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      ‘Fathom’ Review: A Whale of a Conversation

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      Scientists attempt to communicate with humpback whales in this Apple TV+ documentary.“Fathom,” a curiosity-driven documentary by Drew Xanthopoulos, is fascinated by two types of waves. It opens with a small boat on an overwhelming vista of water, then cuts to a computer analysis of the visual patterns in whale songs two scientists have left their lives behind to record.On the fringes of Alaska, Dr. Michelle Fournet wants to communicate with humpback whales — to not just listen, but converse — using a playback machine of growls, swops and whups that’s taken her a decade to develop. (An early attempt sounded like the cetacean Minnie Riperton.) Nine-thousand miles south, Dr. Ellen Garland tracks the spread of one whale tune from Australia to French Polynesia, testing her hypothesis that whales have a shared culture similar to how humans fall under the thrall of an earwormy pop hit.As the title implies, Xanthopoulos is intrigued by the lengths — or, in this case, depths — a person will go to understand another species. At times, the doc feels like science-fiction without the fiction. Swap whales for aliens and these two doctors aglow with the thrill of discovery could double for Jodie Foster in “Contact” or Amy Adams in “Arrival.”Since the film is more focused on the quest itself than its conclusions, the second half pivots to apply the doctors’ theories of connection to the assistants who’ve agreed to follow them off the grid. In a nod to her own research, Dr. Garland teaches a Ph.D. student a wire-winding technique passed down through four generations of biologists, while Dr. Fournet wrestles with feeling more adrift in a city than she does at sea.“I have to remove myself from society and live in a world that is dominated by animals,” Dr. Fournet says. “And it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. It feels like a release.” Sure, mankind has also evolved to be a social beast — but whales have more than a 40-million-year head start.FathomNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and on Apple TV+. More

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      ‘Wolfgang’ Review: Light as a Soufflé, and About as Substantial

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      David Gelb’s biographical documentary says much about what Wolfgang Puck has done, and very little about who he is“I don’t like to think about the past too much,” Wolfgang Puck confesses early in the Disney+ documentary “Wolfgang,” a red flag that we’re not going to encounter much in the way of intense self-scrutiny in the scant 78 minutes that follow. A fairly vapid and shallow affair, even by the low standards of the celebrity bio-doc subgenre, “Wolfgang” provides copious archival montages of “the first celebrity chef” (Julia Child apparently didn’t count), but precious little understanding of what actually makes him tick.Puck’s early years are skimmed, aside from an extended anecdote about losing his first kitchen job, told in great detail and illustrated with re-enactment footage, so we fully understand this as The Story That Defines Him. The real juice here is Chef Wolfgang’s rise to fame, and much of that material is fascinating: how the open kitchen design of his Spago restaurant elevated the chef from a “blue-collar job” to a celebrity, how his staff read Hollywood trade papers to best assess who got the premium tables, how instrumental he was to the development of fusion cooking.Some much-needed tension is provided by Patrick Terrail, the owner of Ma Maison (Puck’s first kitchen of note), as he and his chef maintain conflicting accounts of how much credit Puck deserved for that restaurant’s success. But most of the picture hums along with the singularity of purpose of an infomercial, and even its coverage of Puck’s flaws — he spread himself too thin, he was an absentee father and husband — have the ring of a job applicant’s description of their biggest flaw: that they just work too hard, and care too much.“Wolfgang” is directed by David Gelb, who all but defined the celebrity chef documentary with “Jiro Dreams of Sushi.” He hits many of the same notes; the food photography is delectable, and Puck is full of bite-size wisdom like “We have to have focus in life” and “If you believe in something, you have to follow your dreams.” But “Wolfgang” ultimately plays like exactly what it is: “Jiro” Disney-fied, and thus drained of its nuance, complexity and interrogation.WolfgangNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 18 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More

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      ‘The Ice Road’ Review: The Mighty Trucks

