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      ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ Review: Reframing an Urban Classic

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      Burhan Qurbani’s film reinterprets a classic German novel into the story of a 21st-century immigrant from Guinea-Bissau surviving under the thumb of a brutal drug dealer.Alfred Döblin’s masterpiece “Berlin Alexanderplatz” received its most famous dramatization not at the movies but on TV, with Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 15-hour adaptation in 1980. Burhan Qurbani’s ambitious film by the same name re-centers the Weimar Era original on a 21st-century immigrant from Guinea-Bissau who seeks the straight and narrow but works for a psychopathic drug dealer.Cash is one reason that Franz (a quietly winning Welket Bungué) stays in the orbit of Reinhold (Albrecht Schuch), a sniveling underboss who promises newcomers to Berlin a way out of poverty and discrimination. But Franz’s loyalty is rewarded with Reinhold’s sadistic betrayals, which leave Franz near dead and missing half an arm. Reinhold exerts a Svengali-like hold on Franz and the women they know, though the character’s questionable magnetism makes this dynamic increasingly baffling.The clubs and flats that Franz frequents evoke a Berlin demimonde that’s colorful yet curiously routine. A breathy voice-over attempts to imbue Franz’s travails with a tragic air, but it all just feels like a stew of unheeded warnings and wild missteps. And when Mieze (Jella Haase), a savvy and gemütlich escort, enters as Franz’s possible savior, she proves to be trusting to the point of incredulity (like other female characters in the film).Qurbani eschews Döblin’s panoramic view of Berlin and urban montage for a steady low fog of despair (until a tacked-on epilogue lets some sunshine in). His “Berlin Alexanderplatz” is a nice place to visit but you might not want to live there for three hours.Berlin AlexanderplatzNot rated. In German, with subtitles. Running time: 3 hours 3 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘About Endlessness’ Review: Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

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      Roy Andersson’s latest feature is a somber, exhilarating collection of self-defeating human specimens.In his elegy for William Butler Yeats, W.H. Auden instructed poets to “sing of human unsuccess/in a rapture of distress.” The Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson may be the great cinematic bard of failure and futility, though his version of rapture is a decidedly low-key affair. “About Endlessness,” his new feature, is at once gloomy and vivid, 76 minutes worth of vignettes that are individually somber and cumulatively exhilarating.Anyone who has seen his “You, the Living” (2009) or “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” (2015) will be primed for this paradox. Viewers lucky enough to be discovering Andersson for the first time will receive a concise introduction to his method and sensibility.This isn’t to say that “About Endlessness” is exactly like the other films. As ever, Andersson favors washed-out colors and lived-in faces, people who move slowly and a camera that doesn’t move at all. Each shot is a kind of sight gag, a visual and philosophical joke with absurdity in the setup and sorrow in the punchline. But this time, more of the jokes are one-liners, in which the premise and the payoff are one and the same.Some of them are accompanied by the voice of a female narrator who calmly witnesses what we are watching. Her script is like the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”: a simple list of things she’s seen that is full of mystery and portent. “I saw a woman who had a problem with her shoe,” she says, as a woman breaks a high heel against the hard floor of a train station. Later, a man will have a problem with his car. But not everything our invisible guide sees is so mundane. “I saw a man who tried to conquer the world and failed,” she says, as actors playing Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis gather in a room while bombs fall outside.She also sees a few people more than once, notably a priest who has lost his faith. He appears first in a dream, hauling a heavy cross up a Stockholm street while being screamed at, flogged and kicked by ordinary-looking modern city residents. The image is jarring because it is incongruous and also completely transparent. We don’t expect to see this particular form of cruelty in this setting, but at the same time we know exactly what it means.Later, the priest will visit a psychiatrist, an encounter echoed in a later meeting between a dentist and a patient who refuses anesthesia. He’s afraid of needles, he explains, before his howls of pain drive the doctor out of the office and into a bar downstairs. Not that liquor is much of a palliative. The pain that Andersson diagnoses is incurable.Though perhaps not entirely untreatable. Against the misery of existence, there is the discipline of art, which can be, in the right hands, a kind of homeopathy. There is something unmistakably tender about the way Andersson regards his mopey, weary, self-defeating characters, most of whom are as gray and lumpy as the clouds that hover over them. They are the kind company that misery loves, and therefore a source of unexpected consolation.About EndlessnessNot rated. In Swedish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 16 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Limbo’ Review: A Musician in Exile Tunes Out

