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      ‘Old’ Review: They Say Sun Can Age You, but This Is Ridiculous

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      A half-hour at the beach costs vacationers a year in this disquieting new horror puzzler, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan.In the opening pages of “Dino,” a 1992 biography of Dean Martin by Nick Tosches, the author cites a haunting Italian phrase: “La vecchiaia è carogna.” “Old age is carrion.”When some vacationing families are deposited on a secluded beach recommended to them by a smarmy resort manager in “Old,” the new movie written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, we see a trio of vultures atop a tree take to the sky.Not long after that, unusual things begin happening. The young children of Guy and Prisca (Gael García Bernal and Vicky Krieps, both superb, as is the entire cast) feel their bathing suits tightening. An epileptic psychologist (Nikki Amuka-Bird) unexpectedly finds herself without symptoms. The elderly mother of the trophy wife of a tetchy physician just up and dies. A moderately famous rap star (Aaron Pierre), who had come to the beach some hours before, wanders around befuddled, with an incurable nosebleed. The corpse of his female companion is discovered in the water, prompting the physician (Rufus Sewell) to accuse the rapper of murder.In time — not too much time, because, as it happens, it is of the essence in this situation — the beachgoers figure out that they are aging at an accelerated rate. One half-hour equals about a year.And the beach that is aging them won’t let them leave.Some vacation. Shyamalan adapted his disquieting tale from the graphic novel “Sandcastle,” by the French writer Pierre Oscar Lévy and the Swiss illustrator Frederik Peeters. As is frequently the case with French-produced bandes dessinées, “Sandcastle” is a stark existentialist parable. (It is perhaps no coincidence that the book Krieps’s character attempts to read on the beach is a dual biography of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.) Shyamalan expands on the book in the way one would expect an American filmmaker to — among other things, eventually offering a sort-of explanation that the source material doesn’t.Being PG-13, “Old” does not dwell, as the graphic novel does, on how rapid aging affects the children of this ensemble in the hormonal department once they hit their teens, although one pregnancy does occur during the victims’ shared life-in-a-day. Instead, the movie buckles down on the considerable anxiety and dread felt, and amplified, by the frequently bickering adults. Because time is accelerated here, wounds heal incredibly quickly. The director exploits this for a couple of weirdly harrowing knife fights and an impromptu surgery scene. The horrific potential of bones breaking, then instantly resetting themselves incorrectly, does not go unnoticed.Shyamalan’s fluid filmmaking style, outstanding features of which are an almost ever-mobile camera and a bag of focus tricks, serves him especially well here. Sometimes the camera will pan back and forth in a ticktock pendulum fashion (get it?) and return to its starting point to reveal a terrifying change. The way he switches out his actors as their characters age is seamless. (The filmmaker’s work in the verbal department is not so felicitous. He names Pierre’s rap star “Mid-Sized Sedan”; early on one character complains to another, “You’re always thinking about the future, and it makes me feel not seen.”)If old age is carrion, it’s also, as a “Citizen Kane” character put it, the one disease you don’t look forward to curing, which provides the impetus for the movie’s finale. While Shyamalan is often cited for his tricky endings, it’s arguable that he doesn’t quite stick the landing with this one. He adds to the story a dollop of that much-venerated Hollywood commodity, hope, and also doles out some anti-science propaganda that couldn’t be more unwelcome at this particular time in the real world.OldRated PG-13 for horrific imagery, language and aging. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ailey’ Review: A Poetic Look at the Man Behind the Dances

