Movies

The title “Mortal” wouldn’t seem to require much explanation, but this Norway-set fantasy film leads with a handy definition (“mortal [mawr-tl] n. A human being”). Its estimation of viewers’ intelligence doesn’t improve from there.Directed by André Ovredal (last year’s more appealing “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”), “Mortal” isn’t really a movie proper as it is ponderous scene-setting for a potential sequel. It centers on Eric (Nat Wolff), an American of Norwegian descent first seen as a struggling backpacker in need of a haircut. He wanders into a town, grabs some medical supplies and is hectored by local teenagers. After getting shoved, Eric warns a boy not to touch him. The kid does anyway, barely — and instantly drops dead.[embedded content]The police are baffled. Eric’s superpowers confound him as well, although, as a hangdog of few words, he initially appears more interested in brooding than in solving the mystery. A psychologist (Iben Akerlie) intuits that his abilities are tethered to his emotions. Eric’s deadly touch can also heal. And he can control weather, allowing the filmmakers to stage show-offy effects sequences like a helicopter crash or a lightning storm on a bridge. A United States government official (Priyanka Bose) fears Eric’s godlike abilities will upend the globe, because he’ll be proof that the world’s faithful are worshiping the wrong god.But is Eric a god? Or is he auditioning for “X-Men: Scandinavia”? The long-deferred answers aren’t satisfying on their own, and even less so when “Mortal” stops short just when it’s getting started. Wait for the next movie, sucker.MortalRated R. Violent weather. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In select theaters and available to rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Early in this movie, when Ben (Edward Holcroft), tells his mom, Margaret (Fiona Shaw), that he and his girlfriend are planning a move from England to Australia, Shaw makes a face that looks as though a chisel has literally been taken to her jaw. Shaw is more often than not a better than capable performer, but this kind of overplaying seems endemic to “Kindred,” a derivative, irritating thriller directed by Joe Marcantonio. (The film has no relation to the Octavia Butler book of the same name, which, depending how you look at it, is fortunate or too bad.)Margaret presides over a crumbling manor whose décor is dominated by portraits of lily-white colonialists from centuries past. In a montage, one of those pale faces is contrasted with that of Ben’s girlfriend, Charlotte (Tamara Lawrance), who is Black. Once Ben is knocked dead by a horse and Charlotte is discovered to be pregnant, Margaret and her stepson, Thomas (Jack Lowden), contrive to lock Charlotte up at the estate. The dreary picture then turns into a hostage scenario for people who thought “Get Out” was too subtle — except race is never explicitly mentioned. This is what the British call “restraint,” one supposes.[embedded content]Some poorly developed symbolic hoo-ha about birds adds a mild supernatural dimension to the movie, which at times calls to mind “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Die! Die! My Darling!” — in the sense that they’re pictures one would rather be watching.It doesn’t help that Charlotte is a completely underdeveloped character who comes off mostly as dull and ineffectual. Eventually the movie devolves into a particularly pernicious variant of torture porn. Marcantonio’s pedestrian direction is matched by Carlos Catalan’s cinematography, depicting England as an unpleasant, dull green-gray land.KindredNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 41 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

Steely Dan once famously mocked “show business kids makin’ movies of themselves.” If “Jungleland,” directed by Max Winkler, son of the actor Henry, is any indication, those kids should stick to that pursuit because they don’t have a clue about other people.The film features two brothers, one a soft-hearted boxer, the other a would-be operator who should have looked out for his sibling. No waterfront figures in this tale by Theodore Bressman and David Branson Smith, with Winkler.[embedded content]Charlie Hunnam’s Stanley has “managed” the fighting career of his brother Lion (Jack O’Connell) to the extent that Lion is banned from legitimate sport. The two now inhabit a boarded-up house in what looks like a 1980s Springsteen album ghost town.A loan shark, whom Stanley owes (of course), waves the promise of a big payday at a bare-knuckle match on the other side of the country. The catch: The brothers have to shuttle a surly young woman named Sky (Jessica Barden) to Reno and deliver her to another degenerate criminal.These three hardscrabble Americans are played by British actors. Their work betrays no condescension, and only a little self-flattery. Hunnam’s characterization is the most experimental, based on the proposition: “What if Channing Tatum, but with a beard?”During their grittily picaresque road trip, Lion becomes attached to the bumptious Sky, and the brothers start to feel bad about delivering her to certain doom. The sweaty clichés enacted along the way are uniformly tired and ultimately offensive. A love scene near the movie’s finale, Winkler’s vision of sex among the underclass, is a caricature that could comfortably fit in the new “Borat” movie.Speaking of Springsteen, the movie pulls out his cover of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” for the movie’s supposed-to-be-searing fight-scene finale. “Come on and open up your heart,” he sings. In any other context one might. Here, the only reasonable response is, “I’m good, thanks.”JunglelandRated R language, violence, sex. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters. More

