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      ‘The Year of the Everlasting Storm’ Review: Home Movies

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      Seven directors present their views of the year of pandemic lockdown, but most fall into predictable territory.You can’t blame filmmakers for keeping busy during lockdown. The omnibus film “The Year of the Everlasting Storm” assembles pandemic-made shorts from around the globe. But with just two decent segments out of seven, this anthology uncannily replicates the sensation of feeling trapped.The highlights come first and last. Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who has dealt with the restrictions of filming at home before (he made his extraordinary “This Is Not a Film” in his apartment, defying a moviemaking ban), delivers a sweet, minor document of a cautious visit by his mother, who arrives wearing what looks like full hazmat gear. She video chats with her granddaughter (spritzing the phone with sanitizer first) and negotiates an accord with Panahi’s pet iguana, Iggy.From Thailand, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”) closes out the feature with a nonnarrative short that intermingles the reverberations of tube lights and the buzzing of insects. Weerasethakul recorded the sound himself, and at a point the bugs’ fluttering seems to merge with scratchy spoken words.The other segments fall into more predictable territory. Anthony Chen (“Wet Season”), whose chapter is set in China, follows two parents and their young son as stir craziness sets in. In California, Malik Vitthal (“Body Cam”) mixes media, using camera phone footage and animation for a short documentary in which the coronavirus complicates an already complicated custody situation. The Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor (“Too Late to Die Young”) and the American David Lowery (“The Green Knight”) barely make impressions.And Laura Poitras (the Edward Snowden doc “Citizenfour”), working with the London-based research group Forensic Architecture, conjures a paranoia-suffused atmosphere as she shares highlights from an investigation into an Israeli cyberweapons manufacturer. But the brief running time does not allow for sufficient context.The Year of the Everlasting StormNot rated. In Persian, Mandarin, English, Spanish and Thai, with subtitles Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick James’ Review: A Very Kinky Guy

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      A new documentary explores the serious artistry behind this “punk-funk” legend’s outlandish persona.The main title of this Sacha Jenkins-directed documentary derives from a sketch on Dave Chappelle’s still-mourned former show on Comedy Central. He regularly reenacted anecdotes told by the comic Charlie Murphy; in one of these, the funk renegade Rick James did some obscene blustering at a bar before announcing “I’m Rick James, bitch!” The sketch resulted in new visibility for James while also making him a cartoon.But then again, James’s outlandishness constituted the through-line of his visible career. This film strives to make the case for James as a serious artist, a social commentator and funk innovator who never got his due.To this end, the movie spends substantial time on James’s roots in Buffalo, N.Y. The contemporary rap artist Conway, also a Buffalo native, speaks of the miserable segregation of the city. James’s enlistment in the Navy in the early 1960s could be seen as a desperate bid to escape his origins. It was an unsatisfactory one. Going AWOL, he landed in Toronto and formed several musical alliances, among them an R&B inflected band with Neil Young that picked up many stylistic cues from the Rolling Stones. James was the lead singer and more than one interviewee from this time says he consciously imitated Mick Jagger.The period in which James’s woodshedding and partying achieved détente led to “punk funk” hits in the late ’70s. One interviewee insists on a distinction between the frat appeal of “Super Freak” and the deeply felt anger of “Ghetto Life.” But James’s vices soon overwhelmed his art and destroyed his character. MC Hammer’s sampling of “Super Freak” in the early 90s led to a windfall for James, which in turn was vacuumed up by his appetites. Despite a stint in prison and various stabs at sobriety, he died in 2004, an active user.The movie wants the viewer to believe that James didn’t have it easy — and he didn’t. But it can’t skate over the aberrant actions that led to his imprisonment. “Bitchin’” is fascinating and troubling viewing.Bitchin’: The Sound and Fury of Rick JamesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes. Watch on Showtime platforms. More

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      ‘Yakuza Princess’ Review: Crime, Amnesia and Ancient Swords

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      This mayhem-filled film from Brazil has no higher function beyond its beheadings.You know this movie isn’t kidding around from its opening scene. Set in Osaka “20 years ago,” the blue-tinted sequence depicts a solemn ceremony broken up by bloody gun assassinations, culminating with a young boy taking a bullet in the back of his neck. So when I say “isn’t kidding around,” what I mean is “wants to impress you with the crass opportunism of its violence.”Based on a graphic novel, “Yakuza Princess” is not a Japanese film; it’s a Brazilian one. The director is Vicente Amorim and the graphic novel, called “Samurai Shiro,” is by Danilo Beyruth. Much of the action takes place in São Paulo, which has one of the largest Japanese expatriate communities in the world. The Japanese pop musician Masumi (who never appears at all comfortable in her role) plays Akemi, who is newly 21 in that Brazilian city and living an ordinary life.At the same time, in Osaka, the Yakuza soldier Takeshi (Tsuyoshi Ihara) is on a hunt that involves him blowing people’s brains out. Back in São Paulo, a hospitalized amnesiac white man breaks out of his medical situation, taking a very shiny (and noisy) ancient sword with him. (The character is played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, his face scarred up like Karloff’s version of Frankenstein’s monster.)It seems inevitable that this group must somehow form a family. OK, not that, but yes, their paths intersect because — of course — Akemi was the sole survivor of that opening massacre. And Takeshi was somehow related and … well, it’s all pretty complicated and not terribly relevant, because fraught chases, frantic fights and various beheadings are really what the movie is all about.The cynical pro forma luridness “Yakuza Princess” grinds out suggests that sensationalist cinema, or at least its most ostensibly mainstream iteration, is currently depleted of resources.Yakuza PrincessRated R for oodles and oodles of violence. Running time: 1 hour 51 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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      ‘Faya Dayi’ Review: A Dream State

