Movies

“Thoroughbreds,” the 2018 debut feature of the playwright Cory Finley, was not to every taste, but for acid wit and gliding camera moves, it could hardly be beat. Finley’s second feature, “Bad Education,” which airs Saturday night on HBO, traffics in a kindred casual misanthropy. The movie offers an agreeably slick account of an early-2000s scandal in which a former superintendent of schools in Roslyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty to stealing $2 million from his district.And like the character played by Hugh Jackman, the superintendent Frank Tassone, “Bad Education” initially keeps its cards close, playing tricks with viewers’ sympathies.Frank, his hair gelled back and his face always wrenched into a grin, goes out of his way to be presentable. He remembers details about students from years earlier or recognizes their siblings. He meets with a parent who pushes for accelerated treatment for her third-grader. He maintains (or at least fakes) an interest in the lives of his teachers. He even welcomes an unscheduled interview with a school newspaper reporter, Rachel (Geraldine Viswanathan), encouraging her to dig deeper on a story about a school construction boondoggle. This, it turns out, is one of his less sharp moves. (The real-life student journalist who helped break the story of the scandal wrote about her experiences for The New York Times.)[embedded content]Part of the strength of “Bad Education” is in showing how easily Frank gets others to sign on to his plans. When it comes to light that a fellow administrator, Pam (Allison Janney), has dipped into the district’s finances to the tune of more than $200,000, Frank is, at first, able to contain the fallout by noting the impact bad press would have. College admissions, property values, a forthcoming budget vote — all would be in jeopardy. For a brief time, Pam looks like the central player in the thefts, rather than one piece of a puzzle.The 2004 New York Magazine article on which the film is based asked whether Roslyn residents allowed themselves to be duped by Tassone. The film, which adheres to the reporting with reasonable fidelity, is, at most, slightly more charitable in its assessment. (Ray Romano, terrific as the school board president, is an island of humanity in the sea of backbiting and self-interest.)Finley didn’t write “Bad Education,” as he did “Thoroughbreds,” and if this film lacks the stylized, pitch-black verbal parries of that movie, he outfits it with similarly precise compositions and a jarring, percussive score. The screenplay, by Mike Makowsky, a student in Roslyn during the scandal, shows an ear for Long Island flavor and class tensions, and even the set decoration is attuned to details. The student journalists’ computer software is spot-on turn-of-the-aughts.But it’s Jackman, whose smile appears increasingly wolfish as the film goes on (and as Frank’s face grows taut with cosmetic surgery), who ultimately owns “Bad Education.” It’s a plum part, sure, but also a deeply unsympathetic one — a chance for the actor to channel his charisma toward dark, mischievous ends.Bad EducationNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes. Watch on HBO. More

It’s the early 1960s in rural Oklahoma, where the wind really does sweep down the plain, just like the song says. There, the teenage Iris (Kara Hayward), a bookish introvert, is trying to keep her head down. The only child of a rancher and a bored, restless housewife (Shea Whigham and Jordana Spiro), Iris is a loner, though it’s unclear if that’s by choice or inclination. Some nights, she runs off to a swimming hole, where she floats under a canopy of stars. She’s primed for some kind of change, which arrives with Maggie (Liana Liberato), a spirited newcomer with a murky past.A drifty, overly sleepy coming-of-age story, “To the Stars” (which starts streaming Friday) tracks the inevitable friendship that arises the moment that Maggie appears onscreen to defend Iris from some bullies. It takes Iris a while to warm to Maggie, partly because Iris’s mother has done a number on her self-esteem. She isn’t used to kindness from other people, especially those her own age. But Maggie is one of those somewhat sainted free spirits who light up everyday dreariness (at least in the movies), stirring things up while inspiring clucks of disapproval and censure.[embedded content]Like almost everything else in this movie, Maggie is at once likable and exceedingly familiar. Part of the character’s appeal comes from the alluring tug of the rebel, the figure who promises freedom and who will blaze intensely before flaming out or burning her world to the ground. Whatever happens, you know that something has to give; it always does. And it’s this expectation of trouble ahead that gives the story its light pulse, enlivening both the proceedings and Iris as she follows her genre destiny: With Maggie’s help, Iris blooms and experiences joy, discovers a fragile sense of self-worth and then suffers the inevitable heartache and disappointment.The director Martha Stephens, working from a script by Shannon Bradley-Colleary, handles this material smoothly, creating a solid, tangible sense of place with landscapes, gusts of wind and a blue sky that feels more confining than sheltering. Stephens, whose movies include “Land Ho!” (directed with Aaron Katz), is particularly sensitive to Iris’s surroundings, her family’s weather-beaten house and barn, and the dusty road where Maggie rescues her. In one scene, Maggie and Iris take off down that road in a car, enjoying a much-needed if frustratingly brief escape. Then it’s back to their mean little town with its small-minded dictators and frustrated, hothouse desires.It’s always nice to see characters break free, but you need to care whether they do. One insurmountable problem with this story is that Iris just isn’t interesting enough and certainly not developed enough either as a character or in terms of the performance. She isn’t simply closed off, like a turtle in lockdown; she’s devoid of spark, personality, and it leaves you searching for someone to care about. Maggie fits that role for a while. But the movie’s great missed opportunity can be found at a beauty parlor, where another loner, Hazel (a very good Adelaide Clemens), styles hair and opens up another world with a few words, darting looks and gentle, seductive grace.To the StarsNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

