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      ‘Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm’ Review: Rockers Ripping It Up

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      A documentary explores the Welsh farm-turned-studio, Rockfield, where Black Sabbath, the Stone Roses and others made music.Rockers endeavoring to “get their heads together in the country” has been one of the great clichés of popular music since the late-1960s. As “Rockfield: The Studio on the Farm,” an agreeable new documentary directed by Hannah Berryman, amply testifies, “the country” was just as likely a place for rockers to lose their heads.As recounted by the brothers Kingsley Ward and Charles Ward, their parents’ large pig and dairy farm in Wales was a dodgy inheritance. “No money in farming,” one of them shrugs. Avid rock fans since the mid-50s, they made music together on reel-to-reel tape and drove north to try to sell it; their first stop was a record pressing plant. (They got a “label” address off the back of an LP.)Various farm buildings had attractive acoustic qualities, so the Wards started cleaning them up and sealing them off, building a residential studio. Black Sabbath rehearsed there; the space-rockers Hawkwind recorded there. After leaving Led Zeppelin, the singer Robert Plant found at Rockfield a place to experiment, an environment where he was “free to fail.”The tales become more picaresque as New Wave and Britpop bands begin checking in and behaving like New Wave and Britpop bands. Simple Minds sing backup vocals for an intermittently sober Iggy Pop, and so on. The studio’s biggest upturn comes when the Stone Roses stay for over a year. And then there’s Oasis. Its former lead singer, Liam Gallagher, recalls the fights with his bandleader brother, Noel (of course he does), and rushing to the village pub.This stuff is best appreciated by rock mavens. Many of the other bands telling their stories (including the Boo Radleys and the Charlatans) didn’t have much of an impact in the States, so Anglophilia helps, too.Rockfield: The Studio on the FarmNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

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      ‘La Piscine’ Review: Pretty, Rich People Behaving Poorly

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      Alain Delon, Romy Schneider and Jane Birkin are among the reasons this restoration of a French thriller is worth watching.“La Piscine,” made in 1969, is best known in the United States for its remake, Luca Guadagnino’s frisky, borderline frivolous 2016 “A Bigger Splash.” The release of a pristine restoration of the original, directed by Jacques Deray and starring Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet and Jane Birkin, should bolster this striking movie’s reputation.Schneider and Delon play Marianne and Jean-Paul, a French couple vacationing in a roomy St. Tropez villa whose swimming pool — the “Piscine” of the title — is one of its eminent attractions. They sunbathe, splash and chase one another around the pool as if they were a brand-new couple. As it happens, they’ve been together for two years. The casual nudity and intimations of S-and-M in their relationship suggest an erotic thriller in the early days of its liberation from censorship norms.But as a thriller, it’s a very slow burn. Into the couple’s idyll drops Harry (Ronet), an old friend of Jean-Paul’s and an erstwhile lover of Marianne’s. A wealthy purveyor of pop music, he pulls up to the villa in a snarling Maserati with a surprise in tow: his teenage daughter Penelope, incarnated by the willowy, whispery Birkin.Almost 10 years after his landmark roles as Tom Ripley in “Purple Noon” and Rocco in “Rocco and His Brothers,” both in 1961, Delon still retained every iota of his ultra-sultriness. In dramatic roles, the actor, his sexy sleekness notwithstanding, tends toward a solemnity, and that suits him well here. Jean-Paul, a failed writer who’s now an ad executive, is a sullen puzzle with a hint of menace.Schneider and Birkin do well as independent-minded women who are nevertheless played as pawns by the males. But Ronet almost walks away with the picture. Harry’s big grin is offset by a barely visible raised eyebrow of derision, and his passive-aggressive manipulation of Jean-Paul is chilling.Pretty people behaving poorly in beautiful settings is something we don’t see as much of in cinema as we used to. This is a master class in the subgenre, and one of unusual depth. (Deray worked on the script with the prolific Jean-Claude Carrière, who recently died). In the movie’s last third, Jean-Paul shows a shocking sadism. Once Jean-Paul and Marianne are exiled from their metaphorical Eden, they remain fully clothed for the rest of the picture, and the movie’s color palette becomes more autumnal. Nifty nuances such as these make “La Piscine” a film experience both pleasurable and discomfiting.La PiscineNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 2 minutes. At Film Forum in New York. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘The Perfect Candidate’ Review: Paving the Way

