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      ‘Belle’ Review: Soaring and Singing Over the Online Rainbow

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      In this gorgeous anime, a high school student journeys into a virtual world and finds herself amid cute, kooky and menacing fellow users.Colors and hearts explode in “Belle,” and your head might too while watching this gorgeous anime. Set in the undefined future, it envisions a reality that resembles our own, with the same drab institutions and obligations, the same confusing relationships and feelings. Suzu (voiced and sung by Kaho Nakamura), a melancholic high school student, lives with her father (Koji Yakusho) and still mourns her long-dead mother. Suzu exists in a miasma of grief, one she fleetingly escapes by entering a computer simulation.Described as “the ultimate virtual community” and cleverly named U, this other-world is an entertainment but also a refuge. A dazzling phantasmagoria, it allows customers to log out of their reality by slipping into an avatar in the U space. Once inside, users — their real selves obscured by eccentric, sometimes aspirational cartoonish identities — have seemingly unfettered freedom. They can cut loose, bop around like tourists, become someone else or maybe find themselves. “You can’t start over in reality,” Suzu hears when she first fires up the program, “but you can start over in U.” The catch? Everyone is still on social media.Journeys of self-discovery dominate much of contemporary animated cinema, even if the routes and mileage vary. “It’s time to see what I can do/To test the limits and break through,” as Elsa sings in “Frozen.” Suzu’s pilgrimage is somewhat complicated — certainly visually — but she too needs to “let it go” and cut free of her past and her trauma, an agony that the story doesn’t soften. Suzu is unequivocally, openly sad. Her shoulders sag and her head bows, she blunders and shrinks from others, sighing and weeping. Even so, she also questions, searches and keeps trying to sing. She lost her voice to grief; she wants it back.Suzu is a poignant, sympathetic figure but there’s a welcome edge to her, a bit of stubborn prickliness that’s expressed through the animation, the character’s churning emotions and Nakamura’s sensitive, expansive vocal performance. The character design employs the pert nose, heart-shaped face and huge eyes that are standard in anime, but these conventions never feel static because Suzu isn’t. Delicately perched on that unstable boundary between childhood and adulthood, she slips from the comically juvenile (mouth agape) to soberly mature. She can seem younger or older than she is, but she’s never less than human.Before you meet her, though, the writer-director Mamoru Hosoda introduces U’s virtual reality, giving you a seductive eyeful. (His movies include “Mirai” and “Wolf Children.”) The first image in “Belle” is of a thin, pale horizontal line cutting across the otherwise black frame, a visual that wittily suggests the first line in a drawing. This line rapidly changes and, as it does, the contours of the U world emerge, as do its mysteries, oddities, personalities and possibilities. At first, the line seems to consist of a series of rectangular shapes that look like beads on a necklace, a design that amusingly evokes the spaceship in “2001: A Space Odyssey” — and then it explodes into the kaleidoscopic realm of science fiction and U.A rapturously beautiful expanse filled with whirling candy colors and charming character designs, U gives Suzu a virtual reality escape and gives you a great deal to go gaga over. That introductory straight line soon expands, growing evermore complex and giving way to intricate geometric forms. As the shapes shift and mutate, Hosoda uses old-fashioned perspective — differing sizes and planes, parallel edges and vanishing points — to create an illusion of movement through depth. That’s crucial for the user (and viewer) experience in U, where rectangles turn into what look like parts of a motherboard only to then transform into mazelike spaces that give way to soaring buildings in a crowded modern cityscape.Suzu enters this sphere through an app on her cellphone. With a few clicks, she is over the rainbow and flying through U, where she becomes Belle, a hyperbolic beauty with a plaintive singing voice and a billowing curtain of pretty pink hair. The U app’s “body-sharing technology” allows users to experience U alongside other revelers, to interact with an array of colorful, comical and vividly imagined beings, some borrowed and tweaked from myth (or thereabouts), others plucked from pop-culture climes. Some of these appear more human than others; more than a few look like collectible anime