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      ‘Mass’ Review: Stages of Grief

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      Years after a school shooting, two couples meet to discuss their children — the one whose life was taken, and the one who took his life.The couples at the heart of the chamber drama “Mass” have much in common. Each pair has two children, one living and one dead. And they share the same tragedy. Linda and Richard’s son, Hayden, killed Gail and Jay’s son, Evan, in a school shooting, before turning his gun on himself.Years have passed, and now the couples have gathered in the back room of a church to discuss their children — the one who was taken, and the one who took. Gail (Martha Plimpton) and Jay (Jason Isaacs) initiated this meeting, and their goal is to uncover the facts that led to their child’s murder. Gail and Jay ask questions, and Linda (Ann Dowd) and Richard (Reed Birney) respond, recalling attempts to seek psychological help for their son, and the decisions that did not prevent his violence.The writer and director Fran Kranz stages this congregation like a play. The actors are seated across from each other in a single room, and the camera work is minimal, alternating between close-ups. The dialogue limits the amount of knowledge the audience is given about how or why the central horror took place. This measured approach allows the feelings that flicker across the faces of the movie’s veteran cast to register not only as markers of marvelous acting — though there is plenty of that to spare — but as events with the power to propel the introspective plot.The movie lacks the gut punch of live theater, the thrill or discomfort of watching people show their feelings in real time. But as cinema, it demonstrates the effectiveness of simplicity. A well-written script and an exemplary cast can still produce a movie worth watching.MassRated PG-13 for references to violence. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Prism’ Review: Taking a Clear View of Bias in Moviemaking

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      In this documentary, three filmmakers put together their own segments that ponder their profession’s culpability.In “Prism,” the directors Rosine Mbakam, An van. Dienderen and Eléonore Yameogo join forces to ask, “Is the very technology of cinema biased?”In 2015, van. Dienderen made “Lili,” a short film that interrogated cinema’s use of China Girls. That’s the name for the test images — typically of a white woman and a color bar — used since the 1920s for film processing calibrations. “Prism” is the result of van. Dienderen’s invitation to Mbakam and Yameogo to ponder their profession’s culpability with her, via Zoom and apart in their own segments. Their answers are personal, cultural, theoretical. Their pieces speak to each other, concurring but diverging too.Densely thoughtful, “Prism” has beautiful and poignant moments. In van. Dienderen’s section, a camera tracks through an art school campus to a television studio where it finds a Black woman, a white man and a color bar. In her layered piece, Mbakam questions two of her former film school professors, both white men. She also reconstructs Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait de négresse” as a living sculpture in which the model’s gaze meets the camera’s with a steady and gorgeous defiance. In Yameogo’s contribution, the actor Tella Kphomahou interviews Diarra Sourank, a cinematographer, and the French-Senegalese director Sylvestre Amoussou about the challenges faced as Black filmmakers.While a great deal here is sober, Yameogo’s piece teases a “60-Minutes”-style conceit that provokes and amuses. In it, Kphomahou interviews a camera. As the actor poses questions, smiling wryly, the camera appears to be paying Cyclopean attention to its hot-seat predicament.PrismNot rated. In French and English with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Lamb’ Review: Oh No, Not My Baby!

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      A strange birth on an Icelandic farm bodes ill for a grieving couple in this eerie debut feature.If movies had smells, “Lamb” would reek of wet wool and dry hay, icy mist and animal breath. Bathed in the sort of unforgiving, glacial light that has actresses begging for a pink filter, this atmospheric debut feature from Valdimar Johannsson plays like a folk tale and thrums like a horror movie.Maria and Ingvar (Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snaer Gudnason) are a childless couple who run an isolated sheep farm in rural Iceland. It’s lambing season, and a mysterious, initially unexplained melancholy hangs over the couple’s calm labors. When a pregnant ewe delivers something that’s neither man nor beast — a tiny hybrid, revealed to us only gradually — Maria and Ingvar are alarmingly unfazed, swaddling the creature and installing it in a crib in their bedroom. They name it Ada.Slow-moving and inarguably nutty, “Lamb” nevertheless wields its atavistic power with the straightest of faces, helped in no small measure by an Oscar-worthy cast of farm animals. (The determination of Ada’s real mother to reunite with her offspring is downright chilling.) With deadpan skill, Johannsson and his fellow writer, the Icelandic poet and novelist Sjon, spin an ominous warning about the danger of seeking happiness through delusion — a peril that Ingvar’s black-sheep brother (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson), arriving for a visit, tries unsuccessfully to avert. And as the movie creeps toward its shockingly appropriate climax, the filmmakers’ grip on tone is almost uncanny.Relishing the wild beauty of the location, the fantastic cinematographer Eli Arenson eyes foggy fields and frightened horses with unruffled awe. When he turns his camera on Ada (an impressive blend of actors, animals, puppetry and CGI), the sight is at once ludicrous and strangely touching. After all, doesn’t every parent think their child is perfect?LambRated R for matricide, patricide and kidnapping. In Icelandic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Madres’ and ‘The Manor’ Review: Maligned Women Uncover the Truth

