Movies

Did you ever wonder what it might be like to be one of the three pigs of children’s story and animated cartoon fame? Is this a bad time to ask that question? Bear with me.“The Wolf House,” an astounding new animated film from Chile, has a cheeky meta-film opening that purports to be from “La Colonia” — a slight variant of the very real-life Colonia Dignidad, a German-founded isolated colony in Chile renowned for its honey and disdained for its exploitation of the labor of Chilean natives. The first clever conceit of this movie is that it, too, is a product of that colony, one with a lesson. What follows is the story of Maria, an escapee from there, who finds a house in the forest where she holes up with two pigs who become her adopted children. Together they live in terror of a wolf at the door.[embedded content]Sounds odd, and it’s odder than that still. The movie is a mix of drawn and stop-motion model animation. And it’s presented in the form of a single unbroken shot. The backgrounds are always in movement. A bathroom changes into a bedroom not through camera movement, but by having the backgrounds painted over to concoct the new background. The characters themselves are constantly broken down and reconfigured. The imagery is often grotesque, the atmosphere claustrophobic.The co-directors, Joaquín Cociña and Cristobal León, did the ultra-painstaking animation themselves and it’s a wonder they weren’t driven insane in the process (although, come to think of it, one can’t authoritatively say they weren’t). Comparisons with visionary animators like Jan Svankmajer and the Quay Brothers might not be inapt, but they also won’t do the trick — these filmmakers have a perspective and a voice that feels entirely new. The film surprises, with incredible force, in every one of its 75 minutes.The Wolf HouseNot rated. In Spanish and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. Watch through KimStim Virtual Cinema. More

The bittersweet character drama “Fourteen” examines a friendship that seems like it should last forever. Despite their differences, Mara (Tallie Medel) and Jo (Norma Kuhling) have been close since childhood. They’ve been friends long enough to have secrets from each other, and they’re close enough to know those secrets don’t really matter. The film around them is like their friendship — intellectual and loving, with a little too much left unsaid.[embedded content]“Fourteen” circles Mara and Jo across 10 years of their adult relationship, lingering on beginnings before the years start to fly by. At the onset, their friendship works as a push and pull between equals — both are gainfully employed 20-somethings building their résumés and dating around in New York City. But when Jo’s mental health devolves, their relationship loses its balance. Jo can no longer hold down the social-work jobs she once enjoyed. Her hot-and-heavy romances used to make Mara jealous, but now they end more dramatically, with threats of self-harm. With each disaster, Mara is Jo’s first call.This story of intimate friendship was written and directed with a subtle touch by Dan Sallitt. He eschews close-ups, preferring to observe how his characters fit within their environment. Denying the satisfaction of grand expressions or gestures, Sallitt instead uses time to show the changes in Jo and Mara’s relationship.As Mara’s life moves forward and Jo’s falls apart, time starts to move faster. Instead of it being a week since Mara last saw Jo, it’s a year, and then several years. What begins as a movie with two protagonists almost imperceptibly evolves into a movie with just one — a touching demonstration of how narratives that seem inevitably intertwined can unravel.FourteenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. More