figurines with exaggerated features and body parts. It’s a raging party of the cute and the kooky, though with shivers of menace.Suzu continues to travel between reality and U as the story evolves and takes a detour into a fairy tale. Much of what ensues after this narrative turn is familiar, and while not everything that happens then works equally well it’s unfailingly touching. Hosoda throws drama, meanies and a couple of romantic rivals (predictable cuties with floppy hair) into the mix, but to his credit, the story remains focused on its heroine. Suzu is moving between two different, outwardly irreconcilable worlds — each with its own textures, shapes and colors — a divide that reflects and speaks to her internal struggles. And while she sets out to escape, what she finally needs is to find a sense of wholeness even when everything seems broken.BelleRated PG for mild virtual violence. In Japanese, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters. More

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      Animated Movies for Adults That Are Generating Oscar Buzz

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      A handful of animated features gaining attention this awards season take a more mature approach.Since the inception of the best animated feature Oscar category in 2001, the Academy has sporadically celebrated thematically mature works alongside box-office powerhouses aimed at audiences of all ages. These more adult-oriented titles are often hand drawn productions conceived abroad in languages other than English and without the involvement of large corporations.Some of these notable candidates have included the Cuba-set romance “Chico and Rita,” the poetic, French-language drama on fate, “I Lost My Body,” and an adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel “Persepolis.”Their recognition at the Oscars helps to push beyond any assumptions that the medium’s sole virtue is to serve as a vehicle for children-oriented narratives.It also evinces that the studio-dominated American animation industry seldom finances this type of audacious filmmaking. One exception that earned an Academy nod is Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion meditation on loneliness and companionship, “Anomalisa.”The current batch of contenders vying for a slot among the final five nominees showcases multiple examples of storytelling with emotional substance tackling grown-up matters with idiosyncratic visual flair.Previously nominated for the fantastical family saga “Mirai,” the Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda plugs back into his interest in the online lives we lead — a topic he undertook in “Summer Wars” (2009) — with the soul-stirring, music-fueled, digital fairy tale “Belle” (in theaters Jan. 14).Borrowing tropes from Disney’s 1991 “Beauty and the Beast,” but repurposed to fit his vibrant aesthetic, Hosoda builds a virtual universe known as U, where people coexist in the form of bright-colored avatars tailored to their physical traits and personalities.Inside this intangible realm, the apprehensive teenager Suzu (voiced by Kaho Nakamura) transforms into a hyper-confident pop star. But when a troubled user, an enigmatic cloaked dragon, begins wreaking havoc, reality bleeds into this seemingly idyllic escape. The rousing action, awe-inspiring world construction and entrancing soundtrack belie tougher subjects.With affecting gravitas, “Belle” confronts the lapse in communication between parents and children, as well as the neglect and abuse committed against young people by their guardians. Still, rather than demonizing the interactions we have via our internet personas, Hosoda presents this alternative mode of engagement as an avenue for sincere connection.Conversely, the fascinatingly immersive mountain climbing drama “The Summit of the Gods” (streaming on Netflix) maps a story of dual obsession that unfolds entirely in animated iterations of existing locations: Mount Everest, the Alps, Tokyo, all of which are no less remarkable in painterly renderings. The French-produced film (based on the manga by Jiro Taniguchi) portrays the strenuous and perilous activity like a spiritual pursuit.Hellbent on reaching the world’s highest peak, the reclusive climber Habu (voiced by Éric Herson-Macarel) has spent years preparing to accomplish it alone. At the same time, the photojournalist Fukamachi (Damien Boisseau) is on a quest to find the camera that belonged to the real-life mountaineer George Mallory, who died on the north face of Everest. Their separate desires soon become inextricably intertwined.A scene from “The Summit of the Gods.”NetflixBefore making “Summit,” the director Patrick Imbert had served as the animation director on hyper