel alive.Julia Hart’s movie adaptation of “Stargirl” reproduced the novel’s more noxious clichés by locking us inside the male protagonist’s point of view and according Stargirl (Grace VanderWaal), a do-gooder ukulelist in suspenders, all the interiority of a decorative urn.Loyal fans may then be startled to see that Hart’s sequel, “Hollywood Stargirl” (on Disney+), takes a hard left turn into the carefree young lady’s world. The movie picks up during the summer before Stargirl’s senior year, when her costume designer mother (Judy Greer) relocates them to Los Angeles. Scarcely a day passes in the new city before the flower child meets the wholesome Evan (Elijah Richardson), an aspiring filmmaker who casts her as his co-star in a low-budget musical.“Hollywood Stargirl” could be seen as a filmmaking exercise. How do you build a story around a character who was auxiliary by design? Hart’s solutions are manifold, but her most effective one is to quash the grating altruism that drove Stargirl in the first movie. In its place is a more balanced, authentic charisma. Numerous breathy pop song performances — including one where Stargirl duets with a washed-up musician played by Uma Thurman — leave little time for emotional development, but then again, when you’re starting out as a stargirl, how much personal growth do you need?Hollywood StargirlRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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    ‘Fire Island’ Review: Oh, the Summer Nights

    The quips are almost as hot as the sexual tension in Andrew Ahn and Joel Kim Booster’s loosely paced but endearing romantic comedy.The fairly banal title, which refers to the famously hedonistic New York gay haven, reflects the degree of originality deployed by Andrew Ahn’s “Fire Island.” This, after all, is a rom-com that deploys not one but three genre staples — a party game (here a session of Heads Up!), a karaoke outing (Britney, naturally) and a dance scene — and where every plot development feels preordained.Yet it’s also impossible to resist a movie that uses “Legally Blonde” as a verb and in which two men adorably bond over Alice Munro short stories. Noah (Joel Kim Booster, who also wrote the screenplay and has a Netflix special due June 21) and his similarly underfunded buddies have descended on the Pines for a last week of summer fun before their host (Margaret Cho) sells her house. Noah is busy playing wingman for his friend Howie (“SNL” cast member Bowen Yang), a hopeless romantic who fears he will never find a boyfriend, while himself steering clear of emotional attachments — until he develops a suspiciously intense antipathy for the uptight, taciturn lawyer Will (the fetching Conrad Ricamora, from “How to Get Away With Murder”).The movie lightly recasts Jane Austen tropes, with Noah as the reluctant anchor of friends fumbling to form attachments beyond their own cozy circle, while the social commentary is updated to barbs at Fire Island’s racial, financial and sexual stratification. The pace is slacker than it should be, but still, “Fire Island” fits neatly alongside Kristen Stewart’s lesbian Christmas movie “Happiest Season” on Hulu’s rom-com shelf.Fire IslandRated R for sexual shenanigans. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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    ‘Miracle’ Review: A Spiritual Investigation

    In this drama set in Romania, when an incident occurs with a novice from a rural convent, a detective seeks answers.The new movie “Miracle,” set in Romania, is technically a sequel, part of a planned trilogy from the writer-director Bogdan George Apetri. The first feature, “Unidentified,” also a police story, was shot simultaneously and still hasn’t opened in the United States. In a device that owes something to serialized literature and TV, and to filmmakers like Krzysztof Kieslowski, the principal characters of “Unidentified” turn up in walk-ons in “Miracle” and vice versa, and certain motifs (a ticking clock) recur.The first 45 minutes or so of “Miracle” follow Cristina Tofan (Ioana Bugarin), a novice from a rural convent, who in one of many smoothly executed long takes furtively exits the convent and hops into a cab. The driver, Albu (Valeriu Andriuta), is the brother of a nun who has arranged Cristina’s transportation to a hospital. But the return trip goes violently wrong, in another sequence that the filmmaker captures in an uninterrupted take, with particularly horrifying attention to sound.Like “Unidentified,” which broadly concerns a reprobate detective’s efforts to frame a Roma security guard, “Miracle” sometimes suggests a low-boil version of Abel Ferrara’s “Bad Lieutenant.” In its second hour, an ethically flexible inspector, Marius Preda (Emanuel Parvu), investigates the incident that caps the first part and grows steadily more enraged at his impotence in securing justice.The film continually invokes tensions between secular and religious elements in Romania, and the concept of miracles turns up in a few contexts. Framed by scenes of weeping, the narrative does not entirely pull itself into a satisfying arc, but the film nevertheless unfolds with dexterity and suspense.MiracleNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters. More