LOS ANGELES — They survived the Great Depression, when tickets cost a dime. Neither earthquake nor greedy developer has been able to topple them. Over the decades, they have endured the rise of the VCR and the indignity of showing “Cats.”But the coronavirus pandemic — so far — has outmatched the remaining movie palaces of Los Angeles, at least one of which, the 93-year-old Chinese Theater, with its towering red columns and swashbuckling copper pagoda, stands as a global symbol of Hollywood.All have been closed for more than a month, along with every other movie theater in the United States: 5,548 cinemas sitting eerily vacant, with only guesses (June? July? August?) as to when projectors might flicker back to life.ImageThe ticket booth at the historic Alex Theater.Hollywood still believes in the magic of watching movies in the dark with strangers.“Communal experience is part of who we are as human beings,” said Thomas E. Rothman, chairman of Sony’s film division. “It’s primal. And people are going to come out on the other side of this with a greater appreciation for it. I am unwavering on this.”We shall see.In the meantime, vintage theaters across Los Angeles — marquee-bearing monuments to the romance of the movies — await their fate in silence. A few stand as hardened survivors of upheavals past, having turned to live music to pay the bills when cinema would not. Some seem fragile, bundled up against an unseen menace. Others are defiant: Go ahead and try to dim me.A dewy-eyed tramp (Charlie Chaplin) fell in love with a blind flower girl (Virginia Cherrill) on the night the Los Angeles Theater opened in 1931. Hosting the premiere of “City Lights” was an appropriate initiation for the Los Angeles, which was designed to drip sophistication: French Baroque architecture, a Versailles-esque mirrored lobby, blue neon floor lights. The theater, like the nearby Orpheum, which has a Beaux-Arts facade, still plays the occasional film but has mostly become a concert venue.Built in 1963, when cinema owners worried that TV sets would make theaters irrelevant, the 800-seat Cinerama Dome has an 86-foot-long, deeply curved screen — enough to fill your peripheral vision. The theater, which squats on Sunset Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, is usually a madhouse. It hosts red-carpet premieres and specializes in blockbusters.The poor Wiltern has had a harder life.It opened to moviegoers in 1931 as the Warner Brothers Western Theater and spent its early years as a Hollywood postcard: Clark Gable and Joan Crawford arriving for premieres, searchlights stabbing the sky from the terrazzo entryway. But new owners — renaming it the Wiltern, a portmanteau of the streets it faces (Wilshire and Western in what is now Koreatown) — failed to maintain its blue-green facade and ornate Art Deco interior. More

I could have forgiven the non-Scottish actors in “Robert the Bruce” for torturing my native tongue had the filmmakers not also wrapped this sort-of appendage to Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” in a caul of Celtic fairy dust. The result is a picture that feels more Walt Disney than George R.R. Martin, a strangely subdued and sluggish game of thrones more focused on convalescence than conflict.Or perhaps not so strange, considering the 25 years that have passed since its star and co-writer, Angus Macfadyen, first played the titular Scottish king in Gibson’s spirited ode to William Wallace. The new film takes place between Wallace’s death in 1305 and the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. Bruce has grown tired of fighting to free his country from beneath the heel of England; repeated defeats have left him worn, wounded and with a price on his head, hunted by Sassenachs and greedy Scots alike.[embedded content]Mostly rejecting clamor and spectacle (unlike David Mackenzie’s gory 2018 take on Bruce, “Outlaw King”), the director, Richard Gray, travels a more leisurely, reflective route. So we watch Bruce trudge despondently through snowy countryside, enact a Scottish legend about a spider spinning a web, and languish on a farm where a young widow, Morag (an appealing Anna Hutchison), and her children tend his wounds. Lingering, sentimental scenes of Bruce bonding with Morag’s youngsters fill a meandering middle section, while portents and witchy premonitions (Morag’s mother is a seer) float in and out of the narrative.Largely filmed in Montana (everyone here looks frozen half to death), “Robert the Bruce” is, for long stretches, an inaction movie. Despite welcome tension injected by Morag’s predatory brother-in-law (Zach McGowan), the tone is almost defiantly restrained. Yet the movie’s rare skirmishes feel authentically battle-wearied and handicapped by conscience. There’s a pleasing humility and introspection to this Bruce — a ruler no longer sure if his patriotic purpose is worth the carnage. His joints may be stiffer than his resolve; but, in placing the warrior temporarily aside, Macfadyen and his director have helped us more clearly to see the man.Robert the BruceNot rated. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, AppleTV and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