stylized projects such as the acclaimed fable “Ernest and Celestine.” But here, his first solo directorial effort, there’s a more austere approach to the character design to make its exploration of the human longing for the unknown, and not the stylization, the focus. Though most of us may never understand what compels people to risk it all at such altitudes, “Summit” attempts to get us as close to that zenith as possible through sensory impressions.Staying in our sufficiently complicated real world, two films this year reinforce a trend that points to animation as a route to understanding the cultural and geopolitical intricacies of Afghanistan. These entries join recent standouts like Cartoon Saloon’s Oscar nominated “The Breadwinner” and the movingly bleak French title “The Swallows of Kabul.”First, there’s the already multi-awarded refugee odyssey “Flee” by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, a nonfiction piece tracing a young man’s treacherous trajectory from 1980s Kabul in turmoil to the safety of his adoptive home in Copenhagen. The subject, Amin (a pseudonym used to protect his identity), befriended the filmmaker when they were both teenagers.Given the severity of the circumstances depicted and that they’re based on factual events, “Flee” calls to mind Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir,” an animated documentary from Israel that was nominated for the best international feature Oscar in 2009.A scene from Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film “Flee.”Final Cut for RealAnimation empowered Rasmussen and his team to materialize Amin’s hazier, most traumatic memories in lyrical fashion and let viewers into the past not only as it happened, but also as he experienced it, with a vividly resonant immediacy. Underlying his hazardous passage is Amin’s concealment of his sexual orientation.“Flee” (in theaters) would make Oscar history if it received nominations in all three categories of animation, documentary and international feature (representing Denmark).Its boundary-blurring presence this awards season, having already won the best nonfiction film award from the New York Film Critics Circle and the best animation award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, provides a prime case study for animation’s merit and effectiveness across genres and formats.A scene from “My Sunny Maad,” directed by Michaela Pavlatova.Negativ FilmThe other hard-hitting account that takes place in Afghanistan, though decades later, “My Sunny Maad,” received a surprise nomination from the embattled Golden Globes. The seasoned Czech animator Michaela Pavlatova, who was Academy Award-nominated for her 1993 short film “Words, Words, Words,” here makes her first animated feature with this domestic drama based on a novel by Petra Prochazkova.The Czech student Herra (voiced by Zuzana Stivinova) moves to Kabul after marrying an Afghan man. Unable to have children, they adopt the timid orphan Maad (Shahid Maqsoodi) to form a loving nucleus, yet the household dynamics with extended family members, as well as growing national unrest, continuously put strain on their marriage.Though so far it has only had a limited awards qualifying run in theaters, this unsparingly poignant film warrants major attention. Blending subdued magical realism with unfiltered harsh truths, Pavlatova addresses the vulnerable position of women in a strictly patriarchal society.While the previously mentioned contenders are international productions, two rare American independent titles also delve into adult themes: Dash Shaw’s zany adventure “Cryptozoo” (streaming on Hulu) and Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt’s gruesome fantasy epic “The Spine of Night” (available on demand).A scene from “Cryptozoo,” directed by Dash Shaw.Magnolia PicturesAn unassumingly profound blast of invention, “Cryptozoo” centers on numerous mythological creatures, known as cryptids, being haunted both by those who wish to exhibit them in an amusement park and by the U.S. military to deploy as weapons.Both “Cryptozoo” and “Spine” are welcome additions to the landscape of mature animated features stateside that for long has had few fiercely autonomous role models, like the veteran animator Bill Plympton and the prolific Don Hertzfeldt, who have managed to retain full creative control of their idiosyncratic comedies by working with limited resources.Whether it means benefiting from European state funds (“The Summit of the Gods, “Flee,” “My Sunny Maad”), establishing a self-sufficient company (like Hosoda’s Studio Chizu) or becoming cleverly frugal to sustain a career, the common denominator between these films appears to be that they exist outside the systems that hinder animation’s full potential. 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      ‘Scream’ Review: Kill Me Again, Again

