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      ‘The Alpinist’ Review: Dizzying Heights

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      This documentary tries to shed light on the attitude of a Canadian rock climber it describes as “elusive.”In a podcast excerpted at the start of “The Alpinist,” the rock climber Alex Honnold, from the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo,” is asked to name a climber who impresses him. He cites Marc-André Leclerc, a Canadian whom Honnold says takes on some of the sport’s most difficult challenges in “such a pure style.” Honnold’s remarks suggest Leclerc would happily ascend in obscurity, keeping his accomplishments between him and the mountains.“The Alpinist” — directed by Peter Mortimer (who narrates) and Nick Rosen, both specialists in climb documentaries — tries to pin Leclerc down. The difficulties go beyond filming him at great heights on rock faces covered with ice or snow. While the lanky, curly haired, almost goofy Leclerc proves an affable screen presence — after we’ve watched him ax his way up an icicle wall in the Canadian Rockies, he describes it nonchalantly as “a really good day out” — his commitment to the documentary is tenuous. At one point, he ditches the filmmakers. When they reconnect, he points out that the camera’s presence interferes with the notion of climbing alone: “It wouldn’t be a solo to me if somebody was there.”The movie could stand to demystify how some of its most terrifying early shots were filmed. (Later on, we’re told Leclerc agreed to carry a small camera himself to shoot part of a conquest in Patagonia.) But it does capture its subject’s philosophy. As with Honnold in “Free Solo,” the film raises the prospect that Leclerc was innately predisposed toward thrill-seeking. In Argentina, he says he eats every pre-climb dinner as if it might be his last.The AlpinistRated PG-13. Dangerous climbs. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Kate’ Review: Lost in Assassination

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      Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays a vengeful contract killer in this predictable thriller.The thriller “Kate” is an undistinguished action film that makes a hero of a hit woman. Kate (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), guided by her wily handler, Varrick (Woody Harrelson), has been a professional since adolescence. Her only rule is to never kill in front of a child. Naturally — this being a relatively unimaginative plot — Kate betrays her principles within the first five minutes of the movie, murdering a yakuza gang member in front of his daughter.The fallout for Kate proves worse than a mere breach of assassin’s creed. She learns that her victim’s gang has targeted her, slipping her a fatal dose of polonium. She has 24 hours to live before radiation destroys her body, and in that time, she is determined to get her revenge. But the only person who knows where she can find the shadowy leader of the gang that wants her dead is Ani (Miku Martineau), the child who witnessed her father’s slaughter.The film takes place in Japan, and the director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan tries to use the setting to inject a shot of style into the largely routine story. There are neon cars, Kabuki theater performances and as many murders committed with samurai swords and katanas as there are with guns. The movie presents an eye-catching fantasy of a candy-colored Japanese underworld. But the exoticism feels as cheap as a whiff of a green tea and musk cologne called Tokyo wafting over a department store counter. Even Winstead, stoic in her fashionably boyish haircut, looks bored.KateRated R for graphic violence, brief gore, and brief sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Dogs’ Review: Fish Out of Water

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      A city boy inherits land used by the Mafia in this unoriginal neo-western crime thriller from Romania.The city boy Roman (Dragos Bucur) is lured into the Romanian outback when he inherits 550 hectares of land from his recently deceased grandfather, a local “godfather” figure not terribly unlike those popularized by Mario Puzo. Though Roman arrives with the intention of quickly selling the miserable property for some extra cash, his sojourn is upended when a group of thugs headed by the smug, sinister Samir (Vlad Ivanov) come to play.A neo-western crime thriller in the grim, nihilistic vein of “No Country for Old Men,” “Dogs,” by the filmmaker Bogdan Mirica, sees Roman thrown into a violent, lawless arena with only a dilapidated shack as his fortress.
      His grandfather’s guard dog, a mangy mutt named Police, winkingly calls attention to the near-absence of law enforcement around these parts, while the two-man law enforcement squad, led by the aging Hogas (Gheorghe Visu), mostly turns a blind eye to the illicit activities afoot. It’s common knowledge, after all, that Roman has stumbled upon a property used for moonlit confrontations and the disposal of body parts — such as the dismembered foot we glimpse in the deceptively serene opening tracking shot.Indeed, human brutality unfolds against a backdrop of pastoral quietude, with the film’s most evocative moments making use of negative space — shadowy showdowns and unnervingly empty expanses of wildlife captured in wide screen — as well as startling sounds that break through the eerie silence.Yet “Dogs” doesn’t go much deeper than the platitude that seems to inspire its title — presenting as it does a merciless dog-eat-dog world without generating ideas of its own that might distinguish it from similar Wild West fare. One can imagine how the particularities of the Romanian bush might yield novel dynamics. Instead, “Dogs” underplays these elements and commits to the beats of the slow burn thriller in mostly generic form.DogsNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Capote Tapes’ Review: New Narratives and Unanswered Prayers

