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      Looking for a Great Courtroom Drama? Start Here

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGateway MoviesLooking for a Great Courtroom Drama? Start Here“Anatomy of a Murder,” starring Jimmy Stewart, is a legal drama that trusts audiences to dwell in gray areas.At the defense table, Lee Remick, left, Jimmy Stewart and Ben Gazzara, with Arthur O’Connell and Eve Arden behind them.Credit…Columbia PicturesJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:27 p.m. ETGateway Movies offers ways to begin exploring directors, genres and topics in film by examining a few streaming movies.Ready-made pressure-cookers that force audiences to question their own values, American courtroom movies are practically a genre of their own. Yet even the greatest ones give in to some pretty hokey dramatic impulses. Think of Jack Nicholson’s huffing, “You can’t handle the truth!” at the end of “A Few Good Men.” Paul Newman’s closing argument to the jury in “The Verdict” mentions faith, power and the symbols of justice — and not a single fact from the case.Otto Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959), one of the greatest trial movies, isn’t immune to that sort of grandstanding, but here the witness whose last-minute testimony wraps up the proceedings doesn’t neatly settle matters of guilt or innocence. By convention, courtroom films tend to tilt viewers’ sympathy toward an underdog or the wrongfully accused. But in “Anatomy of a Murder,” the defendant has indisputably committed the killing he’s accused of, and his defense lawyer is played by Jimmy Stewart — no one’s idea of an underdog, at least by the late ’50s. (He may have played one in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” in 1939, but was now well into the darker, postwar phase of his career.)Even the jazz score by Duke Ellington (who has a cameo) expresses a kind of brassy ambivalence; this is not a film inclined to easily hummable melodies or triumphal orchestral swells. It’s a legal drama that trusts audiences to dwell in gray areas — what one character calls the “natural impurities of the law.”“Anatomy of a Murder”: Rent it on Amazon, FandangoNow, Google Play or Vudu.“As a lawyer I’ve had to learn that people aren’t just good or just bad, but people are many things,” Paul Biegler (Stewart) says late in “Anatomy of a Murder,” in a line that is as close as the movie comes to stating its animating principle. It speaks to Preminger’s audacity that the film takes an hour before the camera enters a courtroom. The first section is devoted to establishing the characters, teasing out the facts of the case and devising a legal theory that might lead a jury to believe a killing was somehow excusable.Biegler is a small-time lawyer on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, earning a comfortable living while the many fish he has time to catch pile up in his fridge. “I run a few abstracts and divorce Jane Doe from John Doe every once in a while,” he explains. He’s being modest: Although he doesn’t have much experience as a defense lawyer, he did used to be the district attorney. His knowledge of that office serves him well when he goes on a different kind of fishing expedition, tricking the current D.A. (Brooks West) into revealing crucial information about a polygraph test.The case involves a Korean War veteran, Lt. Frederick Manion (Ben Gazzara), who has shot and killed a bar owner named Barney Quill. The lieutenant’s wife, Laura (Lee Remick), had told him that Barney had raped her. “I have the unwritten law on my side,” Manion tells Biegler, but Biegler explains that the “unwritten law is a myth.”The case for letting Manion off will instead rest on a string of written legal premises. Maybe he committed murder in a dissociative state. Maybe that state meets the legal definition of insanity or maybe not. Maybe an obscure precedent from the state Supreme Court will allow Biegler to thread the needle.George C. Scott, left, Joseph N. Welch and Kathryn Grant in a scene from the classic drama.Credit…Columbia PicturesIs anyone implicated in this trial not culpable in some way or other? Certainly not Frederick, who is established as an abusive, jealous husband with a violent temper. And maybe not Laura. While victim blaming is anathema today, this is a movie made in 1959, and an assistant attorney general (George C. Scott) whom the district attorney has brought in for help goes to some lengths to insinuate to the jury that the way Laura dressed and acted on the night of the crime meant that she invited what happened to her. (In his telling, she may even have been “making a play” for Quill.) Preminger has already established Laura as a firecracker who could ignite: When she first meets Biegler at his office, she really makes herself at home on the couch. And Remick, whose performance toggles between vulnerability and flirtatiousness on a dime, creates a multidimensional character who remains a marvel of ambiguity.“Anatomy of a Murder” hardly represented Preminger’s first challenge to the Production Code Administration or to local censorship boards, both of which tried to police the subject matter presented in movies. His 1953 film “The Moon Is Blue,” a comedy deemed to have taken a scandalously flippant attitude toward sex, opened without the administration’s signoff. Preminger’s “The Man With the Golden Arm” (1955), starring Frank Sinatra, focused on a heroin addict.Nevertheless, “Anatomy of a Murder” still packs a punch with characters frankly discussing rape, contraception and panties. The judge, Weaver, has to ask the courtroom audience not to laugh whenever the undergarments are mentioned.While some other Preminger films of the era (“Bonjour Tristesse” from 1958 or “Porgy and Bess,” released the same year as “Murder”) used wide-screen formats like CinemaScope or Todd-AO, “Anatomy of a Murder” instead favors claustrophobic compositions that ask viewers to judge several characters’ reactions at once. Pay close attention to the questioning scenes: Preminger frequently takes care to keep the lawyer, the witness and — just a bit further in the background — the judge in focus simultaneously.About that judge: To the extent that there is a clear crime in “Anatomy of a Murder,” it is the scene stealing of Joseph N. Welch in the role. Amazingly, he wasn’t an actor at all: Welch is better known as the special counsel for the Army in the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, in which he gave Joseph McCarthy a dressing-down that contemporaneous audiences might have freshly remembered from television: “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”After meeting with the lawyers from both sides in his chambers, Judge Weaver delivers a line of the ages of his own: “Skirmish over. Shall we join now on the field of battle?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Human Factor’ Review: In Peace Talks Trust Is Vital and Elusive

