Movies

In the 2018 picture “Bleeding Steel,” the daredevil performer Jackie Chan pulled off a remarkable action sequence on top of the Sydney Opera House. Thrilling, and a little surprising. The man turned 66 this year. He’s broken a lot of bones to entertain us during the course of a multidecade career and owes us nothing. But he’s still an international star. If he’s not going to kickbox atop high places, what should he be doing in movies?“The Foreigner,” a relatively sober action drama from 2017 in which Chan gave a frankly middling performance, was one answer. “Vanguard” is more in line with his brand of amiable action mayhem Chan pioneered in 1980s vehicles like “Police Story” and “Project A,” only not as good.[embedded content]Here, rather than do much stunt work (he figures prominently in one action set piece, an old-school waterfall bit), Chan wears a suit and observes as younger performers jump, kick, punch and get punched. Playing the chief executive of the titular high-end security company, he also recites a lot of banal “I’m concerned” dialogue as multiple villains converge on Fareeda (Ruohan Xu), a rich man’s daughter and African wildlife conservationist.Extortionists to the left of her, poachers to the right; stuck in the middle with her is the dreamy Vanguard agent Lei (Yang Yang). Pursuing kidnappers elsewhere is Mi Ya (Miya Muqi), a Vanguard operative who objects to being used as a “honey trap” but soon shows up in a bathing suit to tempt a tough guy anyway.“Vanguard” is directed by Stanley Tong, who made Chan’s “Rumble in the Bronx,” a 1995 movie in which the mountains of its Vancouver shooting location are prominent in many shots. Tong is not a stickler for verisimilitude. Hence, this movie’s ridiculous computer generated lions; hence also, its solid-gold sports cars.VanguardNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

The dark haired, strapping Danish actor Claes Bang played a museum curator in 2017’s “The Square.” In last year’s “The Burnt Orange Heresy” he played a jaded art critic. In “The Last Vermeer” he plays a Dutchman, working with the Canadian army, after the fall of Germany in World War II, repatriating paintings and sculptures stolen by the Nazis.Directed by Dan Friedkin (no relation to the director William; this Friedkin’s father, Thomas, is a renowned stunt pilot) and adapted from the nonfiction book “The Man Who Made Vermeers” by Jonathan Lopez, the movie opens with the discovery of “Jesus and the Adulteress,” a work reputedly by Vermeer, stashed away by Hermann Göring. Bang’s character, Joseph Piller, is eager to track down whoever sold it to the Nazis, despite his misgivings about the firing squads he sees dispensing rough justice in Amsterdam.[embedded content]It doesn’t take him long to find Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce), an ostensibly failed artist who more than passes the smell test for a collaborator. But Piller can’t quite believe in van Meegeren’s guilt. He’s committed some kind of crime, to be sure. But what?The film moves from detective story to courtroom drama with nicely sketched character studies as a bonus; Piller’s marriage is suffering because he can’t accept his own wife’s undercover work during the war. While Vicky Krieps does stealthily affecting work as Piller’s assistant, the movie ultimately belongs to Pearce’s van Meegeren, an aging dandy intent on long-term revenge — even at the potential cost of his own freedom — against the art world insiders who disdained and shunned him.The Last VermeerRated R for language, themes, brief nudity. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

