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      ‘A Son (Un Fils)’ Review: The Pain of Others

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      In this Tunisian drama, a terrorist attack sends a husband and wife into a spiraling crisis, opening a world of hurt and understanding.A tense emotional bloodletting, “A Son (Un Fils)” opens on a deceptively peaceful note. A group of men and women on the younger side of middle age have gathered together for a picnic, perhaps for a celebration. Convening in a pretty spot under a canopy of trees, they chatter and raise glasses, laughter and drinks freely flowing as children play nearby. And while the location is unclear, the geographic possibilities narrow when the picnickers speak Arabic with smatterings of French. The smiles keep coming, even when one reveler jokes about an imam and another says they’ll laugh less when the Islamists take over.Set in the summer of 2011, “A Son” unfolds in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolution, though never directly engages with the upheaval. (In January of that year, after mass protests, the authoritarian president fled the country, leading to the creation of a new government.) Instead, the writer-director Mehdi M. Barsaoui takes fairly oblique approach to the country’s turmoil. Without waving flags or voicing explicit politics, he emphasizes faces and feelings and specifically what happens when one of the families at the picnic — this joyous gathering, with its laughter and bare heads, contemporary clothing and ties to the modern world — blunders into a violent Islamist ambush.Fares (Sami Bouajila) and Meriem (Najla Ben Abdallah), a sexy, attractive, warmly affectionate couple, are first seen driving to the picnic in a Range Rover. Sometime later, they and their 11-year-old son, Aziz (Youssef Khemiri), are on the road again, this time headed south on a business trip for Fares. Their destination is Tataouine, a location bounded by desert and a few hours from Libya, then in the midst of civil war. There, the family checks into a luxury hotel, and you wait for the worst.It arrives shortly thereafter with narrative economy, gunfire blasts and a shock of visceral terror. One minute the family is singing along to a pop tune; an eye-blink later, Fares is racing down the road in reverse with shattered windows and a severely wounded Aziz, and you’re abruptly watching a new movie. Fares and Meriem rush him to a hospital, where Barsaoui begins thwarting your assumptions about what to expect. And as the tone, vibe and storytelling parts shift and shift again — the movie is by turns a hospital drama, a marriage melodrama, a black-market intrigue — Meriem and especially Fares draw you near, push you away and prompt you to choose sides.Barsaoui folds in a lot of narrative turns in the compressed time frame and in the cramped spaces of the main locale, the rundown regional hospital where Fares and Meriem worriedly wait as doctors tend to Aziz. Although the focus remains on the parents, their anguished faces and blood-soaked clothing, Barsaoui takes laps around the rest of the hospital, where watchful women in head scarves also wait. The silence of these other visitors — some accompanied, others alone — thickens meaningfully as Fares and Meriem’s relationship is tested and their voices grow louder, angrier. What, Barsaoui seems to ask, do these other women — emissaries from another Tunisia that Fares and Meriem share but don’t inhabit — think, hope and want?What Barsaoui wants is for you to notice these women and see how they look at this couple, who rarely return their gaze, a blinkeredness that’s understandable if also revealing. If this were a certain kind of European art film, Fares and Meriem might be punished for living in a bourgeois, secular echo chamber. But Barsaoui doesn’t brutalize his characters, even when he shows them (and you) the depths of human depravity. Their child may be dying and their marriage might be too, and that is pain enough. But there’s more to life than one’s own sorrow, as Barsaoui underscores with another child, an unloved boy who enters late and brings the horrors of the larger world with him.A Son (Un Fils)Not rated. In French and Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘France’ Review: When the Journalist Becomes the Story