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      Neither a remake nor a sequel, this tired retread can’t move forward for looking back.Throttled by a corrosive self-awareness, the latest “Scream” is a slasher movie with resting smug face, so enamored of its own mythology that its characters speak of little else.This self-referential chatter, disguised as commentary on the franchise-within-the-franchise, “Stab,” means that there’s scarcely a line of dialogue that doesn’t land with a wink and a nudge.“There are certain rules to surviving a ‘Stab’ movie,” Dewey (David Arquette), now a disgraced former police officer and over-imbiber, tells the latest batch of potential victims. But the knowingness that was cute in Wes Craven’s original picture has, over the course of 25 years and three sequels, curdled into complacency, leaving James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick’s screenplay so marooned in the meta it feels weirdly plotless. Thus Dewey, having suffered a total of nine stabbings during the series, is now viewed as an expert to the teenagers seeking his advice when the Ghostface killer once again stalks the streets of Woodsboro.This will require Dewey to sober up, rejoin the force and reunite with his longtime crush, Gale (Courteney Cox), now a TV anchor in New York. The eventual reappearance of Sidney (Neve Campbell), possibly the slasher canon’s most repeatedly traumatized heroine, completes the original threesome. Their return to Woodsboro also fulfills one of the rules of this so-called requel — not quite a remake, and not exactly a sequel — as recited by Mindy (Jasmin Savoy Brown, currently knocking it out of the park on Showtime’s “Yellowjackets”), a high schooler and the script’s main receptacle of horror-movie trivia. What’s a requel without legacy characters?“Scream” may not define itself as a remake, but much of it wallows in reminders of the foundational film. From the ringing landline that introduces the opening attack, to the painstaking recreation of one infamous character’s home, the movie revels in visual and aural callbacks. Yet by designing a movie that seems solely intended to placate an avid fan base, the directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (two-thirds of the collective known as Radio Silence), paint themselves into a creative corner. They’re so busy looking backward, they’re unable to see a coherent way forward.Franchises, of course, have always pandered — it’s in their D.N.A. — but rarely has one groveled quite so thirstily for fan approval. The result is a picture so carelessly plotted, and so coarsely photographed, that it traps its cast in a deadening cycle of blasé snark and humdrum slaughter. This makes the touching warmth of Campbell and Arquette’s too-brief appearances feel imported from a more innocent, earnest time.Also operating on a different plane is the terrific Melissa Barrera as Sam, a fragile Woodsboro returnee hiding a terrible secret. Sam’s back story is little more than a sketch, but Barrera, who mesmerized me for weeks in the recent Starz drama “Vida,” begs us to care about her anyway. She’s a marvel.Wearyingly repetitive and entirely fright-free, “Scream” teaches us mainly that planting Easter eggs is no substitute for seeding ideas.“I’ve seen this movie before,” Sidney remarks at a critical moment. Oh girl, I hear you.ScreamRated R for stabbing, jabbing, slicing and shooting. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘A Cops and Robbers Story’ Review: Keep Your Enemies Closer

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      This documentary follows a police officer who rose through the ranks while concealing his criminal past.Corey Pegues, the subject of the slim and sober documentary “A Cops and Robbers Story,” started in law enforcement in 1992, eventually becoming a commanding officer in his 20-year career with the New York City Police Department. But as a Black officer, Pegues was often treated with suspicion by his fellow policemen, who would snidely comment that he was too close to the community he was patrolling.What these officers didn’t know was that Pegues had once been part of a drug gang in Queens known as the Supreme Team. When he trained new officers, his presentations included criminal data on his own friends and former associates. Pegues was, in effect, living a double life.Pegues’s story is told through photographs, home videos and, most significantly, through present-day interviews with him, his family, friends and former contacts in both the police department and among members of the Supreme Team. The director, Ilinca Calugareanu, also