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      ‘Come From Away’ Review: Looking for Light in Somber Times

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      The filmed version of this Broadway musical lands on Apple TV+ to deliver hope and kindness.The capture of the Broadway musical “Come From Away” that is now streaming on Apple TV+ is almost impossible to hate. Unless, that is, you have an aversion to traditional Irish music and nice people.The first permeates the score, a tribute to the cultural heritage of Newfoundland where the show is set — and where the second find themselves. The ensemble, many from the original Broadway cast, deftly toggles between portraying passengers aboard planes diverted into the Gander airport on Sept. 11, 2001, and the kindly Canadians who welcomed them to their isolated province on the Atlantic coast.Hatched by the Canadian team of Irene Sankoff and David Hein and inspired by real people, “Come From Away” describes, in a series of vignettes, the surreal few days experienced by the stranded visitors and their hosts. Both were shellshocked by the situation and somewhat befuddled by each other, yet they made the most of the circumstances in a demonstration of tolerance and human decency.You would have to be green and hate Christmas to wish ill on this story. At the same time, the show does not elicit passionate feelings of any kind: It is … nice.Certainly, there is a double emotion involved in this Apple release: It coincides with the 20th anniversary of 9/11, and was filmed in front of an invited audience at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater back in May, when all the other Broadway theaters remained shuttered. Christopher Ashley, whose work on the stage version earned him the 2017 Tony Award for best direction of a musical, acquits himself well in the transition to video. But this amiable production’s temperature never rises above lukewarm: good sentiments are, unfortunately, difficult to dramatize, an issue compounded by a score that can feel like aural wallpaper.The best songs, which rely less on Celtic clichés, surface toward the end, including Jenn Colella’s belted ballad “Me and the Sky” and the rousing number “Somewhere in the Middle of Nowhere.” It’s a fine send-off to folks we feel we got to know, at least a little.Come From AwayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Azor’ Review: A World on Fire, Discreetly