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      Liam Neeson fights for traction as a big-rig driver in this mildly entertaining thriller.“Now I’m angry!” Mike McCann (Liam Neeson) hisses halfway through “The Ice Road,” signaling the moment we’ve been waiting for. As any Neeson watcher will tell you, you don’t mess with his action characters once their dander is up.Sadly, Neeson’s dander is no match for a hackneyed plot, poorly visualized stunts and characters whose behavior can defy common sense. They have plenty of opportunity in a setup that sends three eighteen-wheelers charging across a thawing Lake Winnipeg, bound for a diamond mine in Northern Manitoba. A methane explosion has trapped the miners, they’re running out of oxygen and the equipment needed to effect a rescue weighs more than 30 tons.Driving identical payloads (to ensure action-movie redundancy), Mike and his fellow big-riggers — played by Laurence Fishburne and the delightful Amber Midthunder, whose character can barely see over the steering wheel — endure storm and avalanche, cracking ice and saboteurs. Cuts to the lolling miners deflate the film’s momentum, as does a sappy subplot involving Mike’s brother (Marcus Thomas), a veteran struggling with P.T.S.D.Written and directed by Jonathan Hensleigh, “The Ice Road” musters more tension than credibility. Despite the valorous efforts of all involved — the movie was filmed without the use of a green screen — the action is at times incomprehensible. In one scene, two trucks capsize and are righted, seemingly in minutes, with barely a glimpse of a winch or a traction pad. And in another, lives are risked in an insane attempt to retrieve a sinking truck that, we have already been informed, is expendable. The poor souls gasping their last in that mine would have been better off waiting for the cast of “Ice Road Truckers.”The Ice RoadRated PG-13 for attack by gun, snowmobile, vegetation and frozen water. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘Against the Current’ Review: Traversing the Tides

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      The director Oskar Pall Sveinsson follows Veiga Gretarsdottir on a 103-day kayaking journey around Iceland.The Icelandic kayaker Veiga Gretarsdottir has always gone against the current. In a literal sense, she attempted and succeeded in a feat that had never been done before: circumnavigating the 2,000-kilometer distance of Iceland counterclockwise on kayak. Gretarsdottir, now in her mid-40s, has also pushed upstream in her personal life; she is transgender and received transition surgery at 38. Much like this obvious metaphor — which the film gleefully underlines — Oskar Pall Sveinsson’s “Against the Current” feels cliché even with an intriguing subject.The documentary follows Gretarsdottir on her 103-day journey, as she traverses the tides, while also dealing with hormone injections, diet maintenance and decades of repressed self-expression. The film — which takes a rather ordinary approach to an extraordinary story — also includes scenic shots of Icelandic nature and talking-head interviews with Gretarsdottir’s parents, brother and ex-wife, with whom she shares a young daughter. These interviews become repetitive sound bites, and are often uncomfortable when family members misgender Gretarsdottir.It’s not difficult to be moved and impressed by Gretarsdottir’s life story, especially when she details the secrecy of her struggles, but the story falls short in tying these emotional threads with her athletic accomplishments in an eloquent manner. Transgender athletes have been a focus of discussion in the news as of late, and it feels like a greatly missed opportunity for this film to not attempt to position Gretarsdottir within this larger conversation. The doc briefly introduces news clippings about violence against transgender people, but it remains surface-level on that topic, too. Unlike its subject, “Against the Current” rarely pushes against convention.Against the CurrentNot rated. In Icelandic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Sun Children’ Review: Treasure Hunt