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      This documentary adds some material to the tragic tale of a great American writer, but also teases at what it can’t deliver.There’s some fascinating and provocative material in “The Capote Tapes” that is diluted by the director Ebs Burnough’s insistence on teasing a question that, arguably, has a self-evident answer.The movie opens with onscreen texts referring to “a journalist’s” archive on interviews about Capote and rumors of an “unfinished scandalous manuscript.” The journalist turns out to be George Plimpton, who published an oral history on Capote in 1997, over a decade after Capote’s 1984 death at age 59. The manuscript would be “Answered Prayers,” excerpts from which caused much disaffection among Capote’s high-society associates when they ran in Esquire magazine in the mid-70s.Capote’s story is one of fierce talent, personal bravery, poor professional ethics, eccentric celebrity, and eventual addiction and dissolution. It’s been dramatized in two notable fiction films. And the man himself features in scores of documentaries. Burnough’s movie very much wants to add something new to the narrative, and it does, introducing Kate Harrington, whom Capote quietly adopted in the ’60s. (It’s a complicated and odd story.)After this, the movie flips and flops from a linear approach and one that implies “Hold on, we’ll get to that manuscript in a bit.” Over a shot of the steel reels of an analog tape recorder rolling, we hear Norman Mailer say “nobody wrote better sentences” — one of the few observations here on Capote’s work. Onscreen, the writer Jay McInerney is unfortunately assigned to deliver a lot of “I want to be a part of it, New York, New York” boilerplate.As for that manuscript, anyone paying attention knows the answer early on. By the end of his life, Capote was such a human wreck that the idea of some kind of posthumous literary time bomb is ridiculous on the face of it.The Capote TapesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘No Responders Left Behind’ Review: Heroes Need Heroes Too

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      John Feal works tirelessly as an advocate for rescuers injured or sickened in the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and their aftermath.In “No Responders Left Behind,” John Feal is a kind of action hero — political action, that is. This documentary by Rob Lindsay follows Feal’s tenacious efforts to obtain government health benefits and compensation for the thousands of rescuers with illnesses and injuries from working on Sept. 11, 2001, and beyond.Feal organizes multipronged campaigns to press Congress to pass aid bills, and the government’s delays and denials feel increasingly galling as the documentary retraces the timeline using interviews and archival footage. The banner piece of legislation on the benefits issue — the Zadroga Act — was not passed until 2010, with renewal and related pushes necessary in 2015 and 2019.Feal — who was injured by falling steel while managing World Trade Center debris removal — is blunt and funny in a way that helps cut through the movie’s hurried, sound-bitey, fundamentally televisual quality. Along the way, he introduces (and amiably rags on) some fellow injured responders, including Ray Pfeifer, a revered firefighter (who died in 2017). He’s open about his tactic of putting politicians on the spot and pushing buttons as necessary. Jon Stewart lends his celebrity as a loyal and sincere supporter of the cause, testifying before Congress.While pragmatic in bent, the documentary repeatedly underlines the toxic manner in which this country treats many who have sacrificed body and mind in service to others. With its blue-collar ranks of responders, the movie also shows who tends to bear such all-consuming burdens and how it can take someone singular like Feal to get both attention and results.No Responders Left BehindNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 19 minutes. Watch on Discovery+. More

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      ‘Queenpins’ Review: Suburban Scammers