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      In this low-key shocker set in Argentina in 1980, a Swiss banker travels through a world that he doesn’t seem to know is ablaze.Tendrils of menace creep through the unnerving drama “Azor,” snaking through every room and scene. It’s 1980 and a Swiss private banker and his wife are traveling through Argentina, taking in the sights while he tries to clean up a mess left by a missing colleague. Danger is everywhere — people have disappeared, are disappearing — though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from the mansions they visit, where the Swiss interlopers exchange pleasantries with the Buenos Aires elite, some of whom voice vague warnings. Others just smile knowingly, betraying their loyalties.A harrowing vision of evil from the inside, the movie tracks the banker, Yvan (Fabrizio Rongione), as he journeys through Argentina several years after armed forces overthrew the government of President Isabel Martínez de Perón. For most of Yvan’s clients, life seems to go on as before, with little to disrupt their cosseted indolence. With the junta ruling the country, the wealthy, murmuring about nothing much, sip drinks by their pools, tended by fleets of servants. Again and again, Yvan apologizes for the behavior of his missing colleague, René Keys (seen briefly in the opening), a confounding figure intensely disliked by some yet beloved by others.Written and directed by Andreas Fontana, making a formally precise, tonally perfect feature debut, “Azor” is a low-key shocker. It has you in its cool grip from the opening shot of a shambolic-looking Keys standing in suit and tie before a flat, blurred backdrop of jungle greenery. As the camera holds on him, he seems more ill at ease and his laughing smiles give way to unexplained agitation. He suddenly looks like a man searching for an exit. As the story unfolds, this perturbation suffuses the movie. It shapes every gesture, sidelong glance and oblique comment, turning an outwardly routine business trip into a mystery unlocked only through Keys.With its swampy air of unease and the figure of the enigmatic missing man, the key to the story as it were, “Azor” vaguely evokes films like Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” (written by Graham Greene), though without the narrative pulse and concerns or Hollywood glamour of that cloak-and-dagger thriller. (The name Keys recalls that of Edward G. Robinson’s claims adjuster, Keyes, in “Double Indemnity.”) Certainly “Azor” has a smattering of suspense-film essentials: hushed conversations, clouds of cigarette smoke, heavily armed soldiers. For his part, the colorless Yvan, with his stiff politesse and old-world firm, presents the very picture of a useful patsy.Fontana, who is Swiss but has lived in Argentina, takes a sideways, insistently oblique approach to intrigue. Rather than stuffing the movie with incidents, with clever turns and sexy characters, empty moralizing and political grandstanding, he has whittled it to the bone. There are no louche, swaggering spies in “Azor,” no dashing heroes, no swoony villains and very little of what could pass for Hollywood-style action. There is instead a lot of seemingly innocuous small talk, the kind often tucked in amid a movie’s narrative leaps forward. There’s chatter about Swiss schools, fine hotels, family castles, the good old days — all of which helps maintain the veneer of normalcy.Terrible things happen. Yet, for the most part, Yvan’s clients, with their money, landed estates and thoroughbreds seem largely indifferent to the evil informing their lives. The land, of course, was stolen long ago, though no one, Fontana included, puts it like that. Instead, when a sympathetic client (Juan Trench) takes Yvan and his wife, Ines (Stéphanie Cléau), on a ride, he speaks about a stand of trees planted by his great-grandfather. The client’s father called the area the grand boulevards, invoking Haussmann, the 19th-century French official who, in service of Louis Napoleon, remade Paris by razing slums and forcing out the poor. Fontana has landed his blow; the group rides on.Fontana doesn’t bludgeon you with explanations, declare his allegiances (they’re a given) or school you on Argentine history, which nevertheless comes into focus through the small talk and devious, sly looks, most notably in a terrifying scene with a Catholic monsignor (a fantastic Pablo Torre Nilsson). Fontana is asking you to look and to listen, and to really grasp what it means to behave as if the world isn’t on fire. Late in the movie, during a gala filled with laughing attendees, a zombie horde in gowns and black tie, Ines talks to an aristocratic doyenne (Carmen Irionda) about the peculiar dialect of Swiss private banking. One curious phrase means “to pretend you haven’t seen anything,” Ines explains, as she takes leisurely drags on her cigarette. “My husband does it very easily.”AzorNot rated. In French and Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Small Engine Repair’ Review: Of Mechanics and Men

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      John Pollono directs and stars in an adaptation of his play that adds depth to the original text but also struggles in its translation from stage to screen.What happens in Manch-Vegas stays in Manch-Vegas. Just ask the men from “Small Engine Repair,” an adaptation of the play of the same name by the actor and playwright John Pollono. The film, which Pollono also directs, provides more depth than the original but still flounders in the translation from stage to screen.Frank (Pollono) calls together his longtime buds Swaino (Jon Bernthal) and Packie (Shea Whigham), middle-aged natives of Manchester, New Hampshire, who’ve fallen out because of a brawl. When a frat boy named Chad (Spencer House) joins what seems like a normal night of bro-ing, the darker intentions behind the gathering are revealed.Pollono’s film has the same grit as the play, which premiered Off Broadway in 2013. Pollono, Bernthal and Whigham deliver ace performances that humanize these puerile man-children without pardoning them. The dialogue is brutal: crass, racist, homophobic, misogynist. It’s The Testosterone Show. Though the play examined the men’s relationship to women, it lacked women characters; the film thankfully corrects that, introducing Frank’s ex Karen (Jordana Spiro) and daughter Crystal (Ciara Bravo).The film self-consciously cushions the trim content of the play, converting anecdotal moments in the dialogue into flashbacks. These additions more explicitly critique the characters for a 2021 audience with greater sensitivity to depictions of toxic men, but they’re largely distracting, highlighting how the film sits uneasily between the contained world of the play and the larger world the adaptation attempts to build. Ultimately, the story still feels unfinished, and Pollono’s direction falters in the film’s big twist, when it tries to balance horror and humor before its tidy resolution.Small Engine RepairRated R for gutter-mouth trash-talking. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Fire Music’ Review: An Impassioned Case for Free Jazz

