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      ‘La Dosis’ Review: Dictating Death

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      In this Argentine drama, a nurse who euthanizes patients grapples with a co-worker who would rather kill for fun.From its first scene, “La Dosis” makes it clear that its taciturn protagonist, a nurse named Marcos (Carlos Portaluppi), privileges his own morals over professional decorum. Despite protests from doctors, he violates protocol to bring a flatlining patient back to life. The film soon muddles this decision, making its own story puzzlingly opaque.After saving that patient, Marcos decides to euthanize her because he disagrees with the doctors’ treatment plan, which leaves her vulnerable to death by infection. This is not the first — nor last — time Marcos tries to put a patient out of their misery. When a mysterious new nurse, Gabriel (Ignacio Rogers), arrives, it seems he may expose Marcos’s misdeeds. Instead, his behavior excuses them by contrast. Gabriel is almost cartoonishly psychotic: He gleefully kills patients and tries to sexually assault the sole female nurse in their ward. Though Marcos might be accused of playing God, next to Gabriel he looks like an angel.While zeroing in on these characters’ actions could have made for tense drama, “La Dosis” has too much else on its mind. The film quickly buries itself in a mountain of half-addressed complexities. Marcos has to search for new housing because his partner recently left him, but we learn nothing about that relationship. Though Gabriel tries to seduce Marcos — including by taking him to a gay bar — it is unclear if Marcos even dates men. “La Dosis” raises many such issues and plays out none of them, making for a frustratingly vague watch.“La Dosis” harms itself by refusing lucidity. What should be a razor’s edge rivalry plays more like a hamstrung thriller.La DosisNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. Available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Holler’ Review: Escaping a Life of Scraps

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      In Nicole Riegel’s feature debut, Jessica Barden stars as an Ohio teenager who strips buildings of metal to earn cash.“Holler” begins with Ruth (Jessica Barden), its protagonist, running. She’s racing to drop trash bags into the flatbed of a truck, where her brother, Blaze (Gus Halper), is waiting. They high-tail it from the scene and sell discarded cans to Hark (Austin Amelio), who pays them chump change for metal. Soon, they will graduate to higher-stakes scrap work: stripping deserted buildings of wiring for larger payoffs, with even bigger risks.The central question of the movie is whether Ruth will summon the courage to run again, to flee her hometown. The director, Nicole Riegel, making her feature debut, shot the film in the section of southern Ohio where she’s from. Riegel has said that Ruth’s story was inspired by her own challenges leaving the area. Even the medium — Super 16-millimeter film, in the era of digital — adds to the ambience of rusting, abandoned machinery.Ruth has little overt incentive to stick around. She hides an eviction notice under a flower pot. Her mother (Pamela Adlon) is a drug addict in a county jail. But Ruth gets an unexpected — and, to a condescending teacher at her high school, impractical — offer of college admission: Although she had prepared the application, she never submitted it. Blaze did that for her.The film strikes an unanticipated false note with its ending, which initially seems too easy — a way to avoid resolving conflicts. But despite a parting smile, and the music of Phoebe Bridgers over the credits, the final moments becomes bleaker upon reflection. The only way to end this story is to abandon it.HollerRated R. Violence and trespassing. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Asia’ Review: Tough Love and an Indecent Proposal

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      This drama about a young single mother and a terminally ill daughter avoids sentimentalism but indulges heavily in dourness.In the opening moments of “Asia,” a young-looking woman dances and downs shots in a crowded, neon-lit bar. You might be surprised when, in the next scene, she’s revealed as the maternal half of Ruthy Pribar’s mother-daughter drama. A 35-year-old Russian nurse in Jerusalem, Asia (Alena Yiv) was in her teens when she had Vika (Shira Haas). Now that Vika is a teenager, and eager to experiment with boys and drugs, Asia struggles to discipline her while seeking escapes of her own in hookups and drinks after long work shifts. Adding urgency to Vika’s adolescent rebellion is her fast-progressing degenerative disease, which makes her desperate to experience life’s hedonistic pleasures.“Asia” follows the contortions of Asia and Vika’s relationship as the latter’s health deteriorates rapidly. Pribar directs with a delicate touch, with little music and a lens that’s attentive to faces and gazes. But if the film avoids the typical sentimentalism of dramas about terminal illness, it indulges heavily in dourness. Asia and Vika struggle to emerge as full-fleshed characters from the movie’s dull, blue-grey frames, while the script rushes through provocative plot turns in its bleak procession toward a wrenching conclusion.The most troubling of these narrative twists involves Gabi (Tamir Mula), a charming Arab nurse-aid whom Asia hires to take care of Vika. In a misguided bid to fulfill her daughter’s desires, Asia makes Gabi a thoroughly indecent proposal — one that, in a more daring film, might have cued an exploration of the ethical quandaries that caregiving often involves. But “Asia” downplays the transgression and its emotional ramifications, in what feels like a disservice to Vika’s assertion that she deserves more than our pity.AsiaNot rated. In Hebrew and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Rogue Hostage’ Review: Everything Must Go

