Movies

Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

This documentary follows the activist Ady Barkan, who toured the U.S. to help demonstrators draw attention to public health policies after his diagnosis with a fatal neurological disease.In 2016, Ady Barkan was working as an advocate for economic justice when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., a neurological disease that deteriorates motor function. Doctors told him he had only three or four years to live. The documentary “Not Going Quietly” begins shortly after this grim diagnosis, as Ady embarks on a new political campaign, this time focused on public health policy.In the film, Ady leaves the comfort of home and family to travel across the United States on a speaking tour as part of his “Be a Hero” campaign. He leads rallies in Congressional districts where politicians support what Ady deems inhumane health policies. In Washington, his push for health care access leads Ady to protest Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court appointment. Through this fight, his illness progresses, limiting his ability to move and speak.The most intriguing scenes in the documentary are focused on the mechanics of Ady’s activism. The director Nicholas Bruckman captures Ady and a team of organizers as they host a training for demonstrators who intend to film themselves disrupting politicians during routine campaign stops with questions about health care. This training represents one of the few occasions that Bruckman treats Ady’s success as a result of organizing, rather than a feat achieved through sheer force of personality.Ady’s vitality has been central to his accomplishments. But Bruckman elides the significant amount of planning that it has taken for Ady and his team to build a national movement. This lack of practical detail means this documentary plays as a human-interest story, built from predictable beats of adversity and triumph. It is a warm and generous portrait, but the film lacks its central organizer’s propulsive shrewdness.Not Going QuietlyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

A documentary looks at an influential distributor and theater owner who went after visionary films, including “Scenes From a Marriage” and “Putney Swope.”Not every documentary features its director calling his subject “kind of a terrible person.” But Ira Deutchman’s “Searching for Mr. Rugoff” happily looks at the man in full: Donald S. Rugoff, the influential distributor, New York City theater impresario and certifiable “piece of work” (to quote one testimonial).During a blazing run in the 1960s and 1970s, Rugoff went after visionary movies that made audiences sit up and take notice: “Z,” “The Sorrow and the Pity,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Scenes From a Marriage,” “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” “Harlan County USA,” “Nothing but a Man,” “Putney Swope,” “WR: Mysteries of the Organism,” and, yes, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”As a former employee and later a distributor and producer, Deutchman brings firsthand insights into the indefatigable Mr. Rugoff (who died in 1989). He assembles an amused and bemused circle of fellow veterans of Rugoff’s distribution company Cinema 5, old-school commentators, Rugoff’s ex-wife and sons, and grateful filmmakers (Lina Wertmuller, Robert Downey Sr., Costa-Gavras). Deutchman, a professor at Columbia University, also visits Edgartown, Mass., for traces of Rugoff’s life after his company was taken over.As someone who grew up going to some of the theaters Rugoff once ran — which included Cinema I and II and the Beekman, among others — I got the warm-and-fuzzies from seeing the love here for moviegoing and exhibition, which he goosed with gonzo showmanship. Equally so for the brief inclusion of Dan Talbot, fellow distributor and theater maven, whose cinemas and unparalleled New Yorker Films catalog also remain at the heart of the medium. It’s all part of an essential history of film culture that continues in new and different ways today.Searching for Mr. RugoffNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Apple TV and other streaming services. More

