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      8 New Movies Our Critics Are Talking About This Week

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      Whether you’re a casual moviegoer or an avid buff, our reviewers think these films are worth knowing about even if you’re not planning to see them.A vampire flick with a familiar bite.Alisha Weir stars in “Abigail” as a 12-year-old who’s snatched one night by a half-dozen genre types.Bernard Walsh/Universal Pictures‘Abigail’A group of bumbling criminals kidnap a young girl and hold her for ransom, but the titular 12-year-old ballerina turns out to have more than just tulle up her sleeve.From our review:A cheerfully obvious splatterthon, the new horror movie “Abigail” follows a simple, time-tested recipe that calls for a minimal amount of ingredients. Total time: 109 minutes. Take a mysterious child, one suave fixer and six logic-challenged criminals. Place them in an extra-large pot with a few rats, creaking floorboards and ominous shadows. Stir. Simmer and continue stirring, letting the stew come to a near-boil. After an hour, crank the heat until some of the meat falls off the bone and the whole mix turns deep red. Enjoy!In theaters. Read the full review.Less-than-glorious “basterds.”Henry Cavill in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”Daniel Smith/Lionsgate‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’Based on a true story of an (until recently) unknown World War II operation, this film features some ungentlemanly types who are tasked with cutting off Germany’s resources by sinking their supply ships.From our review:“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” the latest offering from the director Guy Ritchie, is a perfect airplane movie. That is not a compliment, but it’s not exactly a dis. Some movies shouldn’t be watched on planes — slow artful dramas, or movies that demand concentration and good sound (please do not watch “The Zone of Interest” on your next flight). But you’ve got to watch something, and for that, we have movies like this one.In theaters. Read the full review.Like if Dorothy Gale was your Uber driver.Maika Monroe plays a ride-hail driver who is fleeing a murderous passenger in “The Stranger,” written and directed by Veena Sud.Hulu‘The Stranger’In this thriller, originally released as 13 short-form episodes on the streaming service Quibi, the indie-film scream queen Maika Monroe plays a Los Angeles transplant fresh from Kansas who works as a ride-hail driver who must face off against a murderous passenger.From our review:The recut version (on Hulu) bears little trace of its earlier form, although its life span across algorithm-driven streaming companies does cast the villain’s tech preoccupations — “whoever figures out the mathematical formula determining the losers and the winners in life will rule” the world, he declares — in a new, meta light.Watch on Hulu. Read the full review.A queer period piece — but the period is summer 2020.John Early in “Stress Positions,” directed by Theda Hammel.NeonWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ken Loach: Championing the Strugglers and Stragglers

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      A retrospective of the director’s work at Film Forum shows how his movies have kept a focus on working-class solidarity.From the start, the British filmmaker Ken Loach came out swinging in support of the underdog. Long before his films opened in theaters, his 1960s television plays introduced uncomfortable topics like back-street abortion (“Up the Junction”) and homelessness (“Cathy Come Home”) to audiences who were not always appreciative of their documentarylike realness and divisive politics.Since then, his dogged championing of society’s strugglers and stragglers has sometimes resulted in his films’ being misread or underappreciated by American audiences. (Even the British film critic David Thomson once judged Loach easier to respect than enjoy.) Inseparable from his time and place, Loach responded to the economic depression of postwar Britain — and what would become decades of Conservative rule — with an unrelenting focus on working-class solidarity. In a Loach movie, survival hinges not on individualism, but on community.Film Forum’s wide-ranging retrospective (running through May 2), which generously samples Loach’s prolific output from 1967 to the present, offers an opportunity to marvel at the breadth and emotional heft of an audacious career. In the 1990s alone (invigorated, one guesses, by 11 years of Thatcherism), he tackled topics as diverse and contentious as Northern Ireland (“Hidden Agenda”), labor rights (“Riff-Raff”), unemployment (“Raining Stones”), domestic abuse (“Ladybird, Ladybird”) and addiction (“My Name is Joe”) with an uncompromising belief in the essential drama of ordinary lives.Over time, his films have become less raw and more artful, more fluidly cinematic but with no less social relevance or political edge. (It’s notable, and shameful, that his 2019 indictment of worker exploitation, “Sorry We Missed You,” feels as justified today as it did more than three decades ago in “Riff-Raff.”) Injections of tough-minded humor have inoculated even his most tragic pictures from charges of miserabilism and opened them up to a wider audience. In “Raining Stones” (1993), for instance — about an unemployed father who takes dangerous steps to purchase his daughter’s first communion dress — a gently comic undertow eases the violence. You’ll be distressed, but you won’t be destroyed.Kris Hitchen, left, with Katie Proctor in “Sorry We Missed You.”Zeitgeist FilmsNowhere, though, is humor more essential than in two of Loach’s most wrenching dramas. In “I, Daniel Blake” (2016) — whose release in Britain sparked a parliamentary discussion — an ailing widower (Dave Johns) is repeatedly rebuffed by an impenetrable welfare system. Despite the welcome distraction of Paul Laverty’s salty, spiky dialogue, some scenes (as when Daniel accompanies an impoverished single mother to a food bank) remain so gutting I like to think even Thatcher would have crumpled.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      4 Documentaries That Explore How Families Cope With Dementia