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      Léa Seydoux plays a star television anchor whose life comes unraveled in Bruno Dumont’s new film.Very often in Bruno Dumont’s “France” — so often that I gave up trying to count — he zooms slowly in on Léa Seydoux’s face, sometimes capturing a tear making its way from one of her blue eyes down the sculpted planes of her cheek.For cinephiles of a certain temperament, the shot will evoke exalted moments in movie history, for instance the silent images of Maria Falconetti in Carl Dreyer’s “Passion of Joan of Arc.” Falconetti’s silent, tear-streaked visage has been taken as evidence of the spiritual power of film. In exploring the beauty and singularity of a face, the camera can also disclose the anguish of a soul.But some of Dumont’s zooms have a more profane, or at least a more worldly connotation. Seydoux’s character, France de Meurs, is a popular television anchor and correspondent who hosts a nightly news show that ends, as such broadcasts typically do, with a close-up. To some extent, “France” — the movie and its possibly allegorical heroine alike — is structured around the tension between the banality of television and the sacredness of cinema, and around the difficulty of telling them apart.“You’re becoming an icon,” France’s producer — a chain-vaping, scene-stealing comic foil named Lou (Blanche Gardin) — enthuses, using the word in the usual secular way, as a synonym for celebrity. But Dumont is also interested in an older, overtly religious meaning. An icon is more than a picture: It’s a pictorial incarnation of holiness.The irruption of the divine into ordinary life — sometimes sublime, sometimes violent, sometimes absurd — has preoccupied this director for much of his career. In addition to two historical features about Joan of Arc, he has made films set in contemporary France (including “The Life of Jesus,” “Humanité” and “Hadewijch”) that vibrate with metaphysical implications. They can be brutal, unnerving and also puzzling.“France” is all of those things, but also curiously slack, especially as France spirals through a series of personal and professional crises. The first of these — the least dramatic but also, for her, the most consequential — occurs in the midst of a Parisian traffic jam, when her car strikes a deliveryman’s motor scooter. He is knocked down, and something is knocked loose in her. Desperate to atone, she gives money to the man’s family that they never asked for, and buys him a new scooter once he has recovered from his injuries.It isn’t enough. Or maybe her emotional turmoil has another source. France is married to a dour novelist (Benjamin Biolay), and lives with him and their obnoxious young son (Gaetan Amiel) in a pretentiously decorated Paris apartment. For a while, she leaves them, and her job, for an old-fashioned rest cure at an Alpine spa. There, she meets a mopey young man (Emanuele Arioli) who claims to be a professor of Latin.In the second part of the movie, dramatic incidents pile up, as France suffers danger on the job, romantic betrayal, tabloid scandal and devastating tragedy. The close-ups continue to accumulate, the discreet tears sometimes blossoming into full, face-contorting sobs. But while France remains interesting, thanks to Seydoux’s tough and resourceful performance, “France” loses its emotional force and its intellectual focus. A potentially insightful exploration of the loss of self in a media-saturated world amounts, in the end, to a series of shallow images.FranceNot rated. In French, German and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Lady of Heaven’ Review: A Tale of Two Eras

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      This historical epic about the life of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, is a mechanical history lesson riddled with clichés.Directed by Eli King, “The Lady of Heaven” chronicles the life of Lady Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.The movie opens with the ISIS invasion of modern-day Iraq. In an unexpectedly graphic scene, a young boy, Laith (Gabriel Cartade), witnesses jihadists murder his mother. He’s then adopted by a strapping Iraqi soldier and his kindly mother, Bibi (Denise Black).Black, a white actress, makes for a questionable casting decision, though she’s primarily a narrator and her silky voice does lend the story a certain gravitas. Bibi comforts the traumatized boy with the faith-affirming tale of Fatima, plunging the viewer into seventh-century Arabia, where the bulk of the film takes place.Thing is, the film is hardly about Fatima.Islamic tradition forbids the direct portrayal of religious figures by individual actors, a code “The Lady of Heaven” abides by. Completely shrouded in a black veil, Fatima is a faceless character who, more important, never truly seems to be the focus.Instead, the film is more of a history lesson that happens to take her into account. King traces the rise of Muhammed; Fatima’s marriage to Muhammad’s cousin, Ali; the death of Muhammad; and the ensuing split between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. In the last act, Fatima emerges as a martyr whose suffering assumes contemporary resonance in Laith’s rejection of Islamic extremism.All the boxes of the historical epic genre are ticked — a bloody battle sequence, an ethereal wedding ceremony and intrigue among power mongering factions. The film runs through plot points in appropriately spectacular, if mechanical, fashion. A shoddy script and an overwhelming reliance on clichés, however, make this would-be blockbuster feel incredibly cheap.The Lady of HeavenRated R for wartime violence. Running time: 2 hours 21 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Real Charlie Chaplin’ Review: Not Enough Funny Business

