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      ‘Scales’ Review: A Sensual Fable With a Feminist Bent

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      From Saudi Arabia, this dystopian tale is heavy on evocative visuals at the expense of a more satisfying story.In a craggy coastal village seemingly isolated from the rest of the world, a group of torch-wielding men prepare for a gruesome ritual: They must sacrifice their daughters to appease the mermaid-like creatures that roam the sea. Despite the pressure to follow community guidelines, so to speak, Muthana (Yagoub Alfarhan) saves his firstborn before she sinks too deep into the black waters.And thus begins the fable-esque story of Hayat (Basima Hajjar), a 12-year-old girl who comes to subvert the fearful, patriarchal customs that dictate the dystopian world of “Scales.” Written and directed by the Saudi Arabian filmmaker Shahad Ameen, this feature debut is aesthetically tantalizing, presented in eerily glistening monochrome. Just as Hayat fends off another round of sacrifice and proves herself by hunting down a sea creature, a scab on her foot grows larger and begins look an awful lot like fish scales. The movie hints at the possibility that the village’s lost girls are transformed into these mystical beings.Ameen prioritizes symbolism teeming with sensory spirit over plot-based narrative, which ultimately renders her attempt at making a political statement too opaque and disjointed to have much of an impact. She gestures at the plight of women in Saudi Arabia, also bound by archaic traditions, but her critique fails to penetrate the surface of this issue.Still, the film’s visual elements — Hayat’s cloud of unruly black hair, the bone-dry rocky cliffs hovering over the village — are palpable, bewilderingly engrossing and complemented by a spine-tingling sound design full of creaks, drips and scratches. By the end, the film feels more mysterious than ever, a frustrating conclusion that may very well be the point.ScalesNot rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 14 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Running Against the Wind’ Review: Love and Friendship in Addis Ababa

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      Two childhood best friends reunite in this unfocused yet uplifting sports drama by the filmmaker Jan Philipp Weyl.Following two childhood besties from a rural area in Ethiopia who reunite after a decade apart, “Running Against the Wind” is a lot of things: a sports drama, a coming-of-age story, a gangster flick. Cramming a flurry of events into its one hour-and-56-minute run time — to constant, ever-shifting pop tunes — the film is, at the very least, never boring.It’s also, despite a potentially compelling conceit, pretty ridiculous.In the opening scenes, the friends are still young: Abdi is a gifted runner while Solomon takes a liking to photography after a humanitarian worker takes the boys on an eye-opening trip to the bustling capital of Addis Ababa. But before too long, little Solomon nabs the worker’s fancy camera and runs away to the city, never to be seen again.Fast-forward to the present-day and Abdi (Ashenafi Nigusu) is a national running champion still searching for his lost pal. Turns out Solomon (Mikias Wolde) is alive, but he has gotten mixed up with a group of thugs who are vexed when the strait-laced Abdi comes on the scene and sets his friend up with an honest job working for his running coach — who eventually promotes Solomon to team photographer.The director, Jan Philipp Weyl (who also stars as Soloman’s photography mentor), injects his sprawling buddy story with a glossy, music video sensibility full of roller-coaster-like intrigue involving Abdi’s athletic rival, Solomon’s wife and baby, as well as his pugilistic friend.Instead of deepening our connection to the characters, these weak subplots distract from the bond at the film’s center, giving it a fragmented, episodic feel that makes even the most harrowing incidents seem inconsequential.At the very least, its light and uplifting mode is a welcome departure from the violent, overwhelmingly tragic course of most films set in Africa that are released in the United States. Sometimes happy endings do the trick.Running Against the WindNot rated. In Amharic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52’ Review: Sea Hunt