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      Two cash-strapped neighbors devise a multimillion-dollar coupon swindle in this mildly entertaining comedy.“Queenpins” might have been a snappy little comedy had it lost 20 minutes and found a point beyond glorifying grand larceny. Erasing the lead character’s smug-perky narration wouldn’t have hurt, either.Set mainly in suburban Phoenix, Ariz. — with pit stops in other dehydrated locations — the movie smiles on Connie (Kristen Bell), a cash-strapped coupon cutter whose bland good cheer masks a desperate longing for a child.“You’re trying to replace a baby with coupons,” her husband (Joel McHale), a withdrawn I.R.S. agent, accurately observes before largely disappearing from the story. Connie’s true partner, though, is JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), a bubbly neighbor and vlogger looking for a break. Together, they hatch a scheme to steal coupons from a printing facility in Mexico and sell them on YouTube. What could possibly go wrong?Written and directed by the husband-and-wife team of Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, “Queenpins,” inspired by actual events, can’t decide if its pink-collar criminals are fools or geniuses. Neither can the two men on their trail: a businesslike postal inspector (Vince Vaughn, starved for decent lines) and the movie’s true hero, Ken Miller (an excellent Paul Walter Hauser), an officious loss-prevention officer for a supermarket chain. Ken’s longing for respect makes him a ridiculous, even pathetic figure; but he has a dogged, shabby sense of honor that the film views as a joke and repeatedly undermines.Making no secret of where its sympathies lie, “Queenpins” scampers toward its ludicrous conclusion with less concern for logic than for ensuring that everyone gets what he or she wants. With the possible exception of the audience.QueenpinsRated R for iffy language and icky behavior. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. In theaters and on Paramount+. More

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      ‘Dating & New York’ Review: Texts and the City

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      A winning cast helps sell a too-familiar premise about commitment-phobic millennials.“Dating & New York” is consciously framed as a modern fairy tale: It opens with a set of watercolor paintings that portray the city in clean, soft textures and a voice-over informing us that “once upon a time” there, two millennials were cursed with the “paradox of choice.” Wendy (Francesca Reale) and Milo (Jaboukie Young-White) connect through a dating app, meet once and then ghost each other. When they finally rendezvous again, Wendy has drawn up a written contract for a “best friends with benefits” arrangement. The two embark on a relationship they refuse to acknowledge as such.A winning cast helps sell that familiar premise — not just Reale and Young-White, who have definite chemistry and an easy-flowing banter, but also the brassy, scene-stealing Catherine Cohen, as Jessie, a friend of Wendy’s and the new girlfriend of Milo’s friend Hank (Brian Muller). This fantasized New York is, as the characters acknowledge, a small world.Stylistically, “Dating & New York,” a first feature from the writer-director Jonah Feingold, insists on selling its charm. The peppy, fast-paced cutting and constant references to Instagram and podcasts — the movie wouldn’t want you to forget it’s about millennials (or clichés about millennials) — nudge viewers to laugh, as if Feingold were employing the directorial equivalent of push alerts. And for all the tech, the New York of “Dating & New York” feels like it’s been formed from hazy impressions of a less overloaded, less distractible era. The film does score, though, with a one-liner about a man who would lie about his age to land on a “30 under 30” list.Dating & New YorkRated PG-13. Dating and New York. Running time: 1 hour 31 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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      ‘Muhammad Ali’ Docuseries From Ken Burns Is a Sweeping Portrait