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      The documentary attempts to restore a sense of mystery to Chaplin’s life and work, but the filmmakers mostly run through a well-trodden timeline.The biographical documentary “The Real Charlie Chaplin” looks to restore a sense of mystery to its beyond-famous subject. The filmmakers, Peter Middleton and James Spinney, mostly run through the well-trodden timeline of Charlie Chaplin’s life and fame — from poverty to ubiquity to exile in Switzerland — but they keep up a wondering, questing approach.Narrated by the actress Pearl Mackie (“Doctor Who”), the film maintains a sprightly tempo, trying out angles on Chaplin: his technique of working out comedy bits and scenes on camera; the story of an impersonator named Charlie Aplin; his satire of Adolf Hitler in “The Great Dictator”; and his virtuosic creation, the Little Tramp, which is linked to the star’s impoverished upbringing in South London. There is also commentary by the actor and director Mack Sennett, the actress Virginia Cherrill (star of “City Lights”), and Lita Grey Chaplin, who worked for Chaplin at 12 years old and married him at 16.The film features two dramatizations of audio interviews by lip-syncing actors (a method the directors also used in “Notes on Blindness”). In one chat, Chaplin imparts behind-the-scenes tidbits to Life magazine at his Swiss mansion; in the other, an older neighbor in South London reminisces about Charlie to Kevin Brownlow (who himself co-directed the important three-part 1983 series “Unknown Chaplin”). There’s also a recreation of a contentious press conference from 1947.Middleton and Spinney address Chaplin’s romantic scandals but sympathetically dwell on his persecution by anti-Communists in the United States. The tell-all promise of the film’s title dwindles away into predictable perspectives from members of his family. But this introduction to Chaplin shines whenever he performs, displaying his comic genius for doing everything wrong to absolute perfection.The Real Charlie ChaplinNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters, and on Showtime platforms Dec. 11. More

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      Five Holiday Movies to Stream