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      The documentary filmmaker Joshua Zeman assembles a team to look for a solitary whale who calls out at a particular frequency.The name of the boat is Truth, which is only one of the piquant details in Joshua Zeman’s seafaring documentary, “The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52.” Another is a coda that audiences will appreciate sticking around for.The cetacean in question — known as 52 because his call broadcasts at 52 hertz, a frequency believed unique among whales — was first recorded in 1989 by the Navy and was suspected of being a Russian submarine. Identified as a whale by the marine scientist Dr. William A. Watkins, who tracked the solitary signal for a dozen years until his death in 2004, 52 has since remained as unfollowed as a suspended Twitter account.Was he even still alive? Zeman, a man who loves a mystery, determines to find out. As he assembles his low-budget, high-hopes expedition and recruits a team of experts, the film’s nerdery is unexpectedly endearing. Excited scientists strive to affix trackers to bucking sea creatures, and acoustic devices slide beneath the waves, opening like magic into the shape of inverted satellite dishes.Neither slick nor propulsive, “The Loneliest Whale” gently combines aquatic adventure and bobbing meditation on our own species’s environmental arrogance. While the boat noodles along the Southern California coastline, Zeman ponders the bloody history of whaling and the “acoustic smog” that plagues oceans teeming with clattering container ships. Not until we heard the 1970 album “Songs of the Humpback Whale,” he notes — the best-selling nature recording in history, and not just because it pairs perfectly with weed — did we care to save the whales. He hardly needs to add, if only the Earth could sing.The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Summertime’ Review: Poetry and Motion in Los Angeles

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      In this film that uses spoken word poetry as its guiding light, the camera only stops long enough for its new subject to enter a recitation.In a poetry reading, pursuing a distraction can be a kindness. Looking away, listening for room tone rather than to the speaker’s words — these are ways of granting the poet reprieve from judgment. But when watching a film, the camera controls where you gaze, and sound design limits the audible disturbances. Ultimately, this is the undoing of “Summertime,” a movie that uses spoken word poetry as its guiding light. The direction limits, rather than expands the words of its performer-poets.The director Carlos López Estrada works with contemporary poets to present a semi-fictional portrait of Los Angeles. The story draws inspiration from the Richard Linklater movie, “Slacker” — here, strangers cross paths momentarily and the camera transitions to new characters with each coincidental meeting. There are some recurring figures, like Tyris (Tyris Winter), a young man who posts Yelp reviews of the city’s restaurants, but most of the stories come and go quickly. The camera only stops long enough for its new subject to enter a recitation.The most successful sequences are the ones that find new ways of illustrating the meaning of a poem besides lingering on the face of the performer uttering purposefully syncopated and painstakingly intonated lines. A dance sequence in a parking lot demonstrates a fantasy of freedom with greater vitality than even the most animated speaker is able to muster. Some of the film’s most moving lines are spoken over a radio at a Korean restaurant. The new rhythm provided by a different language breaks up the film’s more predictable patterns of verses, and the broadcast from afar grants both the audience and characters room for imagination — a quality that unfortunately feels in short supply.SummertimeRated R. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Rock, Paper and Scissors’ Review: There’s No Place Like Home

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      In this Argentine drama, two unhinged siblings trap and torture their half sister after she pursues her share of their father’s inheritance.Soon after reuniting with her half siblings, Magdalena (Agustina Cerviño), the unlikely protagonist of “Rock, Paper and Scissors,” takes a tumble down the many, many stairs of her childhood home. It is unclear if she was pushed — and if so, by whom — but it is apparent that this movie, directed by Macarena García Lenzi and Martín Blousson, wisely withholds its revelations.Forced into the care of her siblings, Magdalena languishes in the bed where their father recently died. Her sister María José (Valeria Giorcelli) remains ever-watchful while their brother, Jesús (Pablo Sigal), acts as a passive confidant. Before Magdalena arrived to collect her share of their father’s inheritance, the three hadn’t spoken in years. As her condition worsens and the siblings’ behavior becomes increasingly erratic, she must use their shared past to try and manipulate her way out of captivity.That past is loaded, to be sure. María José, as devoted to God as she is to “The Wizard of Oz,” vacillates wildly between the familial nurturer and an Annie Wilkes impersonator. Jesús is just as menacing but hovers in the periphery, content to make violent, experimental short films. He is something of a family outsider for being gay, while Magdalena is occasionally maligned for having a mother with darker skin, though these details don’t add much to the script except a few jarring slurs.There are no easy answers at the end of Magdalena’s journey, but her story is as interesting as it is confounding. Given the cast’s three outstanding performances and slick camerawork by Nicolás Colledani, this makes for a fascinating capsule of family brutality.Rock, Paper and ScissorsNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Robert Downey Sr., Filmmaker and Provocateur, Is Dead at 85