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      A Syrian refugee deposited on a remote Scottish isle seeks meaning in his isolated surroundings, with wryly funny results.Most of the films we’ve seen about the migrant and refugee situation in Europe in recent years are gritty, often heartbreaking dramas and documentaries. “Limbo,” written and directed by a ferociously talented filmmaker, Ben Sharrock, takes an insinuating, poetic and often wryly funny approach. And it’s both heartbreaking and heartlifting.Amir El-Masry plays Omar, a young Syrian man seeking asylum in Britain. He and a group of other male refugees have been deposited on a remote Scottish island while their applications are processed. How remote? A scene early in the movie shows Omar in a phone booth, speaking to his mother, as a couple of other men wait for him to complete his conversation. They all own cellphones, but there are no bars. (The movie was shot in the Outer Hebrides.)There are, however, “Cultural Awareness” classes, taught by two comically stilted instructors who mime close dancing (to a Hot Chocolate song) to demonstrate social dos and don’ts when interacting with the women of Europe.Omar’s estrangement is multileveled. In his homeland he was a celebrated musician, a player of the oud, a type of lute. So was his father, who is now in Istanbul with Omar’s mother, and playing in the street for change. Omar hasn’t touched his instrument because he’s had one hand in a cast since leaving his homeland. When the cast comes off, he tunes his oud, and worries that it doesn’t sound right.It’s not as if he doesn’t have boosters. One of his housemates, Farhad (Vikash Bhai), a fellow with two fanatical interests, those being chickens and Freddie Mercury, offers to be his manager, and endeavors to put book him “an evening of Syrian music.”“They put us out here in the middle of nowhere to try and break us,” one of Omar’s comrades complains. But there are other factors straining Omar. His brother stayed behind in Syria, to fight in its civil war. His parents pull him one way and another in their conversations. Omar takes long, aimless walks, carrying the oud he won’t play. The flat green fields and the big open sky frame his figure (the film is mostly presented in a boxy aspect ratio) to make his isolation seem constant.If you’ve spent any time in the Scottish isles, you know they’re places where time seems to stand still. The setting here constructs a powerful metaphor for the protagonist’s plight. With a pleasing bit of cinematic sleight-of-hand, the movie grows more expansive once Omar determines to expand his horizon.LimboRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Four Good Days’ Review: Repairing a Mother-Daughter Relationship

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      In this drama, Mila Kunis plays a heroin addict and Glenn Close the mother trying to help her get clean.“Four Good Days” deals with the recoveries of two people: a heroin addict and her mother, who has given up on trusting her daughter.The first scene between Deb (Glenn Close) and Molly (Mila Kunis) establishes the wheedling strategies that Molly has used on Deb before. Molly shows up at Deb’s doorstep, claiming to want to detox at her home; Deb, pained by the interaction, musters the willpower to shut her out. But soon after, she’ll take her in. The four days represent a period during which Molly, with no place else to go, must stay clean: Once the drugs are gone from her system, she can take a monthly shot of naltrexone, which will prevent opiates from delivering a high and make it easier to get clean.But during the wait, the mother-daughter tension never relents. Deb can’t believe Molly, and Molly can’t regain credibility. If there is something familiar about watching movie stars de-glam themselves for roles (Molly has lost some of her teeth), the toggling gives the actresses something substantial to work with. As a relationship movie, not just for the pair but those around them, “Four Good Days” is more complex than its outward trappings and preachier scenes — like an anguished Molly addressing a high school class — suggest.The film is based on a 2016 Washington Post article by Eli Saslow, who wrote the screenplay with the director, Rodrigo García. The movie adheres to the crucial points, even if it relocates the characters from greater Detroit to Southern California. It also preserves the story’s power.Four Good DaysRated R for drug abuse and its consequences. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘The Outside Story’ Review: Brooklyn as No One Has Ever Known It

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      In this listless comedy by Casimir Nozkowski, a moping homebody locks himself out, but the resulting interaction with others helps to change his outlook.The comedy “The Outside Story” takes a listless look at the life of Charles (Brian Tyree Henry), who is moping over his breakup with his unfaithful girlfriend, Isha (Sonequa Martin-Green). When Charles chases down a delivery person to offer a belated tip, he gets locked out of his Brooklyn apartment for a day and must set his self-pity aside.This predicament forces him into contact with the neighbors he never bothered getting to know. Unable to re-enter his comfort zone, he asks to use the bathroom of the polyamorous partners upstairs. He charges his phone with the help of the adolescent piano prodigy who lives in his building. Charles is depressed, but affably so. He’s amiable to everyone he meets, even the overachieving police officer (Sunita Mani), who finds a new reason to interrogate Charles each time she circles the block. With the help of his new friends, Charles reflects on his romantic relationship and contemplates reconciliation.The film, which was written and directed by Casimir Nozkowski, sets an easy pace to match Charles’s mild ennui. The only problem is that the movie doesn’t supplement its lack of stakes with style or substance. The cinematography is flat and lifeless, and Charles and his neighbors represent Brooklyn street style with oversize cardigans and rumpled button-ups. This is a toothless version of the city, where disputes between neighbors are solved without a single swear word, where confrontations with police are resolved over a sandwich. Even the streets seem scrubbed of grime, grit, color and texture. It’s a movie with images that are as squeaky clean as its faultless characters, a cinematic view that feels better suited to a sitcom suburb.The Outside StoryNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Percy vs Goliath’ Review: Growing Pains