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      In “Little Empty Boxes” and other films, the heartbreak of memory loss is intertwined with deeper cultural implications.When his creative, funny, independent mother, Kathy, began to exhibit signs of dementia, the writer Max Lugavere moved cross-country and picked up a camera to start documenting his journey to figure out how to help her. The result is “Little Empty Boxes,” a new documentary that’s strongest when it chronicles their relationship. Kathy’s memories of Max’s upbringing and his desire to be close to her bring them both a strange comfort. (She passed away in 2019.) The rest of the film — notably interviews with researchers studying links between nutrition, exercise and brain health — is uneven. Its visual language ranges from traditional, brightly lit talking heads to an observational approach, which can provoke whiplash for the viewer.But “Little Empty Boxes,” directed by Lugavere and Chris Newhard, made me think about other powerful documentaries that chronicle walking through memory loss with a loved one. The experience can be tremendously painful, with family and friends feeling helpless; watching a film about it can in turn be both gut-wrenching and cathartic.One of the best recent movies about memory loss — nominated for an Oscar last year — is “The Eternal Memory” about the Chilean journalist Augusto Góngora and his wife, the actress Paulina Urrutia. Directed by Maite Alberdi, the film (streaming on Paramount+) weaves Góngora’s slow decline into a broader meditation on cultural memory, and on what we lose as communities when we’re denied the ability to retain those memories — through book bans and state propaganda that whitewashes historical truth. But the broader metaphor doesn’t obscure Góngora and Urrutia’s love story, which is heartwrenchingly beautiful.Even more harrowing is “Tell Me Who I Am” (Netflix) directed by Ed Perkins. Like “Little Empty Boxes,” this 2019 film is more effective when exploring its subjects’ relationship than when it turns journalistic. Alex Lewis was in a motorcycle accident at 18, and when he woke up, he’d lost his memory. His twin brother, Marcus, helped him reconstruct his life, but as the film goes on, Alex — and the audience — realize that Marcus was holding back information about their past, and that revealing it is fraught. The brothers’ trust and love holds the film together.The most unmissable and life-affirming film of this sort, though, is “Dick Johnson Is Dead” (Netflix) from 2020. Dick Johnson is the father of the director Kirsten Johnson; years after losing his wife (Kirsten’s mother) to Alzheimer’s, he begins to exhibit signs of dementia. Facing an uncertain future, Dick and Kirsten work together to humorously and movingly stage different ways he might die, while exploring their relationship and the meaning of love, history and remembrance. It’s a vital, hilarious, gorgeous and truly innovative film, and I can’t think of a better exploration of the bond between a filmmaker and a parent in the face of impending loss. More

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      ‘Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’ Review: Of Stars and Wars