In the double-agent saga “The Informer,” the director, Andrea Di Stefano, isn’t going to wow anyone with flashy technique. But the movie has a surfeit of the sudden reversals and interlocking loyalties that can make for an absorbing time killer.It stars Joel Kinnaman as its main mole, Pete Koslow, a military veteran and ex-convict who has made a deal with the F.B.I. to serve as an informant while running fentanyl for the Polish mob. But his presence at a deal gone wrong — where an undercover New York Police Department officer is killed — puts him in a bind. In a single moment, he becomes persona non grata to his F.B.I. contact (Rosamund Pike) and a suspect for an N.Y.P.D. detective (Common). The killing also cements his obligations to the cartel’s chief, called The General (Eugene Lipinski), the man he was supposed to expose.[embedded content]The only solution that might satisfy everyone (though not with all the groups’ knowledge, naturally) is for him to go even deeper into cloak-and-dagger territory — by returning to prison, where he’ll traffic drugs for The General while secretly amassing evidence on that same drug ring for the feds.Is any of this plausible? Probably not, but the movie, based on a Swedish novel and transplanted to New York, escalates quite nicely, laying out how Pete, caught in a web of bureaucratic secrecy, can’t trust his motivationally opposed handlers to protect him or his family. (Ana de Armas plays Pete’s wife.) And Kinnaman, beefy enough to convincingly fend off a violent prison hit, helps “The Informer” make a few satisfying late forays into action territory.The InformerRated R. Violence and corruption. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Approaching space travel with eyes and spirit firmly tethered to the ground, Alice Winocour’s “Proxima” takes a sadly unadventurous look at the impending separation of a female astronaut and her child.When Sarah (Eva Green) is chosen for a yearlong mission to the International Space Station, her young daughter, Stella (Zélie Boulant-Lemesle), struggles to adjust to what feels like an abandonment. Their emotional journey, however — while tender and movingly performed — so consumes the film that both Sarah’s sexist captain (Matt Dillon) and Stella’s preoccupied father (Lars Eidinger) are so faintly drawn that they barely register.[embedded content]With its detailed, documentarylike interest in the mental challenges and physical duress of prelaunch training (the film was partly shot in the European Space Agency’s facilities), “Proxima” has authenticity to spare. Yet despite its visual beauty (the gleamingly sterile photography is by Georges Lechaptois), the result is dramatically bland, with narrative threads that — like Sarah’s mysterious skin infection — simply fade from view.Torn between the maternal and the cosmic, the tactile and the unearthly, “Proxima” feels as unsettled as its heroine. And while the film’s feminist thrust is admirable, Winocour’s decision to sacrifice this for a cheap, sentimental finale is infuriating. As Sarah’s reckless last-minute actions jeopardize not only her lifelong dream, but the mission itself, they also disappointingly undermine the movie’s own thesis: that the demands of motherhood and high-stakes careers are not mutually exclusive.Making that point far more effectively are the beaming images of real-life astronauts and mothers scrolling past in the end credits. They made me wish that “Proxima” had fully embraced its nonfiction instincts and delved into their stories instead.ProximaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes. Rent or buy on iTunes, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Set in rural Spain during Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, “The Endless Trench” tells the story of a man who spends 33 years hidden inside his house for fear of political persecution. It’s a survival drama not unlike “The Revenant” or “127 Hours,” except what Higinio (Antonio de la Torre) must survive are not the elements or the limits of his own body, but, for the most part, isolation and tedium.Apart from a kinetic opening in which Higinio escapes capture in the Andalusian countryside and returns to his new wife, Rosa (Belén Cuesta), the film unfolds largely indoors. As the years go by, the central couple (aged impressively by prosthetics) grapple with marital troubles and parenthood amid a life of deception and fear.[embedded content]“What’s going on in the village?” Higinio asks Rosa at dinner a couple decades into his confinement. “Life, Higinio, I don’t know,” she replies exasperatedly.It’s fertile thematic ground, but as in most survival movies, showy feats of filmmaking take precedence over insight or revelation. Cuesta and De la Torre play their parts with somber, awards-appropriate dignity, and the film’s glossy production values imbue even blood and grit with a golden-yellow glow. Every emotional beat is underlined with precious visuals: a beam of light illuminating a single tear on Higinio’s face as he watches Rosa’s interrogation through a hole in the wall; Higinio wistfully examining photographs of everyday life under a magnifying glass.It’s all (neatly rendered) text, with little subtext. The directors Aitor Arregi, Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga literalize this approach with intertitles — featuring dictionary entries of words like “hide,” “detention,” and “danger” — that plainly lay out the film’s themes.The Endless TrenchNot rated. In Spanish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

The likelihood of my going camping was slim even before I saw Johannes Nyholm’s tent-based terror, “Koko-di Koko-da,” but now it’s nonexistent. Don’t be lulled by the jaunty title — taken from a Scandinavian nursery rhyme and emanating here from a child’s music box — this “Groundhog Day” of murder and marital discord will ensure you never go down to the woods again.Three years after experiencing a devastating tragedy, a young couple, Elin (Ylva Gallon) and Tobias (Leif Edlund), take a camping vacation, randomly pitching their tent in a deserted woodland glade. Bickering mercilessly, the two seem miserably trapped in the past, unable to reconnect or move beyond their pain. A terrifying nighttime attack by three grotesque figures and a slavering hound appears to leave one camper dead and the other bloodied and shaken — a scenario we’ll see replayed, again and again, with variations in violence and outcome. Is the couple locked in a supernatural time loop, or in a dreamlike purgatory of blame and guilt that neither will admit?[embedded content]Thick with anxiety and unacknowledged trauma, “Koko-di Koko-da” (expanded from Nyholm’s 2017 short film, “The Music Box”) plays as part pitch-black fable, part psychological allegory. Though at times tasteless and barely coherent, the story is oddly affecting, the very strangeness of Nyholm’s folkloric vision and its unnerving execution pulling you in. Touchingly animated interludes reinforce an atmosphere of surreal and pervasive sadness — the aftershocks of a grief that can no longer be ignored.Koko-di Koko-daNot rated. In Swedish and Danish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More