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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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      ‘Those Who Wish Me Dead’ Review: A Desperate Scramble to Survive

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      This thriller starring Angelina Jolie takes its time but doesn’t waste any time.I’m not sure I believed the plot for a minute of “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” but as a means of pitting righteous characters against implacable assassins in a succession of abrupt, pitiless, life-or-death confrontations, the story has a terse effectiveness. The film, based on the 2014 novel by Michael Koryta, has been brought to the screen by the writer-director Taylor Sheridan. Although he isn’t the sole screenwriter here, the film paints in the bold, primal strokes of his scripts for “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” without getting bogged down in the sloggy self-seriousness of his previous directorial feature, “Wind River.”The movie takes its time, but it also doesn’t waste time. The main pair do not meet until almost 40 minutes in. Until then, “Those Who Wish Me Dead” patiently juggles different narrative lines. One, initially the least interesting, involves Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a daredevil smoke jumper who has had a barely veiled death wish ever since her poor judgment of forest fire winds led to the deaths of three children. (Only a movie would so quickly entrust another boy to her care, to offer a chance at redemption.) In an indication of how “Those Who Wish Me Dead” never asks to be judged on plausibility, the film twice puts Hannah in the path of lightning strikes. There is an almost comic casualness to the way she dumps antiseptic on each new wound.The movie also tracks Connor (Finn Little), the precocious son of a Florida forensic accountant, Owen (Jake Weber). Owen has discovered something that could get both of them killed. The nature of the discovery is the film’s MacGuffin — all we know is that governors and congressmen would be implicated by its disclosure, and that they are scared enough that the government (or someone government-adjacent) has hired two fixers (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) to kill anyone with the information. (Tyler Perry, who makes a deferred entrance and appears in only one scene, plays their boss.)The hit men are introduced faking a gas line explosion to murder a district attorney; they have few qualms about killing bystanders. They are also skilled investigators who deduce that Owen and Connor have run to Montana, where Owen’s former brother-in-law, Ethan (Jon Bernthal), and Ethan’s pregnant wife, Allison (Medina Senghore), run, yup, a survival school, and where Connor will eventually meet Hannah. It’s emblematic of Sheridan’s efficiency that when Ethan the uncle and Connor the nephew finally connect, the movie doesn’t pause to have them say hello.All of this is elemental stuff, a battle between unmitigated darkness (in the form of the fast-thinking killers) and total virtue, as Hannah and Connor struggle to reach safety, then retreat, then run again, all while outwitting a forest fire that Gillen’s character has set to the distract the locals. New Mexico plays Montana, and not being familiar with the terrain, I was convinced by that. Accurate or not, the landscape gives as sensational a performance as any of the actors.Those Who Wish Me DeadRated R. Cruel and especially upsetting violence. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theaters and on HBO Max. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

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      ‘Los Hermanos/The Brothers’ Review: A Long-Deferred Duet

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      In this documentary, two musician siblings — one who lives in Cuba, the other in the United States — get a chance to tour together.A moving documentary with generous amounts of music, “Los Hermanos/The Brothers” follows two musician siblings from Havana whose personal closeness is at odds with the geopolitics that keep them apart. Ilmar Gavilán, a violinist, left at 14 to study in Moscow and later immigrated to the United States. Aldo López-Gavilán, his younger brother, a pianist and composer, mostly stayed in Cuba, apart from conservatory training in London. Until December 2014, when President Obama announced a restoration of American relations with Cuba, the brothers — the sons of professional musicians — had few opportunities to perform together, or even to see each other.Directed by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, the documentary follows the brothers separately and as a pair from 2016 to 2018, as they visit their respective homes and travel the United States on a musical tour. The film shows how their differing backgrounds have shaped their musical styles and their attitudes. Aldo talks about the lack of good pianos in Cuba. Ilmar explains how the embargo prevented Aldo from having their mother’s piano there repaired by Steinway in the United States. When Ilmar visits Cuba, Aldo praises the government stores while Ilmar teases him about how infrequently the rations allow him to obtain a chicken. In Detroit, Ilmar laments the visible inequality.The film might have done more to explain the logistics of the brothers’ border hassles, and there are a few occasions when the year of filming could be clarified. But the electrifying musical collaborations — in addition to the poignant sibling performances, Joshua Bell performs Aldo’s music with Aldo at Lincoln Center — more than make up for those quibbles.Los Hermanos/The BrothersNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 24 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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      ‘Enfant Terrible’ Review: I Can Sleep When I’m Dead

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      The packed biographical film “Enfant Terrible” races to keep up with the blazing life of the filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder.Oskar Roehler’s “Enfant Terrible” runs through an impressively packed compendium of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s life and works — the brilliance, the sadism, the compassion and the leopard-print suiting.Roehler begins with Fassbinder upending Munich’s Action Theatre in his early 20s, and his fearless artistic talent suggests a force of nature unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. An account of milestones from the director’s 40-plus features follows, from “Love Is Colder Than Death” to the Cannes breakthrough of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” to the narcotic dream of “Querelle.” He holds rapt a circle of collaborators and lovers, but his sadistic habits and drug jags (he died in 1982 at 37) made it like being friends with a tornado.Famous Fassbinder players include the actor Kurt Raab (Hary Prinz), and El Hedi ben Salem (Erdal Yildiz), the male lead of “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” and a lover; not all appear by name (Frida-Lovisa Hamann’s rising star, “Martha,” seems to be Hanna Schygulla). Oliver Masucci (“Dark”) presides as the slovenly genius himself, and I like him when he’s screaming and copulating but I still wanted more. (Fanboy quibble: the actor flaunts a potbelly but he’s nearly half a foot taller than Fassbinder.)Roehler shoots “Enfant Terrible” on stage-like studio sets, working through certain stylistic elements from certain Fassbinder films. The look adds to an affectionate tribute that’s more than a Hollywood-style “greatest hits,” partly just because of Fassbinder’s loving embrace of queer and working-class experience. But the film feels both hermetic and declarative, and it’s folly to constantly remind a viewer of Fassbinder’s impossible-to-replicate alchemy of color, lighting, angles and passion.Enfant TerribleNot rated. In German, French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hour 14 minutes. In select 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