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      ‘Jolt’ Review: Danger, High Voltage

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      Kate Beckinsale stars as a turbocharged action heroine in Amazon’s limp, derivative revenge picture.Lindy (Kate Beckinsale), the hero of Tanya Wexler’s action-revenge thriller “Jolt” (streaming on Amazon) has no patience for the irritating and inconsiderate. When she encounters someone boorish or grating — an insolent waitress, say, or a manspreader on the subway — she seethes with anger, as if allergic to the slightest lapse of etiquette or social politesse. And because Lindy suffers from a rare neurological condition that causes hyperaggressive tendencies and violent impulses, she usually beats these unsuspecting offenders into a bloody mess. She’s like Larry David crossed with The Terminator.All those brutal beatings have made it hard for Lindy to live an ordinary life, but her therapist, Dr. Munchin (Stanley Tucci), has devised a solution: a kind of mobile electroconvulsive therapy mechanism, designed to suppress Lindy’s violent impulses. Whenever she wants to assault someone loudly tapping a pencil on a desk or pummel a driver for rudely berating a valet, she gives herself a little shock and that ferocious temper is reigned in. It’s like the inverse of Jason Statham in “Crank,” who needed a steady dose of electricity to power his action rampage.The action in “Crank” was suitably electrifying, but in “Jolt,” it’s missing that rousing charge. Lindy goes on a rampage of her own after a date she’s smitten with turns up murdered, pursuing his killers with vicious abandon, and what follows is yet another single-minded quest for cutthroat vengeance in the style of “John Wick,” which has already spawned several imitators. The plot, stretched thin even at just 90 minutes, is extremely predictable, and therefore boring, and the film doesn’t do enough with its high-concept shock-therapy conceit to feel fresh or novel.JoltRated R for language, graphic violence, some nudity and sexuality. Running time: 1 hour and 31 minutes. Watch on Amazon. More

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      ‘How It Ends’ Review: What, You Expected Us to Tell You?

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      In this apocalyptic comedy, Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein count down Earth’s last day, measuring out the hours in serial conflict resolutions.In the apocalyptic comedy “How It Ends,” the Earth faces destruction by meteor at the end of the night. Here, the world ends not with a bang or a whimper, but with self-deprecating jokes and irreverent self-reflection.For her last hours before Earth’s expiration, Liza (Zoe Lister-Jones) wanders Los Angeles, visiting family, friends and lovers in a search for spiritual resolution. In a metaphysical twist, the adult Liza is accompanied by the manifestation of her younger self (Cailee Spaeny).Among the standouts from the film’s deep cast are Helen Hunt as Liza’s mother, who offers a heartfelt monologue about not being meant for parenthood. Liza and her former best friend, played by Olivia Wilde, demonstrate their psychic bond through complicated and rhythmic overlapping dialogue. Logan Marshall-Green, as the man who got away, brims with brooding romanticism.The film’s writers and directors, Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein, ensure that each reconciliation has an arc that builds from confrontation to explanation to resolution, and they are also careful to ensure that each scene stands on its own. The film plays as a series of perfectly enjoyable sketches strung together, an excuse for veteran actors to chew on playful dialogue. Liza attempts to tie up the loose ends of her life in one day, and if it seems like she succeeds rather economically, the writing, ever clever, builds in an explanation for the film’s breeziness. The characters shrug off the importance of their revelations — it’s only the end of the world.How It EndsRated R for language and references to drugs and sex. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Last Letter From Your Lover’ Review: Relationship History

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      Shailene Woodley and Felicity Jones star as two women living in different eras struggling to uncover the truth behind a series of passionate love letters.In Augustine Frizzell’s “The Last Letter From Your Lover,” women have complicated relationships to their pasts — in more ways than one.After surviving a collision, Jennifer Stirling (Shailene Woodley), a socialite wedded to a distinguished English diplomat (Joe Alwyn), loses her memory. Jenny’s frazzled by her husband’s stuffy demeanor — is she supposed to be in love with this man? — yet everyone insists she used to lead a charmed existence. Skeptical, Jenny sets out to uncover the mystery of her own life, unearthing a P.O. Box and a collection of love letters hidden away in her husband’s study.From Jenny’s gilded 1960s milieu, we’re dumped into present-day London where a bedraggled journalist, Ellie Haworth (Felicity Jones), comes across the same letters while conducting research. A workaholic and reeling from a bad breakup, Ellie numbs the pain with messy one-night stands, though a charming archivist (Nabhaan Rizwan) chips away at her defensive veneer.As both women gradually piece together the truth in their separate but interwoven timelines, the dreamy origins of Jenny’s affair with a reporter, Anthony O’Hare (Callum Turner), come into focus.Adapted by Nick Payne and Esta Spalding from Jojo Moyes’s lengthy 2010 novel of the same name, “The Last Letter” is a compressed version of the romantic epic that cuts away all the rough edges, and with them, the longing and languorous feelings that uncontrollable passion entails. In short, it too efficiently glosses over multiple plotlines to have much of an emotional impact. What remains are mostly generic beats.Still, the formula is engrossing enough, and its midcentury vintage appeal — the pillbox hats, headscarves and swanky soirees — is particularly seductive.Ultimately, the past and present converge, yielding not a lesson on how radically different women overcome their painful histories, but a happy ending about the universal power of love — or whatever.The Last Letter From Your LoverNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Val Kilmer Documentary Review: The Iceman Cometh