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      Haifaa Al-Mansour crafts a story that’s part family drama and part parable of female activism, set in Saudi Arabia.Women in Saudi Arabia were granted the right to drive in 2018. In “The Perfect Candidate,” a film made in 2019 that is only now being released here, Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani), a physician in a small town, is seen driving purposefully to destinations that include an airport. At that airport, she is refused permission to board a plane because her travel permit has expired. Said permit needs the approval of a guardian for renewal.That’s correct. Maryam — who is an expert diagnostician and deft surgeon, an excellent driver and a fully grown adult — can’t get on an airplane without her father’s permission.As it happens, Maryam still lives with that father, as do her sisters: Selma (Dae Al Hilali), a wedding videographer, and Sara (Nora Al Awad), a teenager who seems like more of a traditionalist than her older siblings.The father, Abdulaziz (Khalid Abdulraheem), an oud player and recent widower, is a relatively liberal patriarch, which stands to reason: His wife, the girls’ mother, was also a musician, something frowned upon in substantial segments of their culture.Maryam’s decision to run for a position in municipal government is a pragmatic move: She wants to have a proper road built to her clinic. The current dirt road is often inaccessible because of flooding. Her candidacy fosters scandal as Maryam learns the ins and outs of social media campaigning and public speaking.Story developments that would seem pat in a Western-made film are treated as miraculous here. But “The Perfect Candidate,” co-written and directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour (“Wadjda,” “Nappily Ever After”), is as much a family drama as it is a parable of feminist activism — and is all the better for it. The movie’s lived-in acting and unhurried pace make it a better-than-palatable viewing experience.The Perfect CandidateNot rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘High Ground’ Review: Two Worlds Collide in the Outback

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      Directed by Stephen Johnson, this western set in Australia doesn’t follow the expected narrative.This outback western, set in Australia’s Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, begins in 1919, depicting a brutal massacre of a group of Indigenous people known as Yolngu. Above the killing fray is a rifleman named Travis (Simon Baker), a member of the party of white people encroaching on the land. The group below has gone against the mission — Travis was supposed to be the only member of the party authorized to shoot — so he descends from his defensive position and tries to save the Yolngu. One surviving Indigenous witness is a young boy named Gutjuk (Jacob Junior Nayinggul).Directed by Stephen Johnson from a script by Chris Anastassiades, “High Ground” is not the narrative of Black suffering and a white savior that its opening might suggest. Rather, it’s a story of two characters from different worlds coming to terms with their circumstances.Several years after the massacre, Travis is enlisted by the military to track down an Indigenous warrior, Baywara, who’s organizing attacks against whites at train stations and other locales. As it happens, the boy he rescued years before is Baywara’s nephew. Originally named Gutjuk, he has been adopted by Christian missionaries and assigned a new name. He’s played beautifully by Nayinggul, whose sensitive, alert and tensed-up performance is a substantial reason to give this movie the benefit of the doubt.Travis enlists the teenager as a tracker in his hunt, and promises he’ll do whatever he can to bring Baywara in alive. And he teaches Gutjuk to shoot, from the “high ground” of the film’s title.Civilization, one of Travis’s military commanders tells him, consists of “bad men doing bad things, clearing the way for those who follow.” Travis has his own reckoning with those bad things. And his charge, Gutjuk, has his own reckoning with identity, discarding his Westernized name almost as soon as he starts riding with Travis. While not as powerful as the 1978 Australian picture “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” this movie makes a solid case as both a statement and an action picture.High GroundNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes. Rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      ‘There Is No Evil’ Review: Condemned, One Way or Another

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      “There Is No Evil,” which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, is one of the most kinetic films ever made in secret.Because “There Is No Evil” has landed in international headlines — the director, Mohammad Rasoulof, made the movie covertly and without the approval of Iranian authorities, and a ban on his leaving the country prevented him from accepting the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in person last year — revealing what it’s about seems fair. But the film is constructed to surprise you.The first of four episodes follows a father (Ehsan Mirhosseini) going about daily tasks. He picks up his wife and daughter. They run errands and go out for pizza. He checks his mother’s blood pressure. Then he awakes at 3 a.m. and heads to work. For some reason, he hesitates when a traffic light turns green. He is an executioner, and at his job, a green light tells him to release the gallows floor.All four episodes involve people pressed into carrying out official executions in Iran. While the stories do not carry over, the themes do. In the third segment, Javad (Mohammad Valizadegan), a soldier, has committed a killing to secure a three-day leave, making a decision that Pouya (Kaveh Ahangar), also a soldier, faces in the second episode. The fourth chapter examines how the choice to act or not reverberates for years.If some twists initially seem facile, the stories deepen with reflection on the characters’ motivations at each moment. This is one of the most kinetic films ever made surreptitiously; the long takes, particularly one in which Pouya retrieves a condemned man, then crumples, are breathtaking. And to make a movie that ponders the moral rot of an unjust system while under the gun of that unjust system is courageous and artistically potent.There Is No EvilNot rated. In Persian and German, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 31 minutes. In theaters and on virtual cinemas. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Profile’ Review: Screen Sharing With Extremists