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      The beautiful souls that created free jazz — including Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry and Carla Bley — light up this new documentary from Tom Surgal.One default reaction to the musical form called “free jazz” — Ornette Coleman’s phrase for this improvised, experimental style of jazz — has long been that it’s “not music.” This concise but cogent documentary directed by Tom Surgal is crammed with exhilarating sounds, moving reminiscences and stimulating arguments that it is not just music, but vital music.Gary Giddins, a critic who’s equally at home explicating Bing Crosby as Cecil Taylor, points out at the film’s beginning that someone playing the blues on a porch can make their phrases 12 bars or 14 bars or whatever at will. In group playing, certain agreements have to be met.One basis of free jazz is to approach ensemble playing without conventional agreements. Hence, Coleman’s practically leaderless double quartet approach on the 1961 “Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation” album. Much consideration is also given here to Coleman’s break with bebop in insisting one could improvise without chords. His playing sounded out of tune to traditional jazz musicians not yet conversant with microtones.This sounds a little dry, but the movie is anything but. Among other highlights are incredibly well-curated archival footage and contemporary interviews that allow the viewer to briefly commune with some beautiful souls, including Coleman, Sam Rivers, John Coltrane, Rashied Ali, Don Cherry, Carla Bley. “Whatever he did was the right thing to do,” Bley, now 85, says of Cherry, who died in 1995.Most of these players are Black, and their innovations in the ’60s had trouble gaining traction in the United States. So they flocked to Paris, and the movie is scrupulous in chronicling how the European movement “free improvisation” grew into something allied with, but distinct from, what the U.S. founders created.As a fan of improvisational music myself, the 88 minutes of this movie constituted a too-short heaven on earth. I’d binge on an expanded series, honestly.Fire MusicNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Alpinist’ Review: Dizzying Heights

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      This documentary tries to shed light on the attitude of a Canadian rock climber it describes as “elusive.”In a podcast excerpted at the start of “The Alpinist,” the rock climber Alex Honnold, from the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo,” is asked to name a climber who impresses him. He cites Marc-André Leclerc, a Canadian whom Honnold says takes on some of the sport’s most difficult challenges in “such a pure style.” Honnold’s remarks suggest Leclerc would happily ascend in obscurity, keeping his accomplishments between him and the mountains.“The Alpinist” — directed by Peter Mortimer (who narrates) and Nick Rosen, both specialists in climb documentaries — tries to pin Leclerc down. The difficulties go beyond filming him at great heights on rock faces covered with ice or snow. While the lanky, curly haired, almost goofy Leclerc proves an affable screen presence — after we’ve watched him ax his way up an icicle wall in the Canadian Rockies, he describes it nonchalantly as “a really good day out” — his commitment to the documentary is tenuous. At one point, he ditches the filmmakers. When they reconnect, he points out that the camera’s presence interferes with the notion of climbing alone: “It wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there.”The movie could stand to demystify how some of its most terrifying early shots were filmed. (Later on, we’re told Leclerc agreed to carry a small camera himself to shoot part of a conquest in Patagonia.) But it does capture its subject’s philosophy. As with Honnold in “Free Solo,” the film raises the prospect that Leclerc was innately predisposed toward thrill-seeking. In Argentina, he says he eats every pre-climb dinner as if it might be his last.The AlpinistRated PG-13. Dangerous climbs. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kate’ Review: Lost in Assassination

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      Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a vengeful contract killer in this predictable thriller.The thriller “Kate” is an undistinguished action film that makes a hero of a hit woman. Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), guided by her wily handler, Varrick (Woody Harrelson), has been a professional since adolescence. Her only rule is to never kill in front of a child. Naturally — this being a relatively unimaginative plot — Kate betrays her principles within the first five minutes of the movie, murdering a yakuza gang member in front of his daughter.The fallout for Kate proves worse than a mere breach of assassin’s creed. She learns that her victim’s gang has targeted her, slipping her a fatal dose of polonium. She has 24 hours to live before radiation destroys her body, and in that time, she is determined to get her revenge. But the only person who knows where she can find the shadowy leader of the gang that wants her dead is Ani (Miku Martineau), the child who witnessed her father’s slaughter.The film takes place in Japan, and the director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan tries to use the setting to inject a shot of style into the largely routine story. There are neon cars, Kabuki theater performances and as many murders committed with samurai swords and katanas as there are with guns. The movie presents an eye-catching fantasy of a candy-colored Japanese underworld. But the exoticism feels as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter. Even Winstead, stoic in her fashionably boyish haircut, looks bored.KateRated R for graphic violence, brief gore, and brief sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Dogs’ Review: Fish Out of Water