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      Jamila Wignot explores the life of Alvin Ailey in a new documentary that brings a choreographer to life through movement and words.Too often, the idea of Alvin Ailey is reduced to a single dance: “Revelations.” His 1960 exploration of the Black experience remains a masterpiece, but it also overshadows the person who made it. How can an artist grow after such early success? Who was Alvin Ailey the man?In “Ailey,” the director Jamila Wignot layers images, video and — most important — voice-overs from Ailey to create a portrait that feels as poetic and nuanced as choreography itself. Black-and-white footage of crowds filing into church, children playing, dance parties, and the dusty landscape of Texas (his birthplace) builds an atmosphere. Like Ailey’s dances, the documentary leaves you swimming in sensation.Ailey’s story is told alongside the creation of “Lazarus,” a new dance by the contemporary choreographer Rennie Harris, whose homage to Ailey proposes an intriguing juxtaposition of past and present. In his search to reveal the man behind the legacy, Harris lands on the theme of resurrection. Ailey died in 1989, but his spirit lives on in his dancers.But his early days weren’t easy. Born in 1931, Ailey never knew his father and recalls “being glued to my mother’s hip. Sloshing through the terrain. Branches slashing against a child’s body. Going from one place to another. Looking for a place to be. My mother off working in the fields. I used to pick cotton.”He was only 4. Ailey spoke about how his dances were full of “dark deep things, beautiful things inside me that I’d always been trying to get out.”All the while, Ailey, who was gay, remained intensely private. Here, we grasp his anguish, especially after the sudden death of his friend, the choreographer and dancer Joyce Trisler. In her honor, he choreographed “Memoria” (1979), a dance of loneliness and celebration. “I couldn’t cry until I saw this piece,” he says.Ailey’s mental health was fragile toward the end of his life; Wignot shows crowds converging on sidewalks, but instead of having them walk normally, she reverses their steps. He was suffering from AIDS. Before his death, he passed on his company to Judith Jamison, who sums up his magnetic, enduring presence: “Alvin breathed in and never breathed out.”Again, it’s that idea of resurrection. “We are his breath out,” she continues. “So that’s what we’re floating on, that’s what we’re living on.”AileyRated PG-13. Running time: 1 hour and 22 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Charlatan’ Review: The Miracle Worker

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      With this drama, the writer-director Agnieszka Holland tackles another complicated historical figure in the Czech herbal healer, Jan Mikolasek.As the world’s biggest fan of Peter Watkins’s twisted and superb “Edvard Munch,” I harbor a soft spot for filmmakers who muss up the perfectly coifed looks and reassuring habits of biographical films. The great writer-director Agnieszka Holland — a connoisseur of those deemed “difficult” by society — does not disappoint with “Charlatan,” her fictionalized story of the persecuted Czech herbalist Jan Mikolasek.Mikolasek rose to prominence and prosperity in the 1930s and 1940s by treating patients with natural remedies, scrutinizing their urine for signs of illness. “Charlatan” jumps between Mikolasek’s rise and fall: his apprenticeship as a youth (Josef Trojan) who has an uncanny “I see sick people” gift; and his professional practice as an adult (Ivan Trojan), as lines of patients out the door were eventually replaced by suspicious state security agents.Mikolasek’s fall out of favor after World War II is not hard to figure since this stubborn individualist stuck out for several reasons. Holland tracks his failures to finesse the postwar turnovers in power — though he did find a way with the Nazis — and his unorthodox approach and ample wealth don’t sit well with postwar apparatchiks. But in these conservative times (which persist) he was also singled out for his loving relationship with his handsome assistant, Frantisek Palko (Juraj Loj).Their warm but unequal romance fuels the second half of the movie, after we’ve seen plenty of scenes of inspired healing and urine swirling. Their clandestine love brings some bucolic light and energy to a movie that often mucks about in Mikolasek’s dim, gray clinic. But Holland also keeps spiking the film with doses of the healer’s coldness, which can be shockingly cruel.When Frantisek says his wife is pregnant, Mikolasek offers him an abortive poison to give her. There is also — fair warning — a scene of Mikolasek disposing of a sack of kittens by thrashing them against a rock. The moment is frankly baffling in its brutality, even if it’s interpreted as demonstrating another kind of barbarity in past eras, or as early evidence of Mikolasek’s dark side.Both Trojans’ performance — the actors are father and son — are steadfast in resisting a sense of heroism, villainy, or, really, charisma, and Josef Trojan suggested to me a credible vision of old-fashioned formality as it might actually have felt to be around. A great-man outsider who falls hard, Mikolasek makes for an intriguing counterpoint to the female protagonist of “Spoor,” the fierce, funny, and mysterious film co-directed by Holland and Kasia Adamik.Often as thorny as its subject but also oddly fascinated by his near-magical abilities, “Charlatan” is a temporary cure for the common biopic.CharlatanNot rated. Running time: 1 hour and 58 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Midnight in the Switchgrass’ Review: Sordid and Derivative