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      Interactions between a journalist and a recruiter for the Islamic State play out over screens in this hackneyed thriller.The shallow thriller “Profile” tells the story of Amy (Valene Kane), an ambitious British journalist on a mission to expose an Islamic State recruitment ring that targets European women. She creates a false identity with a Facebook profile to match, and draws the attention of Bilel (Shazad Latif), a London-born recruiter. Undercover, Amy begins to flirt with Bilel, suggesting her readiness to travel to Syria. Her investigation is dangerous, but the risk plays out entirely online. It’s provocative material, but unfortunately “Profile” is more interested in gimmicks than analysis.“Profile” was directed by Timur Bekmambetov, who was previously a producer on the cyber-thrillers “Unfriended” and “Searching.” Much like those earlier films, “Profile” is set on a single computer screen. The screen furiously flashes between desktop windows, swapping between Amy’s Skype calls with Bilel and text messages from her increasingly concerned editor and friends. The digital frenzy is engaging, even if it lacks the novelty of earlier experiments in cinematic screen sharing.More troublesome is the movie’s sensationalized story, which is adapted from the book “In The Skin of a Jihadist.” Despite this nonfiction reference material, the movie presents a simplistic and hackneyed view of what drives extremism. Bilel is shown to be an attractive manipulator who is defined more by machismo than by any ideological passions. The interactions between Bilel and Amy take the form of a mutual seduction. But the movie doesn’t examine the politics or the psychology of Amy’s undercover investigation, and as a result, her story feels insufficient, neither worth her risk nor the audience’s time.ProfileRated R for language, violence and references to sexuality. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Stop Filming Us’ Review: Wary of Their Close-Up

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      The Dutch documentarian Joris Postema’s Congo-set film aims to reckon with neocolonialism.The title of Joris Postema’s documentary comes from the cries the Dutch filmmaker encounters in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as he follows a local photographer (Mugabo Baritegera) through the streets. “What’s this white man doing?” one hawker asks skeptically. “Taking our photos without giving us anything?” exclaim others, covering their faces.“Can I, a Western filmmaker, portray this world?” Postema wonders at the outset of “Stop Filming Us.” The reality that emerges in the film’s interviews and observational segments is that Postema is freer to do so than native artists in Goma, who struggle to work profitably outside the influence of foreign institutions. Betty, a filmmaker, must apply for funding at the Institut Français to finish shooting her project, while Ley, a photographer, is commissioned by private aid organizations and U.N. agencies to take pictures of destitute refugees that many find exploitative.Postema frequently turns the lens on himself, posing provocative questions to his Congolese crew. Has he done anything “neocolonial” during the shoot? Should he make this film or hand his resources over to a local director?Postema’s interlocutors respond with candid critiques, but the director’s self-flagellation feels increasingly empty — less a reckoning with neocolonialism than a toothless display of white guilt. His critical insights are thin, too: There’s little consideration of the economic barriers that separate the artists Postema engages in debate from the people on the street whose consent he openly defies. And despite all his hand-wringing about who should tell which stories, “Stop Filming Us” ultimately credits only one director.Stop Filming UsNot rated. In Dutch, English, French and Swahili, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In New York at Film Forum. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Riders of Justice’ Review: Just Give Me a Reason

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      Mads Mikkelsen goes berserk in this gleefully violent, yet gold-hearted deconstruction of the revenge thriller.In the jarring opening scene of “Riders of Justice,” one girl’s bike is stolen and turned into another kid’s Christmas present, kicking off a chain of events that results in a disastrous subway explosion. When Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), a probability expert suffering from a bad case of survivor’s guilt, pins the calamity on the leader of a criminal gang, he inadvertently triggers another round of violence.The Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen understands that the most difficult tragedies to process are the inexplicable ones, the kind where there’s no one to blame. This idea is at the core of his gold-hearted, yet gleefully bloody deconstruction of the revenge thriller and the meat-headed masculine urges that typically underscore the genre.With the help of his tech-wiz friends (Lars Brygmann and Nicolas Bro), Otto creates an elaborate schemata proving the intentionality of the crash. But things get drastically more physical when the band of nerds are joined by Markus (an unnervingly callous Mads Mikkelsen), an emotionally-stunted military man whose wife was killed in the accident, and whose teenage daughter, Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), barely made it out alive.A trained killer with an abundant stash of firearms, Markus makes easy work of the slobbish thugs while his much less intimidating comrades watch nervously at a distance, quietly shifting their priorities toward sweet Mathilde, who’s led to believe her dad’s new friends are live-in therapists with eccentric methods.In the end, Jensen opts for feel-good fantasy over hardened truths, but his dizzyingly chaotic methods amount to a dynamic, unexpectedly touching ode to the difficulties of baring your vulnerabilities to genuinely overcome them.Riders of JusticeNot rated. In Danish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More