For years, people in the arts or in journalism have, in conversation, said of their vocation, “I didn’t choose it; it chose me.” At times this is an at least half-glib attempt to rationalize the often nonremunerative nature of their endeavors. But the truism gains some heft if looked at from a different angle.Consider the film artists whose work could not escape, even had they wanted it to, a world-historic trauma that also had a profound personal meaning for them. One thinks of Claude Lanzmann and the Holocaust. One wonders what the Russian filmmaker Aleksei German would have done had Stalin never existed, or what the filmmaker Edward Yang’s oeuvre might look like had the specter of the militaristic Kuomintang government not haunted it.Yang and German were fiction filmmakers. Lanzmann was a documentarian. The Cambodian-born director Rithy Panh, whose impetus for filmmaking was Pol Pot, works in both fiction and documentaries; the documentaries are especially distinctive and imaginative, and in recent years, more and more personal.Panh’s father was a minister of education in the regime preceding that of the Khmer Rouge, which brutalized his family after coming to power. Panh escaped Cambodia as a teenager and discovered filmmaking during his education in France. His 2014 feature “The Missing Picture” grappled with his family tragedy and depicted its personages, including his mother and father, in the form of artful clay figurines.In “Graves Without a Name,” Panh sets himself on a mission that he had to understand as impossible: to locate his parents’ burial sites. The movie’s opening scene shows the filmmaker having his head shaved during what appears to be a Buddhist prayer ritual. In a land that became known for its killing fields during Pol Pot’s reign — a land where today, we learn, farmers plowing their fields turn up stray human teeth and bone — finding specific victims of genocide is an undertaking that may require supernatural means. Late in the film, in one of its most strange and moving scenes, a woman conducts a séance of sorts in which she tells Panh of the spirit she’s conjured: “He recognizes his son.”There is no archival footage in this picture, a strategy that recalls one of Lanzmann’s methods. Panh has interviewees tell harrowing stories of starvation, forced labor, executions, even desperate cannibalism. He intersperses these with poetic and sometimes enigmatic images: an old snapshot going up in flames, at first slowly, then disappearing in a sudden “whoosh”; small piles of rice neatly arranged on a piece of cloth; a row of carved wooden figures of humans yoked together by a rope, each one wearing a blindfold. In French, Randal Douc reads a text derived from Panh’s own 2013 memoir, “The Elimination.”The accretion of detail — narrative, visual and verbal — gives the movie an unusual density. The depiction of human cruelty is appalling, but the way “Graves” makes the viewer feel the necessity of its filmmaker’s calling is profoundly moving.Graves Without a NameNot rated. In French and Khmer, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Here are a few of the best events happening on Thursday and how to tune in (all times are Eastern).Travel Back in Time With Prince and the Revolution9 p.m. on YouTubeThe Prince estate, in partnership with YouTube, is hosting a watch party of “Prince and the Revolution: Live,” the renowned concert captured at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse, N.Y., on March 30, 1985. The show, filmed at the peak of their Purple Rain Tour, was the first live concert footage that Prince officially released as both a television broadcast and home video. And this will be the first time it’s streamed. Among the hits preformed are “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Delirious,” “1999,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Darling Nikki,” “When Doves Cry” and “Purple Rain.” Tune in an hour early for a live Q. and A. with the Revolution drummer Bobby Z.When: The preshow starts at 8 p.m., and the watch party is at 9. The concert will be available through Sunday night.Where: On Prince’s YouTube Channel: Watch the preshow here, and the concert here.A Tribute to Dylan Thomas8 a.m. on 92Y OnlineIn celebration of International Dylan Thomas Day (yes, there is such a thing), the 92Y’s Poetry Center will release a never-before-seen recording of a 2014 performance of Thomas’s play, “Under Milk Wood,” featuring the actor Michael Sheen. Thomas gave his first reading in the United States at 92Y in 1950, and on May 14, 1953, “Under Milk Wood” premiered at the 92Y’s Kaufmann Concert Hall (the reason it was appointed his day), with Thomas reading a number of roles. In 2014, on the same stage, Sheen directed and starred in the work, about life in a Welsh fishing village (Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales), featuring an all-Welsh cast: Kate Burton, Karl Johnson, Mark Lewis Jones, Francine Morgan and Matthew Aubrey. The broadcast played live on BBC Radio Wales, but the footage has never before been available to the public. Tickets are $10.When: 8. a.m., and it will be available through June 12.Where: 92Y Online.#TheNewGig With Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow and More8 p.m. on the Jazz Foundation of America’s websiteOn Thursday, the Jazz Foundation of America is presenting #TheNewGig, a live benefit to raise money for the Covid-19 Musicians’ Emergency Fund. The show will be hosted by Keegan-Michael Key and include performances from Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Robert Cray, Angelique Kidjo, Jon Batiste, Stanley Jordan, Milton Nascimento. Special guests include Wayne Shorter, Bootsy Collins, Jeffrey Wright, Rosie Perez, Bruce Willis, Danny Glover, Mark Ruffin, Michael Imperioli, and Steve Schirripa.When: 8 p.m.Where: The Jazz Foundation of America website.A Conversation With Beanie Feldstein2 p.m. on 92Y OnlineIf you haven’t seen the films “Lady Bird” and “Booksmart,” do so immediately, if not sooner. If you still need convincing, join Beanie Feldstein, who starred in both, in conversation with Jenelle Riley, a screenwriter and editor at Variety. Feldstein will discuss her career and her new projects: “How to Build a Girl” — the adaptation of Caitlin Moran’s memoir and a New York Times Critic’s Pick — and her role as Monica Lewinsky in “American Crime Story: Impeachment.”When: 2 p.m.Where: 92Y Online More