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      A delirious, pulpy mishmash of knockoffs, Zack Snyder’s film isn’t good, but it sure is something.A Zack Snyder picture is like everything and nothing else in the galaxy. “Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver,” the second half of the director’s hammering saga about a bucolic village at the fringes of the universe forced to fight off its imperial overlords, pulls from as many influences as there are stars in the sky. “Star Wars,” of course (yes, there are light sabers), and also “Mad Max,” Caravaggio, John Ford, European art-house cinema, World War II propaganda flicks, steampunk Victoriana, cottagecore girlies on Instagram and Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” Not only does the score boast two types of choirs (haunted child and Gregorian), but a single frame might include a robot dressed like the Green Knight (and voiced by Anthony Hopkins) next to a Conan the Barbarian clone next to some guy in overalls who looks like he just flew in from Bonnaroo. A delirious, pulpy mishmash of knockoffs, “The Scargiver” isn’t good, but it sure is something.The first “Rebel Moon,” released on Netflix in December, made audiences endure a gantlet of narrative groundwork that’s fairly inessential and recapped here. In it, a farm boy named Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) and a secretive assassin named Kora (Sofia Boutella) assemble an interstellar team of protectors (played by Djimon Hounsou, Staz Nair, Elise Duffy, Doona Bae and others). Now, the story picks up five days before the squad must defeat a vicious army led by an admiral (Ed Skrein) with a bad haircut and worse attitude.The script by Snyder, Kurt Johnstad and Shay Hatten trips over its aspirations whenever any character talks. There’s not a single authentic conversation, just exposition dumps and soliloquies (the best of which Hounsou delivers). Finally, after an hour of speeches, we’re treated to an hour of rousing warfare. Primal, pitiless, agonizing carnage is where Snyder excels. He’ll kill anyone, even nice people, even grandmothers-turned-guerrilla warriors who just want to get back to folk dancing. And he makes it hurt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ Review: War, Undemanding

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      Guy Ritchie’s latest is the platonic ideal of an airplane movie, which is not exactly a good thing.I travel by air every couple of months, and always think about a single, burning question: What makes for a great airplane movie? Not movies about being on planes. Movies to be watched on planes, making bearable the three or nine hours spent in a tin can, squashed on all sides, munching tiny pretzels and trying not to order yet another gin and tonic.“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” the latest offering from the director Guy Ritchie, is a perfect airplane movie. That is not a compliment, but it’s not exactly a dis. Some movies shouldn’t be watched on planes — slow artful dramas, or movies that demand concentration and good sound (please do not watch “The Zone of Interest” on your next flight). But you’ve got to watch something, and for that, we have movies like this one.Ritchie didn’t always make airplane movies. His early work, frenetic and ribald and hilarious movies like “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch,” begged to be watched in a room full of roaring audience members, or at least at home over pizza and beers with your friends. In more recent films like “Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant,” he’s veered darker and more serious, the sort of thing that might make a flight even more tense.But watching “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” which applies a frivolous touch to a serious matter (that is, defeating Nazis), I realized it embodied my three most important principles for airplane movies.Principle I: Make It Familiar“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is a fictionalized account of a real thing that was only recently discovered. During World War II, in an effort to cripple German U-boats in the North Atlantic and also open the way for the Americans to join the war, Winston Churchill maybe-sorta-unofficially authorized a rogue band of daredevils to execute a delicate operation: Cut off resources to the Germans by sinking their supply ships. Unfortunately the refueling operations, accomplished via a few Italian boats, were parked on a Spanish-controlled island called Fernando Po, located just off the coast of West Africa — in neutral territory. An official British campaign would cause the rest of unaligned Europe to join up with the Nazis. So it had to be done in secret.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Stress Positions’ Review: It’s Giving Pandemonium

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      The writer-director Theda Hammel’s biting, delirious quarantine comedy skewers white gay men in a world where fact, fiction and authentic experiences collide.For “Stress Positions,” the writer-director Theda Hammel shows her hand when a character says, in a world-weary voice-over, that the madness we’re about to witness “happened so long ago.”The movie is set in summer 2020.Karla (portrayed by Hammel) is a sardonic transgender massage therapist in New York, and the first of the film’s two narrators. Her opinion of white gay male privilege, especially that of her best friend Terry, who went from intern to husband of his boss, can be stinging.“Stress Positions” finds Terry (John Early) in lockdown in the brownstone of his soon-to-be ex-husband, Leo (John Roberts). Upstairs, Coco (Rebecca F. Wright), a tenant, puffs cigarettes and vaguely hews to Terry’s Covid safety protocols. Terry’s nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a Moroccan fashion model, is ensconced at the garden level. The 19-year-old Bahlul is the son of Terry’s estranged sister who converted to Islam. He has a broken leg, soft brown eyes and a small notebook. Is it a memoir? A novel? As he writes, he ruminates on his mother in a voice-over. We find out that Karla’s girlfriend, Vanessa (Amy Zimmer), wrote a minor-hit novel with material filched from Karla’s life. Here, fact, fiction and authentic experience are all themes to be mined.Beyond skewering white gay male culture, the movie is also a dig at the pieties of the recently politicized. Terry, Karla and Vanessa don’t know where Morocco is, or Yemen or Kabul, for that matter. And Ronald, a food delivery guy (Faheem Ali), plays a telling role in exposing the hierarchy of lives that matter.If some of the points seem muddy, the filmmaking is expressive and deliberate. With shimmer, shadow and verve, “Stress Positions” — which recently closed the New Directors/New Films festival — captures the often hallucinatory pandemonium wrought by that “long-ago” moment.Stress PositionsNot Rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Blood for Dust’ Review: Dire Straits