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      A city boy inherits land used by the Mafia in this unoriginal neo-western crime thriller from Romania.The city boy Roman (Dragos Bucur) is lured into the Romanian outback when he inherits 550 hectares of land from his recently deceased grandfather, a local “godfather” figure not terribly unlike those popularized by Mario Puzo. Though Roman arrives with the intention of quickly selling the miserable property for some extra cash, his sojourn is upended when a group of thugs headed by the smug, sinister Samir (Vlad Ivanov) come to play.A neo-western crime thriller in the grim, nihilistic vein of “No Country for Old Men,” “Dogs,” by the filmmaker Bogdan Mirica, sees Roman thrown into a violent, lawless arena with only a dilapidated shack as his fortress.
      His grandfather’s guard dog, a mangy mutt named Police, winkingly calls attention to the near-absence of law enforcement around these parts, while the two-man law enforcement squad, led by the aging Hogas (Gheorghe Visu), mostly turns a blind eye to the illicit activities afoot. It’s common knowledge, after all, that Roman has stumbled upon a property used for moonlit confrontations and the disposal of body parts — such as the dismembered foot we glimpse in the deceptively serene opening tracking shot.Indeed, human brutality unfolds against a backdrop of pastoral quietude, with the film’s most evocative moments making use of negative space — shadowy showdowns and unnervingly empty expanses of wildlife captured in wide screen — as well as startling sounds that break through the eerie silence.Yet “Dogs” doesn’t go much deeper than the platitude that seems to inspire its title — presenting as it does a merciless dog-eat-dog world without generating ideas of its own that might distinguish it from similar Wild West fare. One can imagine how the particularities of the Romanian bush might yield novel dynamics. Instead, “Dogs” underplays these elements and commits to the beats of the slow burn thriller in mostly generic form.DogsNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Capote Tapes’ Review: New Narratives and Unanswered Prayers

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      This documentary adds some material to the tragic tale of a great American writer, but also teases at what it can’t deliver.There’s some fascinating and provocative material in “The Capote Tapes” that is diluted by the director Ebs Burnough’s insistence on teasing a question that, arguably, has a self-evident answer.The movie opens with onscreen texts referring to “a journalist’s” archive on interviews about Capote and rumors of an “unfinished scandalous manuscript.” The journalist turns out to be George Plimpton, who published an oral history on Capote in 1997, over a decade after Capote’s 1984 death at age 59. The manuscript would be “Answered Prayers,” excerpts from which caused much disaffection among Capote’s high-society associates when they ran in Esquire magazine in the mid-70s.Capote’s story is one of fierce talent, personal bravery, poor professional ethics, eccentric celebrity, and eventual addiction and dissolution. It’s been dramatized in two notable fiction films. And the man himself features in scores of documentaries. Burnough’s movie very much wants to add something new to the narrative, and it does, introducing Kate Harrington, whom Capote quietly adopted in the ’60s. (It’s a complicated and odd story.)After this, the movie flips and flops from a linear approach and one that implies “Hold on, we’ll get to that manuscript in a bit.” Over a shot of the steel reels of an analog tape recorder rolling, we hear Norman Mailer say “nobody wrote better sentences” — one of the few observations here on Capote’s work. Onscreen, the writer Jay McInerney is unfortunately assigned to deliver a lot of “I want to be a part of it, New York, New York” boilerplate.As for that manuscript, anyone paying attention knows the answer early on. By the end of his life, Capote was such a human wreck that the idea of some kind of posthumous literary time bomb is ridiculous on the face of it.The Capote TapesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More