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      Christopher Walken plays a beleaguered farmer in this understated environmental drama.“Percy vs Goliath” might be based on a 1998 Canadian legal battle and its fallout, but Clark Johnson’s ambling, warmhearted movie doesn’t lean on courtroom tension for drama. Addressing high stakes — the degree to which agribusiness controls our food supply — in an extremely low key, Johnson uses one family’s plight to illustrate the predicament of an entire industry.Christopher Walken stars as Percy Schmeiser, a curmudgeonly canola farmer in Saskatchewan. Each year, Percy plants the legacy seeds his family has saved over generations, refusing to purchase the genetically modified, pesticide-resistant variety patented and sold by Monsanto. (The company has since been acquired by Bayer.) When Monsanto investigators discover his crop contains the modified gene (which Percy claims was an accidental contamination from a neighboring farm), Percy is vaulted into a yearslong struggle to protect his farm, his livelihood and, not least, his integrity.Sentimental and a little corny in parts, “Percy” is protected from bathos by Walken’s proudly minimalist performance as an intensely private man reluctantly drawn into an uncomfortably public fight. Both Zach Braff (as Percy’s out-of-his-depth lawyer) and Christina Ricci (as a perky environmental activist with her own agenda) do their best to enliven the movie’s rather staid rhythms. And while the courtroom scenes are dusty and dull, Luc Montpellier’s generally unremarkable cinematography surprises us with some lovely prairie vistas.Unabashedly partisan and unfailingly modest, Garfield L. Miller and Hilary Pryor’s script strives to educate, not always unobtrusively (as in a visit to India to discuss farmer suicides). The result is a movie that’s unlikely to raise your pulse, but it might just heighten your interest in what goes into your mouth.Percy vs GoliathRated PG-13. No sex, no guns, no bad words and no idea why the rating. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse’ Review: A Routine Mission

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      Aside from a few set pieces, this action film, starring Michael B. Jordan, is a surprisingly dull adaptation of Clancy’s 1993 novel.Situating the bulk of its action in 2019, “Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse” updates Clancy’s 1993 novel by opening with a prologue in Aleppo, Syria, and making reference to the Russian military presence in the country. But the geopolitics and relative lack of cyber-anything otherwise date the movie to a barely post-Cold War period, while the plot mechanics grind along like holdovers from Charles Bronson’s heyday.Michael B. Jordan plays John Kelly, a Navy SEAL whose pregnant wife (Lauren London) is killed when Russian operatives invade their home, intending to terminate him. A sympathetic colleague from the SEALs (Jodie Turner-Smith) and the defense secretary (Guy Pearce) relax protocol to help Kelly get revenge, but a C.I.A. official (Jamie Bell) gets peeved, signaling to viewers that he’s secretly working for the other side — or at least that the screenwriters, Taylor Sheridan and Will Staples, need them to think that. (Either way, Bell could dial down the superciliousness.)The director, Stefano Sollima (“Sicario: Day of the Soldado”), manages the proceedings with a minimum of zest, relying on a score by Jonsi (of Sigur Ros) for ambient energy. Even the visuals are gray and indifferent, and the briefer-than-expected running time does not correspond to a brisk pace.Three set pieces — an ambush outside Dulles airport; a creatively executed hostage-taking at a prison; a plane crash — elevate the movie’s pulse, but most of “Without Remorse” is surprisingly dull, more concerned with laying franchise groundwork than with being exciting on its own terms. Jordan makes a sturdy enough action hero, but the character as portrayed doesn’t give him any contours to play.Tom Clancy’s Without RemorseRated R. The human toll of espionage. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Amazon Prime Video. More

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      ‘Lucy, the Human Chimp’ Review: Far From Home

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      A domesticated chimpanzee is disastrously relocated to the wild in this deeply troubling documentary.There’s a strange irony in the appalling trajectory of “Lucy the Human Chimp,” a documentary about an experiment that forced a chimp to live as a human, but resulted in requiring a human to live as a chimp.That would be Janis Carter, whose uncontested voice and pained features dominate the screen as she narrates Lucy’s distressing story. As a student in the 1970s, Carter was hired as Lucy’s caretaker by the psychologists Maurice K. Temerlin and his wife, Jane, who had purchased the newborn chimpanzee roughly a decade earlier and raised her as a human in their suburban home.But Lucy — who slept on a king-size mattress, communicated in sign language and mixed herself a mean cocktail — had become so large and dangerously hormonal that the Temerlins decided she’d be better off in the African jungle. (Never mind that she was an adult who knew nothing of the wild or other chimpanzees.) Her screaming during the flight was only a harbinger of the torment to come.By turns alarming and poignant, Alex Parkinson’s infuriatingly deferential film recounts how Carter — passionately attached to Lucy and admittedly clueless about how to facilitate her adjustment — abandoned her life to live with Lucy on a remote island. Her devotion is extraordinary, but her obliviousness is shocking: If you believed, as she did, that Lucy saw herself as human, why would you compel her to live as a wild animal? Neither that question, nor any other, is asked by Parkinson, who uses archive footage and wonder-filled re-enactments to tell what he apparently views as a love story. Maybe it is; but it’s also a heart-rending tale of animal suffering and human hubris.Lucy, the Human ChimpNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 8 minutes. Watch on HBO Max. More