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      Jessica Beshir’s debut feature settles into a trance-like flow.Shot in a rural Ethiopian town, the tone poem “Faya Dayi” settles into a trance-like flow. We watch men and occasionally women musing to one another — about their dreams for the future or about distant lovers, mothers and fathers — but the feel is dreamlike, like a falling dusk, even when the concerns are concrete.Some of that comes from the local importance of khat — an addictive leaf that induces altered states when chewed (variously euphoric and melancholic). But while many are shown harvesting, warehousing, or otherwise touched by the crop, not everyone is under its influence. The documentary’s mystical sensation, after all, springs from choices by the director, Jessica Beshir, particularly the allusive style and monochrome black-and-white photography.Beshir left Ethiopia as a teenager and, returning as an adult to see family, she was struck by khat’s dominance. Also the cinematographer and producer, she flouts common vérité approaches in mapping out the changed community. Ritual objects and dramatic fragments — two kids bathing, a scuffle over emigrating, a madeleine-like musing on coffee — hold center stage more than bright narrative threads. The smoky texture of the images led me to think of her technique as a kind of sfumato: shading in and out of moods of presence, absence and longing.A voice-over recalls the Sufi tale about seeking eternal life (a nod to the spiritual role of khat). Unifying this elliptical canvas is the sense of a contemplative search, which can also mean an escape from an altered homeland, perhaps to dull what feels lost.Faya DayiNot rated. In Amharic, Harari, and Oromo with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours. In theaters. More

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      ‘Memory House’ Review: Seeking a Niche Between Present and Past

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      An Indigenous worker in Brazil finds a surreal portal of sorts to the culture of his forebears.While I don’t exactly agree that the worst of times generate the most compelling art, political turmoil can certainly inspire some of the angriest work. Case in point: the recent surge of class-conscious films by a number of Brazilian directors, such as Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”), responding to the government’s austerity policies and its willful neglect of the country’s cultural heritage.“Memory House,” by the filmmaker João Paulo Miranda Maria, follows suit in somber and surreal fashion, pitting an aging Indigenous Black man from the rural North against the xenophobic inhabitants of an Austrian enclave in the South.Captured by the cinematographer Benjamin Echazarreta in menacing slow zooms and long, contemplative shots, the film follows Cristovam (the renowned actor Antônio Pitanga), an unfortunate outsider toiling away in a sterile-white milk factory where the employees are overtly likened to the livestock.Stoically withstanding an onslaught of racist encounters — the most devastating of which involves the killing of his three-legged pet dog by a group of white teenagers — Cristovam stumbles upon an abandoned house filled with folkloric relics of his cultural past, which prompt jarring hallucinations that occasionally have violent consequences.Better as a mood piece than a political statement, “Memory House” superficially nods to the bloviating politicians and coldblooded capitalists who dictate the lives of people like Cristovam. As he reconnects with his roots, eventually donning a full bull costume in an act of spiritual reclamation, his white neighbors take on an increasingly homogeneous appearance, suggesting an authoritarian hereafter.Trapped in a hopelessly alienating world, Cristovam would rather buck than surrender; a fatal end would seem inevitable, but wisely, Miranda Maria pulls back the reins with a glimpse of empathy that teases a potential way forward.Memory HouseNot rated. In Portuguese and German, with subtitles. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘We Need to Do Something’ Review: I Think I’ll Stay In

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      A family rides out a diabolical storm by holing up in a bathroom in this slice of confinement horror.As if timed to hurricane season, “We Need to Do Something” kicks off with a family of four riding out a storm in a big suburban bathroom. Then it turns out that the weather forecast is not the issue: the family’s antsy teenager, Melissa (Sierra McCormick), may have sort of unleashed the forces of hellfire through black magic high jinks with a schoolmate.Ill-advised incantations are an All-American horror pastime — “The Gate” (1987), in particular, remains burned in my brain — but the gambit here is to lock us into a single room. The pressure cooker is on: the alcoholic father (Pat Healy) hectors the mother (Vinessa Shaw), while guilty panic leaves Melissa a wreck. Flashbacks reveal some generic hexxing against a gross guy by her and Amy (Lisette Alexis), the dully intense goth she hooked up with. Melissa’s little brother, Bobby (John James Cronin, possessed by the spirit of Ralphie from “A Christmas Story”), is the story’s innocent bystander.Confinement is a classic testing ground for a horror director (there’s even a genre: the haunted house). Sean King O’Grady, making his debut feature, stirs together parental menace, teenage malaise and creature effects (one tedious, one absolutely delicious). The power of suggestion is the chosen method for the chaos outside — offscreen voices and noises — but despite some nifty freak-outs, the movie’s buildup can lack a certain snap.The anxieties of pandemic quarantine were apparently an inspiration for the film, but what might come to mind as well are the bunker sequences of postapocalyptic nuke dramas. Some viewers, especially city folk, might simply marvel at the downright shocking expanse of the suburban bathroom.We Need to Do SomethingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 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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      'Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles' Review