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘The Human Factor’ Review: In Peace Talks Trust Is Vital and ElusiveNegotiators recall their advances and missteps in a quest for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. More

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      ‘You Will Die at Twenty’ Review: Death, and Life, on the Nile

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘You Will Die at Twenty’ Review: Death, and Life, on the NileIn his debut feature, Amjad Abu Alala deepens a fable-like premise into a lyrical confrontation with the certitudes of faith and the life-giving powers of doubt.Islam Mubarak in “You Will Die at Twenty.”Credit…Film MovementJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETYou Will Die at TwentyNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Amjad Abu AlalaDrama1h 43mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.A folk tale turns existential in “You Will Die at Twenty,” the rapturous debut feature by the Sudanese filmmaker Amjad Abu Alala. In a sun-dappled village by the Nile, a holy sheikh tells Sakina (Islam Mubarak) that her newborn son, Muzamil, will live only two decades.The prophecy becomes too heavy a cross for their family to bear: Muzamil’s father soon abandons them, admitting softly to Sakina that he isn’t as strong as her. She’s left to raise their son alone, condemned to misery by her unshakable belief. Dressed in all black even while Muzamil is alive, she counts down his days on the walls of their hut. “Has sadness become a habit?” a fellow villager asks her.[embedded content]Alala deepens this simple, fable-like premise into a lyrical confrontation with the certitudes of faith and the life-giving powers of doubt. Raised strictly religious, Muzamil (a wonderfully sensitive Mustafa Shehata) goes through his 20th year dourly awaiting his fate, ignoring even the romantic attentions of his beautiful friend Naima (Bunna Khalid). Until, one day, he meets Uncle Sulaiman (Mahmoud Elsaraj), a wealthy drunk who has returned to the village after many years abroad. An archetypal tough-loving father figure, Sulaiman introduces our unworldly hero to movies, art and women. To never sin is to never truly know piety, he suggests.As Muzamil’s convictions begin to unravel, the movie’s ravishing compositions imbue the setting with the shimmer of myth. Dust-flecked beams of sunlight slice through shadows; green-robed dervishes glide down the Nile in boats; the turrets of a mosque pierce a startling blue sky. Avoiding didactic conclusions or pat answers, Alala’s film questions blind belief but finds boundless enchantment in every frame.You Will Die at TwentyNot rated. In Arabic, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch at virtual cinemas through Film Movement.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Spoor’ Review: Hunters in the Snow

