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      ‘The Young Wife’ Review: A Spiraling Bride

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      A beleaguered bride spirals on her wedding day in Tayarisha Poe’s stylish but overly familiar comedy-drama.In Tayarisha Poe’s “The Young Wife,” a wedding party plays out like a psychedelic fever dream. The camera keens and swoops, birdlike, around the guests — who are decked out in neon eye shadow and bright pastel-colored outfits — and a synth-heavy score lends the whole affair a hint of the uncanny.But beneath these quirks, Poe’s dramedy tells a tale as old as time (or at least as old as “Runaway Bride”): of a woman who has cold feet before marriage.Celestina (Kiersey Clemons) is a burned-out corporate lackey who has quit her job in a fit of rage days before tying the knot with River (Leon Bridges), a lawyer-turned-cupcake-baker. She hasn’t yet broken the news to her relatives and friends, whom she has gathered in a family home in the countryside for what she insists is a party, not a wedding. As she waits for her fiancé, who is delayed by inclement weather, to arrive, her guests buzz around her like candy-colored flies, pestering her.Her soon-to-be sisters-in-law can’t stop talking about pregnancy and children; her best friend is aghast when she discovers that Celestina has given up a lucrative career; her imperious mother disapproves of the marriage; and her fiancé’s sick grandmother, played by a purple-haired Michaela Watkins, begrudgingly lugs around an oxygen tank and tries to convince Celestina to help euthanize her.The film’s cacophony of voices, and a spotlight that roves across the party guests, creates a storm of light, color and sound in the midst of which Celestina ponders existential questions. Does she want to be a “wife,” with all the baggage that implies? Was it worth it to quit her corporate job in search of an elusive peace?These are familiar, even hackneyed themes, which make the film’s relentless theatrics feel gratuitous and somewhat exhausting. Style overpowers substance, though Poe’s fantastic eye for composition and Clemons’s vivacious screen presence are undeniable.The Young WifeRated R for talk of death, weed and capitalism’s disappointments. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      Jessica Lange Portrays a Fading First Lady of the American Theater

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      Jessica Lange is ideally cast as a grande dame of the theater who is facing a reckoning in this well-crafted melodrama by Michael Cristofer.“The Great Lillian Hall” is not afraid to embrace its classicism; had it been made in the 1940s, it would have starred Bette Davis. Like many of the best golden-age melodramas, this HBO film fully commits to both unabashed emotion and a complicated female lead, a role filled by Jessica Lange with a finely tuned mix of showmanship and nuance.Lange’s Lillian Hall is a theater grande dame playing the charismatic matriarch in a Broadway revival of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.” She is on shaky ground, suffering from memory lapses that affect the rehearsals, but she stubbornly, proudly soldiers on. Even after some devastating news, Lillian keeps refining her performance, both in life and onstage. (What we glimpse of the production made me want to see Lange, who is currently starring in “Mother Play” on Broadway, actually tackle “The Cherry Orchard” next.)Besides its elegant handling of the parallels between Lillian’s character and her own life, the movie’s most interesting gambit is the way it breaks from the lazy habit of portraying stars as narcissistic, destructive monsters. Lillian certainly loves being the center of attention, and she can blithely wound her beleaguered daughter (Lily Rabe) and her dedicated personal assistant (Kathy Bates). But she is also capable of kindness and loyalty, along with a pleasurable wit. “I haven’t decided what age I am,” she tells her doctor (Keith Arthur Bolden), “but I’m not that old.”Even when she is at her most irritating, Lillian has a lock on the devotion of those around her. You may well join the fan club, too.The Great Lillian HallNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Max. More

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      ‘In a Violent Nature’ Review: Killing Them Softly

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      Chris Nash’s ultraviolent horror movie is an unexpectedly serene, almost dreamlike meditation on a murderous psyche.There is a calm implacability to “In a Violent Nature” that’s deeply unsettling and particularly unpleasant. Yet I was also transfixed: Chris Nash’s direction is so persuasively bold — brazen, really — and bloodcurdlingly coolheaded that his unusual shocker is impossible to dismiss.Gathering routine genre elements — the masked predator, the luckless teenage victims, the cabin-in-the-woods setting — Nash subordinates them all to a mood of stunning serenity. In place of a shrieking, pounding soundtrack, there is only birdsong and crunching leaves as a hulking human shape known as Johnny (Ry Barrett) heaves itself from the earth and begins its leisurely rampage. Following behind, we see only what Johnny sees and hear what he hears, his appearance initially restricted to a scorched skull (at times encased in an ancient smoke helmet) and hands like raw meat.Less a man than a near-mythic entity, Johnny is as relentless as the industrial log splitter that silences the courageous park ranger (Reece Presley) who tries to stop him. A spartan plot involving an abusive childhood and a stolen locket provides Johnny’s motivation, but “In a Violent Nature” is more partial to atmosphere than narrative. The stirring forest floor, the wind-riffled surface of a lake, snatches of indistinct conversations — these are the threads that bind one horrific kill to another.Whether nauseatingly explicit or eerily suggestive, the murders shock less for their punishing particulars than for the dreamy languor with which they’re enacted and filmed. Johnny likes to take his time; and if his experiments are sometimes hard to watch, they are also at times uncommonly creative. Claiming inspiration (in the film’s press notes) from Terrence Malick and others, Nash has attempted an ambitious blend of art house and slaughterhouse whose rug-pulling ending will polarize, even as its moody logic prevails.In a Violent NatureNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Ezra’ Review: This Father Doesn’t Know Best