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      His movies, most notably “Putney Swope,” didn’t make a lot of money. But they attracted a lot of attention and influenced a lot of younger directors.Robert Downey Sr., who made provocative movies like “Putney Swope” that avoided mainstream success but were often critical favorites and were always attention getting, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 85.The cause was Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Rosemary Rogers, said.“Putney Swope,” a 1969 comedy about a Black man who is accidentally elected chairman of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, was perhaps Mr. Downey’s best-known film.“To be as precise as is possible about such a movie,” Vincent Canby wrote in a rave review in The New York Times, “it is funny, sophomoric, brilliant, obscene, disjointed, marvelous, unintelligible and relevant.”The film, though probably a financial success by Mr. Downey’s standards, made only about $2.7 million. (By comparison, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” that same year made more than $100 million.) Yet its reputation was such that in 2016 the Library of Congress selected it for the National Film Registry, an exclusive group of movies deemed to have cultural or historical significance.Shelley Plimpton and Ronnie Dyson in a scene from Mr. Downey’s “Putney Swope” (1969).Cinema VAlso much admired in some circles was “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), in which a Christlike figure in a zoot suit arrives in the Wild West by parachute. Younger filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson (who gave Mr. Downey a small part in his 1997 hit, “Boogie Nights”) cited it as an influence.None other than Joseph Papp, the theater impresario, in a letter to The New York Times after Mr. Canby’s unenthusiastic review, wrote that “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.” (Mr. Papp’s assessment may not have been entirely objective; at the time he was producing one of Mr. Downey’s few mainstream efforts, a television version of the David Rabe play “Sticks and Bones,” which had been a hit at Mr. Papp’s Public Theater in 1971.)Between “Putney Swope” and “Greaser’s Palace” there was “Pound” (1970), a political satire in which actors portrayed stray dogs. Among those actors, playing a puppy, was Robert Downey Jr., the future star of the “Iron Man” movies and many others, and Mr. Downey’s son. He was 5 and making his film debut.That movie, the senior Mr. Downey told The Times Union of Albany, N.Y., in 2000, was something of a surprise to the studio.“When I turned it into United Artists,” he said, “after the screening one of the studio heads said to me, ‘I thought this was gonna be animated.’ They thought they were getting some cute little animated film.”Allan Arbus in Mr. Downey’s “Greaser’s Palace” (1972), of which the theater impresario Joseph Papp wrote, “Robert Downey has fearlessly descended into the netherworld and come up with a laughing nightmare.”via PhotofestRobert John Elias Jr. was born on June 24, 1936, in Manhattan and grew up in Rockville Centre, on Long Island. His father was in restaurant management, and his mother, Betty (McLoughlin) Elias, was a model. Later, when enlisting in the Army as a teenager, he adopted the last name of his stepfather, Jim Downey, who worked in advertising.Much of his time in the Army was spent in the stockade, he said later; he wrote a novel while doing his time, but it wasn’t published. He pitched semi-pro baseball for a year, then wrote some plays.Among the people he met on the Off Off Broadway scene was William Waering, who owned a camera and suggested they try making movies. The result, which he began shooting when John F. Kennedy was still president and which was released in 1964, was “Babo 73,” in which Taylor Mead, an actor who would go on to appear in many Andy Warhol films, played the president of the United States. It was classic underground filmmaking.“We just basically went down to the White House and started shooting, with no press passes, permits, anything like that,” Mr. Downey said in an interview included in the book “Film Voices: Interviews From Post Script” (2004). “Kennedy was in Europe, so nobody was too tight with the security, so we were outside the White House mainly, ran around; we actually threw Taylor in with some real generals.”The budget, he said, was $3,000.Mr. Downey’s “Chafed Elbows,” about a day in the life of a misfit, was released in 1966 and was a breakthrough of sorts, earning him grudging respect even from Bosley Crowther, The Times’s staid film critic.“One of these days,” he wrote, “Robert Downey, who wrote, directed and produced the underground movie ‘Chafed Elbows,’ which opened at the downtown Gate Theater last night, is going to clean himself up a good bit, wash the dirty words out of his mouth and do something worth mature attention in the way of kooky, satiric comedy. He has the audacity for it. He also has the wit.”Mr. Downey with his son, the actor Robert Downey Jr., at a Time magazine gala in 2008. The younger Mr. Downey made his acting debut in one of his father’s movies when he was 5.Evan Agostini/AGOEV, via Associated PressThe film enjoyed extended runs at the Gate and the Bleecker Street Cinema. “No More Excuses” followed in 1968, then “Putney Swope,” “Pound” and “Greaser’s Palace.” But by the early 1970s Mr. Downey had developed a cocaine habit.“Ten years of cocaine around the clock,” he told The Associated Press in 1997. His marriage to Elsie Ford, who had been in several of his movies, faltered; they eventually divorced. He credited his second wife, Laura Ernst, with helping to pull him out of addiction. She died in 1994 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Downey drew on that experience for his last feature, “Hugo Pool” (1997).In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by a daughter, Allyson Downey; a brother, Jim; a sister, Nancy Connor; and six grandchildren.Mr. Downey’s movies have earned new appreciation in recent decades. In 2008 Anthology Film Archives in the East Village restored and preserved “Chafed Elbows,” “Babo 73″ and “No More Excuses” with the support of the Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation. At the time, Martin Scorsese, a member of the foundation’s board, called them “an essential part of that moment when a truly independent American cinema was born.”“They’re alive in ways that few movies can claim to be,” Mr. Scorsese told The Times, “because it’s the excitement of possibility and discovery that brought them to life.”Mr. Downey deflected such praise.“They’re uneven,” he said of the films. “But I was uneven.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      On the Scene: Cannes Film Festival 🇫🇷