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      A new four-part documentary series by Ken Burns paints a sweeping portrait of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes.One day in the mid-1990s, Ken Burns had a cold while he was in Los Angeles to raise money for his next documentary. He ducked into a coffee shop for some hot tea, and after paying, one of the 20th century’s most ardent historians turned from the counter and locked eyes with perhaps its most towering icon. Muhammad Ali was sitting in a booth nearby. The two men stared at each other silently for longer than most strangers would — celebrities or not.“There’s was almost no movement on both of us except that kind of opening, that love that happens when you just feel unashamed and unembarrassed by the persistent gaze,” Burns said recently. “This wordless conversation; I have the script in my head, I heard his voice in my mind. But it was just without going over and shaking hands, of course, not asking for an autograph or anything like that.”By that point, Ali was in the clutches of Parkinson’s disease — hence the silence from a man who for many decades couldn’t stop talking: about his own beauty and skill, about how ugly and untalented his opponents were, about the injustice Black people across America had faced for hundreds of years.Nearly three decades later, Burns; his oldest daughter, Sarah; and her husband, David McMahon, have stitched together a sweeping portrait of Ali’s impact from more than 40 years of footage and photographs. “Muhammad Ali,” a four-part documentary series that premieres Sept. 19 on PBS, follows the arc of a man whose life intersected with many of modern America’s most profound changes — and who was also not as widely revered in his prime as he is now.David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker and author of “King of the World,” a 1998 biography of Ali, said “it was very clear that a lot of America found him dangerous, threatening to the way people were ‘supposed’ to behave — much less Black people.”“He won people over because he was right about the war,” Remnick continued. “He won people over because as an athlete, he proved himself over and over again to be not only beautiful to watch, but unbelievably courageous. So his athleticism and his superiority as an athlete couldn’t just couldn’t be denied, even when he lost.”In 1978, Ali beat Leon Spinks to win the heavyweight championship for the third time.Michael GaffneyThere has been no shortage of documentaries or biographies about Ali in the last few decades. For the filmmakers, the idea took root in 2014, when their friend Jonathan Eig was working on a book about Ali. (“Ali: A Life,” published in 2017.) Eig’s research led him to believe that a comprehensive film representation of Ali’s life had not been done before, and that the Burnses were the perfect team to do it.McMahon said it took only a few archival clips to convince them of the potential power of a wide-ranging Ali documentary. “There were so many possibilities to tie together all these threads that were kind of out there,” he said. “You’d see documentaries that had been about a single chapter in his life or a single fight, or books covering only a portion of his life.”The more the filmmakers dug into Ali’s life, Sarah Burns said, the more they realized “just how much there was to this story.”“Not just the boxing, obviously,” she said, “but his relationships with Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, his family life, his marriages, his draft resistance and his courage and being willing to go to jail for his convictions, and also his battle with Parkinson’s — you know, his later life, his post-boxing life.” That “really hadn’t,” she added, “been explored in as much detail.”The new series traces a path from the young Cassius Clay in Jim Crow-era Louisville to the complicated, at times self-contradictory adult who won the heavyweight title three times and faced down the U.S. government over his refusal to fight in Vietnam. The filmmakers show him as not only a dominant heavyweight during his peak fighting years but also a figure of no small impact on society. Here is “The Greatest” clowning with the Beatles; standing at a podium with Malcolm X; embracing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; calling another Black fighter an “Uncle Tom” for refusing to acknowledge his name change, as a leering Howard Cosell tells the cameras to “keep shooting” the ensuing scuffle; and finally declaring publicly — at risk to his career and endorsements — that he was a Muslim.Ali had relationships with many other prominent 20th century figures, including Malcolm X.ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Live NewsAli’s rise to stardom coincided with a period of intense cultural change in the United States, and his connection to the Civil Rights and antiwar movements is critical in distinguishing Ali the man from Ali the boxer, McMahon said — and in recognizing his impact on American audiences.