includes re-enactments to stage the dramatic episodes from Pegues’s life, such as his failed attempt to shoot and kill a man.The re-enactments are attractively filmed, with stark cinematography and colorful costume choices. But their inclusion disrupts the flow of the narrative, often looping back to demonstrate scenes that have already been explained.The repetition of verbal and visual storytelling points to the limited scope of this film. “A Cops and Robbers Story” explores Pegues’s split loyalties, but the talking head interviews tend to isolate characters whose very intimacy is the subject of the film. If the central problem of Pegues’s life was that his past and present could never interact, the documentary replicates rather than resolves this tension.A Cops and Robbers StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 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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      ‘Why Is We Americans?’ Review: A Family Synonymous With Newark

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      This documentary looks at Amiri Baraka and his loved ones, who have played a vital role in arts and politics in their city and beyond for generations.Historical accounts of revolutionary icons are often plagued by hero myths that exalt individuals at the expense of the community that formed them. With “Why Is We Americans?,” a documentary about the impact the poet and radical Amiri Baraka and his descendants have had on the city of Newark, the directors Udi Aloni and Ayana Stafford-Morris attempt a different approach. In this compressed account of the multiple generations of artists and activists that make up the Baraka clan, the patriarch, who died in 2014, is a single (if central) node. It’s a story that spans past and present, arts and politics, and kin and country — and the movie, with its haphazard editing, struggles to contain it all.”In the film’s opening minutes, archival footage of Amiri Baraka’s rousing address at the National Black Political Convention in 1972 in Gary, Ind. — “What time is it? It’s nation time!” — gives way to scenes of his son Ras’s campaign to become mayor of Newark, a position he currently holds. From Ras, we go on to the other children, including Amiri Jr., a political strategist who was active in student protests at Howard University, and Shani, a daughter whose murder led to the establishment of a women’s resource center in her name. Amiri’s wife, Amina, emerges as the film’s most arresting figure, sharing moving anecdotes and sharp, feminist critiques of the Black Power movement.But the film’s unfocused, grab-bag montages often raise more questions than the movie can answer. Amiri Baraka’s first wife, the poet Hettie Jones, is mentioned only in passing, and some other important themes, such as Baraka’s feelings about the sexual orientation of a lesbian sister and daughte, are touched upon too cursorily. These elisions feel even more jarring given the ample time devoted to Lauryn Hill, an executive producer of the film, who appears throughout to offer broad, mostly gratuitous cultural commentary.Why Is We Americans?Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Hotel Transylvania: Transformania’ Review: Another Monster Mash

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      The plot, about a crystal-powered ray gun that can turn monsters into humans, seems to acknowledge the need to goose its characters out of their inertia.“Hotel Transylvania: Transformania,” directed by Derek Drymon and Jennifer Kluska and streaming on Friday on Amazon Prime Video, concludes the series of four animated features that cast Dracula as a nervous father and the proprietor of a monster resort. This time, the plot — about a ray gun that turns humans into monsters, and vice versa — seems to acknowledge the need to goose characters out of their inertia.“Drac” (Brian Hull, replacing Adam Sandler), has settled down with Ericka (Kathryn Hahn), a great-grand-daughter of the famed monster hunter, Van Helsing. Mavis (Selena Gomez), Drac and Ericka’s daughter, has a child with a goofball human backpacker named Johnny (Andy Samberg). Van Helsing (Jim Gaffigan) roams the hotel basement. It’s his crystal-powered ray gun that transforms Johnny into a dragon, and turns Drac and his circle of monster dads into humans.Johnny embraces his rambunctious new form because Drac, who is typically overprotective, has said that only monsters can take over the hotel after he retires.But Drac, now a flightless human, misses his mojo. He and Johnny go on a Scooby Doo-grade quest to an Amazonian cave in search of a fresh crystal for the now-broken ray gun. Ericka, Mavis, and company give chase in an airship to help.Giving