This thoroughly generic war movie explores the Netherlands’ colonial legacy in Indonesia.At the tail-end of World War II, an armed conflict broke out that is known today as the Indonesian War of Independence. The Dutch, after having lost their former colony to the Japanese in 1942, regrouped and deployed forces to reconquer the archipelago in 1946. Naturally, Indonesian nationalists were having none of it. And perhaps even more predictably, the Dutch Army responded with a violent campaign.“The East,” a bloated and thoroughly generic war movie by the Dutch filmmaker Jim Taihuttu, reckons with the Netherlands’ colonial legacy by spotlighting this overlooked moment in history. The details may be novel — even eye-opening for some — but this story of white guilt and brutality feels mighty old.For one thing, Johan (Martijn Lakemeier), a young, idealistic soldier, disillusioned by the impotence of Dutch efforts to fend off rebel forces, quickly acquires a taste for blood. A volunteer recruit hoping to make spiritual amends for the sins of his Nazi-collaborator father, he is initially the most polite and benevolent of his group of juvenile, sex-obsessed troopers. The good boy goes bad, however, when he meets Raymond “The Turk” (Marwan Kenzari), a mustachioed brute known for his merciless tactics. Cue the firing squad, terrorized villagers, and shame-fueled inner torment.The jumbled script straddles two timelines: the events in Indonesia and Johan’s return to the Netherlands after completing his service. It’s all bleakness and self-loathing without the momentum or punch. Neither a joyless, immersive thrill ride (“1917”) nor a cartoonish display of tough-guy patriotism (“Midway”), “The East” fits squarely into the tradition of Vietnam War movies like “Platoon,” whose depictions of imperial carnage and psychic derangement might have once been provocative. Today, a film like “The East” feels more like a numbing recapitulation.The EastNot rated. Running time: 2 hour 17 minutes. In Japanese, Dutch and Indonesian with subtitles. In theaters. More

This docu-essay inspired by Sebastian Haffner’s 1978 book of the same title argues that Hitler was disturbingly ordinary.The docu-essay “The Meaning of Hitler” proceeds with caution. The film, inspired by the historian and journalist Sebastian Haffner’s 1978 book of the same title, seeks to understand the combination of personal pathology, political shrewdness and mass complicity that allowed Hitler to create the Nazi regime. It also finds disturbing 21st-century echoes.But the filmmakers, the wife-husband directorial team of Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker (“Gunner Palace”), are wary of contributing to any mystique that surrounds Hitler, not least because they find little in Hitler’s background that makes him unique. Early on, a narrator expresses concern about the project: “Is it possible to make a film like this without contributing to the expansion of the Nazi cinematic universe?”Although the film features Holocaust historians like Saul Friedländer, Yehuda Bauer and Deborah Lipstadt and the authors Martin Amis and Francine Prose, it approaches Hitler from a variety of disciplines. The psychiatrist Peter Theiss-Abendroth says that Hitler has been assigned almost any diagnosis available, but he suggests that such speculation invariably creates excuses for culpability. Bauer notes that Hitler’s psychological problems were no different from those of millions of others. The movie delves into technology to explain how advances in microphones enabled Hitler’s theatrical style of oration. An archaeologist discusses the excavation of the Sobibor death camp.So is “The Meaning of Hitler” really playing with fire? It is when it trails the Holocaust denier David Irving on a visit to Treblinka. Irving makes offhand anti-Semitic remarks so flagrantly offensive it’s difficult to see what’s edifying about including him.But that misstep aside, “The Meaning of Hitler” takes a multifaceted, often counterintuitive approach to examining the underpinnings of fascism.The Meaning of HitlerNot rated. In English and German with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, Apple TV and other streaming services. More

This documentary from Peter Nicks follows Oakland High School seniors as they fight for social justice and face Covid-19 on their way to graduation.On their first day of school in 2019, members of the senior class at Oakland High School in Oakland, Calif., looked forward to Instagram posts and a year of tuning out teachers who drone on about math and classroom rules. More engaged classmates, like Denilson Garibo, a student governing board representative, might have anticipated that the year would include social justice organizing. But it would have been hard for the class of 2020 to predict the changes that the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd protests would bring to their lives. This unprecedented year is captured in vérité style in the heartfelt documentary “Homeroom.”The film maintains a tight structure, beginning on the first day of school and ending with graduation day. The director Peter Nicks shows these students to be socially engaged and thoughtful, and his camera patiently watches as teenagers articulate what they want from their education. School board meetings become a central focus of the film, as Denilson pushes for changes in policy, including a motion to remove police officers from Oakland schools.Nicks does not disrupt his observations to introduce every pupil by name, nor are there talking-head interviews to pause the action. The editing finds what is harmonious in how these teenagers express themselves, creating the impression of a class that speaks with a unified voice. When the pandemic forces the students into sudden isolation, the loss of their collective energy curbs the film’s momentum, and the contemporaneity of these events means that there is little suspense or surprise in the film’s second half.But, like a diploma, it’s easy to imagine how the rewards of this carefully observed documentary could accrue with a little time.HomeroomNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