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      Two horror films about marginalized women uncovering conspiracies join Amazon’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” anthology series.“Madres,” a new film directed by ​​Ryan Zaragoza, claims to be “inspired by true events,” like many paranormal thrillers before it. But unlike many of those films, this one isn’t borrowing from urban legends or famous ghost stories — it’s drawing on verifiable atrocities committed against Latina women. “The Manor,” which Amazon is releasing alongside “Madres” as part of their “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series of horror films, also tells a story of marginalized womanhood, albeit with a septuagenarian protagonist. Though vastly different in setting, both films offer refreshingly rare protagonists, yielding spirited — if occasionally middling — results.“Madres” takes place in the 1970s, as the mother-to-be Diana (Ariana Guerra) moves to a migrant community with her husband, Beto (Tenoch Huerta). A passionate investigative journalist, Diana is loath to leave her native Los Angeles, but she uncovers a wealth of new material when it appears a sinister force is harming the town’s pregnant Latina women. The ensuing investigation catalyzes social tensions between Diana, a light-skinned Mexican American, and her darker-skinned husband that are almost more fascinating than the mystery itself. A subdued score and some by-the-book camerawork can make this urgent story drag, but what it lacks in sting it makes up for with an original script (by Marcella Ochoa and Mario Miscione) and a ferociously pregnant protagonist who would make the “Fargo” character Marge Gunderson proud.Set at a present-day nursing home, “The Manor,” written and directed by Axelle Carolyn, focuses on the intersection between sexism and ageism. After the protagonist Judith (a fantastic Barbara Hershey) moves into assisted living following a stroke, she suspects the staff are up to something nefarious. Naturally nobody believes her, and her mental competency is soon up for debate. With the help of her goth grandson Josh (Nicholas Alexander), Judith must unravel a deranged conspiracy before it claims her life.Uncommon is the film that centers on grandmother-grandson relationships, let alone one that shows a relationship like Judith and Josh’s. Josh clearly worships his take-no-crap grandma, and the two bond over the macabre: He texts her “Psycho” references, she quizzes him on horror trivia in the parlor of the old folks’ home. At one point, Judith admonishes Josh for swearing and he counters that she cusses all the time. This is delightfully true — Judith drops expletives like she’s one of the kids in “Stranger Things.”Despite some flat cinematography and borderline goofy special effects, “The Manor” gives us a distinctive 70-year-old woman as its protagonist and a twisty ending sure to polarize. It and “Madres” are both a bit half-baked, but their foundations are inventive enough to distract from some sloppy construction.MadresNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Watch on Amazon.The ManorNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘Golden Voices’ Review: In Tel Aviv, With an Unappreciated Talent

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      Two voice actors from Russia struggle for a fresh start.Among other things, the late-1980s collapse of the Soviet state brought about both the privatization of Russian industry and the government’s softening of laws forbidding Jews to emigrate from the land. “Golden Voices,” a winning comedy-drama directed by the Israeli filmmaker Evgeny Ruman, himself a son of immigrants from Belarus, locates its unusual narrative at the meeting point of those two post-U.S.S.R. circumstances.Victor and Raya, played by Vladimir Friedman and Maria Belkin, were top Russian-dubbing artists in the post-Stalin “thaw.” (“You turned Kirk Douglas into a great actor,” an old fan enthuses to Victor about his work on “Spartacus.”) Now, in 1990, the state film apparatus doesn’t need them anymore, as it has ceased to exist. The couple had long wanted to settle in Israel anyway. On arrival, they quickly learn that demand for their particular talents is scarce.These are warm, attractive, intelligent characters who believe in art, and Raya’s diffidence upon landing a job at a phone-sex warehouse is understandable. But she applies her talents aptly: She can be a “22-year-old virgin” on one call and a jaded, bored housewife on the next. Victor hooks up with some lo-fi video pirates, dubbing movies taped in theaters with a camcorder, but this messes with his sense of artistic integrity, not to mention his desire not to be arrested. Plus he’s plenty anxious over Iraq’s threatened missile attacks — which indeed arrive at the movie’s climax. Friedman and Belkin are dead-on credible at every turn.Job tensions hammer at the fault lines of the couple’s marriage, but the movie maintains an understated “I love ya, tomorrow” tone. A pleasant sit — the kind of picture that’s moving, but not too moving.Golden VoicesNot rated. In Russian and Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 28 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Knocking’ Review: Domestic Disturbances