sitcom-style family dynamics to monsters has long been standard in big-tent animation projects, but these dynamics tend to make banal what is weird and intriguing about the characters. The “Hotel Transylvania” series, previously directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, usually compensates with a spry visual imagination for its comedy, a vibrant sense of color, and, of course, dance parties.But despite some flourishes (such as a mirror-like crystal cave), “Transformania” feels locked into the routine rhythms of its plotting and makes one-note jokes out of its human incarnations. It even ends with a character shrugging.Hotel Transylvania: TransformaniaRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘The Pink Cloud’ Review: Love in Lockdown

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      Iuli Gerbase’s first feature film reflects a funhouse-mirror image of our present lives.Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A deadly phenomenon has spread across the globe and forced all of civilization into an extended quarantine. Fights break out in grocery stores and online. Video chat becomes the center of human communication, playing host to everything from work meetings to birthday parties. Many people find that their partners and children are the only souls they’ll keep company with for the next several months.This is the premise for “The Pink Cloud,” a Brazilian domestic drama with a helping of science fiction that, remarkably enough, was conceived of in 2017 and filmed in 2019. Directed by the newcomer Iuli Gerbase, it stars Renata de Lélis and Eduardo Mendonça as two 30-somethings, Giovana and Yago, who have a one-night stand and wake up the next morning to find a mysterious pink cloud hanging over their city, killing anyone who breathes it for 10 seconds. The government orders a nationwide lockdown, and the two of them, alone together, are suddenly forced to reckon with a potential relationship.Like other works of prescient sci-fi, “The Pink Cloud” forecasts an eerie funhouse-mirror image of our present lives. FaceTime becomes the main channel for social gatherings; citizens are issued government-provided care packages that feel insufficient; Giovana’s friend, trapped alone in her home, experiences symptoms of depression and languishing.The film’s pacing often matches that static sensation, to a frustrating degree. Even as the lockdown accelerates intimacy and conflict between the protagonists, their actions feel inconsequential compared with the greater world outside. “The Pink Cloud” is at its most perceptive when it acknowledges this level of powerlessness, like when a hopeful conclusion to the disaster turns out to be a false alarm. Outside, the cloud floats along, with no dissipating end in sight.The Pink CloudRated R for nudity, brief language and pandemic-related despondency. In Portuguese and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Brazen’ Review: Not So Novel

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      A prolific crime novelist teams up with a hunky homicide detective to track down a killer in this painfully formulaic Netflix murder mystery.Early in “Brazen,” a psychological thriller on Netflix, the crime novelist Grace Miller (Alyssa Milano) insists that her books, which feature grisly femicide, aren’t trashy, but illuminative. “They’re about the exploitation of women, and misogyny, and the patriarchy,” she declares.The movie surrounding her has less lofty ambitions. Predictable and all-American, “Brazen” is the murder mystery version of a Hallmark Christmas romance. Indeed, the movie is based on a grocery store paperback by the prolific author Nora Roberts, and its director, Monika Mitchell, counts several made-for-TV holiday movies among her credits. It’s a match made in algorithm heaven.The story begins with the big-city Grace traveling to the suburbs to help her sister, Kathleen (Emilie Ullerup), fight a custody battle. But when the reunion is cut short by a grisly murder, the plot pivots. Grieving and frightened, Grace vows to apply her writerly instincts to track down the killer, with some help from the hunky homicide detective Ed (Sam Page) who happens to live next door.Chock-full of tropes and status quo gender dynamics — “if anything ever happened to you, I would lose my mind,” Ed cries when Grace volunteers for a risky police gambit — “Brazen” occasionally scratches the same itch as does a cop procedural, or a Lifetime drama so formulaic you foresee every beat. It is perhaps fitting, then, that the film is rarely suspenseful; I, for one, guessed the killer from the opening scenes, and I haven’t written even a single mystery novel.BrazenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More