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      This drama centers on a boy with autism and his divorced dad, with a cast featuring Robert De Niro, Rose Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg and Bobby Cannavale.Success has many fathers, but in the case of Ezra (William A. Fitzgerald), none of them are Max (Bobby Cannavale), his hotheaded divorced dad.A sentimental drama, “Ezra” opens as its titular character, an 11-year-old boy with autism, is expelled from school for disrupting class. Soon after, a pediatrician suggests that Ezra enroll in special education and start taking medication.At this point, concerned parents might consult a second opinion. But Max, a struggling comedian living in New York City with his surly father (Robert De Niro) after his divorce from Jenna (Rose Byrne), makes a more impulsive bid for control: He climbs Jenna’s fire escape, seizes Ezra from bed and brings him on a road trip.As the pair make their way cross-country, the movie gracefully shows how Ezra is the one who ends up steadying Max. Although he exhibits rigid behaviors, Ezra is confident and easygoing, while Max’s aggression, as embodied by the skilled Cannavale, is tinged with pained desperation.Written by Tony Spiridakis and directed by Tony Goldwyn, “Ezra” is standard Hollywood fare. Its mood is often playful, until there’s a hard tug at the heartstrings. Family members reconcile, while tough guys learn life lessons about being generous with their children, and their own inner children. What keeps the story sweet is the chemistry between Cannavale and Fitzgerald, who build a bond worth cherishing.EzraRated R for family drama. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Backspot’ Review: Queer Cheer-Squad Drama

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      This queer high school movie, starring Devery Jacobs and Evan Rachel Wood, channels an after-school special without the coming-out trauma.The nonbinary director, D.W. Waterson, wanted to make the kind of film they wished they had seen growing up in a hockey-obsessed household in Canada. Which may explain why an earnest teen spirit seems to be alive and somersaulting in “Backspot,” a cheer squad tale offering plenty of life lessons.A queer protagonist with pom-poms is not a cinematic first. (Remember the comedy “But I’m a Cheerleader”?) The double full twist with “Backspot” is that the writer, Joanne Sarazen, and Waterson (who edited and scored the film), don’t center the coming-of-age drama in coming-out trauma.From the get-go, Riley (Devery Jacobs of “Reservation Dogs”) and her girlfriend, Amanda (Kudakwashe Rutendo), laugh, canoodle and walk to practice hand in hand. Being queer in high school is not where the movie’s lessons lie.Instead, “Backspot” confronts mental health issues: Riley anxiously pulls out her eyebrows, has panic attacks and aches for the approval of Eileen (Evan Rachel Wood), her new coach. As the Thunderhawks’ trainer, Wood keeps her jawline taut chomping gum. Her implacable expression registers near-constant displeasure with her three eager new recruits: Riley, Amanda and Rachel (Noa DiBerto). After all, the team has only two weeks before the cheerleading championships!Not unlike its protagonist, “Backspot” initially tries too hard to be worthy of the genre in which “Bring It On” still reigns supreme. But something shifts emotionally for the anxious teen, and for the film, when Riley finds Eileen’s assistant coach, Devon (Thomas Antony Olajide) side-gigging as a go-go dancer.Its early execution strains and wobbles some, but “Backspot” sticks its landing.BackspotNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Robot Dreams’ Review: A Friendship That Is Far From Mechanical