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      A documentary about Val Kilmer offers a self-portrait of the artist that’s personal but not quite intimate.The actor Val Kilmer is not only the subject of “Val,” a documentary directed by Ting Poo and Leo Scott. He also receives a cinematography credit, having shot many of the home movies and video diary entries that give the film its visual texture. More a self-portrait than a profile, “Val” tells the story of a Hollywood career with a candor that stops short of revelation. The tone is personal but not quite intimate, producing in the viewer a warm, slightly wary feeling of companionship.Hanging out with Kilmer, now in his early 60s, is an interesting, bittersweet experience. In on-camera interviews, he still radiates movie-star charisma, even though his voice isn’t what it used to be. Since being treated for throat cancer in 2014, he speaks through a tracheostomy tube, and his words are spelled out in subtitles.What he says in his own raspy, electronically distorted voice is supplemented by narration — read by his son, Jack — that reflects on the ups and downs of a career that was never quite what he wanted it to be. Kilmer muses on the way acting crosses and blurs the boundary between reality and illusion, concluding that he’s spent most of his life “inside the illusion.”A Juilliard graduate with a passionate sense of craft, he ascended to Hollywood in the less-than-golden age of the 1980s. His best-known roles are probably still Iceman, the jaunty, square-jawed heavy in “Top Gun,” and Batman, whose suit he wore, not very comfortably, in between Michael Keaton and George Clooney. When Kilmer visits Comic-Con, the autograph seekers want him to sign memorabilia from those movies. But to appreciate the full range of his talent, you are better off cuing up “The Doors,” “Tombstone” and of course “Heat,” in which he credibly holds his own alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro.In outline, “Val” is a standard biographical documentary, tracing an arc from childhood through struggle, triumph and more struggle. We see Kilmer with his parents and brothers, hear about his marriage to the British actress Joanne Whalley and witness on-set and backstage shenanigans with the likes of Sean Penn, Tom Cruise and Marlon Brando.Conflicts with directors and castmates, and Kilmer’s tabloid-fueled reputation for “difficulty,” are mentioned in passing, but “Val” is neither a first-person confessional nor a journalistic investigation. It seems to arise, above all, from the desire of a sometimes reluctant celebrity and frequently underestimated artist to be understood. With a combination of wit, sincerity, self-awareness, and the narcissism that is both a requirement and a pitfall of his profession, Kilmer succeeds in explaining himself, or at least convincing us that we never really knew him before.ValRated R. Rough language. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)’ Review: Always Hustling

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      The film follows the lives of two individuals in Nigeria who dream of immigrating to Europe to better their prospects.The Nigerian feature “Eyimofe” is about many different things — migration, exploitation, misogyny — but it’s primarily about money. Following the lives of two individuals in Lagos, both of whom dream of immigrating to Europe to better their prospects, the film traces a web of Nigerian naira — currency needed for hospital bills, housing bills, lawyer bills, endless bills — that entraps the characters, sucking them in deeper the harder they try to escape. They’re at the mercy of a city where every interaction is a transaction, and where the myths of bootstrap capitalism come to die.Mofe (Jude Akuwudike), who leads the first of the film’s two halves, lives in a cramped slum with his sister and nephews, and works as a mechanic at a dangerously ramshackle repair shop to save up enough to immigrate to Spain. Rosa (Temi Ami-Williams), the focus of the film’s second chapter, lives in the same neighborhood with her pregnant teenage sister. Rosa works two jobs, and yet is forced to deal with unsavory characters — including a predatory businesswoman and a lovesick landlord — to pay her bills and procure visas to Italy.Both Mofe and Rosa are struck by harrowing personal tragedies that in a different film — and with different actors — might take over the narrative. Both characters, however, keep moving with the stoicism of someone for whom hardship is the norm. Besides, there isn’t really any time to mourn: The bills continue to pile up, with even death involving a complex bureaucracy and hefty price. Rosa sees a glimmer of hope when an American expat begins dating her, but she’s soon forced to succumb to the very stereotype his rich, condescending friends have of her: a gold digger. Survival and manipulation are blurred when one is so desperate, leaving little room for anything as sincere as desire.With aerial shots of Lagos’s bustling marketplaces and a sound design attuned to the city’s chatter, the directors, Arie and Chuko Esiri, evocatively capture a milieu where everyone — rich or poor — is always hustling and bargaining. The cinematographer Arseni Khachaturan shoots on warm, grainy 16-millimeter film, which emphasizes not just the vibrant colors of Lagos but also its textures. The heat, dust and crumbling facades of Mofe and Rosa’s world contrast with the rarefied air and glossy surfaces of the venues where Rosa’s boyfriend takes her on dates. The portrait of life that emerges organically from this understated, observant approach makes “Eyimofe” the rare social realist drama that conveys critique without didacticism and empathy without pity.Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)Not rated. In Nigerian English with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Broken Diamonds’ Review: Illness as a Narrative Convenience