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      A character’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise turn into a thriller about the horrors of isolation.Grief has left Molly (Cecilia Milocco) in a fragile state in “Knocking,” a new psychological thriller from Sweden by the director Frida Kempff.After losing her lover in a tragic event at a beach, Molly spent time in a psychiatric ward, and her recovery in her new apartment is touch-and-go. Kempff spins Molly’s suspicions about a mysterious tapping noise into an insistent entry in the horrors of breakdown and isolation.Molly lives alone but her real solitude comes from having neighbors and a superintendent who look at her funny when she asks about the noises in the building. There’s a kindly grocer and a sympathetic police officer, but otherwise Molly is portrayed as living in a mental hellscape: First a depressive stultifying stillness, her curtains drawn and house cluttered, and then a panicked spiral played up with canted angles, tinted lighting and vertiginous camerawork (care of the Snorricam, a rig mounted directly on the actor).Pulling off this claustrophobic level of immersion requires better orchestration than Kempff’s drawn-out buildup. “Knocking” unnerves more when landing on singular imagery: a bird scrambling for footing on a metal railing, or, in one wild shot, blood droplets on a cellphone screen showing a yowling fox. Milocco’s face is a sea of balled-up tension but it’s tough for her to sustain this perpetually disbelieved character within a confining screenplay that retreads its beats.What could be described as a story about gaslighting is complicated by the liberal use of eccentric camera perspectives that seem less aligned with expressing Molly’s distress than with pushing suspense. The film does strike one long, nerve-jangling note, but the style leaves Molly with nowhere to run.KnockingNot rated. In Swedish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Jacinta’ Review: A Neverending Cycle of Hurt

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      This haunting documentary by Jessica Earnshaw traces the journey of a young woman struggling with addiction after her release from prison.When we first meet Jacinta — the 26-year-old subject of this distressing documentary portrait that bears her name — she’s on the verge of being released from her eight-month stint at the Maine Correctional Center. Jacinta’s mother, Rosemary, is also serving a sentence there; both women are recovering from drug addiction, and both have gone to prison multiple times. Oddly, the pair — scrappy soul sisters more than mother and daughter — seem at peace with their incarceration. And when it’s time for Jacinta to leave, both women teeter from ambivalence to desperation.The remainder of the film grapples with an issue that might seem counterintuitive to the average viewer: Why might Jacinta dread her freedom? It’s not a simple answer, but the director, Jessica Earnshaw — a photographer turned documentarian who followed Jacinta over three years — responds generously by unfurling a long history of inherited trauma and regret.Earnshaw’s lo-fi, vérité approach gives the documentary the impression of a collection of home videos tracing Jacinta’s post-prison journey. Though she strives to stay sober for the sake of her doting daughter, Caylynn, who lives with her grandparents in the New Hampshire suburbs, home is with her father in a mill town bursting with familiar faces tempting her to relapse. As Jacinta gradually succumbs, Earnshaw weaves in interviews, often in voice-over, with Jacinta’s close ones that explain her early run-ins with the law, her experiences with sexual abuse, and her unwavering admiration for her mother, who taught her to fight, shoplift, and use drugs.Though Earnshaw relies on a cloyingly sentimental score to underscore the tragedy of Jacinta’s situation, this durational portrait is undeniably affecting, highlighting as it does Caylynn’s gradual disillusionment with her mother and the jarring ease with which Jacinta falls back into her old ways. This is not a happy story. The lucidity with which these subjects speak to their own mistakes and sorrows will leave you haunted.JacintaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Justin Bieber: Our World’ Review: A Pop Star Enshrouded

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      Alternating like clockwork between live numbers and soft insight dulls this documentary’s rhythm.Justin Bieber’s life beyond pop stardom — namely his personal post-teen transformation — is almost completely obscured in “Justin Bieber: Our World.” The film opens with his supportive wife Hailey in bed with him just before he plays a New Year’s Eve gig in 2020, his first full concert in three years.But this show is different because it has to be: It takes place on the rooftop of the Beverly Hilton Hotel as Covid-19 cases were surging in Los Angeles. The doc encapsulates the shared exhilaration of watching Bieber perform during this socially distanced concert spectacle, but it’s only for the biggest Beliebers. And even they, too, may wish it didn’t play out in such tedious mechanical fashion. Alternating like clockwork between live numbers and soft insight dulls the film’s rhythm, diminishing the excitement it’s going for as it counts down the days to showtime.The director Michael D. Ratner only grazes the surface of a newly grounded and grateful Bieber; the star’s heartthrob-to-husband evolution is safely teased out in self-captured vlogs and calculated crew member testimonials. Mostly, Ratner stays fixed on pandemic-era concert planning, from daily swab tests to an infected crew member.Another obstacle comes in the form of bad weather just before the show — anything, it seems, to avoid a deeper, more personal look at Bieber (though we do learn he was a fan of the mustache, just not in certain pictures). If “Our World” has anything to say, it’s that the chaos caused by a global health crisis can be a guarded pop star’s greatest diversion.Justin Bieber: Our WorldRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More