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      On the Scene: Cannes Film Festival 🇫🇷Kyle BuchananReporting from the French RivieraThe standing ovation for “Annette” — an esoteric musical with songs from the band Sparks — lasted so long (over five minutes!), Adam Driver and Leos Carax, its director, both lit up cigarettes in the theater. More

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      ‘Black Widow’ Review: Spies, Lies and Family Ties

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      Scarlett Johansson plays the latest Avenger to get her own movie, but she’s overshadowed by Florence Pugh in this Cate Shortland-directed entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.If I were Natasha Romanoff, a.k.a. the Black Widow, a.k.a. the first original female Avenger and yet years overdue for her own film, I’d be hella miffed.After wearing myself out doing flips and kicks and spy work, I finally get my own movie, but the result, Marvel Studios’ “Black Widow,” opening Friday, uncomfortably mashes up a heartwarming family reunion flick with a spy thriller — and then lets its star, Scarlett Johansson, get overshadowed.“Black Widow” begins in Ohio in the ’90s: Natasha is a brave but serious young girl who already has a hardened look in her eyes. She looks after her younger sister, Yelena, and suspiciously follows the lead of her parents, Melina (Rachel Weisz) and Alexei (David Harbour), who are actually spies posing as a married couple. Natasha, who has already started training at the Red Room, a secret Soviet boot camp turning young women into deadly agents, is split from Yelena, and the girls are taught to kill.The main action of the film skips ahead to the time immediately following “Captain America: Civil War” (2016), when Natasha (now played by Johansson) is a fugitive separated from the rest of the Avengers. If jumping back a few films in the franchise sounds confusing, “Black Widow,” along with the current Disney+ series “Loki,” serves as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most recent attempt at retroactively building character narratives and back stories by doubling back on its own colossal, ever-expanding timeline. And so Natasha finds out that not only is the Red Room still in business and its leader, Dreykov (Ray Winstone), still alive, the other “widow” operatives are chemically manipulated so they become mindless assassins without free will. To bring down Dreykov and his Red Room, Natasha reluctantly joins forces with her fake family, including an older Yelena (Florence Pugh), who has found an antidote to the mind control.Despite the intriguing opening sequence, which involves shootings, a jet and a family escape, “Black Widow,” directed by Cate Shortland, lags, unsure of how to proceed with the story. There’s Natasha puttering around while in hiding, some muddled exposition and the introduction of a helmeted assassin who looks like a Mandalorian cosplayer.For a story about a woman named after a deadly spider, “Black Widow” is surprisingly precious with its hero. An Avenger who has been afflicted with something of a savior complex, Natasha hopes to redeem the red in her ledger with good deeds but ends up sounding like the dull Dudley Do-Right of the superhero film.In a lot of ways “Black Widow” feels different from the usual M.C.U. film. The coercion and manipulation of young women, the kidnapping and murder missions with civilian casualties — the film seems more like a Bond or Bourne movie, with a tacked-on moral about the importance of family, and