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      Majid Majidi’s social-realist drama about street children in Iran trades narrative complexity for precious visuals.“Sun Children” opens with a series of striking shots. A montage rifles through images of swanky car hoods as a band of pint-size carjackers try to find their pick in a garage; a boy runs through Tehran, the streets rippling around him like water; kids frolic in a circular pool that, shot from above, sparkles like a blue sun. Majid Majidi’s latest feature doesn’t lack in style or charm, using a child’s perspective — a staple in Iranian cinema — to locate beauty and hope in a cynical world. As is often the case with the director’s work, however, precious visuals come at the cost of narrative complexity.The story follows the 12-year-old Ali (Rouhollah Zamani) and his feisty gang as they infiltrate a school for street kids on the orders of a local gangster. Enticed by the promise of a treasure buried beneath the school, they dig away between classes, dreaming of the new lives they might buy for themselves and their destitute parents, who struggle with poverty and addiction. Majidi alternates the kids’ mini-mafia high jinks with a social-realistic arc about the school, where resource-strapped but sincere teachers gradually (though predictably) break through the insouciant exteriors of our tiny con men.Save for a few turns that subject the characters to surprisingly harsh disillusionment, there’s little in “Sun Children” that doesn’t feel predetermined. Zamani makes an admirable effort with his wide-eyed expressiveness, but the film’s pristine compositions and maudlin score leave no room for the textured ambiguity that, in the work of Iranian directors like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, makes children’s lives feel fascinating and mysterious even to adult viewers.Sun ChildrenNot rated. In Farsi, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Review: ‘Sisters on Track,’ ‘LFG’ and the Price of Star Power

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      Two documentaries explore the flaws of the financial reward systems in elite sports and their effects on the athletes involved.Two documentaries, “Sisters on Track” and “LFG,” explore the achievements of world-class athletes and, more intriguingly, the way money is allocated within sports.“Sisters on Track” follows Tai, Rainn and Brooke Sheppard, three preteen sisters who qualified as junior Olympians in track. The film begins in their first moments of national recognition, as they are invited on to shows like “The View” to discuss their family’s achievements. At the time, their mother was single, working minimum-wage jobs that were insufficient to cover their rent in Brooklyn. The Sheppard family was living in a homeless shelter, and their athletic success is presented as a story of resilience.The documentarians Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grottjord-Glenne show how this flash of national attention granted them immediate opportunity, including an offer by the entertainer Tyler Perry to pay for the family’s housing for two years. Their film follows the Sheppard sisters in vérité style through this period, as their mother, Tonia, and their coach, Jean, guide them through middle school, puberty, nerves and indecision. The shared dream is for all three girls to earn college scholarships.“Sisters on Track” shows a family working within the imperfect system that controls the financial rewards available to them. By contrast, the subjects of “LFG,” (it stands for a soccer rallying cry), are looking to upend the entire pay structure of their sport. The documentary follows the U.S. women’s soccer team as the players pursue a lawsuit against their employer, the United States Soccer Federation, for institutionalized sex discrimination.Soccer stars like Megan Rapinoe, Christen Press and Jessica McDonald explain how the women’s team has to win more games, secure more viewers and generate more revenue to make a wage that is comparable to that of the men’s team. In talking-head interviews with the documentary’s directors, Andrea Nix Fine and Sean Fine, the teammates express their hopes that future generations of girls will be able to earn a living as athletes without having to maintain an unparalleled record within their sport.Jessica McDonald in the soccer documentary “LFG”.HBO MaxBoth films are conventional in cinematic style, and they constitute the kind of feel-good entertainment that is easy to recommend. But what is timely and interesting — even thorny — about these films is their focus on the economic opportunities generated by athletic achievement. For the Sheppard family, continued track success pushes closed doors open, granting the sisters access to shelter, scholarships and private school admissions that might have otherwise been beyond their means. But as they plan ahead for college — its opportunities and its expenses — they know they have to maintain their national records if they want to translate early success into lifelong stability.Unlike the Sheppards, who are at the start of their athletic careers, the women of the national soccer team have already proven themselves as world champions. But their astronomical achievements have not translated into astronomical earnings, suggesting that a glass ceiling looms over all women in sports. Both documentaries question how much success women must achieve to attain financial stability, and both films find that it’s not enough to be very good. To translate physical ability into financial gain, you have to be the best in the country, if not the best in the world.Though both movies are peppered with promises that everything will work out in the long run, they also function as documents of the exploitation that elite athletes experience. Here, superhuman strength runs straight into all-too-recognizable barriers — poor working conditions, low wages, discrimination, corporate greed. The subjects of “Sisters on Track” and “LFG” confront challenges with the mentality of champions, but that doesn’t make the opposition any less daunting.LFGNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on HBO Max.Sisters on TrackRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      ‘False Positive’ Review: Pregnancy Scares