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      A list of quality holiday movies on streaming services other than Netflix.There is hope for holiday-loving cord-cutters who don’t have access to the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime’s bulging libraries and have already binged the new Netflix offerings: Other streaming services have stepped up their game when it comes to tinselly and cheery originals.Here are five new movies that run the gamut from violent to heartwarming. Just try to guess where the new “Home Alone” installment falls in this range.‘The Advent Calendar’Stream it on Shudder.As much as many people like to complain about the holidays, their actual experience remains fairly mild and any mention of nightmares is largely metaphorical. Not so in this new French-Belgian movie, which is streaming on the horror platform Shudder, and where the gore and violence are very real.Eva (Eugénie Derouand) is a former dancer who began using a wheelchair after a car accident. Her best and apparently only friend, Sophie (Honorine Magnier), gives her a beautifully designed German advent calendar for Christmas. It’s a gift that keeps on giving — and not in a good way, because a malevolent force becomes unleashed.The most interesting aspect of the writer-director Patrick Ridremont’s shockfest is that Eva is a complicated, flawed protagonist. Because she is in a wheelchair, she is constantly mistreated and bullied by callous colleagues and friends. But the advent calendar also exploits her bitter regrets and frustrations — it is those colleagues, not her disability, that have made her vulnerable to the temptations and delusions that her new possession feeds on.‘8-Bit Christmas’Stream it on HBO Max.The elevator pitch for this HBO Max film is simple: imagine “A Christmas Story” but in the 1980s, and with a Nintendo Entertainment System instead of the Red Ryder BB gun.To stop her incessant requests for a cellphone, Jake (Neil Patrick Harris) tells his daughter, Annie (Sophia Reid-Gantzert), a long, convoluted story — which he clearly hopes is a teachable moment — about the winter when he was 11 and desperately trying to get his hands on the console every kid coveted.Most of the film stays in the ’80s with young Jake (the very good Winslow Fegley), as he and his friends cook up incredibly elaborate schemes to procure that Nintendo. One of them even includes actually working hard selling wreaths to win a contest with a Nintendo as the grand prize.The best part of the movie, at least for adult viewers, is a wonderful performance by Steve Zahn as the young Jake’s father, simultaneously cranky and warm, and with a welcome soupçon of almost unsettling unpredictability. But while there are plenty of references to the 1980s, including a subplot about the scarcity of a certain Cabbage Patch Kid, the decade’s main influence is in the storytelling, which often recalls the “National Lampoon” movies at their most politically incorrect — think projectile vomiting, something happening to a family dog, a slightly gonzo vibe.‘Home Sweet Home Alone’Stream it on Disney+.Unless you are a dedicated fan, you may not have realized that the 1990 hit “Home Alone” had turned into a franchise. All the films involve a boy who somehow ends up on his own during the holidays and must fend off intruders. In the latest and sixth installment, available on Disney+, it’s the turn of Max (Archie Yates, from “Jojo Rabbit”) to be mistakenly left behind by his family — this time as they leave for vacation in Japan.A key narrative switch is that this film is mostly told from the perspective of the home invaders, the cash-strapped Jeff and Pam McKenzie (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper), who try to retrieve a precious possession they think was stolen by Max. As funny as Delaney and Kemper are — which is very, and they should get a franchise of their own — watching a couple afraid to lose their house suffer through a booby-trapped gauntlet devised by a rich brat does not exactly feel hilarious right now.As for the original forgotten kid, Kevin McCallister, we learn from his slovenly older brother Buzz (still played by Devin Ratray three decades later) that he now runs a home-security company and still likes pranks. Sounds like an open invitation for Kevin’s eventual return to the franchise’s fold, were Macaulay Culkin ever to decide that he’s game.‘The Housewives of the North Pole’Stream it on Peacock.North Pole, Vermont, is the kind of only-in-movies small New England town whose folksy Main Street has all the ritzy bearings of Rodeo Drive. Which sort of makes sense since its self-proclaimed queen, Trish, is played by Kyle Richards of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.”Trish always wins the annual Christmas home-decorating contest, thanks to the help of her best friend, the sweet-tempered artist Diana (Betsy Brandt, of “Breaking Bad”). But when the women’s friendship abruptly flames out, Trish’s streak is compromised while Diana is left feeling betrayed and lonely. Don’t worry, lessons will be learned and bridges will be mended.Accepting a parallel universe where a Vermont burg hosts insane displays of ostentatious wealth and folks brave December in shorts and a T-shirt without freezing to death will greatly improve your chances of enjoying this Peacock original. Indeed, the movie is so nuttily untethered to any semblance of reality that it’s almost enjoyable. How far can it go? After a while, you even start thinking that everybody is in on the joke.But what is that joke, exactly? A satire of a status-obsessed, by-any-means-necessary woman with a lot of time on her hands? “The Housewives of the North Pole” never quite goes there.‘Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas’Stream it on the Roku Channel.In yet another example of a canceled show finding a new life on a different platform and, in this case, a different format, the Roku Channel’s first original feature picks up where Season 2 of the NBC series “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist” left off.The overall premise is that the title character (Jane Levy) hears people’s emotions as songs. And now so does her boyfriend, Max (Skylar Astin). Zoey provides a very brief explanation/recap at the start for newcomers, but they are largely on their own — “Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas” is a gift to fans of the show, now watching the heroine try to get through her first holiday season without her late father.Those with a low tolerance for Christmas tunes will be glad to hear that while the movie has its fair share of them, it also incorporates regular songs — Mary Steenburgen’s version of “Call Me Maybe” is a sweet highlight. Other pluses include terrific performances by Alex Newell, back as the gender-nonconforming Mo, and Bernadette Peters as Steenburgen’s friend. Overall, though, the film may feel too insular to those who have not already embraced its whimsical world. More

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      ‘Beijing Spring’ Review: The Politics of Aesthetics