it sits awkwardly with heavier themes. (In one scene, an exchange about the forced sterilization of the widows is played for comedy but just sounds absurdly dark.)Though Johansson gets some great action shots, she is outshined by the other strong actors (strong despite their inconsistent, and often odd, Russian accents). Harbour’s Alexei is an obnoxious though endearing Russian teddy bear of a retired super soldier. Weisz’s Melina is the tough but cowardly scientist who is used to being complicit in a system of which she’s also a victim. But most often Pugh steals the show. Her Yelena is steely and sarcastic yet still reeling from what she’s done while under mind control. Pugh brings cleverness and vulnerability to the character, and she and Johansson have the chemistry to pull off the comic taunting and teasing that comes with a sibling relationship.Why does Natasha always pose in the middle of fights, landing close to the ground, flipping her hair up and back? Yelena asks mockingly. And she challenges Natasha’s self-righteous idea of heroism: “I’m not the killer that little girls call their hero,” Yelena tells her. There’s a whole movie in that exchange alone.The script, by Eric Pearson, grants Yelena more personality, emotional depth and intrigue. It not only mines the more immediate trauma she has faced but also, through her, critiques the wishful optimism that Natasha holds for the Avengers, whom she considers her real family.The film also struggles to figure out its deeper politics. Natasha and Yelena’s rough beginnings as immigrant children who are pushed into the extraordinary world of superheroes and villains recall the early years of the Maximoffs, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. There’s some statement here about young immigrants who are left behind, but the movie never figures it out. And the villain with a love for controlling little girls? Well, I’m sure I don’t need to go into the sinister implications of that.Women assassins, women mad scientists: There seems to be a thematic undercurrent of girl power and the strength of women, which is often systematically subdued or controlled by men, but it feels superficial. We aren’t introduced to the other widows, and, for a film about expert fighters, the fight choreography and cinematography don’t do our female warriors justice; the rapidly shifting camera angles obscure rather than reveal the martial arts.By the end of the story, which leads into “Avengers: Infinity War” (and a post-credits scene jumps forward to the future, in case the hops around the M.C.U. timeline haven’t been confusing enough), it seems as though “Black Widow” is self-satisfied with its protagonist. She’s got the freshly dyed-blond ’do, and her journey with her spy family inspires her to get back to her other family, the Avengers. But “Black Widow” never feels more than just a footnote in the story, a detour that holds no weight in the larger M.C.U. narrative, except to set up Yelena for a larger role in the future.With many of these new Marvel productions, however, it seems that’s the best we could hope for: stories that finally feature the underrepresented heroes we want to see, but that often still serve as placeholders, slotting in another piece of the puzzle of the larger M.C.U. as it continues to grow.I’d hoped “Black Widow” could be deadly and fierce, but it ultimately slides just under the radar.Black WidowRated PG-13 for spy vs. spy stabbings, fisticuffs and some naughty Russian words. Running time: 2 hours 13 minutes. In theaters and on Disney+. More