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      The drama about a brother caring for a sister uses mental illness as an engine for a predictable plot.The drama “Broken Diamonds” begins with the death of a family patriarch and the reunion of distant siblings. Scott (Ben Platt) is a writer hoping to escape to a career in Paris, but when his father dies, he is forced into the role of caregiver for his older sister, Cindy (Lola Kirke). She began displaying symptoms of schizophrenia when she and Scott were teenagers, and as an adult, she resides at a care facility that intends to expel her for poor behavior. Cindy is released to live with Scott, but his impatience in his role makes it harder for her to maintain stability.This film dramatizes the effect that mental illness has on families, but unfortunately its portrait of Cindy’s life with schizophrenia never transcends cliché. A challenge of crafting a story around illness, mental or otherwise, is that in life, flare-ups are neither moral nor entirely predictable. The director, Peter Sattler, emphasizes the uncontrollable nature of Cindy’s illness as a plot point, but the narrative convenience of her mental state is apparent in every gesture, every line of dialogue and every movement of the camera.Cindy’s highs and lows correspond directly with Scott’s behavior, his character’s need for growth. When she experiences a crisis, the breakdown maps predictably into climactic story beats. The movie treats illness as a series of contrivances, an engine that keeps the plot pistoning forward, and the result of this approach is a film that feels lifeless, or worse, reductive. It mines drama from a disorder, and offers no insight, no beauty, no humor in return.Broken DiamondsRated PG-13 for references to self-harm and language. Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on FandangoNow, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘Settlers’ Review: Interstellar Colonialism on Mars

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      The first feature from Wyatt Rockefeller takes on exploitation and violence against women — and bungles both.Billionaires are racing to colonize space, but how might it play out if they were ever to be successful? “Settlers,” a sci-fi thriller from Wyatt Rockefeller (of those Rockefellers) takes a stab at this vision, but succeeds only in telling a clumsy cautionary tale of homesteading and violence on the planet Mars. It would make the most sense for this film to side with Jerry (Ismael Cruz Córdova), a Mars native hoping to reclaim his land. Instead, it paints him as a deranged savage.“Settlers” is divided into three chapters, each focused on a key figure in the life of a young girl named Remmy (Brooklynn Prince). Her father, Reza (Jonny Lee Miller), is a short-tempered, protective man. He warns Remmy and her mother, Ilsa (Sofia Boutella), not to stray too far from their remote ranch. Soon enough, his paranoia proves true when Jerry appears. As it turns out, Jerry’s family used to own the land before Reza and Ilsa ousted them. He wants his home back.Though this could be a straightforward fable about the ills of colonialism — the twist being that Remmy and her family are the real intruders — Rockefeller’s muddled script casts Jerry as the villain, and he quickly makes Remmy’s life a living hell. Jerry (played, notably, by a Puerto Rican actor) will stop at nothing, including murder, to lead a successful life on Mars.This has all the trappings of a film that should know what it’s doing: impressive special effects, slick cinematography, staggering art direction. Unfortunately, all the money in the world can’t save this rotten narrative, which culminates in a scene depicting the attempted rape of a teenage girl. “Settlers” purports to challenge violence against women and colonialism. Instead, the female protagonist wallows in powerlessness for most of the movie, and a boxy robot is ultimately presented as more sympathetic than a displaced brown man.SettlersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In select 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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      ‘Holy Beasts’ Review: Cinematic Dreams Within Dreams

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      Geraldine Chaplin offers a commanding performance in this sleek tropical thriller.The meta thriller “Holy Beasts” follows a group of artists who gather in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to complete the unfinished project of their friend, the filmmaker Jean-Louis Jorge, who was murdered in 2000. This is a sleek, intellectual homage within a homage, a fictional consideration of what it means to continue the legacy of a real artist who has been lost.The story follows Vera (Geraldine Chaplin), a former star who has taken on the role of director. She is flanked by Victor (Jaime Pina), her potentially shady producer, and Henry (Udo Kier), her mysterious choreographer. On her set, Vera acts as the guardian of Jorge’s memory, the interlocutor for his ghostly presence. But Vera’s task becomes complicated as members of her cast turn up dead, and her tropical setting pushes the production toward catastrophe.For inspiration, the characters watch clips of Jorge’s films. Through those excerpts, the directors, Israel Cárdenas and Laura Amelia Guzmán, show how Jorge mixed kitsch and melodrama to create a vibrant cinematic style. Elements of Jorge’s methods are visible here — the natural setting, the gaudy costumes, the beauty of young dancers — but the lens holds a different perspective. Here, the camera holds back, observing the drama in long, static takes filmed from a distance.It is a credit to both the intelligence of the filmmakers and to Chaplin’s commanding performance that the movie effectively encourages its audience to consider the same questions that haunt Vera: Does this image capture the spirit that animated Jorge’s work? A theremin score weaves its way through the soundtrack, a spectral reminder that what sounds like a human voice might only be an electric facsimile.Holy BeastsNot rated. In Spanish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Film Movement Plus. More