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      Megan Fox, Emile Hirsch and Bruce Willis track down a killer in a film that feels familiar.“Midnight in the Switchgrass” is the first feature directed by Randall Emmett, whose trademark as a producer — according to a sprawling career overview in New York magazine earlier this year — has been a rash of low-budget movies starring misleadingly top-billed actors like Bruce Willis. “Switchgrass” is superior to those Emmett productions (“Reprisal,” “Survive the Night”), but that bar is on the ground, or even beneath it — buried under the switchgrass, if you will.A second-billed Willis appears here in a barely roused state as an F.B.I. agent, who along with his partner, Rebecca (Megan Fox), is trying to catch a man who has been hunting underage girls in the Florida panhandle. Flouting protocol, Rebecca teams up with a Florida state officer, Byron (Emile Hirsch), who is tracking a serial killer who preys on prostitutes. The victims’ profession means his superiors don’t care about the case. Byron deduces that he and Rebecca are after the same guy.The murderer’s identity isn’t a mystery to us: Ripping off “The Silence of the Lambs” (down to a climactic fake out in which Emmett misleads viewers about which character is on which doorstep), the movie crosscuts between the investigation and the killer (Lukas Haas), a trucker and family man leading a double life, to follow him as he kidnaps a 16-year-old (Caitlin Carmichael). The atmosphere is thoroughly sleazy without being distinctive, and everything about the movie — the emotionless line readings, the half-baked back stories — exudes a terse functionality. Clearly, no one even bothered to proofread the onscreen text. But “Midnight in the Switchgrass” achieves its apparent sole goal: being a movie that exists.Midnight in the SwitchgrassRated R. Violence and disturbing themes. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on FandangoNow, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Jolt’ Review: Danger, High Voltage

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      Kate Beckinsale stars as a turbocharged action heroine in Amazon’s limp, derivative revenge picture.Lindy (Kate Beckinsale), the hero of Tanya Wexler’s action-revenge thriller “Jolt” (streaming on Amazon) has no patience for the irritating and inconsiderate. When she encounters someone boorish or grating — an insolent waitress, say, or a manspreader on the subway — she seethes with anger, as if allergic to the slightest lapse of etiquette or social politesse. And because Lindy suffers from a rare neurological condition that causes hyperaggressive tendencies and violent impulses, she usually beats these unsuspecting offenders into a bloody mess. She’s like Larry David crossed with The Terminator.All those brutal beatings have made it hard for Lindy to live an ordinary life, but her therapist, Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci), has devised a solution: a kind of mobile electroconvulsive therapy mechanism, designed to suppress Lindy’s violent impulses. Whenever she wants to assault someone loudly tapping a pencil on a desk or pummel a driver for rudely berating a valet, she gives herself a little shock and that ferocious temper is reigned in. It’s like the inverse of Jason Statham in “Crank,” who needed a steady dose of electricity to power his action rampage.The action in “Crank” was suitably electrifying, but in “Jolt,” it’s missing that rousing charge. Lindy goes on a rampage of her own after a date she’s smitten with turns up murdered, pursuing his killers with vicious abandon, and what follows is yet another single-minded quest for cutthroat vengeance in the style of “John Wick,” which has already spawned several imitators. The plot, stretched thin even at just 90 minutes, is extremely predictable, and therefore boring, and the film doesn’t do enough with its high-concept shock-therapy conceit to feel fresh or novel.JoltRated R for language, graphic violence, some nudity and sexuality. Running time: 1 hour and 31 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘How It Ends’ Review: What, You Expected Us to Tell You?

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      In this apocalyptic comedy, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein count down Earth’s last day, measuring out the hours in serial conflict resolutions.In the apocalyptic comedy “How It Ends,” the Earth faces destruction by meteor at the end of the night. Here, the world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with self-deprecating jokes and irreverent self-reflection.For her last hours before Earth’s expiration, Liza (Zoe Lister-Jones) wanders Los Angeles, visiting family, friends and lovers in a search for spiritual resolution. In a metaphysical twist, the adult Liza is accompanied by the manifestation of her younger self (Cailee Spaeny).Among the standouts from the film’s deep cast are Helen Hunt as Liza’s mother, who offers a heartfelt monologue about not being meant for parenthood. Liza and her former best friend, played by Olivia Wilde, demonstrate their psychic bond through complicated and rhythmic overlapping dialogue. Logan Marshall-Green, as the man who got away, brims with brooding romanticism.The film’s writers and directors, Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, ensure that each reconciliation has an arc that builds from confrontation to explanation to resolution, and they are also careful to ensure that each scene stands on its own. The film plays as a series of perfectly enjoyable sketches strung together, an excuse for veteran actors to chew on playful dialogue. Liza attempts to tie up the loose ends of her life in one day, and if it seems like she succeeds rather economically, the writing, ever clever, builds in an explanation for the film’s breeziness. The characters shrug off the importance of their revelations — it’s only the end of the world.How It EndsRated R for language and references to drugs and sex. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ Review: Relationship History