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      This drug-run thriller, starring Scoot McNairy, traffics in grim ponderousness.In “Blood for Dust,” Cliff (Scoot McNairy), a salesman, hawks defibrillators across the upper western states. The devices are a tough sell, he admits. Yet this sluggish, self-serious job-gone-wrong movie could itself stand to be jolted to life.It emerges that, while working for a previous employer, Cliff participated in an elaborate theft scheme that ended with the accounting man’s suicide. That gory mess, seen in a prologue set in 1992, provides the first image, in the sort of sudden brutality that is meant to shock but instead comes across as posturing.Flash forward 17 months, to when the bulk of the action takes place. Cliff has debts, a tarnished reputation and a wife (Nora Zehetner) with whom he has had the experience of caring for a cancer-stricken child. (Evidently opening with a suicide wasn’t grim enough.) Ricky (Kit Harington), a former colleague in the scandal, approaches Cliff with an offer. “I could use a man don’t mind breaking the rules,” he drawls in an accent far removed from the Montana setting.Cliff doesn’t trust that pitch — and the barely recognizable Harington shouldn’t have trusted in that horseshoe mustache — but desperation is desperation. So Cliff joins a drug-running operation, with predictably violent consequences.Directed by Rod Blackhurst, “Blood for Dust” is a throwback, in the sense of being exceedingly familiar. An early shot of a snow-covered parking lot inevitably evokes “Fargo,” but “Blood for Dust” doesn’t have a witty line or a glimmer of humor. The climactic shootout is so dimly lit that it’s difficult to discern who is firing at whom. It’s easy enough to guess.Blood for DustRated R. Gun violence and a topless bar. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on most major platforms. More

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      ‘Abigail’ Review: Horror by Numbers

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      In this cheerfully unambitious vampire movie, a bloodsucker is shut up in an old mansion with some nitwit criminals. Will there will be gore? You bet.A cheerfully obvious splatterthon, the new horror movie “Abigail” follows a simple, time-tested recipe that calls for a minimal amount of ingredients. Total time: 109 minutes. Take a mysterious child, one suave fixer and six logic-challenged criminals. Place them in an extra-large pot with a few rats, creaking floorboards and ominous shadows. Stir. Simmer and continue stirring, letting the stew come to a near-boil. After an hour, crank the heat until some of the meat falls off the bone and the whole mix turns deep red. Enjoy!That more or less sums up this movie, a horror flick that’s serviceable enough to make you occasionally giggle or flinch, yet is also so aggressively unambitious that it scarcely seems worth griping about. It centers on the kidnapping of the title character (a fine Alisha Weir), an outwardly self-possessed 12-year ballerina who’s snatched one night by a half-dozen genre types. A formulaically diverse cohort of underworld bottom feeders (played by Dan Stevens, among others), these Scooby-Doo-ish chuckleheads come with divergent skills, histories and expiration dates, and are largely tasked with padding the reed-thin story and dying horribly.The filmmakers — it was written by Stephen Shields and Guy Busick, and directed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett — have outfitted the story with the usual particulars. Much of the movie unfolds inside a sprawling labyrinthine mansion that looks like it was imagineered by an amusement park designer who scanned some old horror movies while thumbing through picture books on the history of the European aristocracy. There are suits of armor flanking the front door, a bearskin rug on the floor, an empty coffin tucked in a corner and oddly, given the genre circumstances, some fresh garlic in an otherwise derelict kitchen.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More