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      In this film from Jon Keeyes, violent men take over a giant store. Nearly all the major hostages are connected, but nothing makes sense.The bulk of “Rogue Hostage” takes place during the siege of a Walmart-like store where customers love buying stuff cheaply, the proprietor, Sam Nelson (John Malkovich), smugly notes. It’s the sort of place where you might expect to stumble on a familiar-sounding but possibly imagined movie like “Rogue Hostage” on the DVD rack. The recycling bin would also do.On a day when Sam, who is also a congressman, plans to appear at the store, violent men led by Eagan (Chris Backus) hold the venue and its shoppers hostage, with the seeming goal of getting Sam to confess a crime. The motive isn’t really relevant — or at least the director, Jon Keeyes, and screenwriter, Mickey Solis, treat it that way. The tossed-off explanations for the villains’ behavior don’t add up to much.Nearly all the characters are connected, but nothing makes sense. The trapped customers include the movie’s hero, Kyle (Tyrese Gibson), a former Marine and current officer for child protective services. He happens to be Sam’s stepson, and a foster child he’s worked with, Mikki (Holly Taylor), happens to be a store employee. Mikki spends most of the siege in the security office with her boss, Sunshine (Luna Lauren Velez), who used to tutor Eagan when he was in high school.Even in establishing physical space — it’s hard to figure out how Kyle subdues a man who is abusive to a child or where he hides in the home goods section, or how Sunshine opens a door without detonating a bomb — “Rogue Hostage” is shoddy work.Rogue HostageNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Censor’ Review: Dirty Work

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      A 1980s film censor loses her grip on reality in this VHS-inspired horror movie.Gloomy in tone and gray in palette, “Censor” returns often to a drab screening room where Enid (Niamh Algar), a conscientious British film censor, scrutinizes a stream of gory exploitation movies. It’s the 1980s, and the violence driving the unregulated home-video market has incited a moral panic that’s filling the tabloids and politicians’ outraged speeches.“Eye gouging must go!” Enid scribbles in her notebook as the latest horror movie unspools. Yet beneath her hot-librarian styling and prim manner, Enid seems fragile and too-tightly wound. Then two things happen that further undermine her equilibrium: One of the films she rated has inspired a freakish copycat murder, and the public has decided she’s to blame; and, more disturbing, a scene in another movie eerily echoes her hazy memories of her sister’s disappearance many years earlier.A homage of sorts to the low-budget trash of the period — and a mordantly humorous jab at its excesses — “Censor” gazes on movie history with style and commitment, but little apparent purpose beyond simulation. Annika Summerson’s cinematography elegantly mimics the era’s grainy VHS aesthetics; but the director, Prano Bailey-Bond (who wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher), barely gestures toward the delicious irony of authorities railing against fictional brutality while the streets are erupting in real-life protests against Margaret Thatcher’s oppressive policies.Plagued by dreary pacing and weak plotting, “Censor” is less a mystery than a portrait of lingering trauma and flaring delusion. The so-called “video nasties” furor of the time claimed that repeat viewing of unexpurgated horrors encouraged a craving for more; Enid seems on track to prove that thesis right.CensorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Misfits’ Review: Blood and Sand

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      Pierce Brosnan leads a band of quirky thieves in this hopelessly fumbled heist movie.“The Misfits,” Renny Harlin’s 25th movie, unfolds mainly in the Middle East, but don’t expect its tone and temperament to differ appreciably from its predecessors. Insouciant as ever, Harlin simply does his own thing, location be damned. He’s the honey badger of cinema.His titular band of Robin Hood-style criminals is at least a diverse bunch, comprising a droll bank robber (Nick Cannon), a fire-loving explosives expert (Mike Angelo), a lithe martial artist (Jamie Chung) and a cool con man (Rami Jaber). To enact their latest heist — a cache of gold bars buried deep inside an Abu Dhabi prison and earmarked for terrorists — the Misfits need the smooth skills of Pace (Pierce Brosnan), a gentleman thief and recent maximum-security escapee.Pace is far from on board with the team’s vaguely altruistic plans for the loot, but he and Schultz (Tim Roth), the prison’s shady owner, have unresolved history. Also, his estranged daughter (Hermione Corfield), yet another Misfit, is hanging around to remind him of his humanitarian duty to refugees and other downtrodden. I did not make that up.Equally insulting to Arabic dialects and the Muslim Brotherhood, “The Misfits” is inarguably awful, its grandiose muddle of a plot unimproved by bored camels and barely clothed women. Yet for the first 20 minutes or so — a blitz of eye candy and ear worms — its breezy action and the performers’ good cheer are enough to entertain. Too soon, though, the movie drifts into narrative doldrums that derail its momentum and drain the cast’s energy.“Oh, bollocks,” Schultz mutters resignedly when he sees his gold is gone. Like the movie, he seems almost too tired to care.The MisfitsRated R for mass vomiting and a bloody cellphone attack. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Infinite’ Review: Stuck in a Loop

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      Antoine Fuqua’s formulaic reincarnation thriller is weighed down by déjà vu.There’s an early scene in “Infinite,” Antoine Fuqua’s sci-fi thriller on Paramount+, that feels like an outtake from a social-issue drama. Mark Wahlberg’s Evan McCauley attends a job interview at a restaurant, where the slimy proprietor grills him about his past struggles with mental health before dismissing him rudely. “Who’s going to hire a diagnosed schizophrenic with a history of violence?” a dejected Evan wonders in voice-over as he walks back home. I was disarmed by the human-size pathos of this scene: Evan’s got bills to pay and pills to buy, same as us all. More

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      The Enduring Appeal of Italian Composers’ Dramatic ‘Library Music’

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      Compositions made from the 1960s through the ’80s to soundtrack films and ads have found new homes on hip-hop tracks and compilations. New artists have been inspired, too.One day in the summer of 2011, Lorenzo Fabrizi rode with a friend to an abandoned warehouse far outside of Rome. The custodian of the building, who said he had bought it for around $100, let them inside to look at its contents: 10,000 vinyl LPs, by Fabrizi’s estimate. They were welcome to take as many they wanted, the owner said; he was brewing beer in the space and had no use for them. More