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      This new documentary chronicles the movement for democratic artistic expression that exploded in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in China.Can art effect real change in the world? To this ever-urgent question, “Beijing Spring” — a new documentary about the titular movement for democratic expression that exploded in the wake of the Cultural Revolution in China — responds with a resounding yes.Directed by Andy Cohen with Gaylen Ross, the film focuses on the Stars Art Group, a collective of self-taught practitioners who seized on the tumult after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and deployed their art like Molotov cocktails. They circulated their paintings and literature via underground magazines; papered revolutionary poems and calligraphy on the famed Democracy Wall; and, most notably, mounted a show on the exterior of the National Art Museum of China after being denied permission to exhibit within.Rousing if somewhat schematic, “Beijing Spring” unfolds as a kind of art-history lesson: In interviews, the Stars look back wistfully on their work, which married ravenous experimentation — including abstract styles and nude figures violently forbidden under Mao — with strident political critique. Wang Keping’s sculpture “Idol” uses some canny detailing to turn a likeness of Mao into that of the Buddha, quietly excoriating the leader’s deification.But the most stirring parts of “Beijing Spring” showcase the power of the cinematic arts. The film weaves in long-unseen footage of the artists’ demonstrations that thrums with both history and stunning aesthetic beauty. Perched on a fence while dodging the police, the young cameraman, Chi Xiaoning, captured the thronging crowds with startling, intuitive immediacy.Cohen and Ross’s own filmmaking suffers in comparison to the crafts on display within the film: “Beijing Spring” assembles its materials into a by-the-book progression of archival excerpts and talking-head commentary, serving best as a primer on — rather than an embodiment of — the radical possibilities of artistic form.Beijing SpringNot rated. In Mandarin and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘National Champions’ Review: A College Football Revolution

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      Athletes go on strike seeking health insurance in this drama as a coach tries to forge his legacy.In New Orleans, two college teams, the Cougars and the Wolves, are days from facing off in a major game — a game that will make or break the legacy of one coach. That would be James Lazor of the Wolves. One of the TV sportscasters hyping the game announces, “Monday night is about etching his name in the history books.”His star quarterback, LeMarcus James, has other plans. Along with his best friend, a lesser player named Emmett Sunday, James is going on strike. Referring to his fellow college athletes, James says in one televised statement, “Over 12,000 of us participate in a multibillion-dollar business that doesn’t even give us health insurance.”Written by Adam Mervis and directed by Ric Roman Waugh, “National Champions” is a drama whose timeliness has only been slightly compromised by the N.C.A.A.’s recent interim policy allowing athletes to earn revenue via endorsement deals. To go by this fictional movie’s argumentation, that real-life shift only slightly changes the overall picture for college athletes.Coach Lazor is played by J.K. Simmons, but his character here is no “Whiplash”-style martinet. He’s ostensibly compassionate, and says he sees LeMarcus as a son. But, unsurprisingly, the coach’s patriarchal stance is later shown to be part of the problem.The movie wants to make its points on class and race hotly. LeMarcus, appealingly played by Stephan James, is Black, and then again so is Katherine Poe (a simultaneously imposing and enigmatic Uzo Aduba), the ruthless lawyer the N.C.A.A. has put on a mission to destroy and discredit the quarterback. The vicious machinations echo an adage popularized by Jenny Holzer: “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.” But the movie dilutes its impact with lackluster direction of samey scenes — people in hotel rooms speechifying — and a distracting nighttime soap subplot.National ChampionsRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Joy Womack: The White Swan’ Review: When Success Is a Stretch

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      This documentary chronicles an American ballet dancer’s efforts to become a star in Russia.Sometime in “Joy Womack: The White Swan,” determination starts to look like monomania, even if the directors, Dina Burlis and Sergey Gavrilov, never tip their hands on where they stand. Their documentary follows Joy Womack, an American ballet dancer who moved alone to Moscow at 15 with aspirations of joining the Bolshoi Ballet. After achieving that goal, she quit the company and made international headlines in 2013 saying that she was told she would have to pay a bribe for a solo role. (She subsequently joined the Kremlin Ballet.)Drawn from seven years of shooting, the documentary charts Womack’s life in Russia, where she says success is more elusive than in the United States. In the U.S., she says, “If you’re a hard worker, you can make it happen,” but in Russia, “it’s like if you do not have the aesthetic, forget about it, just don’t even try it.” The film observes her efforts to reconcile what a ballet critic in the film calls a Broadway style with the Russian style. Womack also has to dance and medicate through injuries. Less than two minutes in, the movie shows her going for an M.R.I.To a degree, Womack’s audacious career path has been shoehorned into a conventional profile format. The directors might have done more to illuminate Womack’s offstage life (you’re left wondering if she learned to speak Russian overnight), although they do chronicle the struggles of a marriage she entered into in apparent sincerity, while also knowing it would help her obtain permission to stay in Russia. Womack comes across as incredibly adaptable, which may be the film’s ultimate point.Joy Womack: The White SwanNot rated. In English and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. Also available to rent or buy on Google Play, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More