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Spoor’ Review: Hunters in the SnowThis oddly structured whodunit from Poland is a reverie wrapped around a murder mystery.Agnieszka Mandat in “Identifying Features.”Credit…Palka Robert/Samuel Goldwyn FilmsJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSpoorDirected by Agnieszka Holland, Kasia AdamikComedy, Crime, Drama, Mystery, ThrillerNot Rated2h 8mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Spoor,” directed by the Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and her daughter, Kasia Adamik, went nearly four years without an American release. At the New York Film Festival the fall after its February 2017 premiere, the critic Amy Taubin, one of its many champions, introduced it as perhaps her favorite film so far that decade. She has interpreted it as a politically charged critique of Polish patriarchy.Praise that high, for a feature that has not played widely in the United States, makes a skeptic want to leave a light footprint, especially after spending time in the film’s dark, snow-covered landscapes.[embedded content]A nature reverie wrapped around a mystery, “Spoor” centers on Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat), who lives by herself in rural Poland and loves animals. (She refuses to be called by her first name, Janina.) More than slightly flighty, she uses astrology to gauge people. After her dogs go missing, she takes schoolchildren to whom she’s teaching English on a potentially traumatic nighttime “field trip” to search for them. She continually locks horns with hunters and asks a high-handed priest why “thou shalt not kill” doesn’t apply to killing animals. Then the hunters start to die.“Spoor” is sensationally atmospheric. The deep bass of the woodwind scoring; the shots of vacant-eyed deer that look like they’re conspiring; the use of limited exterior light; a wintry setting so bone-chilling that, when the action flashes forward to June, the verdant green and Mandat herself are momentarily unrecognizable — all hit on a primal level.The structure, though, seems counterproductively, even confusingly, elliptical, and the timing of flashbacks muddles the point of view. This is a whodunit that plays tricks with the “who.”SpoorNot rated. In Polish and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Atlantis’ Review: A Bleak Apocalypse Love Story

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Atlantis’ Review: A Bleak Apocalypse Love StoryUkraine’s official Oscar entry, the movie depicts an all-too-convincing dystopia, with no fancy gadgets or cars.Andriy Rymaruk in “Atlantis,” directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych.Credit…Grasshopper FilmJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETAtlantisNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Valentyn VasyanovychDrama, Sci-Fi1h 46mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Conventional cinematic dystopian futures almost always compensate for their bleakness with nifty gadgets or, at the very least, incredibly fast and dangerous cars chasing one another. Not “Atlantis,” Ukraine’s official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year. Written, directed and shot by Valentyn Vasyanovych, the movie is an especially economical, even ruthless exercise in what could be called “slow cinema,” with no shiny widgets in sight.This is in part because the future in which “Atlantis” is set is extremely not-too-distant: 2025, to be exact, in the aftermath of an incredibly destructive war between Ukraine and Russia. PTSD-riven ex-soldiers Ivan and Sergei let off steam with target practice, which gets heated, ending with one plugging the other in the bulletproof vest.[embedded content]At work in a massive factory — one that seems to produce lava-like sludge, essentially — Ivan (Vasyl Antoniak) commits an act that results in a shutdown, and in a lot of resentment against Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk). Sergiy then finds a gig driving a water truck. This is a necessity in their land, as naturally potable water is scarce. He soon forms an alliance with a young woman, Katya (Liudmyla Bileka), who exhumes, and tries to identify, the war dead.The story is told in single long takes with a mostly static camera — Vasyanovych’s style is informed by both Kubrick and early Jim Jarmusch. The topography depicted in these shots is startling, starkly insisting that we humans really do live on a rock. The movie’s visual language sometimes expands as its emotional temperature heats up; there’s actually a dissolve near the end.Sergiy and Katya’s home is, an ecologist tells Sergiy near the end, all but uninhabitable in its current state. But it’s where they found each other, and it’s their country. Vasyanovych and his actors manage to make this parable both heartening and stupefying.AtlantisNot rated. In Ukrainian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on Metrograph.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Identifying Features’ Review: Lost in Migration

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Identifying Features’ Review: Lost in MigrationIn this confident drama, a mother searches for her son who went missing while trying to migrate from Mexico to the United States.Juan Jesús Varela in “Identifying Features.”Credit…Kino LorberJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETIdentifying FeaturesNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Fernanda ValadezDrama1h 35mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The drama “Identifying Features” begins with a figure approaching from across a field, his appearance obscured by a heavy fog: perhaps he’s a soldier, maybe a farmer. It becomes clear only when he’s a few feet away that the man in the mist is really just a boy. As his face emerges, with smooth cheeks and cold eyes, the beauty, elusiveness and surprise of the film around him surfaces, too.With calm conviction, this teenager, Jesús (Juan Jesús Varela), announces his plans to cross the border from Mexico to Arizona. Jesús’s mother, Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández), explains in a voice-over that this is one of her last memories of Jesús before he went missing on his journey to reach the United States.[embedded content]The movie follows Magdalena as she attempts to follow her lost son’s trail, and her quest soon spills over into the plains near where Jesús was last seen. There, she meets Miguel (David Illescas), a young man returning to his family after being deported from the United States. As they hunt together for their missing relatives, each acts as the other’s surrogate family, a makeshift son for a makeshift mother.Though it is a somber story, the film is enlivened and energized by striking, purposeful images. The writer-director Fernanda Valadez builds depth within her frames by staging action in the background and making liberal use of offscreen sound. Traffic glows from border highways, villains loom from the shadows. There always seems to be movement happening just outside of the characters’ field of vision, events that develop without their understanding. It’s a confident debut feature, and a sophisticated acknowledgment of the powerlessness that migrants face.Identifying FeaturesNot rated. In Spanish, Zapotec and English, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 35 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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Our Friend’ Review: Lean on Me