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      This animated film from Pablo Berger is a silent wonder that says everything about love.Decades after Philip K. Dick asked if androids dreamed of electric sheep, we have an answer. This android — one of two nameless leads in the Oscar-nominated charmer “Robot Dreams” — envisions a small, lonely dog in his third-floor walk-up, microwaving a depressing dinner for one. Set in 1980s Manhattan, Pablo Berger’s all-ages, wordless wonder of a cartoon kicks into gear when the mutt assembles a self-aware, spaghetti-limbed robot companion ordered from an infomercial. You might be thinking that sentient artificial intelligence didn’t exist 40 years ago, and you’d be right. But dogs don’t rent apartments, either.This fanciful vision of New York is populated by animals: sporty ducks, punk rock monkeys, buffalo mail carriers, penguins shouldering boomboxes, and a disproportionate number of llamas. Mechanical beings are sparse and some creatures consider them lower in status, a brutal development when our robot’s relationship with his dog begins to break down. But Berger isn’t interested in science fiction. He’s made a buddy film that’s as relatable as two friends bonding over slices of pizza (but the robot eats the plate, too).Berger, who also adapted the screenplay, expands Sara Varon’s short graphic novel of the same name into a minor epic. To describe the plot — a dog and a robot are best friends, until they aren’t — the film sounds pitifully small. But the world inside it feels huge, a sprawling landscape of joy and heartbreak and mixed emotions and stinging dead ends.It’s hard to make out the dog and robot’s attachment. Is it platonic? Romantic? Does the dog consider himself the robot’s partner or his owner? The leads remain resolutely mute. In their silence, we fill their relationship with our own memories of loved ones, present and past: partners, best friends, siblings, even long-lost pets. The music steers the mood, a mix of Alfonso de Vilallonga’s jazzy score and a track by Earth, Wind & Fire that’s heard in endless permutations from the full original to a stripped-down, jaunty whistle, like that gag about a butcher who uses everything but the oink.The film is structured as a series of vignettes. Some are designed to break your heart; others exist just because. In a low moment, the robot imagines himself taking the place of the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” which he and the dog rented on VHS from Kim’s Video. His dreamscape, however, squeezes the Empire State Building and the twin towers into Emerald City’s skyline, and on his yellow brick stroll there, he’s engulfed by giant, dancing flowers who stomp their stems at him in choreography that’s Busby Berkeley by way of Riverdance.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Handling the Undead’ Review: When the Dead Don’t Die

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      A zombie movie is wrapped in a gentle tale of mourning and love.The yearning to reverse death is baked into human nature, a longing to defeat evil, to set things right, to conquer mortality. In “Handling the Undead,” that desire is the fruit of great love. Who hasn’t, upon losing someone, wished desperately for just one more chance to see them, hold them, tell them how much they mean?“Handling the Undead” has an earnest and simple premise that sounds like enough for a whole thriller: One day, out of nowhere, with little explanation, the dead are reanimated en masse. The film is unconcerned with the global ramifications of this phenomenon; instead, its focus is on three groups of Oslo residents whose lives are upended by the event.There is Mahler (Bjorn Sundquist) and his daughter, Anna (Renate Reinsve), a single mother whose young son died some time ago. The two of them, from the looks of it, have never recovered from the loss — Mahler weeps on his grandson’s grave, while Anna tries to bury her anguish in work. Meanwhile, Tora (Bente Borsum) grieves her partner, Elisabet (Olga Damani), who has died after their long life together. And David (an outstanding Anders Danielsen Lie), an aspiring comic, is shocked when his beloved wife, Eva (Bahar Pars), is killed in a car accident, barely knowing how to keep living with their two teenagers.This is merely the beginning of the story. But what follows is simple, and the director Thea Hvistendahl wisely takes her time getting to any real action. Instead, with a slow-moving camera and plenty of filtered sunlight, she conjures a dreamlike state, the sense of hanging between planes of existence that tends to accompany those who grieve. There are times when the film veers too near the maudlin for comfort, but it always finds its way back to something spare and meaningful. What would you do, the story gently asks, if your fondest and most impossible wish was granted, and you realized it wasn’t at all what you’d hoped it would be? How far does real love go to maintain a connection with those whose time has come?Hvistendahl wrote the screenplay with John Ajvide Lindqvist, the author of the novel on which the movie is based (as well as the quiet vampire story “Let The Right One In”). The drama borrows from zombie movies, but for something distinctly unzombielike. What’s under examination is the strange permeable barrier between life and death, and the way it appears to those who are left behind to deal with the fallout. In exploring it with a hint of mysticism, “Handling the Undead” joins a rich variety of entertainment, like “Fringe,” “The Leftovers,” “The Good Place” and “Six Feet Under.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Best True Crime to Stream: ‘Dirty John,’ ‘The Puppet Master’ and More

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      Four picks across television, film and podcasting that explore a devastating, yet slippery, type of manipulation.The concept of “coercive control” entered the lexicon about a decade ago and has become an increasingly prevalent theme in the true crime genre. Pioneered by Evan Stark, a researcher and expert on domestic abuse, it refers to a pattern of abusive behavior and manipulation — including isolation, humiliation, financial abuse, stalking and gaslighting — used to dominate a partner. Men are most often, but not always, the abusers.Coercive control “is designed to subjugate and dominate, not merely to hurt,” Stark, who died in April, said in a London court in 2019 while testifying on behalf of a domestic abuse victim who’d murdered her husband. She, appealing her conviction, was subsequently released from prison.Here are four picks across television, film and podcasting that show how this form of psychological abuse, though hard to prove as a crime, ruins lives.Podcast‘Sweet Bobby’Because I’ve watched every episode of the MTV show “Catfish,” I thought that this six-chapter investigative podcast from Tortoise Media, which explores a true story in which coercive control overlaps with catfishing (tricking others, often into a romantic relationship, using fake digital profiles), was unlikely to shock me.But the saga — about Kirat Assi, a woman from London whose life was turned on its head for nearly a decade after she fell for “Bobby” via Facebook — still managed to test my tolerance for how little legal recourse the deceived parties have. The story also speaks to why the damage caused by coercive control and by the proliferation of catfishing should not be minimized.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More