This documentary about the painting “Salvator Mundi” packs the fascination and wallop of an expertly executed fictional thriller.To paraphrase John Lennon, Leonardo da Vinci is a concept by which world civilization (such as it is) measures artistic mastery.“The Lost Leonardo,” a documentary directed by the Danish filmmaker Andreas Koefoed, is a disquieting confirmation of this idea. It’s the story of how a painting purchased for a little over $1,000 was soon identified — if not wholly authenticated — as a Leonardo, and eventually wound up in the hands of a Saudi oligarch who spent more than $400 million on it. Among other things, this picture freshly demonstrates that a conventionally structured documentary can pack the fascination and wallop of an expertly executed fictional thriller.The globe-trotting narrative begins with Alexander Parish, a self-described “sleeper hunter” — an art buyer who looks for catalog mistakes — purchasing the painting “Salvator Mundi” from a New Orleans dealer. Working with the renowned art historian and restorer Dianne Modestini, Parish and his financial partner Robert Simon determine they have a Leonardo on their hands. And so the movie moves from “The Art Game” to “The Money Game.”Into this narrative, “The Lost Leonardo” weaves coherent mini-treatises on restoration, art dealerships, free ports, the true nature of the auctioneering business and more. The art critic Jerry Saltz blusters that the painting is not just not a Leonardo, but that it’s garbage. The writer Kenny Schachter is more considered and rueful in expressing his doubts. Footage of spectators reacting to the painting suggests that one can produce a Pavlovian response to an artwork merely by labeling it a Leonardo. The movie also features F.B.I. and C.I.A. figures, the New York Times investigative journalist David Kirkpatrick and Leonardo DiCaprio.It’s a dizzying tale. And whether or not you believe “Salvator Mundi” to be a real Leonardo, it’s ultimately a disgusting one.The Lost LeonardoRated PG-13 for language. In English and French with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

Four unrelated women with serious emotional baggage are connected by an incident on the subway in this indie drama directed by David Gutnik.In “Materna,” the debut feature by David Gutnik, four anguished New York women are connected by an incident on the subway involving — surprise, surprise — an unhinged man (Sturgill Simpson). Subtler and more focused than cloyingly grandiose interlocking dramas like “Crash,” it takes an interest — as the title suggests — in motherhood and mothering: the anxieties related to pregnancy and child-rearing; the guilt and frustrations born of generational rifts.The film’s four sections recount the events leading up to each woman’s arrival to the same train car, and the outburst that takes place therein is visualized repeatedly from each one’s troubled head space.Jean (Kate Lyn Sheil) is a VR artist whose mother constantly badgers her to freeze her eggs; Mona (Jade Eshete) is an actress struggling to connect with her estranged mother, a Jehovah’s Witness; Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) is a wealthy stay-at-home mom whose young son, she’s convinced, is being persecuted by his school’s politically correct agenda; Perizad (Assol Abdullina, who also serves as a co-writer along with Gutnik and Eshete), travels to her native Kyrgyzstan after the death of a relative, and spends time with her mother and grandmother.Perizad’s story, buoyed by Abdullina’s weary, yet searching gaze, achieves an emotional tenor that the preceding vignettes lack, enfeebled as they are by dialogue — and text messages — that announce precisely the issues at stake.Each section, however, leaves its mark: Jean’s story veers toward science fiction horror when artificial insemination takes on an eerily literal meaning; naturalistic camerawork lends Mona’s heated sessions with an acting coach a delirious intimacy; and the tension between Ruth and her ideologically opposed brother (Rory Culkin) erupts into an arresting, if predictably sketched, dramatic showdown.If only their bond amounted to more. As it stands, the glue uniting these women of different ethnicities and backgrounds reads like a failed attempt to carve a more ambitious meaning out of individual stories already brimming with possibility.MaternaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming services. More