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      This Hulu horror movie is a tepid, scattered look at the dark side of childbirth starring the “Broad City” co-creator Ilana Glazer.In recent years, mainstream horror movies like “Hereditary” and “It Follows” have embraced a seemingly more sophisticated form that unites social and psychological drama with a sleek visual sensibility. But possessing these ingredients does not a winner make. Case in point: “False Positive,” a handsome new Hulu feature that aspires to be a modern version of “Rosemary’s Baby,” but that ultimately lands somewhere between tepid and confused.Directed by John Lee from a screenplay he wrote with Ilana Glazer, his “Broad City” collaborator and the star of the film, “False Positive” explores the dark side of pregnancy in the age of fertility treatments.The concept, at least, is promising. After two years of attempting to conceive, Lucy (Glazer) and Adrian (Justin Theroux), a wealthy Manhattan couple, turn to John Hindle (Pierce Brosnan), a debonair fertility doctor with a menacing glint in his eyes. The oddly simple procedure works and soon Lucy is carrying not one, but three babies.To prevent future complications, however, she is forced to undergo “selective reduction” that will either destroy her male twins or her single girl. Against Hindle’s recommendation and her husband’s desires, she chooses the girl, unfurling what may or may not be a conspiracy to wrest control of Lucy’s pregnancy from her.That women continue to lack autonomy over their own bodies is indeed a horrifying reality. But Lee and Glazer, torn between the impulse to satirize an upper-crust milieu of would-be parents and the desire to depict a complex mental breakdown, unleash a watered-down and occasionally contradictory critique of, well, just about everything — white liberals, the health care system, the patriarchy.And despite its vaguely unsettling clinical ambience, very little about the film as it makes its way to an ultimately flat and predictable final twist, manages to feel tense or thrilling. Or even funny for that matter.False PositiveRated R for disturbing/bloody images, sexual content, graphic nudity and language. Running time: 1 hours 32 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      ‘Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide’ Review: Outlasting an Art Scene

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      A new documentary co-directed by the artist’s daughter shows how Scharf, a poster boy for downtown New York art in the ’80s, is hard at work decades later.The condition of being an artist and the significance of what an artist produces are two distinct things. The post-pop artist Kenny Scharf, who came out of the same downtown art and music scene as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Klaus Nomi, is someone whose critical and material stock has risen, fallen and risen again over decades. The documentary “Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide,” directed by Max Basch and the artist’s daughter Malia Scharf, makes a considered and not entirely uncritical case for Scharf’s relevance.Unlike the three other artists grouped with him above, Scharf is still alive and working. This, as some observers of the art world have noted, can be a career disadvantage. The movie’s canny assemblage of archival footage from Scharf’s early New York ascendancy in the late 1970s puts across what made his scene both exhilarating and, to many within and outside it, insufferable. (In early interviews Scharf often sounds like a snooty teenager being forced to make conversation with his boring parent.)Scharf’s stories of meeting up with Haring (they were roommates for some time) are evocative and moving. “This was the person I’ve been looking for,” he said, still in awe of his friend. Malia is actually on-camera, comforting her father, during a searing recollection of Haring’s death from AIDS. The range of Scharf’s work is intriguing — beyond his familiar cartoon-junkyard aesthetic, paintings from a dark period in his life have echoes of trenchant Surrealists like Yves Tanguy.In recent years Scharf has taken up new forms of street art, in a way carrying the torch of his fallen comrades Haring and Basquiat. The movie shows him decorating the denim jacket of a young man who had just been passing by while Scharf was working on a mural. The gesture shows an admirable generosity of spirit.Kenny Scharf: When Worlds CollideNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 17 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. More