Ricky Gervais generally has reliable comic timing. He helped usher in a renaissance of documentary-style cringe comedy as a creator and star of the original British version of “The Office.” And he has successfully positioned himself against the well-heeled Hollywood crowd that occasionally invites Gervais to mock them to their faces as host of the Golden Globes. (In his routine in January, Gervais roasted his celebrity peers for their displays of social consciousness while they worked for corporations like Amazon, Apple — “a company that runs sweatshops in China” — and Disney. “If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?” he taunted.)But will the current cultural moment be as receptive to Season 2 of Gervais’s dark comedy series “After Life” when Netflix releases it on Friday?On this show, which Gervais created, writes and directs, he also plays the lead role of Tony Johnson, a widower still mourning his wife, Lisa (Kerry Godliman), who died of breast cancer. In his grief, Tony resolves to become the person he’s always wanted to be — self-assertive, impolitic and largely resistant to the efforts of friends who hope to steer him onto more positive paths.“After Life” is suffused with an existentialism that could make it either an ideal tonic right now or too uncomfortably real — and Gervais knows that its tone is tricky even under normal circumstances. As he said in a recent video chat from his home in north London: “The big worry for me was, could people go from laughing about something ridiculous to crying about something very real? I think the answer is yes.”Gervais talked about making comedy out of misery, the response to his Golden Globes set and his wariness of celebrity worship. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. More

Ned Kelly is a legendary figure in Australian history, a 19th-century outlaw of Irish descent who came to symbolize the struggle of oppressed people on that continent. (Oppressed white people, that is.) “True History of the Kelly Gang” takes the form of Kelly’s story as told by Ned himself. While not well versed in letters, he writes a lengthy missive to his child as his hour comes nigh, recounting his ultra-hardscrabble childhood.“A man can never outrun his fate, nor the crimes of his past,” he observes, anticipating his own end. His account of himself features anecdotes that include his refusal, as a child under the tutelage of outlaw Harry Power (Russell Crowe, looking very relaxed), to shoot off the genitals of the local official (Charlie Hunnam) who’s been sexually abusing Ned’s mother. Yikes.[embedded content]There are a couple of action scenes in “True Story of the Kelly Gang” that show off the director Justin Kurzel’s technical chops and eye for novelty. A climactic shootout with startling strobe-like lighting effects is undeniably impressive. But the jumpy, springy qualities of the movie’s visual style are unfortunately undercut by its verbal content.The movie is adapted from a Booker Prize-winning novel by Peter Carey. If you haven’t read the book, you might wonder while watching the movie, “THIS cold porridge won a Booker?” Well, no. While Carey’s voice for Kelly does contain some commonplace language, the prose also has music and momentum (the narrative abjures commas but is still clear enough to flow coherently, no mean feat). It also allows Kelly some vivid similes, as in, “Your Grandma was like a snare laid out by God for Red Kelly.” Shaun Grant’s script rarely, if ever, avails itself of such riches; instead, the narration and dialogue teem with outlaw-movie clichés.Grant and Kurzel’s conceptions of the characters are so one-dimensional they seem to defeat the movie’s talented cast. As Kelly’s mother, Essie Davis, excellent in “The Babdook” and the upcoming “Babyteeth,” does little besides jut out her jaw while either sneering or smirking. Her trite defiance is exemplified when she remonstrates against a would-be teacher who would pollute young Ned’s mind with “fancy books.” As the adult Kelly, George MacKay seems content to run around with his shirt off and make faces while faux-punk songs adorn the soundtrack. For minutes at a time, you might think, and also maybe wish, that you were watching “Trainspotting.”True History of the Kelly GangRated R for violence, language and a bit of sexuality. In English and Latin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 4 minutes. Rent or buy on Amazon, AppleTV and other streaming platforms, as well as pay TV operators. More

A group of crazies tries its hand at social engineering in “1BR,” a claustrophobic thriller set in a Los Angeles apartment complex whose evils the sun never comes close to disinfecting.For Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom), recently arrived in Hollywood with plans to become a costume designer, her new home seems idyllic. The upbeat manager (Taylor Nichols) has chosen her over dozens of applicants, and her handsome neighbor (Giles Matthey) is almost uncomfortably solicitous. The other residents can’t do enough for one another, sharing barbecues and loving concern for the aging actress (Susan Davis) who appears to be everyone’s favorite.[embedded content]But there’s a Stepford quality to their congeniality that Sarah shrugs off, moving in with her cat in tow and in violation of the building’s no-pets policy. Harder to ignore are the creepy attentions of Lester (Clayton Hoff), who skulks around on the fringes of gatherings and leers at her through glasses with one lens mysteriously blackened. Already unsettled by the family issues she’s trying to escape, Sarah soon finds her Zoloft can’t compete with the ominous noises that keep her awake all night and, it seems, only she can hear.Drawing on a fascination with cults and utopian communities, the director and co-writer, David Marmor, has created a mildly entertaining survival story whose depiction of psychological indoctrination far outstrips its generic dips into torture. Bloom is too bland to persuasively dramatize the stakes, and the movie’s shocks (sorry, kitty!) are too conventional to scare. But the ending is nicely done, and the script’s beady focus on the corrosive embrace of groupthink feels fresh and unexpectedly satisfying.1BRNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Rent or buy on AppleTV, FandangoNOW and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More