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Our Friend’ Review: Lean on MeJason Segel is the ballast that keeps this soggy drama from sinking completely.Jason Segel and Dakota Johnson in “Our Friend.”Credit…Claire Folger/Gravitas VenturesJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETOur FriendDirected by Gabriela CowperthwaiteDramaR2h 4mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As with any bad movie emerging from someone’s real-life tragedy, “Our Friend” is almost more painful to critique than to watch. Based on Matthew Teague’s raw 2015 article detailing the decline of his wife, Nicole, from ovarian cancer, this drippy drama presents precisely the kind of prettified portrait of death that Teague’s candid writing sought to rebut.Packing roughly 14 years into a ruinously nonlinear timeline, the director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (whose nonfiction skills would seem perfectly suited to this material) strains to pin down emotions that reconstitute with almost every scene. Watching Matt and Nicole (Casey Affleck and a charming Dakota Johnson) process Nicole’s 2012 diagnosis, argue in 2008 over Matt’s job as a war correspondent and deal with an infidelity in 2011, the movie’s splintered chronology keeps us at arm’s length. As a consequence, Nicole’s suffering — she’s bedridden one minute, brightly playing charades the next — is drained of the force to wound us.[embedded content]The only constant is Dane (a perfectly steadfast Jason Segel), the friend of the title and the family’s glue. Counselor, housekeeper, babysitter to the couple’s two small daughters — he’s indispensable and unfathomable, moving in to help and staying more than a year. His selflessness is as astonishing as Matt and Nicole’s casual acceptance of it, his motivations a mystery perhaps only the audience cares to solve.It’s not the only puzzle in Brad Ingelsby’s frustratingly vague script, like why is Nicole’s family — who supposedly prompted the couple’s move from Louisiana to Alabama — not more involved? And how could an article that grappled openly with the horrors of terminal illness grow into a Lifetime-ready weepie like this?Our FriendRated R for distressing language. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV 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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘No Man’s Land’ Review: Leaving Home, Learning Tolerance

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘No Man’s Land’ Review: Leaving Home, Learning ToleranceAn act of violence forces a Texas rancher to cross the Rio Grande and question his beliefs.Jake Allyn and Andie McDowell in “No Man’s Land.”Credit…IFC FilmsJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETNo Man’s LandDirected by Conor AllynAction, Adventure, Thriller, WesternPG-131h 54mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Strangled by good intentions and teachable-moment clichés, Conor Allyn’s “No Man’s Land” turns the border between Texas and Mexico into a gateway to racial empathy.When Jackson Greer (Jake Allyn, the director’s brother) accidentally kills a young Mexican boy during a chaotic confrontation near his family’s ranch, his father (Frank Grillo) tries to take the blame. A suspicious Texas Ranger (George Lopez) isn’t buying it, though, so Jackson takes off on horseback, crossing the Rio Grande and heading south into Mexico. What follows is less a flight from justice than a journey of moral redemption and attitude realignment.[embedded content]Wracked with guilt and haunted by visions of the dead boy, Jackson begins a slow and sensitive awakening. As he interacts with the Mexican families who feed him and offer him work, the film’s meandering middle section is marked by moments of gentle humanity and arid beauty. Brief dust-ups with various pursuers — law enforcement; a lanky, leering coyote — barely mar Jackson’s leading-man looks and beseeching gaze, both of which help endear him to the lovely woman (Esmeralda Pimentel) who facilitates his ongoing escape.Relying on music to build a tension that’s missing from the script, the director, who grew up between Texas and Mexico, is unable to moderate his impulses. So when Jackson risks his life to confront the dead boy’s enraged father (Jorge A. Jiménez), his penitence has more than a touch of the sacrificial. By the end, “No Man’s Land” is so thickly blanketed in a plea for comity that virtually every act of kindness feels like a step toward saving Jackson’s soul.No Man’s LandRated PG-13 for guns, knives and a hint of drugs. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. In theaters. Also available to rent or buy on Amazon, Vudu 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.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More