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      In the Disney+ concert film “Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles,” the pop star Billie Eilish pays tribute to the star-struck hauntedness of that city.The concert film “Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los Angeles” finds the pop musician Billie Eilish performing in her hometown, and taking her place in the long lineage of stars who have been shaped by the mythology of Los Angeles.Eilish sings a tight set consisting of songs from her most recent album “Happier Than Ever.” There are brief sequences in which an animated Eilish cruises down billboarded boulevards, or looks over a sprawling vista. But the best tribute to the city comes from the choice of venue, the Hollywood Bowl, and Eilish’s guest collaborators — most notably, the Los Angeles Philharmonic.The Hollywood Bowl amphitheater is completely emptied for this virtual concert, and Eilish plays to an absent crowd. The contrast between the spectacle onstage and the vacuum in the audience suggests the star-struck hauntedness of the City of Angels better than the more direct visual metaphors employed in the animated sequences of the film — trite images of Eilish growing wings and floating into the clouds.As Eilish croons about the pressures of fame, the Hollywood Bowl cradles her, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic lifts her. Strobe lights flash, and the directors, Robert Rodriguez and Patrick Osborne, swirl the camera, peering down at Eilish with distant drone shots. But despite the modern technology, the setting and the sound draws attention to what is retro about this young star’s style, the influences from bossa nova, jazz, and traditional choral music that pop up in her chart-topping records. If there is a surprise to be had in this concert footage, it is that modern pop retains a glimmer of classic Hollywood mystique — here, there’s as much Judy Garland as there is Lana Del Rey.Happier Than Ever: A Love Letter to Los AngelesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 6 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘Mogul Mowgli’ Review: Rapping for Dear Life

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      Riz Ahmed plays a hip-hop artist who faces illness and identity crises in Bassam Tariq’s electrifying new film.We first meet Zaheen, whose rap moniker is Zed, onstage at a club in New York. Wiry and wired, with a whispery intensity and a quick sense of humor — and played by Riz Ahmed with everything he has — Zed is on the verge of a career breakthrough after years of almost-stardom. He’s also about to break up with his girlfriend, Bina (Aiysha Hart), and face an illness that will precipitate a wrenching identity crisis.But before all that, if you listen to the verses he spits, it’s clear that the puzzles and paradoxes of identity are the wellsprings of his art. A London-bred son of immigrants from Pakistan, he writes seething, witty rhymes about the complicated history of the skin he lives in. He’s a British citizen descended from colonial subjects; a Muslim who is skeptical of piety and tradition; a man of the 21st century burdened by an earlier era’s legacy of partition, displacement and war.Nothing about Zed is simple, and he revels in his own complexity. “Mogul Mowgli,” Bassam Tariq’s astute, compact fictional feature debut, is a portrait of the artist as a son, brother and patient. Not that he’s summed up by such roles, or any others. “Only a few fit those words, so I’m repping for the rest of us,” he raps.Ahmed, who wrote those lyrics (and collaborated with Tariq on the screenplay) reps the character faithfully. Zed’s illness makes “Mogul Mowgli” a companion of sorts to “Sound of Metal,” in which Ahmed played a drummer facing the existential crisis of hearing loss. An autoimmune disease, arriving midway through this movie, quickly renders Zed unable to walk or stand without assistance. Stuck in a hospital bed, he is thrown back into a difficult relationship with his father (the superb Alyy Khan) and into a series of reveries.These unnerving episodes — existing somewhere between dream and memory, fantasy and hallucination — evoke moments from Zed’s childhood and also some of the traumas of South Asian history. One recurrent figure is a wildly dancing man, his face obscured by garlands of flowers. He is identified as Toba Tek Singh, a Punjabi place name that is also the title of a short story (by Saadat Hasan Manto) about the absurdity and tragedy of the 1947 partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Rather than explain the reference, Tariq and Ahmed let Toba Tek Singh stand as a kind of avatar and warning for Zed, who does what he can to master the madness of his circumstances.The film moves briskly though the phases of his predicament. He squabbles with his manager (Anjana Vasan), deals with an obnoxious fan, and endures the admiration of a younger rap acolyte known as RPG (Nabhaan Rizwan), a fool with facial tattoos and wisdom that would make Ali G proud. (“There’s no Drake without Whoopi Goldberg. No Nelson Mandela without apartheid.”)With the director of photography (Annika Summerson) and the sound designer (Paul Davies), Tariq stitches domestic drama, satire and magical realism into a tissue of moods and meanings, held together by the shattering credibility of Ahmed’s performance. In his work, Zed tries to bring coherence to the baffling anarchy of experience. “Mogul Mowgli” accomplishes just that.Mogul MowgliNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters. More