“You can’t understand his refusal to be inducted into the U.S. Army without understanding his faith, without understanding the meaning of Elijah Muhammad in his life,” he said, referring to the mercurial and sometimes caustic leader of the Nation of Islam, with whom Ali had a close relationship. “We hadn’t really seen that explained. There were also perspectives that hadn’t been heard; we thought, ‘Who out there could tell us more about his faith?’”Eig, the biographer, shared a huge trove of contacts with the filmmakers, and they started their initial interviews in 2016, a week after Ali died. Dozens of writers, friends and boxing ambassadors participated: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Larry Holmes, Jesse Jackson, the novelist Walter Mosley, the ESPN writer Howard Bryant, the boxing promoter Don King. Over the next several years, the filmmakers unearthed more than 15,000 photographs and dug up footage that had not been seen publicly. A production company that had shot the “Thrilla in Manila,” Ali’s third and final bout with Joe Frazier, in the Philippines, had folded before the film could be used. Their footage was buried in a Pennsylvania archive.“This woman pulled these boxes out and said, ‘They say “Ali” on them — I don’t know what they are,’” McMahon said. “This is Technicolor, it’s 16-millimeter, shot from the apron [of the ring] — it just pops. And you see the fight in ways that had never been seen before.”Ali’s relationship with Frazier, who as a young fighter had been one of Ali’s fans, is one of the thornier aspects of the documentary. Ali’s treatment of him before their fights was quite cruel, employing some of the language of “racist white people,” as one commentator in the series says, to denigrate Frazier (who never forgave him). It’s part of the complex picture of Ali that the series provides: a people’s champion who could be petty; a devout Muslim who was a serial philanderer; an idealist who made a lot of people angry with his refusal to conform to public expectations.Bryant, the ESPN writer, said he didn’t think “people understand why this story is so heroic and so important and so unique.”“We just seem to think that every person out there, if they protest something, if they say something, if they face some sort of sanction, we put them in the same category as Muhammad Ali or Jackie Robinson,” he continued. “And it’s just such nonsense.”“Name me another athlete where the full weight of the United States government came down on one person. I’m not talking about the N.F.L. saying you can’t play when you’re already a millionaire. Colin Kaepernick obviously sacrificed and lost some things. It’s not the same thing. It’s not even close.”For two of Ali’s daughters, Rasheda Ali (from his second marriage, to Khalilah Ali, born Belinda Boyd) and Hana Ali (from his third, to Veronica Porche), the new documentary is an honest look at the father they knew mainly while he was under the weight of Parkinson’s. The film opens with a shot of him sitting with his oldest child, Maryum, encouraging her to look out the window so he can steal a bite of her food. The footage brought Rasheda to tears.Belinda Boyd became Ali’s second wife and changed her name to Khalilah Ali. Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos“I’ve never seen the family footage — and even the photos!” Rasheda said. “I was like, ‘Wow, where did you get that?’”“He was always making jokes and he was fun,” she added. “That’s the Muhammad Ali people don’t really see regularly.”Hana, who said that anyone other than the Burns would have been making “just another documentary about my father,” also noted that the more intimate footage helped fill in some of the nuances about him.“It’s so hard when you live a life like my father’s, where you’re so accessible, and so photographed, and his story’s been told so many times,” Hana said. “Honestly, I’ve seen so many documentaries about our father, and even just watching the beginning of this one, already, it was just different — it felt more personable.”The series comes to a close as Ali has become, as Ken Burns described it, “the most beloved person on the planet.” The footage of his trembling surprise appearance at the 1996 Olympics, in Atlanta, is a crucial piece of Ali’s lasting image and mythology. But as Burns put it, “mythology is a mask.”Bryant, who argued that Ali changed the relationship between athletes and fans, was more direct about the boxer’s evolving public image in those later years.Ali in Manhattan in 1968. Despite his popularity as a boxer, Ali angered many people with his refusal to conform to public expectations.Anthony Camerano/Associated Press“People hated his guts, and white people didn’t love him until he couldn’t talk,” Bryant said. “There were people — Black and white — who still called him Cassius Clay; there were people who still did not want to give him his due. And there were people who still held a lot against him.”“Then he couldn’t talk, and suddenly he belonged to everybody,” he said.Ken Burns suggested that this public redemption was akin to “a funeral where people are talking really nicely about other people.”“And you go, ‘Why can’t we do this in the rest of our lives?’” he said. “The funeral isn’t for the person who’s dead — the funeral is for the people who are left behind, and we’re always modeling the best, most human behavior. And yet, we don’t seem to be able to bring it to our own lives.”He quoted one of the journalists in the documentary, Dave Kindred, who said that in death, Ali “can’t hurt us anymore; he can’t make us mad anymore.”“He could no longer anger us, he could no longer make it difficult for us, to force us back on our own feelings, our own beliefs, our own prejudices, Burns said. Then there’s this room to forgive and perhaps exalt.”“It’s a long process with him,” he added. “And it’s so interesting that a great deal of that positive progress is from defeat.” More