A testosterone substitute in drama form, “Embattled” practically peacocks onto the screen. The camera starts on its side and rotates upright (big, unconventional shot, suckers!). It then tracks Cash Boykins (Stephen Dorff), a mixed martial arts fighter, as he saunters cage-ward for his latest match. In his first lines, Cash banters about how well-endowed he is. Soon he’s pummeling the skull of a Russian opponent. “Embattled” goes so hard, it puts the ending of “Rocky IV” up front.Cash is not what you would call an easy man. He battered his children and his now-ex-wife (Elizabeth Reaser), who works as a waitress with no support from Cash’s millions. Cash disdains one of their sons (Colin McKenna), who has Williams syndrome, and is involved in the life of the other, Jett (Darren Mann), only insofar as he can train him to fight and dispense advice on how to drink and drive without getting caught. (Lest we think Cash is a total monster, he maintains a wavering interest in negotiating benefits for his fellow fighters.)[embedded content]“Embattled” emerges as Jett’s story: the struggle of a caring brother, considerate son and failing calculus student who sees his clearest path forward as following in his brutal father’s footsteps. When it’s showing its sensitive side, the film, scripted by David McKenna (“American History X”) and directed by Nick Sarkisov, unexpectedly shines. Alas, it’s too much to assume that Jett and Cash could settle their grievances Jett’s way, or that an M.M.A. movie might get financed without devoting 20 minutes to a climactic beat down.EmbattledRated R. Merciless cage matches. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

Matthew Rankin’s loony debut feature, “The Twentieth Century,” presents a feverish reimagining of turn-of-the-20th-century Canada. An exuberant feat of visual design, it’s meticulously weird and full of rambunctious humor.In Rankin’s lurid vision, the goody-two-shoes Mackenzie King (Dan Beirne) is groomed to be prime minister by his eccentric, shut-in mother (Louis Negin). King — the character shares his name with the actual 10th prime minister of Canada — faces major obstacles: a fascist leader called Lord Muto (Seán Cullen), bullying from other candidates and some heavy sexual neuroses. He’s energized by Muto’s noble daughter, Ruby (Catherine Saint-Laurent), but political defeat plunges him into self-loathing and an all-consuming foot fetish.[embedded content]Like I said, this isn’t the Canada of history textbooks (despite including the Boer War). It’s more akin to the fond burlesques of Guy Maddin, or the surreal lampooning of “The Kids in the Hall.” Maddin is largely the method here: Rankin similarly toys with the Victorian trappings of silent-movie melodramas (orphans, wall-to-wall yearning), supercharged with rude passions that would tickle Freud. The candidates for prime minister compete in “tests of leadership” that poke fun at national identity: sniff-testing wood, passive-aggressive queuing, and clubbing baby seals.“The Twentieth Century” also boggles the eyes with, well, 20th-century arts. The expressionistic sets evoke wartime poster art and Art Deco, and the 16 millimeter film stock yields both ruddy hues and Northern Lights blues. Is it all a bit much? Sure, but the self-consciousness is baked in: Rankin names one public gathering place “Disappointment Square.”The Twentieth CenturyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

In 2016, Mount Sinai Hospital opened its Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery in Manhattan. The documentary “Born to Be,” directed by Tania Cypriano, follows the work of one of that center’s pioneering surgeons, Dr. Jess Ting.Ting began as a general plastic surgeon; he only entered the field of transgender surgery 18 months before filming began. “Everyone thought I was nuts,” he says, when he stepped up to join the Mount Sinai center. Unlike too many others, in medicine and the world, he seems to understand transgender people and their needs on an instinctive level. Patient, good-humored and thoughtful, he’s always looking for ways to improve surgeries, none of which are depicted explicitly here.[embedded content]It was not too long ago that transgender men and women were compelled to subject themselves to black-market procedures, getting plastics injected into them just to, as Ting phrases it in one scene, make the “external face and the internal identity match.” Now such damaging procedures can actually be reversed, and replaced with viable ones.But it’s been a long journey. Cashmere, one of Ting’s patients, now in her 50s, takes the viewer on a tour of the now largely transformed meatpacking district, where she was once a sex worker. “Everybody in that tape is dead,” she exclaims in one interview, referring to the 1990 documentary “Paris Is Burning,” which features her old friends. Another, younger patient, Garnet, struggles with self-harm even after a successful surgery.Through it all Ting is an anchor, a presence of compassion and good sense. Anyone confused about transgender people will certainly benefit from a viewing of this picture.Born to BeNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and on Kino Marquee. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More