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      Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones star as two women living in different eras struggling to uncover the truth behind a series of passionate love letters.In Augustine Frizzell’s “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” women have complicated relationships to their pasts — in more ways than one.After surviving a collision, Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley), a socialite wedded to a distinguished English diplomat (Joe Alwyn), loses her memory. Jenny’s frazzled by her husband’s stuffy demeanor — is she supposed to be in love with this man? — yet everyone insists she used to lead a charmed existence. Skeptical, Jenny sets out to uncover the mystery of her own life, unearthing a P.O. Box and a collection of love letters hidden away in her husband’s study.From Jenny’s gilded 1960s milieu, we’re dumped into present-day London where a bedraggled journalist, Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones), comes across the same letters while conducting research. A workaholic and reeling from a bad breakup, Ellie numbs the pain with messy one-night stands, though a charming archivist (Nabhaan Rizwan) chips away at her defensive veneer.As both women gradually piece together the truth in their separate but interwoven timelines, the dreamy origins of Jenny’s affair with a reporter, Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner), come into focus.Adapted by Nick Payne and Esta Spalding from Jojo Moyes’s lengthy 2010 novel of the same name, “The Last Letter” is a compressed version of the romantic epic that cuts away all the rough edges, and with them, the longing and languorous feelings that uncontrollable passion entails. In short, it too efficiently glosses over multiple plotlines to have much of an emotional impact. What remains are mostly generic beats.Still, the formula is engrossing enough, and its midcentury vintage appeal — the pillbox hats, headscarves and swanky soirees — is particularly seductive.Ultimately, the past and present converge, yielding not a lesson on how radically different women overcome their painful histories, but a happy ending about the universal power of love — or whatever.The Last Letter From Your LoverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Val Kilmer Documentary Review: The Iceman Cometh

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      A documentary about Val Kilmer offers a self-portrait of the artist that’s personal but not quite intimate.The actor Val Kilmer is not only the subject of “Val,” a documentary directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott. He also receives a cinematography credit, having shot many of the home movies and video diary entries that give the film its visual texture. More a self-portrait than a profile, “Val” tells the story of a Hollywood career with a candor that stops short of revelation. The tone is personal but not quite intimate, producing in the viewer a warm, slightly wary feeling of companionship.Hanging out with Kilmer, now in his early 60s, is an interesting, bittersweet experience. In on-camera interviews, he still radiates movie-star charisma, even though his voice isn’t what it used to be. Since being treated for throat cancer in 2014, he speaks through a tracheostomy tube, and his words are spelled out in subtitles.What he says in his own raspy, electronically distorted voice is supplemented by narration — read by his son, Jack — that reflects on the ups and downs of a career that was never quite what he wanted it to be. Kilmer muses on the way acting crosses and blurs the boundary between reality and illusion, concluding that he’s spent most of his life “inside the illusion.”A Juilliard graduate with a passionate sense of craft, he ascended to Hollywood in the less-than-golden age of the 1980s. His best-known roles are probably still Iceman, the jaunty, square-jawed heavy in “Top Gun,” and Batman, whose suit he wore, not very comfortably, in between Michael Keaton and George Clooney. When Kilmer visits Comic-Con, the autograph seekers want him to sign memorabilia from those movies. But to appreciate the full range of his talent, you are better off cuing up “The Doors,” “Tombstone” and of course “Heat,” in which he credibly holds his own alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.In outline, “Val” is a standard biographical documentary, tracing an arc from childhood through struggle, triumph and more struggle. We see Kilmer with his parents and brothers, hear about his marriage to the British actress Joanne Whalley and witness on-set and backstage shenanigans with the likes of Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and Marlon Brando.Conflicts with directors and castmates, and Kilmer’s tabloid-fueled reputation for “difficulty,” are mentioned in passing, but “Val” is neither a first-person confessional nor a journalistic investigation. It seems to arise, above all, from the desire of a sometimes reluctant celebrity and frequently underestimated artist to be understood. With a combination of wit, sincerity, self-awareness, and the narcissism that is both a requirement and a pitfall of his profession, Kilmer succeeds in explaining himself, or at least convincing us that we never really knew him before.ValRated R. Rough language. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More